Decoding Social Sentiment in DAO: A Comparative Analysis of Blockchain Governance Communities

Abstract

Blockchain technology is leading a revolutionary transformation across diverse industries, with effective governance standing as a critical determinant for the success and sustainability of blockchain projects. Community forums, pivotal in engaging decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), wield a substantial impact on blockchain governance decisions. Concurrently, Natural Language Processing (NLP), particularly sentiment analysis, provides powerful insights from textual data. While prior research has explored the potential of NLP tools in social media sentiment analysis, a gap persists in understanding the sentiment landscape of blockchain governance communities. The evolving discourse and sentiment dynamics on the forums of top DAOs remain largely unknown. This paper delves deep into the evolving discourse and sentiment dynamics on the public forums of leading DeFi projects—Aave, Uniswap, Curve Dao, Aragon, Yearn.finance, Merit Circle, and Balancer—placing a primary focus on discussions related to governance issues. Despite differing activity patterns, participants across these decentralized communities consistently express positive sentiments in their Discord discussions, indicating optimism towards governance decisions. Additionally, our research suggests a potential interplay between discussion intensity and sentiment dynamics, indicating that higher discussion volumes may contribute to more stable and positive emotions. The insights gained from this study are valuable for decision-makers in blockchain governance, underscoring the pivotal role of sentiment analysis in interpreting community emotions and its evolving impact on the landscape of blockchain governance. This research significantly contributes to the interdisciplinary exploration of the intersection of blockchain and society, with a specific emphasis on the decentralized blockchain governance ecosystem. We provide our data and code for replicability as open access on GitHub.

Uniswap Daily Transaction Indices by Network

“…Expanding the Dataset with Additional Network Attributes: While the current daily indices offer a robust foundation for empirical analysis within the DeFi ecosystem, it is evident that the breadth of our dataset can be broadened to include more comprehensive variables. These variables should encapsulate diverse facets of DeFi network systems, as referenced in existing literature, 31,33 including advanced network features, 4 intricate transaction fee mechanisms, 34,35 and the nuanced social sentiment dynamics [36][37][38] prevalent in DeFi networks. A particular area of interest for future investigations is the security dimension within these networks, as outlined in existing research.…”