Internet Governance Forum (IGF) of the United Nations has announced the establishment of a group to launch a pilot project for a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). It hopes to explore how public sector institutions can deploy blockchain and DAO principles for governance structures. In addition to DAO governance, research topics also include digital asset management, identity, blockchain accessibility and security, and the use of this technology in economic development and investment.

A persistent issue Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) face is the notion of voter apathy, which in turn hurts the economic security of a DAO. Voter apathy occurs when the complexity, concentration of power, and time and financial cost outweigh the benefits of participating in governance. In a pseudonymous world like DeFi, solving voter apathy is rather tricky and remains an ongoing challenge.

A new proposal from the Aave community suggests using EIP-4824 to expand Aave DAO. EIP-4824 defines a standard JSON schema for publishing basic DAO metadata on-chain. It achieves this by deploying a new smart contract to store the daoURI, and does not involve any fund transfers or changes to the Aave smart contract.

Ethereum staking infrastructure SSV Network has announced that two key proposals have been approved by snapshot voting. The main network incentive plan will reward DVT to promote wider adoption, while Foundation Incorporation will help simplify offline and online operations. The first proposal proposes to create an incentive layer for the running SSV main network, which rewards participants running on the SSV network in the coming year to promote the adoption of DVT and the growth of the SSV Network. If approved, the DAO multisig committee will initially mint 200,000 SSV into a new multisig wallet; the SSV minted during the incentive main network program will not exceed 1 million. The other proposal, "ssv.network DAO Foundation Merger," outlines the steps and motivations for establishing a Cayman Foundation (SSV Foundation) for the ssv.network DAO, including foundation documents, personnel, and establishment schedules. Within three months of the passage of this proposal, the Foundation Working Group (FWG) will be authorized to instruct the SSV Foundation to take necessary steps to complete the registration process and begin operations.

Abu Dhabi, the second-most populous emirate in the UAE, has introduced a regulatory framework for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and other entities built on distributed ledger technology (DLT). This marks the first step towards such a framework by a Middle Eastern territory. The new framework allows DAOs to operate legally and issue tokens to their members, providing regulatory clarity for firms in the digital assets sector. Abu Dhabi is aiming to become a crypto hub alongside Dubai, and this move is part of a larger initiative to foster initiatives in the broader blockchain and digital asset realm.

DAO management platform Aragon announced the dissolution of its subsidiary, the Aragon Association. ANT holders can exchange their ANT for ETH at a fixed rate of 0.0025376 ETH/ANT. To facilitate this, the Aragon Association is deploying 86,343 ETH to the redemption contract on the Ethereum mainnet. Due to legal restrictions, particularly regulatory risks arising from token speculation and market manipulation, this decision cannot be subject to public voting. In the future, the Aragon Association will continue to fulfill its mission within a product-centric structure and use the remaining funds for product development.

David Paul, a member of the Republic of Marshall Islands Parliament, and Adam Miller, CEO and co-founder of MIDAO, stated that the Marshall Islands Parliament passed legislation last week to further promote its already-perfected decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) laws. The original law stated that DAOs do not need a board of directors, do not require written or paper records if they are on the blockchain, and every member of the DAO, except for one person, can remain anonymous. Those who do not wish to remain anonymous do not need to be in the Marshall Islands but must provide detailed KYC information. The revised law strengthens the advantages of the original law by providing faster registration times (up to 30 days). It also stipulates that DAOs will not be responsible for their use of open source software alone. In addition, the law stipulates that most governance tokens are not securities if they do not confer any economic rights. This move also makes the Marshall Islands the first country to legally incorporate DAO series limited liability companies.

On October 26th, Tarun Chitra, the founder of DeFi risk manager Gauntlet, announced the completion of an $8 million financing round for his new startup Aera. The round was led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Jump Trading. Aera is a decentralized protocol aimed at helping decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) manage their finances. Chitra stated that Aera's goal is to enable DAOs to quickly respond to market changes while not sacrificing decentralization principles, providing them with crowdsourced investment portfolio management advice.

Ether.fi has launched a liquidity staking token eETH, which can be heavily staked on EigenLayer. The team plans to open source the protocol entirely in December this year and achieve DAO governance by March 2024. 

October 16th, the non-custodial liquidity staking protocol ether.fi announced its decentralized roadmap on its social platform and will limit its market share. It promises to limit the number of validators and ETH self-restriction to less than 25% on the consensus layer of the protocol.