Chronicles of Nantang DAO (Part I)

By Jia Fan

(PhD Student, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Eurybia Researcher)

Preface

In March 2025, with the support of City University of Hong Kong and my doctoral supervisor Professor Xiaofan Liu, I conducted a one-and-a-half-month field study in Sanxing Village (formerly Nantang Village), Sanhe Town, Fuyang City, Anhui Province. During this period, I conducted in-depth interviews with 14 participants, including core members of Nantang DAO, employees of local agricultural cooperatives, and villagers. I also participated in activities such as the Nantang DAO Onboarding Program, daily operations of the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative, and the Nantang Buzhi DAO Translation Group.

Although the time was short, I was deeply moved. I witnessed the locals’ earnest efforts to put DAO ideals into practice, as well as the many challenges they faced as pioneers in the rural-building DAO space. These issues are not only unique to their context but also reflect broader difficulties currently facing DAO development.

The "Chronicles of Nantang DAO" series is divided into seven parts: Origins, Gathering and Conflict, What Are the Goals?, Experiments in Incentives and Circulation, Is It Decentralized Enough?, Paving a New Path, and Final Thoughts. These writings aim to objectively document the stories of people striving for change on this land — the faint yet persistent light of idealism in rural revitalization, the frustrations and perseverance in practice, and the most authentic human connections. If these stories can resonate with more people or offer insights to rural builders and Web3 explor alike, then they have fulfilled their purpose.

This first and second part introduces the background of Nantang DAO’s emergence in Nantang Village, the gathering of the "Seven Founders," and the tensions between the Nantang Cooperative and DAO members.

Origins

Nantang’s Democratic Roots

In the year 2025, on the wish list of the Ethereum Foundation’s academic grant program, the question “How can DAO tools assist cooperatives?” was proposed for the first time as an academic topic¹. This marked not only a novel application of Web3 technology² in the real world but also posed a significant challenge to researchers globally. While scholars around the globe were eager to tackle this issue, coincidentally, in a seemingly ordinary rural village in China, a group of young people and villagers had already begun their own grassroots experiment.

In August 2024, Nantang DAO — a decentralized autonomous organization dedicated to rural development — was officially established. Unlike most DAOs worldwide, all members of Nantang DAO live within the village, coexisting with the original agricultural cooperative. Though jokingly described as rival factions, the truth is that the so-called "headquarters" of Nantang DAO actually resides within the cooperative compound — a true example of mutual integration. However, introducing the concept of decentralized autonomous organization into rural life is indeed a pioneering effort in China. This small village in Sanhe Town, Yingzhou District, Fuyang City, Anhui Province, became a hub of innovation by adopting cutting-edge ideas from the crypto world. It soon gained national attention, drawing scholars and experts to discuss the concept of “rural-building DAO,” and even hosted a Web3 hackathon — an unprecedented event in rural China³.

Figure 1 - The Horse-Head Wall of the Nantang Cooperative Courtyard

You might wonder: what makes this village so attractive to Web3 elements? Why was the first rural DAO born here? And why has it been humorously dubbed “the Jerusalem of Chinese Web3”? The answer lies not in randomness but in history — the democratic genes and cultural heritage cultivated over the past three decades are the deepest roots of its success. From renowned farmer rights organizations to the first localized implementation of Robert's Rules of Order, the seeds of democratic governance have long been sown here.

The mention of farmer rights organizations may seem somewhat outdated today. Yet at the turn of the century in China, when the phrase “farmers suffer, rural areas are poor, agriculture is dangerous”⁴ accurately reflected reality, such self-organized groups played a crucial role in advancing rural modernization and left a significant mark in the history of rural development. This village in Anhui was both a participant and witness to this sweeping movement.

In the 1990s, tax reform was implemented nationwide, but in some parts of Fuyang, local authorities imposed excessive burdens on farmers, while corrupt officials colluded with local thugs to enforce collection efforts, leading to widespread suffering. At that time, Yang Yunbiao (affectionately called “Biao Ge”), a recent graduate from Northwest University of Political Science and Law, represented villagers in filing complaints in Beijing. He faced various forms of retaliation, including intimidation and unlawful detention. In response, locals realized that only through self-organization could they change the status quo. Thus, the Farmers’ Rights Protection Association was born⁵.

In 2004, inspired by the suggestions of Wen Tiejun, a well-known expert on rural issues in China, the village began preparing to establish the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative, marking a shift from protest-driven resistance toward constructive community building — from “crying for rights” to “building villages with smiles.” During this period, many constructive cultural, social, and economic initiatives emerged, including the Elder Respect Cultural Festival, farmer-led financial mutual aid programs, elderly associations, women’s associations, and activity centers for left-behind children⁶.

As things gradually settled down, one of Nantang Cooperative’s democratic innovations once again drew outside attention — in 2008, Robert’s Rules of Order, the classic Western parliamentary procedure, took root in a Chinese village for the first time. Yuan Tianpeng, the key figure behind this transformation, had personally experienced the rule-based system during his time at the student parliament of the University of Alaska. Upon returning to China, he committed himself to adapting these rules for local use. Through a chance introduction by independent writer Kou Yan Ding, he met Yang Yunbiao of Nantang Cooperative and visited the village in person. Together with Biao Ge and other villagers, they engaged in extensive discussions and trial-and-error processes, eventually crafting the “Thirteen Nantang Principles” — affectionately nicknamed the “Radish and Cabbage Rules” by locals. The book Operational Democracy vividly documents the birth of this set of rules⁷.

This localized adaptation of parliamentary procedure quickly attracted widespread attention from domestic and international academia and media, becoming one of Nantang’s most recognizable cultural symbols. Looking back, what made it especially valuable was that it successfully stripped away the elitist connotations of Western-style parliamentary rules and transformed them into a truly practical and implementable model rooted in rural life. The Nantang practice demonstrated that democracy is not an abstract ideal or the exclusive privilege of elites, but rather a workable system grounded in methodology that can take root even at the most basic levels of society. This experience provided valuable indigenous insights for China’s grassroots democratic construction and showcased the strong vitality of democratic institutions in rural China.

Formation of Nantang DAO

Consciously organizing farmers and applying the Radish and Cabbage Rules undoubtedly represent Nantang’s precious cultural DNA. Yet up to this point, everything happening within the Nantang Cooperative had not yet intersected with the world of Web3. That connection would come through one person — Liu Bing.

In 2011, Liu Bing came across online reports about Nantang’s democratic practices. Driven by curiosity about the “Radish and Cabbage Rules,” he traveled to Nantang as a volunteer. Meanwhile, Matthew Hale, a Ph.D. anthropology student from the U.S., arrived in Nantang to conduct field research on China’s new rural development movement⁸. In this village deeply connected to the land, they engaged in wide-ranging discussions — from Argentina’s worker factory occupation movements⁹ to how blockchain technology could foster decentralized economic systems and support cooperative development. During one casual conversation, he introduced Bitcoin to Liu Bing and even offered him one (worth about $1 at the time). This encounter planted a seed in Liu Bing’s mind. Since then, fate had started turning — he began closely following developments in the cryptocurrency industry. From 2013 onward, he invested in Bitcoin and participated in Ethereum’s global crowdfunding campaign in 2014. After achieving financial freedom, Liu Bing began giving back to Nantang — initially donating Ether directly to the cooperative and attempting to educate its members about blockchain and digital wallets. Unfortunately, the results were less than ideal.

In the following years, two major events occurred — one involving the cooperative, the other related to the Web3 space in the Chinese-speaking world. First, the cooperative’s mutual fund project collapsed due to factors like the impact of the 2022 pandemic, leaving loans unrecoverable and plunging the cooperative into debt. Meanwhile, SeeDAO — the largest DAO organization in the Chinese-speaking world — completed its transition from a company to a DAO and rapidly grew into the largest DAO community in China. SeeDAO, a humanistic DAO, has always focused on rural development in China. Against this backdrop, with introductions from Liu Bing, Gu Yi, and Wang Debin, Yang Yunbiao, the head of the cooperative, and Baiyu, the founder of SeeDAO, engaged in deep conversations. They realized that integrating Web3 into rural development could attract more young talent and commercial resources, and potentially offer new solutions to the cooperative’s debt crisis. At this point, combining Nantang with Web3 seemed to have everything in place — except for the final spark.

Unexpectedly, the wind blew first from SeeDAO. In May 2024, several SeeDAO members visited Nantang for field research. In the former village elementary school now known as Nantang Sutras Guesthouse, Biao Ge shared the cooperative’s 20-year struggle story under a Bodhi tree with visiting guests. These stories deeply moved the Web3 explorers, who repeatedly exclaimed that Nantang felt like “the Jerusalem of Chinese Web3.” This meaningful meeting ignited enthusiasm for collaboration, and SeeDAO subsequently organized multiple study tours. Almost simultaneously, the cooperative launched its first intern recruitment plan, opening its doors to young people passionate about rural development.

Thus, people from two entirely different worlds — rural development and Web3 — began exchanging ideas and learning from each other in Nantang. Amid this vibrant atmosphere, another favorable wind quietly arose — the idea of establishing a truly grounded Web3 organization was gradually transforming from dream into reality...

It was June 2024 in Shanghai — preparations for the “Ethereum Public Summer” event, jointly initiated by LXDAO and ETHPanda, were underway. Meanwhile, an extraordinary 700-kilometer journey was about to begin. Introduced and sponsored by Liu Bing, partners from the Nantang Cooperative in Fuyang, Anhui, entered the Web3 world for the first time. There, they met Jump, an LXDAO member who was preparing for a presentation. Liu Bing recalls little about the actual speech, but he clearly remembers how Biao Ge’s son excitedly grabbed his hand after Jump finished speaking, shouting: “I like Jump! I like Jump! I want to bring him back to Nantang!” This innocent moment, full of destiny, was seen by Liu Bing as a fated connection.

In the following days, in-depth conversations between Liu Bing and LXDAO member Yu Xing gave shape to the vision of “Web3 entering Nantang.” Soon after, Lizi from SeeDAO, along with Yu Xing and Jump from LXDAO, arrived in Nantang as the first resident participants, launching this unique experiment. To encourage more Web3 participants to join, Liu Bing promised a reward of 0.1 ETH (approximately RMB 2,000) to each participant who visited Nantang. Later, to build a more sustainable incentive mechanism, and upon collective suggestion, Liu Bing decided to establish a dedicated treasury to facilitate exchanges between Nantang and the Web3 world.

Once the funding issue was resolved, organizational efforts followed. On July 28, 2024, Yu Xing drafted and published Nantang DAO’s first official proposal¹⁰, marking the formal start of this innovative organization aimed at integrating Web3 technologies with rural governance. One month later, the Nantang DAO founding proposal was approved by LXDAO¹¹, signifying the establishment of a deep collaborative relationship between Nantang DAO and LXDAO, and affirming Nantang DAO’s status as an independently operating entity.

From ambitious declarations of building “the Jerusalem of Chinese Web3” to the concrete rooting of a DAO led by Nantang itself, much has happened in just two short years on this land. For the Nantang Cooperative, emerging from the shadow of debt brought a glimmer of hope — and everything seemed to be moving in a better direction.

Figure 2 - Logos

Gathering and Conflict

The Seven Founders of Nantang DAO

"Creating connections while embracing differences, nurturing hope amid uncertainty."¹²

With the support of Liu Bing’s Web3 incentive program, news quickly spread across various online DAO communities. More people gradually arrived in Nantang, including Bixing, who would later become a core member of Nantang DAO. At the same time, the cooperative also assigned one of its official employees (Yang Zhen) to join the DAO’s founding team as a representative. Thus, a rural DAO composed of seven initial members was formed. These "Seven Founders" came from diverse backgrounds — some were DAO practitioners, others were Web3 developers or graduate students, and some were even local villagers born and raised in Nantang. Across all of China, it would have been hard to find a more grounded DAO team at that time.

Yu Xing was the first resident member of Nantang DAO. Before meeting Liu Bing, this Web3 practitioner had already studied innovative cases of integrating blockchain technology with rural development in Japan. From his early fascination with NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens)¹³, to his deep involvement in building decentralized communities, and eventually becoming a contributor to LXDAO, his career has always been driven by idealism and entrepreneurial passion. Even before officially stepping into the field of rural revitalization, Yu Xing sharply perceived the natural “resonance” between DAO organizations and traditional villages. In his view, compared to the winner-takes-all corporate structure prevalent in urban commercial societies, traditional villages naturally possess bottom-up governance features through clan networks and public opinion supervision — a characteristic that intriguingly aligns with the distributed decision-making model pursued by DAOs. Moreover, DAOs aim to build more equitable ownership relationships where co-creators participate in value distribution — a concept similarly reflected in the design of agricultural cooperatives¹⁴, indicating a deeper institutional synergy. Reflecting on his connection with Nantang, he believed that this land, rich in historical practices such as farmer rights protection and localized implementation of Robert’s Rules of Order, carries an inherent spirit of pioneering social exploration — providing fertile ground for Web3 to engage with rural development. However, facing reality, he candidly acknowledged that significant information asymmetry exists in rural areas, meaning meaningful change can only happen when people are fully immersed. With this understanding, he committed himself wholeheartedly, initiating a profound dialogue between Web3 and rural China.

Jump was the second core member to arrive in Nantang after Yu Xing. As a devoted fan of American anthropologist David Graeber¹⁵, Jump was deeply captivated by the idea of bottom-up organization upon first encountering the concept of DAO. Prior to arriving in Nantang, he had worked at LXDAO for a year, until a chance encounter at the Shanghai event forged a unique bond between him and the locals. Despite this, during my interview with him, he seemed conflicted about being described as “an LXDAO member coming to Nantang,” almost deliberately avoiding such framing. For him, the identity he carried upon arrival represented a certain original intention — he preferred to see himself as free-spirited, able to pursue what truly resonated with him in Nantang — a lifestyle and institutional design inspired by the logic of mycelium networks.

From Jump’s perspective, mycelium-like design emphasizes instability and interweaving. Instability embraces emergence, multiplicity, and dynamic influence from encounters (as opposed to linear growth and control), while interweaving implies symbiotic relationships with surrounding environments — designing institutions with attention to differences and dependencies among entities, enabling better coexistence.¹⁶ Carrying these values, he came to the countryside to seek a new way of life, naturally adopting a place-based mindset. When asked about the combination of rural revitalization and DAO, he noted that although simply packaging these two elements together may generate buzz and attract development resources, economic benefits, and media attention to the village, the still-bubbly nature of Web3 resembles a seed — one that desperately needs fertile soil like rural China to grow. When I further asked what the countryside could offer DAO (or Web3), he paused thoughtfully before replying: “I haven’t spent decades working within the Ethereum system, nor do I have extensive personal experiences tied to it, so I don’t approach it from that angle. I feel more connected to this village and the people I’ve met here.” Nevertheless, despite his rural-centered thinking, he added: “Digital transformation is something Professor Wen Tiejun has long advocated, and Web3 could serve as an entry point for rural builders to explore digital tools. There are people in the Web3 space who genuinely want to use technology to make positive changes in the real world, and Nantang offers an excellent testing ground.”

Bixing is a seasoned developer in the Web3 space. Just as his pseudonym “xboring” suggests, his daily life is simple and routine-driven. Yet beneath this calm exterior lies a heart filled with curiosity toward emerging ideas — it was precisely this desire for “stillness giving rise to movement” that led him into the world of DAOs. Born and raised in the countryside, Bixing has always maintained a deep emotional attachment to rural life. When he first heard about the unprecedented idea of combining rural revitalization with Web3, his inner passion was instantly ignited. “I wanted to know what they were really thinking, what they truly wanted to achieve.” Driven by equal parts curiosity and unease, he embarked on his journey to Nantang, even preparing to leave shortly after arrival if things didn’t work out. But instead, he ended up staying for over half a year.

He is a pragmatic person — not one to dwell on conceptual debates, but rather someone skilled at identifying solutions based on concrete needs. When discussing the intersection between DAOs and rural revitalization, he emphasized that rural communities need to unite, and DAOs provide just the right organizational form — one that preserves individual independence while enabling effective collaboration. He believes that promoting DAO applications in rural areas can at least open new pathways for struggling rural initiatives and create opportunities for transformative change. As he put it himself: “Change, no matter how small, is better than no change at all.”

Besides Yu Xing, Jump, and Bixing, other members who came from outside included Cikey, Pianpian, and Dinghui. At the time, Cikey served as head of operations at LXDAO and was also a proponent of decentralized communities, saying: “DAO design resembles an ecosystem — it grows from the bottom up, offering more people opportunities to unlock their potential and creativity, helping them find like-minded friends.” To better assist the integration of local communities with Web3, she accepted Nantang’s invitation and traveled there. Pianpian was working at an ecological farm in Guangzhou’s Yinlin Village at the time. Although only vaguely familiar with DAOs, he found the concept “quite interesting.” Finally came Dinghui, a well-known KOL in the community, who gained recognition in Web3 circles for his viral article titled "The Great Failure of Chinese DAOs: Don't Worry, None of Us Can Achieve Decentralized Autonomy."¹⁷

With Dinghui's arrival, the “Seven Founders” of Nantang DAO were finally united, marking the beginning of this groundbreaking social experiment blending rural revitalization with Web3.

Figure 3 - The Seven Founders of Nantang DAO (Source: Nantang DAO homepage[^18])

Conflict: Two Groups with Divergent Backgrounds

The collectivist culture of rural Chinese society is rooted in the tradition of agricultural village communities, emphasizing group cooperation and shared well-being. This culture is based on moral constraints such as the belief that "people act while heaven watches," and it maintains social order through collective norms. As Professor Fei Xiaotong noted, traditional beliefs (such as the kitchen god’s supervision) and taboos (respect for grain, sex, and written paper) form a framework that regulates people's daily behaviors in rural society.¹⁹ In contrast, DAO governance emphasizes individual rationality and autonomous decision-making, building trust through blockchain’s transparency and traceability. When these two fundamentally different governance cultures and logics meet, conflict becomes almost inevitable.

In early 2025, the Nantang Xingnong Cooperative announced its third round of recruitment under the “Nantang Youth Internship Program,”²⁰ marking the third such initiative since its launch in March 2024. Unlike previous rounds, this time the program included not only ecological agriculture, zero-pollution village development, community library operations, and cultural activities, but also emphasized learning Web3 fundamentals and participating in Nantang DAO. Soon after being disseminated by the media teams of Guoren Rural Reconstruction²¹ and SeeDAO, the announcement attracted attention — yet internally within Nantang, the situation was far from optimistic. After months of coexistence, rather than forming a strong synergy, tensions between cooperative members and DAO participants escalated. Jump once summarized the source of this tension as the deep-seated differences between the two groups: “The gap includes differences in experience, life background, values, personality — and often, prejudice.”²²

In fact, signs of this divide were already visible during the formation of Nantang DAO. At the very beginning, when defining the relationship between the cooperative and the DAO, significant disagreements arose. The DAO team wished to operate relatively independently, while the cooperative insisted on starting actions first and gradually establishing boundaries through collaboration. In Biao Ge’s view, as the local entity responsible for ensuring stability in the village, allowing full autonomy to the DAO without established trust was unrealistic — decisions had to be made collectively. Yu Xing categorized this difference as one of "behavioral habits": DAOs tend to plan rules and structures upfront, while rural organizations adapt flexibly to changing circumstances, following a more "elastic" approach.

After prolonged negotiation, both sides reached a compromise: the cooperative would provide its courtyard as the workspace for Nantang DAO, while the DAO would issue an additional 20% of its original token supply (Nantang Beans) to the cooperative as economic compensation. Additionally, the cooperative retained a veto right over decisions involving local affairs.

At the same time, internal institutional development within Nantang DAO continued, aiming to better integrate with the local context. To facilitate participation and support newcomers, in September 2024, the community voted to adopt the first version of a unique "Newcomer Onboarding Task Plan." This plan included tasks closely tied to the local community, such as attending daily morning exercises, participating in ecological farming (weeding, composting), understanding Robert’s Rules of Order, and interviewing villagers. Learning basic Web3 concepts and using common governance tools like Snapshot, Fairsharing, and Notion were also mandatory requirements.

As a result, some cooperative staff and interns completed these tasks and joined the DAO. However, instead of promoting integration, this influx seemed to further complicate the situation. From the perspective of Nantang DAO, new members brought dual identities and equal voting rights — potentially influencing the direction of the community. According to Yu Xing, “their affiliation with the cooperative often led them to act in the cooperative’s interest,” causing internal misalignments. For an organization built on flat hierarchies and shared decision-making, this posed a major challenge.

In response, Nantang DAO raised the entry threshold²³: beyond completing the onboarding tasks, candidates were now required to have prior DAO experience — such as contributing meaningfully to other DAOs or participating in foundational knowledge-sharing sessions within Web3 partner organizations. This higher standard excluded many cooperative members, effectively stripping them of decision-making power over many local initiatives. Yet in a small village like Nantang, nearly everyone was a stakeholder in local affairs.

Thus, at the time, local youth could be roughly divided into three categories:

1. Members of Nantang DAO with Web3 backgrounds,
2. Members of Nantang DAO affiliated with the cooperative,
3. Interns from the cooperative who had not joined the DAO.

On the proposal platform, opinions were sharply divided — some advocated for ecological agriculture, others pushed for local community building, while others focused on external connections. During discussions and voting, arguments often became heated. Central questions emerged: “What does this actually have to do with Web3?” or “Will this truly benefit local development?” If you had visited then, you might have heard community members joking: “Other Web3 communities are trading crypto, while we’re arguing all day.”

In mid-October 2024, during a sharing session in Beijing, Bixing reflected: “Maintaining the vitality of a DAO is far more challenging than creating it — especially when managing internal differences and conflicts.”²⁴

A Third Path: Nantang Buzhi DAO

As time passed, tensions grew increasingly irreconcilable. Rational discussion gave way to emotional disputes, and debates often spiraled into endless arguments. The once-unifying idealism of Nantang DAO now faced its first crossroads.

Jump was among the first to make a choice. As a core member deeply involved in every major decision from inception to daily operations, he found himself trapped in escalating conflicts. “DAO meetings had become rigid and boring,” and the word “struggle” was what he heard most frequently. Feeling powerless to change the status quo, he grew exhausted. Though the mycelium logic told him that instability and conflict were normal, the drawn-out entanglements eventually wore down his patience. He decided to seek a new way — to build a different kind of relationship with local partners.

Around winter 2024, when interns were excluded from Nantang DAO due to their lack of Web3 experience, Jump teamed up with Yaren, Shuhui, and other cooperative members to launch a new initiative. With irony, they named it Nantang Buzhi DAO, setting up its digital space on Notion.²⁵ Exploring this archive, one can find records of passionate gatherings like the “Revolution Against Investors” meeting, alongside everyday activities such as communal movie nights, translation projects, and writing sessions. As more local activities unfolded, relationships among members grew closer.

Although founded with irony and critique, Nantang Buzhi DAO objectively offered a third path — a middle ground between the cooperative and Nantang DAO. When asked about its relationship with Nantang DAO, Jump offered a telling remark: “We hope Buzhi DAO creates pressure for them to improve, pushing them toward better performance.” When questioned about how it differed from Nantang DAO — which also aimed at rural revitalization — Shuhui candidly replied: “We refuse to do things just for the sake of being a DAO. Instead, we focus on practical, meaningful actions that directly impact villagers’ lives — things that are possible but remain undone.”

In April 2025, Nantang Buzhi DAO published an article titled "Finding Authentic Meaning Amid Urban Alienation" explaining its organizational philosophy and vision. It proposed ideas such as “decentralization is a means, not an end,” and “letting rural revitalization truly revitalize itself.” It pledged not to force members to engage with Web3 technology, but instead to empower local youth and inspire more young people to realize their potential.²⁶

Notes and References

¹ https://efdn.notion.site/Academic-Grants-Round-2025-Wishlist-17bd9895554180f9a9c1e98d1eee7aec

² Web3 is a term coined by Gavin Wood, co-founder of Polkadot and one of the original founders of Ethereum, in 2014. It refers to a "decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain technology."

³ A hackathon (also known as a hackfest) is an event where computer programmers and other individuals involved in software development—such as graphic designers, interface designers, and project managers—gather together to collaborate intensively on a software project.

⁴ In the early 2000s, Li Changping, then Party Secretary of Qipan Township, Jianli County, Hubei Province, wrote a letter to Premier Zhu Rongji stating that “farmers are truly suffering, rural areas are truly impoverished, and agriculture is truly at risk.” His book I Tell the Truth to the Premier later brought national attention to rural issues. In 2001, the term “San Nong” (rural issues) was officially included in policy documents and became a widely used term among academic circles and policymakers in China.

⁵ Zhu Xinshan, Rural Social Structure Changes and Organizational Reconstruction [M]. Shanghai University Press, 2004. Page 166.

⁶ Yang Yunbiao, Operational Democracy [EB/OL]. Urbanization Network — China's Urbanization Portal, March 20, 2015 [accessed November 1, 2023]. http://www.ciudsrc.com/webdiceng.php?id=82806

⁷ Kou Yanding, Yuan Tianpeng. Operational Democracy: A Complete Record of Robert’s Rules of Order Going Rural [M]. Hangzhou: Zhejiang University Press, 2012.

⁸ Hale, M. A. (2013). Reconstructing the Rural: Peasant Organizations in a Chinese Movement for Alternative Development (Doctoral dissertation).

⁹ The Argentine Worker Takeover Movement is a social movement that emerged in the early 2000s during Argentina's economic crisis, where workers autonomously took over bankrupt factories and implemented democratic management and production practices.

¹⁰ https://snapshot.box/#/s:ntdao.eth/proposal/0xd01a82872a220edfc472bf9699546cc0d8e3c4a177bb07f3c0594264218f8b86

¹¹ https://snapshot.box/#/s:lxdao.eth/proposal/0x877eda715a49ed9c1c22e0f227f9129bcaa554e4eadea1d588fde2b446bcb639

¹² LXDAO Beijing Offline Event Review | Public Goods & DAO Governance, https://mirror.xyz/lxdao.eth/GBySIP5z0R5vJdEqg6UH7i3iXsPFMhyXp5vo11jeRH8

¹³ A non-fungible token (NFT) is a data unit on a blockchain (digital ledger) that represents unique digital assets such as artwork.

¹⁴ According to the revised People's Republic of China Farmer Cooperative Law in 2017, rural cooperatives are mutual economic organizations voluntarily formed and democratically managed by agricultural product producers or providers/utilizers of agricultural production services, based on rural household contract operations. One of their core features is the "distribution of surplus according to transaction volume," with more than 60% of distributable surplus needing to be returned to members in proportion to their transactions.

¹⁵ David Graeber (February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020), an American anthropologist and anarchist activist, was a professor at the London School of Economics. He was well-known for his sharp critiques of bureaucracy, politics, and capitalism.

¹⁶ Wynn/Tiao. From ALONE to Myco: Fungi, Public Goods, Domestic Conscience, Nantang and Nantang DAO [EB/OL]. Matters, October 27, 2024. https://matters.town/a/t8mkit1ijo4z/history

¹⁷ https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/u66m0xCZNBwuY8__4XtMvg

¹⁸ https://www.notion.so/DAO-ba1ea7d047e3480bb89b210a5ea8d3d0

¹⁹ Fei Xiaotong. Peasant Life in China (Kiang-Ts村经济) [M]. Beijing: Peking University Press, 2012: 232.

²⁰ Anhui Fuyang Nantang Xingnong Cooperative. 2025 Nantang Youth Internship Program [EB/OL]. Foresight News, January 4, 2025 [accessed April 21, 2025]. https://s.foresightnews.pro/article/detail/75546

²¹ https://www.bilibili.com/opus/1018446800155049989

²² Wynn/Tiao. From ALONE to Myco: Fungi, Public Goods, Domestic Conscience, Nantang and Nantang DAO [EB/OL]. Matters, October 27, 2024. https://matters.town/a/t8mkit1ijo4z/history

²³ https://snapshot.box/#/s:ntdao.eth/proposal/0x2f95455984cc1ad1c6ffe13dbd78342e58e38ff32a4eb5ea70ca1222d9954520

²⁴ https://mirror.xyz/lxdao.eth/GBySIP5z0R5vJdEqg6UH7i3iXsPFMhyXp5vo11jeRH8

²⁵ https://meadow-kangaroo-109.notion.site/DAO-187015795cf7817cbb48cabaec79cc24

²⁶ Nantang Not-a-DAO: Searching for the True Meaning of Life Amidst the Alienation of Urban Life, https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1lLmDI1Ka1XDDwpSx3w85w

PANews Link

https://www.panewslab.com/zh/articles/ofg179u4wv9j