Glossary

Every term this site uses, defined in two sentences.

DAO: A decentralized autonomous organization: a group that makes decisions by public vote and holds funds in wallets anyone can inspect. There is no company registrar; the public record is the organization.
Proposal: A written request for the organization to do something, put to a vote. It has an author, a voting window, and an outcome.
Vote: A member casting their voting power for or against a proposal. Voting power is usually proportional to tokens held or delegated, not one person one vote.
Quorum: The minimum amount of voting power that must participate for a vote to count. Each organization sets its own, and some set none at all.
Turnout: How much of the eligible voting power actually voted. This site cannot measure it directly — no free source publishes eligible supply per proposal — so it reports quorum attainment instead.
Delegate: Someone who votes with voting power lent to them by other holders. One delegate address can represent thousands of people, which makes voter counts look smaller than the number of humans involved.
Treasury: The funds the organization controls, held in public wallets. Its composition matters as much as its size.
Governance token: The token that confers voting power in an organization. When a treasury holds mostly its own governance token, its value and its influence rise and fall together.
Multisig: A wallet that requires several signatures to move funds. Common for treasuries, and it means a named few can execute — or fail to execute — what a vote decided.
Off-chain vote: A vote recorded by signing a message rather than by a blockchain transaction, so it costs nothing to cast. Most votes this site reads are off-chain.
On-chain vote: A vote cast as a blockchain transaction, which costs a fee and executes automatically if it passes. Slower and more expensive, but binding without anyone's cooperation.
Timelock: A delay between a vote passing and it taking effect, so anyone who objects has time to react. A safety mechanism, not a governance one.
Stablecoin: A token designed to hold a fixed value, usually one US dollar. A treasury holding these keeps its value when the organization's own token falls.
Voting power concentration: How much of the voting power that gets cast is controlled by the largest few voters. High concentration means a small group decides outcomes regardless of who else participates.
Health score: This site's 0–100 summary of four measurable things about an organization. It is an observation with a date on it, not a rating and not an endorsement.