Decentralised organisations are built from a sincere rejection of inherited power. They are driven by a belief in agency, shared ownership, and the idea that participation should not require permission. Structure is designed to distribute authority, not concentrate it. Transparency is meant to replace trust in institutions with trust in process.

And in many ways, it works.

But influence doesn't disappear simply because hierarchy is removed. It reorganises. It forms through proximity, timing, shared context, and the natural coordination that occurs long before anything reaches governance. Over time, this becomes normal. Decisions still move. Votes still pass. Participation still feels open. Yet the organisation begins operating differently to how it understands itself.

In decentralised organisations, influence almost always shapes decisions before governance forms. When that influence goes unnamed, culture develops out of step with the brand the organisation believes it is building, creating cultural debt that distorts brand reality.

A vote passes with 87% approval. The proposal looks straightforward, allocate treasury funds to a new initiative. Token holders review the details, cast their votes, and the decision feels participatory. Transparent. Democratic, even.

What they don't see is the three weeks of discussion that happened before the proposal reached them. The Discord channels where early ideas were shaped. The private calls where concerns were negotiated. The pre-coordination that determined which version of the proposal would go to vote. By the time token holders see it, the real decisions have already been made. They're not deciding. They're ratifying.

This is governance theatre. And it's everywhere in decentralised organisations.

Decentralised organisations promise something specific. Power is distributed, decisions happen transparently, anyone can participate meaningfully. The brand identity is built on this promise. It's not just marketing. It's the entire value proposition.

But influence doesn't work the way the structure suggests it should. It forms through patterns that have nothing to do with tokens or formal voting rights. Being in the right conversation at the right time. Showing up early when the project is still taking shape. Having technical knowledge that others depend on. Being hired by the core team. Dominating the discussion not through title, but through presence.

Not everyone who contributes develops this kind of influence. Only a subset. And that subset shapes decisions in ways that aren't visible to everyone else.

The gap between how influence is supposed to work and how it actually works. That's where the problem starts.

Most decentralised organisations form quickly. There's a protocol to build, a token to launch, a community to grow. The focus is on shipping, not on designing how decisions will be made when the project scales.

Early contributors make calls because someone needs to. They're the ones who understand the codebase, who know the vision, who've been in the conversations from the beginning. Informal influence concentrates naturally around whoever is present and active during those first months.

Then the organisation grows. More people join. Token distribution expands. Governance frameworks get formalised. But the patterns from the early days don't disappear. They just become harder to see.

The patterns from the early days don't disappear, they just become harder to see.

The people who were there at the start still have context that newcomers don't. They know which conversations matter. They understand the unspoken history behind certain decisions. They're connected to each other in ways that aren't documented anywhere.

This isn't necessarily intentional. It's just how organisations work when they move fast and formalise later. But in a decentralised organisation, where the promise is that everyone can participate equally, this creates a problem.

Influence in these organisations concentrates in predictable ways. Research shows that in some DAOs, fewer than 8% of contributors hold a governing majority. In others, the top ten token holders control 70-80% of voting power. The average quorum for passing proposals can be as low as three addresses.

But voting power isn't the same as influence. You can hold tokens without ever shaping a decision.

This is the proximity factor. Coordination happens in public channels, Discord servers, Telegram groups, governance forums, but understanding what's happening requires being there consistently and having enough context to know why certain things matter. It's not hidden. It's just not accessible without that proximity.

Most token holders aren't in those spaces. They see the final proposal. They vote. And they believe they're participating in a decision that's still being made, when really they're approving a decision that's already been shaped.

In traditional organisations, you know who has influence because it's marked by titles and reporting lines. The CPO has authority over the product roadmap. The CEO makes final calls on strategy. It's visible.

In decentralised organisations, influence operates without those markers. No one has a title that says "this person shapes governance decisions." But certain people do shape them, through being present, through having credibility, through being connected to the core team, through technical expertise that others depend on.

Influence operates without markers. No one has a title that says 'this person shapes decisions.' But certain people do.

There's even a pattern where core teams hire people they already know or people who are similar to them. Like hires like. This reinforces existing networks and makes it harder for outsiders to gain the same kind of influence, even if they're just as capable.

This isn't an accusation. It's an observation about how human organisations function. People trust people they know. They coordinate with people who understand context. They hire people who seem like a good fit. But in an organisation that promises decentralisation, these human tendencies create a gap between promise and reality.

Cultural debt is the term for when there's a gap between how an organisation claims to operate and how it actually operates. In a traditional company, this might matter internally, employees get frustrated, there's turnover, but it doesn't usually damage the brand. Customers don't care how decisions get made inside the company as long as the product works.

In a decentralised organisation, the structure is the brand. The promise isn't just "we built a good protocol." It's "we built a protocol that's governed transparently and collectively." When people join these organisations, as contributors, as token holders, as community members, they're buying into that promise.

When they experience the gap between the promise and the reality, it's not just an internal culture issue. It's a brand issue.

The gap itself isn't the damage. It's the accumulation. One proposal where the real discussion happened off-chain and the vote was just a formality, that might not register. But when it happens again. And again. When participants start to notice that their votes don't seem to change outcomes. When they realise that decisions are being shaped by people they can't see in conversations they can't access.

That's when cultural debt accumulates into brand damage.

The challenge is that most of this is unintentional. People coordinating in Discord aren't trying to centralise power, they're just trying to get work done. Core teams hiring people they know aren't deliberately excluding others, they're hiring people they trust. Early contributors maintaining influence isn't a conspiracy, it's just that they have context others don't.

But intention doesn't change the outcome. The influence is still invisible to most participants. The decisions are still being shaped before they reach a vote. The promise of decentralisation is still contradicted by the reality of how decisions actually happen.

For founders and core teams, the pattern is hard to see from the inside because you're in the channels where coordination happens. You're part of the pre-discussion. You have the context. To you, the process feels transparent because you can see all of it.

But to someone who holds tokens and votes on proposals without being in those channels? They're seeing a finished product and believing they're participating in its creation. They don't know invisible influence occurred. They don't know the decision was already shaped before they saw it.

They don't know invisible influence occurred. They don't know the decision was already shaped before they saw it.

The gap isn't in what gets documented. Everything might be documented. The gap is in what's knowable without proximity.

Once these patterns establish, they're difficult to change. Early contributors have built relationships and context that new participants can't replicate. Core teams are embedded in networks that formed when the organisation was small.

The standard approaches fail predictably. You could rotate people through working groups. But then you lose continuity. You could require all coordination in public forums. But then sensitive discussions become visible to adversaries. You could mandate minimum discussion periods. But that slows everything down.

Most token holders want to hold tokens, not attend weekly governance calls. They want the option to participate meaningfully if they choose to, but they don't want it to be required.

But some organisations are navigating this differently. They're not trying to eliminate invisible influence. They're making it visible and designing around it.

Some are explicit about stages of decentralisation. "We're starting with core team control. Here's the timeline for distributing that." Others document influence pathways. Who shapes decisions, how they earned that position, what the path looks like for others who want the same proximity.

A few have created contributor tiers that formalise what was already informal. Core contributors, active contributors, token holders. Each with different levels of access and influence. It's not equal. But it's honest.

They're not trying to eliminate invisible influence. They're making it visible and designing around it.

Others rotate decision makers through working groups while maintaining institutional knowledge. New voices get proximity. Context gets documented. The concentration softens without losing coherence.

Research shows that DAOs with transparent on-chain governance trade at a premium compared to those where coordination happens primarily off-chain. The market is already rewarding organisations that close the gap between promise and reality.

Degrees matter. An organisation where 8% of contributors hold governing majority isn't the same as one where 80% of power sits with the top ten holders. An organisation that actively works to bridge the context gap isn't the same as one that ignores the problem.

The pretense that everyone has equal influence does more damage than the concentration itself. When an organisation says "we're perfectly decentralised" but operates with concentrated invisible influence, every participant who notices the gap experiences a broken promise.

The organisations that are building differently acknowledge where they are on the spectrum. They're honest about where power concentrates and what they're doing to make it more visible.

The tension in decentralised organisations won't resolve by pretending invisible influence doesn't exist. It exists. People who show up consistently, who build trust, who develop expertise, they naturally gain influence. That's human. That's how collaboration works.

The organisations that will define the next phase aren't those that eliminate this reality. They're those that acknowledge it and communicate it clearly.

The brand advantage goes to organisations that can say, here's where power sits, here's why, here's how you can earn proximity if you invest the time, and here's what we're doing to make that path clearer. This isn't compromise. It's strategic honesty.

In a space where most organisations are still performing perfect decentralisation while power concentrates invisibly, honesty itself becomes differentiation.

Participants stay longer in communities that acknowledge reality rather than gaslight them about it. Contributors are more likely to invest time when they understand how influence actually works, not how it's supposed to work in theory. Token holders who understand that their vote ratifies rather than decides can still choose to participate, but they're making that choice with accurate information.

In a space where most perform perfect decentralisation while power concentrates invisibly, honesty itself becomes differentiation.

The decentralised structure is at the core of the value proposition of these organisations. But the promise can shift from "everyone has equal power" to "anyone can see how power works and challenge it if they invest the time." That's still decentralisation. Just honest about what it means.

The organisations building for the long term are treating decentralisation not as a binary state but as a spectrum they can deliberately move along. They're honest about where they are. They're transparent about the mechanisms that concentrate influence. They're designing pathways that make proximity more accessible.

When the promise aligns with reality, when organisations are honest about how influence works, trust can build differently. Not on the premise that invisible influence doesn't exist, but that the organisation is being honest about where power sits.

This matters more in decentralised organisations than in traditional ones because the structure is part of the brand. When the structure works as honestly communicated, even if it's imperfect, the value proposition holds.

The tension isn't going away. But the organisations that name it, design for it, and communicate it clearly are building something more durable than the promise of perfect decentralisation ever could.

Not to define. Just to notice.

This perspective is part of an ongoing series observing how trust, identity and brand shift in systems undergoing change. Written from a background in brand and business growth within traditional environments, these reflections explore how familiar dynamics re-emerge in decentralised contexts.

Decentralised organisations are built from a sincere rejection of inherited power. They are driven by a belief in agency, shared ownership, and the idea that participation should not require permission. Structure is designed to distribute authority, not concentrate it. Transparency is meant to replace trust in institutions with trust in process.

And in many ways, it works.

But influence doesn't disappear simply because hierarchy is removed. It reorganises. It forms through proximity, timing, shared context, and the natural coordination that occurs long before anything reaches governance. Over time, this becomes normal. Decisions still move. Votes still pass. Participation still feels open. Yet the organisation begins operating differently to how it understands itself.

In decentralised organisations, influence almost always shapes decisions before governance forms. When that influence goes unnamed, culture develops out of step with the brand the organisation believes it is building, creating cultural debt that distorts brand reality.

A vote passes with 87% approval. The proposal looks straightforward, allocate treasury funds to a new initiative. Token holders review the details, cast their votes, and the decision feels participatory. Transparent. Democratic, even.

What they don't see is the three weeks of discussion that happened before the proposal reached them. The Discord channels where early ideas were shaped. The private calls where concerns were negotiated. The pre-coordination that determined which version of the proposal would go to vote. By the time token holders see it, the real decisions have already been made. They're not deciding. They're ratifying.

This is governance theatre. And it's everywhere in decentralised organisations.

Decentralised organisations promise something specific. Power is distributed, decisions happen transparently, anyone can participate meaningfully. The brand identity is built on this promise. It's not just marketing. It's the entire value proposition.

But influence doesn't work the way the structure suggests it should. It forms through patterns that have nothing to do with tokens or formal voting rights. Being in the right conversation at the right time. Showing up early when the project is still taking shape. Having technical knowledge that others depend on. Being hired by the core team. Dominating the discussion not through title, but through presence.

Not everyone who contributes develops this kind of influence. Only a subset. And that subset shapes decisions in ways that aren't visible to everyone else.

The gap between how influence is supposed to work and how it actually works. That's where the problem starts.

Most decentralised organisations form quickly. There's a protocol to build, a token to launch, a community to grow. The focus is on shipping, not on designing how decisions will be made when the project scales.

Early contributors make calls because someone needs to. They're the ones who understand the codebase, who know the vision, who've been in the conversations from the beginning. Informal influence concentrates naturally around whoever is present and active during those first months.

Then the organisation grows. More people join. Token distribution expands. Governance frameworks get formalised. But the patterns from the early days don't disappear. They just become harder to see.

The patterns from the early days don't disappear, they just become harder to see.

The people who were there at the start still have context that newcomers don't. They know which conversations matter. They understand the unspoken history behind certain decisions. They're connected to each other in ways that aren't documented anywhere.

This isn't necessarily intentional. It's just how organisations work when they move fast and formalise later. But in a decentralised organisation, where the promise is that everyone can participate equally, this creates a problem.

Influence in these organisations concentrates in predictable ways. Research shows that in some DAOs, fewer than 8% of contributors hold a governing majority. In others, the top ten token holders control 70-80% of voting power. The average quorum for passing proposals can be as low as three addresses.

But voting power isn't the same as influence. You can hold tokens without ever shaping a decision.

This is the proximity factor. Coordination happens in public channels, Discord servers, Telegram groups, governance forums, but understanding what's happening requires being there consistently and having enough context to know why certain things matter. It's not hidden. It's just not accessible without that proximity.

Most token holders aren't in those spaces. They see the final proposal. They vote. And they believe they're participating in a decision that's still being made, when really they're approving a decision that's already been shaped.

In traditional organisations, you know who has influence because it's marked by titles and reporting lines. The CPO has authority over the product roadmap. The CEO makes final calls on strategy. It's visible.

In decentralised organisations, influence operates without those markers. No one has a title that says "this person shapes governance decisions." But certain people do shape them, through being present, through having credibility, through being connected to the core team, through technical expertise that others depend on.

Influence operates without markers. No one has a title that says 'this person shapes decisions.' But certain people do.

There's even a pattern where core teams hire people they already know or people who are similar to them. Like hires like. This reinforces existing networks and makes it harder for outsiders to gain the same kind of influence, even if they're just as capable.

This isn't an accusation. It's an observation about how human organisations function. People trust people they know. They coordinate with people who understand context. They hire people who seem like a good fit. But in an organisation that promises decentralisation, these human tendencies create a gap between promise and reality.

Cultural debt is the term for when there's a gap between how an organisation claims to operate and how it actually operates. In a traditional company, this might matter internally, employees get frustrated, there's turnover, but it doesn't usually damage the brand. Customers don't care how decisions get made inside the company as long as the product works.

In a decentralised organisation, the structure is the brand. The promise isn't just "we built a good protocol." It's "we built a protocol that's governed transparently and collectively." When people join these organisations, as contributors, as token holders, as community members, they're buying into that promise.

When they experience the gap between the promise and the reality, it's not just an internal culture issue. It's a brand issue.

The gap itself isn't the damage. It's the accumulation. One proposal where the real discussion happened off-chain and the vote was just a formality, that might not register. But when it happens again. And again. When participants start to notice that their votes don't seem to change outcomes. When they realise that decisions are being shaped by people they can't see in conversations they can't access.

That's when cultural debt accumulates into brand damage.

The challenge is that most of this is unintentional. People coordinating in Discord aren't trying to centralise power, they're just trying to get work done. Core teams hiring people they know aren't deliberately excluding others, they're hiring people they trust. Early contributors maintaining influence isn't a conspiracy, it's just that they have context others don't.

But intention doesn't change the outcome. The influence is still invisible to most participants. The decisions are still being shaped before they reach a vote. The promise of decentralisation is still contradicted by the reality of how decisions actually happen.

For founders and core teams, the pattern is hard to see from the inside because you're in the channels where coordination happens. You're part of the pre-discussion. You have the context. To you, the process feels transparent because you can see all of it.

But to someone who holds tokens and votes on proposals without being in those channels? They're seeing a finished product and believing they're participating in its creation. They don't know invisible influence occurred. They don't know the decision was already shaped before they saw it.

They don't know invisible influence occurred. They don't know the decision was already shaped before they saw it.

The gap isn't in what gets documented. Everything might be documented. The gap is in what's knowable without proximity.

Once these patterns establish, they're difficult to change. Early contributors have built relationships and context that new participants can't replicate. Core teams are embedded in networks that formed when the organisation was small.

The standard approaches fail predictably. You could rotate people through working groups. But then you lose continuity. You could require all coordination in public forums. But then sensitive discussions become visible to adversaries. You could mandate minimum discussion periods. But that slows everything down.

Most token holders want to hold tokens, not attend weekly governance calls. They want the option to participate meaningfully if they choose to, but they don't want it to be required.

But some organisations are navigating this differently. They're not trying to eliminate invisible influence. They're making it visible and designing around it.

Some are explicit about stages of decentralisation. "We're starting with core team control. Here's the timeline for distributing that." Others document influence pathways. Who shapes decisions, how they earned that position, what the path looks like for others who want the same proximity.

A few have created contributor tiers that formalise what was already informal. Core contributors, active contributors, token holders. Each with different levels of access and influence. It's not equal. But it's honest.

They're not trying to eliminate invisible influence. They're making it visible and designing around it.

Others rotate decision makers through working groups while maintaining institutional knowledge. New voices get proximity. Context gets documented. The concentration softens without losing coherence.

Research shows that DAOs with transparent on-chain governance trade at a premium compared to those where coordination happens primarily off-chain. The market is already rewarding organisations that close the gap between promise and reality.

Degrees matter. An organisation where 8% of contributors hold governing majority isn't the same as one where 80% of power sits with the top ten holders. An organisation that actively works to bridge the context gap isn't the same as one that ignores the problem.

The pretense that everyone has equal influence does more damage than the concentration itself. When an organisation says "we're perfectly decentralised" but operates with concentrated invisible influence, every participant who notices the gap experiences a broken promise.

The organisations that are building differently acknowledge where they are on the spectrum. They're honest about where power concentrates and what they're doing to make it more visible.

The tension in decentralised organisations won't resolve by pretending invisible influence doesn't exist. It exists. People who show up consistently, who build trust, who develop expertise, they naturally gain influence. That's human. That's how collaboration works.

The organisations that will define the next phase aren't those that eliminate this reality. They're those that acknowledge it and communicate it clearly.

The brand advantage goes to organisations that can say, here's where power sits, here's why, here's how you can earn proximity if you invest the time, and here's what we're doing to make that path clearer. This isn't compromise. It's strategic honesty.

In a space where most organisations are still performing perfect decentralisation while power concentrates invisibly, honesty itself becomes differentiation.

Participants stay longer in communities that acknowledge reality rather than gaslight them about it. Contributors are more likely to invest time when they understand how influence actually works, not how it's supposed to work in theory. Token holders who understand that their vote ratifies rather than decides can still choose to participate, but they're making that choice with accurate information.

In a space where most perform perfect decentralisation while power concentrates invisibly, honesty itself becomes differentiation.

The decentralised structure is at the core of the value proposition of these organisations. But the promise can shift from "everyone has equal power" to "anyone can see how power works and challenge it if they invest the time." That's still decentralisation. Just honest about what it means.

The organisations building for the long term are treating decentralisation not as a binary state but as a spectrum they can deliberately move along. They're honest about where they are. They're transparent about the mechanisms that concentrate influence. They're designing pathways that make proximity more accessible.

When the promise aligns with reality, when organisations are honest about how influence works, trust can build differently. Not on the premise that invisible influence doesn't exist, but that the organisation is being honest about where power sits.

This matters more in decentralised organisations than in traditional ones because the structure is part of the brand. When the structure works as honestly communicated, even if it's imperfect, the value proposition holds.

The tension isn't going away. But the organisations that name it, design for it, and communicate it clearly are building something more durable than the promise of perfect decentralisation ever could.

Not to define. Just to notice.

This perspective is part of an ongoing series observing how trust, identity and brand shift in systems undergoing change. Written from a background in brand and business growth within traditional environments, these reflections explore how familiar dynamics re-emerge in decentralised contexts.