Who should hold the future of a protocol? Increasingly, the answer from more projects is: the community.

Take WAL as an example. They are building a truly decentralized autonomous organization system, gradually shifting governance rights from the core team to the community. How are they doing this?

**The key is the veWAL model.** The more $WAL you lock and the longer the lock-up period, the greater your voting power. This design is very clever—it naturally encourages long-term holders who are optimistic to participate in decision-making, while effectively isolating short-term arbitrage noise. Major decisions like technical upgrades, fund allocation, and ecosystem collaborations all require voting.

**The participation process is also very clear.** The community initiates discussions on the official forum, mature ideas are then submitted to off-chain voting platforms like Snapshot for preliminary surveys, and final important decisions are executed on-chain. Early on, the roadmap might still be led by the foundation and core developers, but in the long run, the true steering wheel will increasingly be in DAO voting hands.

**The ecosystem fund is also a highlight.** The protocol allocates a portion of its revenue or tokens into the community treasury, where developers can submit project proposals for support. Want to create a new interface? Data analysis tools? Or even integrate other blockchains? There are opportunities. This way, a variety of creative ideas can flow in, naturally activating the ecosystem.

Whether this model works or not ultimately depends on the community’s participation and execution.