Today, Taiko, the first-ever based rollup scaling Ethereum, activated binding on-chain governance, giving its community certain controls over protocol decisions, marking the beginning of a new direction that gives its community direct control over protocol decisions. The move comes with three major Board Diretor appointments: Harvard Business School’s Felix Oberholzer-Gee, former Binance regulatory chief Joy Lam, and IEEE Fellow Wen Yonggang.
The move addresses growing concerns about centralized control in Layer 2 networks, where most protocols retain override powers that can change user funds and protocol rules without community input. Unlike most L2s that use centralized multisigs, Taiko’s governance runs entirely on-chain at dao.taiko.xyz. Token holders can veto any protocol change during review periods. The Security Council can initiate proposals, but can’t override community decisions.
“We’re flipping the script on L2 governance. Most scaling solutions keep backdoor controls through multisigs or upgrade keys that can override community decisions. We’re giving real power to token holders; they can actually veto any protocol change they don’t like,” said Daniel Wang, CEO of Taiko Labs.
The Board of Directors comprises:
Joy Lam brings extensive experience in navigating complex legal and regulatory matters. As former Head of Global Regulatory at Binance, she guided the company through challenging regulatory landscapes worldwide. Lam pioneered Asia’s first tokenized funds and led the first tokenization of prime London real estate.
Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Andreas Andresen Professor at Harvard Business School, brings world-class strategic thinking to Taiko’s governance. His research on competitive strategy and digital technology’s impact on corporate performance is regularly featured in the Financial Times, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor Wen Yonggang is an IEEE Fellow and President’s Chair in Computer Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University. He founded and directs NTU’s Centre of Computational Technologies in Finance, leading blockchain research, education, and community development across the university.
Taiko also appointed Ren Jang as a new advisor. Jang is the Head of Strategy at Flipster, a high-performance Centralized Exchange engineered by traders, optimized for trading. Ren is a licensed CPA in Korea. He initially worked as a corporate valuation expert at Ernst & Young before joining the Crypto industry, driven by a belief in blockchain’s potential to transform finance.
“True decentralization means ceding control. Taiko’s governance empowers tokenholders with binding veto power over protocol changes, putting ownership in the community where it belongs. Taiko is raising the bar in L2 governance by embedding transparency and accountability into on-chain decision-making, principles I have seen through years of navigating global regulatory frameworks to be the foundations of systems that last,” said Joy Lam.
The first binding votes are already live. Token holders can delegate voting power or vote directly on protocol changes. Every technical decision happens transparently on-chain.
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