Agora, a blockchain governance startup, is set to be acquired Its rival’s meeting room. The company framed the acquisition as a strategic move to strengthen governance within the broader Ethereum ecosystem, citing expectations of renewed growth in decentralized governance due to President Trump’s promise of regulatory clarity for the blockchain industry.
“2025 is the year we make good governance the standard for all protocols in Ethereum,” Yitong Zhang, co-founder of Agora, told CoinDesk.
Agora was founded in 2022 by Zhang, Charlie Feng, and Kent Fenwick. The trio initially began working on governance tools for Nouns DAO, one of the most active blockchain protocols emerging from the DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) and 2021 NFT hype cycle.
The term “DAO” generally describes cryptocurrency communities governed by holders of their tokens. They are a favorite of those who believe that the spirit of decentralization in cryptocurrencies could be a world-changing force, albeit an impractical way to run a false company. This has created an opportunity for support projects like Agora.
Agora was founded on the premise that token governance is fundamental to the value of crypto protocols. It aims to provide easy-to-use, open source governance tools for DAOs like Uniswap and Optimism, both of which currently use Agora to organize token holders and obtain governance votes.
Boardroom, Agora’s predecessor and with similar goals, took a more horizontal approach to blockchain governance. Boardroom has gradually moved from an Agora-style DAO widget software to a “Bloomberg”-style data feed for cryptocurrency management data.
Agora declined to disclose the amount it paid to acquire Boardroom. Boardroom employees have been offered roles at Agora, and Boardroom founder Kevin Nielsen will remain as an advisor. “There is no plan to shut down” the boardroom, according to Zhang. Instead, the Agora team will keep both platforms running and will work with users to determine how to gradually integrate the tools.
A new day for decentralized autonomous organizations?
The word “DAO” is less popular in 2025 than it was a few years ago. They have been proposed as a way to leverage blockchain’s core strengths in decentralized coordination to develop a new type of community-owned enterprise, but have been implemented in different ways and with varying degrees of success.
Many DAOs have faltered due to organizational difficulties; It can be difficult to coordinate thousands of token holders around a single goal. Improving DAO tools can help address this issue, but it is only one side of the equation. Another barrier for DAOs is the lack of regulatory clarity, which has left open questions about legal liability and made it difficult for DAOs to determine how tokens should be issued, and how decisions should be divided between token holders and the core developers of the platform.
“From a business perspective, DAOs are coming back in a really big way,” said Zhang, who says his own business has grown “10-fold” over the past year. “People haven’t noticed yet because people have had so much trauma because of the DAO bulls**t.”
The Trump administration has indicated its intention to set clearer guidelines for issuing cryptocurrencies, which has led to optimism among Zhang and some of his rivals.
“I think we will finally get reasonable definitions of enough decentralization, security, and compatible ways to make a token,” Zhang said.
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