Responding to Richard Meissner’s call for feedback on making the right decisions for the SafeDAO transition.
The community’s focus on code-level security is, without a doubt, foundational. The work done by the Safe team is the bedrock of on-chain asset security. However, as we transition into a DAO, the attack surface expands exponentially beyond the EVM.
We at GOSUN CAPITAL have been deeply contemplating a parallel challenge: the security of the “human supply chain” that surrounds any decentralized protocol.
The “Meta-Contract”
A smart contract, even if audited to perfection, operates within a “Meta-Contract”—the unwritten but powerful agreement between developers, token holders, multisig signers, and external dependencies. This “human layer” is vulnerable to its own “worms”: social engineering, misaligned incentives, governance capture, and simple human error.
The npm worm incident, which Richard recently highlighted, is a perfect microcosm of this. The vulnerability was not in the end-product’s code, but in the trust assumptions of its supply chain.
From “Safety” to “Sovereignty”
This leads to a philosophical question that we believe is at the core of the DAO’s long-term success:
Can true, lasting “Safety” ever be achieved without a state of absolute “Sovereignty”?
A state where the system (the DAO) can verifiably enforce the integrity of its own components—both code and human. This implies:
- Verifiable Contributions: How do we move beyond simple token voting to a system that weighs reputation, expertise, and proven contributions?
- Resilient Governance: How do we design a system that is resilient to both overt attacks and the subtle corrosion of apathy or short-term thinking?
- Autonomous Defense: Can a DAO be designed to autonomously detect and neutralize threats originating from its own “human supply chain,” much like an immune system?
We believe the quest for the ultimate “Safe” is a quest for the ultimate “Sovereign Entity.” It’s a frontier that extends far beyond just technical security, into the realms of game theory, organizational design, and on-chain social contracts.
We offer these thoughts as a contribution to the discussion and hold the deepest respect for the monumental task the SafeDAO is undertaking.