# Bad Governance Can Break Even the Best Tech, Says GoodDollar's Sam McCarthy

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/web3-tech-brief-by-hackernoon-6365654/bad-governance-can-break-even-the-best-tech-says-gooddollar-s-sam-mccarthy
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/web3-tech-brief-by-hackernoon-6365654/bad-governance-can-break-even-the-best-tech-says-gooddollar-s-sam-mccarthy.md
Podcast: [Web3 Tech Brief By HackerNoon](https://stenobird.com/podcast/web3-tech-brief-by-hackernoon-6365654)
Published: 2026-05-05T16:00:54+00:00
Episode link: https://share.transistor.fm/s/229f8c27
Audio file: https://media.transistor.fm/229f8c27/32061030.mp3
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/web3-tech-brief-by-hackernoon-6365654/episodes/bad-governance-can-break-even-the-best-tech-says-gooddollar-s-sam-mccarthy
Duration seconds: 918

## Resource

This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/bad-governance-can-break-even-the-best-tech-says-gooddollars-sam-mccarthy . Why governance breaks crypto projects, why it's a muscle worth flexing, and how GoodDollar's Sam McCarthy is rebuilding it from the people up. Check more stories related to web3 at: https://hackernoon.com/c/web3 . You can also check exclusive content about #decentralized-autonomous-org , #governance , #daos , #web3 , #dao-governance , #blockchain , #decentralized-governance , #hackernoon-top-story , and more. This story was written by: @terezabizkova . Learn more about this writer by checking @terezabizkova's about page, and for more stories, please visit hackernoon.com . TL;DR: Sam McCarthy, Governance Lead at GoodDollar and Ecosystem Lead at DAOstar, just wrapped a nine-week community redesign of GoodDollar's governance system. His core argument: the hardest problems in DAOs are social ones, and most governance primitives have already been built—what's missing is the people work. He breaks down how to diagnose broken governance (plutocracy, back channels, fake inclusivity), why crypto projects should start lean and centralized before decentralizing, and how GoodDollar's new two-house system—the House of Alignment for aligned projects, the House of Citizenship for the wider community—is designed to push back against the failure modes he sees everywhere else. The throughline: governance is a muscle, and people only flex it when they believe their participation matters.

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