DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) use governance tokens to give community members voting power. Creating a DAO token on Solana is the foundation of a community-governed protocol.
What is a DAO Token?
A DAO token is a governance token that gives holders the ability to vote on protocol decisions. Token weight typically equals voting power — more tokens = more influence. Examples on Solana include JUP (Jupiter), MNGO (Mango Markets), and DUAL (Dual Finance).
Step 1: Create Your Governance Token
Use Create Solana Token with these recommended settings for a DAO token:
- Supply: 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) — allows flexible distribution
- Decimals: 6 — standard for governance tokens
- Mint Authority: Keep initially for treasury/team allocations
- Freeze Authority: Revoke immediately — no centralized control
Step 2: Plan Token Distribution
A healthy DAO token distribution typically looks like:
- Community/Treasury (40–50%) — For governance-approved spending
- Team (15–20%) — Vested over 2–4 years
- Early Contributors (10–15%) — Founders, advisors
- Public Sale/IDO (15–20%) — Community launch
- Liquidity (5–10%) — DEX liquidity provision
Step 3: Set Up DAO Governance
Solana has excellent DAO tooling:
- Realms (realms.today) — The main DAO governance platform on Solana. Free and open source.
- Squads Protocol — Multi-sig treasury management for DAO funds
- SPL Governance — The underlying protocol powering Realms
Step 4: Launch on Realms
Create DAO on Realms
Go to realms.today and connect your wallet. Click "Create DAO" and select your governance token.
Configure Voting
Set minimum voting weight, voting duration, and approval quorum. These define how proposals pass.
Transfer Treasury
Send treasury funds to the DAO's Squads multisig. Now only governance votes can spend funds.