Vitalik: Democratic mechanisms need to shift from "building a perfect order" to "tools for consensus discovery" to adapt to chaotic times

Gate News reports that on March 9, Vitalik Buterin posted today stating that the decline in external enthusiasm over the past decade for DAOs and their internal voting mechanisms, quadratic funding and other financing tools, ZKpassport voting scenarios, social media internal voting systems, and political reform at the national level is due to the transition from the “Era of Stability” to the “Era of Chaos.” The Era of Stability can be imagined as a more perfect order, while the Era of Chaos is characterized by interventions driven mostly by selfish power struggles. Democratic mechanisms tend to adopt a conservative stance for defense, making long-term victory difficult. Vitalik believes that in the Era of Chaos, democratic tools should focus on “consensus discovery” rather than rigid decision-making constraints, such as Pol.is-style anonymous voting (where votes or statements initially remain anonymous and automatically become public once a certain support threshold is reached, allowing all participants to synchronize and form a public commitment). This helps highly decentralized groups voice their opinions and demonstrates the potential for broad support to influential actors. Taking Iran as an example: there is a need for tools that enable the collective voice of the Iranian people to have immediate influence, rather than relying solely on future order.