Lighthouse

We design products and protocols for internet markets.

Lighthouse Labs is an applied research lab studying how users govern, allocate capital, and participate on-chain. We create open protocols that make coordination accountable.

Our contributions
to decentralized coordination

Selected work

Contributions to date.

Every protocol we've shipped and every open problem we're still working on.

See the full archive →

Protocols

6 entries
objekt.sh
Decentralised file storage and site hosting, paid in USDC via x402.
x402Pay-Per-Request
atst.me
ENS-native attestations for social media account ownership.
EIP-191 SignaturesDAG-CBOR
Dispatch
An ENS-focused governance interface, with the analytics baked in.
ENS DAODelegate Accountability
Harbor
Secondary markets for time-locked token positions.
VestingLocked Token Liquidity
Signals
Conviction-weighted governance voting.
Conviction VotingStake-Weighted
Lighthouse App
Mobile-native client for on-chain communities.
Mobile ClientProposal Notifications

Research

4 entries
Minimal Viable DAO
The smallest legible set of operating documents a DAO can function with.
ENS MetagovPolicy Inventory
Continuous Governance Surface
AI-mapped tensions across ENS governance discourse.
Talk to the CityENS Governance
AI Grant Screening
AI-assisted screening for ENS grant applications.
Grant EvaluationENS SPP2
Sub-linear Commitment Voting
Meritocratic capital allocation, calibrated against real DAO data.
Sub-linear VotingCapital Allocation
What's next

Humans and AI,
governing together.

Autonomous agents are already participating in markets, voting in DAOs, and deploying capital. The coordination primitives we've been building are the substrate that makes that legible and accountable.

Read our AI thesis
Recent notes

From the field

Apr 2026
ENS Schemas: Bringing Structured Data to ENS Names
ENS has long been used to identify people, projects, and organizations, but until now, there hasn't been a standard way to describe what a name represents or its role on-chain.
ENS SchemasMetadata StandardsENSIPAI AgentsJSON Schema
Mar 2026
What Is Dead May Never Die.
We think this diagnosis is wrong. Not because the symptoms aren't real, but because it confuses the failure of a specific product category with the failure of coordination itself.
TallySignals ProtocolENS MetadataAI Grant EvaluationVoting Portals
Nov 2025
Why Ethereum Needs Its Own License
Vitalik’s recent essay presented the stance of “I support it only if it’s open source,” which should be a much more common position when it comes to powerful new technologies. The point is simple but profound: open source is not just about faster progress, it’s about who gets to participate, who benefits, and whether new inventions entrench inequality or spread opportunity.Open Source Isn’t Enough To Protect The CommonsEthereum was built on open source. Geth, Solidity, countless clients, roll...
EGPLCopyleftExtractive ForksProtocol GuildEVM-Compatible L1s
All writing
Towards intelligent institutions

Humans and AI,
governing together.

We believe governance research and protocol engineering are essential to building a better future. With expertise across mechanism design, smart-contract development, and community coordination, our work addresses many of the documented open problems in the decentralized governance space.

Open problems

The work is
just beginning.

Mechanism design, agent-native primitives, governance that's actually legible to the people governed by it — these are decade-long problems, and most of them aren't solved yet. If you're working on any of this from the inside — a DAO, a foundation, a protocol, a lab — we'd like to hear from you.

Collaborate with usWe're hiring