# Lighthouse Labs > Lighthouse Labs is an applied research lab studying how people govern, allocate capital, and participate in decentralized systems. We design products and protocols for internet markets, and build open protocols that make coordination accountable. We work across mechanism design, tokenomics, DeFi primitives, governance interfaces and operations, AI-augmented governance, ENS identity, agent infrastructure, and open-source licensing. Contact: hello@lighthouse.cx ## Topics - [Mechanism Design](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/mechanism-design): Formal models of voting power, commitment curves, and incentive structures that shape how on-chain communities surface and act on collective preferences. - [Tokenomics](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/tokenomics): Token emission schedules, epoch-based distribution, and economic models that calibrate decision-making power across stakeholder groups over time. - [DeFi Primitives](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/defi-primitives): Liquidity mechanisms, NFT bond markets, and AMM pricing infrastructure — especially for locked or illiquid token positions. - [Governance Interfaces](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/governance-interfaces): Voting clients, delegate dashboards, proposal analytics, and mobile surfaces that make governance participation legible and accessible. - [Governance Operations](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/governance-operations): Operating documents, policy frameworks, retrospective methods, and accountability structures that let DAOs govern themselves coherently. - [AI-Augmented Governance](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/ai-augmented-governance): AI-assisted methods for grant evaluation, discourse mapping, and operational governance workflows that surface structure at scale. - [ENS Identity](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/ens-identity): ENS-native identity primitives — metadata schemas, attestation formats, and naming conventions for on-chain entities including agents and DAOs. - [Agent Infrastructure](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/agent-infrastructure): Decentralised, account-less infrastructure for autonomous and human use — pay-per-request services and on-chain settlement via HTTP-native payment protocols. - [Open Source](https://lighthouse.cx/topics/open-source): Licensing frameworks, including the EGPL, that preserve permissionless deployment on Ethereum without enabling extractive forks by non-aligned chains. ## Work - [AI Grant Screening](https://lighthouse.cx/work/ai-grant-screening): An experiment in AI-assisted grant evaluation: ten ENS SPP2 applications scored by frontier models against a weighted rubric, surfacing nine recurring failure modes across the cohort. Methodology and per-application reports are published on the ENS governance forum. - [atst.me](https://lighthouse.cx/work/atst): A decentralised attestation format that cryptographically binds ENS names to social media accounts via EIP-191 signatures over DAG-CBOR payloads, published as parameterised ENS text records. No central registry; revocation happens by rotating the attester's ENS address. - [Continuous Governance Surface](https://lighthouse.cx/work/continuous-governance-surface): An adaptation of the Talk to the City AI pipeline for ENS governance discourse, mapping structural tensions across eleven months of forum data. Algorithmic findings cross-validated against independent qualitative analysis from the Metagov Phase 1 study. - [Dispatch](https://lighthouse.cx/work/dispatch): An ENS-focused governance interface that surfaces the dynamics behind every proposal — quorum accumulation, daily voting activity, vote-weight density, and delegate-level participation history — alongside the standard browse/vote stack. - [Harbor](https://lighthouse.cx/work/harbor): Harbor creates secondary markets for time-locked token positions. An escrow absorbs bond NFTs and mints a fungible ERC-20 claim token, giving formerly illiquid positions access to deep liquidity on any existing DEX without weakening issuer-enforced lock semantics. - [Lighthouse App](https://lighthouse.cx/work/lighthouse-app): A mobile-native governance client for on-chain communities. Real-time proposal notifications, voting, verified announcements, and event coordination across DAOs and protocols. - [Minimal Viable DAO](https://lighthouse.cx/work/minimal-viable-dao): A reflection on the ENS Metagov retrospective: what the smallest legible set of operating documents looks like for a working DAO, and why a canonical policy inventory is the foundational reform from which the others follow. - [objekt.sh](https://lighthouse.cx/work/objekt): objekt.sh is decentralised file storage and static site hosting paid per request in USDC. Settlement happens on-chain via x402, enabling pay-as-you-go hosting without accounts or subscriptions. - [Signals](https://lighthouse.cx/work/signals): Signals makes governance reflect genuine conviction by leaning into the opportunity cost of time. It derives voting power as a function of both stake and lock duration. - [Sub-linear Commitment Voting](https://lighthouse.cx/work/sub-linear-commitment-voting): A revision of how voting power is derived in Signals, our conviction-weighted governance protocol. The mechanism is being calibrated against on-chain data from ENS, Optimism, and Uniswap. ## Writing - [ENS Schemas: Bringing Structured Data to ENS Names](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/260414-ens-metadata) (2026-04-14): 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. - [What Is Dead May Never Die.](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/260325-what-is-dead-may-never-die) (2026-03-25): 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. - [Why Ethereum Needs Its Own License](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/251127-egpl) (2025-11-27): 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... - [NFT Bonds & Uniswap Hooks](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/250611-nft-bonds-uniswap-hooks) (2025-06-11): While designing the Signals Protocol, we decided it would be important to offer some sort of “rage quit” mechanism in which supporters who had locked up tokens could exit the system early without defeating the purpose of the token lock. We were then accepted into the Uniswap Hooks Incubator, and decided it was the perfect place to explore this concept. What if the tokens locked in a Signals Board could take the form of an NFT, and be traded on an AMM? If we could create an NFT that represente... - [Paid Incentives in Signals](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/250609-paid-incentives-in-signals) (2025-06-09): We recently published a piece on the technical design of the Signals protocol. If you haven’t read it yet, you might want to start there first.Understanding participation in Web3 governanceDuring our time spent engaging with the top Web3 governance ecosystems, we experienced first hand the struggles communities face caused by a lack of participation. Core users who are passionate about governance are naturally motivated to participate, but for the large majority of token holders, the benefits... - [Signals Protocol](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/250602-signals-protocol) (2025-06-02): A new Ethereum sensmaking protocol compatible with existing governance tokens, designed to reveal an organizations true priorities. - [Native voting with Safe on Snapshot](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/250218-native-voting-with-safe-on-snapshot) (2025-02-18): We are excited to announce that you can now natively vote on Snapshot proposals using Safe. Security best practices dictate that assets of significant value should be stored in a multisig wallet. In this regard, Safe has become the industry standard on Ethereum, ensuring the highest level of security for DAOs and organisations. Meanwhile, Snapshot has established itself as the most widely adopted gas-less voting mechanism on Ethereum, empowering a diverse range of communities to govern effici... - [Epoch-Based Emissions](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/250206-epoch-based-emissions) (2025-02-06): “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster FullerPreambleOn-chain governance enables democratisation in a way not seen before, but in order to realise this potential, it is important for governance tokens (and, therefore, decision-making power) to be distributed amongst the ecosystem in a way that accurately represents each participant’s role. We can assume the majority of communities would want decision-making power distributed proportio... - [Introducing Signals](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/241220-introducing-signals) (2024-12-20): In today's decentralised landscape, communities face a fundamental challenge: How do we ensure individuals and groups remain aligned, trust one another, and work together toward shared goals? Traditional governance systems — both on-chain and off-chain — often reduce complex community sentiment to simple yes/no votes, missing the nuanced signals that reflect where people truly stand. The Challenge Communities thrive on voluntary participation and open dialogue. Yet this freedom comes wit... - [November 2024](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/241128-november-2024) (2024-11-28): In times of mass hysteria, we can find refuge in the words of great people who came before."Do not be ashamed of help. Accept it as it is offered, and give thanks for it.” — Marcus AureliusAt Lighthouse, we are grateful to be encouraged and supported by forward-thinking organisations, and we would like to acknowledge some of the recent programs and campaigns we have participated in.RnDAO <> Arbitrum CollabTech Hackathon — Signals 📡In a hackathon that attracted 160 builders from all around th... - [Recently at Lighthouse](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/240923-recently-at-lighthouse) (2024-09-23): This year has been a whirlwind of growth and innovation for our bootstrapped team, and it’s important to take a moment to celebrate our achievements — both big and small. Over the summer, we took a brief pause from social media to recharge, reconnect with loved ones, and dive deep into refining our product strategy for the remainder of the year. Now, we’re back and more energised than ever! Here’s an update on what has happened since. Fresh UX: We’ve updated our onboarding flow to better welc... - [Product update](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/240531-product-update) (2024-05-31): May was a great month with lots of public facing updates. Lets dive in.New websitehttps://lighthouse.cx/ We were struggling to communicate the scope of our offering, so we decided to update our website. We reworked our information architecture from the ground up and created a new section called "Use Cases" where we outline how our product can be used from the perspective of different stakeholders.Community membersDelegatesDAOsCreatorsTo inject some flair into the website we also commissioned ... - [Introducing Lighthouse](https://lighthouse.cx/writing/240419-introducing-lighthouse) (2024-04-19): Web3 communities are exploding. More than $30B [1] worth of assets have been entrusted to DAOs, and more than $24B [2] was spent on NFT sales in 2022. These large pools of capital represent on-chain groups, or communities, from which new collective ownership structures are emerging. We use the word "community" to describe a group of people who share similar interests, and who are connected via ownership of one or more tokens (DAO governance tokens, NTFs, or even community-based meme tokens). ... ## Optional - [Writing feed (RSS)](https://lighthouse.cx/feed.xml): All published writing - [Sitemap](https://lighthouse.cx/sitemap.xml): Every indexable page