# What is Decentralized Governance? ### What is Decentralized Governance? The rules of decentralized organizations are primarily enforced by code, rather than the legal system. Changes to the governance, require the community to discuss, propose, and vote. As the governance is specific to each project, individuals are able to easily choose which communities and governance sets they participate in. Additionally, decentralized governance allows for more direct voting versus nation-states or companies. Participants are able to choose whether they vote on proposals or delegate their voting power to community experts. While this can empower community involvement from members, it can also lead to voter apathy and delays in governance actions. ### **Benefits of Decentralized Governance** Decentralized governance **gives power directly to token holders**. This limits single points of failure, like corruption, censorship, manipulation, or bribery. Decentralized governance also **helps align incentives of community members**. This enables better coordination of actions and assign of resources across stakeholders. Many protocols distribute governance rights via tokens to their users as an incentive, which can further align interests over time. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.common.xyz/commonwealth/community-overview-2/governance/what-is-decentralized-governance.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.