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Delegated Domain Allocation

Delegated Domain Allocation

TL;DR:

DDA is a modular funding model where capital is allocated through domain-specific stewards. Each steward (or group) manages a portion of the treasury for a defined focus area—like DevRel, Governance, or Research—creating scalable, parallel, and accountable funding streams.


Delegated Domain Allocation solves a common problem in large ecosystems: centralized grant committees don’t scale well. DDA breaks up decision-making by delegating funding power to trusted individuals or teams, each operating within their own domain of expertise.


Each domain has:

  • A clear mandate (what it funds)
  • One or more stewards (trusted decision-makers)
  • A pool of capital
  • Its own allocation methods (e.g. open calls, RFPs, direct grants)


This structure introduces parallelism, improves context-awareness, and reduces bottlenecks. When paired with Allo Protocol, DDA allows funding to flow transparently, with each domain operating semi-autonomously while still plugged into a broader ecosystem strategy.

Best For

  • Large, multi-focus ecosystems
  • Protocol treasuries with multiple workstreams
  • Growing DAOs that need to scale funding without losing clarity
  • Organizations needing domain-level accountability

Good At

  1. Mapping funding decisions to subject-matter expertise
  2. Running multiple allocation streams in parallel
  3. Reducing centralization and bottlenecks
  4. Increasing transparency and evaluation per domain

Dependencies / Requirements

  • Clear domain definitions and scopes
  • Legitimate and trusted stewards
  • Defined funding methods per domain
  • Oversight and evaluation for cross-domain alignment

Not Good At

  • Small or early-stage orgs (can introduce unnecessary overhead)
  • Environments with unclear governance or trust structures
  • Funding spontaneous or cross-domain projects without coordination

Who Should Use It?

  • Protocol ecosystems with technical, community, and governance domains
  • Networks or DAOs with multiple teams or regional nodes
  • Organizations that want to scale allocation through modularity and trust
  • Communities needing both focus and decentralization

Example Use Cases

  • A protocol DAO assigns domain stewards for Dev Tools, Governance, and Ecosystem Growth—each with its own pool and autonomy
  • A regenerative network delegates funding to regional hubs, each stewarding capital for local initiatives
  • A foundation sets up recurring DDA cycles, rotating stewards and reviewing domain performance quarterly