This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 9, 2026 - February 15, 2026

Having a seat at the table should actually mean something. For many Malaysians, this ideal remains elusive. The concept of community participation, where individuals are expected to have a say in decisions impacting their lives, is often celebrated in theory. In practice, however, the reality tells a different story.

Concerns about community involvement in Malaysia are not relics of the past. They continued to surface in very recent debates. In early 2026, Orang Asli leaders and civil society groups questioned the consultation process surrounding the proposed amendments to the Aboriginal Peoples Act 1954, arguing that although consultations had been formally conducted, they felt superficial and failed to meaningfully incorporate community voices. As one legal advocate put it, consultation should never be a “box-ticking exercise” but must give communities a real opportunity to influence decisions that affect their lives.

Similar frustrations have emerged in urban settings. In August 2025, lawmakers and residents in Kuala Lumpur criticised new planning rules that require public consultation only “if necessary”, warning that such vague standards weaken community influence and reduce participation to a procedural formality. Together, these episodes illustrate that the challenge of meaningful community participation in Malaysia is ongoing and systemic.

Meaningful community involvement plays a crucial role in improving both democratic accountability and the quality of public services, as it allows individuals to shape decisions that directly affect their lives. When communities are actively involved, policies and projects are more likely to reflect local realities rather than abstract assumptions made by distant planners. Participation also strengthens social cohesion by encouraging individuals to work together and build constructive relationships among themselves and with public institutions, fostering trust and shared responsibility. Communities bring valuable experience and insight into their own needs and priorities, often offering solutions that differ significantly from those proposed by service providers, making interventions more effective and relevant.

Beyond governance outcomes, participation generates economic and social value by mobilising voluntary effort, developing skills and expanding networks that can improve employment prospects and reduce social exclusion. Importantly, it promotes long-term sustainability by giving communities a sense of ownership over development initiatives and the confidence to maintain progress even after external funding or support has ended.

Yet despite recognised benefits, meaningful community participation often falters not because people lack interest, but because the way participation is organised limits who actually holds influence. Many initiatives are still shaped by external experts who arrive with predefined solutions, leaving little room for communities to define their own priorities. In such settings, participation becomes procedural rather than meaningful, reinforcing the sense that decisions have already been made.

Governments may also promote participation in principle while using consultation selectively, allowing existing power relations to remain largely untouched. In practice, those who are well-connected or already active tend to dominate engagement spaces, while quieter or marginalised voices are filtered out by informal gatekeeping. Development efforts further weaken participation by prioritising technical delivery and measurable outputs over the slower work of building trust, social organisation and shared decision-making. Pressures to demonstrate success encourage a focus on visible results and discourage honest reflection on failure, contributing to public fatigue and scepticism. Together, these dynamics explain why participation is so often experienced as symbolic rather than empowering.

Digital innovations such as Decentralised Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, provide a new model for community participation that addresses many of the problems communities face. A DAO is a digital community governed by pre-set rules without a central leader, with decision-making carried out in a decentralised way. It uses blockchain technology, a secure and transparent system, to record every proposal, vote and decision permanently, so they can be publicly verified. These rules and processes are implemented through smart contracts, which are automated computer programmes that execute actions automatically when certain predefined conditions are met.

Collective decision-making is crucial for DAOs to maintain their decentralisation. This means decisions must be made through democratic process of the community, rather than by an elite centralised higher authority. Thus, community participation is essential in DAOs. However, DAOs typically have huge communities with participants from all over the world and they often command large amounts of money. How do they ensure community involvement and maintain their decentralised nature? After all, not all community members have the skill, time or interest to go through proposals on which collective decisions need to be made.

Community participation in DAOs is done through a well-known procedure where community members delegate or appoint a proxy to vote on their behalf. Participants can delegate their votes to a chosen representative who has the same ideas and concerns as themselves, and if unhappy with their chosen representatives, the participant can switch to another representative as they please. This is known as liquid democracy.

So, if a community member submits a proposal and enough members vote in favour through their own personal vote or through delegation, the smart contract can automatically release funds or approve the action. This makes participation collective, transparent, automatic and verifiable, reducing the chances of manipulation or gatekeeping. Thus, DAOs show how careful system design and technology can make participation collective.

To illustrate how community participation is achieved within a DAO, we take Cardano as a case study. Cardano is a decentralised blockchain platform that allows its community members to perform peer-to-peer transactions and build decentralised applications through coding. Participation in governance is tied to the holding of ADA, Cardano’s native digital token. ADA is a digital currency and the native currency of Cardano. It is used to pay for peer-to-peer transactions. ADA is also used to participate in governance by either voting on proposals or delegating ADA temporarily to representatives. The representatives may be Decentralized Representatives, known as DReps, or Stake Pool Operators.

The DReps are the proxies that represent the community members interests by proposing, reading, debating or discussing governance proposals or voting on them. The Stake Pool Operators maintain the network by adding blocks on the blockchain, thus ensuring its running. They also vote on proposals and governance actions. When community members delegate or “stake” their ADA, they transfer their voting power to a chosen Stake Pool Operator, who participates in governance and network maintenance on their behalf. If the Stake Pool Operator that they have chosen is able to add a block on the blockchain, ADA rewards are received by the Stake Pool Operator who then shares it with those who delegated their ADA.

Both representatives can vote “yes”, “no” or “abstain” for proposals on-chain. The voting is done in real time and is transparent for all community members to monitor. Both representative roles are voluntary. Community members are eligible to serve as representatives if they meet specified technical and procedural requirements, including the payment of a refundable deposit in ADA.

One may ask how the Cardano community members can find out more about the representatives for delegation purposes. This is possible from discussion forums that take place off-chain on the internet and through other online platforms. These forums replace face-to-face interactions. As DAOs are transnational, where community members are from different jurisdictions, these online forums are important to build trust in the Cardano community. Through these forums, community members can choose the representatives that best embody their vision. Community members can also at any time withdraw their delegation from the chosen representatives, as well as — if wanted — vote on their own or delegate to another representative. This is how liquid democracy ensures community participation.

So, what lessons of promoting community involvement can the real world learn from the innovative mechanisms of DAOs? First, peer delegation should be allowed for community members to participate in decision-making. Delegation does not necessarily have to be from a higher authority, it can be done in situations where ordinary members of the community become representatives. Second, this delegation power should come with the right to at any time switch representatives, allowing the community members to be continuously involved by keeping tabs on their representatives and ensuring representatives do not become complacent and lethargic in their role. Third, to encourage community members to participate, incentives or gamification elements should be attached to encourage delegation by community members. Further, the voting process should be transparent, that is, each vote made should be observable by the whole community. Lastly, community forums through online means should allow for free discussions and communication to allow all community members to know the representatives and the news of the community. These measures turn “having a seat at the table” into a genuine opportunity to shape better future outcomes for the community and, in turn, society and the nation.

Sherin Kunhibava is a senior lecturer specialising in law and technology and social finance and Nur Husna Zakaria is a researcher specialising in emerging digital market regulation at the Faculty of Law, Universiti Malaya. The authors thank Emurgo, a co-founding entity of the Cardano blockchain that drives the commercial adoption of blockchain technology and asset tokenisation, for funding this research.

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