Realms

Realms is the leading DAO governance platform on Solana, providing infrastructure for decentralized organizations to create proposals, vote on decisions, and manage treasuries on-chain. Built and maintained by the Solana Program Library (SPL) team, Realms powers the governance of hundreds of Solana projects including major protocols, NFT communities, and ecosystem organizations. At its core, Realms provides the spl-governance program — a smart contract framework that enables any Solana project to set up decentralized governance. DAOs created on Realms can define custom governance rules including voting thresholds, proposal durations, council vs community voting, and multi-sig style governance for smaller organizations. This flexibility allows Realms to serve everything from small NFT communities to billion-dollar DeFi protocols. The platform supports multiple governance models. Token-weighted voting lets governance token holders vote proportionally to their holdings. Council governance provides a multisig-style structure where designated council members approve proposals. Hybrid models combine both, with a community token for broad proposals and a council for operational decisions. This versatility makes Realms adaptable to virtually any organizational structure. Treasury management is a critical Realms feature. DAOs can hold SOL, SPL tokens, and NFTs in program-controlled vaults, with transfers requiring governance approval. This means protocol treasuries, grant budgets, and community funds are managed transparently with on-chain voting — no trusted intermediary or multisig controlled by insiders. Proposals can execute arbitrary Solana transactions, enabling sophisticated on-chain operations. Realms also supports vote delegation through the Voter Stake Registry (VSR), allowing token holders to delegate their voting power to representatives. This increases governance participation by letting less active holders still have their voice represented. Some DAOs also use lockup-weighted voting, where locking tokens for longer periods gives more voting power, incentivizing long-term alignment. The Realms interface provides a clean dashboard for each DAO showing active proposals, treasury balances, members, and governance parameters. It has become the standard governance frontend for Solana projects, similar to Snapshot's role on Ethereum. The protocol is fully open-source and continues to evolve with new governance primitives being added by the community.