New contributors often receive a charter PDF and a Discord invite, then face their first vote within a week. These fifteen terms appear in nearly every Solana DAO onboarding conversation we facilitate. Each links to our full glossary for deeper reading.
The starter list
- Realm — your DAO's governance container on-chain
- Proposal — a formal request for the DAO to act
- Quorum — minimum participation for a valid vote
- Voting power — the weight behind your yes or no
- Delegate — someone who votes on your behalf
- Council seat — elevated governance role with special permissions
- Treasury — pooled assets the DAO controls
- Multisig — wallet requiring multiple signatures
- Signer — wallet authorized to approve transactions
- Execution — carrying out a passed proposal on-chain
- Cooldown period — wait time before execution
- Instruction — a single action inside a transaction
- Governance program — on-chain code storing votes and config
- Charter — foundational off-chain rules document
- Vote escrow — locked tokens that grant governance weight
How to use this list
Read one term per day during your first two weeks. When a proposal appears in your realm, look up any word in the description you cannot define in one sentence. If your DAO uses different labels — "stewards" instead of "council," for example — ask an ops lead how those map to on-chain roles.
When fifteen terms are not enough
Teams with complex treasury setups or vote escrow often need a custom slice. Our Glossary Deep-Dive session builds fifteen definitions specific to your realm configuration.