Except when it's not: https://docs.decentraland.org/player/general/dao/overview/ho...

> To circumvent the very high gas fees associated with full on-chain governance, Decentraland’s DAO uses a combination of free, off-chain voting for the community and a multi-sig wallet controlled by a “DAO Committee” to enact those off-chain decisions on the Ethereum blockchain.

I'm not a huge follower of the crypto ecosystem and DAOs, but this kind of thing seems like it's pretty common.

This is actually very common for the allegedly decentralized apps. A centralized service controls the actual application while some resulting data is recorded to the blockchain. Decentralized in name only, but most users don't know and those who understand are only happy to oblige the hype.

Slightly off topic, but I quite like this video over Decentraland/the metaverse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiZhdpLXZ8Q

It's an in depth look/critique.

There are all kinds of governance models, as there should be.

> a multi-sig wallet controlled by a “DAO Committee” to enact those off-chain decisions

DAOs may empower a multi-sig with certain allocated funds to spend according to a mandate. This is ok. It's like saying America is not a democracy because regulators can make new rules that congress is not voting on.

It also possible to have off-chain voting, but still enforce those results on-chain using a fraud-proof like system, and some do this. Lots of design space to play with.

How do you guarantee the off-chain votes haven't been tampered with during the initial off-chain step?

>It's like saying America is not a democracy because regulators can make new rules that congress is not voting on.

That actually does appear to be the opinion of the current supreme court, and you can expect further rulings counter to historical precedence WRT chevron deference.