Blockchain technology and corporate law

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are blockchain-based entities that pool digital assets, automate governance through smart contracts, and enable collective decision-making, challenging traditional corporate structures. By removing hierarchies and centralized control, DAOs promote transparency and global participation, while raising complex questions around liability, governance, and regulation in the digital age. This authoritative volume places DAOs within the framework of corporate law, offering a rigorous, interdisciplinary analysis of their evolution and potential. Written by a global team of scholars from the US, UK, continental Europe, Australia, and Asia, the book combines cutting-edge blockchain research with legal expertise. It traces DAOs from their idealistic origins as code-based systems designed to replace traditional law, to practical adaptations in Swiss associations and bespoke legal forms in US states such as Wyoming. Key chapters explore legal debates, historical parallels with early corporations, and governance innovations that expand participation while testing accountability. Case studies highlight DAOs’ diversity and adaptive governance, while additional chapters address bankruptcy, international law, dispute resolution, collective investment, and DeFi regulation. Forward-looking perspectives consider DAOs’ legal integration, limitations, and emerging intersections with AI. Ideal for academics, policymakers, investors, and professionals navigating Web3, Foundations of Decentralized Organizations: Blockchain and the Future of Corporate Law reveals DAOs’ transformative potential to reshape corporate law and organizational design.

The development of Bitcoin and its underlying technology blockchain has enabled a new phenomenon called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs can be perceived as self-governing organizations whose management is based on programmed and encoded rules on a decentralized and distributed peer-to-peer network. These DAOs typically manage and allocate funds, often in the form of cryptocurrencies. However, in recent years, a variety of DAOs have been established to provide services (e.g., currency exchange, project financing), curate collections (e.g., art collections), or own and manage real assets (e.g., land). Currently, DAO literature focuses mainly on online communities managing digital assets; however, DAOs owning physical properties differ from them in localized communities, asset indivisibility, and additional complexity in collective acquisition, ownership, limited physical capacity, and decentralized governance. Such property-owning DAOs are interesting, because they fuel the transition from purely online organizations into organizations integrating with the physical world. From an organizational system theory perspective this article explores how a DAO owning properties could be designed by exploring three DAO projects that own properties. Applying a conceptual research design, we first identify DAO Design Principles obtained by traditional organizational system theory, followed by examining and describing the core organizational principles for property-owning DAOs. Based on a comprehensive discussion of the conceptual findings, we present a research agenda for further studies on DAOs owning properties.

Web3-DAO: An ontology for decentralized autonomous organizations

A new paradigm for agricultural research based upon the innovation system is emerging. New types of organisation are required to fit the new paradigm. The evolution of PROINPA from NARI programme to foundation is analysed as a case study in organisational innovation in Bolivia, where a comprehensive competitive funding system is being established. The value added and difficulties faced by the PROINPA Foundation are described. The Foundation, as a new type of organisation, widened and deepened linkages with other key actors, added value to the research and development process and appears to fit well with the innovation system approach. The article ends by sharing lessons learned for developing foundations under similar conditions.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) represent a new form of economic organization, leveraging smart contracts and blockchain technology to manage financial operations, governance, and decision-making. This structure eliminates the need for centralized intermediaries. From an accounting and economic perspective, this article investigates DAOs, offering a comprehensive examination of their architecture, voting methods, governance procedures, smart contract vulnerabilities, and the legal environment. The article proposes a five-tiered DAO structure, demonstrating how each layer contributes to operational efficiency, transparency, and decentralized responsibility. The study emphasizes the importance of smart contract auditing tools in ensuring reliable financial transactions. According to the data presented in the study, applying traditional accounting principles to token-based transactions, decentralized decision systems, and DAO treasuries poses significant challenges such as token valuation, revenue recognition, and the absence of standardized reporting formats. The study explains how DAOs act as economic coordinators, using real-world case studies such as MakerDAO, Gitcoin DAO, and Uniswap DAO. Additionally, the research highlights the issues DAOs face regarding valuation and compliance. This article concludes with a policy-focused examination of regulatory gaps and offers suggestions for future research directions in the areas of financial integration, legal categorization, and the sustainability of DAOs. Through the integration of institutional and economic theory with the technical structure of DAOs, this research advances our understanding of DAOs as novel forms of finance and governance.

Blockchain technology and smart contracts are catalysts for decentralization and disintermediation. These new technologies reduce transaction costs, agency costs, and offer a basis for trustless social and economic interactions. They are fueling new business models for decentralized platforms and have revolutionized crowdfunding. A recent trend, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), stands to fundamentally transform organizing and governance. DAOs are blockchain-native, decentralized organizations that are collectively owned and managed by their members via smart contracts. In this note, we assess the promises and challenges of DAOs, with a focus on decentralized governance and disintermediation, and offer a first empirical glimpse at the rise and functioning of DAOs. Overall, DAOs may introduce a new era in organizational economics, transforming the global corporate landscape from hierarchical organizations to democratic and distributed organizations powered by organizational entrepreneurship and innovations.

Purpose This literature review aims to provide a comprehensive synthesis of Metaverse Finance (MetaFi), which combines emerging technologies such as blockchain, decentralized finance (DeFi) and metaverse technologies. The article proposes a novel three-layer MetaFi framework attempting to consolidate fragmented research on digital financial assets, decentralized intermediaries and immersive marketplaces online. Design/methodology/approach We conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) adopting PRISMA guidelines, by analysing 29 peer-reviewed articles that are either Scopus Q1/Q2 or ABDC A*/A journal-indexed, published between 2021 and 2025. We devised a structured review matrix, thematic synthesis and bibliometric validation to enable MetaFi framework. Findings The review identified three foundational layers of MetaFi: (1) Digital Financial Assets [Cryptocurrencies, Utility tokens, Stablecoins, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT) and Security tokens]; (2) Decentralized Financial Intermediaries [Virtual banks, DeFi protocols, Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)] and (3) Immersive Financial Marketplace (Virtual stock exchanges, Tokenized real estate platforms, Governance token markets). We identified six critical gaps, including empirical testing of metaverse models, governance effectiveness of DAOs, cross-platform interoperability, ESG perspectives, behavioural perspectives and regulatory challenges in MetaFi. Originality/value This review unifies the fragmented domains of DeFi, DAOs, NFTs and immersive marketplaces into a single MetaFi architecture. Its originality lies in revealing the MetaFi logic as to how digital/virtual assets, decentralized intermediaries and virtual markets blend as an integrated economy. By theorizing these interdependencies, this review positions MetaFi as a new institutional field of financial research, offering scholars a conceptual foundation, investors a structural lens and policymakers a roadmap to govern the next generation of digital finance.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have become an indispensable part of digital infrastructure in recent years. The unique organizational characteristics and functional structure empower them to become an effective tool for solving corporate governance issues, including contract risks, principal-agent dilemmas, etc. However, DAOs themselves also face a variety of governance issues. On one hand, as a new economic organization model, the existing corporate governance theories and methods are no longer fully applicable to DAOs. On the other hand, unpredictable logic vulnerabilities and code loopholes in the governance mechanism might cause devastating damage to DAOs. The parallel intelligence theory based on the ACP method (i.e., artificial systems, computational experiments, and parallel execution) is an elegant research paradigm and a practical approach tailored to solving these challenges. As such, we propose a novel parallel governance framework for DAOs based on the parallel intelligence theory and further discuss its technical methodology and implementation model. Furthermore, we construct a parallel governance system for GnosisDAO and conduct computational experiments to validate the effectiveness of its governance mechanism. The experimental results not only confirm the defects of the GnosisDAO governance mechanism but also illustrate parallel governance as a useful research direction to solve existing governance problems of DAOs.

The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), a group organized by governance rules programmed on a blockchain, has recently been attracting attention as a novel organizational form. The effectiveness of a DAO’s decentralized governance mechanism and transparency, as secured by its code, has generally been discussed in contrast with traditional stock companies. However, the potential of a DAO for non-profits, which provide goods and services that profit-seeking organizations do not offer, has been less discussed. This paper presents a proof-of-concept implementation to demonstrate the advantages of utilizing a DAO governance framework for non-profits. To this end, this study developed a DAO governance framework incorporating a reputation-based decision-making system, a peer evaluation system, and a transparent, real-time accounting system for the Ethereum blockchain. Most current decentralized governance systems rely heavily on token-based voting using governance tokens with stock-like features. However, there is a need for a voting mechanism beyond token-based voting for non-profits, which do not have owners. Therefore, the developed application applies an existing reputation-based voting mechanism and integrates additional features, such as a membership system with mutual evaluation and a reputation NFT to visualize contributions. Several exemplar demonstrations were conducted to evaluate its key functionalities. This application enabled discussions across the boundary between technology and society in terms of the key aspects of non-profits: i) transparency of finance and governance, ii) participatory governance by diverse stakeholders, and iii) equity and inclusiveness of the consensus mechanism. The results indicated that blockchain technology compensates for a non-profit’s vulnerabilities, and illustrated that the proposed reputation-based governance mechanisms are well-motivated. However, the results also revealed that blockchain-based governance involves as many potential risks and limitations as it brings benefits. Lastly, by providing several possible solutions to these constraints as well as recommendations for future research, this paper contributes to the sustainable development of non-profits as one of the foundations of democratic governance.

The advent of blockchain technology has paved the way for numerous innovations in online governance, with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) emerging as a prominent development, often referred to as “digital jurisdictions.” Despite experiencing remarkable growth, currently boasting nearly 7M users and $18 billion in assets, DAOs remain relatively underexplored in the existing literature, particularly from an empirical perspective. This study presents a comprehensive framework comprising 15 dimensions to categorize DAOs based on their operational domain, purpose, scope, voting process, and utilization of crypto-tokens. By applying this categorization schema to 40 DAO communities hosted on the Aragon platform, encompassing over 423 000 participants and managing treasuries worth $960M, we shed light on the prevailing characteristics of these DAOs. Contrary to assertions made by blockchain enthusiasts, our analysis reveals that DAOs predominantly operate in financial and technological domains, primarily offering blockchain-based services. Additionally, our investigation into their governance structure exposes limitations in terms of democratic participation, as decision-making power typically correlates with the number of tokens owned by the voter, resembling plutocracies rather than true democracies. We believe these findings will facilitate researchers’ comprehension of this innovative form of governance and aid practitioners in designing future DAOs with greater effectiveness. Furthermore, our analysis can be replicated on other platforms or at different time periods to validate and contrast our conclusions.

Decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) utilizes blockchain technology and smart contracts to invest in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The proposed DAO is entirely on-chain, where members can join to pool their funds transparently and securely. The structure of this decentralized platform will be distributed, allowing its members to propose and vote on investment decisions. The DAO's predefined investment strategy will focus on NFTs with a proven track record of successful growth or high potential for future. Additionally, before making any investments, extensive research investigations will be performed. Another potential feature of the proposed DAO platform is the ability to promote stakeholder participation through pre-defined NFTs, assuring active participation from members of the platform. The proposed DAO has the potential to transform NFT investing by promoting a more democratic and inclusive approach. Small investors who would otherwise be unable to participate in the NFT market might do so through this platform by pooling the financial resources. This proposed system incorporates blockchain technology to increase transparency and security, reduce the risk of fraudulent behavior or bad decision-making. This research work articulates the proposed DAO's technological and governance features by providing a road map for its effective development and implementation.

Blockchain technology allows for new forms of online governance relying on decentralized infrastructure. In particular, it has enabled the so called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): pieces of software deployed on a blockchain which mediate the interaction of groups of people. Allegedly, their main aim is to facilitate large-scale decentralized cooperation in online communities. In order to do that, they provide governance mechanisms for democratic decision-making in communities. One of them is ”Holographic Consensus”, a voting mechanism intended to filter relevant proposals for large communities. To which extent is Holographic Consensus working as intended, facilitating effective scalable cooperation? In order to validate this method, we analyze the 22 DAO communities and 6000 users from the DAOstack platform, which uses Holographic Consensus in all its DAOs. Our results show that this mechanisms seems to follow the expected behavior, facilitating scalable decision-making in large DAOs.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), like blockchains, were expected to revolutionize the economy by solving the principal–agent problem in the corporate form. Yet, the very first DAO (“The DAO”) suffered a catastrophic hack that led to the Ethereum blockchain’s forking. Despite this failure, and the 2022 crypto markets collapse, enthusiasm for DAOs as corporate alternatives persists in crypto circles. Nine years on, however, DAOs remain a niche structure with little traction outside crypto projects. This chapter posits that this is due to fundamental flaws in the case for DAOs as corporate replacements. Crypto proponents often dismiss centralization and opacity as wholly undesirable, overlooking their functional value in business organizations. They also fail to recognize that blockchain’s security, transparency, and predictability are narrowly bound and come at a cost, rendering DAOs poorly equipped to handle the risks organizations face in the real world. These trade-offs explain why DAOs are less a revolution, more naïve wishful thinking.

Decentralization holds a significant role in the context of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), with its nature being not a fixed value but a comparative spectrum. Prior research investigating the measurement of decentralization in nations’ governance system provides a foundation for our current study. This research aims to integrate these insights to define dimensions and indicators, tailored explicitly for assessing decentralization levels within DAOs. Then, the article undertakes an examination of the suitability of traditional decentralization measurement approaches within the unique DAO context, employing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) as our analytical tool based on a total of 44 DAOs. Hence, the results suggest that DAOs have three dimensions for measuring decentralization, ‘political decentralization as a participatory engagement’, ‘economic decentralization as a resource distribution’, and ‘administrative decentralization as the self-governing execution of decisions’. By substantiating the applicability of established decentralization measurement frameworks within the unique context of DAOs, the findings not only enhance the understanding of this emergent governance paradigm but also provide DAO practitioners, policymakers, and researchers with invaluable insights.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) represent a novel organizational form enabling self-governed coordination based on blockchain technology. This study examines the prototypical Bitcoin DAO from an institutional perspective, focusing on how its core features—decentralization and autonomy—interact with the broader institutional framework in which it operates. Specifically, we study how regulative institutional environments (i.e., (il)legalization) shape the growth and development of DAOs while theorizing about the role of both petty and grand corruption (i.e., by higher-level officials) in influencing the effectiveness of these regulative institutions. Our empirical analysis focuses on the global rise of Bitcoin trading and platform establishment across 49 national contexts from 2011 to 2023. Utilizing a unique data set, we find that, although the number of Bitcoin exchange platforms in a country is positively associated with Bitcoin legalization, Bitcoin trading volume is positively associated with Bitcoin illegalization. In countries with higher levels of grand corruption, Bitcoin illegalization becomes even more strongly associated with trading. In contrast, grand corruption dampens the positive association between legalization and the number of Bitcoin exchange platforms. Further, the presence of petty corruption reduces the impact of grand corruption. Our study reveals that it is critical to distinguish between petty and grand corruption as an important factor that influences the interplay between the regulative environment and growth and development of the Bitcoin DAO and the related ecosystem of Bitcoin trading and platform founding.