What Do DAOs Really Contribute?

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.

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.

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 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.

Web3-DAO: An ontology for decentralized autonomous organizations

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.

Research Context: Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) emerge as innovative structures operating on blockchain infrastructures, providing transparency, decentralization, and autonomy in digital governance and coordination processes. Scientific and/or Practical Problem: Despite their transformative potential, DAO face significant obstacles, such as scalability limitations, risks of power concentration, legal ambiguities, and complex incentive models. Proposed Solution and/or Analysis: This study investigates recent scientific literature on DAO, seeking to understand their current state, focusing on how they have been conceptualized, characterized, evaluated, and applied. Related IS Theory: The research draws on the wisdom of crowd theory, which explains how collective decision-making can overcome individual choices, and sociotechnical theory, which emphasizes the interaction between technological infrastructures and social structures. Together, these perspectives frame DAO as hybrid systems that integrate algorithmic processes with collective human governance. Research Method: A systematic mapping study was conducted, encompassing the collection, selection, and coding of 47 primary studies published in relevant scientific sources. Summary of Results: The results highlight the conceptual consensus on the decentralized and smart contract-based nature of DAO, propose categories of structural challenges, and map recurring application domains, such as decentralized finance (DeFi), open science, energy, and digital art. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the transition of DAO from algorithmic entities to sociotechnical hybrids, connected to emerging trends such as the metaverse, NFTs, and decentralized artificial intelligence. Contributions and Impact to IS area: This study provides an updated theoretical foundation for the IS area, mapping the state of the art of DAO, identifying structural challenges, and emphasizing their evolution toward hybrid models. Most importantly, it reveals the complexity and originality of uniting the three main pillars of information systems (code, governance, and automated processes), thus contributing to the design of more resilient, inclusive, and sustainable digital governance systems in emerging decentralized ecosystems.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are attracting interest from various disciplines, particularly business and economics, and computer science. However, much like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, where each observer sees only part of the phenomenon, DAO research has largely remained fragmented across disciplines, limiting a comprehensive understanding of the potential of DAOs. This paper investigates to which extent DAO scholarship has achieved meaningful interdisciplinary integration. We address this question through an analysis of knowledge flows between Business and Economics and Computer Science, using citation network analysis, topic modelling, and outlet analysis. We find that while DAOs generate vibrant interdisciplinary discourse, the interactions remain predominantly applied and case-driven, with limited theoretical integration. By mapping interdisciplinary exchanges, we highlight key gaps and opportunities for greater synthesis across fields. We argue that strengthening the alignment between organizational and technical insights is crucial for advancing DAO research and fostering a more cohesive interdisciplinary framework.

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.

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.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have gained widespread attention in academia and industry as potential future models for decentralized governance and organization. In order to understand the trends and future potential of this rapidly growing technology, it is crucial to conduct research in the field. This research aims at a data-driven approach for the objective content analysis of big data related to DAOs, using text mining and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA)-based topic modeling. The study analyzed tweets with the hashtag #DAO and all Reddit data with “DAO”. The results were from the identification of the top 100 frequently appearing keywords, as well as the top 20 keywords with high network centrality, and key topics related to finance, gaming, and fundraising, from both Twitter and Reddit. The analysis revealed twelve topics from Twitter and eight topics from Reddit, with the term “community” frequently appearing across many of these topics. The findings provide valuable insights into the current trend and future potential of DAOs, and should be used by researchers to guide further research in the field and by decision makers to explore innovative ways to govern the organizations.

Web 3 is considered the next generation of the internet. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are considered the next avatar of organizations run digitally over blockchain-led technology platforms. Business logic and rules for running the organization are programmed in distributed applications (dApps) and executed using smart contracts. Token-based rights allow owing members to vote, participate in governance, and direct how the organization will be run. While DAOs are facing several legal and regulatory challenges on one side and fighting with technical vulnerabilities and hacks on the other side, future research in this field appears promising. There is an enormous need for education and awareness of the functioning of these emerging models, which can be dealt with using a multi-faceted approach. Decentralized governance can have a massive societal impact and lead to an equitable world. It drives financial inclusion and puts automatic decision-making at the fore.

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.

Electronic communities of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) that engage in agile business-network collaborations, are enabled by recent blockchain-technology related innovations using smart contracting. DAOs utilize service-oriented cloud computing in a loosely-coupled collaboration lifecycle that commences with the setup phase. The latter supports the selection of services provided and used by DAOs in combination with smart contract negotiations. Such setup phases for DAO-communities use blueprints of business-network models that DAOs populate with tentative service offers. The negotiation phase may result either in a consensual agreement, a counteroffer, or a disagreement. In the latter case, the smart contract negotiation collapses and the lifecycle returns to the beginning of the selected collaboration blueprints. To the best of our knowledge, such a smart-contracting setup lifecycle has not been formalized so far. The paper fills the gap and evaluates the model with means of model-checking methods.