Defining Real and Fake DAOs

Based on Vitalik Buterin’s DAOs, DACs, DAs and More: An Incomplete Terminology Guide from 2014, a DAO could be described then as a capitalized organization in which a software protocol informs its operation, placing automation at its center and humans at its edges. For example, a software protocol could specify the conditions upon which an organiza... See more

Decentralized governance is at the heart of the ideological foundation of crypto: equal participation for all actors. The playbook of progressive decentralization is being followed by more decentralized finance (DeFi) projects. Users and tokenholders can now have more control over protocol parameters, treasury spending, and, in general, the industr... See more

The shape of this future is rapidly coming into focus and centers around an organization referred to by technologists as “decentralized autonomous organizations,” or DAOs. These DAOs operate with different assumptions than many of today’s traditional legal entities and other business associations. DAOs are not run by boards or managers, but rather ... See more

All in all, it is safe to say that “DAOism” is well on its way to becoming a quasi-cyber-religion. However, one of the hidden problems lurking beneath the space is a rather blatant one: no one even knows what all of these invididual terms mean. What exactly is a decentralized organization, what is the difference between an organization and an appli... See more

In summary, eight imagined qualities of decentralized autonomous organizations are autopoietic, alegal, superscalable, executable, permissionless, aligned, co-owned, and mnemonic. Drawn from observation, these qualities trace desires for interdependence growing in the cracks of legacy institutions, as well as the dubious inheritance of cybernetic d... See more

I liked this simple definition of DAOs proposed by the Bankless guys: “digitally native communities that center around a shared mission.” Where the communities are bottoms-up, flexible, and loosely organized. They have a shared mission and protocol (on the blockchain), internal capital, and enforceable social norms, and they can be used to manage j... See more