Eight Qualities of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

The promise of DAOs lies in self-governance. With the appropriate tools and mechanics, contributors can onboard, coordinate, reward one another, rather than relying on one single point of failure. In absence of such infrastructure, decisions will continue to be made arbitrarily and consensus cannot scale across the network.

Reputation, quality of work, social capital and experience are already being used by DAOs to make decisions about how to treat specific members, but if these qualities could be inferred from an on-chain record, DAOs would become more autonomous and permissionless. Decisions could be made automatically, such as unlocking new spaces or granting great... See more

Vitalik argues that a truly decentralized DAO should look to political science for design inspiration. In the future, he predicts these first-order non-corporate organizations will end up supporting second-order organizations that use more leader-driven forms of governance.

This Essay explores the nature of DAOs and highlights several areas where states and regulators can adapt existing legal regimes to potentially accommodate DAOs. Part II provides an overview of DAOs and their perceived benefits and includes a taxonomy of DAOs to help understand the different variations currently emerging in the blockchain ecosystem... See more