What is a DAO?

DAO (acronym) = Decentralized Autonomous Organization

Defintions

Short definition

A DAO is a group of people without central management that coordinates over the Internet around a shared set of rules to achieve a common goal.

Technical definition

A DAO is an internet-native entity without central management which is regulated by a set of automatically enforceable rules on a public blockchain, and whose goal is to take on a life of its own and incentivize people to achieve a shared common mission.

Aragon-specific technical definition

Aragon brings more than a general description of DAO - we provide an opinionated technical framework for developing DAOs. At present these technical opinions include

• Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and EVM compatible tools as our public blockchain of choice

• IPFS as our web3 network storage protocol of choice

• Multi-signature wallets as the default

• Freedom to customize the EVM Access Control Lists (ACLs) in a hierarchical and flexible way - software should aspire to reflect how people naturally interact.

Key words

For our purposes, you can think of DAOs as flexible, global, and uncensored online organizations.

DAO use cases

• Part-time projects with friends or strangers

• Future of work: people working part-time on multiple things for short periods of time

• Temporary pop-up companies

• Companies in authoritarian jurisdictions

• Global, distributed teams

Trends around the world accelerating DAO adoption

• The rise of populist authoritarians

• The future of work (remote and distributed)

• The growing de-platforming problem

• The rise of decentralized finance

• The increasing complexity of human civilization
• Growing adoption of blockchain currencies in central banking institutions

You can read more about DAOs at aragon.org/dao.

References

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations and the Corporate Form p. 316

Comparison and Analysis of Governance Mechanisms Employed by Blockchain-Based Distributed Autonomous Organizations p. 196