DAO

A DAO — decentralized autonomous organization — is a group coordinated by smart contracts and token votes instead of bosses and bylaws: proposals, voting,

A DAO — decentralized autonomous organization — is a group coordinated by smart contracts and token votes instead of bosses and bylaws: proposals, voting, and treasury spending all happen on-chain. ConstitutionDAO, MakerDAO, and Arbitrum’s DAO are landmark examples.

Why it matters

DAOs are governance experiments at scale — genuinely novel when vote power is diffuse, pure theater when three wallets control the outcome. The honest test is always the same: who can move the money, and how many independent votes does it take? Everything else is forum decoration.

Related terms

governance ·
governance token · treasury

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