Mehar et al. (2020Mehar, M. I., Shier, C. L., Giambattista, A., Gong, E., Fletcher, G., Sanayhie, R., Kim, H. M., & Laskowski, M. (2020). Understanding a revolutionary and flawed grand experiment in blockchain: The DAO attack. Research Anthology on Blockchain Technology in Business, Healthcare, Education, and Government, 1, 1253-1266. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-5351-0.ch069 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-5351-...
, p. 6) |
“The concept behind a distributed autonomous organization (DAO) is to program the required rules and decision-making apparatus of an organization into code, eliminating the need for governing roles. The DAO leverages the incorruptible digital ledger of Blockchain, and the digital currency and smart contracts of Ethereum to build an organization without the oversight of managers. Corporations at their very core are a set of complex agreements that are executed by managers and employees of the corporation, and the DAO mimics the entire system but replaces humans with its respective technology and code.” |
Wang et al. (2019Wang, S., Ding, W., Li, J., Yuan, Y., Ouyang, L., & Wang, F. Y. (2019). Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Concept, model, and applications. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, 6(5), 870-878. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSS.2019.2938190 https://doi.org/10.1109/TCSS.2019.293819...
, p. 1) |
“The so-called Decentralized Autonomous Organization [DAO, sometimes labeled as decentralized autonomous corporation (DAC)], which is a new organization form that the management and operational rules are typically encoded on blockchain in the form of smart contracts, and can autonomously operate without centralized control or third-party intervention.” DAO is a blockchain-powered organization that can run on its own without any central authority or management hierarchy. In a DAO, all the management and operational rules are recorded on blockchain in the form of smart contracts, and the distributed consensus protocols and Token Economy Incentive are utilized [25] to realize organizations’ self operation, self-governance, and self-evolution.” |
Zamani and Giaglis (2018Zamani, E. D., & Giaglis, G. M. (2018). With a little help from the miners: Distributed ledger technology and market disintermediation. Industrial Management and Data Systems, 118(3), 637-652. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2017-0231 https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-05-2017-023...
, p. 9) |
“Cryptocurrencies together with DLT and smart contracts provide the infrastructure for the development of corporations that are fully digital and distributed and, for the first time in history, even entirely autonomous. Cryptocurrencies provide the payment method for transactions, DLT provides verification and validation of these transactions, while smart contracts can be the mechanisms that trigger transactions, essentially setting the entire corporation in motion when certain conditions are met. DACs aren’t an entirely new concept; they first appeared on a conceptual level in 2011 (The Economist, 2014). However, coupled with other technological advancements, such as autonomous agents, the possible applications of DACs may be endless, as there can be ‘pre-programmed’ businesses (Aron, 2014Aron, J. (2014). What’s wrong with Bitcoin? New Scientist, 221(2955), 19-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(14)60271-2 https://doi.org/10.1016/S0262-4079(14)60...
).” |
Hassan and De Filippi (2021Hassan, S., & De Filippi, P. (2021). Decentralized autonomous organization. Internet Policy Review, 10(2), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1556 https://doi.org/10.14763/2021.2.1556...
, p. 2) |
“A DAO is a blockchain-based system that enables people to coordinate and govern themselves mediated by a set of self-executing rules deployed on a public blockchain, and whose governance is decentralised (i.e., independent from central control). The DAC concept was used mostly informally in online forums and chats by early cryptocurrency enthusiasts, using both ‘decentralized’ and ‘distributed’ autonomous corporations interchangeably. While some argue that Bitcoin is effectively the first DAO (Buterin, 2013Buterin, V. (2013, Sep. 13). Bootstrapping a decentralized autonomous corporation: Part I. Bitcoin Magazine. https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bootstrapping-a-decentralized-autonomouscorporation-part-i-1379644274 https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/boo...
; Hsieh et al., 2018Hsieh, Y. Y., Vergne, J. P., Anderson, P., Lakhani, K., & Reitzig, M. (2018). Bitcoin and the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations. Journal of Organization Design, 7(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0038-1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0038-...
), the term is today understood as referring not to a blockchain network in and of itself, but rather to organisations deployed as smart contracts on top of an existing blockchain network.” |
Zhao et al. (2022Zhao, X., Ai, P., Lai, F., Luo, X., & Benitez, J. (2022). Task management in decentralized autonomous organization. Journal of Operations Management, 68(6-7), 649-674. https://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1179 https://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1179...
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“The term DAO refers to a scalable and self-organizing community supported by blockchain-enabled coordination mechanisms (Singh & Kim, 2019Singh, M., & Kim, S. (2019). Chapter four - blockchain technology for decentralized autonomous organizations. In S. Kim, G. C. Deka, & P. Zhang (Eds.), Advances in computers (pp. 115-140). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1179 https://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1179...
) to govern its corresponding DApp.” |
Hsieh et al. (2018Hsieh, Y. Y., Vergne, J. P., Anderson, P., Lakhani, K., & Reitzig, M. (2018). Bitcoin and the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations. Journal of Organization Design, 7(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0038-1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41469-018-0038-...
, p. 2) |
“... as non-hierarchical organizations that perform and record routine tasks on a peer-to-peer, cryptographically secure, public network, and rely on the voluntary contributions of their internal stakeholders to operate, manage, and evolve the organization through a democratic consultation process (Dietz et al., 2016Dietz, J., Xethalis, G., De Filippi, P., & Hazard, J. (2016). Model distributed collaborative organizations. https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Model_Distributed_Collaborative_Organizations https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Model_Dis...
; Van Valkenburgh et al., 2015Van Valkenburgh, P., Dietz, J., De Filippi, P., Shadab, H., Xethalis, G., & Bollier, D. (2015). Distributed collaborative organisations: distributed networks and regulatory frameworks. Coincenter.).” |
Zalan (2018Zalan, T. (2018). Born global on blockchain. Review of International Business and Strategy, 28(1), 19-34. https://doi.org/10.1108/RIBS-08-2017-0069 https://doi.org/10.1108/RIBS-08-2017-006...
, p. 10) |
“a DAO is truly autonomous, in that what the organization does or will do is determined purely by code (Maas, 2017Maas, T. (2017). Understanding ethereum - The full guide. HackerNoon. https://hackernoon.com/ understanding-ethereum-a-complete-guide-6f32ea8f5888 https://hackernoon.com/ understanding-et...
). Thus, together with programmable money (cryptocurrencies) and programmable contracts (smart contracts), a DAO may become a building block of new economic governance (Davidson et al., 2018Davidson, S., De Filippi, P., & Potts, J. (2018). Blockchains and the economic institutions of capitalism. Journal of Institutional Economics, 14(4), 639-658. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1744137417000200 https://doi.org/10.1017/S174413741700020...
).” |