A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is a company, organization, or enterprise that operates without any central administration. It is a corporation that works either fully or partially on self-executing smart contracts and/or open-source protocols to provide services to its customers.

What are the advantages of a DAO?

The advantage of such an organization is that smart contracts and blockchain technology guarantee transparency and fairness for all participants involved. A DAO may be thought of as an “unstoppable” decentralized artificial intelligence with no human intervention or error since it only acts upon the programming set in the development of the smart contract.

All decisions are made by stakeholders, who buy tokens and vote according to their stake in the project to determine the company’s direction. It would be accurate to describe it as a crowd-sourced autonomous organization with economic rewards.

Every company needs a financial system that enables participants to interact with each other. A DAO is no exception. In fact, one of the most important reasons for creating a DAO is that companies want to remove their reliance on banks or other traditional financial institutions.

What makes it autonomous?

The term “autonomous” implies that there is no central individual who manages transactions within the blockchain, rather the code/smart contracts take care of everything automatically.

The term “corporation” refers to an organization created by people for business purposes, who set out their goals and vision via a group of founders.

A decentralized autonomous organization should be distinguished from an ordinary business corporation as this form of enterprise only exists as long as the code (in the blockchain) is operational.

Are DAOs trustworthy?

The DAO code should be open source and published on GitHub, to indicate that users can trust it.

A DAO can act as a traditional company, although there are no directors who manage its relations with its clients. All decisions are taken by a majority vote of all members involved (stakeholders), and these terms are stated within a public smart contract.

A DAO has no ownership of assets though. The tokens are technically distributed to stakeholders, and it’s their mission to increase the value of their tokens through trading activities.

What are some future implications of DAOs?

This seems like a perfect blend between cutting-edge technology and democratic values and might be part of the solution in dealing with many problems we encounter today in our current financial system. A DAO company is created in the following way: first, a few members define its code, which should be open source. Then they create shares that are distributed among stakeholders.

The development team works on technology in order to make it operational in real-life conditions, and finally, when it’s done, the DAO is ready to go live. In the meantime, the stakeholders vote on various issues and give feedback.

In most cases a DAO is funded by an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) which enables everybody to become a stakeholder. The company can choose to operate solely online or open a branch in a given physical location as well.

How do DAOs work?

A practical example of how a DAO works can be seen in Dash, a cryptocurrency that has proven to show all the advantages blockchain technology offers. The company was created in 2014 and is based on a decentralized autonomous organization. A special voting system enables stakeholders to make decisions regarding new features or compensation of work for developers, which are then implemented by the code directly.

In addition, users receive financial incentives for their participation. Anyone can become a member of Dash if they hold tokens, own a mining rig, or provide some other services which are useful to the community.

By taking this approach, Dash was able to earn trust among members and make decisions in the best interest of all participants involved.

For example, at one point they decided that 10 percent of the mining revenue will go directly to the development team. This 10 percent was divided among different developers, and after they made their contribution to the system, Dash became one of the most popular cryptocurrencies in existence today.

Are there limitations to DAOs?

Unlike traditional companies, DAOs can operate globally without geographical boundaries or other limitations. It’s essentially a community with its own self-sustainable financial system which enables everybody to contribute products/services offered by this network.

The decentralized autonomous organization is thus an open-source entity that allows anybody who holds tokens to decide how it should be developed. Another benefit that comes along with joining projects based on blockchain technology is that all activities are transparent.

Once a transaction occurs, it becomes part of the public ledger which anyone can access at any time. There is no need to provide documentation like in traditional companies, nor any fear that sensitive information will be leaked.

In fact, especially ICOs are nowadays the biggest trend in the blockchain industry and they have built up a new generation of investors who desire transparency. During an ICO tokens are sold for future services which lie on the roadmap published by the company.

The progress of this roadmap is then made available through Github or other platforms which share updates about development goals achieved. Investors can thus make decisions based on how much work has been done so far.

People who purchase tokens during an ICO often follow these principles as well. If you open any relevant thread on Reddit, it’s always possible to find feedback related to developers’ activity, project transparency, or even criticism expressed by community members.

It’s also worth mentioning that many projects offer tokens with some benefits attached, which makes them even more attractive from an investor perspective. For example, most people involved in blockchain technology prefer to pay for goods and services with Bitcoin rather than traditional currencies because it offers lower fees and faster transactions.

In Dash, master nodes (users who create a full copy of the blockchain) receive rewards for their service. As a result, they have financial incentives to work for the network.

Key Takeaways

• The DAO was an organization that was created by developers to help with making decisions and doing transactions with cryptocurrencies.
• In June 2016, hackers exploited coding mistakes and vulnerabilities to steal 3.6 million ETH from the DAO, resulting in a wave of currency theft that spread across Europe.
• In September 2016, the DAO token was delisted from the digital exchange currencies.

In conclusion, we can say that every blockchain-based company offers an innovative way to help solve existing problems and create entirely new opportunities in various different industries.