A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization, DAO) is a decentralized autonomous organization whose operation is governed not by classic management and a board of directors, but by program code in the form of smart contracts. The logic of governance and the treasury is embedded in the blockchain, most often on the Ethereum platform, and the source code of such projects is, as a rule, open for community review.

The key idea of a DAO is an attempt to build a new model of organization in which decisions are made collectively by the holders of special governance tokens. Each participant can submit proposals and vote on them, and the result of the vote is automatically executed by a smart contract without intermediaries. This approach is applied to both commercial and non-commercial initiatives: investment communities, decentralized-finance protocols, grant funds, and network projects.

Features and risks of a DAO

• transparency: the rules and the movement of funds are visible in the blockchain;
• collective governance through tokens and voting;
• the absence of a single center of control and hierarchy;
• dependence on code quality — errors in a smart contract can lead to the loss of funds.

A DAO remains an experimental but actively developing form of organization. Before participating, it is important to study the structure of the specific project, its smart contracts, its governance model, and its legal status, since the technology and regulation in this area are still taking shape.