Grounding Decentralised Technologies in Cooperative Principles: What Can 'Decentralised Autonomous Organisations' (DAOs) and Platform Cooperatives Learn from Each Other?

Abstract

This working paper shares ideas presented in a research sprint exploring cooperative approaches to data ownership and governance led by Harvard University’s Berkman Klein and The New School, which we presented at the Platform Cooperative Consortium Conference, 2021.

Our research project explores the wealth of literature on platform cooperatives, to investigate what “Decentralised Autonomous Organisations” (DAOs) can learn from coops, as participatory data governance and coordination frameworks. We find that DAOs share a lot of similar challenges to those already experienced by platform coops and could borrow from cooperative principles to strengthen the parameters of governance design and inter-institutional relationships. Furthermore, we see room for further investigation of how novel technical governance mechanisms in DAOs may be utilised by platform coops to help them scale efficiently, while simultaneously retaining the practices of democratic governance.

Keywords: cooperative, platform coop, decentralized autonomous organization, blockchain, DAO

JEL Classification: O10, O00, O30, O14, O17, M10, M13, Z10