Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) – A Market Meta Analysis

Abstract

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) enable unprecedented technology-driven decentralized decision-making tools, transparent governance, and direct participation of stakeholders, making them highly adaptable to the evolving digital age.

DAOs disrupt established centralized legacy models across industries. Yet, open questions and challenges for DAOs linger. Among those are the establishment of standardized governance mechanisms to ensure fairness, security, and accountability within DAOs. Additionally, scalability issues, legal frameworks, and interoperability between different DAOs are areas that require further exploration and development.

The paper provides a dataset (N=[65]) analysis by assets in DAO treasuries across different industries. Descriptive statistics and data analysis show DAO industry trends and highlight governance and other shortcomings in the evolving DAO industry. The paper provides a normative analysis and outlook.

Keywords: Decentralized Autonomous Organization, Distributed Systems, Governance, Distributed Ledger Technology, Regulation, Protocols, Optimization, Principal-Agent, Emerging Technology

JEL Classification: K20, K23, K32, L43, L5, O31, O32