DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization)
Digital entity governed by rules programmed in smart contracts where members collectively make decisions.
What is it? - Dummies
Una DAO It's like a Digital club without bosses, where all the rules are written in a program (smart contract) and members vote to make decisions important: how to spend money, what projects to support or how to change the rules. Everything is done transparently and automatically, and no one is in charge more than the others.
What is it? - PRO
Una DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) It's a digital and decentralized organizational structure, managed by smart contracts deployed on a blockchain, which allows participants make collective decisions without the need for a central authority. Operating rules, governance processes and resource distribution are codified in smart contracts, ensuring that they are complied with in a manner transparent, verifiable and immutable.
DAOs use governance tokens that they grant to their holders right to proportional voting For:
- Propose and approve changes to the protocol or project.
- Allocate treasury (treasury) budgets.
- Incorporate members or partners.
- Regulate interactions with third parties.
These organizations can have different purposes:
- Protocol DAOs (e.g. MakerDAO, Uniswap): they govern DeFi protocols.
- Investment DAOs (e.g. The LAO): they manage collective capital.
- Impact or community DAOs (e.g. GitCoinDAO): promote public initiatives.
- Shared Owned DAOs (e.g. for art, real estate, NFT).
- Occupational data: decentralized freelancing structures or on-chain operations.
Its main features include:
- Programmable and automated management.
- Collective and transparent decision-making.
- Public record of votes, proposals and executions.
- Organizational disintermediation.
- Ability to interact with tokenized assets and external contracts.
The main challenge of DAOs is not technical, but organizational and legal. Although they are resistant to censorship and centralization, they require robust governance mechanisms, active participation and legal models compatible with the jurisdictions in which they operate, especially if they manage financial resources or collective property.
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