decentralized autonomous organization (DAO)

A DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, is a group that runs itself through rules written in smart contracts instead of through bosses, boards, and back-office paperwork. Picture a club whose entire rulebook — how decisions get made, who can spend the shared treasury, what happens when a vote passes — is code that everyone can read and that executes on its own. There is no head office and no single person holding the keys; the organization is the running code plus the members who govern it.

Members usually steer the DAO by voting, and voting power typically comes from holding a governance token: anyone can propose a change, members vote, and if the proposal passes the threshold, the smart contract carries it out automatically. The treasury, the membership list, and every vote are all on the blockchain in plain view, so the organization's actions are transparent by default and follow the rules it was given — no manager can quietly override the outcome.

DAOs matter because they let people who have never met coordinate money and decisions across the world with no central operator they must trust. They run investment funds, manage open-source projects, fund public goods, and govern DeFi protocols. By moving the rules of an organization into open, self-executing code, a DAO turns "how this group is run" from a private arrangement into something anyone can inspect and take part in.