Term
DAO
A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is an on-chain organization whose decisions are made by token-holder voting through smart contracts, with treasury and operations controlled by the voted-in outcomes rather than a traditional management structure.
A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a group whose rules and decisions are encoded and executed on-chain. Members typically hold governance tokens that give them voting weight; proposals are submitted, discussed, and voted on through smart contracts; passing proposals execute automatically (releasing treasury funds, adjusting protocol parameters, granting roles).
DAOs run everything from DeFi protocols (Uniswap, Compound, MakerDAO), to investment collectives (The LAO), to public-goods funders (Gitcoin), to social clubs (Friends With Benefits). Treasury management is often the highest-stakes DAO function — some DAOs control hundreds of millions to billions in on-chain assets.
The trade-off is speed and coordination. On-chain votes are slower than traditional decision-making; contentious proposals can split communities; token distribution often ends up concentrated among founders and early investors, making "decentralized" more aspirational than literal in many cases.
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