What is DAO?

Aman Agarwal
Nerd For Tech
Published in
3 min readFeb 16, 2023

DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. It is a decentralized organization run by code, instead of people or central authority, that operates on a blockchain network. Members can participate in decision-making through rules encoded as smart contracts on the blockchain.

What kind of rules are there in DAO creation

When creating a DAO, rules typically include:

  1. Membership: how members can join and leave the organization
  2. Voting: how members make decisions and how much power each member has
  3. Fund management: how funds are raised, stored and distributed
  4. Proposal process: how new ideas or proposals can be submitted and approved
  5. Governance structure: the organizational structure of the DAO, such as the roles and responsibilities of members
  6. Token issuance: how the organization’s tokens are created and distributed
  7. Amendment process: how the rules of the DAO can be changed over time

These rules are encoded as smart contracts on the blockchain and are transparent and publicly accessible.

How do DAO work and its workflow?

A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) works by allowing its members to make decisions collectively through the use of smart contracts on a blockchain. It operates based on a set of rules encoded into its smart contract code, which govern everything from its organizational structure to its decision-making process.

Here’s a typical workflow for a DAO:

  1. Membership: Members can join the DAO by participating in an onboarding process, typically involving staking a certain amount of cryptocurrency or completing some other form of verification.
  2. Proposal creation: Members can submit proposals for changes to the DAO’s operations or decisions. Proposals can be submitted through the DAO’s interface, typically a website or mobile app.
  3. Proposal voting: Members can vote on proposals, with each member’s voting power proportional to the amount of cryptocurrency they have staked.
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  4. Proposal execution: If a proposal receives enough votes to pass, the changes outlined in the proposal are automatically executed by the DAO’s smart contract.
  5. Accounting and record-keeping: The DAO’s smart contract maintains a transparent ledger of all transactions and decisions made within the organization.

Through this process, DAOs aim to provide a decentralized and democratic decision-making system that eliminates the need for intermediaries and allows for more equitable and transparent governance.

Industrial use of DAO

​DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) have the potential to be used in a variety of industries to create more transparent, democratic, and equitable systems of decision-making. Here are some examples of industries where DAOs can be used:

  1. Finance: DAOs can be used to create decentralized investment funds, insurance products, and peer-to-peer lending platforms.
  2. Gaming: DAOs can be used to create decentralized gaming platforms, where users can own and trade in-game assets and participate in decentralized gaming tournaments.
  3. Healthcare: DAOs can be used to create decentralized health data marketplaces, where users can sell their health data to pharmaceutical companies and research institutions.
  4. Real Estate: DAOs can be used to create decentralized real estate investment trusts (REITs), where users can invest in real estate assets and receive returns based on their performance.
  5. Supply Chain Management: DAOs can be used to create decentralized supply chain management systems, where users can track and verify the origins and quality of products as they move through the supply chain.

These are just a few examples of the potential applications of DAOs. As blockchain technology and DAO platforms continue to evolve, it is likely that new use cases for DAOs will emerge.

Conclusion

Here we understand what DAO is, what all things DAO contains, and how its made. We also learned where it can be used and its industries. And which sectors can be affected by DAO implementation and use.

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Aman Agarwal
Nerd For Tech

Engineer | Explorer | Blockchain | Golang | JavaScript developer