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Main Authors: Sharma, Tanusree, Potter, Yujin, Pongmala, Kornrapat, Wang, Henry, Miller, Andrew, Song, Dawn, Wang, Yang
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13095
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author Sharma, Tanusree
Potter, Yujin
Pongmala, Kornrapat
Wang, Henry
Miller, Andrew
Song, Dawn
Wang, Yang
author_facet Sharma, Tanusree
Potter, Yujin
Pongmala, Kornrapat
Wang, Henry
Miller, Andrew
Song, Dawn
Wang, Yang
contents Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) resemble early online communities, particularly those centered around open-source projects, and present a potential empirical framework for complex social-computing systems by encoding governance rules within "smart contracts" on the blockchain. A key function of a DAO is collective decision-making, typically carried out through a series of proposals where members vote on organizational events using governance tokens, signifying relative influence within the DAO. In just a few years, the deployment of DAOs surged with a total treasury of $24.5 billion and 11.1M governance token holders collectively managing decisions across over 13,000 DAOs as of 2024. In this study, we examine the operational dynamics of 100 DAOs, like pleasrdao, lexdao, lootdao, optimism collective, uniswap, etc. With large-scale empirical analysis of a diverse set of DAO categories and smart contracts and by leveraging on-chain (e.g., voting results) and off-chain data, we examine factors such as voting power, participation, and DAO characteristics dictating the level of decentralization, thus, the efficiency of management structures. As such, our study highlights that increased grassroots participation correlates with higher decentralization in a DAO, and lower variance in voting power within a DAO correlates with a higher level of decentralization, as consistently measured by Gini metrics. These insights closely align with key topics in political science, such as the allocation of power in decision-making and the effects of various governance models. We conclude by discussing the implications for researchers, and practitioners, emphasizing how these factors can inform the design of democratic governance systems in emerging applications that require active engagement from stakeholders in decision-making.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_13095
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Future of Algorithmic Organization: Large-Scale Analysis of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
Sharma, Tanusree
Potter, Yujin
Pongmala, Kornrapat
Wang, Henry
Miller, Andrew
Song, Dawn
Wang, Yang
Social and Information Networks
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) resemble early online communities, particularly those centered around open-source projects, and present a potential empirical framework for complex social-computing systems by encoding governance rules within "smart contracts" on the blockchain. A key function of a DAO is collective decision-making, typically carried out through a series of proposals where members vote on organizational events using governance tokens, signifying relative influence within the DAO. In just a few years, the deployment of DAOs surged with a total treasury of $24.5 billion and 11.1M governance token holders collectively managing decisions across over 13,000 DAOs as of 2024. In this study, we examine the operational dynamics of 100 DAOs, like pleasrdao, lexdao, lootdao, optimism collective, uniswap, etc. With large-scale empirical analysis of a diverse set of DAO categories and smart contracts and by leveraging on-chain (e.g., voting results) and off-chain data, we examine factors such as voting power, participation, and DAO characteristics dictating the level of decentralization, thus, the efficiency of management structures. As such, our study highlights that increased grassroots participation correlates with higher decentralization in a DAO, and lower variance in voting power within a DAO correlates with a higher level of decentralization, as consistently measured by Gini metrics. These insights closely align with key topics in political science, such as the allocation of power in decision-making and the effects of various governance models. We conclude by discussing the implications for researchers, and practitioners, emphasizing how these factors can inform the design of democratic governance systems in emerging applications that require active engagement from stakeholders in decision-making.
title Future of Algorithmic Organization: Large-Scale Analysis of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
topic Social and Information Networks
Computational Engineering, Finance, and Science
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
Human-Computer Interaction
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.13095