DAO
An organisation whose rules live in code rather than in articles of association, and where voting power follows token holdings.
Decentralised autonomous organisation. Proposals are made and voted on-chain, and approved decisions are executed automatically by smart contracts — no board needs to sign. The model is used to govern protocols, investment treasuries and collectively owned projects.
The original The DAO raised the equivalent of $150 million in 2016 and was drained through a contract bug weeks later. The Ethereum community chose to reverse the transaction through a hard fork, splitting the chain into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic — and making clear that "code is law" has limits. Voting by holdings also means in practice that the largest holders decide.