TECHNOLOGIES

DAO

Decentralised Autonomous Organisation

A group that coordinates through smart contracts, with shared funds and decisions governed by on-chain voting instead of a board and a bank account.

Last reviewed: 2026-06-02 byKevin Riedl wiki β†—

A DAO is a way to run a collective where the rules of membership, voting, and spending live in smart contracts. The treasury is an on-chain wallet that only releases funds when a proposal passes a vote. Voting power usually tracks token holdings or membership. The pitch is that coordination becomes transparent and tamper-proof: anyone can audit the treasury, every vote is recorded, and no single signatory can quietly drain the funds.

DAOs work well for a specific job: managing a shared on-chain treasury where the members do not fully trust each other and need verifiable rules for who can spend what. Investment clubs, protocol parameter governance, and grant funding are real fits. We built the on-chain governance and treasury logic for FTW DAO, where the structure earns its complexity because real money is pooled across parties.

Where DAOs become theatre: governance over decisions that are not actually on-chain, token-weighted voting that concentrates power in a handful of whales, and “community governance” that is a marketing label over a team who still controls the admin keys. If the hard decisions still happen in a private chat and the vote is a rubber stamp, you have a normal company wearing a DAO costume. We will tell you which one you are building. See our blockchain work.

// FAQ

FAQs

FAQs

A collective whose membership, voting, and treasury rules live in smart contracts. Funds sit in an on-chain wallet that only pays out when a proposal passes a vote, so the rules are transparent and no single person can quietly spend the money.
When parties who do not fully trust each other pool real funds and need verifiable, tamper-proof rules for spending and decisions. Investment clubs, protocol governance, and grant treasuries are genuine fits. Most other uses are a normal org wearing a DAO label.
When the real decisions happen off-chain in a private chat and the vote is a rubber stamp, when token-weighted voting hands control to a few whales, or when the team still holds the admin keys behind the ‘community governance’ branding. That is a company in a costume, not a DAO.