DAO
Also called: decentralized autonomous organization, DAOs, on-chain governance
A DAO is an organisation whose rules and treasury are governed by token-holder votes executed through smart contracts. In practice governance concentrates fast: turnout is low and large holders decide outcomes, reproducing the shareholder-control problems it was meant to escape. Legal status remains unsettled, and a US court has held that a DAO's members could be treated as a general partnership.