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From Technology to Society: An Overview of Blockchain-based DAO

Lu Liu, Sicong Zhou, Huawei Huang1 , Zibin Zheng1
Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is believed to play a significant role in our future society governed in a decentralized
way. In this article, we first explain the definitions and preliminaries of DAO. Then, we conduct a literature review of the existing
studies of DAO published in the recent few years. Through the literature review, we find out that a comprehensive survey towards
the state-of-the-art studies of DAO is still missing. To fill this gap, we perform such an overview by identifying and classifying the
most valuable proposals and perspectives closely related to the combination of DAO and blockchain technologies. We anticipate that
this survey can help researchers, engineers, and educators acknowledge the cutting-edge development of blockchain-related DAO
technologies.

Index Terms—Blockchain, Contracts, DAO, Fault Tolerant System, Governance

I. I NTRODUCTION
User
Blockchain-based technologies have been deeply adopted by
multiple applications that are closely related to every corner of User
Contract
our daily life, such as cryptocurrencies, tokenomics, business User

applications, Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, and etc..

Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), as one of the Exchange

blockchain applications shown in Fig. 1, is growing rapidly Miner Developer

and drawing great attention from both academia and the Contract

governments around the world. Although DAO has brought Developer

a lot of opportunities to blockchain technologies, we are sur-

Contract
prised to find out that an overview of DAO in the perspective
Exchange Miner
of blockchains is still missing. Based on the background User
mentioned above, we perform a comprehensive classification
on the latest studies combining the blockchain and DAO. User
The taxonomy in this article mainly includes three cate-
gories. In the first category, we discuss the common problems Fig. 1. The structure of DAO.
and the related studies of blockchain and DAO, including
various attacks and security issues of blockchains, and the
counter-trend issues. In the second category, we focus on the security and scalability. We look forward to a new integration
issues related to DAO governance and the existing develop- of both social and organizational structure of DAO in the
ment of a more in-depth discussion. In the third category, we context of blockchain technologies. To help have a clear clue
evaluate the latest development of DAO in various fields, such of this article, Fig. 2 shows the organization of this article.
as e-government, economy, and etc., and predict the future
development directions of the relevant fields. II. P RELIMINARIES
Although a small number of researchers are worried about A. Decentralization
the future of DAO and blockchain due to the hard fork caused
In general case of centralization, the use of a database is
by The DAO hacking incident [1], most of them still have high
basically based on the trust of a third-party organization. For
expectations on this technology. We also believe that with the
example, as the third party, people all trust the banking system,
inspiring pace of the development of DAO and blockchain,
which can correctly manage the database and record our
the DAO projects can become mature, and DAO will show
transactions. The bank keeps accounts for every transaction,
overwhelming advantages over many existing solutions.
and only the bank has the authority to keep users’ accounts.
Through this overview, we find the most important findings
However, the shortcoming of such centralized organization is
on this direction is that the future effort can be devoted to
obvious. No one can make sure that whether the centralized
improving DAO from a better balance of decentralization,
organization that manages the database is entirely trustworthy.
This work was supported in part by the Key-Area Research and De- For example, during the global economic crisis in 2008, the
velopment Program of Guangdong Province (No. 2019B020214006), the US government could issue money indefinitely, because it is
National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61902445, No. 61722214), the central institution of monetary management.
the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China
(No.19lgpy222), and the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research On the contrary, decentralization means that the database
Foundation (No. 2019A1515011798). does not depend on a specific organization or administrator
Lu Liu and Sicong Zhou have the equal contribution. Authors are all with but is distributed among all peers. Blockchain is essentially a
the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University,
Guangzhou, China. decentralized database. Each full node has a complete copy
1 Corresponding author. Email: {huanghw28, zhzibin}@mail.sysu.edu.cn of the blockchain ledger. If the database is modified, the

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Section I: Introduction

Motivation & Contribution

Section II : Preliminaries

Background of Blockchain

Definitions, Terminologies and History of DAO

Section III : State-of-the-art Studies

Taxonomy of state-of-the-art Studies related to

blockchain-based DAO

Section IV: Open Issues and Future Directions

Research Topics Engineering Perspectives Fig. 3. Blockchain-related fields.

Section V: Conclusions
this completely decentralized way makes investors typically
don’t know and trust each other, blockchain is a good tool
Fig. 2. The structure of this overview.
to help achieve the goal of DAO. However, DAOs are not
necessarily to built on top of an existing blockchain such
information saved by all nodes will be noticed. Thus, the as Ethereum [4]. During the getting-start guidelines, Casino
information in the blockchain database will be open and [2] was published as an introduction to DAO. It presents the
transparent. Decentralization solves the trust problem through concepts, characteristics, frameworks, applications, the future
redundant data validation. trends of DAO, and etc. The readers will gain a systematic
overview of DAO that spans multiple domains.
B. Bitcoin Blockchain D. Project The DAO
Originally proposed by Satoshi Nakamoto [2], Bitcoin is the In the development of DAO, the first DAO project is
first application of the blockchain. In Bitcoin, the blockchain proposed with a historic and dramatic meaning. A partic-
serves as a distributed database that stores all transactions ular historical moment of DAO is the creation of the first
originated from one account to another. The advantages of DAO and how it was eventually hacked. The DAO project
blockchain brings many pros for the Bitcoin ecosystem. For was started on April 30th, 2016. By the end of the entire
example, everyone has the right to validate accounts, the funding period, more than 11,000 enthusiastic members had
currency cannot be overissued, and the entire ledger is com- participated and raised 150 million dollars, making the The
pletely open and transparent. When processing a transaction, DAO the largest crowdfunding project in history. It was an
Bitcoin adopts the techniques of digital signatures to identify overnight success, but the idea of The DAO vulnerability had
the ownership of a coin. Each Bitcoin account address has a been circulating in the developer community. Finally on June
private and a public keys. The private key is private and is used 18th, a hacker began using a “recursive call vulnerability" in
to exercise the bitcoin ownership of the bitcoin account, while the software to collect Ether coins from The DAO’s token
the public key is known to all nodes to verify the transaction sales. He took advantages of a well-intentioned but poorly
and the balance of a Bitcoin account. When the transfer implemented feature of DAO designed to prevent the majority
information of a transaction is published, a digital signature from tyrannizing over dissenting DAO token holders. But this
must be embedded by encrypting the digital summary of the “split" feature was implemented to make The DAO vulnerable
transfer message together with the private key of the sender. to catastrophic reentrance errors. As a result, the attacker was
Thus, other nodes can use the public key of the sender’s able to steal about 3.6 million ETH, worth about $50 million
account to decrypt and verify the legality of the transaction. at the time of the attack, bringing the price of the coin from
After such verification, each blockchain node is acknowledged more than 20 dollars to less than 13 dollars. Losses reached
this transaction. 70 million dollars. The DAO’s problems have had a negative
impact on both the Ethereum network and its cryptocurrency.
C. Definition and Background of DAO The situation for The DAO investors is particularly precarious.
DAO was originally introduced by the white paper [3], Eventually, over 90% of the hashrates indicated support for
in which DAO is defined as an organization built on smart a fork. The DAO fund was returned to investors as if the
contracts that can execute autonomously. Unlike the con- organization never existed. The DAO hack sparked a debate
ventional centralized entities, it doesn’t include the central about hard forks and soft forks, and the creation of Ethereum
control or management. As shown in Fig. 1, DAO achieves the Classic [1].
decentralized organization by encoding a set of rules in smart
E. To Launch a DAO Project
contracts, where how DAO performs is predefined. Although

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In this part, we perform a thorough taxonomy towards

the existing up-to-date studies of blockchain-related DAO.
Through the classification of the existing literature related to
DAO, we find that in addition to the introduction of DAO
systems, existing studies mainly focus on the security issues,
applications in various fields, and DAO governance issues.
Therefore, we divide it into the categories presented in each
subsection.
Among those categories, on the analysis of the questions
Fig. 4. The four-step launch of a DAO project. about DAOs related issues, we divide them into two classes.
On one hand, a DAO project is based on the blockchain,
thus the problems existing in blockchain are also the existing
Although the first DAO project failed, it did not completely problems of DAO. On the other hand, DAO induces some new
prevent the initiation and development of other DAO projects. problems in governance. Such relevant studies are reviewed
The operation of launching a DAO project includes the fol- in governance problems and solutions. Finally, in the last
lowing steps [5], which are also illustrated in Fig. 4: category, DAO and related areas, we pay attention to the
1) Developing and deploying smart contracts according to current development of DAO in the context of various fields.
predefined rules.
2) Handling the token issues (through ICO) at the initial A. Existing Problems and Solutions of Blockchains
financing stage. The hacking incident of the first The DAO project triggered
3) At the end of the financing phase, a DAO starts running. the introspection of DAO project [9]. The first generation
4) Proposals are made and members can vote on them. blockchain technology, Blockchain 1.0, was mainly invented
for cryptocurrency purposes. Then, the second generation of
F. Existing Popular DAOs Blockchain 2.0, represented by Ethereum, is an open platform
that enables a new decentralized computing paradigm. The
The representative existing implementations of DAO are
DAO is exactly based on Ethereum. While there are no obvious
reviewed as follows.
security vulnerabilities in pure cryptocurrency systems such as
1) Aragon Bitcoin [10], the second-generation blockchain applications
Aragon [6] is a platform that enables any participant to and semantics inevitably introduce security vulnerabilities
collaborate with others without any third-party organizers. On [11], [12].
Aragon, people can create a decentralized digital jurisdiction Besides, from the perspective of social development, we
for their company, community, and organization. The Aragon observe some common problems that need to be solved
users are also allowed to create diverse communities. For together for both blockchains and the DAO. For example, the
example, a financial DAO can be generated to incentivize typical problems include:
internal usage of coninbase Apps, a council DAO is launched
• the interpretation of fork culture by DAO hacker event;
to expand the utilization of wealth management, or a pocket
• whether there are problems in the application develop-
DAO is established to eliminate blockchain infrastructure
ment of distributed ledger technology (DLT);
monopolies.
• and whether the main trend of blockchain technology is
2) Colony
reasonable.
Colony [7] is designed as an infrastructure that enables
organizations collaborate with each other via the decentralized Inspired by those questions, the blockchain system hacker
software implemented on top of Ethereum. It treats every attacks [1] and security issues [13], blockchain counter-trend
participant impartially. Unlike other DAOs, Colony advocates issues [14] have drawn a lot of attention.
to eliminate the requirement of voting from members. Instead, 1) Security threats and enhancement solutions in
it focus on mechanisms that enforce people to get their job blockchain
done. Blockchain technology has shown a promising application
3) DAOstack prospect since its birth. Blockchain has been used in many
fields, ranging from the original cryptocurrency to various
DAOstack [8] is an open-source, modular DAO project,
applications based on smart contracts. Along with the boom-
which leverages the technology and adoption of decentralized
ing development of blockchains, the security and privacy of
governance, enabling people to create the DApps (decentral-
blockchains should not be ignored. On the basis of existing
ized apps), DAOs, and DAO tools.
studies on blockchain security and privacy issues, Li et al.
Although several DAOs have been implemented, we should
[13] systematically studied the security threats of blockchains
notice that DAO is still in its immature stage, a large number
through the analysis of popular blockchain systems. Their ma-
of new DAOs will be developed for future, and many insights
jor contribution includes (a) analyzing the causes and possible
of DAOs will be perceived then.
consequences of each risk or vulnerability, (b) investigating the
corresponding actual attack, and (c) analyzing the exploited
III. TAXONOMY OF S TATE - OF - THE - ART S TUDIES vulnerability.

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TABLE I
E XISTING DAO AS BLOCKCHAIN PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

References Recognition Methodology

Li [13] Security threats and enhance- A systematic study on the security threats to blockchain and the
ment solutions in blockchain corresponding real attacks, and suggests some future directions
to stir research efforts into this area.
Zhou [15] Scalability of blockchain Existing blockchain scalability solutions are classified according
to the blockchain hierarchy.
Manski [14] Countervailing trend Blockchain applications could exacerbate inequality.
LSE Team [16] DLT The potential of DLT is great but need to be assessed the
feasibility.

From the generation perspective of blockchains, we sum- nologies, have shown a tendency to pursue different future
marize the common risks of the blockchain 1.0 as follows: trajectories, depending on their implementation details. For
(a) 51% vulnerability, (b) Private key security, (c) Criminal example, blockchain technology can help build a technology
activity, (d) Double spending, and (d) Transaction privacy community in which advanced exchanges, communications,
leakage. While for blockchain 2.0, the common risks include: and decision-making technologies are used to aggregate, al-
(a) Criminal smart contracts, (b) Vulnerabilities in smart locate, and manage the capital at multiple levels. However, a
contracts, (c) Under-optimized smart contracts, and (d) Under- series of anti-subsidy trends indicate a deepening of inequality
price operations. and democratic decline. Because technology is stratified, a
Furthermore, the popular attacks towards the blockchain large number of employees are reduced to less disposable
include: Selfish mining attacks, DAO attacks (which is also population, regulation is reduced and corporate personnel are
the focus of our article), BGP hijacking attacks, Eclipse at- technologized. While the mainstream trends in blockchain
tacks, Liveness attacks, and Balance attacks. Considering those technology are greatly believed as distribution, decentral-
attacks, Li et al. [13] summarized the security-enhancement ization and democratization, the most powerful blockchain
solutions of the blockchain system as follows: (a) SmartPool, applications are likely to exacerbate inequality.
(b) Quantitative framework, (c) Oyente, (d) Hawk, and (e) 4) The future of the DLT
Town Crier. Those solutions have made a good prediction for In fact, blockchain is essentially an application of the
the future direction of the blockchain. distributed ledger technology (DLT). LSE Team [16] describes
2) Scalability of blockchain [15] the problem to be solved before DLT is used. The potential of
Similar to CAP theory in the field of traditional dis- DLT is too great to ignore. Its commitment to decentralization,
tributed systems, the three important attributes of blockchain data security and privacy can help improve and make public
systems, including decentralization, security, and scalability, services more affordable by reducing the role of government as
cannot be fulfilled altogether. For example, Bitcoin faces an intermediary. The decentralized and transparent properties
performance problems with low throughput and high trans- of the DLT lead to greater collaboration and integration with
action latency. Other cryptocurrencies also face these flaws, the private and social sectors by enhancing the government’s
leading researchers to pay more attention on the scalability own transparency, accountability and inclusiveness. However,
of blockchains. To have a clear clue about the blockchain there is no general rule book that specifies where a DLT should
scalability solutions, Zhou et al. [15] attempted to overview be deployed. If governments desire to use DLT for governance,
the related state-of-the-art studies by categorizing them accord- they need to assess the feasibility of DLT and implement the
ing to their blockchain hierarchy. The hierarchical structure DLT-based applications only when the benefits of speed, secu-
mainly consists of two layers. The first-layer solution is rity and privacy outweigh the social costs. Governments must
executed on the chain, focusing on the blockchain consensus, govern in the context when the implemented DLT applications
networks and data structures. Such as increasing the block are transparent to the underlying algorithms and ensure that
size of Bitcoin blockchain, optimizing the storage scheme, the applications truly represent public value. All these visions
as well as adopting the sharding technology. Various im- will have to wait for the DLT technologies to evolve further.
proved consistency algorithms, where transaction throughput
can be increased and transaction latency is decreased, are also B. Governance Problems and Solutions
reviewed. The second-layer solutions seek opportunities to DAO, as an application of blockchain in governance, raises
extend the blockchain through the off-chain channels, side- new issues about governance that are not found in conventional
chain and cross-chain protocols. Basically, these solutions blockchain. Through professional knowledge and experiments
have both advantages and limitations as they strive to achieve [17], there is still existing differences between code-based
decentralization, security, and scalability at the same time. The governance and blockchain-based governance. To use DAOs
insightful classification and analysis of current solutions can in certain areas, DuPont [18] argues that DAO may simply
inspire further researches. be a risky investment which masquerads as a new way of
3) Countervailing trend doing things. Furthermore, once governance is applied in
To our surprise, the blockchain technology also somewhat the area of blockchains, legal problems are inevitable. In
shows a counter-trend problem. Blockchains, like other tech- particular, the characteristics of blockchain governance have

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led to tensions between strict “on-chain" governance systems tics. Besides, the annual general meeting also has procedural
and possible “off-chain" governance applications [19]. Before defects. Especially when shareholders vote remotely, there
The DAO attack, some lawyers expressed concerns about DAO is great uncertainty about whether the information between
programs, saying that DAOs have touched on legal issues shareholders and the company (including shareholder voting
related to security in several countries [20]. records) is correctly communicated.
1) Fork and culture for DAO Lafarre et al. [22] therefore strongly call for the use of
Interpreting fork culture based on The DAO hacker event, blockchain technology to modernize the AGM. Blockchain
Tarasiewicz et al. [17] argue that a strong emphasis must be technology can significantly reduce the cost of shareholder
placed on interaction and communication between institutions voting and corporate organization. And it also can improve the
and informal coding communities to further research and speed of decision-making, and promote the rapid and efficient
develop new blends of social and organizational structures. participation of shareholders.
2) Problems with DAOs used in corporate governance In calls for using blockchain technology to realize the mod-
Agency theory is the dominant theory of governance con- ernization of the Annual general Meeting (AGM), however, at
flicts among shareholders, company managers and creditors, the same time, Lafarre et al. [22] are also pointed out that it is
in which one party entrusts the work to the other party. The important to realize the annual general meeting of shareholders
core agency conflict caused by the separation of ownership and based on blockchain will bring important legal issues. Whether
control cannot be fully resolved under the existing theoretical it should be abolished physical classic annual general meeting
and legal framework. Attempts to monitor agents are inevitably of shareholders, or let it outside of the annual general meeting
costly and transaction costs are high. of shareholders based on blockchain coexist? If it is desirable
Kaal et al. [21] point out that blockchain provides an to organize a decentralized AGM only on the blockchain, how
unprecedented solution to the agency problem in corporate many forum functions are included in this technology? Record
governance. DAO technology could help improve the agency dates and notice periods must be reconsidered, and the role of
relationship, but also proposed the potential of blockchain intermediaries in (cross-border) chains. More importantly, are
technology as an emerging technology of governance design, shareholders and companies ready to participate in non-entity
in which many ideal models and theoretical evaluations were meetings? Recent evidence shows that even most institutional
limited by the real world. First of all, the blockchain is a fun- investors do not favor full virtualization.
damental technology, and its transformative impact will take 4) Blockchain economy’s rethink
decades rather than years to establish and reform the system. Following the development of blockchain, blockchain econ-
In the corporate governance environment, the application of omy is on the rise, also needs new governance methods.
blockchain technology may develop in the existing centralized Blockchain and the smart contract supported by blockchain
structure or decentralized environment. The former requires may give birth to a new economic system, which Beck et
consensus on how and when to implement such technologies al. [23] call blockchain economy. The blockchain economy
for governance use cases. For the latter, only when a true goes beyond the digital economy because agreed transactions
decentralized common blockchain emerges, with scalability are executed autonomously, by following rules defined in
and full security, can the proxy relationships be truly removed smart contracts, without the need for agency intervention
to overhaul them. or third-party approval. They can embed digital assets or
With the complexity of the agency relationship, human tokens into digital representations of physical assets to enforce
behavior in the agency relationship needs a backstop, namely autonomous contract performance. The blockchain ensures
the continuous support of human code. Without decentralized that contracts are honored without being broken. It is in the
human support for code, the immutability of the blockchain new form of organization as DAO that blockchain economy
and its cryptography security systems may not create true will manifest itself.
transactional guarantees and trust between principals and Beck et al. [23] explored a DAO case, Swarm City to
agents to maintain the integrity of their contractual relation- explore the decision right, responsibility and incentive mecha-
ships. nism related to governance. Decision rights involve controlling
The blockchain-based corporate governance solution in certain assets, monitoring decisions, and have to do with ac-
DAO requires an incremental blockchain governance protocol. countability and incentives motivate agents to take action. The
Thus, the socially optimal hard fork rule may not be applica- authors used a novel IT governance framework to show that
ble. the emergence of the blockchain economy requires a rethink of
3) Problems with DAOs used in AGM governance. Compared with the digital economy, the location
The classic Annual general Meeting (AGM) has three of decision-making power in the blockchain economy will
functions for shareholders: information, forum and decision- be more decentralized. The accountability system in principle
making. AGM also has important theoretical significance in will be more and more established technically rather than
the collective supervision of shareholders. However, AGM is institutionally, and the consistency of incentives will become
often regarded as a dull and obligatory annual ceremony, and more and more important.
all three functions are actually eroded. For example, (almost) Therefore, from the three governance dimensions, the
all information is often disclosed well before the AGM. In ad- authors proposed the governance research agenda in the
dition to expensive shareholder voting decisions, the decision- blockchain economy in each dimension respectively. For ex-
making function of AGM also has static annual characteris- ample, in the aspect the decision right, the research agenda

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TABLE II
G OVERNANCE PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Categories References Recognition Methodology

Fork Tarasiewicz fork and culture The author interprets fork culture based on The DAO hacker event.
[17]
Governance in Kaal [21] corporate Problems with DAOs used in corporate governance.
company governance
Lafarre [22] DAO in AGM Problems with DAOs used in corporate governance(especially AGM).
Economy Beck [23] Blockchain DAO could lead to blockchain economy.
economy
Massacci [24] security and The failure of a security property, e.g. anonymity, can destroy a DAOs
economics because economic attacks can be tailgated to security attacks.
vulnerabilities
Law Blemus [20] blockchain laws This paper describes blockchain regulations discussed in the US, EU
and major economic countries.
Reijers [19] DAO in legal philos- This paper seeks to situate the blockchain discussion within the field of
ophy legal philosophy, examining how legal theory can apply in the context
of blockchain governance.
Shakow [25] DAO tax issues This article explains how a decentralized autonomous organization
operates and interacts with the U.S. tax system.

include: (a) how to make decisions in the blockchain econ- Blemus et al. [20] collected and compared regulatory trends
omy? (b) how to allocate decision management right and in various applications or issues within the area of United
decision control right? (c) how to resolve decision-making States, the European Union, and other key countries. These
differences in the blockchain economy? and (d) what is the were supported by blockchain technologies, including Bit-
role of ownership in the blockchain economy? coin/virtual currency/cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, decen-
The work [23] has identified an important approach to tralized autonomous organizations, initial coin offering (ICO),
governance research in the blockchain economy and provided and others. It mainly includes three supervision projects:
a rich foundation for further theoretical work. (a) supervision of virtual currency, (b) supervision of ICO
5) Security and economics vulnerabilities (and cryptocurrency), and (c) legal validity of blockchain
technology and intelligent contract.
Traditionally, security and economics functionalities in IT
The conclusion shows that distributed ledger technology
Financial services and Protocols (FinTech) have been separate
regulation is in its infancy. As of 2017, when the work [20]
goals. Only security vulnerabilities in security-critical systems
was published, uncertainty remains about the legal and eco-
that could be exploited by terrorists, criminals or malicious
nomic qualifications of virtual currencies, tokens, ICOs, smart
government actors turned into security problems.
contracts and distributed ledger technologies. Predictably, over
Massacci et al. [24] believe that security and economics are time, the need for extensive research into blockchain technol-
crucial issues for DAOs. The DAO’s hack is essentially a com- ogy will become less controversial.
bination of a security vulnerability (recursive calls constantly
7) Discussion of DAO in legal philosophy
extract coins from The DAO) and an economic attack (The
Recently, the blockchain developer community has begun
user is only authorized to withdraw money the first time). In
to turn its attention to governance issues. The governance
DAO Futures Exchange, on one hand, a failure of integrity
of blockchain-based systems typically consists of various
could be dramatic for the agreement. On the other hand, if
rules and procedures that can be implemented “on-chain"
anonymity fails, futures exchange DAO may face economic
and “off-chain". On-chain governance refers to the rules
attacks combining anonymity failure and price discrimination.
and decision processes that are directly encoded into the
Failure of security attributes, such as anonymity, can destroy underlying infrastructure of blockchain-based systems. Off-
DAOs because economic attacks can be considered security chain governance includes all other rules and decision-making
attacks. The danger is not the vulnerabilities themselves, but processes that may affect the operation and future development
the combination of an attack on software and an attack on of blockchain-based systems. The characteristics of blockchain
the economy. Economic vulnerabilities, presumably, cannot governance raise the issue of possible tensions between a
be repaired, since the economic damage they may cause is strict “on-chain" governance system and possible “off-chain"
unlikely to be reversed by pure technology such as forks. Thus governance applications.
for DAOs, economic vulnerabilities (security and economic Through investigations, Reijers et al. [19] believe that chain
vulnerabilities) are indeed the new “beast" to be ignored. governance and Kelsen’s positivist concept of legal order [26]
6) Infancy of blockchain laws have a striking similarity. Blockchain-based systems become
Blockchain has become a major topic for public policy- vulnerable when private interest groups use off-chain mech-
makers around the world. As this disruptive and decentralized anisms to usurp governance systems on the chain. The DAO
technology has become a key business issue for start-ups and attack shows that while “code rules" can be formally followed
market participants, central banks and financial regulators, in a specific chained order, in exceptional states, sovereignty
particularly in the US and EU, have shifted from initially is asserted through a chained mechanism.
intense hostility to a more cautious and market-friendly stance. As reflected in Kelsen’s argument, the combination of

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private interests is a weakness of positivist legal systems, and it DAO technology greatly contributes to improving the effi-
can be assumed that this is an inherent weakness of governance ciency of agency relationships and reducing agency costs by
on the chain of existing blockchain-based systems. Given these an order of magnitude.
characteristics, future research could consider possible steps The purpose of Leonhard et al. [30] is to develop a virtual
the blockchain community could take to address abnormal corporation with a corporate structure similar to the structure
states in a manner consistent with their respective ideologies. of a modern corporation. It offers a corporate governance
8) DAO tax issues structure where shareholders appoint the members of a board
After The DAO hack, the Ethereum community voted to of directors, which then funds a Chief Executive Officer, who
create a “hard fork" for the Ethereum chain, creating two can then in turn pay salaries and acquire property on the
Ethereum chains in the future. To add insult to injury, Se- corporation’s behalf.
curities and Exchange Commission (SEC) used this DAO 2) Blockchain Governance—A New Way of Organizing
to explain for the first time its view that some blockchain- Collaborations?
related issuance would be considered securities subject to Today, many companies are investing resources to develop
SEC regulation. The possibility of using smart contracts to and implement blockchain-based programs.
allow entities to operate entirely autonomously on blockchain In the traditional contract governance, the effectiveness of
platforms seems attractive. It is not hard to see that these contract management cooperation depends on the quality of
structures of DAO raise significant tax issues. However, little national legal system to a large extent.
thought has been given to how such an entity would qualify Conversely, DAO governance does not directly depend on
for the tax system. Thus, Shakow et al. [25] explains how a the enforceability of external legal systems. Enforcement in
decentralized autonomous organization operates and interacts a blockchain is achieved through prescribed code and algo-
with the U.S. tax system by describing how a DAO works, rithms, such as smart contracts. Even more, in governance,
and raises many of the tax issues raised by these structures. direct connections between collaborators are not required in a
As a result, there is no evidence that DAOs have considered blockchain.
being subject to various requirements under the tax code. Thus, blockchain may be considered the first form of gover-
For those who want to comply, the easy solution is to use a nance that truly leverages digital technology’s computational-
site like Overstock.com. If they don’t, they may be penalized and data-based capabilities, well beyond traditional forms of
by the IRS. However, without international cooperation and social governance.
innovation, it is difficult for tax administrators to find out who DAO, like other governance mechanisms, does not govern
should tax a “DAO" income. all types of transactions equally well.
Lumineau et al. [31] believe that DAO governance can
reduce searching, monitoring, and enforcement costs but tends,
C. DAO Technologies and the Related Areas but often means relatively high design costs.
3) eGov-DAO: A better government using blockchain
It is nearly undeniable that DAO still has a certain trend
based decentralized autonomous organization
across diverse sectors such as supply chain, business, health-
The e-government system has greatly improved the effi-
care, IoT, privacy, and data management [23], [27]–[29]. The
ciency and transparency of the government’s daily operations.
emerging DAO is on the rise. The work of Beck et al. [23]
However, most existing e-government services are provided
and other papers have discussed in the fields of blockchain
centrally and rely heavily on individual control. Highly cen-
economy, crowdfunding, accounting, and even electric cars
tralized IT infrastructures are more vulnerable to external
and charging station billing systems. Especially, more than one
attacks. Moreover, internal malicious users can easily compro-
studies [23] [27] have found that in addition to e-government,
mise data integrity. In addition, relying on individuals to mon-
the blockchain in the financial industry is also very promising.
itor some workflows makes the system error-prone and leaves
1) Corporate Governance on Ethereum’s Blockchain room for corruption. In fact, both government and business
Traditionally, principals have controlled the oversight tasks services have been hacked multiple times, from ransomware to
of their agents, which now can be delegated to decentralized denial-of-service attacks. To address these challenges, Diallo
computer networks, with the following advantages: et al. [32] suggest using blockchain technology and Decen-
• Blockchain technology provides a formal guarantee for tralized Autonomous Organization to improve e-government
principals and agents involved in solving agency prob- systems. Diallo describes the high-level architecture of the
lems in corporate governance. government DAO and gives the detailed design of a DAO e-
• Blockchain technology can facilitate the elimination of government system. This is the first system to allow real-time
agents as intermediaries in corporate governance through monitoring and analysis of e-government services. The system
code, peer-to-peer connectivity, groups, and collabora- retained all audit records, thereby limiting litigation between
tion. parties, increasing the speed of contract allocation and enforce-
• DAO token holders are not affected by the existing corpo- ment, providing transparency, accountability, immutability and
rate hierarchy and its restrictive effect. DAO token holder better management of the national resources of the service.
focuses on adding value, which benefits all components. The evaluation of this system indicates that the government
• The “work value focus of workflow" in DAO structure DAO system faces two main threats: data integrity and rule
has the potential to reform the agency relationship. integrity. Besides, it can be found that modern government

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TABLE III
DAO A ND R ELATED A REAS

Categories References Recognition Methodology

Governance in Leonhard [30] DAO corporation A virtual DAO corporation with a corporate structure similar to the
company structure of a modern corporation.

Lumineau [31] DAO corporation DAO governance works differently than traditional contractual and
relational governance.

eGov DAO Diallo [32] DAO in e- They provide a concrete use case to demonstrate the usage of DAO
government system e-government and evaluate its effectiveness.
Jun [33] DAO replacing ex- Blockchain creating “absolute law" makes it possible to implement
isting social appa- social technology that can replace existing social apparatuses including
ratuses and bureau- bureaucracy.
cracy
Economy Akgiray [34] DAO tokens and The question of whether DAO tokens are money or not may can be
money raised.
Zichichi [27] crowdfunding and LikeStarter is structured as a DAO, that fosters crowdfunding, and
DAO, LikeStarter recognizes the active role of donors, enabling them to support artists
or projects, while making profits.
Accounting Dai [28] blockchain in ac- Blockchain has the potential to transform current auditing practices,
counting profession resulting in a more precise and timely automatic assurance system.
Karajovic [35] blockchain in ac- A analysis of the implications of blockchain technology in the ac-
counting profession counting profession and its broader industry. Criticisms will be raised
to address concerns regarding blockchain’s widespread use.
Jeong [29] billing system This paper proposes the blockchain based billing system. The EV and
the charging station store the billing information in the blockchain and
prevent the modification.
Voting Zhang [36] DAO in voting This paper proposes a local voting mechanism based on blockchain.

work does not require much delay. We can get conclusions services. In response, big financial firms are partnering with
that by implementing transparent and secure e-government tech companies to maintain their market power.
systems at the lowest cost, eGov DAO’s solution can help Akgiray et al. [34] discuss the latest applications of
governments save unlimited resources, manage government blockchain technology in financial services and outlined reg-
businesses more effectively, and reduce the risk of providing ulatory responses. Economists consider money to have three
contracts to companies that lack the capacity to deliver. basic functions: a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and
4) Blockchain government: a next form of infrastructure a store of value. It is easy to imagine a variety of DAO tokens
for the twenty-first century in the financial world, because transactions are expressed in
Today, there are hundreds of blockchain projects around real currencies or digital currencies (Alipay, Apple Pay, etc.),
the world to transform government systems. There are signs and expressed in real money.
that blockchain is a technology directly related to social Therefore, Akgiray et al. [34] argue, if the tokens on the
organization. However, according to Jun et al. [33], there may DAO can fulfill the three functions of money, then the question
be an epistemological rejection of the idea of blockchain- of whether it is money or not can be raised.
based automated systems replacing familiar public domains 6) LikeStarter: a Smart-contract based Social DAO for
such as bureaucracy. Society must accept that such a shift is Crowdfunding
inevitable, and open discussion is needed to reduce the fear Social media platforms are recognized as important media
and side effects of introducing revolutionary new technologies. for the global transmission and dissemination of informa-
By applying Lawrence Lassig’s “code is law" proposition, the tion. The combination of social interaction and crowdfunding
authors of [33] suggested that five principles should be fol- represents a powerful symbiotic relationship. On the other
lowed when replacing bureaucracy with blockchain system: a) hand, blockchain technology has revolutionized the way we
Introducing blockchain regulations; b) Transparent disclosure think about the Internet. So Zichichi et al. [27] introduced
of data and source code; c) Implement independent executive LikeStarter, a social network where users can raise money for
management; d) Establish a governance system based on direct other users through simple “like" on the Ethereum blockchain.
democracy; e) Make distributed autonomous government. Jun LikeStarter is built on the Ethereum blockchain, structured as a
et al.’ proposed blockchain feature, which creates inviolable DAO that promotes crowdfunding without any central agency
“absolute laws", makes it possible to implement social tech- intervention and uses smart contracts to control and manage
nologies that can replace existing social institutions, including money. Zichichi et al. [27] have used a case-study to show
bureaucracy. that LikeStarter successfully makes it easy for people to get
5) The Potential for Blockchain Technology in Corporate funding and reach as many people as possible.
Governance 7) Toward blockchain-based accounting and assurance
Traditional platforms are rapidly becoming obsolete and the Since 2009, blockchain has become a potentially transfor-
trend is towards open platforms for financial services. Tech mative information technology that promises to be as revolu-
companies are starting to offer simple but disruptive financial tionary as the Internet. Accounting and insurance could be one

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of the industries where blockchain could bring huge benefits prevents users from modifying their records after electric
and fundamentally change the current model. However, the vehicles have been charged.
potential benefits and challenges that blockchain could bring 10) A privacy-preserving voting protocol on blockchains
to accounting and assurance remain to be explored. Voting is a universal phenomenon and to some extent is
For this reason, Dai et al. [28] proposed an accounting part of various societies. As the technology matures and more
and assurance method (an accounting ecosystem that supports voting is expected in the future, there is an urgent need for
blockchain, real-time, verifiable and transparent) based on the a local voting mechanism built directly on the blockchain
reference of multiple disciplines and ideas of the accounting network to decentralize and dis-intermediate the network.
industry. This method will provide real-time, verifiable infor- Zhang et al. [36] argue that the need for this voting mechanism
mation disclosure and step by step automation. As a result, is not limited to public blockchain networks, but also applies
blockchain can be used as a tool to verify any information to syndicate-licensed blockchain networks.
related to auditing. However, it is worth pondering how In this regard, the authors categorized and summarized ex-
to adapt the existing blockchain mechanism to the field of isting voting systems, and proposed a local voting mechanism
accounting and auditing. The insights of Dai et al. [28] will based on blockchain to facilitate the decision-making of nodes
help integrate blockchain into the existing business processes in the blockchain network. The core idea is (a) distribution
and facilitate the transformation of the current audit model to voting, (b) distributed tally, and (c) cryptography-based ver-
the next generation. ification. The implementation on the Hyperledger structure
8) Thinking outside the block: Projected phases of shows that the protocol is feasible for small and medium-sized
blockchain integration in the accounting industry voting issues. The agreement protects the privacy of voters and
allows for the detection and correction of cheating without any
The rapid growth of blockchain has sparked curiosity across credible parties.
the industry, leading to talks about setting up a blockchain
consortium in accounting. Accountancy firms such as PwC, IV. O PEN I SSUES
Deloitte, EY and KPMG have pledged to integrate blockchain According to Diallo et al. [32], we can see that although
into their financial services. Innovative products such as Vul- The DAO project was abolished, the future of Ethereum is
can (for managing digital assets), Rubix (for improving supply bright. In the future, research on DAO can start from the
change management), editable blockchain and blockchain as following aspects. To help gain a quick clue, we propose
a service are among there. Karajovic et al. [35] conducted an several questions here.
in-depth and detailed analysis on the application of blockchain Based on the system design of the blockchain itself, the
technology in the accounting profession. As block linking first question is how to optimize and handle the performance
becomes more mainstream, the technique can be used to trilemma, i.e., decentralization, security and scalability, in a
simplify many redundant and vulnerable accounting practices. balanced way in the context of DAO? Secondly, a better
While the initial cost of developing and integrating blockchain blockchain system and the evaluation tool of blockchain
infrastructure can be high, this can be offset by the cost security-enhancement solutions are anticipated for DAO. Fur-
savings it brings to the enterprise in terms of long-term, thermore, the feasibility of those blockchain system and eval-
improved efficiency. Karajovicet al.’s philosophical analysis of uation tool needs to be assessed, because the governance is
the technology’s application illustrates many questions about possible only if the benefits of efficiency, security and privacy
the uncertain relationship between accounting and blockchain. of DAO exceed the social costs. Thus, another questions is how
While the technology has the potential to reshape entire to reduce the social costs such that the feasibility of DAO can
capital markets, the social and political barriers to blockchain be improved.
proliferation need to be looked at critically. But one thing is From the operation perspective of DAO, we have the
certain: accounting is just one block in the chain that is being following concerns.
dramatically redefined by this disruptive technology.
• Only depending on the social-optimal hard-fork rule is
9) Blockchain based billing system for electric vehicle and not applicable. The corporate governance solution based
charging station on DAO needs to propose new protocols for blockchain
DAO can also be used in the charging system. The charging governance.
results measured in the charging electric vehicles may differ • Leveraging DAO, it is necessary to create the trust of
from the amount claimed in the charging station. This is real transactions, thus maintaining the integrity of its
because electric vehicles and charging station measure the contractual relationship.
charge amount with their own measurement equipment. If the • While “code rules" can be formally followed on a partic-
electric vehicles or charging station provide fault information, ular chain. In exceptional states, sovereignty is asserted
the billing may be invalid. In addition, billing information through an off-chain mechanism. This requires the study
can be manipulated. To prevent these problems, Jeong et al. of possible actions, which are taken by the blockchain
[29] proposed a blockchain-based billing system. After mutual community to address anomalies in the ways that are
authentication, electric cars and charging stations both store consistent with their respective ideologies.
billing information in the blockchain. A DAO is a system • Legal issues related to DAOs need to be taken into
where all nodes have the same ledger, thus the ledger data account, such as how an entity should comply with the
cannot be tampered. Jeong et al. have shown that the system tax system.

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[36] W. Zhang, Y. Yuan, Y. Hu, S. Huang, S. Cao, A. Chopra, and S. Huang, ZIBIN ZHENG received the Ph.D. degree from the
“A privacy-preserving voting protocol on blockchain,” in 2018 IEEE Chinese University of Hong Kong, in 2011. He is
11th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD). IEEE, currently a Professor at School of Computer Science
2018, pp. 401–408. and Engineering with Sun Yat-sen University, China.
[37] A. Alketbi, Q. Nasir, and M. A. Talib, “Blockchain for government He serves as Chairman of the Software Engineering
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smart-dubai-close-to-rolling-out-20-blockchain-based-services-1. an H-index of 46. His research interests include
695280. blockchain, services computing, software engineer-
[39] A. Alketbi, Q. Nasir, and M. A. Talib, “Novel blockchain reference ing, and financial big data. He was a recipient of several awards, including
model for government services: Dubai government case study,” Interna- the Top 50 Influential Papers in Blockchain of 2018, the ACM SIGSOFT
tional Journal of System Assurance Engineering and Management, pp. Distinguished Paper Award at ICSE2010, the Best Student Paper Award at
1–22, 2020. ICWS2010. He served as BlockSys’19 and CollaborateCom’16 General Co-
[40] D. Vujičić, D. Jagodić, and S. Rand̄ić, “Blockchain technology, bitcoin, Chair, SC2’19, ICIOT’18 and IoV’14 PC Co-Chair.
and ethereum: A brief overview,” in 2018 17th International Symposium
INFOTEH-JAHORINA (INFOTEH), 2018, pp. 1–6.
[41] K. Jones, “Blockchain in or as governance? evolutions in experimen-
tation, social impacts, and prefigurative practice in the blockchain and
dao space,” Information Polity, no. Preprint, pp. 1–18, 2019.

Lu Liu is currently an undergraduate with the

School of Computer Science and Engineering, Sun
Yat-Sen University, China. Her research interests
include blockchain and financial big data.

Sicong Zhou is currently a master-program student

with the School of Computer Science and Engineer-
ing, Sun Yat-Sen University, China. His research
interests mainly include distributed learning and
blockchain performance optimization.

Huawei Huang (M’16) is currently an Associate

Professor with Sun Yat-Sen University, China. He
earned his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and
Engineering from the University of Aizu (Japan) in
2016. His research interests include blockchain and
distributed computing. He has served as a Research
Fellow of JSPS (2016-2018); a visiting scholar with
Hong Kong Polytechnic University (2017-2018); an
Assistant Professor with Kyoto University, Japan
(2018-2019). He received the best paper award from
TrustCom2016. He is a member of ACM.

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