A Taxonomy of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

Christian Ziegler, Isabell Welpe

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are trustless organizations that automate transactions, operations, and decisions without a trusted third party (Wang et al. 2019). So far, this research area is missing a taxonomy that investigates the different dimensions and characteristics of DAOs and the many different forms they can take. This paper addresses this research gap by creating a data-driven taxonomy analyzing 72 DAOs. In doing so, we identify the three main categories treasury, community, and governance, seven sub-categories, 20 dimensions, and 53 characteristics. In addition, we provide dimensions with inadmissible characteristics DAOs cannot take, as well as dimensions used to assess DAOs. The results of our agglomerative clustering are five distinct DAO types: On-chain product and service DAOs, off-chain product and service DAOs with community focus or with investor focus, investment-focused DAOs, and networking-focused community DAOs.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2022
Subtitle of host publication"Digitization for the Next Generation"
PublisherAssociation for Information Systems
ISBN (Electronic)9781713893615
StatePublished - 2022
Event43rd International Conference on Information Systems: Digitization for the Next Generation, ICIS 2022 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 9 Dec 202214 Dec 2022

Publication series

NameInternational Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2022: "Digitization for the Next Generation"

Conference

Conference43rd International Conference on Information Systems: Digitization for the Next Generation, ICIS 2022
Country/TerritoryDenmark
CityCopenhagen
Period9/12/2214/12/22

Keywords

  • Blockchain
  • Decentralized Autonomous Organizations
  • Taxonomy

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