Orca Crypto
DeFi term

DAO

A decentralized autonomous organization, coordinated by token votes and contracts.

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Updated 2026-08-303 min readDefinition
Definition

A decentralized autonomous organization, coordinated by token votes and contracts.

A DAO manages shared funds and decisions through onchain proposals and voting instead of a company structure. Treasuries can run into hundreds of millions of dollars.

Legal status remains unsettled in most jurisdictions, and participation is usually far lower than the ideal implies. Many DAOs are effectively run by a small active core.

In practice

A DAO proposal typically has a discussion phase, a signaling vote, then a binding onchain vote that executes automatically if it passes.

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