IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v113y2023p182-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Ian Appel
  • Jillian Grennan

Abstract

Blockchain technology has facilitated the emergence of a new type of organizational form, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In contrast to corporations and other types of business organizations, DAOs do not have managers or directors with formal decision rights. Instead, the members of DAOs collectively make decisions by voting on proposals. The governance process is encoded and executed via smart contracts, negating the need for centralized leadership. We examine the control of DAOs by analyzing 10,639 proposals across 151 DAOs. We find that rather than democratizing decision-making, a small number of entities, often three or fewer, exert control over most decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Ian Appel & Jillian Grennan, 2023. "Control of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 113, pages 182-185, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:113:y:2023:p:182-85
    DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20231119
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231119
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://doi.org/10.3886/E183946V1
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20231119.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/pandp.20231119?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
    • D86 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Economics of Contract Law
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:113:y:2023:p:182-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.