DAOs as property owners: a conceptual exploration from the perspective of organizational system theory

The development of Bitcoin and its underlying technology blockchain has enabled a new phenomenon called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs can be perceived as self-governing organizations whose management is based on programmed and encoded rules on a decentralized and distributed peer-to-peer network. These DAOs typically manage and allocate funds, often in the form of cryptocurrencies. However, in recent years, a variety of DAOs have been established to provide services (e.g., currency exchange, project financing), curate collections (e.g., art collections), or own and manage real assets (e.g., land). Currently, DAO literature focuses mainly on online communities managing digital assets; however, DAOs owning physical properties differ from them in localized communities, asset indivisibility, and additional complexity in collective acquisition, ownership, limited physical capacity, and decentralized governance. Such property-owning DAOs are interesting, because they fuel the transition from purely online organizations into organizations integrating with the physical world. From an organizational system theory perspective this article explores how a DAO owning properties could be designed by exploring three DAO projects that own properties. Applying a conceptual research design, we first identify DAO Design Principles obtained by traditional organizational system theory, followed by examining and describing the core organizational principles for property-owning DAOs. Based on a comprehensive discussion of the conceptual findings, we present a research agenda for further studies on DAOs owning properties.