[Paper Review] Open Problems in DAOs

Joshua Tan, Tara Merk+27 more|arXiv (Cornell University)|Oct 29, 2023

FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance9 citations

TL;DR

A comprehensive survey outlining open research problems in decentralized autonomous organizations across computer science, economics, ethics, law, organizational science, politics, and philosophy, with calls for cross-disciplinary collaboration and data resources.

ABSTRACT

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are a new, rapidly-growing class of organizations governed by smart contracts. Here we describe how researchers can contribute to the emerging science of DAOs and other digitally-constituted organizations. From granular privacy primitives to mechanism designs to model laws, we identify high-impact problems in the DAO ecosystem where existing gaps might be tackled through a new data set or by applying tools and ideas from existing research fields such as political science, computer science, economics, law, and organizational science. Our recommendations encompass exciting research questions as well as promising business opportunities. We call on the wider research community to join the global effort to invent the next generation of organizations.

Motivation & Objective

• Identify high-impact open problems in the DAO ecosystem needing data, theory, or tooling.
• Bridge DAO questions with established disciplines (CS, economics, law, organizational science, political science, ethics).
• Provide a roadmap of research questions and potential datasets or collaborations to advance DAO science.
• Encourage empirical collaborations between academics and builders in the DAO ecosystem.

Proposed method

• Survey existing literature and practitioner experiences to enumerate open problems across disciplines.
• Organize problems into disciplinary sections (computer science, economics, ethics, law, organizational science, political science, philosophy).
• Propose data sets, benchmarks, and research-friendly frameworks to enable experimentation and verification.
• Highlight potential methodological tools (formal verification, agent-based modeling, MBSE, HCI evaluation) applicable to DAOs.
• Offer cross-cutting recommendations and a call for collaboration via accompanying resources (website).

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 What granular privacy primitives are feasible for DAOs to balance transparency with strategic participation?
• RQ2 How can private execution and multi-substrate computation be safely integrated into DAO operations without compromising autonomy or security?
• RQ3 What formal verification, modeling, and design-tools are needed to ensure robust and verifiable DAO governance?
• RQ4 What interfaces and HCI designs best support inclusive and effective participation in DAOs?
• RQ5 How should decentralization be measured and compared across different DAO architectures and governance models?

Key findings

• DAOs are rapidly growing, with millions of participants and thousands of DAOs, prompting a need for foundational research across disciplines.
• There are substantial open problems in privacy, secure voting, cross-chain and cross-substrate execution, governance modeling, and human-computer interaction for DAOs.
• A cross-disciplinary research program, including data sets, benchmarks, and frameworks, is essential to advance DAO science.
• Collaborations between academics and DAO practitioners are crucial to address real-world needs and validate theories.
• The article provides a structured map of questions and opportunities to guide future research and development.