Abstract
This research sheds light on DAO governance in practice through the lens of the first decentralised virtual world – Decentraland, where its token holders are endowed with voting rights on all community affairs. The study is the first to adopt a social network analysis method called ERGMs to test the significance of different network voting behaviour effects and the influence of voting power on voting behaviours. The results show that participation in this decentralised system may depart radically from the ideal notions of DAOs. Under the rule of token-weighted voting, it appears that a small number of members are more active which might be due to their higher token ownership. This may ultimately lead to the issues such as plutocracy and a poor degree of decentralisation which undermines the original vision of DAOs. Overall, this study offers theoretical and practical implications for DAO governance using novel statistical methods.
Recommended Citation
Lu, Chuwen; Cui, Tingru; Liu, Libo; and Wang, Peng, "Investigating Governance Participation in Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) Using Social Network Analysis" (2023). PACIS 2023 Proceedings. 159.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2023/159
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Paper Number 1624; Track Blockchain; Complete Paper