Glossary
DAO
A decentralized autonomous organization: a group coordinated by on-chain rules and token-weighted voting rather than a corporate charter.
A DAO is a group of participants whose treasury and decision-making live on-chain. Membership and voting power usually come from holding a governance token; proposals are submitted to a smart contract, and if a vote passes the contract executes the action (a transfer, a parameter change, a contract upgrade).
DAOs range from small dev collectives to multi-billion-dollar protocol treasuries. The trade-off they manage is between participation and capture: lower thresholds invite more voters but also more vote-buying and governance attacks.