Graduate School student Eliza Oak has an article (with Andrew hall) on the a16zcrypto website entitled “DAO research: A roadmap for experimenting with governance”.
Abstract:
As we’ve argued, web3 governance can serve as a lab for democracy, in much the same way that online markets have enabled economists to experiment, or how social networks have provided a wealth of data for the study of networks. Our Optimism study is one specific analysis on one specific topic in the study of constitutional design. But many foundational questions exist, and we can study them by leveraging similar opportunities in web3. Here are a few ideas. For each topic, we summarize the issue and provide concrete questions that some projects are already starting to explore.
a16z crypto is a venture capital fund that invests in crypto and web3 startups.
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an emerging form of organizational structure with no central governing body and whose members share a common goal of acting in the best interest of the entity. Popularized by blockchain enthusiasts, DAOs make decisions using a bottom-up management approach.
Eliza Oak is a PhD candidate in political science at Yale University. She studies the politics of emerging tech and society with a focus on democratic online governance. She was a research intern at a16z crypto during the summer of 2023 and continues to work on governance research and experiments with Optimism, an a16z portfolio company.