DAOs at Work: How Blockchain-Powered Organizations Are Driving Change

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are blockchain-based governance mechanisms that allow independent users to manage revenue and upgradability of protocols in decentralized finance (DeFi) in a transparent, decentralized, and community-driven manner. DAOs represent a future of governance and organization that is defined by democratic values, all without relying on, or needing, traditional structures of centralized authority. All that is required to participate in decision-making is ownership of governance tokens specific to the DeFi protocol.  

While DAOs have faced some skepticism, an increasing number of successful case studies are demonstrating the benefits of DAOs. Below we provide examples of DAOs that are set up to accomplish public good, advance scientific research, build community and promote decentralization.

DAO Case Studies

Public Good DAOs:

One category of DAOs to take hold over the past nine years are those focusing on funding public good projects. DAOs such as Gitcoin and Giveth have collectively enabled the allocation of tens of millions of dollars to projects around the world in ways that comport with their personal giving goals, while also promoting transparency of the recipient of funds. 

• Gitcoin, specifically, allows token holders to vote on how to allocate community funds, giving grants to projects at organizations ranging from the Internet Archive to UkraineDAO (a DAO that raised humanitarian aid for Ukraine during its war with Russia). In total, Gitcoin has made 5.3 million donations, amounting to $67.2 million in funding.

• Giveth has taken a similar approach to Gitcoin, however Giveth charges zero donation fees, allowing donors to donate directly to the project using public blockchains’ peer-to-peer transactions. This means that less money is spent on overhead costs compared to traditional philanthropic organizations who rely on traditional financial intermediaries that often take a portion of the overall donation to conduct the donation transaction.

Decentralized Science DAOs:

DAOs have also enabled the proliferation of Decentralized Science (DeSci), which is a movement that utilizes public blockchains to democratize access to science and scientific research, making the field more inclusive and transparent as a result. The ResearchHub Foundation—which does not explicitly refer to itself as a DAO but acknowledges that it operates as one—and VitaDAO, for example, collectively have just shy of 100,000 members and have disbursed millions of dollars to researchers and peer reviewers. 

• ResearchHub Foundation provides an alternative to academic journals and institutions by hosting a platform, known as ResearchHub, that uses public blockchains to “allow anyone to access, review, and contribute to scientific knowledge.” Specifically, “users are rewarded with ResearchCoin (RSC) for publishing, reviewing, criticizing, and collaborating in the open.” And once a user has earned RSC, they may then participate in community decision-making and create grants for research. So far, ResearchHub has provided funding for projects spanning a variety of topics, ranging from research in the complications and remedies for women with polycystic ovary syndrome, to a study of anticancer agents against non-melanoma and melanoma skin cancers.

• VitaDAO has invested in a variety of projects related to preventing aging. These projects range from attempting to find new drugs to help people with Alzheimer’s to finding ways to remove senescent cells to prolong lifespan. In total, VitaDAO’s 10,000 members have deployed $4.2 million in funding across 24 research projects.

By placing the power to choose which projects receive funding in the hands of token holders, both DAOs promote funding science through the decentralization model. Instead of having to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and/or propose research that conforms to the constraints of academia, projects funded through DeSci DAOs can pursue “high-risk, high-reward research,” as explained by VitaDAO. DeSci DAOs also reduce barriers to entry for those wanting to explore scientific research, but have failed to do so through traditional systems.

Community Building DAOs:

A variety of DAOs exist to bring together communities of like-minded people, unifying them based on a common goal, skillset or interest. ConstitutionDAO and LexDAO each serve a unique goal, but their ultimate purpose is to unify like-minded individuals.

• ConstitutionDAO existed with a single, short-term purpose: raising enough money in 72 hours to purchase an original copy of the US constitution at auction. Although the DAO ultimately lost the bid, ConstitutionDAO reported that it “broke records for the largest crowdfund for a physical object and most money crowdfunded in 72 [hours].” ConstitutionDAO’s impact was not limited to this single auction; however, it showed that decentralized governance could coordinate large-scale action outside traditional institutions.

• LexDAO is attempting to revolutionize the legal field. By bringing together and forming a community of legal engineers, LexDAO hopes to “research, develop, and evangelize first-class legal methods and blockchain protocols that secure rules and mises with code rather than trust.” This involves creating open access and more available legal resources, partnering with law students and continuing legal education programs, and moving more dispute processes on-chain.

What unites these DAOs is their ability to foster collaboration and achieve shared goals in ways that traditional, centralized organizations often fail to accomplish. As blockchain technologies continue to evolve, these DAOs offer insight into a future where communities can self-organize and create associations without the need for traditional intermediaries.

DAOs Promoting Financial Inclusion & Decentralization:

Many DAOs exist to further the goals of decentralization and disintermediation, which place more power in the hands of individuals and create more transparent systems of communicating, transacting, and planning. Three disparate examples—Uniswap, SporkDAO, and Kleros—all seek to decentralize traditionally centralized processes.

• Uniswap is one of the largest decentralized exchanges (DEXs) by many metrics, including by market cap and trading volume. On September 16, 2020, Uniswap announced the introduction of UNI, the governance token that would place decision-making authority in the hands of community members. Uniswap has clear guidelines for how proposals are put forth, voted on, and followed—all driven by its community members. Placing the governance in the hands of community members of an organization with a market capitalization of nearly $5 billion (as of March 2025) is unheard of in the traditional financial system, and yet, Uniswap boasts 125,000 eligible voters and 163 proposals from community members as the DAO continues to revolutionize exchanges.

• SporkDAO is a community-owned DAO that drives decision-making for ETHDenver, an annual Hackathon and blockchain conference with the goal of promoting Web3.0 technology. SporkDAO brings together over 40,000 people from around the world to plan one of the foremost annual Ethereum events. Because SporkDAO is owned by members with a vested interest in the planning and execution of ETHDenver, the DAO’s token holders can “determine the direction of the community’s efforts, investments, content, and interests.” 

• Kleros is an “open source online dispute resolution protocol” that allows parties to settle and adjudicate disputes—driven by a randomly selected pool of people who have staked PNK, Kleros’ token, on the courts. Kleros allows for fair arbitration of disputes in the digital economy, which often facilitates cross-border transactions that leave parties without a legal authority to which they can appeal. To do so, Kleros leverages smart contract software applications to allow jurors to rule on a dispute and release money to the winning party. As of March 2025, Kleros has helped settle nearly 1700 disputes and 197,000,000 PNK have been staked.

Conclusion

DAOs are an important part of decentralized innovations, and there are many DAOs that are achieving real, measurable results in various fields. DAOs often achieve results that align more closely with the desires of their members by providing a mechanism to govern transparently and more democratically than traditional centralized institutions. In doing so, DAOs provide a future pathway that leverages technological innovations to help actualize the power of individual agency and decision-making in collective action.

This piece was written by Henry Michaelson, a policy intern with the DeFi Education Fund.