Developing blockchain supported collective intelligence in decentralized autonomous organizations

Abstract

The arrival of Blockchain and cryptographic assets-driven decentralized technologies has brought to the world an entirely new spectrum of possibilities regarding social, financial, and technological innovation. While the first applications of Blockchain technology were for digital currency transactions, that same technology is now being applied to the development of the Decentralised Web (DWeb), including recording the movement of data, registering unique user names and even data storage. It has become possible to achieve superior levels of transparency, security and fairness to the public, especially when compared to the rather limited business models that dominates WEB 2.0 commercial products. By providing a reliable, open and programmable accounting system, Blockchain has led to the invention of the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), which are open, self-organized networks coordinated by crypto-economic incentives and self-executing code, and cooperating around shared goals. DAOs have attracted the brightest minds to work in the Blockchain space, however, such experts still lack critical elements for an adequate decentralized governance and efficient collective decision-making. Joint research conducted by the bitfwd community and University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (VGTU) in Vilnius, Lithuania, sought to deepen our understanding of the development of blockchain supported collective intelligence in DAOs. This qualitative study identifies the main problem areas and highlights the importance of social value creating technological solutions by developing collective intelligence. Behind our research is the evaluation of Alchemy (https://alc hemy.daostack.io/) DAO platform, an open source software toolset that allows for decentralized governance, allocation of resources and collective decision-making co-developed in the DAOstack (https://daostack.io/) ecosystem.