**1. Introduction**

The rise of Bitcoin and blockchain brought new organizational forms called decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that are blockchain-based organizations, owned and governed by members [1–3]. DAOs push forward the blockchain ideals of decentralization, inclusion and transparency, enabling the communities to own and govern cryptocurrency projects. In DAOs, the community not only owns the organizations but also can propose and vote, having a saying regarding the future of the organization. Therefore, DAOs are distributed instead of hierarchical, power is decentralized instead of centralized and management is autonomous and communitybased instead of bureaucratic [2, 3]. DAOs are, thus, an alternative governance form to traditional bureaucratic and hierarchical management models, being a natural governance choice among cryptocurrencies.

One of the first examples of a DAO was Bitcoin itself. Created in 2009, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency designed to allow people to securely transact and exchange value at a global scale without the need for costly intermediaries [4]. With the purpose to create an independent financial system, Bitcoin is sustained by a community able to validate transactions (miners) and co-create code updates (developers), which translates into new functions and participation rules without the interference or orchestration of a central sponsor. Later on, in 2016, born the first assumed decentralized autonomous organization called the DAO. The DAO raised 150 million dollars in a short period of time, making it the world's largest crowdfunding project at that time. Despite that the DAO project suffered a massive attack due to security breaches, its governance model came to stay and prosper and thousands of DAOs have been emerging in different areas as decentralized finance (e.g., Uniswap), media (e.g., Global Coin Research and Forefront), gaming (e.g., Decentraland), art and culture (e.g., SuperRare and Rarible) and investment funds (e.g., BitDAO and MetaCartel), among others. While the DAO is a governance model that highly celebrated among cryptocurrency projects, very little is known about its characteristics, as well as the problems they solve (i.e., lack of extrinsic incentives, censorship, mismanagement and lack of transparency and accountability) and face (i.e., lack of participation, rigidity, voting misbehaviours and legal status).
