04-07, 10:00–10:20 (Europe/Zurich), Verge Stage
Designing a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an intricate task and the literature and practice have called for more research on the design of DAOs. In this talk, we are going to present a DAO design framework that can be used in practice to set up a DAO. We developed the framework within a research project at Zurich University of Applied Sciences. The developed framework is based on DAO literature and organizational theory and evaluated with domain experts and potential users. The proposed design framework identifies three constituent elements (purpose, legislation, business case) influencing the organizational structure– and five structural elements (organizational bodies, decision-making, token, treasury, communication) that need to be actively designed when setting up a DAO. The talk serves as a starting point to better understand DAO organizational structure and offers assistance in how to set up DAOs for practitioners.
Florian Spychiger received his MSc. in Quantitative Finance jointly by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich and his PhD at the UZH Blockchain & Distributed Ledger Technologies Group. Currently, he is working as a research associate at the Zurich University of Applied Science. He conducts research on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and on incentives in blockchain systems. Florian analyses existing incentives in blockchain protocols and in DAOs and designs new systems. Specific research topics include consensus design, decentralized autonomous organizations and blockchain governance. Furthermore, he is a council member of the industry association DAO Suisse that promotes DAOs in Switzerland.
Lukas Küng is a research assistant at the Zurich University of Applied Science at the Institute for Organizational Viability in Blockchain and DAOs. In addition, he is enrolled as a PhD student at the Institute For The Future at University of Nicosia, emphasizing the application of decentralized autonomous organizations while researching their potential for new economic models and new governance systems. He received his MA in Leadership in Digital Communication/Innovation by the Berlin University of the Arts in cooperation with the University of St. Gallen and is certified in Blockchain Business Innovation and Application through MIT Sloan Executive Education.