In this weeks instalment of Crypto Curious, your hosts Tracey, Blake and Craig discuss the nascent world of DAOs, or decentralised autonomous organisations. A DAO is a blockchain-based community or company that operates with no need for centralised governance. It provides a way for disparate individuals or groups to work together in an entirely secure and anonymous fashion without reliance on trust.

All funds related to a DAO are secured by smart contracts, and all financial or operational decisions must receive a majority vote from all participants. Anyone can put forward proposals for change and community members are free to vote as they please. In many cases, users have greater weight to their vote depending on their level of investment or dedication to the project.

The DAO governance method is based on a classical theoretical problem known as the Byzantine General’s Problem, which defines how disparate groups can collectively agree upon decisions without direct communication. Blockchain technology has made use of modern computing power to solve the problem through governance methods like Proof-of-Work (PoW) or Proof-of-Stake (PoS). Every day, thousands of blockchains around the world use governance methods to decide on anything from minor payment disputes to major upgrades. One example is the Ethereum blockchain's recent hard fork upgrade, which took over a year to gain approval.

Your Crypto Curious hosts close the podcast discussing the rise of community-led blockchain games like Axie Infinity, in which players use their AXS governance tokens to guide development and earn SLP tokens with real-life value.

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