Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a novel way to coordinate a group of (pseudonymous) entities towards a shared vision (e.g., promoting sustainability), utilizing self-executing smart contracts on blockchains to support decentralized governance and decision-making. In just a few years, over 4,000 DAOs have been launched in various domains, such as investment, education, health, and research. Despite such rapid growth and diversity, it is unclear how these DAOs actually work in practice and to what extent they are effective in achieving their goals. Given this, we aim to unpack how (well) DAOs work in practice. We conducted an in-depth analysis of a diverse set of 10 DAOs of various categories and smart contracts, leveraging on-chain (e.g., voting results) and off-chain data (e.g., community discussions) as well as our interviews with DAO organizers/members. Specifically, we defined metrics to characterize key aspects of DAOs, such as the degrees of decentralization and autonomy. We observed CompoundDAO, AssangeDAO, Bankless, and Krausehouse having poor decentralization in voting, while decentralization has improved over time for one-person-one-vote DAOs (e.g., Proof of Humanity). Moreover, the degree of autonomy varies among DAOs, with some (e.g., Compound and Krausehouse) relying more on third parties than others. Lastly, we offer a set of design implications for future DAO systems based on our findings.

翻译：去中心化自治组织（DAO）作为一种新型协作方式，通过区块链上自动执行的智能合约实现去中心化治理与决策，协调（匿名）实体群体共同追求共享愿景（例如促进可持续发展）。短短数年间，已有超过4000个DAO在投资、教育、健康与研究等不同领域成立。尽管其发展迅猛且领域多元，但这些DAO的实际运作方式及其达成目标的有效程度仍不明确。为此，我们旨在剖析DAO的实际运作效能。通过分析涵盖不同类别与智能合约的10个代表性DAO，结合链上数据（如投票结果）、链下数据（如社区讨论）及对DAO组织者/成员的访谈，我们进行了深入研究。具体而言，我们定义了量化DAO关键特征（如去中心化程度与自治程度）的指标。研究发现：CompoundDAO、AssangeDAO、Bankless与Krausehouse的投票去中心化程度较低，而一人一票制DAO（如Proof of Humanity）的去中心化程度随时间推移逐步提升；此外，各DAO的自治程度存在差异，部分DAO（如Compound与Krausehouse）较其他DAO更依赖第三方。最后，基于研究发现，我们为未来DAO系统的设计提出了若干启示。