The Decentralized Autonomous Corporation as Knowledge Commons

Abstract

This chapter examines the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), which rely primarily on sociotechnical infrastructures supplied by blockchain technology and consist substantially of combinations of shared computer code and shared data. The chapter considers DAOs using the governing knowledge commons (GKC) research framework, contrasting the GKC perspective with long-standing views of the corporate form as a nexus of contracts, as an instance of hierarchy and decision theory, and as a complex system. The analysis is set against the context of earlier work on the corporation as commons. The chapter concludes that the GKC framework focuses attention on elements of governance that often are not salient in conventional accounts. This is especially true of the important question of how governance responds to and generates social dilemmas associated specifically with practices of sharing knowledge, information, and data.