DAOs, cooperatives and the educational principle

Abstract

Decentralized autonomous organizations (‘DAOs’) are the digital successors to traditional cooperatives due to their shared ownership structure, but DAO cooperatives must also confront the complex legacy of education in cooperative history. Two aspects of that legacy will be extremely important in the future: 1) whether member education should be considered an indispensable organizational and legal component of the cooperative form in the digital era, and 2) whether DAO cooperatives should be required to provide both ‘on-chain’ and ‘off-chain’ educational opportunities. This Article examines the political, technological, organizational and legal meaning of education in Anglophone cooperative history.