What We Talk About When We Talk About DAOs: An Integrated Socio-Technical Framework

Abstract

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) integrate blockchain-based automation with novel forms of collective governance, yet research on them remains fragmented across technical and organizational silos, hindering a comprehensive understanding of DAOs as socio-technical systems. To bridge these gaps, we first conduct a systematic umbrella review of 12 prior surveys to map research themes and persistent gaps. Based on this analysis, we propose a novel, three-layer framework that explicitly links (i) technical artefacts (the infrastructure, e.g., tokens, smart contracts), (ii) governance logics (the rules, e.g., incentives, consensus mechanisms), and (iii) organizational manifestations (the outcomes, e.g., proposals, votes). By making cross-layer dependencies explicit, the framework enables more holistic theorizing, supports comparative empirical work, and provides a diagnostic tool for practitioners dealing with design trade-offs between decentralization, efficiency, and participation.