DAO-Ontology: A Domain Ontology for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

Abstract

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) are an emerging blockchain-based paradigm for decentralized governance. Despite growing interest, their conceptualization remains fragmented. This paper introduces DAO-Ontology, a domain ontology formalizing DAO concepts-including perspectives, characteristics , solutions, evaluation methods, application domains, and challenges. Developed via the OntoView methodology from a systematic mapping of 47 studies, it is implemented in OWL and validated with a Java application using the OWL API. The ontology provides a standardized vocabulary, supports semantic integration, and enhances understanding of DAO as sociotechnical systems.