One of the biggest disruptions of blockchain technology is the automation of processes and the potential automation of the entire organization. Decentralized autonomous organizations or DAOs are the company of the future - there is no point of failure, no downtime, no need for office or formal employees. One big problem with top-down hierarchy is that they contain concentrated failure points, because the individual can be subject to bad influence, bad actions, or poor judgment. Also, the interests of some powerful people are often out of alignment with less powerful people, so decision-makers often provide incentives to act against the common good. An interesting alternative has emerged in the form of a movement toward decentralization, in which peer networks organize themselves to act collectively without such concentrated centers of power. One such type of organization has been known as DAO, or a decentralized autonomous organization.
In DAO, peer networks encode their protocols for decision-making into blockchain, and that depends on smart contracts - usually run on the Ethereum network - to become referees who count and carry out the will of the people.