DAOs are probably the most innovative concept in the blockchain space, they are internet-native organizations collectively owned and managed by their participating members. They have built-in treasuries that are only accessible with the approval of their participating members and decisions are made via proposals the group votes on during a specified period, in other words DAOs are blockchain-based entities governed by self-organizing communities. Some argue that a DAO is meant to operate like a venture capital fund for the crypto and decentralized space because the lack of a centralized authority reduces costs and in theory provides more control and access to the "investors". While the Bitcoin network could have been the first DAO, Ethereum is officially considered the first one because of the smart-contracts implementation. In fact The DAO was implemented as a smart-contract on the Ethereum network on April 30th 2016 and unfortunately it was hacked by 18th June of the same year, notably because of a specific smart-contract vulnerability as Ethereum network was properly working at that time, more on this here.