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.

As far as I understand DAOs are not illegal organizations because (i) a DAO only exists as smart contracts inside a blockchain network and is not considered a real company, (ii) DAOs founders/participants are not shareholders and (iii) DAOs have no central authority like a CEO or Director. Having said that, during the last years DAOs have been recognized as legal entities in Marshall Islands and also in the states of Vermont (2019) and Wyoming (2022) of USA.

A number of DAOs have been created for many purposes and mostly for DeFi (Decentralized Finance). According to DeepDAO there are at least 4228 organizations with a US$ 8.1B treasury and according to DeFi Pulse the DeFi space has about US$ 71.49B in locked value. More recently a few DAOs are showing up to fill the DeSci (Decentralized Science) gap and a call to join the decentralized science movement was published in December 2021, however, most of those DeSci initiatives are in the Northern Hemisphere.

Decentralization is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Could we then interpret blockchain decentralization in a wider sense well beyond consensus computing or voting proposals ? Would it be possible to decentralize even more of the blockchain space by promoting/supporting more teams and projects in the Southern Hemisphere ? I imagine most if not all blockchain networks would be interested in promoting a wider and faster adoption, meaning more DAOs and dApps being built and demanding even more network usage ? It looks like DeSci DAOs and DeComm (Decentralized Communication) DAOs may have a very special place in the Sourthern Hemisphere as promoting them also means an even more decentralized space. I am especially happy Ethereum.Rio 2022 is happening in South America as it provides a unique opportunity for curious and interested people to establish a network for starting or expanding projects, however much more than that is actually needed. A DeComm DAO originating in the Southern Hemisphere could organize a first online meeting with focus on Spanish and Portuguese speaking teams/projects (e.g. IberoAm !), no matter which chain they use. Such a DeComm DAO could directly promote and support seed projects in the Southern Hemisphere or Iberoamerica, not only by communicating but mainly promoting blockchain education. A DeComm DAO like this could finally promote a greater decentralization by supporting initial stage projects considering regional demands and priorities and targetting portuguese and spanish speaking markets. This could also be the DAO to help science publication business decentralization, since few corporations already dominate the market and control the expensive APC (Article Processing Charge) or publication fees. In fact, the scientific publication business may be considered an absurd system and also a luxury market, with an annual revenue of more than 2.6 billion pounds with profit margins between 30 and 40%. Finally, a DAO like this could potentially help the already available non-comercial SciComm community to maintain and grow their high-quality science communication content and be rewarded for that.