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Newsletter 14 – Decentralized Autonomous Organizations – May 28th 2026

Another newsletter special. This time highlighting Questionnaire 'Self assessment - Assess your community based on the DAO criteria'. Feel free to share this newsletter with others! Feedback is always welcome. If you have interesting insights about a new ways of organizing that you'd like to share with the community, please let us know at info@howtodao.it. Enjoy reading about this questionnaire. Find all our questionnaires on our website. Fill out those questionnaires to gain insight into your community!

Questionnaire ‘Self assessment - Assess your community based on the DAO criteria’

In order for a community to be considered a DAO, the three elements must be covered:

• Being  an Organization

• Being  Autonomous

• Being  Decentralized 

This questionnaire contains questions about these three elements (organization, autonomous, decentralized) and is based on the criteria for a 'Vanilla DAO': the minimum implementation of structures to earn the 'DAO' label. See Booklet ‘DAOs - Getting acquainted’ for an introduction into DAOs and into the concept of a Vanilla DAO.

The first part of this newsletter contains the questions, the second part the remarks that offer some background for each question.

For the online version of this and other questionnaires see https://v0-how-to-dao-it-website-with-wiki.vercel.app/tools/questionnaires. 

Part 1 ‘Questions/criteria’

Being an Organization

1. Does your community have a subsystem 'Identifiable Data & Profile'?
   O Yes O No

2. Does your community have a subsystem 'Constitution'?
   O Yes O No

3. Does your community have a subsystem 'Treasury'?
   O Yes O No

4. Does your community have a subsystem 'Member(ship) & Organizational structures'?
   O Yes O No

5. Does your community have a subsystem 'Notary/Log'?
   O Yes O No
   
   Being Decentralized

6. Do all members have equal access to information?
   O Yes O No

7. Is the number of agents participating in joint decision making / governance ≥ 2?
   O Yes O No

8. Is the number of agents with ownership rights ≥ 2?
   O Yes O No

9. Is the technology used for (at least) joint decision making, treasury functionality and logging decentralized (Web3)?
   O Yes O No
   
   Being Autonomous

10. Does the community's logic (coded in software) execute as agreed upon?
    O Yes O No

11. Are decisions (= approved proposals) executed automatically?
    O Yes O No

Part 2 ‘Remarks per question/criterion’

Being an Organization

1. Does your community have a subsystem 'Identifiable Data & Profile'?
   •. A DAO must have a name and preferably additional identifiable data.
   •. A DAO must be able to be found.

2. Does your community have a subsystem 'Constitution'?
   •. A DAO must have a constitution with rules for collaboration, governance & ownership.
   •. A DAO must have a constitution with rules that are explicitly publicly stated and acknowledged by the DAO participants.
   •. A DAO must have a constitution with rules that should be coded into software as much as possible.
   •. A DAO must have a constitution with rules that updateable by decision of the community.
   •. A DAO must have a constitution with rules that are guarded by the "Notary" function.
   •. Decision making on proposals and value transfers within a DAO must only be possible by using coded logic.

3. Does your community have a subsystem 'Treasury'?
   •. A DAO must have a treasury function to manage its community funds and assets.
   •. Having community-specific tokens is not mandatory

4. Does your community have a subsystem 'Member(ship) & Organizational structures'?

   •. It must be transparent, at least to the other participants, who the account holders are (at least their public key should be known)
   •. A DAO may consist of only one organizational unit but can exist of multiple units or autons.
   •. The organizational chart should preferably be transparent.

5. Does your community have a subsystem 'Notary/Log'?

   •. A DAO must log all transactions made by the DAO or by community members.
   • Each recorded transaction result must contain the digital signatures of the transaction parties and a timestamp.
   •. It must be clear that a log item is the result of coded temper-proof logic.
   •. For reasons of privacy protection, hybrid technology can be used where some data is stored on-chain and some data off-chain.
   
   Being Decentralized

6. Do all members have equal access to information?

   •. There should be no information asymmetry among members so that each member can protect their interests and make informed decisions.

7. Is the number of agents participating in joint decision making / governance ≥ 2?

   •. There should always be multiple agents with governance rights.
   •. There should always be multiple agents being involved in decision making on a proposal.

8. Is the number of agents with ownership rights ≥ 2?

   •. There should always be multiple agents with ownership rights.

9. Is the technology used for (at least) joint decision making, treasury functionality and logging decentralized (Web3)?

   •. Web3 software and infrastructure is decentralized, censorship resistant, secure and transparent (code & data).
   •. Not all the software used by a DAO has to be web3.

   
   Being Autonomous

10. Does the community's logic (coded in software) execute as agreed upon?

    •. When certain predefined criteria are met, code should execute automatically without the possibility to interfere one-sided (= censorship resistant).

11. Are decisions (= approved proposals) executed automatically?

    •. Approved proposals should be automatically executed as described in the proposal if viable for automated execution. For example, an automatic transfer of funds to a deposit from which the contractor can be paid, when this is approved by the community.