Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) Adoption for Smart City Governance

Cities are the foundation upon which civilization is built, but their large population concentrations present significant challenges in terms of economic, environmental, and social resilience. One promising approach to address these challenges is the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) based on the smart city concept. To effectively implement smart city initiatives, it is essential to foster active participation from both public and private actors in the rapid urbanization process. This study focuses on the governance of smart cities, specifically addressing issues of participation and distributed decision-making using the lessons of Web 3.0 online communities. Our goal is to understand the potential challenges and opportunities of adopting blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for smart city governance. A DAO is a form of organization represented by rules encoded as computer programs called smart contracts that are transparent, controlled by the organization members and not influenced by a central authority. We employ a qualitative research methodology using an inductive approach to explore DAO adoption with experts. Our study identified five critical areas that impact DAO adoption in smart city governance: power configuration, performance expectancy, effort expectancy, threat management, and organizational context.