WTF is a DAO

D ecentralized A utonomous O rganization

That still doesn't mean a thing, does it? The original intent, as far as I know, was an organization centralized around a piece of code. The code controlled finalized decision making, usually from a vote.

This is no longer the case.

Plenty of groups are spinning up a token and calling themselves a DAO by having a Discord channel. Not a bad thing but it really muddys the water around terminology.

So.

What can a DAO be?

Maybe we break down each word, out of order.

Organization

This is easy. Any collection of people that are organized around one thing. This could be a football club, a FinTech startup, or prisoners picking up trash in the park.

Decentralized

A slightly trickier word that is often confused with Distributed. Decentralized means there is no central 'thing'. No office or multiple offices. No vault or multiple vaults. No central piece of code or multiple bits of code forming a thing.

Something decentralized has no center. You could take part away and it would still function. It doesn't have to function well but must continue.