A decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, is a kind of organizational structure that prioritizes decentralization for governance.

DAOs rely on their stakeholders to maintain and advance the project. In the context of MakerDAO, its community manages the Maker Protocol through an embedded governance mechanism.

It is decentralized in that no single party has full control over the system and autonomous in that once deployed, the Maker Protocol facilitates governance through the built-in governance mechanism and the existence of MKR.