Incentivization in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

Abstract

We propose a mechanism for the incentivization of workers in decentralized autonomous organizations instantiated on the blockchain. Our approach relies on staking, a digital form of collateralization that requires network participants to acquire cryptographic tokens and deposit them in a smart contract or bound wallet. In case of worker malfeasance, the collateral can be reallocated to the customers to compensate them for their losses. We use the nascent decentralized insurance market as a laboratory to apply our model based on real-life data and show that relatively small stakes are sufficient to maximize network throughput, which is equivalent to welfare.