Special session on Evolution of Organisations and Systems through Blockchain Technology and Tokenisation (EOS)

Scope

Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) promise to transform organisations and cross-organisational processes by facilitating decentralised governance, leveraging blockchain technology, and tokenising resources and rights. This special track delves into the conceptual roots and real-world complexities of Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), conceived as socio-technical ecosystems that intertwine the threads of economics, computer science, and organisational theory.

Despite their transformative potential to reshape decision-making processes, current implementations of these systems remain hampered by a host of limitations undermining their broader adoption and practical utility. Existing studies show persistent governance-related issues such as voter apathy, centralisation of governance power, as well as security vulnerabilities, and fragmented communities (e.g., Sharma et al, 2024; Kusmerz & Overko, 2022; Kivilo, 2023). Moreover, DAOs face structural issues in decentralised application (DApp) development, particularly scalability, usability, and complexity (e.g., Udokwu et al., 2021). Among the many challenges, the inherent complexity of smart contract languages creates a barrier for non-technical stakeholders involved in DAO governance, making it difficult for them to grasp the full implications of design choices and system updates. As a result, critical governance decisions often fall into the hands of small developer teams, ultimately compromising the foundational ideal of decentralisation (Bonnet et al., 2024).

The absence of standardisation in the specification and verification of token economies and governance protocols significantly limits the utility of current DAO implementations. Although recent research has made strides in modelling, developing ontologies, and systematising decentralised applications and blockchain-based systems, a cohesive and interdisciplinary framework is still lacking—one that is essential to transform DAOs into truly scalable, inclusive, and resilient organisational forms.

Building on these considerations, this special track invites interdisciplinary contributions that deepen the integration of technological, economic, and social perspectives on DAOs. We welcome theoretical, computational, empirical and methodological papers that address, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Modelling languages and methods: Textual and visual languages that make DAO design and governance understandable and accessible to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Formal verification and model checking: Techniques for increasing the reliability of smart contracts, governance rules, and token economies.
• AI-augmented DAO governance: Methods leveraging artificial intelligence for proposal filtering, adaptive governance, and reputation systems that improve utility and security.
• Agent-Based Simulation of token economies of DAOs and Web3-based systems: Simulation models that explore emergent behaviour in decentralised governance and token economy systems.
• The role of non-monetary Incentives in token economies: Models and methods to design, implement, or simulate non-monetary incentives, including governance, access rights, and reputation systems in DAOs, to foster participation and coordination in decentralised ecosystems.
• Game theoretical models for tokenised resource management in blockchain ecosystems: Balancing competition and collaboration.
• Collaborative economies: Models and systems facilitating access to resources through mutualisation, enabling new forms of socioeconomic organisation and interaction.
• Case studies: Empirical insights into existing DAO implementations, highlighting both best practices and persistent shortcomings.
• Ontologies and semantic models: Domain-specific ontologies and semantic frameworks that support interoperability and analysis of DAO ecosystems (e.g., see Valiente et al., 2024).
• The role of institutions and regulation in the emergence of DAOs and decentralised ecosystems based on Web3.

Essential References

• Abdel-Basset, M., Abdel-Fatah, L., & Sangaiah, A. K. (2018). Metaheuristic algorithms: A comprehensive review. Computational intelligence for multimedia big data on the cloud with engineering applications, 185-231.
• Bonnet, S., & Teuteberg, F. (2024). Decentralized autonomous organizations: A systematic literature review and research agenda. International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management, 21(4), 1–63.
• Clark, P. B., & Wilson, J. Q. (1961). Incentive systems: A theory of organizations. Administrative science quarterly, 129-166.
• Gigerenzer, G., & Todd, P. M. (1999). Fast and frugal heuristics: The adaptive toolbox. In Simple heuristics that make us smart (pp. 3-34). Oxford (UK): Oxford University Press.
• Kivilo, S. (2023). Designing a token economy: Incentives, governance, and tokenomics (Master’s thesis, Tallinn University of Technology). URL = https://rgdoi.net/10.13140/RG.2.2.13326.13124. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.13326.1312, accessed: 30th January 2025.
• Kusmierz, B., & Overko, R. (2022). How centralized is decentralized? Comparison of wealth distribution in coins and tokens. In 2022 IEEE International Conference on Omni-layer Intelligent Systems (COINS) (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
• Murphy, R. O., Ackermann, K. A., & Handgraaf, M. J. (2011). Measuring social value orientation. Judgment and Decision making, 6(8), 771-781.
• Sharma, T., Li, Y., Kumar, A., Wang, Y., & Kim, T. (2024). Unpacking how decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) work in practice. In 2024 IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC) (pp. 416–424). IEEE. URL = https://doi.org/10.1109/ICBC59979.2024.10634404, accessed: 30th January 2025.
• Schoemaker, P. J. (1992). Subjective expected utility theory revisited: A reductio ad absurdum paradox. Theory and decision, 33, 1-21.
• Tesfatsion, L. (2023). Agent-based computational economics: Overview and brief history. Artificial intelligence, learning and computation in economics and finance, 41-58.
• Udokwu, C., & Norta, A. (2021). Deriving and formalizing requirements of decentralized applications for inter-organizational collaborations on blockchain. Arabian Journal for Science and Engineering, 46(9), 8397–8414.
• Valiente, M.-C., & Pavón, J. (2024). Web3-DAO: An ontology for decentralized autonomous organizations. Journal of Web Semantics, 82, 100830. URL = https://doi.org/10.1016/j.websem.2024.100830, accessed: 30th January 2025.
• Van Miltenburg, N., Buskens, V., Barrera, D., & Raub, W. (2014). Implementing punishment and reward in the public goods game: the effect of individual and collective decision rules. International Journal of the Commons, 8(1), 1–34.
• Weibull, J. W. (1997). Evolutionary game theory. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press.

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Topics

Given the growing complexity and societal relevance of DAOs, this track aligns closely with DECON’s interdisciplinary mission to deepen our understanding of decision-making systems through cognitive, experimental, algorithmic, evolutionary, and socio-economic lenses. In this spirit, the track aims to enrich cross-disciplinary dialogue and promote methodological innovation, offering critical insights into both the challenges and the transformative potential of decentralised and algorithmic governance.

On this basis, and given the broader interdisciplinary nature of DECON, we also encourage submissions that address fundamental cross-disciplinary issues in decision sciences, broadly defined to include economics and related fields, from theoretical, conceptual, methodological, computational, experimental, and empirical perspectives. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

• The limits of optimisation in decision-making under real-world constraints (e.g., Gigerenzer & Todd, 1999).
• Formal and informal rules in collective decision-making (e.g., Van Miltenburg et al., 2014).
• Rationality, computability, and the epistemology of choice (e.g., Tesfatsion, 2023).
• When heuristics outperform algorithms: Cognitive limits as an asset.
• The interplay between mathematical formalism and institutional design.
• Descriptive vs. normative modelling: What does “better” mean in complex systems?
• Revisiting expected utility: New approaches to old paradoxes (e.g., Schoemaker, 1992).
• The structure of incentives in evolving organisational systems (e.g., Clark & Wilson, 1961).
• The role of emotions and bounded cognition in economic modelling.
• Causality, complexity, and inference in socio-economic systems.
• The dynamic evolution of preferences and beliefs in uncertain environments.
• Cross-disciplinary metrics for evaluating decision performance (e.g., Murphy et al., 2011).
• Modelling ambiguity: From classical probability to imprecise reasoning (e.g., Abdel-Basset et al., 2018).
• Coordination without communication: From biological systems to economic applications (e.g., Weibull, 1997).
• Decision architectures in humans, institutions, and machines.

These topics, among others, will form the basis for dialogue and exchange within the special EOS track at DECON 2025, offering a dynamic forum for cross-disciplinary inquiry into decision-making, economic theory, and the shifting paradigms of complex socio-technical systems.