Understanding Members' Active Participation in a DAO: An Empirical Study on Steemit

One of Blockchain’s great potential is to enable the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), whose organizational structure and operational mechanism fundamentally distinct from traditional organizations. This revolutionary nature of DAOs will definitely influence peoples’ behavior. Steemit is an online community like Reddit, but it’s a DAO enabled by STEEM blockchain. This nature makes Steemit fans both users and owners. As users, people can enjoy social capital from using Steemit, just like using any other social media. As owners, people can get some economic incentives by earning and holding Steem Power, and Steem Power can be seen a kind of share capital. This paper attempts to explore the participation behavior of people in the Steemit community from two perspectives—social capital and share capital. Social feedback and economic feedback received by members also have an impact on participation behavior.

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