A DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation) is a group whose rules and decision-making are encoded in smart contracts, with members typically voting using governance tokens rather than following a traditional corporate hierarchy. Proposals, treasury spending, and protocol changes are often decided this way.
In practice, DAO governance can still be concentrated — a small number of large token holders can carry disproportionate voting power — so "decentralised" describes the mechanism, not a guarantee that influence is evenly spread.