# The DAO \- What is a DAO? A Decentralized Autonomous Organization is an internet-native entity, in theory with no central management, which is regulated by a set of automatically enforceable rules on a public blockchain in order to achieve a shared goal. Currently, DAOs are more decentralized than anything else, often using an amalgamation of organizational approaches, including tokenized structures for incentive alignment and more typical hierarchies. As the tools available in web3 increase in sophistication and adoption, DAOs have the potential to become more and more autonomous. \- What is the Token Engineering Commons? The TEC is an open source, collectively governed project that aims to create a token economy that will accelerate the responsible & ethical creation of public goods within the TE community. The TEC is the first product of the Common Stack \- What is the Commons Stack? The common stack is a community whose mission is building commons-based microeconomies to sustain public goods through incentive alignment, continuous funding and community governance \- What is the goal of the TEC? The goal of the TEC is to develop a tightly modeled crypto-economic system that can produce continuous funding for the production of new technical primitives, education initiatives, and token engineering research. \- What is the Mission, Vision and Values (MVV) document? The [Mission, Vision and Values](https://token-engineering-commons.gitbook.io/tec-handbook/what-is-the-tec/mission-vision-and-values) is a foundational document for our community that guides all individual and group actions. It is a living document that was collectively proposed and voted on by our community. \- What is the Cultural Build? Anything that is collective has cultural variables that should be taken into account, especially when building economic systems. The TEC Cultural Build is working on the foundations of the Commons to ensure a healthy relational fabric and to give support to soft governance practices. The Cultural Build process is guided by Elinor Ostrom’s 8 principles from her Nobel Prize winning Governing the Commons (1990). \- What are *Ostrom’s 8 Principles*? Elinor Ostrom has documented in many places around the world how communities devise ways to govern the commons to assure its survival for their needs and future generations. She found [8 principles](https://token-engineering-commons.gitbook.io/tec-handbook/what-is-the-tec/the-cultural-build#ostroms-8-principles) for how commons can be governed sustainably and equitably in a community. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://token-engineering-commons.gitbook.io/tec-handbook/hatch-101/faq/the-dao.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.