With the rapid development of information technology in the 21st century, major changes are effecting the way people live and act. Everyday life is becoming faster and more dynamic due to the development of computers and the Internet, and people have wholeheartedly accepted new technologies and have attempted to implement them as much as possible. Decentralized autonomous organizations (hereinafter DAOs) are computer programs based on the blockchain that enable participants to decide on the way to use the organization's resources (community wallet management) through proposing and voting on decisions that come up on the agenda, thereby managing the future of the organization. How many voting rights each member has in the DAO depends on the amount of governance tokens they own. This method of determining the amount of voting rights is somewhat reminiscent of the structure of a joint-stock company, but due to the insufficient legal regulation of DAOs and the lack of the possibility of incorporation as a capital company, the legislators in Croatia and in the world tend to consider DAOs as a general partnership in case of disputes. Subsuming a DAO under the definition of a general partnership can be particularly dangerous for DAO members because they do not enjoy the protection of the wall of legal personality. In this paper, the legal status of DAOs, the establishment of DAOs and the participation of members in DAOs, is analyzed but first of all, terms such as decentralized finance (DeFi), blockchain and smart contracts are explained.