Too Long; Didn't Read
A Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or DAO, is a theoretical organization or company operated by code instead of people. The network's nodes must reach an agreement on the network's current state. This agreement is achieved using ‘consensus mechanisms**’ These mechanisms are not directly related to building a dapp, but understanding them will illuminate concepts relevant to you and your users' experience, like gas prices and transaction times. Gas refers to the amount of computational effort required to execute specific operations on the Ethereum network.