DAO to (Anonymous) DAO Transactions

Abstract

Blockchain assets are increasingly controlled by organizations rather than individuals. DAO treasuries, consortium wallets, and custodial exchanges rely on threshold authorization and multi-party key management, yet existing payment mechanisms still target single-user wallets, leaving no unified solution for organizational transfers. We formalize the problem of \emph{DAO-to-(anonymous)-DAO} transactions and present \textsc{Dao$^2$}, a framework that enables one threshold-controlled organization to pay another, optionally with recipient anonymity, while keeping received funds under distributed control. \textsc{Dao$^2$} combines three components: \emph{distributed key derivation} (DKD) for non-stealth child addresses, \emph{distributed stealth-address generation} (DSAG) for unlinkable one-time destinations, and \emph{threshold signatures} for authorization. For ordinary transfers, the receiver derives a non-stealth address via DKD; for anonymous transfers, it derives a stealth address via DSAG. The sender then threshold-signs the payment, and the receiver redeems the funds without reconstructing any master secret. We formally prove its security and evaluate a prototype. A complete anonymous DAO-to-DAO transaction for a typical-sized (e.g., 7-member) DAO finishes in under 27\,ms with less than 1.2\,KB of communication, and scales linearly with DAO size.