In most DAOs, the proposal system only judges the proposers by REALITY (don´t say that blocktrades is wrong but reputation can be a weak proxy for reality). In a DAO you claim that your proposal will have a certain influence on the network parameters like "this proposal will increase the number of active users ergo the long-term price (like a moving average) by 30cents". Either it will and you get payed a reward proportional to the price-move or your proposal was shit and you lose your stake, so will anybody else.
It is called prediction market (aka. futarchy) and it eliminates all trust. It is provably a collusion-resistant mechanism.
the best guys in the space research in that direction
Hanson, Robin 2013: Shall We Vote on Values, But Bet on Beliefs?
Buterin, Vitalik 2014: An Introduction to Futarchy
Merkle, Ralph, C. (Nick Bostrom, Vitalik Buterin, Robert A. Freitas Jr., Robin Hanson, Charles Hoskinson , John Oh, and Melanie Swann) 2016: DAOs, Democracy and Governance
Hayes, Ryan, Tran, Alexandra, Xu, Henry. 2018: Futarchy Considered: a guide to blockchain-based prediction markets and futarchy
The "DAC" described by Stan and Dan Larimer was not the same as a DAO, same as Steem is not a "Crypto" (because there is zero crypto inside the consensus mechanism, it purely is based on economics and a race condition). One could say that dPOS is a crypto-substitute and a dPOS DAC is similar to a DAO, but you cant make it trustless in that gametheoretical collusion resistant fashion. Not without changing the fundamental structure.