# Governance Token
A [bearer instrument](bearer-instrument.md) token which grants holders of the token the capacity to "vote" in a [smart contracts](smart-contracts.md) implementation of a [DAO](dao.md) or other [DeFi](defi.md) protocol.

Governance tokens are imitations of voting shares [stock](stock.md) as seen in regulated [security](security.md).

See also [DeFi](defi.md) and [DAO](dao.md).

## References
1. Chen, Liang, Tony W. Tong, Shaoqin Tang, and Nianchen Han. 2022. ‘Governance and Design of Digital Platforms: A Review and Future Research Directions on a Meta-Organization’. Journal of Management 48 (1): 147–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063211045023.
1. Crepaldi, M. 2020. ‘The Authority of Distributed Consensus Systems Trust, Governance, and Normative Perspectives on Blockchains and Distributed Ledgers’. PhD Thesis. http://amsdottorato.unibo.it/9432/.
1. El Faqir, Youssef, Javier Arroyo, and Samer Hassan. 2020. ‘An Overview of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations on the Blockchain’. PervasiveHealth: Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, August. https://doi.org/10.1145/3412569.3412579.
1. Rikken, Olivier, Marijn Janssen, and Zenlin Kwee. n.d. ‘The Ins and Outs of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (Daos)’. Available at SSRN 3989559. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3989559.