Mr. Zamfir, one of Mr. Gün Sirer’s co-authors, is one of the 10 curators. Another curator, Alex Van de Sande, a programmer in Brazil, said on Friday that the authors “really raise some interesting attack vectors.” He said he did not see the attacks as an imminent threat, but he was hoping that investors would vote to make the structure of the D.A.O. more secure, potentially by dividing it into several smaller funds.

The D.A.O. is built on Ethereum, a newer cryptocurrency network that was created to overcome some shortcomings in Bitcoin.The Ethereum system enables so-called smart contracts in which legal agreements can be written into computer code. It is those smart contracts that serve as the basis for decision making and investments within the Decentralized Autonomous Organization. The D.A.O. is motivated in large part by a broader desire to find more decentralized ways to make decisions and financial transactions, with fewer middlemen involved.

After the organization began raising funds from investors in April, the surprising level of interest led investors to buy Ether – the virtual currency in the Ethereum network – to invest in the D.A.O. That drove up the price of Ether, which in turn drove up the value of Ether invested in the organization. As of last weekend, the aggregate value of Ether that had been sent to the venture by investors around the world was more than $150 million.

More recently, several experts in the area have voiced concerns about the D.A.O., which has helped push down the price of Ether. On Friday, the value of the Ether in the D.A.O. was $131 million, even as the number of Ether invested had increased.

The new paper points to several ways that bad actors could exploit the voting process that investors in the D.A.O. will use to choose investments.

“At a fundamental level, these attacks all stem from unintended consequences of the mechanisms built into the D.A.O.” the paper says. “These problems can give rise to complex strategic behaviors, all resulting in a corruption of the intended, honest debate and voting process to select the most deserving proposals.”