# Hats Trees The fact that all hat's have hats as admins means that every hat exist within a "tree" of hats. This tree structure forms the basis for an organization's hats Within a given branch of a hat tree, hats closer to the root of the tree have admin authorities for hats further down the branch. This is consistent with the direction of delegation of authority for DAOs, and combats the tendency for accountability to dilute as delegated authorities reach the edges of a network. ### **Top Hats** Top Hats are the one exception to the rule that a hat's admin must be another hat. A Top Hat is a hat that serves as its own admin. The root of a Hat tree is always a Top Hat. Typically, a DAO will wear the Top Hat that serves as admin for the tree of Hats related to the DAO's operations. ### Hat Trees and Hat Ids Each hat tree has a max depth of 15 and a branching factor of 2^16. This means that each hat can have up to 2^16 = 65,536 children, and this pattern can repeat 14 times. Every hat's id includes the id of its tree and its location within the tree. See the following page for more detail on [hat ids](/for-developers/hats-protocol-for-developers/hat-ids.md). --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.hatsprotocol.xyz/for-developers/hats-protocol-for-developers/hats-trees.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.