A \textit{3-net} of order n is a finite incidence structure consisting of
points and three pairwise disjoint classes of lines, each of size n, such
that every point incident with two lines from distinct classes is incident with
exactly one line from each of the three classes. The current interest around
3-nets (embedded) in a projective plane PG(2,K), defined over a field K
of characteristic p, arose from algebraic geometry. It is not difficult to
find 3-nets in PG(2,K) as far as 0<p≤n. However, only a few infinite
families of 3-nets in PG(2,K) are known to exist whenever p=0, or p>n.
Under this condition, the known families are characterized as the only 3-nets
in PG(2,K) which can be coordinatized by a group. In this paper we deal with
3-nets in PG(2,K) which can be coordinatized by a diassociative loop G
but not by a group. We prove two structural theorems on G. As a corollary, if
G is commutative then every non-trivial element of G has the same order,
and G has exponent 2 or 3. We also discuss the existence problem for such
3-nets