

Eris: A Decentralized Autonomous Organization Framework - mischa_u
https://eris.projectdouglas.org/

======
impassebreaker
There's an interesting back story to this team that you won't find on their
website. One of the founders spent 5 years in the Marines in Somalia after
receiving an engineering degree, then went to law school, and returned to
Somalia to start a law practice. And he writes software on the side.

Who cares, you ask? This is someone who understands the importance of the rule
of law -- having seen life without it as a soldier and as a lawyer -- and what
it means to live in a country where promises can't be enforced. The rest of
the team is just as impressive (and modest). That experience appears to inform
the philosophy behind the project:

"Given that the aim of Project Ðouglas is to demonstrate the utility of ÐAOs
in everyday applications and to advance the state of the art, it is our view
that compliance functionality is not only an added feature - it is a
prerequisite. Public, corporate, institutional and government buy-in will
require it."

It'll be exciting to see what's next.

Congratulations Dennis, Casey & Preston.

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obeattie
As someone coming to the topic of "replacing the Bitcoin Foundation" cold,
this would really benefit from a short, Plain English description. This tells
me next to nothing:

> an adaptable software package which is designed to be modular, easily
> copied, and easily modified - and therefore used in many different
> applications. We intend to use Eris as the relevant platform when we
> incorporate the Association at a later date, but we will not be limiting
> future development of the platform to that single application.

~~~
kordless
"Governance in a Box" would be a better description. Imagine anything that
needs to be governed by consensus, including corporation bylaws, town
ordinances, 'foundation' advertising spends, Internet group meeting agendas,
etc. Eris appears to be a basic framework for instantiating any of these in a
way that brings trust and high transparency to a group of individuals with
common goals and interests. It's one of the more powerful _things_ the
blockchain brings us!

~~~
compleatang
That's actually very much what we are going for. I have spent much of my
career at the intersection of international development and legal reform and
the idea of having a governance framework which can be used for making
collective decisions in a way which will not rely on central nodes of
corruption or failure.

~~~
platz
And then we'll find out we are just trading central modes of failure for
failure which can occur across networks due to specific channel attacks

~~~
compleatang
Perhaps. But we'll never know until we try.

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jameshart
This cute "ÐAO" acronym isn't actually defined anywhere on the page. I assume,
based on the HN link headline, it refers to a "decentralized autonomous
organization". I looked for that in the page but the word "autonomous" never
appears (the words "decentralized", "decentralised", "organization" and
"organisation" all do). I tried searching the page to find out whether they
actually defined "ÐAO", but was initially thwarted when I typed in "DAO" and
found _that_ doesn't appear on the page either because of the insistence on
using ÐAO.

Is this some deliberate attempt at anti-SEO?

~~~
koalap
You may want to watch this
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIVjAo4vres](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIVjAo4vres)

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mischa_u
This is a response to the USD$100,000 bounty to create a software-based
platform to replace the Bitcoin Foundation as initially announced on
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/25sf4f/100000_bount...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/25sf4f/100000_bounty_for_software_platform_that_can/)

~~~
floatrock
More importantly, Ethereum and some of the other "Bitcoin 2.0" protocols are
tackling the _technology_ behind distributed consensus and trust (using crypto
blockchains for something other than payment), but there's the additional
question of how do you make your cute technology interface with the real
world's legal systems (if not for you, then for all the organizations your DAO
will interact with).

The interesting thing about these guys is they're a team of both developers
and lawyers... part of this project is the packaging of the technology on top
of Ethereum, but part of it is figuring out the legal frameworks needed to
grant legal authority to a distributed crypto consensus network.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIVjAo4vres&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIVjAo4vres&feature=youtu.be)
is a good 10 min background interview with Preston Byrne, one of the members.

~~~
a-priori
I'm no lawyer, but I think it's compatible with contract law...

If you wanted to create an organization represented by a DAO in this system,
then you would still need to register a legal entity with your government to
represent your organization (for tax and regulatory reasons). But that
organization could have exactly one bylaw saying, essentially, "this
organization shall operate according to the DAO uniquely identified as
ABCXYZ123". Then you do all further work in the DAO.

If you wanted to create a contract of some kind, you wouldn't need to do even
that. A "contract" in law is fairly general: it's an agreement, entered into
voluntarily, between multiple partners for their mutual benefit. It's often
done on paper, but not necessarily: they can be created orally, or via email.
There's no reason I know of that a DAO couldn't create a contract, as long as
you could show to a court that it fits all the normal criteria for a valid
contract.

The main complication in all this is that it's _unusual_ and, at least at
first, judges wouldn't know how it works and would want proof that it creates
a legal contract.

~~~
floatrock
> I'm no lawyer, but I think it's compatible with contract law...

There was a neat talk from the silicon valley ethereum meetup a few months ago
where a lawyer dives into the technical definition of a legal 'contract' and
what parts of that Ethereum code does and does not satisfy:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSLK3lbENRc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSLK3lbENRc)

(One of the key insights there is although Ethereum uses the term 'contract'
to describe its autonomous code, Ethereum contracts do not by themselves
satisfy the criteria for a legal contract in common jurisdictions...
'autonomous agent' would be a better term for Ethereum to use)

All of these links I got from people on a discussion on r/ethereum the other
week:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/27gdhc/are_you_all...](http://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/27gdhc/are_you_allowed_to_give_corporate_shareholder/)

~~~
compleatang
Agree; indeed, I tried to make the same point at my talk at an Amsterdam
Ethereum meetup a while ago.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnFqOfR5a7I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnFqOfR5a7I)

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pkinsky
This looks like it could be entry-in-the-history-books huge, but there's this:
"We have not slept for three weeks."

Has anyone more knowledgable than me (that is, anyone) looked at this in
detail?

~~~
kordless
I've been thinking about it for several months now. Blockchain technologies
make things like this a reality - we just need someone to write the software
and make it easy to use for multiple use cases. I'm thrilled to see someone
working on it so soon!

~~~
compleatang
Eris is an attempt at a first run of a solution. We have no idea, but we would
love to hear everyone's input and critiques.

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chipsy
The idea's been percolating for a while - one of the major facets of
blockchain technology is that it can be used to effect many kinds of
transactions, where traditional finance is just the simplest one to conceive
of. Simultaneously there's been a thread of philosophy arising from various
sources(Singularity writers, cypherpunks, Anonymous) that advocates new
governance forms that fully exploit digital technology.

My favorite book on this is Binding Chaos [0] - most of the material in it
clarifies problems with existing governance structures and their inevitable
tendency towards power inequality. The remainder suggests that a better system
would contain two major concepts: stigmergy - essentially, "space-making"
instead of our existing "leadership" model, where environmental changes can
automatically direct the next action of the group - and epistemic user groups:
Communities that are focused on a particular form of expert knowledge and its
study.

We already have some models for this in open source projects, Wikipedia, etc.
but the book is light on specific implementation ideas. What is really needed
is software innovations on these concepts, and blockchain hacking is one way
to go about it.

[0] [https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/binding-
chaos/](https://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/05/24/binding-chaos/)

edit: forgot this isn't reddit

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eric_bullington
Looks interesting, but where is the Eris repo? (Note: it's currently private,
see Edit 2 below)

It's described as being under MIT but the only repos I find under the Project
Douglas Github account are Jekyll-based websites (and forks of Ethereum
projects). When I click on the link to the Eris license, I only get a 404.

Is it private now?

Edit: To be clear, I don't blame them if they've made it private. They may
have feared a third-party trying to take credit for their project and going
after the cash bounty. I'm just interested in looking at the source code, if
it's available to the public.

Edit 2: In a reddit post about Eris, the (presumed) developer writes "Repo
goes public shortly. Should have a unified method for test driving sometime
this week hopefully. (Maybe as early as tomorrow)".

~~~
compleatang
Hi Eric,

Indeed, you are correct we were a bit worried about that. We about 3-P theft.
Also, we are not natural coders so we've been furiously trying to clean up the
code so it is somewhat presentable to people who do code for a living. That
process should more or less be finished and we will open the repos very
shortly. To be honest, we were a bit amazed at such a response to our small
proposal and did not bargain on the reception we have received today. In any
event the repo will be available at GH:project-douglas/eris before midnight
tonight GMT.

~~~
eric_bullington
Great, I look forward to taking a look. By the way, what do you mean by "3-P
theft"? The sentence seems to be missing a word or else there's a typo. But I
can't quite figure out what that might be.

~~~
compleatang
Sorry for the quickness. Yesterday turned out to be a bit hectic. I meant
third parties taking our work. (3-P being my own lawyer speak...)

------
robertfw
I have been thinking a lot about what can be done in this space but have felt
the need to find some smart people working on the field so I could get an
entry point into existing work. This is exactly what I have been hoping for!

~~~
joeyspn
Same here... a DAO's framework is what we've been waiting for... The current
examples (ethercasts, etc) were "too light".. hopefully they'll make one about
Eris!

~~~
compleatang
We will be recording with Mids on Thursday.

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joeyspn
Been lurking the Ethereum forums for a couple of months waiting for something
like this.. I read about the "The People's Republic of DOUG" [0] and found it
a nice reference ethereum app... but this is __much __more interesting..

It will help us kickstart some projects we have in mind... I'm beyond stoked..
Thanks for your contribution

[0][https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1009/the-people-s-
repu...](https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/1009/the-people-s-republic-of-
doug-ethereum-based-decentralized-organization)

~~~
compleatang
The people's republic of DOUG is based on an older version of the very same
core DOUG functionality which operates sort of as the kernel of the DAO. We
definitely look forward to your comments.

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ojilles
I just kept on reading this (not knowing anything about the Bitcoin
Foundation) hoping this would allow for something like the automated
corporations that feature in Accelerando (and other books, for sure). It's
okay, I'll wait :)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerando)

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sharemywin
Do you see more complicated voting methods being incorporated?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system)

weighted voting. proxy. random.

~~~
compleatang
It is possible. How we have designed the voting module allows it to be swapped
out for other modules when a DAO is initialized (or later if there is
sufficient consensus for such a change). We have a rep weighted module as the
default module and we hope to built additional modules in the coming months
for other voting mechanisms.

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bshimmin
Exactly one pixel of that custom scrollbar is clickable on my Mac (Chrome).
Thanks.

------
sharemywin
How is this different from etherium?

~~~
dennismckinnon
We are building off of Ethereum and tying in Bittorrent to produce a platform
which allows us to build these applications. So what we are doing is taking
the tools we are being given and putting them to use. :)

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Ursium
Amazing work Dennis, Casey and Preston! Can't wait to see it in action!

