
Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project - sethbannon
http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/16/the-tao-of-the-dao-or-how-the-autonomous-corporation-is-already-here/
======
street
The DAO isn't actually worth 120 million. For one, it's based on the price of
ETH, which would completely crash if you attempted to sell even a few million
worth.

Secondly, everyone can withdraw their funds from the DAO before any funds are
sent to projects. Many have invested because those who invested early make
money from those investing later, since the number of "DAO tokens" you get per
"ETH" has gone down over time. ( _cough_ pyramid _cough_ )

~~~
drcode
> The DAO isn't actually worth 120 million.

I you tried to sell all Apple stock in a single day it would also sell at well
below market rate- Does that mean Apple is worth less than its market cap?

That said, I personally have not invested/speculated in the DAO because I just
don't see it as a good opportunity.

~~~
street
I just sold one of my hairs to myself for $10. Is my head now worth a million?

With Apple, there's intrinsic value to consider. And frankly, if you sold
enough Apple stock for it to go down 50%, I'd personally start buying. I doubt
that's the case for ETH, where there's only early adopters buying it hoping to
strike it rich.

~~~
drcode
So you're saying the intrinsic value is certain to be lower than it's current
market value? I have good news for you: You can become rich by simply shorting
ether on Kraken and Poloniex!

~~~
c2315261
You're completly disregarding that timing is far more important than simply
knowing that there will be a downward correction. The shorting fees will end
up being consuming a large chunk of the profit even though you sold a hundred
thousand ether coins at $11 and bought them back at $1.

~~~
aianus
> The shorting fees

Costs about 16% APR to borrow ETH for shorting on Bitfinex right now. So if
you're expecting a >=90% crash in the next ~5 years you'd still make a profit.

------
drcode
TLDR; A computer program living on the ethereum blockchain is currently in
control of 107+ million dollars, making it the second largest crowdfunded
project in history. Shareholders vote on proposals to give money to other
entities (probably also programs on the ethereum blockchain) that they hope
will make money and send it to the parent contract.

All votes are managed by a program written in EVM code, which runs on a sort
of "virtual computer" that is designed to be (in theory) 100% secure, 100%
reliable, and 100% incontrovertible. No middlemen have any control over this
program, it essentially completely outside of any human control (beyond the
voting rules encoded within it.)

UPDATE: Apparently this morning it passed $120 million and is now the largest
crowdfunded project in history.

~~~
dragontamer
Last time I checked, Apple Computers is worth $500+ Billion and is a public
company.

Don't forget that the stock market is the original mass-crowdfunded project.
Anyone can become an owner if you go to a brokerage account, and ownership
rights entitles you to a vote for the board of directors and a share of the
profits (ie: the dividend)

~~~
drcode
Agreed, "crowd funding" is an inexact term- I described it that way to help
explain why some people think the project is novel. Certainly there is a lot
of arbitrariness as to what belongs on a list of "top crowdfunded projects".

~~~
dragontamer
Yup. I just want to bring up the fact that this thing seems more akin to a
classical public company, but in many regards is less transparent.

There's the fact that all the code and mechanisms is public, but that's the
part that everybody trusts anyway. When you're a shareholder in Apple, the
votes are tallied, all relevant information from the board of directors is
published, etc. etc. And the SEC forces the company to publicly disclose
financial information in the form of 10k, 8k, and publicly announce insider
trades.

At the moment: I don't know who the "insiders" of this company are. Maybe one
dude has $50 Million USD and effectively controls the entire damn "movement".
Or maybe not. Knowing the identities of large shareholders is a BIG DEAL in
public companies.

Still, the digital form probably has some advantages. Maybe future companies
will find a compromise and manage to exist as digital contracts akin to this
DAO? But I don't expect this first version to actually work. Its pretty much a
learning experiment, to see what is and isn't possible with technology.

If any lessons are to be learned from Bitcoin: politics will affect this
entity eventually. The technology currently serves as a mask to the politics.
But politics always rears its ugly head eventually.

~~~
fudged71
Apparently 0.8% of DAO token holders own >50% of the tokens. There is lots of
potential for conflict of interest

------
joshuaheard
A corporation, being a legal fiction, can only act through physical persons.
So in that respect, no corporation can be truly autonomous. It sounds like
what they have done is taken all the paperwork associated with corporate
activity: by-laws, annual meeting minutes, resolutions, etc., and put them
into a block chain. A more proper description would be a paperless
corporation.

~~~
drcode
That's like saying a car can't be autonomous because some programmers wrote
the software that it uses.

~~~
DigitalJack
No, a corporation is a legal entity that must have directors and officers, aka
people. Without that, you don't have a corporation.

And after reading the article, they aren't a legally recognized corporation.

~~~
dragonwriter
> No, a corporation is a legal entity that must have directors and officers,
> aka people.

OR, a corporation is a legal entity formed by a corporate charter that is
treated as a person under the law. In any case, whatever these ethereum-based
things are, they aren't corporations.

~~~
zardo
>In any case, whatever these ethereum-based things are, they aren't
corporations.

They may end up creating and operating corporations, but DAOs are their own
thing.

~~~
will_brown
To expand on Dragonwriter's point just a little.

Lets pretend DAO somehow autonomously filed Articles of Incorporation in DE.
What is required by DE? A DE physical address for the corp.; a registered
agent located in DE; and a incorporator (doesn't need to be shareholder, but
must be an individual). Already we see it is an impossibility for DAO to do
this autonomously.

But lets pretend it wasn't impossible, DAO autonomously entered into a Lease,
contacted with a registered agent, contracted with a corporate lawyer too be
the incorporator and file the Articles. Whats the next step? A bank account,
well DAO doesn't have a social security, and doesn't qualify for TIN. The
Corp. can't get an EIN, which means it can't open a bank account, which
effectively means it can't do business. Well again, lets pretend the DAO
C-Corp doesn't need a bank account because well Bitcoin is perfect right? DAO
autonomously creates a Bitcoin wallet for the corp and does all business
through that, well the company still doesn't have an EIN, which means it won't
be able to pay taxes.

~~~
HillaryBriss
> _won 't be able to pay taxes_

Sounds like the ultimate corporation to me.

Until now, corporations have had to spends millions of dollars on accountants
and lobbyists to avoid paying taxes. Well, friends ... no more. Because this
organization is genetically _incapable_ of paying taxes!

Forgot the Cayman Islands and Nicaragua! Forget double Dutch reverse corporate
inverse backdoor Irish LLCs with a post office box in Nevada! Gentlemen, put
down your cigars and cognac and get to know your new best friend: little DAO
...

------
tonyswish
This is really cool for all of us in the Ethereum space, and as mentioned
before, I'm a part of the Augur team which is a dapp on Ethereum.

I did sort of see this coming eventually as Augur, Digix as well as Ethereum
itself have been really successful using this method. It's a pretty cool way
to fund open source projects and I think with something that incentivizes
contributions like Code Valley there will be a boom in these projects.

------
noonespecial
Charlie Stross is smiling somewhere.

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

~~~
CharlesMerriam2
Closer to Daniel Suarez, Daemon & Freedom. [http://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-
Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451228731](http://www.amazon.com/DAEMON-Daniel-
Suarez/dp/0451228731)

This fiction starts the autonomous corporation from a vide game. The second
book shows society's evolution to cope with the new corporation.

~~~
jaytaylor
@CharlesMeeriam2 You beat me to it, I came here to post just this!!!

This article reads as though it were a page straight out of Suarez's Daemon
series.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(novel_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_\(novel_series\))

------
Bjorkbat
An interesting concept, but I'm not buying the hype.

At the end of the day a bunch of people bought shares in a company (or did
they? Legality is weird) with the special condition that in addition to owning
a share of said company they also get to vote on what the company actually
does, and even submit proposals for what it should do.

Oh, and they also bought said shares with cryptocurrency. Magic internet money
guys!

Admittedly I think enabling this kind of democracy in a company is a bad idea.
It might actually wind up being less nimble than an actual corporation because
of the extra consensus required.

Meanwhile, even though one might assume that the shareholders might be more
informed than "the common mob", they might still propose and vote on more
misses than, say, a corporation where new products and services are proposed
through an informed internal decision making process that ultimately ends in
the CEO using the information at his or her disposable to make the final
decision. In a good corporation, bad decisions are self-correcting, in some
cases leading to such extremes as a leadership shuffle.

By contrast, who's to blame if the DAO votes on a proposal that wound up being
a miss? How do they learn from their mistakes so it doesn't happen again?

And I'm sure there are many other issues, but those are at the top of my list.
I'd rather a company be run by those most capable, rather than the crowd.

~~~
kuschku
> Admittedly I think enabling this kind of democracy in a company is a bad
> idea. It might actually wind up being less nimble than an actual corporation
> because of the extra consensus required.

This stuff is also known as a cooperative, and is a very common concept for
democratic companies – almost all housing in europe is owned like this.

~~~
Freak_NL
> […] almost all housing in europe is owned like this.

Did you mean _social housing_ rather than housing in general? Because home
ownership exceeds 50% in most European countries, just like the US.

Social housing _is_ often managed by cooperatives, but decades of
neoliberalist thinking caused a lot of the larger of these cooperatives to
invest in boondoggles and grandiose development projects completely unrelated
to their core task rather than build more affordable housing. Coupled with the
immoral self enrichment of upper management, mentioning European social
housing cooperatives may not exactly support the point you are making.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
In the UK flats - apartments - are often run by a limited liability management
company which collects maintenance fees and makes sure maintenance is
performed.

Some or all of the flat owners are directors, and company accounts have to be
filed in the usual way.

They're not co-ops in the usual sense, but they're not so different in
practice. Obviously these companies aren't run for profit, but it's not
unusual for companies to accumulate rainy day reserves and to make a little
from interest.

------
riffraff
the article doesn't actually explain the "autonomous" bit imo.

This looks rather more like a distributed decision making platform. Say,
liquid democracy + ethereum, rather than Accelerando-style "sentient alien
corporations".

Noticeably, the DAO does not seem to be able to make any decision, it does
things through proposals suggested by people which are voted on.

Still cool anyway.

~~~
chriswarbo
I suppose there are a couple of ways to view this:

\- The DAO is a tool for people to make decisions collectively, by pooling
their resources, voting on activities, and having Ethereum take care of trust
issues. This is what you've described.

\- Alternatively, The DAO could be described as similar to a computer virus:
it tries to survive by spreading into as many systems as possible, using their
computational resources to propagate itself further; but crucially its
behaviour is completely determined by its code, rather than acting as an
interpreter for centrally-issued commands (like, say, a botnet or Seti@Home).

While most computer viruses are parasitic, The DAO could be seen as symbiotic:
in return for the resources it uses, it provides the services described above.
It could be described as social engineering, like that of the ILOVEYOU virus,
although it's not a trick (as far as we know).

In the case of The DAO in particular, the first description probably makes the
most sense. However, I'd say Ethereum applications in general are better
described by the latter. For example, a gambling application like etheroll
could persist completely independently on the network for as long as people
are willing to gamble with it, spending part of its commission on resources
("gas").

------
jrochkind1
> While The DAO is a group of people authorized to act as a single economic
> entity, no governmental body recognizes it as such.

They're really not legally incorporated anywhere?

Foregoing the limitation of liability that goes along with a corporation seems
awfully legally risky -- any of the individual members can be sued, likely
succesfully, for something done by the aggregate, with possible damages
exceeding their 'investment'.

I'd think you could legally incorporate the thing how they wanted it with few
problems, have bylaws saying decisions will be made with blockchain votes or
whatever.

I guess the automated "splitting" the corp would be a problem.

Still, I don't think I'd want to be involved in such a thing without legal
corporate limited liability protections.

~~~
cloudjacker
Right, and there are people that do want to be involved.

They want to be part of the case law incongruences that will arise to solve
disputes. They want to bring this to light so that the legacy system is
presented with a better or more efficient way.

Anyway, Slock.it a germany company is managing this asset, their liability is
limited.

~~~
jrochkind1
If they think they can somehow get limited liability protections in the U.S.
without a legal incorporation, I think nearly any lawyer will tell them they
won't have much of a case. No judge is going to decide that. You don't get
limited liability protections just by acting like a corporation, you need to
actually incorporate. It's pretty straightforward law with regard to that
much. (I am not a lawyer).

~~~
cloudjacker
The point is that they don't care about the US, or France, or Hong Kong, or
Zimbabwe.

Also, the individual owners of DAO are not known and are entirely bearer
assets. You and I could Shapeshift some bitcoin to Ether right now, exchange
for DAO tokens, vote on proposals for the DAO that eventually cause a gigantic
oil disaster and whatever unlimited liability a court finds for shareholders
will stall forever because they can neither find the shareholder or freeze the
assets on the DAO.

------
tonyswish
This actually does a much better job explaining the project than the website
does. I'm glad I have something to show friends/interested parties that is
understandable!

------
will_brown
What a bunch of snake oil.

If you invested or are thinking of investing ask yourself a few simple
questions. Who are the Shareholders/Directors/Officers of this corporation? Do
you know what state it is incorporated in or going to be incorporated in?

Just a few buzz words. Decentralized? No shit, any corporation with more than
one shareholder is decentralized. Smart contracts? Defined as a self enforcing
contract, guess what they don't exist. Autonomous? I'd like to see how this
code is independently filing annual reports and preparing taxes sending out
K-1's to its shareholders autonomously, because that alone would be an
enterprise solution every single corporation in the US would pay top dollar
for, because DAO just singlehandedly replaced corporate compliance lawyers and
CPAs with code.

Still not convinced and eager to get in on this? Then why not cut out the
middle man? Create your own "DAO" as an Investment Club (Corp or LLC) the only
issue is you will be capped at 100 members/voters/token holders and $25M in
investment. But you will be able to tell people your created your own
decentralized corporation every bit as autonomous as DAO, complete with 100
tokens people can buy to become a member/shareholder and use to vote on
investment opportunities presented by the DAO or members/shareholders of the
DAO.

~~~
tonyswish
I think there are many legitimate concerns about this project, but what you
are saying address none of them. In fact your first questions mean you don't
understand it.

~~~
will_brown
I think as a lawyer who practices a great deal of corporate transactions, I
have a much better idea than most on the legal structure and compliance issue
with corporations on a state by state basis.

But instead of telling me my question shows I don't understand, please answer
any of the following:

-Are the token holders shareholders?

-If shareholders do the token holders also get to vote for the board, or are their tokens/shares non-voting?

-How many members are on this board? Since it is all autonomous how do you know the DAO has the minimum amount of board members are required by law? If say DAO is a DE corp (min 3 board members) and DE amends the law, how is DAO's code going to keep up?

~~~
drcode
> I think as a lawyer who practices a great deal of corporate transaction

Well, I think we can both see these systems are an attempt to circumvent
individuals like yourself (At least partially, some human legal representation
will likely still be used.)

Taxi drivers similarly complained a lot about the legality of Uber.

(BTW, my wife is also a corporate lawyer.)

~~~
will_brown
I'm not sure if you are trying to compare my legal knowledge to that of a Taxi
driver, or suggesting my position is not based on law but an irrational fear
of competition, or maybe you are implying taxi drivers were wrong about Uber
so I must be about DAO.

Maybe it helps my point, maybe not, but Uber is certainly illegal in many
jurisdictions. Take Miami-Dade county, there are 10,000 Uber drivers and
nearly 3,000 tickets have been issued ($1,010/ticket) something like $2.9M in
fines. Moreover, Uber sends out training for Miami Drivers on how to avoid
getting stopped/ticketed/impounded in Miami as an unlicensed ride for hire and
when Uber drivers do get ticketed/impounded Uber provides the drivers a lawyer
for their case (oddly its their FL corporate lobbyist not a traffic/criminal
defense lawyer). Finally, the Miami-Dade ordinance carries a potential penalty
of 45 days jail.

~~~
drcode
> I'm not sure if you are trying to compare my legal knowledge to that of a
> Taxi driver ...

Certainly not, I see no evidence that you don't have a strong understanding of
the law, far beyond my own.

I guess what I'm saying is that Uber and the DAO both operate in a legal grey
zone- And both of them likely have aspects that directly conflict with current
law. However, I think it's clear that the legal system is a "living
institution" and has been surprisingly welcoming of new innovative business
models and technologies recently (as with Uber and things related to the DAO
like Bitcoin) and is one of the reasons I still feel relatively optimistic
about the future of the US economy.

What made Uber succeed, to a large degree, is that clearly a lot of societal
pressure had built up over decades due to poor experiences with the taxi
system- I think it's undeniable that this had an influence on the positive
legal rulings around Uber, so far as those exist in many parts of the country.

Similarly, alternative governance systems like the DAO will keep appearing and
I think eventually are likely to get some support from the existing legal
system.

> Take Miami-Dade county...

Yikes! Glad I don't live there anymore, as my lifestyle depends significantly
on access to ride sharing services.

~~~
dragonwriter
> I guess what I'm saying is that Uber and the DAO both operate in a legal
> grey zone-

What is required to be a corporation is not really a legal gray zone. The DAO
doesn't operate in a legal gray zone as to that characterization, its just
flat inaccurate.

Insofar as the DAO is a mechanism for constructing contracts between actual
legal persons (either natural persons or corporations), it may operate in a
poorly-tested area as to whether valid contracts are formed, how those
contracts are interpreted and what law they are governed by, and whether and
to what extent they are enforceable, true.

~~~
drcode
I hear you, but I don't think I've ever used the word "corporation" in this
forum or claimed that the DAO is a corporation, or directly disputed any claim
made by another comment as to whether the DAO is or isn't a corporation.

Whether or not the DAO meets the definition of a "corporation" doesn't seem
like a very interesting question to me, and I think it's too early to know
how/if it matters if the legal system uses the word "corporation" to refer to
the DAO.

~~~
will_brown
I would define DAO as blockchain based _investment club software_ [1]. The
problem is, whether you called DAO a corporation or not, DAO raised $100+M on
the basis of being an _autonomous corporation_ , something that can not exist
under the law any more than a corporation owned by cats. If the investors are
not educated enough to know they invested in a legal fiction, its safe to say
they bought it hook link and sink that DAO offers more transparency,
shareholder control or flexibility than existing corporate structures...and
even if they could exist, there is nothing to suggest any of that is true.

If people want to pool their money in a corporate structure (LLC or
partnership) and vote on various investment opportunities, that's great, but
its nothing new or paradigm shifting. Corporations without
shareholders/owners? Nothing new, but that does not make them autonomous.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_club_software](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_club_software)

------
fapjacks
It's not a question of whether or not ETH (and now the "DAO") is a scam. It is
probably a scam. The question is whether or not ETH/DAO can become entrenched
as <something> before it dies. As someone that got in this game early and has
watched altcoins for years, that is pretty much the whole history of ETH,
folks. Just do some research.

------
c3534l
There's a reason corporations developed as they did. With a large number of
owners, it becomes very difficult to tell what is actually going on in a
company and making consistent, sensical decisions is difficult. The result is
that we developed a board of directors who are elected by the owners to
oversee the performance of the top employees at that company, and a complex of
system of accounting to communicate the financial position of the company
directly to investors.

I don't see how this project addresses the two main problems that corporations
attempt to solve: a lack of complete information about a company of reasonable
size, and a coordinating a large number of people who may not want to devote a
full-time job to overseeing the company.

I would be much more impressed if they described this as an open-source
investment algorithm or something like. Instead, it seems as if they're trying
to sell us on the benefits of a corporation to people who think "corporation"
means "big, evil company."

~~~
drcode
> There's a reason corporations developed as they did.

Well, the counterargument would be "Because they didn't have computers back
then and therefore couldn't develop alternative systems that are better but
are impractical to implement manually."

~~~
c3534l
Sure, but I don't see how this actually addresses the problems that
corporations solve.

~~~
drcode
I agree that question doesn't have a good answer yet, and is why I am not
participating in this experiment.

------
archgoon
> Currently only the privileged can found and fund new companies.

What? It's about $200 in Seattle to file to register a Limited Liability
Company. It's a stretch to call that 'only the privileged'.

~~~
drcode
I'm pretty convinced the vast majority of tech startups were started by
individuals who relied on their family supporting them through the initial
phases of their business.

~~~
reviseddamage
pretty convinced from what data? source please? thanks!

~~~
drcode
I don't know if anyone has collected any formal data, I'm basing it on my
personal experience. Certainly plenty of other people make the same
observation. [http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Why-do-so-few-
st...](http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Why-do-so-few-startup-
founders-grow-up-6794214.php)

------
nxzero
Anyone know how to legally assign a corporation over to an autonomous system?

~~~
Canada
The company Articles could require its directors to obey the direction of the
autonomous system. And if it doesn't the autonomous system could direct the
creation of another corporation with a mandate to sue the non compliant one.

~~~
lsseckman
realistic & efficient, good thought

~~~
Canada
The DAO isn't constrained to simply giving money to some individual and hoping
for the best. Its owners could decide to approve proposals that structure
deals in ways that mitigate risk, such as providing funds in tranches and
using custodians who are contracted to return unspent money in certain
conditions.

------
dragonbonheur
The first truly successful autonomous corporation will be a 419 scam. Even if
it is not on Ethereum.

------
zekevermillion
The concept of a decentralized organization is cool. The implementation in
DAOhub is dangerous to all participants. Both curators and contractors of
DAOhub projects risk violating US securities laws if they use the platform to
"crowdfund" projects. Participants, as is obvious, risk losing all their
contributions, paid into the pockets of "contractors" who may possess voting
control over project funds.

------
alttab
This could be interesting. What does this mean for hostile take overs though?

~~~
drcode
I think you're asking "what happens when someone captures 51% of the voting
shares?" \- This is actually the #1 problem with these types of systems, since
the majority could just vote to put 100% of the funds into their own bank
account.

The slockit-authored DAO in the article addresses this through two failsafes:

1\. Shareholders can vote to split the company in two at any point to
extricate their funds from majority control.

2\. There is an extra layer of "curators" (kind of a misnomer) who are trusted
members in the community who make sure payments aren't being funneled through
an intermediary to a majority shareholder.

Whether these safeguards will work remains to be seen.

~~~
tinkerrr
Anyone can 'split' the DAO at any point of time, which renders the 51% attack
moot. A 51% attack works only when the attacker can get more than what he puts
in.

Consider this obvious attack vector: Let's say today is the last crowdfunding
day, and the DAO has raised $150 million so far. A wealthy attacker can
immediately put another $150 million, effectively controlling 50% of the
voting for the DAO, and then vote to send all the money to his own Ethereum
address. This is perfectly possible, since this is all written in Ethereum
contracts anyway.

To avoid this, the rest of the people can 'fork' the DAO, effectively leaving
the attacker with 100% control over his share of 50%. The attacker gains
nothing. The other 'fork' can now continue on.

This forking described above is also going to be used (I think) when it comes
to funding new projects. I am sure some people will disagree with some
proposal, and they would fork the DAO away to not invest in that proposal even
though the majority agreed they would. They are free to do so.

~~~
drcode
> which renders the 51% attack moot.

Well, I'm not sure I'd use such absolute language. For one thing, people can
still perform a 51% attack and try to influence decisions covertly, without
triggering a split.

Also, the spectre of a 51% attack required for some major compromises to be
made in the DAO design- Having a company that can arbitrarily split at any
moment is likely to have a major impact on the future operations of the DAO.

~~~
tinkerrr
You're right, I shouldn't have used an absolute language. There is also the
issue of voter apathy so yes, a 51% attack might be worthy of a try for a
wealthy enough adversary.

In terms of the split, if the community broadly agrees that there is an
attack, then I don't see it having a long-term detriment. However, as you
said, if it is more 'stealthy' then it would be harder to detect and correct.

All that being said, I think there is a theoretical safety mechanism in place.
Whether that will work in real life or not, we'll wait and see. I am sure some
good lessons will come out of this in either case and the next generation of
applications can improve upon some shortcomings.

------
mangeletti
I think the idea is great, but only if the ETH can never be withdrawn without
the board's consent, much like funding a a corporation where you'd need to be
paid a distribution or something, etc. - you don't just withdraw your money
after the next VC enters the scene and drives the price up. If the ETH can be
withdrawn at any time, then this is no different than a publicly traded
stock... which is currently undergoing a pump-and...

As such, I've flagged the post, to avoid contributing to what's turning out to
be a free(?) viral marketing campaign.

Am I wrong about the "withdraw" part?

------
pre
So, a sort of Distributed Digital Democratic Dragon's Den then.

I suspect the contestants will make more money than the Distibuted-Dragons.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
It's a shockingly bad idea. I support the right of people to invest in
whatever they like, but VC has notoriously poor returns, decentralized VC run
by a committee that can only invest in other decentralized technologies seems
like a really, really bad idea. DAOs like Augur are actually interesting, even
if you think they'll never work. This just seems crazy.

~~~
pre
As long as nobody's putting in more than they intend to lose, it's at least a
very pretty way to fund a bunch of distributed app code being written I guess.

And if they all take what's left of their money out again, the code will still
exist. Presumably has to be mostly free-software if it's gonna run distributed
anyway.

------
joosters
At $120 million, it's the largest security bug bounty in history! Someone will
'claim' it soon...

------
1337biz
So how can I buy into this ponzi? I'd throw $50 at it and see what happens.
How do I do that?

~~~
humbledrone
Unless you have some ETH or BTC laying around, it's a bit of a hassle, but if
you go to [https://daohub.org/](https://daohub.org/) and click "Get DAO
Tokens" and then "Start Wizard" it will walk you through the process.

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carlob
Self driving company

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reddytowns
bitshares is an autonomous corporation that was created last year, developed
using its own coin. I don't see any advantages that "The DAO" has over it.

[https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dan/is-the-dao-going-to-
be-...](https://steemit.com/crypto-news/@dan/is-the-dao-going-to-be-doa)

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otempomores
If you gave ai seed funding and ago on the stock market.. Would that still be
a conpany when you leave?

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zanchey
> imagine that being able to accept payments from renters and unlock
> accordingly was a function of a lock itself

My word.

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nikolay
Another speculators' playground!

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tqi
Can someone point me to an sample smart contract?

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pweissbrod
so, it's like twitch but for business?

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findjinn
Time to go reread Daemon!

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oh_sigh
What's to stop someone from putting in $108M worth of etherium coins and then
voting to give all the money to that same person?

~~~
drcode
see the information above regarding "splits"

