The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever • Hacker News Board

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#71

Post by killerstorm » Mon, May 16, 2016, 8:37 AM UTC

ddxv wrote: post #34

I clicked, read the webpage, went back to HN for an explanation in the comments. Unfortunately there just other human beings as confused as I am. So I googled it and found this: “decentralized autonomous organizations” (DAOs) https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-... The way I understand it, it is for building an organization that is somehow "autonomous" and decentralized. I put the autonomous i…

Autonomous means that it is able to act on its own.

E.g. suppose that at some point organization members decide that it should pay do monthly payments to some address to pay for certain work. A DAO noted this decision and started to execute it.

At a later point members might change their mind, they no longer want this payments to be made. But DAO will keep making them if there is no way for members to cancel this execution.

Thus DAO members do not have a complete control over the thing. It is autonomous.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#72

Post by m0se » Mon, May 16, 2016, 8:44 AM UTC

kang wrote: post #57

splintercell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nothing but an investment medium on the blockchain (Ethereum specifically). The Ethereum community is very interested in seeing great things being built on its platform, so someone came up with this idea to create a blockchain app which allows it's members to direct funds towards building of other blockchain apps.

Interestingly, that someone is the company being funded (slock.it).

nop, there is no certainty that any company (including slock.it) will get any money from the DAO. Slock.it (like everyone else) can submit a proposal for a well defined project to the DAO and the DAO Token holder (people who put the money in the DAO) will vote on that proposal. If the don't see any benefit for the DAO/them-self in a proposal they will not vote for it and it won't get funded.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#73

Post by m0se » Mon, May 16, 2016, 9:15 AM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #23

street wrote: post #10

[deleted]

Thanks for the explanation. Sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me. Is there any independent site that verifies how much funding they've already got?

Yes, there are several independent sites where you can find all the information needed to verify. Here you can check how much Ether (ETH) was raised on two different block explorers (both not affiliated with the DAO): http://etherscan.io/address/0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3... https://etherchain.org/account/0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c7...

..and to convert that to USD or whatever you can even use https://duckduckgo.com/?q=1+ETH+in+USD&ia=cryptocurrency or check the price directly at one of the exchanges that trades ETH/USD, like https://www.kraken.com/charts.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#74

Post by cordite » Mon, May 16, 2016, 12:29 PM UTC

I got way more information out of the title of the white paper than the twenty minutes I spent scanning this website. Automated governance is what I needed to get a handle on what this is.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#75

Post by splintercell » Mon, May 16, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

kang wrote: post #56

splintercell wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DAO is essentially a 'Smart Contract' (read: a computer program which runs over the blockchain) between the willing investors to collectively fund various projects (in exchange of a certain return). People are investing in this because they want to participate in the future blockchain/non-blockchain projects which will seek funding from the DAO. Others can submit proposals to this smart contract, and community ca…

There are non-smartContract program that run on blockchain. That is not what a smart contract is.

Your criticism is like if someone said "Using cryptography you can securely store any information you don't want anyone else but yourself to see", and you criticize it by saying "You can also store information you want others to see using cryptography".

That said, technically bitcoin is a smart contract too, a Smart Contract for a virtual currency.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#76

Post by splintercell » Mon, May 16, 2016, 2:03 PM UTC

m0se wrote: post #72

kang wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, that someone is the company being funded (slock.it).

nop, there is no certainty that any company (including slock.it) will get any money from the DAO. Slock.it (like everyone else) can submit a proposal for a well defined project to the DAO and the DAO Token holder (people who put the money in the DAO) will vote on that proposal. If the don't see any benefit for the DAO/them-self in a proposal they will not vote for it and it won't get funded.

It may sound a cruel thing to say, but I would not have funded a Slock.It-only crowdsale. I am sure there are quite a few people who think similarly.

I'd rather the talented team behind slock.it work on the DAO full time than on slock.it.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#77

Post by tonyswish » Mon, May 16, 2016, 3:10 PM UTC

chamza wrote: post #44

I agree that the website is terrible. Over the past few weeks I've dug deep into it and think it is a really awesome experiment, although a very risky 'investment'. I will attempt to explain it below: The DAO is a group of people putting together their money to manage it and make more. This is done through proposals and members voting on passing them. Based on the proposals that are accepted, the DAO can be anything…

I agree completely.

I'm a part of a different project on Ethereum (Augur) and we went out of our way to simplify everything so that anyone, regardless of sophistication can understand. We had the first big crowdsale on the platform and did quite well in a very bear market, I credit much of that to simplifying the idea as much as possible.

This is a huge problem with Ethereum projects as there are so many cool ideas but they are so developer-centric that they lose anyone with unnecessary big words and weird language.

With all that said, the DAO seems to be a very cool project and has found a huge level of success with this major flaw, which says something. I just wonder what they could be doing if the message was something that could be figured out by a newbie in under 3 minutes.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#78

Post by greenrd » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:08 PM UTC

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #37

have_faith wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a couple pages in and gave up.

It feels like the Dharma Initiative or whatever the made up company on Lost was called. The web pages are crazily confused. My first thought was this is Spectre :-) I think what it is supposed to be is a way to make investments in a kind of non-centralized VC fund, and you buy money by transferring bitcoins or ether into dao token. Then a central committee figures out a list of ventures to fund. The members get propo…

Huh? Laws operate within countries. You can't file (or even defend against) lawsuits in a country without being "present" in that country.

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#79

Post by greenrd » Mon, May 16, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

killerstorm wrote: post #71

ddxv wrote: post #34

I clicked, read the webpage, went back to HN for an explanation in the comments. Unfortunately there just other human beings as confused as I am. So I googled it and found this: “decentralized autonomous organizations” (DAOs) https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-... The way I understand it, it is for building an organization that is somehow "autonomous" and decentralized. I put the autonomous i…

Autonomous means that it is able to act on its own. E.g. suppose that at some point organization members decide that it should pay do monthly payments to some address to pay for certain work. A DAO noted this decision and started to execute it. At a later point members might change their mind, they no longer want this payments to be made. But DAO will keep making them if there is no way for members to cancel this exe…

That's a hypothetical though, I'm guessing. Does The DAO actually use uncancellable payments, and if so, what for?

Re: The DAO close to $100m in funding. Soon to be the largest crowdfunding ever

#80

Post by NotSammyHagar » Tue, May 17, 2016, 5:33 AM UTC

greenrd wrote: post #78

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like the Dharma Initiative or whatever the made up company on Lost was called. The web pages are crazily confused. My first thought was this is Spectre :-) I think what it is supposed to be is a way to make investments in a kind of non-centralized VC fund, and you buy money by transferring bitcoins or ether into dao token. Then a central committee figures out a list of ventures to fund. The members get propo…

Huh? Laws operate within countries. You can't file (or even defend against) lawsuits in a country without being "present" in that country.

So open a fako office in a country (like they do for filing patent claims in west Texas) and then file the lawsuit. It's not like big companies can't make this work. And lawyers can make it work.