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Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

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Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#101

Post by drcode »

will_brown wrote: post #98
drcode wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.)

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 tic…

> 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.

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#102

Post by [deleted] »

hugozap wrote: post #58
Bjorkbat wrote: post #44

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…

If you vote a proposal is because you agree with it and you can't blame someone else. There's more flexibility than traditional structures with concepts like "splits" where if you don't agree with a proposal you can opt to not participate. It's new ground , has new concepts and it's still evolving. Really interesting stuff.

[deleted]

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#104

Post by a3camero »

joshuaheard wrote: post #14

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.

They have put hardly any of the paperwork associated with companies on the blockchain. Here's my brief comparison between The DAO and some of the features of regular corporations: http://www.cameronhuff.com/blog/slock-it-dao-paper/index.htm....

This is more like a group of people pooling their money to invest. A savings club. The contract also gives them the right to withdraw their money if they don't like the direction it's headed.

Furthermore it's not a corporation. A "corporation" requires complying with a number of jurisdiction-specific rules (such as filing fees and certain paperwork). If you don't complete the steps, you generally don't have a corporation. In some places you would have a partnership or some other structure that's different from just a group of individuals. The laws differ by jurisdiction.

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#105

Post by a3camero »

drcode wrote: post #7

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…

Although the "proposals" themselves are Ethereum "contracts" (programs), the thing that the money goes towards doesn't have to be a program.

The most popular proposal for The DAO to invest in is actually a German corporation called Slock.it UG: https://www.online-handelsregister.de/handelsregisterauszug/....

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#106

Post by drcode »

dandelany wrote: post #34
drcode wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, it's a bit more like saying a car can't be autonomous because it still has people telling it where to go.

Agreed, your analogy is even better.

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#107

Post by natosaichek »

c3534l wrote: post #78

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 fi…

So I might be reading into it too much, but it seems to me that part 1 (a lack of complete information about a company of reasonable size) Is basically totally solved by this system. The assets are completely documented on a massive publicly distributed system. The procedures for making decisions are similarly well documented. Basically everything you'd want to know about the [entity] is totally freely available. It's not hard to write some frontend to query all the data from the blockchain and keep an up-to-the minute accurate accounting of the resources of the [entity]

Now the second part I can't vouch for - coordinating a large number of people is hard. But the code for the system is available for inspection. If someone thinks they can come up with a way to align incentives and such so that people cooperate better in the system (quadratic instead of linear voting? vote delegation? temporary dictatorships?) then (I think?) they can submit those as amendments to the system and improve it. I'm really guessing here as I haven't looked into it in that much detail.

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#108

Post by cloudjacker »

street wrote: post #36

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…

Ethereum's daily volume is around $22 million, and thats just on public exchanges.

So you could sell $120 million in Ether in 4-5 days also using OTC exchanges.

I've had worse liquidity on penny stocks and the options market, so you'll have to drop the meme. Cryptocurrencies are liquid enough and they continue to attract more and more liquidity.

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#109

Post by gst »

will_brown wrote: post #50

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, gu…

You're referencing US law here, but it looks like most of the people involved in the DAO are neither US citizens nor US residents. Slock.it is a German company and dao.link will be incorporated in Switzerland.

Re: Autonomous corporation “The DAO” has become the biggest crowdfunded project

#110

Post by benjaminmbrown »

street wrote: post #71
drcode wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

It actually did go down 50% from $15ish to $6ish and recovered. Early adopters trying to get rich = all early stage investing so what's your point?
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