Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 213 posts

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

#151

Post by TD-Linux »

drcode wrote: post #4
alttab wrote: post #3

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

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…

>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.

If there are humans involved that can exercise this level of control over The DAO, is it really autonomous?

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

#152

Post by homogeneous »

cloudjacker wrote: post #145
vkou wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops non-blockchain code from making purchases, hiring people, etc? Just because it uses a third party (A bank account) to store value doesn't make my WidgetFactoryFactory AI any less of an autonomous corporation.

That entirely depends on if we are talking about this DAO or DAOs in general. A DAO focused on gaining revenue doesn't need to hire people to achieve that. There a decentralized asset exchanges where other companies have raised capital. A DAO could access those to buy shares completely programmatically, for example. It could trade oil futures till eternity if it wanted. It could create a contract for an agent at a pa…

How does the DOA know that the robot factory in Shenzen was built successfully and to specification?

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

#154

Post by hythloday »

kuschku wrote: post #72
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…

> 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.

In the UK, both The Co-operative and John Lewis companies are cooperatives and account for over 10% of the supermarket industry. Various building societies are very similar, and the largest has 10-20% of the banking market (depending on how you measure it).

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

#155

Post by dharma1 »

darawk wrote: post #87
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…

The DAO will probably end up being more like a hedge fund / VC firm than a normal corporation. It will more likely invest in other companies than try to execute its own ideas. At least, that is my hope for it, and I think that is the path that makes the most sense. We will see what the crowd decides.

I think this is how it will pan out, too.

However, I keep wondering what kind of company would raise funding from DAO? One that can't from anywhere else?

I guess it will be companies tied into the yet to be established ETH ecosystem, that are seen too risky by trad VCs. That will help to kickstart the creation of some ETH companies, but still doesn't solve the general user adoption of ETH, beyond speculators.

Will be interesting to see where the killer use cases are.

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

#156

Post by cloudjacker »

homogeneous wrote: post #152
cloudjacker wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That entirely depends on if we are talking about this DAO or DAOs in general. A DAO focused on gaining revenue doesn't need to hire people to achieve that. There a decentralized asset exchanges where other companies have raised capital. A DAO could access those to buy shares completely programmatically, for example. It could trade oil futures till eternity if it wanted. It could create a contract for an agent at a pa…

How does the DOA know that the robot factory in Shenzen was built successfully and to specification?

Presumably when new robots start executing based on the signature of the smart contract and conducting tasks in line with the contract. The main goal would be the new machines, not necessarily the means to the end.

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

#158

Post by kuschku »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #128
kuschku wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm vaguely familiar with the co-op model through organic co-op grocery stores. I actually like the notion of grocery stores being run this way, but members participate in a grocery co-op primarily so they can get less expensive organic groceries and even have a say in what the co-op carries. Really it's just buying in bulk with strangers. But then I look at a corporation where members are ultimately voting on their…

Well, I am member of a cooperative grocery store chain, which has 10k employees and an annual income of about a billion.

A regional chain, not national or international, but sizeable.

And it works, mostly because people aren’t members to become rich.

A few years ago the sibling chains in other states (which were organized in the same model) fused into one public corporation, quickly focused on profits, and ended up with corruption, and bankruptcy.

So, we’re not going to focus too much on profit anytime soon.

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

#159

Post by roywiggins »

mathattack wrote: post #33
DigitalJack wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ownership chain also has to ultimately go back to people.

Not always:

> In February 2004, for example, Formations House created three companies: Corporate Nominees, Legal Nominees, and Professional Nominees. The second company owns the other two, while itself being owned by the first company. The third company is secretary for the other two, while its own secretary is the first company. The second company is director of the other two, while its own director is the first company. These three companies then became directors, secretaries and shareholders of other structures, in an increasingly baffling multidimensional web of crisscrossing lines of control. If you looked for the companies’ real owners, the most you could eventually discover was that the original three all owned, controlled and managed each other.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/19/offshore-ce...

This was fixed in law in 2008 in the UK, but for all I know there are jurisdictions that allow these sorts of shenanigans still.

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

#160

Post by vectorpush »

rboyd wrote: post #144
will_brown wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This changed in July 2015, when the ethereum network went live. I know the term exists and I know people are operating as though it is a thing. But if you and I enter a contract whether it is a written agreement or a smart contract on Ethereum network, that has no more or less bearing on the legal enforcement in the event of a breach. In either case the non-breaching party must file suit for the breach and there mus…

>But if you and I enter a contract whether it is a written agreement or a smart contract on Ethereum network, that has no more or less bearing on the legal enforcement in the event of a breach. These contracts are enforced by math. Breaking them isn't a possibility. Whether or not The DAO works out or is a scam, I think it's a sign of things to come. We're in the beginning stages of seeing our traditional corporation…

> These contracts are enforced by math. Breaking them isn't a possibility.

Math cannot "enforce" a contract, it can't even understand the terms of the agreement, much less enforce it.

> We're in the beginning stages of seeing our traditional corporations and nation states morphing into something new and barely recognizable.

This kind of hyperbolic nonsense strains credulity.

Post reply on HN