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

191–200 of 213 posts

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

#191

Post by rboyd »

will_brown wrote: post #187
rboyd wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a hard example consider the typical crowdfunding protocol. The contract (in english) is roughly: if this campaign hits goal before a deadline passes, all the backers pledge their money; or if the deadline comes before hitting the goal the money is returned to backers. In today's world we rely on kickstarter programs or staff, credit cards and banking. Codified using a smart contract these rules can be executed aut…

>if this campaign hits goal before a deadline passes, all the backers pledge their money; or if the deadline comes before hitting the goal the money is returned to backers. Let's pretend the campaign hits its goal and gets all the funding. There are still a number of breaches that can occur after the fact at which point the contract/math/programming is not going to be able to enforce anything one way or the other. Fo…

You bring up a few interesting points.

In my example there wouldn't be any room for a CC chargeback because we can assume all of the transactions are denoted in ETH itself. This is one of the qualities that enable the smart contracts to transact currency automatically. The programming language used to codify the smart contracts includes primitives to transact ETH.

The possibility of a minor transacting is interesting and I know there has been some discussion on implementing an identity framework on Ethereum (https://github.com/tradle/about/wiki/Identity-on-Ethereum). One can imagine then a contract which further limits participants by age.

I think you'll find though that many early adopter/enthusiasts don't care about age or jurisdiction. It's not obvious why US law should apply.

As a thought experiment though, I should ask about the properties which US courts hold that enable them to enforce contracts. Ultimately doesn't it come down to a court order, which if ignored ends in garnishment, imprisonment, or worse?

In theory, in a blockchain-enabled contract world, garnishments would either no longer be necessary or could automatically be enforced.

At the scary extreme you could even imagine a future where security drones owned by the "Sovereign State of Etheria" which fly around enforcing smart contracts with hunt/capture/kill orders. Slock.it is the most popular example bridging the real world/IoT with a DAO. And would this really be altogether different from how contracts are enforced manually in egregious cases?

I'm not stating any of this is good or bad, I'm just illustrating what is possible now and imagining what is conceivably possible in the future. I don't have a position in Ethereum (never owned any) nor The DAO, and I'm certainly not "marketing smart contracts". But you seem to insist that none of this is possible for some reason, and from what I can tell it certainly is.

If my interpretation of anything I've read about the technology is wrong though, I'd appreciate the corrections.

To find some common ground we should be able to agree on: how many contracts end up in litigation because one or both parties misinterpret the language of the agreement? Wouldn't it be desirable if there was a system that left no room for misinterpretation?

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

#192

Post by lazaroclapp »

vectorpush wrote: post #186
rboyd wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart contracts are enforced programmatically, that's kind of the point. The future is always hard to believe until it's here. You can say you disagree and state why. But please don't call me a gullible idiot and then try to dress it up in fancy vocabulary. This kind of reply seems common in your comment history, like you're just generally angry around blockchain threads for some reason.

> Smart contracts are enforced programmatically, that's kind of the point. That is a tautological statement. Smart contracts are not "enforced" programmatically in any sense of the word that is distinct from all other pieces of software since the rules of all programs are "enforced programmatically" by definition. "These contracts are enforced by math" is a meaningless platitude. > But please don't call me a gullible…

> "These contracts are enforced by math" is a meaningless platitude.

Not quite. For example, assuming you accept cryptocurrencies have an actual monetary value, now I can pay any amount of money I want to a "smart contract" that will then proceed to pay that money to whomever solves a mathematical problem of interest to me (for example, I could give it to someone who gives me the cheapest route to visit 50 cities of my choosing, given the point to point cost). Once the contract is defined and created, the following is true: a) I no longer can choose not to pay, even if I change my mind, b) Only someone who solves the problem I posed will be able to claim that payment, and c) They will be able to cash in the prize without ever needing to reveal their identity to me.

Now there is two potential problems with this. First, it might very well be that the kind of "contracts" we care about for running organizations are beyond what can be expressed and enforced by smart-contracts (specially "enforced" in the sense of the example above, versus simply "reported"). Second, the above guarantees hold only as long as the underlying network holds, and that is a social system in the final degree, made of people who can as a whole destroy or subvert it. However, regarding the not-turtles-all-the-way-down argument about the cryptocurrency networks being social systems in the end, well... so is the Internet, the international trade system, the national governments, etc. Smart-contracts are not magic, but they are a different way of organizing resources and bootstrapping trust between parties. Will they eliminate the need for governments and traditional corporations? Probably not. Some people said that about the internet too, and they were, in the short to medium term at least, wrong. But if it has even 1% of the impact in the world the Internet had, well...

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

#193

Post by 6nf »

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…

If you pay a contractor to do something AFK and they take the money and run, how do you enforce the contract?

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

#194

Post by JumpCrisscross »

drcode wrote: post #46
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…

> 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 [sic] you tried to sell all Apple stock in a single day it would also sell at well below market rate

You are describing a takeover. These commonly come with control premiums [1], not discounts.

Liquidity does not proceed across time and size preferences continuously, or even monotonously. Between a small block sold in minutes and an entire company sold in months, the time component of the liquidity surface tends to dominate the size component.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_premium

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

#196

Post by WeaselNo7 »

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?

It could hire human agents to inspect and confirm. I guess you could treat the DAO as an exceptional manager who has no domain knowledge at all, but knows to delegate to people with domain knowledge.

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

#197

Post by notahacker »

rboyd wrote: post #191
will_brown wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if this campaign hits goal before a deadline passes, all the backers pledge their money; or if the deadline comes before hitting the goal the money is returned to backers. Let's pretend the campaign hits its goal and gets all the funding. There are still a number of breaches that can occur after the fact at which point the contract/math/programming is not going to be able to enforce anything one way or the other. Fo…

You bring up a few interesting points. In my example there wouldn't be any room for a CC chargeback because we can assume all of the transactions are denoted in ETH itself. This is one of the qualities that enable the smart contracts to transact currency automatically. The programming language used to codify the smart contracts includes primitives to transact ETH. The possibility of a minor transacting is interesting…

I think the point the user was making is that most of the language of the agreement is not readily convertible to code for most conceivable agreements (including "deliver goods that are a good faith attempt to produce what was promised"; obviously you can code for "send something by $DATE" or "purchase X units of stock Y")

What is being automated is the least risky parts of a crowdfunding arrangement (counterparty risk on the part of the crowdfunding company and the bank its client accounts are held with). But the ability of humans to override payments (e.g. if the card was stolen, or the fundraising campaign is judged to be a scam) is a risk mitigation feature rather than a bug of a real world payment system. Guaranteeing one side of a contract is honoured instantly, efficiently and anonymously can actually increase the likelihood of contracts not being honoured in many real world use cases.

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

#199

Post by beachstartup »

mfringel wrote: post #37
beachstartup wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"found" means to do the paperwork and setup a bank account. that's it. there's no deeper meaning. "fund" just means putting some money into a bank account for it. you could fund a company with a dollar (and many people do, for symbolic reasons).

You have just enumerated the "passing resemblance" noted above. Connotations matter.

i've done it multiple times.

believe me when i tell you a huge, huge number of wantrapreneurs never even get around to organizing an LLC and opening a bank account.

want to know why? it takes at least 10 hours of work and when faced with doing 10 hours of actual fucking work, most people won't.

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

#200

Post by homogeneous »

WeaselNo7 wrote: post #196
homogeneous wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It could hire human agents to inspect and confirm. I guess you could treat the DAO as an exceptional manager who has no domain knowledge at all, but knows to delegate to people with domain knowledge.

What if the human employees lie, are incompetent, or collude with the subject of their inspection in exchange for part of the pay out?
Post reply on HN