[HN Gopher] D(?)A(?)O - Decentralization and Autonomy in "DAOs"
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D(?)A(?)O - Decentralization and Autonomy in "DAOs"
Author : bpierre
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-05-04 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (boardroom.mirror.xyz)
(TXT) w3m dump (boardroom.mirror.xyz)
| nullc wrote:
| Missing the point. These things are supposed to exist for pure
| marketing blitz, it doesn't matter if they're actually
| decenteralized or even outright fraudulent.
|
| It just has to help bring in enough new suckers to allow the
| recipients of ethereum's huge pre-mine (now valued at about one
| quarter trillion dollars) to exit more of their positions without
| collapsing the price.
| anotha1 wrote:
| I hope your wrong, for the sake of all the folks that invested
| in this.
| nocommentguy wrote:
| Thank you for looking out for my financial well-being,
| internet stranger
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Ethereum's pre-mine is worth more than half of ETH's market
| cap?
| yaa_minu wrote:
| Yes, 70% premine. Absolutely unethical
| nocommentguy wrote:
| Describing a public crowdsale as a premine is unethical.
| nullc wrote:
| Something doesn't stop being a premine once you sell it.
|
| Once they've finished selling their premine to the public
| would it be accurate to say it wasn't premined at all? Of
| course not. So it's not accurate to exclude the partially
| sold portion now.
|
| This massive understatement of their premine is a well
| known example of the dishonesty of ethereums operators
| and advocates.
| [deleted]
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| How does one learn this information? Do you have a link?
| [deleted]
| DennisP wrote:
| https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-
| sal...
| nullc wrote:
| "We are not blocking the US after all. Yay."
|
| I hope you can see why many people believed the US was
| prohibited.
| DennisP wrote:
| Yes, if they weren't paying attention.
|
| There was serious concern that the Ethereum Foundation
| would get in trouble with the SEC if they sold in the US.
| They delayed the crowdsale for several months while they
| consulted lawyers, who finally signed off on a way to
| keep them out of SEC trouble. There was a lot of
| discussion about this in the community.
|
| The presale was open for 42 days and very well known in
| the crypto community. Within the first few days it was
| clear that it was going to be one of the largest
| crowdsales to date, so it got regular media attention
| too.
| DennisP wrote:
| Only a small portion went to the early devs, and an equal
| amount to the nonprofit foundation. The rest of that 70%
| went to the presale, which was open to anyone and well-
| advertised. First-year bitcoiners had a way bigger
| advantage than ETH presale buyers.
|
| https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-
| sal...
| Tenoke wrote:
| In all fairness, a presale effectively means it went to
| them and then they sold it for money at the earliest
| price.
| DennisP wrote:
| The bitcoins that people paid went to the nonprofit
| foundation, not to individuals. The foundation paid
| people salaries in exchange for work, and is still
| funding Ethereum development today.
|
| I.e. it was a crowdsale raising funds for development,
| much like projects on Indiegogo except that it was a
| nonprofit instead of a business.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No one person controls more than 1% of ETH supply. Satoshi
| still owns 1M BTC, or 5% of all BTC and it's said that the
| Winklevoss twins control about 1% of BTC supply.
| nullc wrote:
| We don't actually know much about who controls the eth
| supply. Their pre-mine recipients were mostly anonymous and
| with the fast majority going to a few addresses. For all you
| know they recycled received funds back out in their crowd
| sale and bought multiple times.
|
| Participation was limited because US residents-- by far the
| largest population of cryptocurrency users-- were prohibited
| from participating (though of course some did). [Edit: A
| comment below claims otherwise, I don't actually see support
| for that in my source, and my own correspondence from the
| time states that it wasn't. I'm not sure if something changed
| around the launch, or if I'm somehow mistaken.]
|
| I dunno anything about winklevoss speculation, people often
| include funds held in custody as if they're owned by the
| custodian and reach weird conclusions. It's easy to list
| ethereum accounts that hold >=1% of all ethereum:
| 0x281055afc982d96fab65b3a49cac8b878184cb16,
| 0x6f46cf5569aefa1acc1009290c8e043747172d89,
| 0x90e63c3d53e0ea496845b7a03ec7548b70014a91,
| 0x53d284357ec70ce289d6d64134dfac8e511c8a3d,
| 0xab7c74abc0c4d48d1bdad5dcb26153fc8780f83e,
| 0xfe9e8709d3215310075d67e3ed32a380ccf451c8; while the largest
| Bitcoin address is under 1%. (Of course, parties can have
| multiple addresses, and as mentioned some parties hold coins
| for many other people)
|
| Moreover, regardless of the distribution Bitcoin had no
| premine: Everyone who has Bitcoin received it in a open
| process available to the whole world with no particular
| privilege other than knowing and caring about it when it was
| almost worthless before other people did. (well, I suppose
| except for those people who stole theirs :)).
|
| We don't actually know how many Bitcoin Satoshi-- if he's
| still alive-- owns: there are guesses based on assuming
| various earlier miners might have been him, but they're
| guesses. The 1M claim specifically is flat out false: it
| comes from counting up every coin mined during the first year
| that was still on spent at the time the figure started
| circulating a few years ago. It includes many coins known to
| have been mined by other people, including likely myself.
| nocommentguy wrote:
| Hi Greg,
|
| > For all you know they recycled received funds back out in
| their crowd sale and bought multiple times.
|
| Actually we know that they didn't and so do you, because
| the funds didn't leave the multisig until the sale ended
| nullc wrote:
| Turns out that money is fungible. The moment the
| crowdsale ended the CEO paid himself out a million
| dollars and left. ...
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| Do you have a source for this claim?
| DennisP wrote:
| U.S. residents were not prohibited. Here's the official
| announcement saying so:
|
| https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-
| sal...
| seigando wrote:
| Wow. that puts him in the top 30 richest people on
| earth...according to https://www.forbes.com/real-time-
| billionaires/#233e45c53d78 which i randomly googled.
| miohtama wrote:
| I did a thread on the evolution of cryptocurrencies today. I
| cover the term "premine." Your arguments do not make sense.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/138957146600232551...
| nocommentguy wrote:
| This user is Greg Maxwell, who works full-time on internet
| arguments on behalf of AXA ventures, the organization that
| deliberately crippled Bitcoin in an attempt to monetize
| sidechains. Since that failed, he has been relegated to simple
| FUD while his handlers accumulate ETH.
| nullc wrote:
| I've never spoken to anyone at AXA as far as I know, FWIW. Of
| course, the rest of your smearing is similarly nonsense.
| seibelj wrote:
| If you want to see a graph about why many are so bullish on
| Ethereum -
| https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_p...
|
| Blockchain is like the early days of the internet, probably like
| 1998 right now. There were competitors to all the major internet
| protocols - TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP, but once everyone standardized the
| web flourished.
|
| I believe Ethereum is like that today. There are competitors, and
| loud internet commenters are financially incentivized to
| criticize it and promote others, but if you look at where organic
| development and new projects are founded on, Ethereum is far and
| away the most popular. Others are not even close.
|
| Other chains who criticize the fees of Ethereum are essentially
| saying, "That place is so crowded, nobody goes there anymore."
| ETH is working on scaling, bit by bit, and now with Layer-2
| solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, Matic/Polygon, zkSync,
| Immutable, etc. etc. it's finally allowing scale in a significant
| way even before ETH2 is launched and takes over. Many chains pay
| projects to port their dapps to their own chain just to get some
| sort of third-party development, while the Ethereum Foundation
| primarily funds fundamental research and protocol improvements -
| Ethereum doesn't need to pay people to build on their chain.
|
| If an alternative blockchain's only reason to exist is "Like
| Ethereum - but with lower fees!" I would be leery. Some chains
| like Monero exist with a very defined purpose (privacy), and I
| see Bitcoin as something else entirely (store of value). But as
| the one-chain-to-rule-them-all, Ethereum would be your best bet.
| knowaveragejoe wrote:
| The graph is a few years out of date, fwiw.
| seibelj wrote:
| True - but as a longtime crypto pro the sentiment is still
| accurate IMO.
|
| See recent article https://decrypt.co/66740/who-are-the-
| fastest-growing-develop...
|
| > _There are more than 8,000 monthly active developers
| working on various cryptocurrency projects, according to the
| Developer Report, produced by Electric Capital, a venture
| firm, with some 80% of those developers starting in the last
| two years._
|
| > _The current leader in terms of people actively
| contributing to the development of a network is Ethereum,
| with approximately 2,300 average monthly developers - those
| who were active on a monthly basis, according to the
| Developer Report. The number actively working on Ethereum has
| grown by 215% in 3 years._
| Tenoke wrote:
| I don't see a reason to think that Ethereum is definitely like
| tcp/ip rather than e.g. like operating systems, social
| networks, browsers, programming languages etc.
|
| Ethereum is the best bet for the leader in the space (it
| already is) but some of the competitors bet on having different
| paradigms with different advantages rather than just lower fees
| e.g. ADA or SOL, and I don't see a reason for certainty that
| there'd be only 1 big success even if it's possible.
| mondoveneziano wrote:
| > Blockchain is like the early days of the internet, probably
| like 1998 right now. There were competitors to all the major
| internet protocols - TCP/IP, WWW, HTTP, but once everyone
| standardized the web flourished.
|
| This just hurts to read. I get the point you are trying to
| make, but spewing non-factual comparisons isn't helping. 1998
| is not "early Internet", more like 1970. By 1998, TCP/IP was
| entirely established; it was standardized in the 1980s. "WWW"
| is not a separate protocol, if you already list it with HTTP.
|
| As to the overall comparison of Blockchain with "the Internet"
| that is so popular: I don't see it. Up until the recent modern
| age, the Internet was always something where demand--and
| desired applications--were vastly over capacity and capability.
| From the moment computers were networked, more people wanted to
| do more things over those networks, and both infrastructure and
| underlying technology had to grow to barely keep up (or, in
| fact, could not keep up--many long desired applications only
| became feasible in the 2000s or so). This does not resemble the
| history of Blockchains.
|
| Equating something with the technology that completely changed
| the shape of the world is a _very_ tall order. Electricity
| qualifies, probably the printing press does.
| xur17 wrote:
| > From the moment computers were networked, more people
| wanted to do more things over those networks, and both
| infrastructure and underlying technology had to grow to
| barely keep up
|
| It's not exactly the same, but this rings at least somewhat
| similar to what Ethereum is going through - the demand is
| pretty clearly there (people are willing to pay very hefty
| transaction fees to use it), and scaling solutions are just
| starting to launch that are enabling entirely new features,
| which I imagine will unlock another wave of demand.
| jerry1979 wrote:
| >If an alternative blockchain's only reason to exist is "Like
| Ethereum - but with lower fees!" I would be leery.
|
| Do you think that taproot on the bitcoin chain could fill that
| role?
| seibelj wrote:
| The bitcoin culture is very religious and getting even minor
| changes into the protocol are very difficult. Bitcoin is not
| trying to be like Ethereum, no one speaks for bitcoin, and
| everyone can have their own opinion on what it is. The fact
| it takes so long to make changes is a good thing from my
| perspective - the risk to the entire crypto space if BTC were
| to have a serious problem is catastrophic, so slow-and-steady
| is a smart tactic.
|
| For me, bitcoin is a store of value, like digital gold. I
| don't purchase BTC for the same reasons I purchase ETH.
|
| Taproot will enable better privacy on bitcoin and more
| efficient transactions. It will not enable an EVM-like smart
| contract system.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Remember that there are lots of reasons to prefer OSI over
| TCP/IP, it's just that TCP/IP focused on interoperability and
| being useful.
| dboreham wrote:
| Not so much. OSI actually sucked. You had to pay to read
| the specs. Their stream protocol (CLNS) was a straight copy
| of TCP. There was no defined API (see: BSD Sockets). The
| layers were arbitrary, following Conway's Law vs the number
| of committees in the ISO organization. In addition as you
| note there was no interop and production deployment was
| rare.
| dsr_ wrote:
| All of those are reasons to prefer OSI! Assuming you were
| a high-ranking bureaucrat in a national postal-telegraph-
| telephone organization.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| This article is a good overview of DAOs but spends a lot of time
| on terminology and taxonomy, without necessarily painting a clear
| picture to someone not familiar with DAOs as to how they operate
| in the wild today and perhaps how they will in the future. I
| continue to believe that DAOs are one of the most disruptive
| technologies of the 21st century. The ability to coordinate
| humans and capital in a decentralized way is powerful and will be
| used for everything from for-profit initiatives to non-profit
| foundations. The pluggable, open-source nature of these systems
| means that DAO treasury management and governance will become
| more and more sophisticated with time. Eventually, many of us are
| going to end up taking jobs working for DAOs.
| anotha1 wrote:
| > most disruptive technologies of the 21st century.
|
| I couldn't agree more.
|
| Though, as far as this article goes, I was looking for more of
| a playbook than high-level market analysis.
| highfrequency wrote:
| What is the argument? Why would we expect a version of Apple
| with decentralized governance to outperform the current Apple?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I don't know why you would pick Apple. They are a hardware
| company. I'm not saying that the introduction of DAOs will be
| the death of all corporations. I could make a much stronger
| argument for a decentralized social network coordinated by a
| DAO, so I would make the case for a DAO-controlled Twitter,
| Reddit, or Facebook (which are software businesses). That's
| not to say that DAOs couldn't be used for a more physical
| business but software is certainly a more natural fit.
| Uniswap, for example, which is a decentralized version of
| Coinbase or NYSE, has something like 7 or 8 employees, is
| trading $2B a day in value, and has $8.5B in liquidity
| available for exchange. This is for a young startup less than
| 2 years old run entirely on smart contracts. Not bad.
|
| https://info.uniswap.org/home https://cryptofees.info/
| 21eleven wrote:
| Because the governance structures of DAOs will be open source
| smart contracts they will be, in theory, easier to iterate
| upon and improve.
| tedunangst wrote:
| The DAO Apple would vote to make iPhones with replaceable
| batteries, which as we all know, is what the market actually
| wants.
| casi18 wrote:
| It is an interesting question, but what would outperforming
| Apple look like? and on what timescale?
|
| Is it being more profitable? Having happier workers? Making
| the sleekest shiny things? And are we thinking for the next
| year or the next hundred years?
|
| Decentralized organisations seem (to me) to be prioritising
| resilience over efficiency. This seems like a long game. But
| perhaps shared ownership and pseudonymous employment will
| appeal to people. And perhaps sourcing workers anywhere in
| the world will lead to quick contacts building and fast
| deployment too. Or it could get caught up in bureaucracy, but
| then we can just fork the daos and vampire attack them!
|
| There is a lot a vague murkyness in national law as to who is
| responsible/where is tax payed/what is it, but the idea of
| being able to click a button and i have a borderless
| organisation with voting systems and memberships all ready to
| go to anyone who wants to join in is pretty exciting. Think
| of the crazy possibilities of collisions happening, people to
| meet, ideas to be generated. If we increase the speed at
| which people, ideas, and capital can come together that can
| be explosive (and that could be good or bad). We can have
| groups of strangers round the world seeding startups of
| anonymous teenagers writing code after school, before the
| university lecturers and vcs ever get to them. Thats radical
| and revolutionary. DAOs are the most exciting thing going in
| crypto imo.
| miketery wrote:
| I'd say you could gain some efficiencies. I think the same
| governance structure that Apple has can be implemented for
| the most part in a DOA (e.g. shareholder voting, board
| assignments, CEO hiring, dividend distributions). The hard
| part is interfacing with physical world legal system. But
| even then the DAO can agree to accept jurisdiction X. Then we
| can do taxation and accounting in the clear. Obviously far
| out. But not impossible.
| lottin wrote:
| So, the company would have the same governance structure,
| only more efficient? How exactly it would be more
| efficient, you don't say.
| miketery wrote:
| Voting, and dividend distribution today requires
| intermediaries (e.g. broker). Those can be direct.
| miohtama wrote:
| I did a thread on the history of cryptocurrencies today. It
| explains the history of DAOs, their benefits and some future
| aspects we are likely to see:
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/moo9000/status/138957146600232551...
| wyager wrote:
| If the DAO has to plug back into existing legal/technical
| infrastructure (which includes almost everything outside of a
| few narrow cases like token market makers), there's not really
| any meaningful improvement from using a DAO over a traditional
| legal structure.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Of course there is. First of all, these systems will cause
| legal systems to change over time to adapt to their
| existence. Second of all, they're borderless, open,
| permissionless, pluggable systems for the coordination of
| human creativity and capital. There are thousands of ways to
| take advantage of that that far exceed what you can do with a
| Delaware C-Corp.
| wyager wrote:
| > borderless, open, permissionless
|
| None of this matters if the actual real-world resources of
| a DAO are under the legislative power of a government. The
| DAO is no better off than a normal corporation with a
| charter.
| atweiden wrote:
| The worst part about reading these articles is how you can
| immediately tell they're an advertorial for Ethereum. You're one
| sentence into it, and you can already tell the target market is
| your disposable income. It makes you feel hustled. Like the
| internet equivalent of a one-room shop in a third world country.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I lost a lot of faith in DAO and the whole code as contract when
| the proponents abandoned it as soon as they lost substantial
| money. When someone found a way to make a lot of money from the
| DAO contract, instead of congratulating them for using the letter
| of the contract to make money, the owners of the DAO suddenly
| started calling it theft and hacking and changed the protocol to
| make recover their money.
|
| Basically, DAOs are just a way of trading a well established
| legal system to settle disputes for one where whoever controls
| the protocols settles disputes in their favor.
| casi18 wrote:
| The blockchain always runs under social consensus. It is here
| for people not machines. Code isnt law, never has been, never
| will be. Because it would be insane to live in that world.
|
| When bitcoin accidentally overflowed and created 184billion
| bitcoin, it was forked away a few hours later because that
| isn't what the majority agreed upon. Same with ethereum, the
| majority decided something and it becomes the agreed state, as
| it does with every block. Its strange we still have to explain
| this 5 years later.
| casi18 wrote:
| I really enjoyed DaoHaus who make it easy to spin up a moloch dao
| in a few clicks -> https://app.daohaus.club/summon
|
| and cheap to run on xdai (until rollups arrive then we can move
| there and get eth security too!)
|
| Also would recommend this article on dao relations too:
| https://medium.com/primedao/conceptual-models-for-dao2dao-re...
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