A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO

by Dino Mark, Vlad Zamfir, and Emin Gün Sirer

We just released the first draft of a research paper that analyzed The DAO and its voting mechanism. This paper identifies problems with The DAO's mechanism design that incentivize investors to behave strategically; that is, at odds with truthful voting on their preferences. We then outline potential attacks against The DAO made possible by these behaviors.

In particular, we have identified seven causes for concern that can cause DAO participants to engage in strategic behaviors. Some of these behaviors can cause honest DAO investors to have their investments hijacked or committed to proposals against their interest and intent.

These concerns motivate a moratorium on funding proposals to prevent losses due to poor mechanism design. A moratorium would give The DAO time to make critical security upgrades. We encourage the community to adopt a moratorium until The DAO can be updated.

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/05/27/dao-call-for-moratorium/