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RE: Nerd Money Isn't Just For Nerds Anymore
The whole ether DAO thing has put me off DAOs for the foreseeable future. Never say never though.
The whole ether DAO thing has put me off DAOs for the foreseeable future. Never say never though.
Dash was the first DAO, before "The DAO" even existed, got hyped and then collapsed. Dash has been quietly doing DAO the right way
The concept of a DAO is great. It's just that the devil is in the details, as they say. The Ethereum DAO was deeply flawed on a number of levels, but I wouldn't let that put you off DAOs in general. I too got caught up in that unfortunate experience, I look at it as lessons learned and the industry as a whole is stronger for having gone through that painful experience. The Dash DAO looks interesting although I'm not investing in it - simply too much money is required to get a masternode these days. Digix looks promising, if they ever manage to actually release their governance contracts.
If you want to sink your teeth into something really exciting, you might want to revisit the VIVA project masterminded by @williambanks. The crownholders in that project form a DAO of sorts, and VIVA has been building up a lot of momentum lately with their ICO approaching. The just released whitepaper is worth a read.
I think this is similar to saying "The South Sea Company has put me off companies". Companies were a relatively new concept at the time, with the East India Company pioneering it on a massive scale. A high profile disaster shouldn't undermine the whole concept. It would be like giving up on shipping after the Titanic disaster.
Incidentally, Steem and Bitshares are DAO's as well. So is Bitcoin, it just doesn't have as well formalized governance.
Maybe.
Steem is not a DAO as I understand it and I don't know enough about Bitshares to comment.
Perhaps you have a narrower criteria for 'organization' than I do, but I definitely consider Steem to fit it. It has a decision making process over a budget, a governance model, it facilitates/funds its own objectives such as development and marketing, etc. It doesn't have a top-down hierarchical structure but that's a positive aspect of DAO's.
Perhaps but I don't see how the decision making is decentralised or autonomous in any way.
It is controlled from the top down by Steemit Inc with occasional input from the community.
If you use the very loose definition of voting on content and electing witnesses then you might think of it that way but I think part of the idea of a DAO is that there is also decentralisation of governance in the same way.
I think it is at best a kind of semi-DAO.
Voting on content = a budgeting mechanism. It's currently mostly used for supporting blog posts, but it's also used to support developers like good-karma developing eSteem, and marketing initiatives such as steemdrive. In both cases a vote from Steemit Inc users helps, but it's not necessary.
I'm not sure what aspect of governance you're saying is centralized? The development of the protocol?
Possibly but I'm talking about the development of Steem and the direction it takes - by the whitepaper definition (in my opinion) at least it does not meet the criteria. I suppose ultimately it depends on what you consider the elements of a DAO to be.
See above - I'm not sure how much plainer I can make it. I'm not against the current structure - I think it makes sense at the current size and level of development but I think calling it a DAO is mislabelling it.
Further the stigma attached to DAOs as a result of last year is something I would rather avoid too.
The governance mechanism for this exists, but the Steemit Inc accounts simply has a stake large enough that it doesn't need to involve many smaller stakeholders in the process to make decisions. This is similar to the way a majority party doesn't have to involve other parties in a government. Although even with their majority stake, they still had trouble getting their agenda through on multiple occasions.
As their stake diminishes they will have to involve more people in this process. But I do think we should be doing more things along the lines of stakeholder polls on protocol upgrades, encouraging users to see themselves as stakeholders and be involved in the process.
I agree. I think it is tricky though.
One of the problems with the big DAO last year was that having so many people involved and decentralising decisions to such a great degree lead to a kind of paralysis.
Any DAOs that follow that kind of model will need to create mechanisms to get round that I think.
In some situations having an organisation or a set of people that have the final say can expedite matters and may be more efficient - that is particularly important when a crisis or emergency occurs.
I think over time Steem/Steemit will find the right balance.
Good point 👍
What do you mean, the Ethereum DAO? Why?
I don't understand your question.