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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> I guess what I'm saying is that Uber and the DAO both operate in a legal grey zone-

What is required to be a corporation is not really a legal gray zone. The DAO doesn't operate in a legal gray zone as to that characterization, its just flat inaccurate.

Insofar as the DAO is a mechanism for constructing contracts between actual legal persons (either natural persons or corporations), it may operate in a poorly-tested area as to whether valid contracts are formed, how those contracts are interpreted and what law they are governed by, and whether and to what extent they are enforceable, true.

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I hear you, but I don't think I've ever used the word "corporation" in this forum or claimed that the DAO is a corporation, or directly disputed any claim made by another comment as to whether the DAO is or isn't a corporation.

Whether or not the DAO meets the definition of a "corporation" doesn't seem like a very interesting question to me, and I think it's too early to know how/if it matters if the legal system uses the word "corporation" to refer to the DAO.

I would define DAO as blockchain based investment club software[1]. The problem is, whether you called DAO a corporation or not, DAO raised $100+M on the basis of being an autonomous corporation, something that can not exist under the law any more than a corporation owned by cats. If the investors are not educated enough to know they invested in a legal fiction, its safe to say they bought it hook link and sink that DAO offers more transparency, shareholder control or flexibility than existing corporate structures...and even if they could exist, there is nothing to suggest any of that is true.

If people want to pool their money in a corporate structure (LLC or partnership) and vote on various investment opportunities, that's great, but its nothing new or paradigm shifting. Corporations without shareholders/owners? Nothing new, but that does not make them autonomous.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_club_software

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