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dzdt

Matt Levine at Bloomberg has some insightful commentary on the DAO from a legal/finance perspective:

* https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-17/blockchai...

* https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-23/bailout-f...

* https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-05-31/complianc...

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I found this helpful. From the first linked-to article, regarding the DAO:

> All of this is trivially replicable using old-fashioned governance structures. Berkshire Hathaway would look a bit like the DAO if, instead of leaving things to Warren Buffett, all of its shareholders got to vote on every investment decision. When I put it like that you can probably see why this structure has not been super popular so far. But who knows! Maybe the DAOers will be really good at picking winners, and putting them into smart contracts.

What's missing is that this DAO structure has a self-evolving nature and can modify its own decision making structure, something that no "old-fashioned" structure can do.

To extend the (simplistic) Berkshire Hathaway analogy, why couldn't Warren Buffet change the structure to shareholder voting? If he did, why couldn't the shareholders then vote to change the structure to something else. That would be self evolving in the same sense that the DAO is "self evolving".

The actual difference is the concensus rules and that everything is public in a shared chain of transactions / events. It means anybody can interact with it on equal grounds.

Last time I checked, I was able to vote in my shareholder's meeting when I only owned a few shares in a company. (I mean yeah... I know GOOGL exists, but most people seem to buy GOOG and pay the slight premium for the voting rights)

Most people just don't care about voting rights in the companies they own (which is why GOOGL exists)

http://investorplace.com/2014/07/goog-google-stock-split/

But that's still not on equal grounds and fully public - what the blockchain systems implement in public using the computers of the collective is instead implemented by humans with imperfect transparency and accountability.

And that was the entire point. The capabilities aren't different, it is the guarantees around its behavior that are.

> But that's still not on equal grounds and fully public - what the blockchain systems implement in public using the computers of the collective is instead implemented by humans with imperfect transparency and accountability.

Who are your major coinvestors in the DAO?

Did any of your coinvestors perform an inside-trade to bet against the company through either a put-option or a short sell?

Because all inside trades of public corporations are publicly documented. Can you really trust your fellow DAO "investors" when you aren't even sure if they're betting on your side?

Nah man, I think classical companies are more transparent. Its very important to keep in mind the insider trades.

Here's all of the insider trades from Microsoft in the past two years: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=MSFT

Now where's the equivalent information on the DAO?

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The DAO is a baby experiment. The first of its kind: a digitally run company. I'll give it credit for that. Unfortunately, it still has a LOT to learn about political trust structures.

No one gives a crap about whether or not board policy was followed. What people care about are inside trades and conflicts of interest, of which the DAO doesn't seem to offer any solace.

Those trades are still just the public ones - a trade doesn't need to have an official paper trail involving every intermediate buyer.

Yeah they do, if you don't feel like going to jail.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/sep/08/matthew-mar...

So once again, I ask what is the mechanism that allows you to trust your fellow DAO investors? What are the protections the DAO has against the classic Ponzi scheme or Pyramid Scheme?

Again: the DAO is a baby in a young field. I'm sure eventually a digital scheme will be invented that addresses these concerns. But from my understanding, the DAO is not a good digital scheme yet. Maybe a future project will be better at addressing real concerns and solving real issues. Or maybe the DAO will be able to self-mutate itself to solve the issues that truly do arise.

The very basis of parliamentary procedure is to create a self-changing human-organization / structure.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order

The details of parliamentary procedure change from organization-to-organization... but the goals are always the same.

1. To create decisions

2. To self-evolve the decision-making structure over time

Errr, except this is the whole point of these structures.

DAO makes it easier to administer/more automatic, but it is not new in what it is trying to do, and has a long history that hopefully folks involved are aware of.

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