Why I think TheDAO is a Success

IMO, This post just has a click-baity title with almost no information within. TheDAO is a failure. There are a few of the other Ethereum DAOs like Augur, Digix and Maker have invested a lot of effort over the last one year and haven't launched yet to iron out issues like these. They didnt need to learn such expensive lessons. Maker Market contracts were hit by the same bug and they handled it very elegantly three days back.

TheDAO was convoluted from the beginning(code, incentives, purpose), and a lot of us within Ethereum were highly skeptical too but when mainstream media started covering it, our voices got drowned.

> to tweet, blog and bloviate their hindsight-informed opinions

If you think these are merely hindsight-informed opinions, you weren't paying attention when people were saying the same thing as foresight-informed opinions.

If every mistake is going to potentially cost $120 million then you might want to rethink your strategy.

I want decentralized blockchain based organizations to work, but haphazard attempts like this are only setting the technology back.

Honestly, it seems like you are willfully in denial about its failure.

Getting valuable data doesn't mean a success if the cost is too high. Too much of the market and reputation was wrapped up in this experiment.

If TheDAO is a success, what would a failed DAO look like?

Sorry, I think your point is completely invalid after reading "I don’t view TheDAO as a failure. I view it as an experiment that has reached its conclusion.". If you go to a doctor and he/she tries to cure from cancer giving orange juice he/she can't argue it was an experiment because this is malpractice.

The DAO was not scrutinized enough comparing to the funds it contained.

This is a really sloppy article - and I and many others disagree with your premise. You don't have to put this much money at risk to innovate, and failures like this have the potential to set the space back years (regulation may increase, consumers will be very wary).

Nearly every engineer who launches a product goes through a staged rollout with testing along the way (including the Ethereum network which took years to develop and test, and likely still has many undiscovered bugs). When the costs of failure are high (any financial services product, software at NASA, embedded software), this is especially important. DAO innovation could have been served by draft contracts passed around in the community, or a small POC with small deposits or toy money, as the design was worked out - and refined over months, and yes, even years.

Releasing a DAO contract (and marketing it, curating it), without any limitations on funding or substantial due diligence, was problematic at best - and gives a black eye to everyone who exercises due diligence in the space.

By this metric, the Hindenburg was a success too.

The problem with the Gretzky quote in this context is that in hockey, you don't lose points for missed shots.

The title of this post is facile and ridiculous. Obviously the DAO was a disastrous failure and very nearly resulted in catastrophe for its investors.

I sincerely hope you have also learned that writing “smart contracts” requires a suitable programming language.