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Comment by biot | Hacker News Reader

DAO needs to be battle tested in EVE Online for a year before letting loose on the real world where money is at stake. Much like ponzi schemes and other exploits of the past, the EVE Online developers just consider it part of the game. Caveat emptor.

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That's a really interesting idea, using a virtual economy to field test something like this. I was thinking about how you'd do that and actually attract attackers by having some value, using something like EVE where people are willing/wanting to do it anyway in game might work.

How would this work? If you discovered an attack, what would be the incentive to not just sit on it until it was released to the real world?

In-game money (ISK) can buy influence in the social dynamics of EVE. There's also a prisoner's dilemma aspect where someone else might independently discover the same attack and use/disclose it before you get a chance to.

I think there are enough people playing EVE who would be more interested about what it would do for them in-game, that if it were something that could be discovered by more than some lone genius with an epiphany, it would come out quickly.

Can't EVE currency be bought and sold for "real" money?

That would mean that real money is still at stake.

https://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-onlin...

Regardless, I'm sure most people have no trouble understanding the practical difference between a video game and what The DAO advertises.

Maybe EVE is vigilant about keeping isk as play money, it other games game real money market for ingame artifacts, and real world governments due get involved in theft and vandalism. If the supposed theft is effected purely ingame under game rules, tho, that's harder for authorities to intervene in erven

Sure, but we're straying pretty far from the intent of my original comment, which is: Trial it in a popular game as an entertainment device to ferret out any bugs. Once it's sufficiently stable, then you introduce it into the real-world ensuring that all in-game data is left in-game. The real-world version starts over with a blank slate.

Of course you can't prevent people from finding a way to gamble real money for in-game currency. But to say "real money is still at stake" is like saying that if people gambled their kidney on a video game, "real organs are at stake". That's missing the forest for one very pedantic tree.

I've been building something like this in VR.

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