This is a good example of a completely useless web page.
What is a DAO? Why should I care?
Who is running this? Is this a for-profit enterprise?
A non-profit? An NGO? A performance art collective?
> The DAO’s Mission: To blaze a new path in business
organization for the betterment of its members, existing
simultaneously nowhere and everywhere and operating
solely with the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code.
This is meaningless to me. It means nothing.
When I see web pages like this, I wonder how people can waste money on web pages like this.
All style, zero substance.
This could be "social experiment" by a bunch of pot smoking college students in a dorm somewhere, for all it speaks to me.
The DAO is essentially a 'Smart Contract' (read: a computer program which runs over the blockchain) between the willing investors to collectively fund various projects (in exchange of a certain return).
People are investing in this because they want to participate in the future blockchain/non-blockchain projects which will seek funding from the DAO.
Others can submit proposals to this smart contract, and community can vote on it (in proportion of their investment).
The DAO is a new type of DAO that instead inflating it's own currency to incentivize humans to do things, it actually is bootstrapped by the people who Create the tokens during the Creation phase.
All DAOs are autonomous. The DAO is run by DAO token holders, they can vote to send money to Proposals.
The idea is that the DAO Token Holders want to make a change in the world, but don't have the time or the plan to do it.
The DAO and it's Proposals are a special type of software called smart contracts. They can be thought of a digital safe that only releases digital currency according to the rules of the Smart contract. The DAO only sends money out when the DAO Token Holders Vote to agree to it and Proposals will have daily/weekly/monthly payment schedules.
Slock.it is hoping that The DAO will choose the Universal Sharing Network to be their flag ship product. We (I work for Slock.it) led the development of The DAO's Code (the [Standard DAO Framework](https://github.com/slockit/DAO) ) so it is specifically designed for the project.
Slock.it will submit a Proposal to The DAO to build the Universal Sharing Network in 2 weeks asking for The DAO to send an amount of digital currency (ETH) to the Smart contract, that ETH will be sent to Slock.it slowly over time and if at any time The DAO doesn't think Slock.it is doing a good job, it can Fire Slock.it and take back the money that is left in the smart contract.
We hope The DAO will be an Ethereum/IoT DAO, and that the DAO Token Holders are excited about that... However we do not know if this will be the case.
I agree that the website is terrible. Over the past few weeks I've dug deep into it and think it is a really awesome experiment, although a very risky 'investment'. I will attempt to explain it below:
The DAO is a group of people putting together their money to manage it and make more. This is done through proposals and members voting on passing them.
Based on the proposals that are accepted, the DAO can be anything really: a hedge fund, VC fund, lottery-system, gambling pot, etc.
What it becomes is still undefined and we can only see with time based on proposals and how the members vote. That alone is really interesting and exciting to me: will members actually make intelligent decisions or will it crash and burn?
The DAO also shows the power of the underlying crypto, Ethereum, on which this was built.
I'm a part of a different project on Ethereum (Augur) and we went out of our way to simplify everything so that anyone, regardless of sophistication can understand. We had the first big crowdsale on the platform and did quite well in a very bear market, I credit much of that to simplifying the idea as much as possible.
This is a huge problem with Ethereum projects as there are so many cool ideas but they are so developer-centric that they lose anyone with unnecessary big words and weird language.
With all that said, the DAO seems to be a very cool project and has found a huge level of success with this major flaw, which says something. I just wonder what they could be doing if the message was something that could be figured out by a newbie in under 3 minutes.
It's nothing but an investment medium on the blockchain (Ethereum specifically). The Ethereum community is very interested in seeing great things being built on its platform, so someone came up with this idea to create a blockchain app which allows it's members to direct funds towards building of other blockchain apps.
DAO stands for 'decentralized autonomous organization'. 'TheDAO' is an instance of a DAO, in this case their stated mission is to fund various projects related to IoT and the sharing economy that its members vote for. Apparently this is for-profit and proposals are expected to provide some kind of ROI, perhaps financial returns or physical delivered product.
Ethereum provides the decentralized infrastructure to support the voting and disbursement of funds from 'TheDAO' to the winning proposals. I don't know enough about ETH to understand the high level view of how it really works. It seems like all the websites devoted to Ethereum/DAO write in this entirely-devoid-of-substance style which is so breathless about how much it will change the world, it can't seem to actually tell you what's really going on.
Crucially, I'm not sure it's quite fair to describe this as $100m in funding. You can get your share of ETH back at any time, minus amounts that have been committed to approved projects. Ethereum must somehow guarantee this property.... It is amazing what a large percentage of all ETH (currently stands at 13%) has been committed, but I assume the refundable nature of it all is what's driving such large involvement.
One thing I found interesting is that the first 'Proposal' on TheDAO is for Slock.it, which itself is run by a team which was highly involved in starting Ethereum. If you read Slock.it and try to understand what they are doing, you will find it's exactly like trying to read and understand TheDAO -- so many words which just totally fail to make any kind of discernible point.
The way I understand it, it is for building an organization that is somehow "autonomous" and decentralized. I put the autonomous in quotes because I am still not sure what that means, though I understand the decentralized part.
Two other descriptions, from slightly skeptical observers, were:
Decentralized Corporation
Decentralized Venture Capital
Autonomous means that it is able to act on its own.
E.g. suppose that at some point organization members decide that it should pay do monthly payments to some address to pay for certain work. A DAO noted this decision and started to execute it.
At a later point members might change their mind, they no longer want this payments to be made. But DAO will keep making them if there is no way for members to cancel this execution.
Thus DAO members do not have a complete control over the thing. It is autonomous.
This looks to me like something on the order of convertible warrants based initially on bitcoin/Ethereum, which convert to DAO tokens. DAO tokens appear to be some sort of collective ownership of "crypto assets" whatever THAT means. The website reminds me of a horse with peanut butter in his mouth -- his lips are moving but not much is being said...
Based on existing proposals, the DAO offers a new type of investment mechanism.
Regular crowdfunding allows accredited as well as non-accredited investors to lock their money in with a start-up in exchange of various type of securities (preferred equity/convertible debt etc...). In this scheme the investors have most of the time absolutely 0 liquidity to exit their investment until the start-up goes public.
The DAO proposals in contrast offers a revenue sharing proposition. The startup can receive a lump sum or stream of payments in exchange for a promise to execute on their business plan. Once the company gets revenue (on the blockchain) a piece of it (like 1%) will be redistributed to token holders (as a form of dividend if you want).
In contrast to illiquid/bottom line offer available in regular crowdfunding platforms, the DAO offers a topline/liquid investment. The liquidity comes from the fact that although the DAO technically "locks" its investment with the startup, the DAO token themselves are a tradeable assets which can be exchanged against other cryptocurrencies (BTC mainly) as soon as the DAO is officially created.
In this light the DAO is akin to some kind of decentralized investment firm because the token holders are not directly owners of any share in the beneficiary business. On the other hand it is a transparent investment firm because no portfolio manager takes discretionary decisions about which startup funds will be allocated to.
the fund allocation logic is organized as "proposals" that can be voted in a secure and transparent fashion on the ethereum blockchain through a smart contract.
>By Creating DAO tokens through interaction with The DAO’s smart contract code, you expressly agree to all of the terms and conditions set forth in that code. If you do not understand or do not agree to those terms, you should not Create DAO tokens.
They are saying you need to fully understand all the code, in order to responsibly decide whether you should click a button. But the code is off somewhere else, with no links to it in the shrink-wrap license. For all I know some of the code is buggy or impossible to understand. How many people putting in money have read all the code before doing so? Does all the code even exist yet? Are they agreeing to contracts now that will be hammered out in the future, by a democracy? Tyranny of the majority, anyone? Tyranny of the majority enforced by code sounds even more scary.
Then:
>The use of The DAO’s smart contract code and the Creation of DAO tokens carries significant financial risk, including using experimental software.
The risk part I get, that's pretty standard. But I'm to agree to abide by contracts set out in code I can't see, probably can't understand, and running in experimental software?
It's basically legalese that says you agree with what's inevitable on the platform anyway. The code governs what happens, and there's no recourse if you don't like it. Every full node on Ethereum makes sure that the code runs the way it's written to run.
My understanding is that this code is written, deployed, and verified by third parties. The ecosystem has tools to let people check sourcecode against deployed contracts.
I think DAO is a complicated abstraction layer over blockchain protocol, meaning that when you get hacked you don't know how much money you actually lost.
DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organization. This seems to be an experiment in democratic group action.
The "process" is: the community approves or declines plain English Proposals backed by smart contract code aimed at building products or services for the benefit of its members. All operational elements are programmed into the Proposals submitted by Contractors. The Proposals submitted will give day-to-day operational control over to the Contractors, while enforcing strict payment schedules executed in predefined instalments.
Ethereum lets you have simple scripting over ethereum transactions, and I think Slock.it is an meant to be a "locking mechanism" on top of that, so one can only guess (because they have no-info web pages too, just like dao!), that this is a more comprehensive and sophisticated block chain programming model and higher level services than ethereum, but I can't really tell for sure.
> Each DAO Token Holder is granted voting rights and complete control over The DAO's digtal assets (ETH to begin with) proportional to the amount of DAO tokens they hold.
It seems like they're going to raise a bunch of money, and then vote on what to do with it. The premise I guess is that it's a "distributed autonomous organization" but I imagine the initial investors have a large stake in the amount funded so far, and their politics will decide what happens to the majority of investors who hold virtually no votes in comparison. This seems like a certain type of investment scheme...
If you're still trying to figure it out, this is what "The DAO" is, in programming code. No more, no less. Money in, wonderful things out. :) It will seem like magic to most.
A DAO is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization. Participating in the governance of a DAO can happen from anywhere that can read/write to the blockchain, and the rules are autonomously enforced across all participants because they are encoded in the blockchain.
The DAO is a DAO specifically designed to raise money for other DAOs. The unique thing about it over other crowdfunding platforms is that voting rights are implemented in an Ethereum contract hence enforceable with no central authority.
So DuckDuckGo gives their site description as being "the first Decentralized Autonomous Organization on the Ethereum blockchain" for those who are curious.
[+] [-] fefe23|10 years ago|reply
> The DAO’s Mission: To blaze a new path in business organization for the betterment of its members, existing simultaneously nowhere and everywhere and operating solely with the steadfast iron will of unstoppable code.
This is meaningless to me. It means nothing.
When I see web pages like this, I wonder how people can waste money on web pages like this. All style, zero substance.
This could be "social experiment" by a bunch of pot smoking college students in a dorm somewhere, for all it speaks to me.
[+] [-] killerstorm|10 years ago|reply
The page was designed for people who already know what is a DAO and need information on that specific DAO.
[+] [-] splintercell|10 years ago|reply
People are investing in this because they want to participate in the future blockchain/non-blockchain projects which will seek funding from the DAO.
Others can submit proposals to this smart contract, and community can vote on it (in proportion of their investment).
[+] [-] grifffgreeen|10 years ago|reply
Bitcoin is considered the first DAO. This interview explains it pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pn_7fdmfZY8&feature=youtu.be...
The DAO is a new type of DAO that instead inflating it's own currency to incentivize humans to do things, it actually is bootstrapped by the people who Create the tokens during the Creation phase.
All DAOs are autonomous. The DAO is run by DAO token holders, they can vote to send money to Proposals.
The idea is that the DAO Token Holders want to make a change in the world, but don't have the time or the plan to do it.
The DAO and it's Proposals are a special type of software called smart contracts. They can be thought of a digital safe that only releases digital currency according to the rules of the Smart contract. The DAO only sends money out when the DAO Token Holders Vote to agree to it and Proposals will have daily/weekly/monthly payment schedules.
Slock.it is hoping that The DAO will choose the Universal Sharing Network to be their flag ship product. We (I work for Slock.it) led the development of The DAO's Code (the [Standard DAO Framework](https://github.com/slockit/DAO) ) so it is specifically designed for the project.
Slock.it will submit a Proposal to The DAO to build the Universal Sharing Network in 2 weeks asking for The DAO to send an amount of digital currency (ETH) to the Smart contract, that ETH will be sent to Slock.it slowly over time and if at any time The DAO doesn't think Slock.it is doing a good job, it can Fire Slock.it and take back the money that is left in the smart contract.
We hope The DAO will be an Ethereum/IoT DAO, and that the DAO Token Holders are excited about that... However we do not know if this will be the case.
This is our [Proposal Overview](http://download.slock.it/public/DAO/Proposal1.pdf)
If you want to learn more about Slock.it's dream to build a Universal Sharing Network, check out this interview: https://youtu.be/Pn_7fdmfZY8?t=4894
If you want to see Christoph walk thru the code for the Sample proposal watch here: https://youtu.be/5BkQ0te_TA0?t=4587
[+] [-] chamza|10 years ago|reply
The DAO is a group of people putting together their money to manage it and make more. This is done through proposals and members voting on passing them.
Based on the proposals that are accepted, the DAO can be anything really: a hedge fund, VC fund, lottery-system, gambling pot, etc.
What it becomes is still undefined and we can only see with time based on proposals and how the members vote. That alone is really interesting and exciting to me: will members actually make intelligent decisions or will it crash and burn?
The DAO also shows the power of the underlying crypto, Ethereum, on which this was built.
[+] [-] tonyswish|10 years ago|reply
I'm a part of a different project on Ethereum (Augur) and we went out of our way to simplify everything so that anyone, regardless of sophistication can understand. We had the first big crowdsale on the platform and did quite well in a very bear market, I credit much of that to simplifying the idea as much as possible.
This is a huge problem with Ethereum projects as there are so many cool ideas but they are so developer-centric that they lose anyone with unnecessary big words and weird language.
With all that said, the DAO seems to be a very cool project and has found a huge level of success with this major flaw, which says something. I just wonder what they could be doing if the message was something that could be figured out by a newbie in under 3 minutes.
[+] [-] toddkazakov|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splintercell|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] have_faith|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zaroth|10 years ago|reply
Ethereum provides the decentralized infrastructure to support the voting and disbursement of funds from 'TheDAO' to the winning proposals. I don't know enough about ETH to understand the high level view of how it really works. It seems like all the websites devoted to Ethereum/DAO write in this entirely-devoid-of-substance style which is so breathless about how much it will change the world, it can't seem to actually tell you what's really going on.
Crucially, I'm not sure it's quite fair to describe this as $100m in funding. You can get your share of ETH back at any time, minus amounts that have been committed to approved projects. Ethereum must somehow guarantee this property.... It is amazing what a large percentage of all ETH (currently stands at 13%) has been committed, but I assume the refundable nature of it all is what's driving such large involvement.
One thing I found interesting is that the first 'Proposal' on TheDAO is for Slock.it, which itself is run by a team which was highly involved in starting Ethereum. If you read Slock.it and try to understand what they are doing, you will find it's exactly like trying to read and understand TheDAO -- so many words which just totally fail to make any kind of discernible point.
[1] - https://daostats.github.io/tokenvol.html
[+] [-] ddxv|10 years ago|reply
So I googled it and found this: “decentralized autonomous organizations” (DAOs) https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/05/06/daos-dacs-das-and-more-...
The way I understand it, it is for building an organization that is somehow "autonomous" and decentralized. I put the autonomous in quotes because I am still not sure what that means, though I understand the decentralized part.
Two other descriptions, from slightly skeptical observers, were: Decentralized Corporation Decentralized Venture Capital
[+] [-] a3camero|10 years ago|reply
And the original proposal for "The DAO" can be found here: https://download.slock.it/public/DAO/WhitePaper.pdf.
[+] [-] killerstorm|10 years ago|reply
E.g. suppose that at some point organization members decide that it should pay do monthly payments to some address to pay for certain work. A DAO noted this decision and started to execute it.
At a later point members might change their mind, they no longer want this payments to be made. But DAO will keep making them if there is no way for members to cancel this execution.
Thus DAO members do not have a complete control over the thing. It is autonomous.
[+] [-] ivoras|10 years ago|reply
Is it a blockchain-centred crowdfunding platform?
[+] [-] opticalflow|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] splintercell|10 years ago|reply
Yes. It's a blockchain powered crowdfunding platform. Except it isn't just a medium to pre-order cool projects online(like Kickstarter is).
[+] [-] typeIIA|10 years ago|reply
Regular crowdfunding allows accredited as well as non-accredited investors to lock their money in with a start-up in exchange of various type of securities (preferred equity/convertible debt etc...). In this scheme the investors have most of the time absolutely 0 liquidity to exit their investment until the start-up goes public.
The DAO proposals in contrast offers a revenue sharing proposition. The startup can receive a lump sum or stream of payments in exchange for a promise to execute on their business plan. Once the company gets revenue (on the blockchain) a piece of it (like 1%) will be redistributed to token holders (as a form of dividend if you want).
In contrast to illiquid/bottom line offer available in regular crowdfunding platforms, the DAO offers a topline/liquid investment. The liquidity comes from the fact that although the DAO technically "locks" its investment with the startup, the DAO token themselves are a tradeable assets which can be exchanged against other cryptocurrencies (BTC mainly) as soon as the DAO is officially created.
In this light the DAO is akin to some kind of decentralized investment firm because the token holders are not directly owners of any share in the beneficiary business. On the other hand it is a transparent investment firm because no portfolio manager takes discretionary decisions about which startup funds will be allocated to.
the fund allocation logic is organized as "proposals" that can be voted in a secure and transparent fashion on the ethereum blockchain through a smart contract.
hope this clarifies some aspects of that project!
[+] [-] natch|10 years ago|reply
>By Creating DAO tokens through interaction with The DAO’s smart contract code, you expressly agree to all of the terms and conditions set forth in that code. If you do not understand or do not agree to those terms, you should not Create DAO tokens.
They are saying you need to fully understand all the code, in order to responsibly decide whether you should click a button. But the code is off somewhere else, with no links to it in the shrink-wrap license. For all I know some of the code is buggy or impossible to understand. How many people putting in money have read all the code before doing so? Does all the code even exist yet? Are they agreeing to contracts now that will be hammered out in the future, by a democracy? Tyranny of the majority, anyone? Tyranny of the majority enforced by code sounds even more scary.
Then:
>The use of The DAO’s smart contract code and the Creation of DAO tokens carries significant financial risk, including using experimental software.
The risk part I get, that's pretty standard. But I'm to agree to abide by contracts set out in code I can't see, probably can't understand, and running in experimental software?
What could possibly go wrong?
[+] [-] pdaian|10 years ago|reply
Also pretty much entirely contained in the whitepaper.
[+] [-] jaredtobin|10 years ago|reply
[1]: https://etherscan.io/address/0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d...
[+] [-] DennisP|10 years ago|reply
My understanding is that this code is written, deployed, and verified by third parties. The ecosystem has tools to let people check sourcecode against deployed contracts.
[+] [-] donaldmcintyre|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aerovistae|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] znt|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fraserharris|10 years ago|reply
The "process" is: the community approves or declines plain English Proposals backed by smart contract code aimed at building products or services for the benefit of its members. All operational elements are programmed into the Proposals submitted by Contractors. The Proposals submitted will give day-to-day operational control over to the Contractors, while enforcing strict payment schedules executed in predefined instalments.
[+] [-] songzme|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevecalifornia|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simondlr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adrianbg|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linagee|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] askafriend|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jgh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strgrd|10 years ago|reply
It seems like they're going to raise a bunch of money, and then vote on what to do with it. The premise I guess is that it's a "distributed autonomous organization" but I imagine the initial investors have a large stake in the amount funded so far, and their politics will decide what happens to the majority of investors who hold virtually no votes in comparison. This seems like a certain type of investment scheme...
[+] [-] simondlr|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olh|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linagee|10 years ago|reply
https://etherscan.io/address/0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d...
[+] [-] chejazi|10 years ago|reply
The DAO is a DAO specifically designed to raise money for other DAOs. The unique thing about it over other crowdfunding platforms is that voting rights are implemented in an Ethereum contract hence enforceable with no central authority.
[+] [-] vasaulys|10 years ago|reply
But my God, that site is horrendous.
[+] [-] pen2l|10 years ago|reply