[snitko]

Explain the mechanism by which people who invest can exercise their rights as stakeholders, receive dividends etc? Who's to enforce they actually own anything? What's stopping this project from taking all the money and producing nothing (which is exactly what happened with pretty much every ICO out there)?

[camdenlock]

As far as I understand it, all that matters is the logic of the smart contract code, and possession of private keys. Humans are removed completely from the process. If you own the private key involved in a transaction, then that is the guarantee you’re looking for. All that’s left is to examine the smart contract code in order to figure out what sort of contract to which you’re now a cryptographically-guaranteed party.

No person enforces anything. Only the math does. And I think that’s entirely the point.

[buboard]

> Humans are removed completely from the process

Do you have an example of an organization that works this way, 100% automated? It's hard to think of a system that can be 100% foolproof, there is always someone somewhere that has to trigger something manually, and that 's the weak spot.

[EGreg]

What’s stopping a YC startup from going bankrupt after having disclosed tons of risks in a PPM? At least here we know exactly how much was invested.

Why does everything have to be about voting and receiving dividends?

Amazon’s shareholders don’t do either one but value the shares greatly.

And dividends can be programmed into the smart contracts too. Want them in DAI, USDT, ETH? You can! One way would be for the company to put them into a new smart contract that refers to the other smart contract which stores who owns what share, at that particular time. You could also program tons of fancy rules like a UBI from the company or whatever. They would also be distributed fairly.

[snitko]

Explain the mechanism. How do I know this organization made this much money and that the amount I'm being paid is fair in regards to their profits? How can this code track all the money the company is making? It's not like they're being paid with their tokens.

And for minority of projects where indeed they're expected to be paid using their own token, how do I know the company owners don't run away with all the money they raised? Because this is exactly what happened with 99.99% of ICOs created on Ethereum. Now, of course scams happen in the traditional financial system too, but not to the same extent, because there's an enforcement mechanism in place. So, following your example, what stops a YC company from declaring bankruptcy and spending all the money on things founders want for themselves? Well, an investigation may be launched: founders are known, they can be found, prosecuted and sentenced. With tokens issued online, where you may not even have a company registered or have a company registered in some obscure jurisdiction, there is very little incentive NOT to steal the money. And, once again, that's exactly what happened during the ICO craze, which Ethereum is directly responsible for. A lot of people lost a lot of money funding scammers - and nobody blinks an eye!

I don't argue that everything has to exist within the traditional financial system. On the contrary. But in order to provide real value and allow investors to have some level of certainty that at least their money won't be outright stolen, the solution MUST include an enforcement or incentive mechanism strong enough to deter scammers.