Being old enough to have stood in a Farm Bureau Co-op in rural Indiana as a kid, DAOs weren't that hard to wrap my mind around when a bunch of grain farmers would collaborate to buy seed and sell their grain. Very informative article, led here by The Great Online Game which was also fantastic. At 65yo, I'm pretty proud of keeping up with technology and its impact (thanks greatly to an IT career trying to get out on the curve pretty far), but have to admit that I was remiss in getting in depth on Web3 and grasping the true scope of Crypto, DAOs and the true integration of the Web economy, influencers, etc. despite having had my own YT channel for a few years now. New subscriber for sure.
I'm easily overly optimistic, but I could see this going as far as many do in society. It may be the stealthy way to shove the Insurance middle man out of the way in healthcare, since we can't get it done in gov't.
Ecstatic, this intellectual piece is so helpful. Helps me understand not only DAO but how the entire blockchain ecosystem works. Especially the section about Coinbase vs UniSwap vs SushiSwap, Brilliant.
What would the best way to be to invest in DAOs? The DaoDeep website shows that a lot of the DAOs that are big today are built on Aragon which is available to invest on Kraken. Would that be one way? Or is ETH the simplest and best because everything is built on top of that? Of course any investing decisions would be my own, just curious if there are other angles to investing in the DAO ecosystem.
"If you look at the Ethereum blockchain today, you won’t find any trace of the heist. No harm, no foul. "
This is not true... The DAO Hack txs are still there... but with the hard fork, all the ETH that was locked in TheDAO's childDAOs (where all the hackers had the ETH) were moved to a refund contract that let the DAO token holders get their ETH back... This move has been dubbed an "irregular state change" and it's all still on chain.
There were a lot of edge cases handled manually as well... it was definitely not as clean as it feels... Tho I will take it as a complement since I led TheDAO clean-up effort for years, and still get DM's to this day from people asking for help claiming their tokens ;-)
That said, you did a great job at simplifying things, and love your article :-D
The only thing I would add is that DAO's can create an economic model that can challenge organizations that don't usually have challengers... Economic models can coordinate value production where business models fail to work (Google "Market Failures")
Specifically... you can create economies that can reward & coordinate value creation that is normally done by Governments and Non-profits.
As you said, positioning is powerful, competing with Facebook and Uber is one thing... Being able to turn donors into investors is very doable and definitely 10x better than the status quo...
What a fantastically-researched article. Thank you for the hard work and simplifying some new concepts right out of the gate, you've given me a great head start.
I agree with the point that this made me more confused and more curious. I am still searching for a useful analogy, such as how NFT's derive value like a rare painting.
The most clear section explained how a "decentralized" protocol would work.
It conjures images of people pooling their money to buy a boat together and making decisions collectively on how to upgrade and modify it.
"From this point forward, future development of the protocol is in the hands of the community. The core team might still influence decisions based on their standing in the community or the number of tokens they hold, but the rules in place in the smart contracts, and any modifications made based on community vote, will determine the future changes."
But then what would that mean in regards to Creator DAO's - would votes or guidance from fans help a creator find more success, which in turn raises "investment" value for the fans?
"Creator DAOs: Jarrod Dicker, Patrick Rivera, and Brian Flynn wrote about the potential for creators to own their work, and share the upside with their true fans. There are no major examples of Creator DAOs today, but I suspect some of the people minting NFTs today will launch DAOs tomorrow that lets fans invest instead of subscribe."
The Dao of DAOs
Just amazing - this post is so helpful. I'm educating myself heavily as I'm trying to create a DAO or set up social tokens for a new brewery.
Being old enough to have stood in a Farm Bureau Co-op in rural Indiana as a kid, DAOs weren't that hard to wrap my mind around when a bunch of grain farmers would collaborate to buy seed and sell their grain. Very informative article, led here by The Great Online Game which was also fantastic. At 65yo, I'm pretty proud of keeping up with technology and its impact (thanks greatly to an IT career trying to get out on the curve pretty far), but have to admit that I was remiss in getting in depth on Web3 and grasping the true scope of Crypto, DAOs and the true integration of the Web economy, influencers, etc. despite having had my own YT channel for a few years now. New subscriber for sure.
I'm easily overly optimistic, but I could see this going as far as many do in society. It may be the stealthy way to shove the Insurance middle man out of the way in healthcare, since we can't get it done in gov't.
amazing.
Thanks you 🙏🏻
Ecstatic, this intellectual piece is so helpful. Helps me understand not only DAO but how the entire blockchain ecosystem works. Especially the section about Coinbase vs UniSwap vs SushiSwap, Brilliant.
Check out Governor Dao. The real DAO of DAOs.
What would the best way to be to invest in DAOs? The DaoDeep website shows that a lot of the DAOs that are big today are built on Aragon which is available to invest on Kraken. Would that be one way? Or is ETH the simplest and best because everything is built on top of that? Of course any investing decisions would be my own, just curious if there are other angles to investing in the DAO ecosystem.
"Today, Uniswap does nearly $1 billion in daily volume, generates close to $30 million in daily transaction fees"
Shouldn't it be $3 million in Tx fees, if the scrape is 0.3%?
"If you look at the Ethereum blockchain today, you won’t find any trace of the heist. No harm, no foul. "
This is not true... The DAO Hack txs are still there... but with the hard fork, all the ETH that was locked in TheDAO's childDAOs (where all the hackers had the ETH) were moved to a refund contract that let the DAO token holders get their ETH back... This move has been dubbed an "irregular state change" and it's all still on chain.
There were a lot of edge cases handled manually as well... it was definitely not as clean as it feels... Tho I will take it as a complement since I led TheDAO clean-up effort for years, and still get DM's to this day from people asking for help claiming their tokens ;-)
That said, you did a great job at simplifying things, and love your article :-D
The only thing I would add is that DAO's can create an economic model that can challenge organizations that don't usually have challengers... Economic models can coordinate value production where business models fail to work (Google "Market Failures")
Specifically... you can create economies that can reward & coordinate value creation that is normally done by Governments and Non-profits.
As you said, positioning is powerful, competing with Facebook and Uber is one thing... Being able to turn donors into investors is very doable and definitely 10x better than the status quo...
Food for thought.
Thank you!
thank you great read
What a fantastically-researched article. Thank you for the hard work and simplifying some new concepts right out of the gate, you've given me a great head start.
I agree with the point that this made me more confused and more curious. I am still searching for a useful analogy, such as how NFT's derive value like a rare painting.
The most clear section explained how a "decentralized" protocol would work.
It conjures images of people pooling their money to buy a boat together and making decisions collectively on how to upgrade and modify it.
"From this point forward, future development of the protocol is in the hands of the community. The core team might still influence decisions based on their standing in the community or the number of tokens they hold, but the rules in place in the smart contracts, and any modifications made based on community vote, will determine the future changes."
But then what would that mean in regards to Creator DAO's - would votes or guidance from fans help a creator find more success, which in turn raises "investment" value for the fans?
"Creator DAOs: Jarrod Dicker, Patrick Rivera, and Brian Flynn wrote about the potential for creators to own their work, and share the upside with their true fans. There are no major examples of Creator DAOs today, but I suspect some of the people minting NFTs today will launch DAOs tomorrow that lets fans invest instead of subscribe."