Two things about DAO s give me hope: the openness and the decentralised set up.
The openness and the complexity of DAOs requires a learning mentality, so as to participate effectively, which is also necessary for decision making.
Most c-corps and insurrectionists need patsies to bring money, effort and production capacity, where the owners can then take the profits and life a life of excess.
DAO openness attracts folk who want to learn, which typically mitigates against being a patsy to folk who tend to excess, because they are in community with their fellow DAO citizens who can see better what is happening. Cults tend to be closed, rather than open!
Secondly, the Decentralised nature means that bad or difficult behaviours can be bypassed. Say if someone has been hacked, or suffers an illness, work will start flowing around them rather than through them, because of the design of the DAO. Caring for such people is another question, but not beyond us I don't think.
Overall, there's an eternal struggle going on here, between the society builders and the power grabbers. Between creationists and hedonists.
Over many years, society builders have managed to stay ahead of power grabbers, mainly through enhanced vigilance.
I hope this still continues, as someone who sees the benefit of society building and is not at all interested in power grabbing.
Of course, I can't see the same opportunities a power grabber can see, so I can only hope I'm right.
The thing I think still has me most unconvinced (aside from all the things that make me skeptical of the longevity of any particular blockchain), is that a participant in any blockchain system is not a *person*, it's a *keypair.*
Even experts in the space sometimes have their keypairs stolen (and often all of the associated cryptoassets), sometimes they simply *lose* their keypairs. Handling compromises is never a simple matter - to the extent that there is on-chain, decentralized, autonomous infrastructure, it is going to settle any disputes by deferring to whoever *holds the keys.* Recovery from compromise is often simply not possible and DAOs often wind up having to start over from scratch when it happens.
All this is to say that I think this makes the applications *pretty niche.* Whatever you're doing with a DAO, the people that actually interact with the *DAO parts* are going to have to be highly technically knowledgeable *and* trustworthy for it to function at all. They can work, probably, but I don't think they're going be democratizing. They're not just "for crimes", they're for crimes *lucrative enough* to justify extremely high levels of risk.
Thanks Jason. Interesting post. In terms of capitalism and increasing productivity do DOAs work to do so? I was hoping blockchain would have some increased efficiency in renewable energy space but its been 8 years without much improvement.
Adam Davidson https://adamd.mirror.xyz/ef3BZjrJGk7bb1ElhVdz5AMWxEAN7GIOQhsXMKTmOWY has a liberal turn to embracing "web3" as the future. He thinks tokens will increase efficiency of paying and change ownership for more collectivization, but not sure why Capital would ever just give labor that much power. His description of tokens as a more fine-tuned resume make me worry this is just a new form of worker surveillance, where showing up to your job is not enough unless you're getting extra tokens for your work. Then the big token winners would get hired more. This seems bad but it also doesn't seem clear how some kind token reward system increases productivity in terms of hiring performance.
He wants to create some kind speculative DAO thats like Patreon/Substack but with voting rights. He doesn't seem to make a great sales pitch for his NFTs, because they don't come with any rights or guarantees and not clear if you can resell them and current cost is incredibly high.
Generally I worry DAO orgs have to actually have productivity values or will just lose to to corporations. My hope though is there could be some work with payment and wage theft.
Two things about DAO s give me hope: the openness and the decentralised set up.
The openness and the complexity of DAOs requires a learning mentality, so as to participate effectively, which is also necessary for decision making.
Most c-corps and insurrectionists need patsies to bring money, effort and production capacity, where the owners can then take the profits and life a life of excess.
DAO openness attracts folk who want to learn, which typically mitigates against being a patsy to folk who tend to excess, because they are in community with their fellow DAO citizens who can see better what is happening. Cults tend to be closed, rather than open!
Secondly, the Decentralised nature means that bad or difficult behaviours can be bypassed. Say if someone has been hacked, or suffers an illness, work will start flowing around them rather than through them, because of the design of the DAO. Caring for such people is another question, but not beyond us I don't think.
Overall, there's an eternal struggle going on here, between the society builders and the power grabbers. Between creationists and hedonists.
Over many years, society builders have managed to stay ahead of power grabbers, mainly through enhanced vigilance.
I hope this still continues, as someone who sees the benefit of society building and is not at all interested in power grabbing.
Of course, I can't see the same opportunities a power grabber can see, so I can only hope I'm right.
The thing I think still has me most unconvinced (aside from all the things that make me skeptical of the longevity of any particular blockchain), is that a participant in any blockchain system is not a *person*, it's a *keypair.*
Even experts in the space sometimes have their keypairs stolen (and often all of the associated cryptoassets), sometimes they simply *lose* their keypairs. Handling compromises is never a simple matter - to the extent that there is on-chain, decentralized, autonomous infrastructure, it is going to settle any disputes by deferring to whoever *holds the keys.* Recovery from compromise is often simply not possible and DAOs often wind up having to start over from scratch when it happens.
All this is to say that I think this makes the applications *pretty niche.* Whatever you're doing with a DAO, the people that actually interact with the *DAO parts* are going to have to be highly technically knowledgeable *and* trustworthy for it to function at all. They can work, probably, but I don't think they're going be democratizing. They're not just "for crimes", they're for crimes *lucrative enough* to justify extremely high levels of risk.
Very well laid out post! The transnational angle is one that I hadn't given enough thought to. Would love to chat more about DAOs sometime.
Thanks Jason. Interesting post. In terms of capitalism and increasing productivity do DOAs work to do so? I was hoping blockchain would have some increased efficiency in renewable energy space but its been 8 years without much improvement.
Adam Davidson https://adamd.mirror.xyz/ef3BZjrJGk7bb1ElhVdz5AMWxEAN7GIOQhsXMKTmOWY has a liberal turn to embracing "web3" as the future. He thinks tokens will increase efficiency of paying and change ownership for more collectivization, but not sure why Capital would ever just give labor that much power. His description of tokens as a more fine-tuned resume make me worry this is just a new form of worker surveillance, where showing up to your job is not enough unless you're getting extra tokens for your work. Then the big token winners would get hired more. This seems bad but it also doesn't seem clear how some kind token reward system increases productivity in terms of hiring performance.
He wants to create some kind speculative DAO thats like Patreon/Substack but with voting rights. He doesn't seem to make a great sales pitch for his NFTs, because they don't come with any rights or guarantees and not clear if you can resell them and current cost is incredibly high.
Generally I worry DAO orgs have to actually have productivity values or will just lose to to corporations. My hope though is there could be some work with payment and wage theft.