6 ms·

A Venture Fund with Plenty of Virtual Capital, but No Capitalist

47 points by jrbedard 10y ago

seibelj 10y ago
If you found a security flaw in ethereum / DAO and stole a bunch of money, is it even illegal? Also, that guy who put 1/3 of his life savings into DAO is out of his mind
- aab0 10y ago
  "If you found a security flaw in ethereum / DAO and stole a bunch of money, is it even illegal?" I'm sure it is. No one has ever gotten away with Bitcoin thefts by arguing 'all I did was input some numbers as allowed to the server and sent some bitcoins to another address'. Is it a good of real world value which you obtained control over without the original owner's consent? Then it was theft and a judge will see it as theft.
  - tamana 10y ago
    What about play money like Eve or WoWarCraft, if I cheat within the game, exploiting an econ flaw or glitch? People buy and sell the play money.
    - shrugger 10y ago
      Those sorts of games are heavily vetted. Eve alone hires several economists in addition to extremely rigorous software testing to ensure that the economy isn't subject to any abject arbitrage from players. It does happen, and I would think (not a lawyer) that in most jurisdictions that it would not be illegal. That case where the guy found a pattern in a video slot machine comes to mind. You are legally entitled to play the game in an authorized manner. Penetrating the server and giving yourself the money wouldn't be the same as playing the game and earning it. Also in Eve, the money doesn't correspond to money, it's time. You can buy time playing the game with the money. Maybe there are places to exchange one for another, but that's not really the point and would be out of scope for the developers, imo.
      - sillysaurus3 10y ago
        http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/707481/huge-eve-online-theft-amazes-45000-worth-of-in-game-cash-looted/ http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/707481/huge-eve-online... If Eve's in-game money doesn't correspond to real money, how is it possible to say "$45,000 worth of in-game cash looted" with any accuracy?
        grenoire 10y ago
        The conversion is most often done through ISK -> PLEX -> 19.95€ on the basis of prices on the in-game markets trading PLEX [1][2]. However, there is no good and legal (?) way of actually converting ISK directly to real money. You can make estimates through the figures for the purpose of creating a sense of scale (especially used in EVE-related articles about battles and corps), but that doesn't mean that it's actually worth $45,000 of withdraw-able cash. [1]: https://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=29668 https://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=29668 [2]: https://secure.eveonline.com/plex/ https://secure.eveonline.com/plex/
  - lumberjack 10y ago
    I think you missed the point. DAO and the funds they hold are not owned by anyone unlike Bitcoins who have a clear owner. I guess in some cases DAO can have a set amount of owners but this is not necessary.
    - Zagitta 10y ago
      Perhaps I'm misundertanding you but how exactly are the funds not clearly owned? It's my understanding that each ethereum invested in the DOA still belongs to whoever invested them because they at any point can chose to split their funds from the original DOA into a different DOA where they then can extract the funds. Returns on investments come back in the form of etheruem that will be evenly distributed to the DOA token holders meaning that even they will have a clear owner. With that in mind I don't see how the fund are any less clearly owned by anyone than bitcoins, maybe you can explain?
- arcticfox 10y ago
  Meanwhile the hypothetical guy that put 1/3 of his life savings in early Bitcoin is extremely wealthy. I agree, not a wise choice, but surely there are worse bets.
  - seibelj 10y ago
    I'm not disagreeing with you, but it's ironic that the article states he also lost his shirt in Bitcoin when mtgox was hacked.
- cloudjacker 10y ago
  sounds like someone who has never used a cryptocurrency. you are either a reporter or grandpa, not because the average joe knows what cryptocurrency is, but because you are here
nolepointer 10y ago
"Olivier Stern, a 31-year-old French socialist ..." I stopped reading there.
- Animats 10y ago
  The current President of France is a socialist. So is the Prime Minister of France. The Socialist Party is currently the ruling party in France.
state 10y ago
Although it's obvious that the DAO is a pretty crazy experiment, I haven't read anything that completely convinces me it's going to fall apart. I'm aware that it's daring, that it's got lots of potential vulnerabilities. I'm inclined, for the mean time, to just sit back and admire the enthusiasm.
jcfrei 10y ago
> After it collects Ether from investors — the deadline to buy in is May 28 — the D.A.O. aims to put the money into other digital currency start-ups. So the D.A.O. is just a very technical form of angel investing? I think a decentralized autonomous organization is an interesting concept but I wonder what the great benefit for society is. Most countries have well established legal personalities, such as corporations to create consensus between different shareholders. An it's usually not even expensive to set up. In the EU anybody can create a corporation in any member country using corporate law from any EU country, so you get to choose from a wide array of legal forms. What's the added benefit of a stateless organization? The corporate structure might exist in a stateless form but apart from that the organization is still bound by local regulations whenever it actually engages in a market. To me it seems like a concept dreamt up for a utopian anarcho-capitalist parallel universe.
- ap22213 10y ago
  The organizational and operational structure seem risky enough. Then, they build it on a digital currency. Are there any similar corporate experiments out there? For a long time, I've wanted to buy into something like this but with state-backed currency.
- FatalLogic 10y ago
  >the organization is still bound by local regulations whenever it actually engages in a market. That seems true, and I also think it's one of many significant problems with the DAO. Though imagine if some of the organizations being funded are also DAOs. It seems very likely that some types of DAO-funded services could operate without ever being directly exposed to a state-regulated market, except at the level of the individual users and other participants. Individual humans are de facto state-regulated entities - but potentially they are anonymous or not expedient for governments to punish.
oh_sigh 10y ago
Does anyone have any ideas of what the first real uses of the DAO may be?
- mapmeld 10y ago
  There's going to be a vote on whether to fund applicants to the DAO smart contract system Anyone can apply, but they need to initiate it through a smart contract on Ethereum + DAO. Currently there are only two projects, including one by the creator of DAO... so I think it's set up for a windfall for the creators

47 points by jrbedard 10y ago

If you found a security flaw in ethereum / DAO and stole a bunch of money, is it even illegal? Also, that guy who put 1/3 of his life savings into DAO is out of his mind

aab0 10y ago
"If you found a security flaw in ethereum / DAO and stole a bunch of money, is it even illegal?" I'm sure it is. No one has ever gotten away with Bitcoin thefts by arguing 'all I did was input some numbers as allowed to the server and sent some bitcoins to another address'. Is it a good of real world value which you obtained control over without the original owner's consent? Then it was theft and a judge will see it as theft.
- tamana 10y ago
  What about play money like Eve or WoWarCraft, if I cheat within the game, exploiting an econ flaw or glitch? People buy and sell the play money.
  - shrugger 10y ago
    Those sorts of games are heavily vetted. Eve alone hires several economists in addition to extremely rigorous software testing to ensure that the economy isn't subject to any abject arbitrage from players. It does happen, and I would think (not a lawyer) that in most jurisdictions that it would not be illegal. That case where the guy found a pattern in a video slot machine comes to mind. You are legally entitled to play the game in an authorized manner. Penetrating the server and giving yourself the money wouldn't be the same as playing the game and earning it. Also in Eve, the money doesn't correspond to money, it's time. You can buy time playing the game with the money. Maybe there are places to exchange one for another, but that's not really the point and would be out of scope for the developers, imo.
    - sillysaurus3 10y ago
      http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/707481/huge-eve-online-theft-amazes-45000-worth-of-in-game-cash-looted/ http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/707481/huge-eve-online... If Eve's in-game money doesn't correspond to real money, how is it possible to say "$45,000 worth of in-game cash looted" with any accuracy?
      - grenoire 10y ago
        The conversion is most often done through ISK -> PLEX -> 19.95€ on the basis of prices on the in-game markets trading PLEX [1][2]. However, there is no good and legal (?) way of actually converting ISK directly to real money. You can make estimates through the figures for the purpose of creating a sense of scale (especially used in EVE-related articles about battles and corps), but that doesn't mean that it's actually worth $45,000 of withdraw-able cash. [1]: https://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=29668 https://eve-central.com/home/quicklook.html?typeid=29668 [2]: https://secure.eveonline.com/plex/ https://secure.eveonline.com/plex/
- lumberjack 10y ago
  I think you missed the point. DAO and the funds they hold are not owned by anyone unlike Bitcoins who have a clear owner. I guess in some cases DAO can have a set amount of owners but this is not necessary.
  - Zagitta 10y ago
    Perhaps I'm misundertanding you but how exactly are the funds not clearly owned? It's my understanding that each ethereum invested in the DOA still belongs to whoever invested them because they at any point can chose to split their funds from the original DOA into a different DOA where they then can extract the funds. Returns on investments come back in the form of etheruem that will be evenly distributed to the DOA token holders meaning that even they will have a clear owner. With that in mind I don't see how the fund are any less clearly owned by anyone than bitcoins, maybe you can explain?
arcticfox 10y ago
Meanwhile the hypothetical guy that put 1/3 of his life savings in early Bitcoin is extremely wealthy. I agree, not a wise choice, but surely there are worse bets.
- seibelj 10y ago
  I'm not disagreeing with you, but it's ironic that the article states he also lost his shirt in Bitcoin when mtgox was hacked.
cloudjacker 10y ago
sounds like someone who has never used a cryptocurrency. you are either a reporter or grandpa, not because the average joe knows what cryptocurrency is, but because you are here

nolepointer 10y ago

"Olivier Stern, a 31-year-old French socialist ..." I stopped reading there.

Animats 10y ago
The current President of France is a socialist. So is the Prime Minister of France. The Socialist Party is currently the ruling party in France.

state 10y ago

Although it's obvious that the DAO is a pretty crazy experiment, I haven't read anything that completely convinces me it's going to fall apart. I'm aware that it's daring, that it's got lots of potential vulnerabilities. I'm inclined, for the mean time, to just sit back and admire the enthusiasm.

jcfrei 10y ago

> After it collects Ether from investors — the deadline to buy in is May 28 — the D.A.O. aims to put the money into other digital currency start-ups. So the D.A.O. is just a very technical form of angel investing? I think a decentralized autonomous organization is an interesting concept but I wonder what the great benefit for society is. Most countries have well established legal personalities, such as corporations to create consensus between different shareholders. An it's usually not even expensive to set up. In the EU anybody can create a corporation in any member country using corporate law from any EU country, so you get to choose from a wide array of legal forms. What's the added benefit of a stateless organization? The corporate structure might exist in a stateless form but apart from that the organization is still bound by local regulations whenever it actually engages in a market. To me it seems like a concept dreamt up for a utopian anarcho-capitalist parallel universe.

ap22213 10y ago
The organizational and operational structure seem risky enough. Then, they build it on a digital currency. Are there any similar corporate experiments out there? For a long time, I've wanted to buy into something like this but with state-backed currency.
FatalLogic 10y ago
>the organization is still bound by local regulations whenever it actually engages in a market. That seems true, and I also think it's one of many significant problems with the DAO. Though imagine if some of the organizations being funded are also DAOs. It seems very likely that some types of DAO-funded services could operate without ever being directly exposed to a state-regulated market, except at the level of the individual users and other participants. Individual humans are de facto state-regulated entities - but potentially they are anonymous or not expedient for governments to punish.

oh_sigh 10y ago

Does anyone have any ideas of what the first real uses of the DAO may be?

mapmeld 10y ago
There's going to be a vote on whether to fund applicants to the DAO smart contract system Anyone can apply, but they need to initiate it through a smart contract on Ethereum + DAO. Currently there are only two projects, including one by the creator of DAO... so I think it's set up for a windfall for the creators