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This is an uncharitable take, and I think you’re on the wrong side of this if you think it won’t work in the future. This team raised $45M from 10k internet str

This is an uncharitable take, and I think you’re on the wrong side of this if you think it won’t work in the future. This team raised $45M from 10k internet strangers in a week, and they almost managed to win the bid. They created a path for bidding with crypto at Sotheby’s, and came up with a legal structure so they could do it with money raised via a DAO. They newly exposed hundreds of thousands of people to the possibilities of crypto beyond BTC. Sure, it failed, and it sucks that everyone loses a lot of gas fees. But these guys did a lot to lay tracks for the next attempt. I bet with more time to plan they would’ve pulled it off. I think Spacex’s early failed landing attempts are a good analogy - lots of time and money spent, but lots of learning to improve the next ones.

pavlov 5y ago
And you don't see any problem with a legal structure that gives everything to the project's creators and nothing to those 10k internet strangers? Why should we want this kind of thing to be successful? I know, the answer is "but crypto is just intrinsically amazing and we'll sort out these little legal deficiencies later, hopefully when we're rich enough to buy out all the politicians."
- gonehome 5y ago
  I get the impression you're not open to being curious about this, but I don't agree with your framing. You can have the DAO as a legal structure where the granted governance tokens do have power, in that case the 10k internet strangers do have a say in what happens. I'm not saying that was the case here (it happened quickly and I don't know), but it definitely seems likely we'll see stuff like this in the future and I think it's pretty cool.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    > "DAO as a legal structure where the granted governance tokens do have power" I.e. voting shares in a corporation. And then you need to register your security offering and know who your investors are. You can't just take money into a Delaware corporation and let anonymous wallets vote on what the company does with its assets. I understand that crypto enthusiasts want to blow up American securities laws. I don't understand why they think it's going to happen if they just persistently keep doing things which are either illegal or just scammy with no legal protections to those whose money is at stake.
    - cl42 5y ago
      > You can't just take money into a Delaware corporation and let anonymous wallets vote on what the company does with its assets. Anonymous holding companies would like to have a word with you. > I understand that crypto enthusiasts want to blow up American securities laws. I don't understand why they think it's going to happen if they just persistently keep doing things which are either illegal or just scammy with no legal protections to those whose money is at stake. I guess you must have also really hated Airbnb when it first came out? Or Uber and Lyft? The web3 and crypto space is moving very quickly and you are right that regulatory bodies are struggling to keep up. What is welcome is that many people are now iterating and experimenting with these structures and some will fail miserably, while others might create completely new opportunities. This is how innovation works.
    - nilsbunger 5y ago
      You're setting up a lot of strawmen: I don't think we should blow up securities laws or buy all the politicians. And this project was far from a scam or a pyramid scheme: the core members were known, had good reputations and stated their intentions around community governance. Each person putting $ in should decide whether that's good enough for them. Totally fair. But I wouldn't wish for failure of the whole approach. We had a group of young ambitious people getting folks excited and organized, raising lots of money for collective action to achieve something. They raised > 2x as much as the biggest kickstarter ever. The shift in the balance of power towards individuals is empowering. That empowerment can be used for good or bad, but on balance I'd rather live in a world where people are more empowered.
  - pfraze 5y ago
    The plan was to form an LLC. Some states have created rulings specifically for LLCs to be driven by DAOs (I forget which states - Oregon maybe?). I'm completely unsure how you structure legal ownership of an LLC vs crypto ownership of a DAO, but I do know that an LLC's bylaws can bind the officers to the decisions of a voting body, and that's what the DAO would do.

pavlov 5y ago

And you don't see any problem with a legal structure that gives everything to the project's creators and nothing to those 10k internet strangers? Why should we want this kind of thing to be successful? I know, the answer is "but crypto is just intrinsically amazing and we'll sort out these little legal deficiencies later, hopefully when we're rich enough to buy out all the politicians."

gonehome 5y ago
I get the impression you're not open to being curious about this, but I don't agree with your framing. You can have the DAO as a legal structure where the granted governance tokens do have power, in that case the 10k internet strangers do have a say in what happens. I'm not saying that was the case here (it happened quickly and I don't know), but it definitely seems likely we'll see stuff like this in the future and I think it's pretty cool.
- pavlov 5y ago
  > "DAO as a legal structure where the granted governance tokens do have power" I.e. voting shares in a corporation. And then you need to register your security offering and know who your investors are. You can't just take money into a Delaware corporation and let anonymous wallets vote on what the company does with its assets. I understand that crypto enthusiasts want to blow up American securities laws. I don't understand why they think it's going to happen if they just persistently keep doing things which are either illegal or just scammy with no legal protections to those whose money is at stake.
  - cl42 5y ago
    > You can't just take money into a Delaware corporation and let anonymous wallets vote on what the company does with its assets. Anonymous holding companies would like to have a word with you. > I understand that crypto enthusiasts want to blow up American securities laws. I don't understand why they think it's going to happen if they just persistently keep doing things which are either illegal or just scammy with no legal protections to those whose money is at stake. I guess you must have also really hated Airbnb when it first came out? Or Uber and Lyft? The web3 and crypto space is moving very quickly and you are right that regulatory bodies are struggling to keep up. What is welcome is that many people are now iterating and experimenting with these structures and some will fail miserably, while others might create completely new opportunities. This is how innovation works.
  - nilsbunger 5y ago
    You're setting up a lot of strawmen: I don't think we should blow up securities laws or buy all the politicians. And this project was far from a scam or a pyramid scheme: the core members were known, had good reputations and stated their intentions around community governance. Each person putting $ in should decide whether that's good enough for them. Totally fair. But I wouldn't wish for failure of the whole approach. We had a group of young ambitious people getting folks excited and organized, raising lots of money for collective action to achieve something. They raised > 2x as much as the biggest kickstarter ever. The shift in the balance of power towards individuals is empowering. That empowerment can be used for good or bad, but on balance I'd rather live in a world where people are more empowered.
- pfraze 5y ago
  The plan was to form an LLC. Some states have created rulings specifically for LLCs to be driven by DAOs (I forget which states - Oregon maybe?). I'm completely unsure how you structure legal ownership of an LLC vs crypto ownership of a DAO, but I do know that an LLC's bylaws can bind the officers to the decisions of a voting body, and that's what the DAO would do.