DAOs are interesting, likely, and terrifying

For instance, interactions with the state are not streamlined for businesses with a large number of owners. Our cooperative is almost entirely owned by immigrants, people of color, and women. This fact entitles us to participate in certain programs and opens certain types of business with the state to us. In order to prove this status, however, we ... See more

Looking at the landscape of open source software today, I note two things. First, successful open source platforms tend to be partnered with caretaker organizations. Wikipedia has the Wikimedia Foundation, Linux has the constellation of organizations around the Linux Foundation, and Kubernetes has the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Second, open... See more

National structures for corporations are struggling to keep up with the world created by globalized communication networks. If I want to start a business with someone in another country, we are going to have a difficult time using legacy corporate structures. The only corporations that thrive in this regulatory regime are multinationals, who write ... See more

DAOs may enable transnational organizational structures that are currently difficult to imagine. This year I worked at a company for six months before I met any of my coworkers face-to-face. We have staff in multiple countries. I am certain this will be perfectly normal in the future. Corporate forms will be molded to fit this new remote/internatio... See more

A well-functioning state without the need for DAOs would almost certainly be preferable to a degenerate state with DAOs, of course. But we might not be able to stop the collapse of the US, especially as climate collapse collides with political dysfunction. The DAO community seems to be attempting to establish a parallel system of financing and gove... See more

The sooner cooperative ownership is enshrined as a legitimate form of organization through DAO structures, the sooner we can build first-class structures for our future cooperatives. DAOs even present a unique opportunity to do so. The LLC is designed for a small set of owners. The public corporation is designed for mass ownership by capitalists. B... See more

Transparency in DAOs will probably lead to less hierarchical organizational forms. The culture around DAOs also, currently, embraces transparency. There is an expectation that DAOs publish their budgets publicly. Anything on-chain, especially currency in-flows and out-flows, is inherently transparent.

DAOs might be the next evolution of the firm. They have some advantages that will inspire their growth, such as ease of creation and a current lack of regulation. It is likely that DAOs will gain many analogues of the legal structures enjoyed by the C-corp. I imagine banks will offer traditional fiat accounts where access is gated by multi-sig smar... See more

The corporate form, in my understanding, is about 1000 years old in the West. It developed the “limited liability” concept early on as well as investor-operator partnerships. The joint-stock company shows up in the 1600s and adds pooled ownership. The private corporation in the 1800s. The modern fully-financialized firm, maximizing only shareholder... See more

The legal structures available for cooperative ownership are quite mediocre compared to the structures and cultures available to capitalist-owned corporations