Author Topic: First Half of "What is a DAC?" script  (Read 4461 times)

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Offline davidpbrown

Keep it simple?..

Is the C of DAC, Corporation? I prefer Adam Levine's suggestion that it's Consensus.
I wonder it is the "Autonomous" AND "Consensus" that makes its potential to function as a Corporation?

"Distributed", "Autonomous" "Consensus"

Just use corporations. Worrying about regulators even in the marketing of your ideas? If you're that afraid you wont even be able to talk about it.

wtf!?

I suggested Consensus because it made more sense; I'm not 'marketing ideas' and certainly not worried about regulators - are you projecting your own concerns?

I prefered Consensus as that is a positive statement suggesting collective support. Corporation is a dull word, with many negative connotations that perhaps doesn't add anyhing. The Corporation is usually the sum total and whole, defining the boundary of action and interest. What the DAC is, might act as Corporation in a new way. You can have DA as adjectives too, if you want it that badly; I don't mind eitherway.
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Offline luckybit

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Keep it simple?..

Is the C of DAC, Corporation? I prefer Adam Levine's suggestion that it's Consensus.
I wonder it is the "Autonomous" AND "Consensus" that makes its potential to function as a Corporation?


"Distributed", "Autonomous" "Consensus"

- "Distributed" - many people are involved providing access to computing power.
- "Autonomous" - there is no central authority; this follows from what makes Bitcoin work so well, allowing a crowd to come to a unanimous decision.
- "Consensus" - everyone agrees on a unique point of reference; that is, there is a general agreement, a 'consensus'. So, for Bitcoin BTC this is the BTC Blockchain, rather than any other ledger. For PTS, this consensus is that PTS Blockchain. For a DAC it is another blockchain acting as a unique reference of transactions as they occur.


The narrative above reminds me of the thought that what are considered the best works of fiction, let the user do the work of creating a world in their imagination, rather than ever answering all the ambiguities. I think that's perhaps why I don't take to narratives for descriptions, and prefer that any description is left simple and specific as a definition rather than as an illustration. That's just me though and promoting ideas always needs a wide variety of types of communication; those each appealling to different audiences, in different ways.

Also, on the point of selling the idea, backing it up with examples perhaps is fine but initially you need to grab a readers attention fast; make them understand very quickly why they need this, rather than risk leaving them wondering why they would want to put in effort up front reading pages of a story. Last thought then is that SETI is too abstract from addressing any real hunger that the reader might come to this with; perhaps a real business example might hook them better?

Just use corporations. Worrying about regulators even in the marketing of your ideas? If you're that afraid you wont even be able to talk about it.
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Offline fuzzy

To nitpick your example, SETI isn't autonomous in the way a DAC is. A DAC is autonomous on the management end, not on the user end. SETI was (is?) managed centrally and actively.

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Do explain  ???

I personally prefer consensus as it pretty much describes what the network is doing .. But I am ok with company ..

what are these legal reasons?


We started off with "corporation" (see "Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics") because we wanted to communicate the idea that crypto-currencies could be viewed as unmanned businesses and designed like all businesses intended to earn a profit.

We said, rather than think of "Bitcoin, Inc." or "Bitcoin, Ltd.", lets call it "Bitcoin, DAC" to indicate that it is a different kind of company that gets its charter from decentralized autonomy, not from a government.

Then it dawned on us, that we were just dangling bait, offering governments something else to regulate.  Not good.

So we switched back to "company" which carries the same connotation of a "business" without the "licensed by government" baggage.

There's nothing wrong with talking about forming a distributed autonomous consensus as something that a Decentralized Autonomous Company does.  But, the two are not interchangable.

Using Consensus or Organization is ok if you are trying to convey some unique meaning where such a change helps convey your point.

But our point is that DACs should be first and foremost for-profit businesses.

So what is the general "Consensus" on naming these (organizations, companies, corporations...)? Has this been ironed out by the players in the Bitcoin 2.0 space?

Seems like it is driven more by brand affiliation.   :)

Hm... I may be incorrect, but doesn't the lack of consensus on these conventions open some projects up to more regulation when other projects with similar (if not identical) goals may slide by due to a simple misstep in the definitions each project uses for branding?

Not sure if you guys know how you will handle this in the future, but definitely see the need for it to be ironed out for the days when called to represent the Decentralized Renaissance in front of a political body.  Kind of outside the scope of my intentions for this thread, but something to think about (a fact to which I am certain Invictus is not ignorant).   
« Last Edit: March 19, 2014, 10:53:51 am by fuznuts »
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Offline fuzzy

Yeh that is kind of how I saw SETI as well.  Glad to have a little more definition to it though. SETI was primarily chosen as a real world way to connect people with a function that can pique nearly everyone's curiousity. Like you said, sometimes there will be central hubs (like SETI has) and sometimes there will not be (Banks and Exchanges).  Those with central hubs are NOT DACs but they do easily bridge the real world Gap between the decentralized digital services they will bring and the more SETI-like projects coming (Gridcoin, for instance).  The next section was going to speak more to the point that a DAC can offer similar services to anyone wanting to pay for them, and that unlike in a traditional company, shares would be issued over time for work done, and that the value of those shares float against the value of the service rendered against other similar and dissimilar services' shares. 

Thanks for responding biophil :)
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Offline biophil

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To nitpick your example, SETI isn't autonomous in the way a DAC is. A DAC is autonomous on the management end, not on the user end. SETI was (is?) managed centrally and actively.

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Do explain  ???

SETI@home is a research program that's managed by scientists out of UC Berkeley. The client software that looks for ET does run autonomously, but the data is reported back to a central location (UC Berkeley). So the network structure of SETI@home is like a hub (UC Berkeley) with spokes (all the individual computers running the client). If you removed the hub, the spokes wouldn't know what to do.

This is fundamentally different from a DAC. With a DAC, there doesn't even have to be a hub. Sometimes there will be hubs, and that's ok, because a DAC is designed so that if you remove a hub, the spokes will automatically reorganize themselves into a new network structure.

See the difference? Just because each computer in the network runs autonomously does not make the network itself run autonomously.
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Offline Stan

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To nitpick your example, SETI isn't autonomous in the way a DAC is. A DAC is autonomous on the management end, not on the user end. SETI was (is?) managed centrally and actively.

Sent from my SCH-S720C using Tapatalk 2

Do explain  ???

I personally prefer consensus as it pretty much describes what the network is doing .. But I am ok with company ..

what are these legal reasons?


We started off with "corporation" (see "Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics") because we wanted to communicate the idea that crypto-currencies could be viewed as unmanned businesses and designed like all businesses intended to earn a profit.

We said, rather than think of "Bitcoin, Inc." or "Bitcoin, Ltd.", lets call it "Bitcoin, DAC" to indicate that it is a different kind of company that gets its charter from decentralized autonomy, not from a government.

Then it dawned on us, that we were just dangling bait, offering governments something else to regulate.  Not good.

So we switched back to "company" which carries the same connotation of a "business" without the "licensed by government" baggage.

There's nothing wrong with talking about forming a distributed autonomous consensus as something that a Decentralized Autonomous Company does.  But, the two are not interchangable.

Using Consensus or Organization is ok if you are trying to convey some unique meaning where such a change helps convey your point.

But our point is that DACs should be first and foremost for-profit businesses.

So what is the general "Consensus" on naming these (organizations, companies, corporations...)? Has this been ironed out by the players in the Bitcoin 2.0 space?

Seems like it is driven more by brand affiliation.   :)
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Offline davidpbrown

Just need to change the D and we've got something completely different!

Dispersed Anonymous Society - or Scattered Anonimous Consensus (DAC) for the OCDs.
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Offline unimercio

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Outside the US and British Common Wealth the term  S.A.  designates an anonymous society, anonymous company, anonymous partnership, etc...

This suggests that a DAS or Distributed Anonymous Society would be more a widely accepted designation. Though I prefer Autonomous over Anonymous.

Regardless, "If you build it, they will come"

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Offline fuzzy

To nitpick your example, SETI isn't autonomous in the way a DAC is. A DAC is autonomous on the management end, not on the user end. SETI was (is?) managed centrally and actively.

Sent from my SCH-S720C using Tapatalk 2

Do explain  ???

I personally prefer consensus as it pretty much describes what the network is doing .. But I am ok with company ..

what are these legal reasons?


We started off with "corporation" (see "Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics") because we wanted to communicate the idea that crypto-currencies could be viewed as unmanned businesses and designed like all businesses intended to earn a profit.

We said, rather than think of "Bitcoin, Inc." or "Bitcoin, Ltd.", lets call it "Bitcoin, DAC" to indicate that it is a different kind of company that gets its charter from decentralized autonomy, not from a government.

Then it dawned on us, that we were just dangling bait, offering governments something else to regulate.  Not good.

So we switched back to "company" which carries the same connotation of a "business" without the "licensed by government" baggage.

There's nothing wrong with talking about forming a distributed autonomous consensus as something that a Decentralized Autonomous Company does.  But, the two are not interchangable.

Using Consensus or Organization is ok if you are trying to convey some unique meaning where such a change helps convey your point.

But our point is that DACs should be first and foremost for-profit businesses.

So what is the general "Consensus" on naming these (organizations, companies, corporations...)? Has this been ironed out by the players in the Bitcoin 2.0 space?
« Last Edit: March 18, 2014, 07:06:31 am by fuznuts »
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Offline Stan

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I personally prefer consensus as it pretty much describes what the network is doing .. But I am ok with company ..

what are these legal reasons?


We started off with "corporation" (see "Bitcoin and the Three Laws of Robotics") because we wanted to communicate the idea that crypto-currencies could be viewed as unmanned businesses and designed like all businesses intended to earn a profit.

We said, rather than think of "Bitcoin, Inc." or "Bitcoin, Ltd.", lets call it "Bitcoin, DAC" to indicate that it is a different kind of company that gets its charter from decentralized autonomy, not from a government.

Then it dawned on us, that we were just dangling bait, offering governments something else to regulate.  Not good.

So we switched back to "company" which carries the same connotation of a "business" without the "licensed by government" baggage.

There's nothing wrong with talking about forming a distributed autonomous consensus as something that a Decentralized Autonomous Company does.  But, the two are not interchangable.

Using Consensus or Organization is ok if you are trying to convey some unique meaning where such a change helps convey your point.

But our point is that DACs should be first and foremost for-profit businesses.



Anything said on these forums does not constitute an intent to create a legal obligation or contract of any kind.   These are merely my opinions which I reserve the right to change at any time.

Offline biophil

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To nitpick your example, SETI isn't autonomous in the way a DAC is. A DAC is autonomous on the management end, not on the user end. SETI was (is?) managed centrally and actively.

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Offline CLains

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what are these legal reasons?

Not sure. From wiki:

The most prominent kind of company, usually referred to as a "corporation", is a "juristic person", i.e. it has separate legal personality, and those who invest money into the business have limited liability for any losses the company makes, governed by corporate law.


Seems like corporation is a type of company; company is more general, which is guess is good, and can include partnerships, and perhaps other things. It'd be interesting if someone could explain the exact reason.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2014, 02:21:55 pm by CLains »

Offline biophil

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I always say Company, and my simple reason is that it provides immediate connotations of profit. One of bytemaster's early papers used profit as a DAC distinctive, and that stuck in my mind.

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Offline CLains

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I think it's an interesting gateway into the concept of decentralized autonomous companies. As Feynman used to say, the only way to teach a class of students is to have a style that occasionally tugs at every student to keep each interested. We should definitely have many different ways to introduce DACs so people can chose the style of learning that suits them. I can definitely see my mom understanding DACs in this way.

The written content is a bit rough around the edges, but I think it can become a good article for novices. Now I'm curious how you will transition to the company part. I'll help fix up the article once you have the next part out. :)

Offline xeroc

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I personally prefer consensus as it pretty much describes what the network is doing .. But I am ok with company ..

what are these legal reasons?