I assume it may not be a popular opinion here, but it would be so much easier if projects like Rust could have a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) instead of a foundation, and a blockchain account managed by this DAO instead of a bank account.
The main issues I see with this idea are volatility of cryptocurrencies prices, inability of paying with cryptocurrencies in most cases atm, environmental issues regarding the blockchain and the infantry of DAO governing models.
But as an abstract idea I believe DAOs will replace foundations at some point in the future, making such discussions much easier.
1. What is the advantage of a DAO in your eyes? (Your comment mostly says that one could be done, not why.)
2. The Rust community is made of people who have been trying very hard to write, essentially, a bug-free compiler and a bug-resistant programming language, and they know it is incredibly unrealistic to be 100% bug-free. How would you convince them that a DAO with its terms specified in code and not in human legal documents would not have even a single exploitable bug?
You're right, I should have mentioned the advantages to begin with.
It's easier, cheaper and faster to setup a DAO than an international foundation, especially regarding registration, opening bank accounts and international members. Important questions such as "which jurisdiction to register the organization in" or "who manages the bank account" becomes irrelevant in a DAO.
It's also cheaper and easier to manage a DAO over time than a traditional foundation. There is no need of payments for bureaucratic stuff, since the protocol is in charge of organizing and executing decisions.
I don't belong to those convinced it's possible to write bug-free code, however, not every bug means immediate exploit, while exploits can also happen in legal contracts.
The immediate solution is a DAO where access is limited to known legal entities. In case a bug is exploited, you can always fall back on the good old legal system to resolve the conflict.
There are other possible solution, but I don't want to turn this comment into a lecture about DAOs.
We use a DAO in a project I've been involved with for a long time in the past, Bisq. I'm not sure how we could have managed it otherwise, since we were a small project, with contributors all over the world, most of them not knowing each other personally.
> It's easier, cheaper and faster to setup a DAO than an international foundation, especially regarding registration, opening bank accounts and international members. Important questions such as "which jurisdiction to register the organization in" or "who manages the bank account" becomes irrelevant in a DAO.
I never understood these arguments. People do not live in an abstract space outside existing social and economical structures. If one way or another, this DAO thing turns into an actor paying wages, the related laws will apply in some juridiction.
Now, what you might say is these questions become irrelevant for the structure creating the DAO, and are instead left to be solved by those receiving the benefit. It sounds dubious at best.
I didn't meant the DAO to be an actor outside the legal system.
The difficulty of answering your remark is that different legal systems probably have different point of views about it.
According to what I was told where I live, I'm allowed to organize activities, even such involved payments, with other people without registering an organization. Especially if those other people come from different countries. As long as I'm declaring my full income and pay taxes.
Such a thing limits what a DAO can do - for example, it can't sign agreements with regular companies (it's not a legal entity) or it cannot employ people.
But as long as you don't do such things, I was told it is allowed. I'm being careful with such statements since I'm not a lawyer.
You may see DAOs as a legal alternative for civil agreements, which are really difficult to make for individuals in the international market.
> Such a thing limits what a DAO can do - for example, it can't sign agreements with regular companies (it's not a legal entity) or it cannot employ people.
The article starts by saying that they want to demonstrate that Mozilla is not the sole entity behind rust.
After that, the very first reason they give for wanting to start a foundation is to sign contracts.
> Lately, though, the Rust project has started to hit the limits of what Mozilla can reasonably support. One common example that arises is the need to have some entity that can legally sign contracts “for the Rust project”. For example, we wished recently to sign up for Github’s Token Scanning program, but we weren’t able to figure out who ought to sign the contract.
I don't understand how a DAO would solve their problems.
One problem they listed is having a bank account which would hold onto money from a few sponsors temporarily for a particular conference, before paying it out to catering, venue, and airfare.
How would that work for a DAO? Would you have to write a new contract for each conference? What about paying for last minute arrangements (a flight gets diverted and you need to pay more for travel)?
Would the contract allow for that, or block that spending of funds?
Actually, how would it block the spending of funds, or tell what you are spending the money on? It's not like Delta has a bitcoin address you can specify in the smart-contract. You have to pay them in dollars.
> I don't belong to those convinced it's possible to write bug-free code, however, not every bug means immediate exploit, while exploits can also happen in legal contracts.
The legal system has had centuries of time with millions of people working out "bug-free" code. Something like a DAO might work for your situation but any organization with the sort of resources Rust has would be completely negligent to rely on such a comparatively untraveled path.
The main issues I see with this idea are volatility of cryptocurrencies prices, inability of paying with cryptocurrencies in most cases atm, environmental issues regarding the blockchain and the infantry of DAO governing models.
But as an abstract idea I believe DAOs will replace foundations at some point in the future, making such discussions much easier.