WTF even is a DAO?
Coding is hard
Launched in April 2016, TheDAO made all the same promises as those around today, and rapidly gained thousands of investor/members and more than 11m Ether under its control (worth well over $100m then, and $25bn now). But a bug in the foundational code of the project, unfixed since May that year, was exploited on 17 June, to drain 3.6m Ether into another account.
But the cryptocurrency sector of 2022 is a different beast from the one of 2016. Perversely, it feels like the vague chance of losing everything to rugpulls and hacks has become more accepted as the sector has moved toward the mainstream, with consumers embracing cryptocurrency as a high-risk, high-reward way of gambling their savings.
These days, the more pertinent flaws of DAOs are becoming apparent as the ambitions of the sector outstrip its ability, with projects such as ConstitutionDAO and theSpiceDAO.
In other words, rather than buying a copy of the book, they seemed to believe they had licensed the actual rights to the property. Needless to say, they are not legally entitled to produce an animated series based on Dune.
Where next?
The steam has started to run out on NFTs, narrowly construed: the art bubble has stopped growing, the profile pic projects are too easily parodiable, and the gaming-related NFTs are still stumbling on the fact that none of the games that exist are good, fun or exciting in any way. Money will flow in, but mainstream attention is moving on.
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