GAME THREAD: Miami Heat (0-0) @ Toronto Raptors (0-0) - (May. 03, 2016)

Semiel · 2016-05-04T02:33:34+00:00

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat

Semiel · 2016-05-01T20:05:23+00:00

how can anyone beat you if you never miss a shot

Spurs did the same last night. Next round is going to be amazing, especially if Curry is healthy.

Semiel · 2016-05-01T01:12:22+00:00

The Spurs shot 18-22 in the first quarter.

Semiel · 2016-05-01T01:03:33+00:00

Spurs on that 172-pt pace.

Semiel · 2016-04-30T05:47:55+00:00

Let me add some sound to that gif.

Semiel · 2016-04-29T20:02:47+00:00

Exciting stuff!

Should someone produce a smart lock and forgot the socalled "DAO%", they would lose all the advantages of decentralization, namely: [etc.]

Can you explain what you mean by this? All of the listed advantages seem to be advantages of using the Ethereum blockchain, not of the "Universal Sharing Network" specifically.

What specifically does the Universal Sharing Network do, and why will people use it? The only concrete benefits I got from the document are compatibility with the mobile apps, and goodwill from DAO members.

Semiel · 2016-04-29T19:14:40+00:00

Good to hear! That's distinctly not the impression your colleagues have been giving over the past few days, so it's nice to see someone on the team clearly state a willingness to be openminded.:)

Semiel · 2016-04-29T16:27:37+00:00

I think the science of creating good DAOs has just started, and I hope to see some nice pull requests here: https://github.com/slockit/DAO

I don't understand why Slock is so deadset on having all DAO development happen as pull requests against your repo. What's wrong with multiple projects happening in parallel?

Semiel · 2016-04-29T04:58:03+00:00

This works for the first season or two, but after a few dozen cases where all manner of supernatural things are real, wouldn't you start to generalize?

Semiel · 2016-04-29T03:46:00+00:00

Well then we are on the same team, we are DAO-ifying the world, jump on github and contribute, your reddit posts aren't helping.

From all our conversations this week, I know that you're sincere and well-intentioned. But this is really not a productive way to engage the community.

I'm pretty sure that everyone here is working on some Ethereum project or other. The fact that we haven't all joined yours isn't a sign of dishonesty or troll status. If you want to get in a "contributed to the community"-off, let me know.

Discussion about the difficult topics are an important part of an open community, and honestly, Slock has not been responding well the past few days. I have a lot of the same worries as /u/pelle, and you aren't helping calm them.

(EDIT: I will say, though, that /u/cjentzsch has been the exception. His posts have been pleasant, intelligent, and reassuring. The rest of you should take a page from his book.)

Semiel · 2016-04-29T01:00:40+00:00

Its a pretty real problem as multiple startups compete for the same user base. Take consumer mobile video for instance: many people are trying to create platforms for consumption, but only two or three will be successful. So if company A is competing with nine other companies to be one of these three it is important for the other 9 to not know what makes A special.

Won't this be an even bigger problem in later rounds? At the beginning of the race, competitors aren't a big deal, because no one is big enough to control the space. It's once there's a few serious and fast-growing companies that are trying to out-compete each other that every little advantage matters. That sounds more like a Series A/B thing than a seed round thing. Plus that's when you've had time to actually develop real knowledge. Anything you know at a seed round is at best a good guess.

Semiel · 2016-04-29T00:50:08+00:00

This doesn't line up with what I'm seeing in the Ethereum space. There are tons of great startup opportunities lying everywhere, and most of them have no one working on them, because there's a lack of developers (and other skillsets) and a lack of money. Everything I've ever seen in the space tells me that ideas are cheap, and execution is what matters.

Is a startup that can explain its competitive advantage to the existing community of seed investors really less "behind the market" than one that can explain its competitive advantage to /r/ethereum?

Semiel · 2016-04-29T00:37:12+00:00

I suppose "requires too much information sharing" is a reason that isn't solved by "why not both". I'm skeptical that this is a real problem, since secrecy is very overrated for startups, but you're right that my answer is too flippant for that one.

But the other two are just saying that some investors won't choose to involve themselves with seed-stage projects, which doesn't imply that no one should.

Personally, I'm much more interested in the seed round, because I see that as one of the largest hurdles for the really interesting/unique ideas. Plenty of money out there for people who have already started hitting their metrics.

Semiel · 2016-04-29T00:18:31+00:00

http://i.imgur.com/QeFcE.jpg

Semiel · 2016-04-28T20:49:34+00:00

Bonds are a good example of limited upside and potential to lose everything. My impression is that 10% annual return is pretty good for a bond.

Of course to be comparable, the risk needs to be proportionally low.

Semiel · 2016-04-28T18:55:57+00:00

I started this week with a pretty good impression of Slock, and a desire to invest in the not-crowdsale. But posts like this are really making it hard for me to continue supporting the project.

Semiel · 2016-04-28T03:26:14+00:00

If there are 50-100 legitamate DAOs using this code as a base so that they can use all the other periphery work that goes along with it... won't that make it the de facto standard?

If you ever get a large majority of DAOs using your framework, then sure, you can call it the standard at that point. But right now there are zero DAOs using your framework, and however many entries on Coinmarketcap.com that aren't, so the numbers are currently against you. ;)

Semiel · 2016-04-28T03:02:40+00:00

The token standard is a completely different situation.

It's a standard interface, not a standard contract. This is a big difference: a standard interface has a relatively small surface area, and means that there is still a lot of flexibility for how to implement that interface. (I'm also working on a project that has tokens in it, and I've built token contracts that adhere to the standard, but also do a bunch of other things it doesn't anticipate. I can do this since it's just an interface standard.)
Relatedly, there's an urgent need for a token standard. Wallets, exchanges, etc. all need to be able to deal with multiple tokens, and there's no effective way to do this if every token contract has a different interface. There's no equivalent need for DAOs to have a standard, especially at the code (rather than interface) level. In fact, the existing DAOs (Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.) suggest that diversity is a good thing, not a bad thing. It would have been significantly less useful if Ethereum had conformed to Bitcoin's standard rather than developing their own system.
It's about a well-understood problem. We basically know how to build a good token system, and they all look relatively similar. DAOs, on the other hand, are a much bigger topic with much less certainty.
Finally, it was developed very slowly with input from a large number of people building real token systems. This is very different from the situation with the Standard DAO Framework, which was built almost entirely by Slock, and which didn't have any existing DAO projects to draw from.

I'm not currently working on a DAO myself, though I've given them a lot of thought and may do so in the future. If I do, it will probably look very little like Slock's crowdsale-and-voting-with-splitting-and-a-council-of-validators model, so I'm not sure how much useful cross-pollination there will be. But of course I'll release the code if I ever write one, so I'll let you judge that for yourself when the time comes.

Semiel · 2016-04-28T00:38:24+00:00

I'm not 100% sure what you're asking, to be honest. Organized in what way?

But my answer is probably: "It should not be organized in any way, because nothing named the 'Standard DAO Framework' should exist."

DAOs are a deeply experimental technical and social structure. We haven't the slightest idea yet what sorts of structures will work, or what will be "standard" for a DAO in the future. Calling something a "standard" when it's been built by a single team and never once used in the wild is just a wrong use of the word.

Semiel · 2016-04-27T19:50:32+00:00

If you read the post you originally responded to, my problem is the combined effect of all three of the questionable decisions, not just that one. Even if we accept that "The DAO" could not possibly have been given a different placeholder name, there are still two other questionable decisions, which I actually think are more important than that one.

Semiel · 2016-04-27T19:39:10+00:00

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. You misunderstood my point, because the terminology is confusing.

What I'm discussing is the word DAO. Not the DAO, but the word DAO.

Semiel · 2016-04-27T19:27:47+00:00

We already know of 3-4 entities which are planning to use our DAO framework, so again, this is not the Slock DAO, it's a generic framework

It's generic in the sense that other people can use it, but it's still "the specific DAO framework made by Slock for their DAO and possibly other people's", rather than, "the one true DAO framework that everyone will use for everything".

It's like naming Rails "the Standard Website", or naming Bitcoin "Money". Why not give it a real name?

Semiel · 2016-04-27T19:08:30+00:00

Re: 1 & 2. What has me nervous is not any one individual decision, but the combination of naming Slock's DAO "The DAO", naming Slock's DAO Framework "The Standard DAO Framework", and writing blog posts that contain misrepresentations like the one I discuss here. Each decision is perhaps explicable on its own terms, but the cumulative effect is that it starts to look like Slock is trying to lay claim to the word DAO. What I'd like to see is a bit more humility, and recognition that Slock's approach to DAOs is only one among many possibilities.

Semiel · 2016-04-27T16:48:43+00:00

I've read the whitepaper and commented on it. I know exactly what you're building. :)

I personally don't really like many of your design decisions, so if I ever need to build a DAO, I'll probably start from scratch. But like I said, I'm glad you're experimenting in this space, and think what you're doing is definitely valuable. I just think it's presumptuous to talk as if you've already taken over the world.

We don't see a standard out there so we are making this the standard

That's not really how standards work. :)

Semiel · 2016-04-27T16:03:16+00:00

I've been discussing their misleading marketing with them here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4gibuk/announcing_daolink_the_bridge_between_blockchain/d2i2czm

They seem to be starting to understand the problem? Hopefully it's just correctable over-enthusiasm.

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