Crypto assets inspire a new type of collectivism beyond finance

Nonetheless, the 5,000-person group successfully mobilized in less than four months to buy a 40 hectare property in Park County, Wyoming, near the state border from Montana.

The members are still discussing what comes next, but the high -tackled goals of the DAO include the expansion of access and reducing property costs as well as the development of new systems for public finances. And you want to do all of this with cryptocurrency software.

"It is a joint experiment," said Scott Fitsimones, the unofficial founder of the project.

Citydao is one of the most visible examples of hundreds of so-called decentralized autonomous organizations, loose groups of cryptocurrency users who come together for a central purpose, be it the management of an open source software program or the purchase of real assets.

The groups have recently gained popularity under the die -hard cryptocurrencies that imagine a future, playing a larger role in the control of large organizations in the software code.

daos can have more "accessibility and transparency" than companies, said Linda Xie, co-founder of the cryptocurrency investment group Scalar Capital. "Nobody controls it," said Xie. "It's like a collective decision -making."

But even some of the most eager supporters of cryptocurrency have had a hard time define Daos, and the projects in the United States are still facing many legal hurdles in which companies and other organizations have to comply with strictly defined regulations.

"It's not a binary thing as if you are a DAO or not," said Xie. "People use the term very freely."

supporters of the DAOS said they were more democratic than companies, so that practically everyone in the world could take part in decision -making. They also argue that blockchains make it easier to create permanent, unchangeable records and to rule the large, loosely arranged groups.

DAOS accept many forms, but usually organize themselves in digital ledgers such as the Ethereum blockchain, which enable developers to write software programs or "intelligent contracts" that automatically carry out transactions when the correct conditions are met. Many issue cryptocurrency tokens that give the owners the opportunity to take part in governance.

"Web3 begins to transform users and contributors into investors and vice versa," said Ian Lee, co-founder of the DAO software company Syndicate and referred to a term for token-based cryptocurrency apps that aim to target a new version of the Internet.

In practice, most Daos look like chat rooms with a common bank account. The most important thing is that, in the opinion of the members, DAOS should not be controlled by a single person, although some in practice are more like centralized companies with risk capital and other insiders who have significant amounts of tokens.

DAOS are currently tiny compared to the rest of the company world, with a total of $ 12.1 billion in cryptocurrency in reserves and around 1.6 million members in groups that are pursued by the Data Service Deepdao.

However, you have already attracted Wall Street's attention. Bill Ackman, the billion-dollar hedge fund manager, has invested in Syndicate that wants to make it easier for people to create investment daos.

In November, a group called Constitutiondao collected $ 47 million to buy an original of the US constitution, just to be surpassed by Ken Griffin, the founder of the HedgeGrade Citadel, at an auction.

Some DAO members have complained that their administration can be unwieldy compared to centralized organizations. Like other new cryptocurrency experiments, they are legally endangered.

The first attempt by a DAO, called "The Dao", brought in more than $ 150 million in 2016 than an experiment with community-oriented investments before an attacker exploited gaps in the code to steal a third of the funds.

The state of Wyoming, which first developed the social structure with limited liability, passed a law at the beginning of this year that enables the formation of "DAO LLCs", which are managed by smart contracts.

More than 110 companies have registered in Wyoming as DAO LLCs since the state passed laws, including four who have changed from normal LLCs, a representative of the state treasury said in an email.

Critics of legislation have argued that their language does not clearly define how Dao LLCs should be managed. The legislator is considering a change in the original law. Lawyers for cryptocurrencies said that profit -oriented DAOs had largely registered as Delaware LLCs, one of the most popular corporate structures in the USA.

"Many of the things that people do are probably legal," said Chris Rothfuss, a democrat who has the chair of a Senate Committee of the State of Wyoming for Blockchain technology. "Probably no convenient wording is legal."

Rothfuss said he hoped that the law would bring more financial technology entrepreneurs to Wyoming and help to diversify the economy of the state away from mineral acquisition.

fitsimones said he was inspired to found Citydao due to the legislation of Wyoming, and he hoped that it would make it easier for larger groups to have and manage land together with the blockchain.

"Land has something really cool in itself because land feels like such a primitive piece of the puzzle," said Fitsimones. "If you can put land in the chain, what is the next step?"

Members of Citydao have to buy one of 10,000 non -funny tokens in order to be able to take part in discussions. You can sell your NFT at any time if you want to stop

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the Ethereum Blockchain, and Brian Armstrong, CEO of the Cryptocurrency Coinbase, both bought the so-called “Citizen NFTS”, which do not share in the physical country or the right to grant the owners.

fitsimones admitted that the project was still confronted with hurdles, and the members of the core team said that most of the time was spent on legal questions.

"The worst-case scenario for this law is that a judge says before a court: 'I don't read the smart contract code. This is a bunch of nonsense, said Fitsimones. "And in the best case, this law becomes this fundamental connection between digital assets, crypto and the physical world."