[ExI] Space Decentral: A decentralized autonomous space agency

[Giulio Prisco]

Adrian, payment is always depending on client acceptance of the
deliverables as conform to the specs in the contract. If the contract
says nuclear power plant (with a long list of specs) and you give me a
toaster, that's no good and I don't pay you.

Large contracts are split in parts and each part works like that. You
get a downpayment at the beginning, but that's all you get if your
work is no good.

I have signed many contracts, small and big, from both sides of the
table. Some times I have refused to pay because the deliverables were
no good (as defined in the contract). We always reached an agreement:
the contractors fixed this and that, and then they were were paid.

Twice I haven't been paid. The first time I had my lawyer send a
muscular letter to the client, who paid the same day. The second time
my client wasn't paid by their client, so they didn't pay me, so I
didn't pay my subcontractors, all because the cost of the project had
been underestimated (my fault). My client went out of business.

In a DAC, it's the members (or a subset of members involved in a
specific project) who decide to accept a deliverable or not.
Realistically, some members will be charged to do acceptance testing
and the rest will vote based on their recommendation.

Re "They have this even without buying a single share: the DAC can
work with anyone it collectively decides to." - Members can
participate in discussions, vote smartly on other projects, gain
followers and build a reputation that helps them win contracts. Think
social media and open source communities.

Re "Investors with serious money rarely care for anonymous
participation - and those that do, already have means to (proxies, for
example)." - Sure, but this is not for investors with serious money.
It is for the rest of us. It is for the little guy who wants to invest
a few hundred bucks in a new project or company. Put one million of
them little guys together and you have enough funding for a space
project.

In general, I think you are too skeptical of the acceptance of
blockchain tech by large corporations and governments. Perhaps you
haven't kept up with the news. Today Microsoft, IBM, Intel and other
tech giants have their own blockchain projects, Japan just passed a
law to regulate crypto money as legal means of payment, Russia and
China plan to do the same, the Bank of England is launching its own
blockchain-based crypto money, and there are news of that kind every
day.

Sometime soon some form of crypto money, interoperable with others,
could become legal tender in one or another country and integrated
with the local banking system. Then the country would pass laws to
give a legal status to companies that operate as front companies for a
DAC.

Won't happen tomorrow or next week, but this is a long term project.

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 8:49 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Apr 13, 2017 7:44 AM, "Giulio Prisco" <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Thanks Adrian. Some advantages of blockchain-based DACs, from the
> perspective of participants / shareholders and compared to traditional
> shares, are:
> - Possibility to buy shares and participate anonymously.
>
>
> Investors with serious money rarely care for anonymous participation - and
> those that do, already have means to (proxies, for example).
>
> - Self-enforced right to easily participate in all decisions.
>
>
> With much money, and thus much shares, they get outvoted if their proposals
> run counter to the interests of - or they just can't convince - a majority,
> just like in normal corporations.
>
> - Possibility to offer services to the DAC as independent contractor (work
> 2.0).
>
>
> They have this even without buying a single share: the DAC can work with
> anyone it collectively decides to.
>
> - More protection against fraud.
>
>
> Less, actually, by trying to work around and shun so many of the protections
> in law.
>
> Concerning your point about payments, paying a contractor in dollars
> is not the problem. In a DAC this could work as follows. Suppose you
> are a contractor who doesn't want to have anything to do with
> cryptocurrency and I am a DAC member who interfaces with you.:
> - You submit a deliverable to me and invoice $100,000.
> - I request authorization to pay you $100,000.
> - The members vote on accepting the deliverable.
> - If the vote is positive a smart contract sends crypto funds to an
> exchange where the crypto is converted to dollars and the dollars are
> delivered to me.
> - I pay you.
>
>
> Ha ha ha ha ha...
>
> Yeah right.  If I am a contractor who is competent*, I am going to insist up
> front on a contract that guarantees payment on delivery.  The DAC does not
> get to vote on whether to accept, save that the DAC votes yes.  If the DAC
> votes no, the DAC can expect to be sued and lose quickly, with damages.
>
> (There are exceptions, such as work so shoddy that the judge would agree it
> is shoddy.  But good luck proving that, and you would likely get a lawsuit
> anyway.)
>
> * I say this having been a contractor in kind of that situation.  I still
> have the court order for payment somewhere in my paper files.  The corp that
> tried this dissolved, and the one responsible fled the state and possibly
> the country rather than pay me.  A space DAC would be routinely dealing with
> contracts for much, much higher amounts than the few thousand dollars in my
> case.
>
> The problem is: what if I don't pay you and steal the money instead?
> Smart contracts protect internal transactions against fraud, but not
> external transactions like this.
>
> This use case becomes easier if you accept to be minimally involved in
> the process. For example you could have an account on the exchange and
> receive the payment (in dollars) directly.
>
>
> And most contractors competent to provide hardware for space stuff won't.
> They prefer the law, which is not subject to the hacking or other
> vulnerabilities that the DAO demonstrated.
>
> In general, the issues are at the interface between DAC and the
> external world. There is no pure DAC solution: I think a DAC that
> wants to operate as a real-world business needs a legal identity, a
> front company in a favorable jurisdiction with named individuals in
> charge, a bank account, ability to hold property etc. One of the
> articles that I listed has examples of how things could be set up in a
> specific jurisdiction (UK).
>
>
> So your problem reduces to, what advantages does a DAC have over a
> traditional corporation, given that most elements of significant financial
> value will refuse to engage with blockchain et al instead of traditional
> means (such as the law & courts, seeing blockchain et al as less effective
> at protecting their interests), thus negating any benefits for their
> transactions that a DAC might have?
>
> You can't just think of benefits to the DAC.  Blockchain benefits the DAC
> but disadvantages outside parties: despite what you say, it does - or at
> least outside parties will believe it does, which is enough to prevent them
> from using it.  So how do you overcome that?  Merely claiming benefits to
> the cryptosavvy & anonymity-preferring (which the outside parties you are
> likely to work with on a space venture are generally not) won't cut it,
> especially if you ignore the proven disadvantages.
>
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