[ExI] A decentralized autonomous space agency

Tue Mar 21 15:56:08 UTC 2017

To be clear: I offer you this criticism because I want you to succeed. ;)

Governance belongs to those who buy shares?  You have described most
corporations.  The problem you are concerned about comes when those who buy
are not those who do the work, but just those with a lot of money seeking
to make more, by selling later for a higher price, with interests thus
often at odds with the workers in practice.  (Also, the workers - working
on whatever the corp does - tend to know a bit about the field, while the
investors too often lack this experience.)  These investors often delegate
day to day decisions to a few people, who are known as "executives" or
"management" and often have way more shares than the workers (but usually
less than the investors) because the investors, having appointed them,
trust them more.  (This dynamic has spiraled way beyond reasonable bounds
at many large public companies, but that's a separate topic.)

This is especially the case when the just-in-it-for-the-money types get a
majority of the shares, making the workers' shares worthless re:
controlling the organization's direction, as eventually happens at most
public companies if it wasn't already the case before they went public.
 (This is why, for CubeCab, I'm trying to keep a majority of shares in the
workers' hands at least until IPO/acquisition - including my own, and
granted I'm "management" if anyone here is.  But there are so many really
bad ideas investors without much experience in the market would likely try,
ironically tanking their own investment along with our hard work.  I'm not
in this to fail, at least not so easily.)

The wisdom of those with money is not the wisdom of the crowd - and in both
cases, for actual working space projects, there's fascination but not, it
turns out, much actual wisdom.

Also you have to pick a project and start gathering resources before the
shares are worth anything.  No, seriously: there's this thing called
"valuation" with lots of ways to calculate it, but by all the good formulas
you have a valuation of $0 right now, so all the shares of it are worth $0
too.  You've yet to do anything new, except use new words to describe well
established stuff.

On Mar 21, 2017 4:46 AM, "Giulio Prisco" <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Adrian, and don't worry, harsh criticism is exactly what I want.
The difference is in the ownership and governance model. A DAO belongs
entirely to its members (those who chose to buy shares) and all
shareholders are empowered to easily vote on all decisions. So this
model replaces traditional exec/management layers with the wisdom of
the crowd.

On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 10:58 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:
> How is this meaningfully different from the (literally) thousands of
> space startup companies all across the world, other than that you
> haven't yet picked a particular project or set of related projects to
> focus on?
>
> "Funded by bitcoin/crypto" is not a meaningful difference; more than
> one of those others is too.  "Assembles space hardware from prefab
> components" is true of at least a quarter of them.  "Is focused on one
> or more potentially world changing projects" is true of most of them -
> the dreams run strong - except, again, they have decided which
> specific projects they will work upon.  Likewise "global, distributed,
> decentralized" has been done in spades (not "to death" because it has
> proven a viable model - but at this point it's a bit short of saying,
> "and our people will sit on chairs").
>
> And if it isn't, why should anyone care, when they can instead find
> one of those startups (one that works on a project that appeals to
> them), work with/for them, and have a far higher chance of success and
> payback?
>
> Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you need answers to those questions if
> you seek to accomplish anything.  Your overview doc acknowledges that
> you need to decide on "WHY/WHAT" before moving past that, but it's
> deeper than you know: deciding on the what will, necessarily, exclude
> people who aren't interested in that particular what - and only then
> will you see if you have a group capable of addressing that particular
> what.
>
> On Mon, Mar 20, 2017 at 3:26 AM, Giulio Prisco <giulio at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I started a working group to discuss conceptual and implementation
>> related aspects of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO)
>> focused on world-changing space projects. Comments, thoughts and
>> requests to join welcome.
>>
>> https://giulioprisco.com/a-decentralized-autonomous-
space-agency-43232aed471c
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