By Dan Edlebeck, Co-Founder of Exidio and the Sentinel dVPN
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs as they are known in the crypto world, have something of an undeserved reputation.While it is undeniably true that hackers managed to exploit the technology in 2016 to access millions of dollars’ worth of Ethereum, that does not mean that the concept itself is defunct and we should reconsider its adoption on a larger scale to ensure the human element can be removed from transactions.
Briefly, DAOs are in many ways the embodiment of what makes the crypto world so attractive: they are not controlled by any single entity.Their decentralized nature means that the rules are encoded as part of a program, controlled only by its membership and certainly not by any central government.This mode of operation is predicated upon a secure digital ledger and a distributed database, as well as timestamping, that allows for parties to transact with trust and without the need for a “trusted” third party.
Returning to the 2016 DAO hacking incident, and just like any software or code, DAOs can and should go through a period of testing to ensure they are safe and, considering the open source nature of the technology, this will be a continuous process to guarantee user trust and reliability.Even the 2016 hack was resolved via a hard forking and this restored the lost assets to their rightful owners.
Since then, safeguards have become even more stringent with digital attack vectors sealed off through the open source process whereby the community highlights vulnerabilities that are addressed immediately.
By relying on DAOs, we could fundamentally change the way our entire economic system operates.Theoretically, and assuming it becomes an accepted and trusted standard by governments, DAOs can be used to offset the costs of relying on third parties and can be used to eliminate the need to continually record and prove the existence of certain contractual agreements across different public records.
One example of this is when recording property ownership and title deeds.Many of these DAOs can even entirely remove the human element and rely on smart contracts, something that has manifested itself in the present day.
In such a way, it would be naïve and foolish of us to ignore the practical applicability of DAOs.Not only are they still being actively used, but a greater adoption of the technology will allow for greater streamlining of operations and contracts while simultaneously reducing costs.Surely, that is something everyone can get behind.
DAOs have been evolving greatly in the past few years; the whole cryptocurrency ecosystem is fast moving and every niche of it moves at different speeds, the latest improvement upon DAOs lies in the new capability of cosmos SDK based chains to have native governance.
Before DAOS had to live on top of third-party chains, nowadays DAOs are able to launch their own chains and be fully sovereign, with the ability to create their own currency with treasury and inbuilt economic management.
One example of successful DAOs is the Sentinel DAO, a sovereign chain whose goal is to create, fund, and develop successful privacy-preserving technologies that are designed to achieve mass adoption.This DAO started in 2017 and successfully funded the development of a decentralized VPN (dVPN) application which is utilized by many people around the world.
Sentinel DAO also recently launched their own Cosmos SDK based chain which has supercharged their application, allowing for cheap and instant transactions which have now been integrated with other dVPN applications.
Dan Edlebeck
ABOUT DAN EDLEBECK
Dan is a connector of thought-leaders and doers in the blockchain space, building diverse networks to achieve high-impact goals.With 10 years of experience in business development, marketing, and operations.Dan worked to bring three blockchain projects to market and helped build four cryptocurrency company communities.He has an ambitious vision to make the world a better place, harnessing the capabilities of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.
Dan earned his MBA at Babson College and his bachelor’s at UW-Madison.
ABOUT EXIDIO
As the leader in transparent, end-to-end encrypted VPN technology, Exidio builds beautiful applications empowering consumers and businesses to reclaim their digital privacy and security.Leveraging open-source code and decentralized networks, Exidio is bringing a new paradigm of transparency to the VPN space.Download our application to access websites and stream videos from around the world, reclaim your online security, and free yourself from third-party surveillance.Exidio – Bringing Secure Access to Web 3.0
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