Collective Decision Making & The Blockchain Meet With DAOstack

The blockchain is very much still in its infancy and we've yet to discover its full potential as it is applied to various business practices and schools of thinking. We've only recently started to come to grips with its ability to digitize currency and be a store of value and now running applications on top of the blockchain protocol opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

As we grow as a society and our world becomes more complex we need to set aside old ideas for new ones that will be able to take us forward. We are truly becoming a global economy and with so many stakeholders and decisions needed to be made faster, our old systems will only serve to hold us back.

So how do we create a collective decision-making process that is scalable and can be applied to various business practices? Well, a project called DAOstack feel they have the answer.

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What is DAOstack?

Firstly DAO stands for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations and is basically an operating system upon which decentralised apps (dApps) can be built. You're probably thinking so what? Ethereum, EOS and NEO can do that too, so what makes DAO so special?

The issue of governance

While there are many blockchain projects that allow you to build dApps many of them suffer from governance issues. Using the DAOstack developers are able to apply blockchain governance to various systems that are traditionally organized and run by a centralized authority or a group of individuals.

DAOs is able to achieve this by allowing the users to put their protocols onto the blockchain and using smart contracts to vote on decisions that will impact that continued operation.

**An introduction int DAOstack**

How will this help blockchain and companies?

So now that you've heard all the fancy lingo and technical explanations you're probably wondering how does this help us further the use of blockchain? DAO will allow international and multinational companies of relative scale operate as if they were all in the same room making decisions in real time. Allowing for transparency and a platform for consensus that's open, uncorruptable and ensures mutually beneficial decsions are taken, recorded and cannot be compromised.

If this is a blockchain project it must have a cryptocurrency right?

That is correct DAO will have a cryptocurrency token supporting its network which is known as GEN. GEN allows users to place a "stake" in a given project proposal to be built atop the DAOstack.

Adding a stake in order to have a say in governance helps to avoid the corruption of the network by a few holding the majority of the wealth, the projects have to be approved by "reputation" holders as well.

Growing with DAO

One of the biggest issues in blockchain today is scalability, even the big boys like Bitcoin and Ethereum are finding it tough to come up with an answer. DAO claim to have the ability to evolve from within, there are no technical bounds since technology behind DAOstack is designed to allow the evolution of the platform.

As new blockchain solutions are conceptualised, introduced or become industry standard, they can be implemented to the benefit of all DAOs and DApps on DAOstack. In order to have a robust, scalable, modular and constantly refined technology in the long term.

My personal feelings on DAO

It seems like a promising project with a wide range of applications but it needs to begin to secure partnerships to show real-world application in various sectors, the benefit in terms of production and cost saving and the ability to scale up. If it can do so it could really be an interesting project, however, there are blockchains like NULS and Ontology who are looking to add similar features to the blockchain so time is of the essence.

Whoever can produce a working MVP and gain adoption the fastest will be the outright front-runner, but its the one who will continue to offer new value that will become the winner in this space.

For more information on the DAOstack project

This is my entry for the @originalworks writing competition

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