Can DAOs change the way we work? The latest news on DAOs and regulation

“Can DAOs change the way we work?” was the title of an interesting panel organized during the Zebu Live event held last week in London. 

It was interesting also because of the historical moment in which it occurred, considering that just a few days ago the CFTC sued a Decentralized Autonomous Organization, OoKi DAO.

The panel featured Nick Almond of Factory DAO, Kam Dylan of Zebu Digital, Nikita Cikaluk of Forbes, Grace Rachmany of DAO Leadership, and Rajiv Sainani of Maker DAO.

What is a DAO and its applications

Taking the floor to explain what a DAO is, Nick Almond explains that DAOs serve as a censorship-resistant mechanism for managing tokens in order to make it possible to manage them in a decentralized way and to have a community-controlled organization, a “self-organization,” in which all participants make decisions together.

In general, according to Forbes’ Nikita, DAOs would be interesting in terms of having customers decide the steps a company should take. In fact, at present, those who work in larger companies do not have decision-making power, but have to spend years before they can lead the way. In contrast, in DAOs everyone can contribute and one does not have to wait weeks for an idea to get feedback, Nikita explains.

Continuing on this theme of work and possibilities for those working in DAOs, for Rachmany it is important to educate people to have their own responsibilities, as well as the fact that by running a DAO they can inspire each other. Thus, this would be “the future of work” and the organization of companies.

Admittedly, we are currently only at the first integration, a “very early adoption,” which is why it is hard and challenging, as Sainani explains, but “DAOs have huge potential to change the future of work,” Dylan explains.

The regulation of DAOs

Certainly one of the current problems is the crazy regulation in which privacy is lost because of mechanisms such as KYC. Another example of this disorganization and confusion is that of Tornado Cash, an instance in which project developers were arrested for something that governments decided was illegal, but when it was created was not.

For these reasons, as Rachmany explains, DAOs can be a solution, since many people are responsible and the whole thing is anonymous.

“We should not compromise with governments because every time we compromise we lose legitimacy as an industry,” Rachmany states.

Continuing on the topic of regulation, Almond explains that no one is waiting for it or wants it either because:

“No one wants institutional adoption, the point is having extra institutional governance.”

Yet the problem is that governments are always looking for ways to be in control, even of anonymous and decentralized associations, a proof of which is the case of Ooki DAO.

The CFTC vs Ooki DAO

A few days ago, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) denounced the team of a project and also all the holders of the issued tokens.

From what emerges, Ooki DAO members are reportedly being sued because they are considered part of an association without legal status, and in this case the liability of a UA (Unincorporated Association) thus falls on all individuals who are part of the same association.

The adoption of DAOs

As mentioned, the industry is still in its infancy, but there are still many people contributing to multiple DAOs, which is “already huge,” as explained by Sainani of Maker DAO.

In any case, though, there are currently not that many successful DAOs, so it would take more applications and big companies adopting them to show that they work.

Another step that could be taken for increased adoption of DAOs, Almond explains, would be ease of creation: if such organizations could be created in 5 minutes, obviously that would make the process easier.