1- First of all, what is the denomination of what is created after the ICO? I've heard a lot of terms like general partnership, limited liability corporation, Dapps and more commonly DAO. What differs them? And although this is an unregulated market, will the entity created after an ICO have to be registered in some way as an enterprise?
dApps are decentralized apps, which are applications built on top of Ethereum platform and a DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, which is a decentralized company based on smart contracts.
An ICO usually distributes tokens and their meaning or value depends on the project.
2- I've read that the management team (founders) of a certain project should cut the umbilical cord with the project itself at some point, because they are vulnerable, so they should keep distance to "real life problems". What exactly are those problems? If there's limited liability, to what extent are the founders liable for their project? Does it involve percentage of tokens held for them not to be liable?
When someone says the founders should cut the umbilical cord with the project they are probably talking about making the project decentralized. Usually the developers/founders make an ICO to distribute token and keep part for themselves as a compensation for their work. When the product is built and functional, if it makes sense for the business it could be left to be managed in a decentralized way by the community. In some cases it makes sense, in others don't. But if the founders stay connected to the project/platform they could be held liable for an eventual problem or represent a single point of failure.
3- After an ICO, how can the project issue more tokens? I've read about post-release sales, in which they can issue more tokens in order to fund further development of the business itself (product development, services, etc), although always dependent on token holders approval. Is it the only way of creating new tokens? Are there any restrictions? Is the maximum cap of coin pre-established in the ICO definite, or is it only for the ICO (for example, Bitcoin maximum cap is 21 million)? What is the goal of establishing a maximum cap of coin that can be ever created?
It varies from iCO to ICO. Usually you can define this rules in the ICO smart contract. I've seen projects that don't allow token creation after the ICO ends and projects that do. Sometimes it is impossible to issue more tokens, but the founders keep a reserve for a future token sale if needed. If you don't have experience with smart contracts you should check if the ICO contract was audited by someone reliable.
4- Let's say a certain project launches an ICO with its respective roadmap. Because the whole idea is for it to be decentralized, every decision/proposal needs to be approved by majority (or the approval percentage needed established in the ICO). Does that include the roadmap proposals? I mean, imagine that the funds raised are kept in smart contracts. Does every step of the roadmap need approval from the token holders too? Or is there a way to make smart contracts before the actual ICO that would release the funds needed for each proposal written in the roadmap, at the time specified for each? (if you don't understand this question take a look at Golem's roadmap to understand what I'm asking
https://golem.network/doc/Golemwhitepaper.pdf). Or can the founders keep the money wherever they want to and spend it whatever they want to?
Not always the sentence "the whole idea is for it to be decentralized" is true. In fact, most ICO are public token sales to fund the development of a product, platform or service in a centralized way. An ICO should exist to cover development expenses, but the roadmap is controlled by the Dev team. If you participate in an ICO it won't allow you to "vote" on development decisions. But, again, it varies from project to project. Maybe in the whitepaper of a specific ICO project they state that the token issued will be used as a share with decision power, and the more tokens you hold more powerful your vote is.
5- In ethereum's website, they talk about a way to keep the majority of the business created by giving 51% of the tokens issued to the founders, and every time new tokens are created, though coding you can create the same amount to the founders automatically. Is it viable? Isn't decentralization the whole point? How would investors react to it, considering that even the management team is top quality?
This is all defined in the smart contract and token sale rules. You can have an ICO distributing 100% of the tokens, or only 1% or anywhere in between. You can have a token that can only be created during the ICO period and a token that the owner can create whenever they want. Investors should look at the contract code (or at an audit results report) and decide by themselves if it is reasonable.
6- Salaries. The business needs real people working on it the whole time (depends on the business created but let's assume so). For example, in Monaco's whitepaper they stipulate that 35% of the token sale will go to R&D, including opening a center in China with 20-30 engineers. Who decides the salary of those engineers? And for how long will their contracts be? Who decides how much to spend on such infrastructures? How and when, if ever, will this detail be transparent?
I assume that at this point, from my others answers, you have undestood that it is not as decentralized as you were thinking. The ICO smart contract has an owner, that is an Ethereum account, which can be managed by one or more of the founders. They control the ETH raised during ICO. They can cash out right after the ICO ends and use the money to pay salaries, bills, marketing and whatever they want. It is possible to create mechanisms to prevent them from offloading the ETH as soon as the ICO ends, and they have an escrow controlling the funds, but again this parameters are specific for each project.
Usually, when you invest in a project during ICO phase, you are trusting that the team can deliver what they are promising and you believe in the potential of their idea / value proposition. More experienced investors are able to judge if the project seems legit based on smart contract auditing, roadmap viability, team background and stuff like that. If it is not stated in the smart contract code, it doesn't matter that it is written on the website or in the whitepaper, people would be able to act diferrently. If the website says "maximum cap is of 50,000 ETH" but you can't find it in the smart contract code, it is up to them to stop the fundraising when they reach the maximum cap.
