Is the Bitcoin community a DAO?

[RainbowKun]

In my last post, I said that Bitcoin is about revolutionizing the production and distribution relations of human society. The key point is to transform the existing joint-stock company and create a new organizational form, which is DAO.

The members of the Ethereum community are very familiar with DAO. In the past few years, I have been researching with DAO as the center. The business I will start in the future is also a DAO that represents the latest concept of Bitcoin. But for members of the Bitcoin community, they may not be familiar with DAO. I want to discuss with your guys whether the Bitcoin community is a DAO.

Before answering the question, I would like to introduce the composition of a joint-stock company. There are four main roles in the company's structure, namely shareholders, management, employees and users, that is, owners, managers, workers and consumers. It is precisely because of the continuous collaborative work between the four parties that the company value is finally realized. The company system is mainly used to maintain the relations of production between the four parties. However, the relationship between the four parties has been split for a long time due to the lack of unanimous interests among the four parties.

After the advent of Bitcoin, everything was changed. Bitcoin has created an organizational form that is different from the existing corporate operating model. The prosperity of cryptocurrency is also based on this. It has designed a set of ingenious economic models to enable people with different stakeholders to realize the integration of interests. This form of organization is DAO, which is a decentralized autonomous organization.

I think the Bitcoin community is the first DAO in the cryptocurrency field. It is precisely because of the stable operation of the Bitcoin community in the past twelve years that people have full confidence in cryptocurrencies. I made this conclusion based on the definition of DAO.

In my opinion, DAO refers to a form of organization that can operate autonomously without human intervention and management through a series of open and fair rules. DAO is like a fully automatic robot, when its program setting is completed, it will automatically operation in accordance with the rules. The Bitcoin community is a DAO.

DAO has the following characteristics:

• 1.The organizational form is a distributed autonomous organization, not a company system.
• 2.Based on certain open and fair rules, the organization can upgrade the rules through governance.
• 3.The incentive of the ecosystem is based on Token, and the participants of the ecosystem can obtain various Token rewards.
• 4.Token holders jointly own the control and ownership of the organization, and can determine the development direction of the organization.

Different from the complex and slow mechanism of ordinary companies, DAO is an automatic machine. Anyone can join and withdraw at any time, and contribute their own labor to get the corresponding reward. The Token issued by DAO will become a medium throughout the entire economy and incentivize all participants in the ecology.

DAO is a reform of the traditional company system. People work together through a new type of relations of production, and the boundaries of the company begin to fade. DAO can do many things that traditional corporate organizational forms cannot do, or effectively reduce friction in business activities, and improve the efficiency of relevant participants in the economy.

The Bitcoin community is the most successful DAO. Such as the upper limit of the number, the consensus method of competitive accounting, etc. are all transparent. In the twelve years of Bitcoin's development, it has not relied on the company for management, and has operated spontaneously in accordance with Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper. Many people mine and trade in this system, and rely entirely on programs to work automatically.

This is the most attractive part of DAO, and it is also an organization that blockchain technology geeks want to build that is not exploited, automatically operated, decentralized, fully trusted, and capable of self-development.

I think the Bitcoin community is the first DAO organization in the crypto world, and it is also the most successful DAO organization. What do you think?

[tbct_mt2]

Upgrades for Bitcoin need to get consensus from miners on the network. The last vote for Taproot to lock in is an example: https://taproot.watch/
Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

Locked In: Bitcoin’s Taproot Upgrade Gets Its 90% Mandate

According to the parameters set forward by “Speedy Trial,” if at least 90% of the blocks mined in any of the designated two-week difficulty periods “signal” their support for the upgrade, then the activation process can begin. To be more precise: 1,815 out of 2,016 blocks mined within a period have to include a little piece of encoded information that indicates that the miners who mined those blocks are in favor of the upgrade.

[Ucy]

• 1.The organizational form is a distributed autonomous organization, not a company system.
• 2.Based on certain open and fair rules, the organization can upgrade the rules through governance.
• 3.The incentive of the ecosystem is based on Token, and the participants of the ecosystem can obtain various Token rewards.
• 4.Token holders jointly own the control and ownership of the organization, and can determine the development direction of the organization.

In regards to Number Four, it cannot apply in cryptocurrency network if you truely want a well Decentralized Network/system. If you base that part on Satoshi's Bitcoin standard, you will easily notice it's incompatible. Bitcoin only requires you to run full nodes to take part in proper network consensus, and any participant can determine the development direction of Bitcoin as long as he/she can solve important problems.
A truely public network is too important to be left in the hands of few people with lots of money. It's more than a company, it's actually a Nation. Requiring citizens to own huge sums of money before they can take part in governance or determine the development direction of a Nation sounds like financial corruption to me.
So a true cryptocurrency network must not require people to own huge amount of money to be able to have a say in the network. They could try that on centralized companies.
Anyone should be able to easily take part in governance/consensus for the sake of decentralization.

[RainbowKun]

Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

Because it's not DAO. The signal means the miner pool is ready to support Taproot, although some people perceive it as weighted vote to support/oppose Taproot.

Upgrades for Bitcoin need to get consensus from miners on the network. The last vote for Taproot to lock in is an example: https://taproot.watch/
Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

Locked In: Bitcoin’s Taproot Upgrade Gets Its 90% Mandate

According to the parameters set forward by “Speedy Trial,” if at least 90% of the blocks mined in any of the designated two-week difficulty periods “signal” their support for the upgrade, then the activation process can begin. To be more precise: 1,815 out of 2,016 blocks mined within a period have to include a little piece of encoded information that indicates that the miners who mined those blocks are in favor of the upgrade.

• 1.The organizational form is a distributed autonomous organization, not a company system.
• 2.Based on certain open and fair rules, the organization can upgrade the rules through governance.
• 3.The incentive of the ecosystem is based on Token, and the participants of the ecosystem can obtain various Token rewards.
• 4.Token holders jointly own the control and ownership of the organization, and can determine the development direction of the organization.

In regards to Number Four, it cannot apply in cryptocurrency network if you truely want a well Decentralized Network/system. If you base that part on Satoshi's Bitcoin standard, you will easily notice it's incompatible. Bitcoin only requires you to run full nodes to take part in proper network consensus, and any participant can determine the development direction of Bitcoin as long as he/she can solve important problems.
A truely public network is too important to be left in the hands of few people with lots of money. It's more than a company, it's actually a Nation. Requiring citizens to own huge sums of money before they can take part in governance or determine the development direction of a Nation sounds like financial corruption to me.
So a true cryptocurrency network must not require people to own huge amount of money to be able to have a say in the network. They could try that on centralized companies.
Anyone should be able to easily take part in governance/consensus for the sake of decentralization.

Thanks to the three wonderful replies, which allowed me to gain more knowledge. I describe the Bitcoin community as a DAO here, more from an ideological level. Here I did not consider too many technical implementation details. These are two completely different levels. Technical thinking must be 100% rigorous, and the ideological level is relatively more open. First, let's take a look at how I define DAO. DAO refers to a form of organization that can operate autonomously without human intervention and management through a series of open and fair rules. The Bitcoin community is also such an organization. Open and fair rules are determined by the Bitcoin white paper, and then participants in different roles participate in activities according to the unified rules in the white paper. At the same time, here I am referring to the Bitcoin community, not the Bitcoin network. We token holders are also part of the Bitcoin community.

[kxwhalexk]

In regards to Number Four, it cannot apply in cryptocurrency network if you truely want a well Decentralized Network/system. If you base that part on Satoshi's Bitcoin standard, you will easily notice it's incompatible. Bitcoin only requires you to run full nodes to take part in proper network consensus, and any participant can determine the development direction of Bitcoin as long as he/she can solve important problems.
A truely public network is too important to be left in the hands of few people with lots of money. It's more than a company, it's actually a Nation. Requiring citizens to own huge sums of money before they can take part in governance or determine the development direction of a Nation sounds like financial corruption to me.
So a true cryptocurrency network must not require people to own huge amount of money to be able to have a say in the network. They could try that on centralized companies.
Anyone should be able to easily take part in governance/consensus for the sake of decentralization.

What if everyone has the right to vote?
I think this will make decision-making more inefficient, and sometimes it will also lead to extreme decision-making

group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members.

I prefer to vote for a group of elites and let the elites vote on behalf of everyone，This is more conducive to moving things in the right direction.

If the elite only pays attention to their own interests, the masses have the right to replace them.

[joniboini]

I prefer to vote for a group of elites and let the elites vote on behalf of everyone，This is more conducive to moving things in the right direction.
If the elite only pays attention to their own interests, the masses have the right to replace them.

In the end, it depends on the situation. There's no one solution to all problems, every context matters. In the case of Bitcoin and crypto, we might argue who should have the right to vote, but by default, anyone who 'participate' can do it.

Keep in mind that "the right to replace them" is easier said than done in most cases. Just take a look at the government situation all around the world, you'll see corruption here and there which is quite difficult to solve just by replacing people.

[DarkDays]

Upgrades for Bitcoin need to get consensus from miners on the network. The last vote for Taproot to lock in is an example: https://taproot.watch/
Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

To my understanding, no BTC is not a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) because the network is maintained by miners from around the world and it's the consensus among codes on their computers that leads to building a new block on the blockchain.

Because these sets of miners are not sitting under one umbrella group/organization but purely backed by enthusistas around the globe, the running and maintenance of BTC is fully decentralized without an appointed group taking charge of mining, events etc, and thank God for that!!!

[davis196]

Token holders jointly own the control and ownership of the organization, and can determine the development direction of the organization.

The people,who own Bitcoins cannot own the control and ownership of the "organization"(by organization I think that you mean the BTC blockchain) and cannot determine the development direction of the organization(BTC blockchain).Bitcoin is NOT stocks.Some ethereum based tokens can be viewed as stocks,so the token owners own a share of the DAO.Bitcoin has nothing to do with ethereum based tokens or ethereum based decentralized autonomous organizations also known as DAO.
The Bitcoin community consists of users,miners and developers,but it doesn't have the specifics of a DAO.

[hatshepsut93]

Bitcoin is Bitcoin, there's no need to call it other things, like "DAO" or "decentralized swarm of hornets". The original DAO was an epic fail, and to this day there are no really popular DAOs that are actually producing something. Bitcoin is first of all open source software, and there's nothing special about it, this paradigm existed decades before Bitcoin was invented.

[RainbowKun]

Upgrades for Bitcoin need to get consensus from miners on the network. The last vote for Taproot to lock in is an example: https://taproot.watch/
Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

To my understanding, no BTC is not a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) because the network is maintained by miners from around the world and it's the consensus among codes on their computers that leads to building a new block on the blockchain.

Because these sets of miners are not sitting under one umbrella group/organization but purely backed by enthusistas around the globe, the running and maintenance of BTC is fully decentralized without an appointed group taking charge of mining, events etc, and thank God for that!!!

Bitcoin is Bitcoin, there's no need to call it other things, like "DAO" or "decentralized swarm of hornets". The original DAO was an epic fail, and to this day there are no really popular DAOs that are actually producing something. Bitcoin is first of all open source software, and there's nothing special about it, this paradigm existed decades before Bitcoin was invented.

Thanks Reply. Yes, DAO became popular in Ethereum, and what it wants to create is a decentralized community organization. Currently there is no very successful DAO on Ethereum. However, we cannot directly deny the meaning of the word DAO just because the overall DAO is unsuccessful. DAO is a new organizational form, which is fundamentally different from our current company. Therefore, I am here to say that the "Bitcoin community" is a "decentralized community organization", not that Bitcoin itself is a DAO. Because it does not have a unified center to coordinate, but functions in accordance with the established rules of the Bitcoin white paper.

[slaman29]

I remember in 2020 especially when there were a LOT of Defi companies claiming they wanted to build a DAO when I commented in one place that you cannot simply build one you can only make it conducive for one to take place. Which is what Bitcoin did. Shitcoins hate to admit but Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.

[RainbowKun]

I remember in 2020 especially when there were a LOT of Defi companies claiming they wanted to build a DAO when I commented in one place that you cannot simply build one you can only make it conducive for one to take place. Which is what Bitcoin did. Shitcoins hate to admit but Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.

I think so. Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.But I believe that many decentralized organizations that truly conform to the spirit of blockchain will be born in the future.

[slaman29]

I remember in 2020 especially when there were a LOT of Defi companies claiming they wanted to build a DAO when I commented in one place that you cannot simply build one you can only make it conducive for one to take place. Which is what Bitcoin did. Shitcoins hate to admit but Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.

I think so. Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.But I believe that many decentralized organizations that truly conform to the spirit of blockchain will be born in the future.

I believe some alts have come close or are coming close. Ethereum definitely took major strides to achieve this, even convinced some people like myself who never wanted to touch it that it was at least becoming "more" decentralized.

It's so funny to see these Defi DAOs coming up, absolute rubbish people fall for it.

[RainbowKun]

I remember in 2020 especially when there were a LOT of Defi companies claiming they wanted to build a DAO when I commented in one place that you cannot simply build one you can only make it conducive for one to take place. Which is what Bitcoin did. Shitcoins hate to admit but Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.

I think so. Bitcoin is the only decentralized organisation there is in crypto.But I believe that many decentralized organizations that truly conform to the spirit of blockchain will be born in the future.

I believe some alts have come close or are coming close. Ethereum definitely took major strides to achieve this, even convinced some people like myself who never wanted to touch it that it was at least becoming "more" decentralized.

It's so funny to see these Defi DAOs coming up, absolute rubbish people fall for it.

In my opinion, the Bitcoin community is the simplest DAO. It redefines a form of organization. But DAO is composed of complex economic behavior, so that there is no fully successful DAO yet. But I believe that there will be more and more projects to explore and practice, step by step towards success. My future career is also based on DAO. I firmly believe that DAO will become one of the basic organizational forms of human society in the future.

[lovemycar]

This is a "thought experiment" proposed by former Bitcoin contributor Mike Hearn. What he described is only a future organization scenario without a leader (no center) after 30 years.

What Hearn described is an idealized decentralized self-regulatory organization. This idea was proposed in the currency community shortly after Bitcoin was designed in 2009. If Bitcoin can eliminate financial intermediaries, then maybe the company or any other group can operate without hierarchical management.

In short, DAO can use coding to make certain rules, and a company will act according to the code from the beginning. For example, the code is used to determine which rules can be changed and a certain percentage of profit is allocated and returned to investors.

In short, this is similar to how ordinary companies work. The biggest difference is that the rules of ordinary companies are not enforced digitally.

I can give a simple example to illustrate that a train of trams will stop at different stations on time and on time according to a pre-programmed program, automatically cruise at a fixed speed, and wait for passengers to get off. The train will go to the charging station to charge based on the profit it generates. It only needs to operate through the code that it thinks, no other human operations are required.



DAO expresses various tasks and work content in the form of code through smart contracts, and runs automatically. It is very different from the current company system, and has advantages and disadvantages.

DAO mostly adopts on-chain contracts, open source code, and the feature of blockchain to record transactions. The result of governance is more credible. The disadvantage is that once the contract is formed and starts running, it will not be tampered with and lacks flexibility. It is just an attempt at present. Bitcoin The community is a great attempt. I believe that the DAO will change the traditional democratic governance, and it will also bring about a very big change in the way of social governance in the future.

[Wind_FURY]

Upgrades for Bitcoin need to get consensus from miners on the network. The last vote for Taproot to lock in is an example: https://taproot.watch/
Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

Locked In: Bitcoin’s Taproot Upgrade Gets Its 90% Mandate

According to the parameters set forward by “Speedy Trial,” if at least 90% of the blocks mined in any of the designated two-week difficulty periods “signal” their support for the upgrade, then the activation process can begin. To be more precise: 1,815 out of 2,016 blocks mined within a period have to include a little piece of encoded information that indicates that the miners who mined those blocks are in favor of the upgrade.

I believe that it doesn’t matter what Satoshi calls it, or what he might not call it. Personally, and I believe I’m not alone, I would be OK if someone considered that Bitcoin “could be” the earliest example of a DAO.

[RainbowKun]

Upgrades for Bitcoin need to get consensus from miners on the network. The last vote for Taproot to lock in is an example: https://taproot.watch/
Miners have to signal their support and help to lock in Taproot. It is a decentralized consensus but satoshi does not call it as DAO.

Locked In: Bitcoin’s Taproot Upgrade Gets Its 90% Mandate

According to the parameters set forward by “Speedy Trial,” if at least 90% of the blocks mined in any of the designated two-week difficulty periods “signal” their support for the upgrade, then the activation process can begin. To be more precise: 1,815 out of 2,016 blocks mined within a period have to include a little piece of encoded information that indicates that the miners who mined those blocks are in favor of the upgrade.

I believe that it doesn’t matter what Satoshi calls it, or what he might not call it. Personally, and I believe I’m not alone, I would be OK if someone considered that Bitcoin “could be” the earliest example of a DAO.

Although many friends do not think that the Bitcoin community is a DAO organization, I still firmly believe that the Bitcoin community is the first DAO organization in the crypto world. Because it does not have a centralized organization for management, but operates completely in a decentralized manner. It has been operating stably in accordance with a set of published rules for 12 years.

[James Watson]

It is reasonable to think that the Bitcoin community is a DAO. From the perspective of successful currency issuance, because miners have issued bitcoins through self-made rules such as bookkeeping rewards in a decentralized mode, and ensure the authenticity and validity of bitcoin accounts, but in view of the fact that bitcoin mining has become a kind of Centralized form, so it does not belong to a successful DAO.

[RainbowKun]

It is reasonable to think that the Bitcoin community is a DAO. From the perspective of successful currency issuance, because miners have issued bitcoins through self-made rules such as bookkeeping rewards in a decentralized mode, and ensure the authenticity and validity of bitcoin accounts, but in view of the fact that bitcoin mining has become a kind of Centralized form, so it does not belong to a successful DAO.

Some people think that DAO will only appear on the Ethereum network, and the Bitcoin community is not a DAO. But I don't think so. DAO is not an exclusive term for Ethereum, but belongs to the entire crypto world. As long as a community organization that truly conforms to the spirit of decentralization, it can be called a DAO organization.