When DAOs Self-Execute—What Could Go Wrong?
Two very recent examples:
One proposal on Aave resulted in roughly $110 million in assets freezing after the proposal passed, and another on Tornado Cash saw a crafty proposer make off with roughly 372 ETH, worth over $670,000.
The Aave proposal has been fixed, and a new proposal executed the fix. As for Tornado Cash, the proposer has made a new proposal to return the funds. But because he is still the majority holder of TORN, the DAO’s governance token, it’s still up to him whether the vote actually passes.
Ah, yes, the dream of true decentralisation, or rather, covert centralisation. To be truly autonomous, as soon as a DAO votes on a proposal, the code that enacts said proposal is engaged immediately. What could possibly go wrong? Plenty.
When will devs, and their followers, get it into their heads that they don't yet have the skills to make such autonomy resilient and even predictive of the chaos the code is about to unleash.
The continual experience of failures is also a failure to learn from experiences.
I still think a DAO needs more human steps. I know, the idea is to avoid that, but... the investors are humans, so there is always the ultimate veto - to leave.