We are going to live in the post-DAO world, whether Ethereum will be (hard or soft)-forked or not.
One of the most important questions hasn’t been answered by the inner circle of Ethereum. And it is not being asked loud enough even. The question is what’s inside the Gordian knot of corrupt ties in the inner Circle.
Former Ethereum members founded Slock.it startup. Then the Slock.it team started The DAO venture, partly in order to get funding for Slock.it itself. The DAO was supported by many Ethereum core team members, including Vitalik.
As a result, a lot of tough question to be asked after the DAO crash. Would be (hard or soft)-fork proposed by Ethereum team if no Ethereum members participation in The DAO? Who are in the inner circle? What are the names of other projects to be saved with a fork in case of disaster?
Fortunately, I am not in the Ethereum world at all, so I do not know answers. Hopefully, some investigative journalists will dig there.
What’s interesting to me is how to avoid dubious scenarios in the future. I think we need to consider some moral ground for core developers and foundation members.
At least, it must be prohibited to work for a blockchain core and any for-profit project built on top of that at the same time, or even for some time after exiting working for a core.
Sometimes developers and foundation members are working for other projects because it is nearly impossible to pay bills developing a core product. For example, I left Nxt mostly because of pretty small rewards. For a developer with vast experience it is easy to find well-paid job. And core development requires highly skilled developers. So it is not easy to get away from multi-million ICOs. Highly-skilled developers team, security audits, consultations with academias and so on could not be cheaper than couple of USD millions. I don’t know about marketing, but I suspect it is not cheaper.
However, spendings must be transparent. Key meetings must be transparent as well, considerations behind key decisions should be described in details.
We need to re-consider governance models, again.
P.S. This post reflects my personal position only.
P.P.S. The title resembles “The Moral Character of Cryptographic Work” by P. Rogaway