The Inventor of the Merkle Tree Wants DAOs to Rule the World
Why Cryptoeconomics and X-Risk Researchers Should Listen to Each Other More
The Inventor of the Merkle Tree, Ralph C. Merkle, has expressed his desire for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) to rule the world. In an article titled "The Inventor of the Merkle Tree Wants DAOs to Rule the World" on CoinDesk , Merkle proposes the concept of "DAO Democracy" as a form of governance. He has been involved as an advisor in Ethereum since 2014 Ralph C. Merkle. Merkle's interest in DAOs was sparked by a paper written by Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, titled "An Introduction to Futarchy" An Introduction to Futarchy. This paper explores various alternative forms of governance that could potentially be used to operate DAOs, with the core concept being Futarchy, a concept developed by Robin Hanson in 2000 Robin Hanson. Buterin speculates that Futarchy governance could lead to a new type of leadership that is based on prediction markets, which assess the likelihood of events happening and control governance based on the accuracy of these predictions. In May 2016, Merkle published a manifesto titled "DAOs, Democracy, and Governance" on his website, where he explains in detail how prediction markets could be used to make decisions such as determining national membership, calculating collective welfare, replacing government institutions like the US Congress, passing bills, electing presidents, and preventing wars DAOs, Democracy, and Governance. Merkle argues that the citizens of a DAO democracy would adopt "realistic" solutions that minimize loss of life in conflicts. While his theory applies to wars, it can be extended to any kind of dispute. Merkle's paper also suggests that the first prototype of a DAO is actually Bitcoin itself, which can be seen as a decentralized, autonomous, and somewhat organized system Making Sense of Bitcoin's Divisive Block Size Debate - CoinDesk. Despite the potential benefits of DAOs and prediction markets, there have been criticisms. The DAO, the first large-scale DAO, suffered a major setback when a person or group manipulated its governance model, resulting in the loss of a significant portion of its resources, which were valued at over $150 million at the time. There are currently discussions about at least 10 other potential abuses of the specific software before DAO 2.0 is released. Over the years, there have been numerous well-thought-out criticisms of Futarchy, mainly focusing on the disruptive nature of such market-based implementations and the potential for decisions that benefit individuals or small groups. However, Merkle believes that the fundamental element of DAO democracy is the ability for its core software to automatically improve. He envisions the DAO ecosystem competing like Darwinian evolution, resulting in genetic improvements to the way DAOs are operated.
Merkle argues that to achieve true DAO democracy, citizens need to become familiar with concepts such as prediction markets, decentralized autonomous organizations, and cryptocurrencies. He suggests that small groups, such as student organizations, could serve as good experimental grounds for this concept. As the functioning of DAO democracy becomes clearer, the logical next step would be to test it in bankrupt cities or lawless states where there is little to lose if it doesn't work, but the potential to save themselves from difficulties if it does Criticism of Futarchy The Future of Futarchy | Toronto Prediction Market Blog Futarchy considered retarded.