Can an Aragon DAO be taken down by "authorities"?

People,

This is a general question - I have a few possible uses for DAOs but it occurred to me today that if the ā€œauthoritiesā€ REALLY didnā€™t like a DAO, there might be something they can do to take it down or persectue the members of the DAO - are these feasible courses of action?

Thanks,
Phil.

If you tie your organization to a legal entity, it may help limit your liability if the organization gets sued, but also open you up to being prosecuted criminally if there is grounds for it.

Pseudonymity can be leveraged for a lot of things, but if you plan on tying your human identity to the organization you need to be aware of the risks. The ā€˜unstoppableā€™ nature of blockchain means you can be arrested while the organization continues to operate - if it is designed well enough, and situated in a community capable of taking the steering wheel.

ā€˜Decentralizationā€™ has to be baked in, not just on what software you are using, but also how the organization is structured. Without key ā€˜ringleadersā€™ involved, it makes prosecution tenuous as best.

2 Likes

@jierdin ,

Thanks for that - all very useful info - however I was thinking more about a DAO as part of Aragon itself I guess - maybe my mental picture of how an Aragon DAO is built on the Aragon base is incorrect but how vulnerable is Aragon itself and its DAOs?

Are you refeing to legal or technical vulnerability?

At one point in time there are no direct ties between ā€œAragonā€ and the DAOs deployed on the Ethereum blockchain from the Aragon framework.

@LouisGrx ,

I guess it is a technical vulnerability - so then the system is only as strong as the Ethereum network - so for the sake of argument, if a government really wanted to put a DAO out of business for political reasons then it would probably be easier to target any key individuals in the DAO they could . . by whatever means they could use (legal or otherwise).

So my mental picture of how all the moving parts work is probably faulty - the DAOs are created by Aragon but then live an independent existence on the ETH blockchain?

Thanks!

I think this a fair assumption.

The DAOs are not created by Aragon. People use the DAO framework written by Aragon and autonomously deploy their DAO on Ethereum. They sign transactions and handle the process themselves and pay Ethereum gas for it, not Aragon. Thatā€™s how I see it

1 Like

OK, that clarifies things for me - unless there are more clarifications, I will keep that mental model . .

Thanks!