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Emin Gün Sirer & Vlad Zamfir: On a Rocky DAO

Episode Summary

Raising $150m+ through its toke sale, 'The DAO' has become the most notable decentralized application to date. The ambitious goal of the project is to form an decentralized organizations that efficiently makes investment decisions and generates a return for the token holders. Computer Science professor Emin Gün Sirer and researcher Vlad Zamfir joined us to discuss the various security issues with the daring project and why they've called for a temporary moratorium on funding proposals.

Episode Notes

Raising $150m+ through its toke sale, ‘The DAO’ has become the most notable decentralized application to date. The ambitious goal of the project is to form an decentralized organizations that efficiently makes investment decisions and generates a return for the token holders.

Computer Science professor Emin Gün Sirer and researcher Vlad Zamfir joined us to discuss the various security issues with the daring project and why they’ve called for a temporary moratorium on funding proposals.

Topics covered in this episode:

• How the DAO works
• What the role of the curators is
• What splits are and how they became a way to withdraw funds
• Why the DAO has a bias towards approving proposals
• How attackers could ‘stalk’ token holders when withdrawing their funds
• How the DAO can be upgraded

Episode links:

• A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO Blog Post
• A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO Full Paper PDF
• EB132 – Stephan Tual: Building A Universal Sharing Network On Ethereum And A $150M DAO
• Understanding the DAO Accounting
• The DAO website
• Meher's 'split DAO' reward token attack

This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Meher Roy. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/134