In an attempt to better understand the technical, legal and sociological impact of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) a group of researchers is planning to launch a DAO that would seek to "save the whales".
Far from an elaborate trolling, the early-stage effort is backed by big universities and researchers seeking to develop a new understanding of how leaderless organizations, powered by a collection of global stakeholders and enabled blockchain technology, could have a real-world impact on wildlife.
To date, the effort is being led by researchers at the University of Toronto Faculty of Information and the University of California, Irvine, and will use funds from a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to the UC Irvine team to fund investigations on the legal implications of advancements in blockchain technology.
In interview, University of Toronto PHD student Quinn DuPont acknowledged that while the idea "started as a joke", it could raise awareness of, and potentially provide funding to, sea creatures in need.
DuPont explained that the idea would find the researchers actually coding and launching a DAO that would "autonomously care" for a pod of Orca whales in the Pacific Northwest. As these gentle giants swim beneath the waves, this new DAO, he said, could be created to dispense funds to researchers working to study the species as a whole.
The project would further envision how DAOs might be used by charities, potentially removing some of the issues consumers have long voiced with the centralized management of non-profit entities.
To add further curiosity to the story, the idea is, no joke, based on concepts from medieval law.
DuPont told CoinDesk. "To really see the benefit of a human-whale-robot hybrid organization, we are reviving the concept of a deodand. A deodand is a medieval legal idea that all created things have legal status, and therefore have the same […]
