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Filip

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The DAO will never die.

Despite the DAO fiasco that polarized many in the community the theory behind the project lives on. It’s no stretch of the imagination to see how the capabilities of Ethereum could create new forms of organizations. After all, what is a for-profit organization other than a collection of contracts between multiple stakeholders? If these relationships can be effectively defined with smart contracts then we might see uniquely different organizational structures begin to emerge. Primavera de Filippi is a researcher at Harvard and is an advocate of blockchain technologies enabling us to redefine organizations, work, reputation, and the economy. The corporation has been an important social technology and there is no reason to suggest it won’t continue to (slowly) evolve. This poses a different threat than technological disruption as it could offer an alternative system to that which currently facilitates traditional and formal organizations.

ICOs.

A fantastic podcast from a16z with Olaf Carlson-Wee who founded Polychain — a hedge fund that invests exclusively in cryptocurrencies. He describes his vision of what role tokens will play in the blockchain ecosystem. If you are bearish on ICOs I think this detailed and astute discussion could challenge your perspective.

Changing tides and smart contracts.

Continuing on from our last newsletter where we discussed the migration of some prominent projects from Bitcoin and Counterparty to Ethereum, StorJ published a blog explaining their reasoning behind this transition. They saw the benefits of better access to tools and wallets for their users, smart contract capabilities, and the Raiden Network as key benefits. There was a recent article that compared the smart contract capabilities of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Hyperledger that is worth checking out for a more technical comparison of these networks. Another recent blog from Monax lays out their perspective on smart contracts and provide a succinct definition of this technology.

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