The next step after plain Ethereum accounts

Today, when you interact with the decentralized world, you are represented by an Ethereum address.

Ethereum accounts are very simple: if you have the private key, you can act on behalf of the address associated with that key.

If you lose your private key, that's it. If it's stolen, same.

It's an all or nothing, you either have access, or you don't.

And then you start needing many addresses, to interact with different Dapps.

And then you have many keys, across many devices, because using just one is insecure. You even build a mental model about which device should have what key. Do I want to use it for Peepeth? Then MetaMask is fine. Do I want to use it to buy a coffee? Then I need Status. Do I want to keep savings? Then I buy a hardware wallet.

This is bad user experience because:

First, users have to build a mental model around what's secure and what's not. Users are users, not hackers! Don't expect them to know all that

Second, you cannot use the same address to interact with a Dapp across devices. You shouldn't have the same key in all devices, but then you cannot have a unique address that represents you anymore!

Third, you cannot establish rich mechanisms for key recovery, stolen funds, a dead man's switch... Plain Ethereum addresses, no matter if you have 10, don't provide that

Introducing personal DAOs

A personal DAO is your own Aragon DAO that acts as your agent in the decentralized world. A personal DAO borrows all the features you can expect from an Aragon DAO, but it isn't an organization comprised of multiple people.

Aragon DAOs enable:

A cohesive identity using the Ethereum Name Service

A way to install more apps that enhance the feature set

A rich permission system in which you can link those apps between them

Here are some examples of what you could build personal DAOs on Aragon.

Dead Man's Switch app

A Dead Man's Switch app that gives permission to a set of accounts to progressively access your funds if:

a) You haven't transacted for a month

b) People can send valid signatures to the app to prove that they own an account in the list

Finance app with thresholds

A Finance app that gives permission to a set of keys to progressively access your funds.

Example:

Key A (MetaMask) can access up to 1 ETH/month .

Key A + Key B (MetaMask + Parity Signer) can access up to 10 ETH/month .

Key A + Key B + Key C (MetaMask + Parity Signer + Ledger) can access all your funds and change permissions in the DAO.

These are already possible and are just a matter of configuring permissions inside the Aragon DAO.

Non-Fungible Token Vault app

An NFT Vault app that can own Non-Fungible Tokens on your behalf.

If they are very precious, you can set thresholds like the ones we talked about with the Dead Man's Switch and Finance apps. You could set it so breeding a kittie requires just one account. But maybe selling it requires a week-long lock-up period in which you can veto the transaction with another account in the DAO.

Marriage DAO

You could build a DAO that has two participants. These participants would each have 1 marriage token (uhm $MRRG?) in the Token Manager, so 50% voting power each.

They could unlock funds for some expenses with unanimous support, allow a smaller threshold for purely personal matters, or use the Dead Man's Switch app.

Then, when you have kids... you can turn it into a Family DAO! And then teach your kids how to take part in the decentralized web, the importance of voting... and use the Dead Man's Switch for inheritance!

Check out my personal DAO

I have created my personal DAO, and while basic and on a testnet, I wanted to play with it a bit. Check it out at luisdao.aragonid.eth.

As you can see in the Token Manager, there are 3 accounts that govern the DAO. The permissions are set in a way that two out of the three of those accounts need to approve votes in order to send tokens in the Finance app of the DAO.

If you like me, you can send me Rinkeby ETH to 0x5807dC308fdc152C8b6Bf592cb491e476a27f687, which is the address of my personal Finance app.

I am currently not thinking of ICO'ing myself (I would have to ask the SEC if my life is a security), but who knows! If I receive enough Rinkeby ETH, I may as well give you Luis Personal Tokens ($LPT, sorry Livepeer) and then you could gain access to my beloved testnet $BCC.