Distributed Autonomous Banks (DABs)

What Balance is trying to buidl and why we are trying to do it.

Bitcoin gave us unstoppable digital gold. Ethereum gave us unstoppable digital contracts. 0x Project gave us unstoppable digital exchange. Dharma gave us unstoppable digital debt. Aragon hopes to give us unstoppable digital organisations. All of these projects are creating incredible buidling blocks.

Imagine if bank branches were as beautiful as Apple Stores.

Balance is buidling a Distributed Autonomous Bank.

We think it is really important that there is an open source interface to the open source financial system. We have seen what happens when centralised companies are built on top of decentralised protocols. GitHub is one of the most powerful interfaces to Git. They tell everyone to embrace open source. Their source code is closed. 🧐

The same thing is happening in the world of economic protocols. Closed source companies with lots of funding are storing huge chunks of people’s funds. We are sinking back into the old system of closed source banking. We need DABs.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. Sign the petition!

There are loads of parts to a bank. They provide people with a place to store and manage their money. In the world of open economic protocols, the largest closed source bank is Coinbase. I wrote about their work here:

They have done an incredible job of keeping the regulators and bankers at bay as people pour fiat money into the open financial system. As I put it:

One of the common complaints about Coinbase from hardcore HODLers is that the company is centralised and antithetical to the mission of these protocols. I find this argument pretty hollow. First up, it shows an absolutely incredible lack of gratitude for what Coinbase has done for them. Nearly all of these people could knock a digit or two off their net worth if Coinbase didn’t exist. They made it easy for normal people to buy, store and manage Bitcoin. Secondly, if someone can point me to a single piece of decentralised, non-custodial wallet software that is easy-to-use, I will be singing from the rooftops about it.

We want to create piece of software that is both easy-to-use and non-custodial. It should be beautifully designed and simple enough for regular people to use without needing to read a knowledge base. Ideally it will be infinitely better than banking on the closed source financial system.

Protocol revenue flows through the DAB. Everyone can own a piece. Dabbing will be illegal.

People should have control of their funds without having the fear of losing them. This means that people should have no idea that it’s running on a set of smart contracts and protocols. They should be able to go to Balance.io and get access to incredible financial services that are powered by unstoppable economic protocols. We are not sure if this is possible but we are trying.

We think that one of the most critical pieces of infrastructure is the ability to reset your password. The team at Gnosis have created the most robust and widely used multi-signature wallet. It hodls billions of dollars of funds.