Thoughts on the purpose of Edgeware’s smart contracts
Some brief thoughts about how (from my perspective) Edgeware plays a part of having smart contracts in a destined multi-chain network.
The below information is not necessarily new or original but it is at least clearer for me what the purpose of Edgeware is self-realising into, and what the possible purpose of (even needing) smart contracts will be in relation to DAOs.
What is the purpose of Edgeware’s smart contracts
Teams and projects that get funded by the Edgeware treasury use multi-sig wallets, which is the main tool we all use to manage funds. Though useful, it has limitations. It is missing some basic DAO functionality such as voting rights, ability to manage assets and vote on funding decisions of a pot of assets that could be worth a lot. Edgeware will advance its tool set by providing DAO functionality to projects who get funded. Some projects may want bespoke logic that fit their needs, and this is where smart contracts play a role.
The purpose of Edgeware’s smart contracts are for treasury funded self-governing orgs, to program their “DAOs” with their own custom logic if they require it.
DAOs on blockchains has risks
DAOs on top of a blockchain has big trade-offs, your trading convenience with relinquishing power over the underlying blockchain it sits on; as well as the impact of homogenous fees affected by the external demands of the network (read more from Vitalik).
To elaborate slightly on governance risk. If a DAO holds off chain physical assets that are registered on the blockchain, and the blockchain governance decides to reset the chain, or do some kind of major fork, then those registered assets may no longer be tied to the new chain.
Many DAOs using out-of-the box features provided by Edgeware may be happy to stay where they are, the ones that want to customise on a blockchain may more likely be requiring to further increase their autonomy. For these DAOs, Edgeware blockchain will be a temporary home, and function as a short to medium term stepping stone for the DAO to become its own parachain. As a parachain it has autonomy over its own fees as well as reduced governance risk. The final trade-off is the governance of the relay chain providing the security and interoperability features to your parachain.
It won’t stop at parachain
Though not essential for all projects and contexts, some “DAOs” may want to become their own multi-chain heterogenous relay/parachain network, with total control over the entire infrastructure, governance and fees. It starts as a seed, becomes a sort of decentralised company, grows into a state, then becomes confederation of heterogenous states with shared security.
I hope that was valuable in some way, I will leave it with this question:
What can we create given what we are capable of that will create a different trajectory for humanity?
