Ameen Soleimani: Moloch DAO – A Simple Yet Unforgiving DAO to Fund Ethereum Development

We’re joined by Ameen Soleimani, Co-founder and CEO of SpankChan. From his humble beginnings at ConsenSys, he went on to create SpankChain in 2017 at the height of the ICO boom. The project aims to create a better and safer environment for sex workers by removing the intermediaries who take significant commissions on their revenues. SpankChain’s initial product, an adult cam platform, allows users to pay performers in crypto with a native asset over sophisticated payment channels. More recently, Ameen headed a project called Moloch DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization with the goal to fund Ethereum 2.0 development. Moloch has but few simple functions: making proposals, voting on proposals, and exiting. This simple design, heavily inspired on “The DAO” of 2016 has attracted funding from Vitalik Buterin, Joe Lubin and other prominent community members.

Topics covered in this episode:

• Ameen’s background as an early ConsenSys employee working on payment channels
• Why Ameen decided to found SpankChain and how the project has evolved since its inception
• What is Moloch DAO and why he decided to launch it
• The mechanism behind Moloch and how it compares to other DAOs
• How one becomes a member of Moloch and participates in governance
• The simplicity of Moloch DAO and its essential functions
• How Moloch DAO scales and its intended lack of a smart contract upgrade mechanism
• The attention and funding the project has already received
• Proposals already made on Moloch, including YangDAO, and their utility to the ecosystem
• Ameen’s views on the broader Ethereum space, his outlook on Eth 2.0 and the future of the project

Episode links:

• Moloch DAO
• Moloch Ventures · GitHub
• Moloch DAO white paper
• Moloch Summoning Guide
• The State of Ethereum 2.0 report
• A Study of Libp2p and ETH2
• A Call for a Temporary Moratorium on The DAO
• YangDAO
• Ameen Soleimani on Twitter
• Moloch DAO on Twitter
• SpankChain
• DappCon – 20% off with the code “EpicenterDappcon2019”
• Epicenter Meetup at Berlin Blockchain Week – Thu 22 Aug 2019
• Berlin Blockchain Week 2019

Sponsors:

• Azure: Deploy enterprise-ready consortium blockchain networks that scale in just a few clicks - http://aka.ms/epicenter
• Trail of Bits: Trust the team at the forefront of blockchain security research - https://trailofbits.com

This episode is hosted by Sebastien Couture & Friederike Ernst. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/297