Friend, while I’m not sure your pitch deck is that of a pro - as in don’t insult the people you are pitching - “Maidsafe dev have a lot to learn from Ethereum” Hello?? I think any synergies should be explored and those smartest guys in the room are @Ross @dirvine and @Viv
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Many good things have already been discussed in this thread but as these debates become heated things easily side-track and we get into nitty-gritty that we are clearly not expressing exactly enough. I’d like to get back to the main part of this conversation of whether approaching THE DAO might be a good thing.
Aside from that we don’t know if the maidsafe team might already have contacted them or might still be in contact, I think a few interesting points have been raised:
I do agree with @Kingslanding that there is a great marketing opportunity here. And the core team has expressed on several occasion that the funds raised are – at least in part – meant to help community outreach and get the word out. So that should indeed be considered IMHO.
HOWEVER, even if it is only in coins, if you have a lot of coins in one hand, they have a lot of power and while it might not opportunistic for them now, dumping those coins in the market to destroy the price could be advantageous for them at a later point in time. (super hypothetical!) Maybe they would like to see the safenet instead to be using a more ether-compatible currency later and could use that power of dumping the price as a thread to get what they want.
Now, I don’t believe that this going to happen with THE DAO but whenever you give a major amount of stock (even without direct voting rights) into one particular control they can influence the market and thus your action more than you might like. And that comes with a risk. So, usually you only want to sell to only one investor because they pay a big surpluss which justifies that risk taken.
There is a reason why “freely available” shares on public markets are under close legislation and rules on what can and can’t be done and how and when you can sell them: they also come with great power!
And I am not sure I would want that power over maidsafe to be in one “single hand”…
There are some small positives about this idea, but more and bigger big negatives IMO. I don’t think we need go into them very far to see this. For example, one potential killer is control.
The last thing MaidSafe will want to do is have TheDAO control any spending, or have influence over the team or the company.
I’m also dubious that swapping MaidSafecoin for ether is a sensible trade just now. It might be, or it might be disastrous. Personally I don’t find ether attractive, actually I think it’s doomed. It is certainly massively inflated and could easily drop 50%, for example, which could mess up the whole deal. This us also true for MaidSafecoin, except we are currently at a relative low in MaidSafecoin and a high in ether - the absolute worst position to contemplate a swap.
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I think this is a really interesting idea.
The DAO stands for a number of things, including privacy, the right to anonymity, and decentralization.
They want to invest in things that;
a) Provide a return on investment or benefit to the DAO and its members
b) Benefit the decentralized ecosystem as a whole.
A deal with MaidSafe could fit very well.
Positives from our perspective are significant: the exposure the Safe Network would get could be huge, and particularly attention from thousands of developers who want to develop decentralised apps, which could soon be hosted on the Safe network.
From the perspective of DAO holders, they could buy into something that could give a fairly quick return if the project is successful, and could be a hugely important platform to serve many decentralised initiatives.
The DAO won’t have control over the MaidSafe team, so the only significant negative that’s difficult to mitigate is the threat that the DAO holders could vote to dump all MaidSafeCoins at once, but that’s hardly going to be in their interest.
This seems well worth exploring to me, and some negatives can easily be overcome, e.g. denominate loan from foundation to MaidSafe in an alternative crypto currency with less up-side potential, don’t hold Ether for long once assigned from the DAO, don’t sell all of the MaidSafeCoins to the DAO - also sell to some private investors so the DAO doesn’t have too much power, but MaidSafe still gain from publicity / exposure to devs etc.
Also, just for Bluebird; there could be some real synergies between the Safe network and Ethereum based technologies. Synergies is a very good & relevant word in this context 
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Those risks seem very easy to mitigate: 1) don’t agree to any control over the MaidSafe team in the proposal, 2) sell Eth quickly to reduce the risk of exposure to an Eth market crash, and 3) don’t go all in with the DAO, but give it a go with a proportion of the funds to get the positives without the negatives.
Are there any negatives about giving this a go that can’t be easily mitigated… other than the fear of rejection 
My understanding of The DAO is that the token holders can start up an agreement with a supplier and, importantly, they can fire the supplier if they are dissatisfied with performance. Token holders can then employ a new supplier. In such an event, the Maidsafe team would completely lose control of the project. I’m not saying it would happen but it could. Just something to bear in mind if consideration is given to DAO funding. 
The DAO is an unknown quantity, illegal according to Preston Byrne. There are many risks here, and a proposal has to be made and sold. That takes effort and resources, which like the crowdfunding suggestions, don’t meet the stated aim of maintaining resources on the project rather than distracting them. I’m not saying never, as always I’m open, but even though I strongly dislike the idea of MaidSafe Limited indebting itself I don’t see these options delivering on the fundamental requirement. The reason David is willing to contemplate such an unpalatable route is I surmise, because it would avoid this distraction and enable them to continue without taking a breath. I hope he has other options that align with that, and I’m very open to hearing from MaidSafe about how I and the community can help with that if he thinks we can.
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The time taken to make and sell the proposal is a real cost that would need to be offset against possible positives. You’re right that it’s an unknown quantity, as it’s very early days, and it’s even unknown when it’ll be ready to take new proposals, given the possible delays for auditing code etc.
It would probably be easier to find private buyers, though I think it’s worth considering possible significant benefits to engaging the DAO, remembering that it could be engaged only for a partial amount of the MaidSafeCoins if it were deemed worthwhile.
From a UK perspective at least, I can’t see how the DAO would be illegal, given that cryptocurrencies are unregulated, and the DAO is not a company (the FCA only regulates company activities).
I think that’s the case if the DAO is contracting someone on an ongoing basis, but if a proposal requires a certain amount up-front, there won’t be any way of pulling out after taking the deal. Whether DAO holders would vote for it is another matter.
Not saying I’m for or against this proposal at this point, but this specific risk could also be mitigated by converting ETH to Digix Gold Tokens (see https://www.dgx.io). This is something that @MrAnderson has been researching deeply for the Crowd Found Hub and could work for others as well.
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I’ve studied the DAO, and in this regard I’m completely against it.
I’m on a small break right now so I can’t list out all my reasoning, but in my opinion it’s way over hyped and exploitable.
Like everything in crypto space it is experimental and if it is successful it sets the precedent for a new way to finance projects that allows everyone in the world with an internet connection to invest in and hopefully profit from. Thats hard to overhype… but time will tell if thousands of crypto enthusiasts like myself were idiots for believing in its promise.
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I would never call you an idiot my friend. I just think it needs some additional controls that’s all.
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I like this idea. I see problems and I am sure no matter what action is taken from here there will be criticism. It would be simple to extract funding and not actually sell any MAID though this would be highly controvesial for some but we could use several million of the MAID as collateral on poloniex margin trading. Then sell MAID on exchange to finish rolling out this game changing software. As they are sold at least as much can be bought on margin until MVP.
Once that milestone is cleared buyback on exchange while closing margin position and BURN THEM.
But there is a SAFE equivalent to blockchain in the works.
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Data chains! Crazy tech
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As far as I’m concerned, the DAO is a volcano waiting to erupt with a wave of face melting, merciless, unrelenting, and ironically cold-hearted, baby murdering reality. I say loot the leaderless nonsense while the looting’s good.
@Warren - You got a link? 'cause a Safenet empowered blockchain could be a game changer.
It was David talking about it in one of these threads and I took away that it had some really magic properties.
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