The DAO wishes Gav all the best

First off, it is sad to see you go Gav, having you on the Curator’s multisig was an honor. Thank you for taking the role of Curator seriously and helping the community understand its purpose.

The Curators’ role is indeed intended to be that of a failsafe mechanism — a last line of defense against potential 51% attacks. The role of the Curators was covered in detail here. Curators curate the whitelist (hence the name given to them), which is the list of Contractors authorized to receive ether from The DAO. The Curators are tasked with a bit more than just being “identity oracles” and hold two primary functions:

First, when a DAO Token Holder submits a Proposal in the form of a smart contract, the Curator checks that the published Contract on the Ethereum blockchain matches the source code the Contractor claims to have deployed (this is done by comparing bytecode).

Second, a Curator confirms that a Proposal comes from an identified person or organization. This is done by asking the entity submitting the Proposal to send a signed transaction with a certain set of data only known to the Curator and the author of the Proposal, thereby confirming the author of the Proposal.

The DAO has a mind of its own and it is fair to say the community has not always understood the Curators’ role completely. It is worth being explicit: Curators are not responsible for providing advice (legal or otherwise) or taking responsibility for any proposal. Curators are neither the builders nor the founders of The DAO.

The responsibility of The DAO’s success falls on the Contractors to make good proposals and the DAO Token Holders to evaluate, debate, and vote on those proposals. Curators have their role, but they are not responsible for the DAO’s future: each and every DAO Token Holder is.

The community should keep in mind that Curators do not currently get paid. Being a Curator can be a bit of work and can lead to unnecessary hassle, as Gav has pointed out. Perhaps, in the future, a small stipend from the DAO to the curators for their trouble should be discussed, or at the very least a Curator’s assistant should be hired to coordinate between them and make their job easy.

The most valuable point of Gav’s piece seems to be the one most prone to misunderstanding: “I urge all those who have placed Ether under the DAO to look beyond the faces and research the structure of the contract and understand properly what agreement your funds are tied to.”

Agreed. By design, The DAO’s code and the DAO Token Holders are what is running the show. One should not just trust the faces of the Curators or other key members. Please, take the time to understand The DAO and its mechanisms found in the whitepaper. And, prior to Creating DAO tokens, one should carefully consider the exemplary and non-exhaustive list of risks and, to the extent necessary, consult a lawyer, accountant, and/or tax professionals.

Thank you Gavin for all you have done for the larger Ethereum community.