导读：这是一篇来自 A16Z 投资 Syndicate 的新闻稿，原文发布于 2021 年 8 月底，文中讲述了 DAO 这种新的组织方式。阅读时间约为 10 分钟。
原文与译文
Conceptually, DAOs are simple, but their implications are profound. The team at Syndicate is building the protocols and tools that will enable DAOs to reach their full potential. That’s why today we’re announcing that we’re leading Syndicate’s Series A.
从概念上讲，DAO 很简单，但其影响却很深远。Syndicate 的团队正在建立协议和工具，使 DAO 能够发挥其全部潜力。这就是为什么我们今天宣布，我们正在领导 Syndicate 的 A 轮融资。
From the moment that we got to know Will and Ian, we’ve been inspired by their crystal-clear vision of a future in which the majority of all economic coordination between humans happens through DAOs, rather than through the archaic legal machinery that we use today. It’s a vision that is very aligned with our view of crypto’s potential and with the kind of positive impact that we believe it will have on the world.
从我们认识 Will 和 Ian 的那一刻起，我们就被他们水晶般清晰的未来愿景所鼓舞，在这个愿景中，人类之间的所有经济协调大多通过 DAO 发生，而不是通过我们今天使用的古老的法律机制。这个愿景与我们对加密货币潜力的看法以及我们认为它将对世界产生的那种积极影响非常一致。
First, for the uninitiated, what is a DAO? A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a mechanism that enables online communities to form and coordinate economically. It is a new kind of digital and economic entity that runs as code and is owned and controlled by its members. It makes it possible for an online group with members from anywhere in the world to pool capital and hard-code rules — entirely in software — for how that capital will be managed and deployed. Those rules are then enforced by the underlying blockchain.
首先，对于不熟悉的人来说，什么是 DAO ？ DAO（Decentralized Autonomous Organization）是一种机制，使在线社区能够形成和协调经济。它是一种新型的数字和经济实体，以代码形式运行，由其成员拥有和控制。它使一个由来自世界任何地方的成员组成的在线团体有可能汇集资本，并对如何管理和部署这些资本进行硬编码规则 — 完全是软件。这些规则然后由底层区块链强制执行。
It’s easy to forget that there was a time when the very idea of a corporation was controversial. Before their invention, all we had were informal partnerships that were loosely held together by ad-hoc agreements. The widespread adoption of legal protocols that formalized corporations like LLCs (and other kinds of structures that followed) dramatically increased the scale at which humans were able to cooperate — as well as the amount of capital that they can collectively raise, manage, and deploy.
我们很容易忘记，曾经有一段时间，公司的想法是有争议的。在他们发明之前，我们所拥有的都是非正式的伙伴关系，通过临时协议松散地维系在一起。法律协议的广泛采用，使有限责任公司等公司正规化（以及随后的其他类型的结构），极大地提高了人类能够合作的规模，以及他们能够集体筹集、管理和部署的资本数量。
But the legal machinery behind corporations today is slow, inflexible, and expensive. For example, creating an LLC in the U.S. today can easily take weeks and cost thousands of dollars. In the age of software and the internet, that kind of inefficiency is embarrassing. DAOs are a better, digitally native mechanism for human coordination. They have similar properties as corporations, but they’re 10,000 times faster/cheaper to set up and operate because so much of how they work is expressed in code (rather than legalese) and is fully automated.
但是，今天公司背后的法律机制是缓慢的、不灵活的和昂贵的。例如，今天在美国创建一个有限责任公司可以轻松地花费数周时间，并花费数千美元。在软件和互联网时代，这种低效率是令人尴尬的。DAO 是一种更好的、数字化的人类协调机制。它们具有与公司类似的属性，但它们在建立和运营方面要快一万倍/便宜一万倍，因为它们的大部分工作方式是用代码表达的（而不是法律术语），并且是完全自动化的。
Because they are so much more efficient, they have the potential to unlock yet another dramatic increase to the scale at which we humans and capital can come together and cooperate with one another. But, it would be a mistake to think that all DAOs will do is make corporations 10,000x more efficient. An improvement of this magnitude to any technology tends to bring along with it fundamentally new use cases and capabilities.
由于它们的效率高得多，它们有可能释放出另一个巨大的增长，使我们人类和资本能够走到一起并相互合作。但是，如果认为 DAO 所做的只是让企业的效率提高 1 万倍，那将是一个错误。对任何技术来说，这种程度的改进往往会带来根本性的新用例和能力。
For example, there is a sense in which the core protocols of the internet were nothing more than a 10,000-fold improvement over the postal mail service. After all, both of them really just do one essential thing — they transport messages from point A to point B. But could you imagine Google Search or Amazon ever being built on top of the postal service? The kinds of things that can be built on top of a 10,000x better messaging system like the internet are fundamentally different.
例如，从某种意义上说，互联网的核心协议只不过是对邮政服务的 10,000 倍的改进。毕竟，它们都只是做了一件重要的事情 — 将信息从 A 点传送到 B 点。但你能想象谷歌搜索或亚马逊曾经建立在邮政服务之上吗？可以建立在像互联网这样的一万倍好的信息传递系统之上的东西，从根本上说是不同的。
So, in the same way that the internet unlocked all sorts of new fundamental value by improving messaging, DAOs have the potential to do the same by improving our social mechanisms of coordinating humans and capital on the internet. We’re at the very start of the evolution of DAOs as a technology. For them to reach their potential, we have to build the right standards/protocols, developer tools, user interfaces, and legal frameworks. Syndicate is leading the way.
因此，就像互联网通过改善信息传递释放了各种新的基本价值一样，DAO 也有可能通过改善我们在互联网上协调人类和资本的社会机制来做到这一点。我们正处于 DAO 作为一种技术进化的起点。为了发挥它们的潜力，我们必须建立正确的标准/协议、开发者工具、用户界面和法律框架。Syndicate 正在引领潮流。
We’re excited to be partnering with the Syndicate team and the community that they’ve brought together to help build the infrastructure that will drive DAOs to widespread adoption.
我们很高兴能与 Syndicate 团队和他们所带来的社区合作，帮助建立基础设施，推动 DAO 的广泛采用。