Dr. Gavin Wood Abruptly Resigns as Curator of the DAO

Dr. Gavin Wood, head of Ethereum-based solutions developer firm Ethcore, has announced his resignation as curator of the Slock.it’s DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization). According to Wood’s post, one of the main reasons for his resignation was the murky nature of the curator position, which Wood describes as “trivial”.

Dr. Wood distanced himself from the DAO by specifically stating that the curators were “not founders” and that his involvement with the project should not be “taken as an endorsement of the DAO.”

Wood continues:

“I never had any intention of offering advice to users on which projects they fund. Many (myself included) had no role in its creation over and above offering technical insight into Christoph’s whitepaper: I was not involved in the conception or creation of the DAO.”

As Wood puts it, the curator position has caused a great deal of confusion regarding the exact nature of his involvement in the DAO project. Additionally, Wood also encouraged investors in the DAO to perform extensive due diligence on the project and the potential implications for investors and the community:

“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. Obviously, you should seek professional advice before acting. Don’t forget: In this case, it is the code which rules; the faces don’t matter a jot.”

Wood’s statements have caused some speculation in the Ethereum Subreddit that the DAO tokens may be classified as “unregistered investments securities” under US law, and that Wood’s actions may be a preemptive maneuver to mitigate any potential legal risks down the line, “In all likelyhood, upon consulting his attorney and significant other, he decided that there was not enough upside for him in being attached to TDAO in a position that could later be viewed by regulators and the courts as fiduciary, especially in light of the size of TDAO’s holdings.” writes one Redditor.

Regardless of the speculative theories floating around, Wood said that he believes the DAO is “one of the most important social experiments of this decade, if not the century.” And he is hopeful the curator position will be removed at some point in the future.

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