A haphazardly assembled online group of passionate people who formed a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, and pooled a spectacular amount of Ether (ETH) for a noble cause came tantalizingly close to pulling off an incredible feat of collective action.
While they fell short of reaching their main goal — securing the last privately owned print copy of the United States Constitution’s first edition in order to make it available to the public — the speed, scale and efficiency of the decentralized effort were profoundly impressive. The fact that the group’s objective was to preserve an artifact epitomizing the most successful attempt to date to conceive a rationally structured, rules-based societal order is also freighted with symbolism.