Parity Ethereum codebase be transitioned to a new DAO named OpenEthereum

By Congecko News 12/17/19 11:18 AM

On Dec 16, Parity Technologies – a startup behind the Parity Ethereum software client, said in the emailed statement that it would turn over ownership of the codebase and maintenance of the project to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), which called the project OpenEthereum DAO.

Parity Technologies

Moreover, the company hopes this new model may supply the basis for cross-organization collaboration to ensure the codebase gets the attention it needs to realize its full potential.

According to that, the startup will no longer run Parity Ethereum, the second-largest Ethereum client after Geth. Additionally, this move shows another move away from Ethereum for Parity, which has been working on its own blockchain protocol, Polkadot, in over a year.

Although it has not named names, the firm says it would talk with Ethereum Foundation, ETC Labs, POA Network, Gnosis and other contributors” about the DAO; maybe some of these will work as DAO members. Besides, other specifics have yet to be ironed out, but Parity said OpenEthereum DAO will base on a “stake-weighted token system” with the effort to foster “a fair, transparent initial distribution of stake in the final decision-making process of DAO.”

According to Parity, as important as the Parity Ethereum base code, it will work on Polkadot and other projects, “Parity is increasingly unable to dedicate the level of resources required for even simple maintenance of this project”. Therefore, when the company moves into a multi-chain future based on technology that is far more modular, maintainable and interoperable. They also added that it is increasingly difficult to explain to stakeholders why it makes sense to dedicate their expertise in maintaining legacy technology.

We are planning to move Parity Ethereum to a DAO ownership & maintainer model. #OpenEthereum will provide the basis for cross-org collaboration to ensure the codebase gets the attention it needs to realize its full potential. https://t.co/vtLeAFVWhf

— Parity Technologies (@ParityTech) December 16, 2019

Particularly, it’s also suspending its role in the Serenity development team to spend more time to Polkadot – an open-source platform for making blockchains interoperable, leaving grant money from the Ethereum Foundation on the table, despite excited for ETH 2.0

On the other hand, close watchers of Ethereum likely will not be surprised, Parity, founded by Gavin Wood, an Ethereum co-founder, caused a disturbance in the ecosystem by helping to develop Polkadot. It is the product of the Web3 Foundation, also founded by Wood, and is seen by many as a competitor to Ethereum.

Furthermore, when Parity Technologies began back in 2015, it was an overwhelmingly Ethereum-focused development shop. Over time, as the company developed, it has a look at an increasingly more token-agnostic view, starting with BTC and ETC support in 2016, then ZEC in 2017-18. A substrate, their next-generation blockchain and smart contract framework and the wider Polkadot project rather take this vision one step further, baking in the idea of chain-agnosticism right into the protocol and framework.