The Nightmare Scenario

For me, the real nightmare scenario is that Ethereum creates very powerful criminal organizations with no one in the top. In short, essentially the worse of our current systemm, but the top 1% is replaced by DAOs. Here's a short walkthrough of one of them:

• A P2P drone delivery system is built in ethereum. Anyone can buy their own drones, config them and add them to the network, and the system will pay for them. These drones will be used to deliver packets from anyone in a city to anyone else, very fast. It disrupts all delivery companies.

• The service is extremely useful, it grows and anyone can add charging stations, smart cars, or services to the network. Soon, there are whole companies dedicated to building and providing them with all kinds of vehicles.

• As the service connects to other distributed services, it's also used as drug delivery mechanism. Libertarians cherish, and governments decide not to outlaw the system because it's seen as useful and instead investigate the deliveries. Slowly, most local drug lords are outcompeted.

• The system develops a variable fee, it can predict how much high risk some deliveries are, soon it can also charge more for high value items high risk, so in essence, much of the drug money previously siphoned to crime is transferred to the mesh network. It's seen as a positive step for many.

• The system is lucrative, but drones don't buy mansions or spend it in prostitutes, all money is going back to buying more robots and expanding the service.

• Vehicles are created for international packet shipping: submarine, torpedoes, long range airplanes. The system is able to reach a container ship in international waters, and grab a packet directly from board. No law is being broken by a human so this is a very hard system to fight against.

• Governments start requiring automated drones to provide identification. Unregistred drones can be shot at will. This doesn't prevent them thou, as slow drones are shot, it only raises the profitability of faster and stronger drones. An arm race starts.

• Legal and illegal factories in china are dedicated exclusively for providing robots for the system. But soon, the factories themselves become DAO's as it's cheaper than CEO's. Maybe humans are still working there, but in bad conditions (just like they are now)

• A prediction market is created to siphon a bit of the money gained in causes that are believed to be good for the system as a whole. If your firm starts lobbying and campaigning for the system, you'll see the system starts just "giving" you money. They lobby for less government intervention, international cooperation, and for worse working conditions.

• The same prediction market evolves into an assassination market: if some person is identified as someone who is a powerful enemy of the system, it siphons money to anyone who can neutralize them.

• Asian factories are 100% automated and can be built anywhere. Reports appear that they are building weaponized drones. No country has ordered them, but someone is paying for them. Why?