Decentralization is one thing, and transparency is another. You mentioned:
I happen to be an extremely and obsessively privacy-oriented person (the type that always uses pseudonyms online) so I’m not really keen on putting my name and private details out here in public just yet—but this is not a burner account, it’s my main and only EA forum account, just bearing a pseudonym. My intention is to fully “dox” myself to people who join the DAO. To them I will reveal my face and all my important personal details and even go through transparent KYC procedures if necessary.
It’s fine to be concerned about privacy. But if someone wants to start or lead anything that involves $1 billion, it’s reasonable to expect that people will know who they are, what their experience levels are, what their track record is, etc. – and be able to verify these things for themselves. If you don’t want to do that, fair enough, but in that case, don’t start this yourself, persuade someone else who is prepared to be public to start this themselves.
Reasons I’m suspicious of this:
No clarity about:
identity of the author
identities of the team
No evidence that the author/team have the expertise to:
set up this community
responsibly manage the funds
In general where large amounts of money are involved, it is better to work with well-established systems and people, as this is lower-risk in terms of “unknown unknowns” etc.
While I’m not persuaded this is a scam, the problem is that even well-intentioned ideas can go wrong if the people leading them don’t have the expertise to do so.
I have personally influenced decisions involving billions of dollars before, and despite this, I don’t think I would have anywhere near the expertise to lead this kind of organization. I certainly would not want to call it “my idea”—I would want to get a team of financial experts involved, so that it would truly be “our idea.”