94 Crypto-artisans

Crypto-artisans

The Web 3.0 economy is providing an alternative to corporate employment in the form of decentralized autonomous organizations.

CryptoTwitter is alight with excitement over decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In simple terms, this is a digitally native community or organization that could potentially represent the future of work—your next employer could be a DAO.

Strictly speaking, a DAO is a community-led digital organization that runs on blockchain technology. It is managed not by a CEO or board of directors but by lines of code that define its operations, known as a smart contract. In practice, many DAOs are not yet fully autonomous and so the term is also used colloquially to refer to digital organizations in general. These are more like online collectives that have common interests and goals, and are often centered around a Reddit group or Discord server.

Crucially, DAOs also have built-in treasuries linked to cryptocurrency, which means members can earn tokens in return for their contributions. A new breed of crypto worker is already being drawn to DAOs as an alternative to the corporate nine-to-five.

In September 2021, community builder and consultant Rafa Fernandez posted a long-form piece on the Web 3.0 publishing platform Mirror about his decision to quit his dream job at a tech startup to work for a DAO. Fernandez is not the only one and participation in the DAO economy is growing fast. According to DeepDAO, a platform that tracks the industry, there were 1.6 million members and token owners in December 2021, a number that had swelled by 356,000 from the previous month alone. In another signal of this explosive growth, a

budding DAO service economy is emerging, with companies such as Opolis offering DAO workers access to healthcare plans, payroll, and other shared services.

From an employee’s point of view, DAOs have a lot to offer. They are digital so there are no physical headquarters or geographic boundaries—both already outdated notions for many gen Zers. DAOs have little to no hierarchy so there are no bosses either. Instead, they offer members the ability to collectively influence decisions and share in profits. Above all they offer a readymade community of likeminded, passionate, and highly invested people all pursuing the same goal.

“At the core of it, it’s just a group of people that really care about something, and they want to work on it together,” Anne Connelly, who teaches blockchain and social impact at Boston University, explained to the WBUR radio station. This raises the question: could traditional companies morph into DAOs? The answer is that it’s already happening. ShapeShift, a crypto-trading platform established in 2014, plans to dissolve its corporate structure and transition to a DAO model in 2022.

DAOs have their challenges. Community insiders acknowledge there’s much to figure out, from gaining clarity on legal status to resolving conflicts. Nevertheless, the combined lure of community, flexibility and shared purpose are so far proving strong.

Why it’s interesting While not every company will want to copy the DAO model, nor will it be universally appropriate, there are interesting lessons to learn from this new model in terms of community, culture building and worker empowerment. In an era of employee activism, many want to shape the place they work to fit their values, as Julia Rosenberg, cofounder and CEO at Orca Protocol, recently explained at the Mainnet conference: “If you disagree, you have the opportunity to effect change, which is not something that exists in centralized organizations.”