Recently, my interest in DAOs got sparked and thought to share with you what I found and how I think this can revolutionise collaboration structures

A DAO in its simplest form is a business or co-op structure to run a community with a common goal[1]. Instead of having a very hierarchical structure, DAOs allow all members to vote on decisions on how to reach that goal based on the tokens they own of that DAO. Are you new to the community and don’t own many tokens? Then you have less voting power. Have you been very active in furthering the common goal and earned a lot of tokens over time? Then you get more voting power. It sounds pretty democratic and will prevent a group of elites from taking over and starting to make decisions in their interest.

As happens often with Web3 like NFTs, the first DAO collected a ridiculous amount of money to collectively fund projects and it failed massively as hackers stole a large amount of high-value crypto[2]. As for everything it seems in this space, there first is a massive hype and then things go wrong and we end up in a period of more mindful adaptation of the technology. That is where we are now.

One group that organises itself in a DAO with a decent amount of success is Friends With Benefits. They are “a worldwide group of cultural creators, thinkers, and builders who convene digitally and IRL to collaboratively shape Web3’s future.”[3] They are at the forefront of running experiments on how to govern themselves. They are a community of 3000 creatives and they utilise the power of the DAO by effectively setting up working groups to get projects off the ground. It would be very challenging for traditional structures to effectively run 3000 volunteers at all corners of the globe, yet with a DAO, it works.

I think Web3 should enhance the real world and be inclusive for everyone, yes, at some point even your grandma, one of the big challenges will be to make all these communities work.

But the interesting thing here is that no one knows what a DAO is. Water & Music ran a research paper a while back and there were as many definitions as there were DAOs interviewed. It’s so new that research has been scant and definitions wildly differ from each other. And I think that that’s where the success of Friends With Benefits comes in. The continuous adaption to what the community needs and how to keep the rules of the DAO up-to-date.  They are not incentivized by what makes the most profit but what’s best for the people it serves. A more human-centric look at technology. That feels like a breath of fresh air to me!

And that, to me, has huge potential for taking communities to the next level and making them truly powerful for everyone involved. Not just in music.

I am curious to know what you think. Do you know any great DAOs or spectacular failures?