There is immense strength to be gained from greater human cooperation. One theory why homo sapiens were victorious over the homo neanderthal 125,000 years ago, was that the cognitive revolution of the human brain allowed the homo sapiens to collaborate more efficiently in larger groups. Human collaboration allowed for efficient hunting groups, joint efforts in developing sophisticated tools and even the emergence of trading networks that enabled efficient allocation of resources and specialisation of labor. The ability to understand and rally behind ‘common myths’ as an interconnected group is the single greatest force behind the advancement of the human race. Emerging victorious over the homo neanderthal, surviving the Arctic conditions of the Siberian passage to reach America 20,000 years ago, the exploration of space,… they were all driven by this same force.

We came a long way as a species since the battle with the homo neanderthal. Our story is very much one of a quest for greater collaboration. As network sizes increased, so did our power to tackle greater challenges. The homo sapiens from 125,000 years ago wouldn’t have stood a chance against a Roman legion, and it takes a substantially larger group to put a man on the moon than it does to hunt down a mammoth. The catalysts for the revolutions in human collaboration have always been new tools. We went from cave paintings to human language, to the printing press, to television broadcasting and the internet. We’re currently on the cusp of the next revolution - on-chain collaboration. This might be the most impactful revolution yet, as it takes trust completely out of the equation. Bitcoin started out as a solution to the Byzantine Generals Problem - which is a collaboration problem in itself. Ever since Satoshi published the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008, the challenges we can address using blockchain technology have transcended the quest for a reliable store of value by a mile. Blockchain is coming of age at exactly the right time, as the challenges we face have never been greater - some can even be considered existential threats. Climate change, war & hyperinflation as a result of monetary debasement to jut name a few.

Pooling resources

Being active in the VC and crowdfunding space myself - I’ve been confronted constantly with the regulatory, legal & administrative hurdles that fund managers, investors & founders face. Whether you want to launch a fund, become an LP in a fund, invest in startups directly or want to set up a funding round for your community - the challenges are vast and the costs are often prohibitive. American investors are faced with accreditation rules that exclude the majority of the population. As a fund manager it can take more than a year and hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up a new fund. Depending on who bears the cost of legal processing, founders or VCs see a significant amount of their funding round evaporate in legal expenses. This results in a lot of good projects that had to shut down because access to funding was gatekept from every possible angle.

The future of fundraising and of the financial infrastructure to gather resources to fund projects is already here, we’re just in the early stages of distribution. I belief that looking back, there will be a consensus that the projects we see now being built in the Web3 space had a similar if not greater impact on how we pool and allocate resources than the emergence of the Limited Liability Company setup that sparked the exploration and trade in the Indian Ocean region.

The tools of the future

Below I listed some projects I’m excited about. While I’m convinced that these tools will be ubiquitous in the near future, we’re still in the early days and most of the early adoption is centered around Web3 native projects:

Syndicate

Syndicate is a decentralised investment protocol with a social network. You can spin up a DAO in a matter of minutes for any project. Syndicate is backed by top tier VC firms like A16Z, Delphi Digital & Electric Capital. There are currently around 6.7k investment clubs and around 8.7k investors. With 74% of DAOs investing less than 1 eth, it’s clear that early adopters are still in a phase of experimenting, but there is an increasing amount of serious projects being built on the protocol. Syndicate supports the Ethereum & Polygon networks.

Juicebox

Juicebox is a programmable protocol for Ethereum projects that runs completely on smart contracts. If Syndicate is the Web 3 version of Angellist, Juicebox can be compared to Kickstarter. The platform allows anyone to get their project funded and organize a community. Every Juicebox project is represented by an NFT. Around 39k users have invested in a Juicebox project, good for a total of 51k eth across 1.1k projects.

Openlaw

Setting up a fund or getting contracts in place for a funding round is not only very expensive, traditional contracts are also extremely rigid. Openlaw allows fund managers, VCs and founders to make their contracts dynamic using code. This decreases the cost and friction of creating, securing and generating binding legal agreements on Ethereum. Openlaw is a critical infrastructure piece in the tech stack to democratise fundraising, and will play a significant role in the democratization of venture capital and community fundraising.

Collab.Land

Collab.Land is not a DAO launching tool, but a DAO management tool. It’s a crucial tool for membership moderation and provides access to members based on the required DAO token in their wallet.

Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe)

Safe is a multi-signature Ethereum wallet that functions as a custody control and collective asset management fundraising. Members of a DAO will typically vote on a proposal first, when it passes the agreed upon voters can sign off on a transaction in the safe. If a sufficient amount of members sign off on it, assets can be moved and the proposal can be executed. There are currently around 92k safes created and 423k transactions have been executed using Safe.

The future is here

I believe the tech stack above removes all frictions that come with community fundraising or raising a fund/DAO. DOAs & smart contracts allow anyone to launch a fund for any purpose, and the low set-up costs make it possible for DAOs to be set up at lightning speed and for all kinds of projects. A good example is ConstitutionDAO, which raised $47m to buy a copy of the constitution. They didn’t win the auction, but this would have been the largest crowdfund in history (to my knowledge). Deal execution for Web 3 native projects can be a lot faster since due diligence can almost entirely be automated since everything is recorded on-chain. Greater transparency in terms of management, treasury and membership allow for a far superior set-up than traditional funds or crowdfunding, which is held back by regulatory and legal constraints.