According to DeepDao, there has been a noticeable increase in DAO projects from 10 in 2019 to more than 200 today as we are approaching the end of 2021. The trend is not exponential, it's rather explosive, I´d say since new DAOs are being creates every day and 200 seems like a small number.

The biggest DAO Uniswap (exchange for different crypto tokens on Ethereum blockchain) has a market cap of over $5 billion (comparable to Duolingo, Oatly or Canada Goose) and 75.652 members, which population wise is comparable to the size of a small European town. This could be even considered a mainstream adoption.

Right now there are 1.6 million organization members and token holders in total out there (this number is close to the population of Estonia 1.3m). Compared to other socialist experiments it still looks like a manageable size to me, even with the currently existing tools with their dubious UX.. But what happens if the whole (business) world will slowly move towards this form of organization?

If the numbers keep increasing we might be living in a socialist experiment running on blockchain pretty soon. Actually it's already happening to some extent. The only difference is that in order to participate in it, you need to log in with your wallet and you need some crypto funds. Crypto socialism meets crypto capitalism creating plutocracy - society that is ruled and controlled by wealthy people.

We will have to see if web 3 will remain a playground for the elites* and insiders or revolutionise the way we live and work in a better and more egalitarian way.

I hope it will be the latter.

*

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/21/will-daos-revolutionize-media-or-just-create-playgrounds-for-the-rich/

My birth year 1985 was the year of perestroika. Gorbatschow initiated his social, political and economic reforms that will put a foundation to the tumultuous and irreversible changes and the end of the Soviet Union 6 years later.

In theory the philosophy of socialism was amazing: everyone was supposed to have an equal right to a share of a country's wealth. The means of production, distribution and exchange were collectively owned and regulated by the community. Sounds a bit familiar to the web 3 philosophy, right? I am a big fan, since it promises a better world for everyone, participation and a fair split. The question is how will the implementation look in practice once we are out of the early experimentation phase which I think is still the case?

The example of the Soviet Union (it´s a weird association, but I have it for some reason) was really challenging and did not work out as we all know since it's not easy to organise a population of 280+ million people. Especially if there are no computers, blockchain, smart contracts, proper community management tools etc. And also taking into account the human nature of our species, that is not 0% free of voracity, self interest and unjust enrichment attempts. Now with over 4.6 billion people online and with tech in place we will see how it works out.

At the end of the day there are always elites that have privileged access to information and resources - in the Soviet Union those were members of the communist party and the friends of the government**. In crypto you have to belong to the inner circles** ideally somewhere in California or New York  in order to know which coin to buy, when are cool NFT projects being released and what are interesting DAOs to participate in. You need privileged information and a decent financial base to start playing on the web 3 playground.

Some price points:

• Start playing Axi Infinity: 3 Axies (equivalent more or less to 450€)

• Set up an Opensea account and list an NFT: 19 USDT (equivalent to 16€)

• Play around with DiFi: the initial investment you might be willing to lose completely or grow to the unimaginable heights and associated gas fees (=transaction fees)

Similar to the Soviet Union, where the safest way to store your money was under the mattress (assuming the currency stored would be still in circulation), get a cold wallet for your crypto play budget to start. This should explain the art work of this post. :)

Ready to dive in?

First posts might sound a bit off topic and naive. Forgive my beginner´s ignorance and potentially the wrong usage of some crypto terms. The idea is to showcase how this web 3 world is being seen with outsider´s eyes and to professionalize ideas, recommendations and the storytelling with every new post. Learning as you go.

After reading my very first posts a couple of months from now on I'll probably laugh at myself on how I could complain about certain complexities or not see the things the way they are considered as “normal” in crypto. The learning curve is super steep! Hopefully it will be useful when developing web 3 ideas for end consumers who will start exactly like I am starting now: clueless and trying things out for the first time. Like this mirror post. :) Enjoy and time travel with me to discover some random parallels between the post soviet 90s and 2020s.