One cannot deny that DAOs are a real hot space, at the high level of innovation, discovering their shapes and forms. From massive and multi-purpose DAOs trying to respond to larger-than-life goals (like Bankless) to “minimum viable product” DAOs created to respond to one simple problem or address one issue – we can pick and choose among what has already been created. The DAO future indeed looks bright in the digital space. But is that enough? Or is it time to take it a bit further?

With DAOs proving their worth in the digital economy, I ask myself – is it the time to go further and to transform collaboration at the level of real economy (which anyway is significantly interlinked with the digital one)? 

My answer – hell yes! And that’s at least for two reasons.

First, using the DAO solutions in the real economy transcends the crypto industry and spreads the gospel of blockchain among non-believers. A lot of people learned that crypto is more than just “pump and dump” of Dogecoin after ConstitutionDAO surpassed its planned fundraising goal in no time and almost got its hand on the US Constitution. Earlier this year, the Freedom Convoy truckers’ protests in Canada got their fund seized on two Web2 platforms and individual protesters’ bank accounts have been frozen (robbed), while their Bitcoin donations remained safe (at least if outside of centralized exchanges). After the eruption of war in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government itself launched a crypto fundraising and it was reported that part of the military equipment was bought with crypto directly as producers decided to accept it. Numerous DAOs stepped in to help Ukrainians as well collecting funds and donating them to different organizations. The more use of crypto by the mainstream, the stronger we are.

Secondly, and more importantly, the world is broken. We live in a world with the real economy surviving on money printing, corrupted political systems that could not be further from the people with corporate money making actual decisions. The governments, even in so-called democratic countries, are growing more authoritarian, trying to own your money, your assets, your data and having the ability to take your life from you on a whim, because you think or act differently than the current mainstream narrative. I think the Covid pandemic was actually a blessing that exposed the real intentions of our ruling class, which sees the future world as a QR-code, CBDC-led social credit system-type of control.

Are you in it?

I am surely not, and I do see crypto as a solution to prevent such a future and to create a different one, based on simple three principles: decentralization, self-custody and anonymity. I will expand on these three principles in a different post, but just like DeFi can give us money without intermediaries, DAOs can transform our institutions, from corporations, through media, lobbying, up to the political institutions themselves. And as long as they present a possible solution to the world’s problems, we have an obligation to try it out.

DAOs have already started invading real-world space. One example was already mentioned (ConstitutionDAO), but more recently my eyes caught the AssangeDAO, which was created “to inspire a powerful solidarity network and fight for the freedom of Julian Assange”. It aims to “raise funds to help with his legal fees and campaigns to increase public awareness on the systemic failure of our justice systems” (quotes from its website: https://assangedao.org/). That is surely an interesting example and one could imagine this to grow into a legal DAO, which brings together lawyers and social activists who plan and take up campaigns in socially-important issues, such as scrapping Covid mandates among countries or discrimination cases.

Can we imagine even more?

Maybe we can replace the broken mainstream media with decentralized journalism, which is backed by a reputation and resources of a MediaDAO - a DAO that ensures high-quality content, free of noise and manipulation that readers can trust?

Or venturing into the corporate world - can we think of a fashion company, which replaces its in-house design and marketing departments with DAO members (effectively its fans) coming up and distributing their own designs?

Those are only some of the ideas that make me very excited about the future of DAOs - add to it DAO publishing companies that come together to choose the best books, then publish them and share the revenues, DAO movie producers, DAO investigative journalism sites (like Bellingcat but on a larger scale with more participants who actually earn a living this way), or investigative short-seller funds where people pool their resources and knowledge united in one goal and monetize it.

It gives me goosebumps! And it should to you because with such DAOs going mainstream we are on the way to transform the real economy, collaboration, and the future of work and get rid of corporations as we know them now, reducing their political power and making politicians answer to the people again. Just like DeFi protocols see themselves as buying up likes of Goldman Sachs one day, why not think about a DAO buying out Blackrock and starting a new era of shareholder activism – this time for real.

In my future posts, I want to focus on imagining such DAOs and how they could work - – in the full mode of experimentation, innovation, and fun. That will be the purpose of this blog. I invite you to come on this journey with me, let’s figure out together what could work and how. Who knows, maybe it will inspire some fellow DAOists to give it a try and create a better world.

Look at nowadays corporations - they hire thousands of people with limited, pre-assigned roles to contribute to the bigger picture and ensure the product is created. Although efficient – are they really a greater example of collaboration, producing the most quality work?

The typical structure of a corporation with a strong hierarchy, numerous middle management positions dispersing responsibility for decision-making, office politics and misplaced incentives (“going up the ladder” has little to do with how one’s job is contributing to the company) constitute only some examples of how corporate collaboration is broken and does not lead either to creating something great or to the satisfaction of the people who are a part of this organization.

As humanity, we probably can do better than that. Maybe instead of pursuing efficiency as a misplaced value, we should direct our thoughts into the quality of the product and the quality of time spent on working on the product – a value on its own. That for me is the culture of DAO, another level of development of human systems that will be the heart and soul of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the alternative vision for the future that will tap into the people’s power.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is an idea of how fast-developing technology will alter the world and, as always, there are different visions on to implement it. The strongest position is advertised by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab who sees it as an effort of collective actors (so-called stakeholders), entirely dismissing any individualism, with the objective to pursue increased efficiency and productivity. One could think that in the WEF world, because of increasing complexity, there is no place for an individual human being, and people are only able to function as part of different collectives, entirely representing the interests of those organizations. That, however, will have unintended consequences like those of functioning corporations, real innovation will be suppressed because it cannot be pursued for the sake of it – if something does not benefit “the stakeholder” it is deemed pointless and does not gather support.

That is when the DAO culture rises to the challenge, by bringing numerous people together, in a fervent, unobstructed, unlimited collaboration and giving the platform to gather, create, test, and often fail, but in the end to produce the best, most innovative outputs. DAOs’ size and money power increase the profile of the ideas to the level not allowed to a single individual. But those ideas are still a product of the thoughts of those individuals who come together willingly to pursue what they believe in and are rewarded in a way that incentivizes good quality work.

That is the Fourth Industrial Revolution worth pursuing - welcome to the new, happier world.