The Future Of The DAO

The date is July the 4th 1776.

The Americans have signed the Declaration of Independence.

A signal of the start of a new era. A country that was once ruled by others, learning to make decisions for itself. The following years were a period of rapid political, social and economic development, and required a country that had been controlled by others to learn how to make effective decisions and govern for itself.

So what does this have to do with the future of the DAO?

Well, right now we are in that period of rapid transition.

There are many different DAOs experimenting with novel use cases and varying methods of governance, and they are far from achieving the efficiency and accessibility they aim to. We also face the challenge of enabling everyone to be effective decision-makers. The majority of people have spent their whole lives working for companies where a manager is the one responsible for making the decisions, with DAO the focus is shifted and, in some form, everyone will be responsible for making complex decisions.

The Evolution of The Freelancer

Being a freelancer in 2022 is hard (I’m sure almost every freelancer will agree with me). It is thought of as a risky career choice and the stability of a job is viewed as the norm. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In an ideal world, we could blur the lines between work and play, and instead of working for money, we would work for ownership, doing what we want, and forming our own ideal role which is moulded to our skillset. DAOs could be the bridge that allows this to happen; they have a very different incentivisation structure to normal jobs. Unlike most companies, DAOs actively encourage carrying out work for multiple DAOs, it is viewed as a positive-sum game. Covid-19 changed the world of work forever, and the structure of a DAO could capitalise on these changes, providing freedom, independence, and upward social mobility at a time when these are needed most.

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Learning In a DAO

Currently, if you wanted to learn about a subject, you would most likely start by reading articles,then watching YouTube videos and joining a course. Now imagine a world where you could join a group full of people who are also immersed in this subject, some of whom are experts in the field, and others who like you are at the start of their journey. This community effect can be avery powerful progress accelerator. Let’s take that idea a step further and imagine a decentralised university, not only would this be significantly cheaper as there would be much lower running costs, but it would also allow for more up to date courses and dynamic learning styles. This approach is already being explored by Bittopia, the world’s first Decentralized Autonomous University.

DAOs and The Government

I’ve always wondered how democratic our democracy is. This may seem like a strange statement, but in the 2020 American Presidential campaign it was estimated to cost over $11 Billion, and although the UK works slightly differently, it seems quite clear that this role isn’t open for just anyone. This leaves the question of whether DAO’s could be a suitable replacement for the government? This is not to say that everyone would vote on every single decision, that would evidently not work, and in fact a similar system to the current one could be employed, simply including all the added benefits of a DAO.

This is a concept that I’m sure will be explored more deeply in the future and could even result in neighbourhood DAOs being created to democratise local decision making and enhance the sense of community. Local councils are responsible for allocating money, and if these were DAOs it would allow the community themselves to have more influence and ensure that the money is allocated in a fair and equitable way, it may even help create more community spirit!

Another possible usage of DAOs is in the form of single-purpose actions to influence the government, examples of this can be seen through YangDAO which funded members to create memes to support Andrew Yang’s presidential campaign.

DAOs For Change

I was recently doing some research on charities and was shocked to see how much of the donated money goes to charitable activities. For every £1 donated to British Heart Foundation, only 26p goes to these activities. This is unfortunately a rather unpreventable problem with large charities as administration and fundraising costs are to be expected.

DAOs streamline these business processes making them cheaper as well as making the accounts completely transparent and traceable at any point in time. This could even allow for a dynamic charity whereby the members help donate to the problems that are most pressing at any given period and can work together to think of ways to target the root causes of these issues.

DAOs can also help provide structure for a movement. Currently, there are many issues that large groups of people are very passionate about, however, the problem has always been effectively gathering them in one place and creating a community to fight against this issue.

DAOs aim to provide this infrastructure, and this could be very powerful, it could allow large groups of people to fight for an issue in an efficient manner and create change quicker than ever before.

This is just a brief exploration on the potential of DAOs and how the underlying technology could fundamentally shift the way we interact with society and the world. There will be many more use cases that will arise that we wouldn’t even believe to be possible today, and more projects are being launched every day.

How do you think DAOs will play a part in our future?

Let me know what you think on LinkedIn