The Future of DAOs?
The future of DAOs is not crystal clear, but what we all seem to understand is that they have incredible potential. As one begins to grasp the sheer amount of power that comes from organizing people, it seems inevitable that a system will appear that reduces even more friction from allowing people to coordinate.
A New Type of Platform
It always starts with an idea from one person that resonates with another. That message spreads over time until it manifests itself into reality and people begin to assemble around it. Throughout history, this formation could only take place around humans who were physically near each other, but the internet changed all of that. One of the first things to show up online were communities and forums. We like to share our ideas and we like to read and understand other people’s ideas as well.
This led to the explosive growth of social media. New platforms that allow people to take sharing thoughts to unimaginable levels. This tool, while very entertaining, is also used to aggregate people all over the world who have similar opinions and deploy their mindshare to accomplish goals. A good example is a Facebook group that grows over time until their content carries so much weight that they can convince people to take action in the real world.
Now let’s imagine we have a similar system except that the same group of people has a shared bank account that they can use to help execute their shared vision. Anybody in the group can create a proposal to deploy some of that capital and everybody in the group has a vote on whether or not they believe it’s a good use of funds. All of this done in a completely trustless manner.
Now that’s a powerful tool. That’s a DAO.
We at SoonLabs believe creating and operating a successful DAO should be just as easy as using our legacy web2 counterparts. Not only that, but it should be just as fun and engaging.
The current status quo of DAOs don’t yet realize this vision. Setting up a DAO is cumbersome, expensive, and it’s difficult to onboard new users if they don’t have a firm understanding of how to use crypto. That’s all about to change thanks to the technology that IOTA and Assembly will enable.
Attributes of a Successful System
Feeless voting is a pretty obvious win here. Can you imagine if you had to pay a transaction fee every time you participated in a poll on Facebook or Twitter? Engagement would be so low! Sure, you can use workaround systems like Snapshot, but it’s important to understand that any form of centralization in a system like this is an attack vector to become deplatformed.
Discussion forums and direct chat functionality should allow you to communicate with anybody on the platform. New ideas can develop, new DAOs can be set up, and new shared visions can be worked on by people all across the world.
Alliances between DAOs should be able to be established where they can use their synergies to further accelerate the path to their goals. Federations or large groups of associated DAOs will increase efficiencies and serve as trusted collectives, which can empower entire sectors through common mandates and areas of expertise.
NFTs should be front and center. You’ve spent money supporting your favorite artists and projects by buying their NFTs, and you should be able to easily show them off in your space. More broadly, based on the development that is clearly happening in communities like IOTA we foresee new applications of the technology in the form of NFT sets emerging, where NFTs own other NFTs. NFT digital twins will pair with QR codes and other IRL elements allowing you to stake and vote with your NFTs. This is all on the horizon as more community projects complete their development cycles and realize their true digital potential.
The elephant in the room in this new future is the fact that most users on these new platforms are pseudo-anonymous. That’s why a ledger recording the reputation of each user is so important. A mechanism like badges and XP that represents one’s activity and accomplishments is almost a necessity for users to better understand who they’re working with. An anon who’s been a part of several successful projects and has a high reputation in a community will instill a lot more confidence than an anon who shows up out of the blue promising the world.
Moving Forward
As we continue to build out the platform over the coming weeks and months, you’ll begin to notice that it becomes easier and easier to use and each iteration will make it more engaging.
Attention is valuable and any of it spent on the internet should bring some form of fulfillment. DAOs and new web3 platforms will make this effortless. The engagement used to generate income for the legacy systems will be transformed in these new systems where ownership through tokenization and new models of deploying capital will accrue their fair share to the users.
We look forward to this journey and are excited that you’re on it with us.
