This is the free version of Trends PRO #0054 — Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
❓ What You’ll Learn
- What are DAOs?
- Who’s earning $180,000/year working for a DAO as a community manager?
- Which well-known politician invests in cryptocurrencies?
- Why will more negative externalities go unchecked?
- How will DAOs curb corruption?
💎 Why It Matters
Networks, marketplaces and nations will become less corrupt, more equitable and more transparent.
🔍 Problem
Network effects lead to natural monopolies. Centralization breeds censorship, corruption and rent-seeking behavior.
💡 Solution
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are groups with no central management. Individuals coordinate around a shared set of rules to achieve a common goal.
Well-known DAOs include Bitcoin and Ethereum. These are transparent, unstoppable, user-owned networks.
🏁 Players
DAOs
- Bitcoin • Stores value
- Ethereum • Powers ether and decentralized applications
- Decentraland • Governs a virtual world
- BrightID • Social identity network
- MakerDAO • Backs Dai (a stablecoin)
- Aave • Lending and borrowing
- MintFund • Supports NFT artists
- PieDAO • Decentralized asset management
Tools
- Aragon • Create and manage DAOs
- Roll • Create and manage social tokens
- Rally • Create and manage creator coins
🔮 Predictions
- User-owned networks will become the norm. Facebook’s public shares have 1/10th the voting power of private shares. DAO ownership will apply to equity and governance.
- Politicians will gut the old system from the inside out. They are stakeholders in the new system and incentivized by lobbyists. The mayor of Miami is a canary in the gold mine. Followed by members of congress. And Biden’s second-largest donor. We’re witnessing a bloodless war. Politicians are handing over power.
- Negative externalities will go unchecked. Governments can enforce carbon credits on factories. How do you stop a decentralized network from mining Bitcoin?
☁️ Opportunities
- Be a network principal and participant. If you use Uniswap, own governance tokens.
- Launch a XaaS around DAOs. Seed Club offers social-tokens-as-a-service. Cooper Turley is a social token manager. Guide others through the frontier.
- Work for a DAO. Lewis Freiberg earns his highest salary ever ($180,000) as a community manager for ESD.
🔑 Key Lessons
- Less lock-in shifts power from principals to participants.
- Currencies, social networks and nations will have lower switching costs.
- Transparency counters corruption. Smart contracts take us from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Can’t Be Evil.”
- DAOs are censorship-resistant. No one will be able to unilaterally ban buying GameStop shares, downloading TikTok or trading with other nations.
😠 Haters
“Didn’t The DAO get hacked?”
Yes. And we’re better for it. See antifragility.
“Decentralization slows things down.”
Some DAOs seek progressive decentralization. Representative models may help.
“These don’t sound very autonomous.”
Autonomous is a misnomer. A better term may be DCOs (Decentralized Continuous Organizations) or DUOs (Decentralized Unstoppable Organizations).
“Whales will run DAOs.”
They run existing networks. Covertly with high switching costs. DAOs check power with transparency and forkability.
“What about the Oracle Problem?”
Be more specific. Time is an oracle. Decentralized networks are oracles. What are you solving for? Most DAOs are not fully autonomous which removes the need for end-to-end oracles.
“What about private blockchains?”
They’re called computer databases. Centralized and censorable. They’ve been around since the 60s. 😉
🔗 Links
- Why Decentralized Matters • Private networks tend to bait-and-switch. They’re generous until they reach liquidity.
- Trends #0050 — NFTs • See how DAOs, like $WHALE and Flamingo, pool capital to buy NFTs.
- Trends #0039 — DeFi • A look at the fast-growing world of decentralized finance.
🙏 Thanks
Thanks to Linda Xie (Scalar Capital), Jess Sloss (Seed Club), Patrick Rivera, Stuart Sim (FinLister) and Shawn Cheng (ConsenSys). We had a great time jamming on this report.
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What you’ll get:
- 23 DAOs (187% More)
- 7 Tools (133% More)
- 7 Predictions (133% More)
- 6 Opportunities (100% More)
- 9 Key Lessons (125% More)
- 11 Links (266% More)
With Trends Pro you’ll learn:
- (📈 Pro) Which DAO reached a $1B market cap in one week?
- (📈 Pro) Who made $350,000 from a DAO-owned casino?
- (📈 Pro) Who built a DAO and $1,200 per-member community?
- (📈 Pro) How to launch a DAO?
- (📈 Pro) Why is community a competitive advantage for DAOs?
- (📈 Pro) What are vampire attacks? Why should we get used to them?
- (📈 Pro) Why are tamper-resistant oracles important?
- (📈 Pro) Why is brand-based trust losing relevance?
- and a lot more…
