In a world raging with military conflicts, and global political tensions from trade wars to challenges to the very democratic values many of us in the free world hold, the power of the Web3 crowd is emerging as one of the planet’s best cross border hopes for economic productivity, resilience, and maybe even greater peace.
Community is a frequently used term in the cryptocurrency sector, yet the prevailing mindset for many years has been more tribal and aggressively confrontational than community-minded. History teaches us that revolutionaries will not progress far with a manifesto calling state actors morons, with a proposed new order replete with fraudsters and schadenfreudes ripping off the people.
It is not a very compelling proposition, to anyone. There is a massive trust deficit.
No one has put this more eloquently than U.S, President Abraham Lincoln who said: “You can fool all people some of the time and some people all the time. But you can never fool all people all the time.”
Jargon like “DYOR” (do your own research) and “not your keys, not your crypto” acted as indicators that someone had crossed the high barriers to entry and become one of the privileged few in the know. Not to mention the factions and figureheads who regularly take sides against one another in arguments like the notorious Block Size Wars.
To be fair, like many areas in life, the crypto sector is comprised mostly of good actors – hard working law-abiding folks who are genuinely working to improve the financial system for everyone, and not just us in the West, also for citizens in parts of the world that have little access to finance or reliable state money.
Unfortunately, the cryptocurrency narrative has often been dominated by those who shout the loudest, make bravado claims, bully and threaten, and demonstrate little understanding of the social contract between citizens and money – a confidence and trust contract.
Digital markets appear to be entering a new phase, and there appears to be a new mindset and a new opportunity emerging. Within the realm of digital and beyond, people are increasingly turning to Web3 for its strength in convening peers from across the globe into like-minded communities focused on achieving specific goals and outcomes, with confidence and trust.
DeFi Paves the Way for DAOs
DeFi protocols were early adopters of the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) model, which hands governance decision-making to a community of token holders. Maker and Uniswap are two of the best-known examples, but until relatively recently, the model was limited to the crypto sphere.
Things have begun to change as communities outside of DeFi arrangments for financial services begin to discover the benefits, including ease of fundraising, and the transparency and accountability of governance DAOs offer.
One such use case is in DeSci, or decentralized scientific research and development, where DAOs are used to direct funds into areas that have historically been underfunded. A recent article in the esteemed scientific journal Nature highlighted the work being done by initiatives such as VitaDAO, which is researching aging and longevity, and AthenaDAO, which focuses on women’s health.
An even more ambitious use case, CityDAO has become the first DAO in history to have made an official land purchase under the auspices of its legal LLC, registered in Wyoming. The land has been parceled up, with each segment represented by an on-chain NFT. CityDAO tokenholders are citizens who can create and vote on proposals regarding the development of the land.
Co-founder and cmo of DAOMaker, Hatu Sheikh, believes that the time is ripe for DAOs to go mainstream, stating: “The DAO movement has been established in crypto for years but is now gaining pace more rapidly elsewhere, and just as other segments of the sector such as DeFi and NFTs have achieved prominence in previous cycles, I believe that DAOs are overdue a run of mainstream recognition.
“We are already seeing a tipping point in that DAOs are finding more and more real-world applications where people need a means of convening shared resources and funds around their mutual passions and interests.”
DAOMaker operates as an incubator and launchpad for up-and-coming DAO projects and has been involved with the launch of over 120 startups.
NounsDAO is a case that illustrates Sheikh’s point well. The project has recently funded an animated movie series called The Rise of Blus, where progress and spending updates are published on-chain.
“Entrepreneurs engaging with communities have an opportunity that was never afforded to prior generations. In addition to building products and distributing them at scale, they have tools to render into existence entire macro-economies. Using token engineering and mechanism design, developers can onboard and engage users quickly from every part of the world, leveraging the open financial technology of Web3,” says Lex Sokolin, managing partner at Generative Ventures, a Web3 & AI focused venture fund.
Leveraging The Loyal Fanbase
DAOs aren’t the only way that Web3 is being used to build communities. In the commercial space, Nike has been a trailblazer in the use of Web3 in branding, crisscrossing the virtual and physical realms. October’s release of the Tinaj (This Is Not a Jpeg) sneaker was only targeted to those who had previously engaged with the company’s .Swoosh NFTs in a specific sequence, giving fresh inspiration to Web3 branding initiatives.
The revenue and engagement opportunities of fan tokens have proven to be an irresistible allure for many sports clubs, with Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, and Juventus all minting their own tokens. Despite rumblings of a clampdown from lawmakers, Tottenham Hotspur became one of the latest UK Premiership clubs to launch a fan token in September, allowing holders to unlock rewards and experiences.
Celebrity NFTs were a staple feature of 2021 and early 2022, as artists, including Grimes, Snoop Dogg, and even Dolly Parton, experimented with the medium. However, many of these initial offerings weren’t designed for long-term appeal, and celebrities who jumped on the bandwagon may wonder if it’s worth trying to replicate in the future.
PlanetReFi believes that celebrities can harness their fandoms to generate interest and funds for environmental issues. Whether a beloved band t-shirt or a limited-edition release of a real-world asset. A celebrity who wants to promote awareness of their environmental causes can launch RWAs to help raise funds for their cause, boosting their social credibility, and creating even more engaged fans.
Decentralized Infrastructure For Community Engagement
While blockchain and tokens offer a mechanism for convening communities, they fall short on facilitating communications. Web3 communities must often resort to communicating on centralized platforms such as Discord or Telegram, which aren’t necessarily fit for purpose.
As a result, innovators have stepped in to fill the gaps with decentralized applications and protocols for social media and communications that offer tools and features more customized to the specificities and expectations of Web3 communities.
One example is Huddle01, a decentralized real-time communication tool akin to Zoom, except without the well-documented issues such as data harvesting or security vulnerabilities. Huddle01’s encrypted meetings can be made even more secure with features such as token-gating, only allowing access to holders of particular tokens, or logins authenticated with a crypto wallet.
DeFi lending giant Aave, now rebranded to Avara, has also made inroads into this space with Lens, a decentralized social media platform that was unveiled in 2022 but recently released a V2 upgrade. The latest version ushers in Web3-friendly features such as profiles that can be managed by a multi-signatory wallet and smart posts that support pay-to-read content.
It’s a far cry from X, formerly known as Twitter, where crypto’s historic tribalism first took root. The Web3 communities of the present and future have a superior set of tools and incentives, opening up the potential for a greater real-world impact.
While state driven trade conflicts penalize large sectors of the economy through trade tariffs, DeFi appears to be accumulating a community workforce and a collective economic muscle far greater than any one sector or state.
Adds Sokolin, ” These economic experiments either become thriving, financially aligned ecosystems — rendering entire value chains of composable software components that grow together — or they fail out, teaching profound lessons in market structure and making room for new ideas. As a result, Web3 has seen quick feedback loops and record user participation across industries like payments, banking, and capital markets in a way that our traditional financial markets have not been able to achieve.”
Pay attention here. As real world assets are digitized and join the growing market of native digital assets of all shapes and sizes – emerging new wealth looks set to be created and distributed across a wider global and better connected demography. The transfer of traditional inter-generational wealth is likely to be distributed across a wider global demography through digital access and fractionalization.
Power to the people, especially financial and economic empowerment and freedom through digital. Let us be persistent in advocating for Web3 technology neutrality for Capitalism3 for the benefit all of the free world, and remain vigilant to its emerging threats.
This news is republished from another source. You can check the original article here
