The name of DAO is very popular! But is it just a new organizational form in concept? What does it have to do with ordinary people? This article sorts out my understanding of DAO and provides a best practice path for ordinary people - PermaDAO, contribution equals income!
Are DAOs the future of work?
If you are in the crypto world, you will be exposed to some novel, dazzling concepts and grand narratives that are said to be subversive every day. Since 2022, I have entered the crypto industry. At that time, the most popular narrative was DAO. DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, is a native organizational form of Web3.
a16z published an article on its official website, which believes that with the development of cryptocurrency protocols, the future of mass work is not enterprises, but DAOs, and the future of income is "X-to-earn".
In the future, ordinary people will most likely not work for companies. Instead, people will earn income in non-traditional ways by making contributions, playing games, learning new skills, creating art, curating content, and other activities. The traditional way to make money is "work to earn money", but the future of income is "X-to-earn" - play games to earn money, learn to earn money, create to earn money, contribute to earn money...
This shift in the way we work may seem incredible to us, but it is not without precedent, just like the idea of companies hiring people to work for them seemed crazy in 1800. Today, that crazy thing is DAOs.
What are the advantages of DAO?
From the perspective of the enterprise, the traditional working model, as mentioned earlier, is an employment relationship between the enterprise and the individual. The enterprise believes that only by binding employees can personal resources be tapped to contribute to the development of the enterprise, and individuals also need to rely on the enterprise's platform to display their personal value and time in order to obtain compensation. This is a strong connection relationship.
As the times change, we feel that this Web2 business paradigm focuses on the internal organization of the company, but ignores the stakeholders outside the company. More and more traditional companies have many "external stakeholders" as they develop, such as Xiaomi's Mi fans, App Store application developers, Toutiao or Douyin creators, or Didi drivers... These participants contribute to the development of the company from the outside, but it is difficult for the company to always align with these stakeholders through incentives. Therefore, in the information age, the traditional corporate employment model is rapidly becoming outdated as a means of resource coordination activities.
From an individual perspective, due to the limited availability of scarce time resources, individuals tie everything about themselves to the development and future of a single enterprise. Apart from earning time compensation, most people are unable to share in the benefits of enterprise development, and the income model is still the lowest level of exchanging time for money. However, the resources and skills accumulated by individuals cannot be reused or expanded outside of the current employer, or they are limited by strong connections, or they do not have time, or they simply do not have the freedom to compound their benefits at their personal advantage. Therefore, in a situation where we have specialized skills and limited time resources, companies are no longer suitable to help us coordinate our personal activities and obtain benefits, or they do not give individuals the freedom to choose.
With the development of blockchain technology, DAO will become the resource coordination layer of this new world, which is needed by enterprises and even more so by individuals. Below we will focus on our personal solutions and practices in DAO.
The main difference between DAO and traditional corporate organizations is that DAO is able to establish a more symbiotic relationship with its stakeholders and participants. So let’s take a look at what roles individuals can contribute in a DAO organization?
As shown in the figure, in a DAO organization, individuals can contribute as token holders, network participants, bounty hunters, and core contributors, which will make work more flexible, smoother, and more interesting than the nine-to-five work we are used to. For example:
Token holders: By holding DAO tokens, they can obtain added value and dividends from the growth and development of the organization, as well as participate in DeFi and other passive income;
Network participants: can truly experience the specific applications or projects of the DAO organization, such as making money by playing Axie, StepN or other P2E games, or earning tokens or reward income by chatting, socializing, and contributing computing power through mobile phones;
Bounty Hunters: People who can earn money by completing clearly defined tasks at an agreed price or duration. For example, people with professional skills or specialties such as development, events, translation, and design can provide services to multiple DAOs at the same time and earn income by completing specific tasks.
Core Contributors: Core contributors are what we typically think of as employees today — people who focus full-time on a project or organization are the creators or core contributing team of a DAO. In the future, there will be no clear distinction between working for this team and working for a company — DAOs will still have core contributors whose interests are most directly aligned with the health of the organization.
Compared to closed organizations, DAOs are more like open economies. DAOs will reward contributions based on the value provided by individuals, regardless of where it comes from, which means that daily behaviors that contribute valuable value to the network have the potential to be transformed into an income-generating opportunity. In future DAO activities, the openness of the cryptocurrency economy will allow individuals to participate in multiple DAO organizations, matching and obtaining different income streams and ownership returns.
In this new future of work, work will become more ephemeral and dynamic — the switching cost between jobs will be lower, work will be broken down into more atomic units, the whole world will be unified under a labor model, and opportunities will be more obvious. We will discover new opportunities based on our on-chain history, ownership, and reputation, and we will be matched to where we have the best comparative advantage to contribute and "work."
My Practice
Since the future of work is DAO, what should we do as individuals? After having a preliminary understanding of DAO, I started to explore the DAO road with three questions.
Is there a way to transform yourself from a cryptocurrency speculator to an industry practitioner?
Is there a truly feasible DAO organization to contribute and improve ourselves?
Is there a DAO job that can generate stable income and start a personal digital nomad career?
At first, I was optimistic about the Korean project Terra ecosystem. The Anchor project in it could provide an annualized 20% stablecoin return. It was estimated that with an investment of 300,000 yuan, a stable return of 5,000 yuan per month could be obtained, which was much easier than going to work. Who would have thought that it would collapse in an instant.
I started playing StepN, a running-to-earn-money project, in May 2022. I got my money back in 30 days, from one pair of shoes to five pairs, and then to the synthesis of shoes on the BSC chain. In the end, I fell into my own constant FOMO.
Later, I returned to the airdrop, thinking about trying to get another chance at $UNI and $FORTH in 2021, where hundreds of thousands of airdrops would fall on my head. However, the airdrops have already reached a very volatile situation, and the huge uncertainty makes people exhausted.
These explorations did not make me a practitioner, nor did they make me money. I just felt a little unwilling to continue to fight in the cryptocurrency circle. I found that these were not the real DAO path, and there was nothing to do. I was just floating in the market like duckweed and becoming a wandering gambler.
First look at PermaDAO
At the end of June 2023, I saw a recruitment notice for PermaDAO by chance and rushed in. I wanted to take a look at what skills are needed for cryptocurrency practitioners. I accidentally saw the message of "rewards for contributions" and tried it in the Pinxuan Guild. I read the gameplay, boarded the ship, and did tasks in Notion. I copied and accumulated two records. On Friday, my wallet actually received 0.1 AR coins.
After going through the entire contribution process, I began to understand some of the concepts and projects, such as PermaDAO, Arweave, evervision, everpay, Permaswap... As I went deeper, I discovered that PermaDAO has brought together a group of partners who are working together to build the Arweave ecosystem. Although everyone is located all over the world, they can use Notion to coordinate the various guilds in an orderly manner, advance the implementation of daily work, hold meetings frequently to discuss community issues and proposals, and continuously evolve the operating rules of the entire organization.
After two weeks of trying, I feel that PermaDAO can answer the three questions I raised in my exploration of the DAO road. This DAO is actually doing things. It does not talk about the price of the currency but only about doing things. This has strengthened my determination to make this my own career.
DAO Contribution Review and Achievements
Newbies start with the product promotion guild. Every day, I post tasks, take screenshots, and accumulate points on various WeChat, Telegram, Discord, and Twitter. Although I don’t know how many times I was kicked out during this period, I still stubbornly let more people see the good articles and new developments in the community.
Afterwards, I took the initiative to communicate and participate in more community work. I maintained the Notion backend for product promotion, made mods for Discord and Telegram, and tried to write a tutorial on everpay transactions, which also started to contribute to the content guild.
My continuous contributions for several weeks gave me the opportunity to become the rotating leader of the Product Promotion Association and provide some services to everyone. I participated in the experience, airdrop and testing activities of community projects and reported product usage bugs. During this period, I also gave a live class sharing in the Digital Tribe Community of Teacher Dayu, specifically introducing how to contribute to the PermaDAO community, which should have helped several friends join the PermaDAO co-construction camp.
Along the way, I am very glad that I can concentrate on doing the right thing in PermaDAO. After a full nine-month contribution journey, as my contributions deepen, I can now earn nearly 10,000 yuan a month. Not only did I use my time to hoard a considerable amount of $AR coins, I also received the corresponding $HALO airdrop (HALO is the governance token of PermaDAO and Permaswap). More importantly, I met a group of like-minded partners here, a group of DAO friends who don’t talk about the price of the currency but only talk about how to build a better community. I also gained a subtle understanding and knowledge of the Arweave ecological project every day and every week.
In fact, I think there is a more important point. PermaDAO answered the answers to the three questions that I was struggling to find at the beginning.
PermaDAO has established a platform for strangers to build together, allowing those who are interested and want to do things to gather together to seek common development; it has established a "salary" system from boarding, contribution, to incentives, a DAO contribution system that can be truly implemented and executed in the long term, allowing me to have the opportunity to transform from a speculator who buys and trades coins to a cryptocurrency practitioner, and truly open up my own DAO contribution path.
Looking back at the DAO diagram above, since the future of work is DAO, moving from the outer circle to the inner circle is the true presentation of our personal value and the future path of our personal "work".
PermaDAO Contribution Experience
At this point, you may be wondering, is it really feasible to work for a DAO? Is it really possible to earn over 10,000 yuan a month? Is there a chance to earn more? Is a DAO suitable for everyone? I can't guarantee it accurately, but I want to talk about a few personal feelings.
Clear goals. Everyone has a purpose for doing anything. PermaDAO was born for the co-construction of the Arweave ecosystem, and we need and hope that more partners will join us to work together for this goal. But it is not a charity, nor is it a project that issues airdrops indiscriminately. You need to come here with contribution and development as your initial motivation, and then find a guild that suits your skills and level to contribute yourself. The guild will distribute deserved rewards every week based on personal achievements. If you want to make quick money and get something for free, I'm sorry, maybe this goal is contrary to the value orientation of the community. You will find that your efforts and rewards are inconsistent, and you will not continue to work here for a long time. Therefore, it is important to think clearly about your goals.
Making money is a natural product of doing the right thing. In DAO, we have to admit that the pursuit of profit is important in human nature, which also makes the DAO model of future work more dynamic. But only by putting things first can we ordinary people not be blinded by interests, and only then can we hold on to good things and let them fully demonstrate the effect of time compounding. Therefore, only by doing the right thing, money will naturally come to us, and there will be a chance that the AR coins hoarded for 5 dollars will multiply 7 times over time.
Unexpected path gains. When I saw this picture, I suddenly realized that contributing to DAO is actually using time to hoard coins and hoard the future!
Summarize
The above is my personal exploration combined with the DAO journey. I have sorted out the logic and reasons why future work will inevitably move towards the DAO model, as well as the roles that individuals can participate in in future DAO organizations. Combined with my personal contribution practice in PermaDAO, I have explored a feasible DAO path, and used the process and results to answer the two questions at the beginning of the article and the three questions explored in my own DAO journey.
DAOs show emerging promise, but they are still early days and have a long way to go before the future of work is realized. The future of work is emerging, and it will develop in unexpected and fascinating directions. We are at the forefront of this opportunity and we can seize it now!
Finally, if you are interested in joining PermaDAO to explore the DAO path where contribution equals reward, you can contact me (VX: denzii) and I will take you on board and start your contribution journey.
Embarkation:
https://onboard.permadao.com/
Tutorial:
https://www.notion.so/permadao/PermaDAO-09379cf5f8bf4b69b599408da17643a0?pvs=4
#DAO $ON $AO
