How will DAOs Shape Our Century?

Software-enabled organizations better known as DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) are growing big enough that governments can no longer ignore them.

Legislators in places as eclectic as Wyoming and Tokyo have claimed Web3 can help drive economic growth, saying that DAOs help set the rules so creators can directly sell to consumers. A cambrian explosion of creativity could result from such a peer-to-peer economic system, they argue.

It’s thus worth asking, are DAOs effective in boosting economies? Do they fuel entrepreneurship? Why care? Do they have benefits or risks?

U.S.-based law professor Aaron Wright answered this in ten words.

Corporations organized the industrialized age. DAOs organized the internet age.

In short, DAOs are internet-based organizations that members own and control together. They enable a paradigm shift in work. The traditional way to make money has been “work-to-earn,” but the future of income is “x-to-earn” — play to earn, learn to earn, create to learn, and work to earn. DAOs can power the X-to-earn trend, making work more fluid and playful than the typical 40 hour workweek jobs.

The more policymakers can do to attract them, and not repel them, the more their countries’ IT sectors and economies can benefit. The flight of over 400 DAO businesses to Wyoming (U.S.A.) speaks to the attractiveness of DAO-friendly jurisdictions. Unlike conventional businesses needing physical locations, DAOs (and their digital nomad…