What is the humanDAO?
I think it may be a first-of-its-kind. A social impact DAO, but built on top of a revenue stream to provide sustainability and foster growth, all while the mission steers the DAO. That mission is simple, to help people through crypto — crypto assets, platforms, or incentives. Because these crypto platforms and incentives are so new, transparent, and open, we may be able to tackle old problems (like poverty) through something new.
From a higher level, it’s a type of jobs board, education center, and opportunity zone for the Metaverse. Underneath, I view it as an evolution of charities. Charity meets crypto/web3. Transparent, open, and built on top of a revenue stream and not relying on donations or handouts.
What is unique about humanDAO is that we have a built-in revenue stream and grew the community from 20–13k in 7 weeks, all word of mouth, pre-token, and token incentives. We have already achieved two of the essential features of a DAO, community and revenues/sustainability.
Right now, that revenue stream comes from play to earn (P2E) games. We are utilizing NFTs/P2E to help underserved communities through our four core pillars: wages, education, meals, and down the road funding projects for the underserved — like micro-lending.
Nearly 99% of our community has no idea this all takes place on crypto networks or even what crypto is. They heard about playing games for money. It is neat that through DAO tokenomics, we will incentivize these newcomers to learn about crypto, its benefits, and how to secure it. After they complete it, they will be airdropped DAO tokens, making them stakeholders of the DAO, with a voice to steer it into the future.
I’m not talking about a 60-second Coinbase video, then receive your Tezos. Actual modules and engagement to absorb the knowledge. The humanDAO is a yield farm that provides jobs and opportunity. We are helping to onboard the masses into crypto — from the bottom up.
What do you mean by bottom-up?
Economically speaking, crypto has been a top-down phenomenon thus far. Until very recently, you needed to buy a token to participate. Pay to play. This prices out most of the world. But with the advent of P2E, people are earning crypto and using it with merchants and their local economy.
The most prominent example of this is Axie and its token SLP. You have merchants and even politicians now accepting smooth love potion. Wild. P2E is the first large-scale way to earn crypto since faucets back in the day. I’ve been a bitcoiner for eight years, back then we used to say, once you start earning bitcoin, it’s game over. Well, it’s not bitcoin. It’s SLP right now, it will be something else later. But it still brings people into the crypto-verse.
Tell us more about this revenue stream?
The P2E model allows you to play games to win or farm in-game tokens that reside on open blockchains. They can move freely around and markets have been created to exchange them. The thing about play to earn is that the game’s economy must be appropriately managed, same as a nation’s economy. Specific criteria are needed, a barrier to entry to even play the game, along with value sinks for the in-game token. Value sinks allow the destruction or lock up of the token that can be easy to gain once the barrier to entry is overcome. The barrier is usually money.
In Axie, you need to have 3 Axies to play the game. While Axies were very cheap not long ago, they are currently $150+ each minimum. If you want a powerful Axie, it can cost up to $400. That is the barrier. Managing the creation/destruction of the token is extremely important. This is what the developers or DAO of the game decide. Get things wrong and too many tokens are farmed, too much supply will lead to declining token prices. A lot can go wrong and will go wrong as developers/DAOs try to navigate their game economies. There is no roadmap yet.
The humanDAO buys these assets (NFTs/tokens) and lends them to scholars to play every day, creating wages where they had none before in most cases. We want to improve human lives by facilitating options outside their local economy and connecting them to new opportunities in the decentralized digital economies and Metaverse. We believe the metaverse economy will rival most real-world economies.
The players make the bulk of the in-tokens (65–75%). There are also managers who manage the training and onboarding of this massive number of people entering the Metaverse (10–20%). The DAO gets the rest (10–15%).
It is essential to note, humanDAO will utilize any crypto platforms or incentives to feed its revenue stream. P2E is just the lowest-hanging fruit at the moment. Over a year ago, no one talked about P2E and scholarships, the Axie devs didn’t create this on purpose. We have no idea what new disruptive business model crypto will throw at us next. If we can use it to expand our revenues and provide more wages, education, and opportunity, we will leverage it.
It’s almost inevitable there will be a decentralized Uber. When that happens, with our global footprint, we will be able to roll that out immediately. Heck, the web3 Uber builders might come to us to utilize our community for testing and improving the protocol.
This is already happening with game developers and large gaming guilds like YGG. Because our communities will be so prominent with gamers, we can negotiate better deals for funding or purchasing their assets. However, when these game studios or whoever choose a guild/DAO, the optics and goodwill will be much better by partnering with the humanDAO due to our social impact.
How are you able to lend these assets? Can’t they be stolen?
It’s interesting, and I eluded to this earlier, most people think Axie developers started the scholarship program. But someone in the Axie community realized how crypto wallets function and how Axie set up the login system (you can use the wallet OR an email/password to log in and play), as long as you don’t give the private key, no assets could be moved. Scholars therefore depend on the DAO to payout the earned tokens.
Isn’t P2E risky? Some say it’s a Ponzi
If you’re a no-coiner, everything’s a Ponzi. We feel our model and revenue stream has been validated with significant investments in YGG and others from many investors globally. Historically speaking, most things new and profound look like a scam or lack value to many. The same was said of the internet in the ’90s as is said of crypto today. Yet here we all are, on the internet playing with our magical internet money.
Again, we differ by using P2E to compound our social impact. We are not looking to build out the P2E Metaverse, only leverage it. We will utilize any crypto incentives or platforms to help people. So if P2E fails, it doesn’t mean the humanDAO will and why investors should not look at humanDAO as solely a P2E opportunity.
The site says the fairest launch; how so?
- No private sales or sweetheart VC deals.
- The community will control 2/3rds of the token (70%).
- There will be a 4/7 or 5/9 multi-sig of diverse reputable builders in this space.
- Fair launch that can’t be front-run by bots/whales to facilitate a fair market value and broad participation.
- Governance will start immediately.
- Less speculation on the value because there’s no vaporware or a new DeFi protocol to be released down the road.
Our business model is already working, it only needs to scale. The cool thing is the more successful the launch, the more capital we can put to work immediately. And because we function on a flywheel or virtuous cycle, it will benefit the entire community, from new members to token holders. The more successful the launch, the more assets we can buy/lend, the more wages we can provide, the more revenues we make, the bigger the DAO becomes.
Why no private sales/seed? Don’t you need VCs?
The bottom line, to make humanDAO the fairest launch possible. That allocation will go to the community. VCs provide knowledge/experience, lend credibility, provide money and awareness. All great things, but there’s no knowledge, experience, or roadmap in what we’re building. These are uncharted waters.
Crypto is new, DAOs very new, and P2E extremely new. There may be less than 50 people in the world with the same vantage point I have with regards to all the parts involved in building a community this way with these specific incentives and new tools. There is no experience in that regard, only knowledge gained by doing, trial and error.
Credibility and trust can be taken care of with fair allocations and a multi-sig. Providing money is a big one, but the optics look bad when meaningful allocations — usually 10% or more of the entire amount — are given for pennies, then it 10–100x. Besides, why do we have these new mechanisms and tools to raise and contribute if we rely on the traditional route? And at this rate, it will soon be the meta16zverse, lol.
You said earlier that the mission steers the DAO. How can you be so sure? What if enough stakeholders get greedy with the revenues and try to drive it elsewhere?
Precisely why 55% of the token is to be allocated throughout the community over time. Many of the communities we want to help aren’t even here yet. The community portion needs to be handled through a lens of a decade or longer. Also, it’s vital to make sure that buying the token is NOT the only way to access membership. This is why we’ve allocated specific initiatives, like through the education pillar, we can distribute it far and wide. You will receive DAO tokens by learning about crypto, its benefits, and how to secure it. You will then have a say in its future. There will be other initiatives that won’t require buying and incentivize the education and growth of the DAO.
What if there’s a bear market and wages dry up?
The humanDAO community is not your typical crypto user or first-world gamer. The people joining are from developing nations. Remember, if you have money, you should buy the assets and play the P2E games yourself, receiving 100% of the tokens. But nearly 3 billion people live on $5 or less per day, a billion of those on $1 or less. These games can payout 2–10x those amounts, and we’ve only begun the P2E dynamic. Even at $1–5/per day, we can lift millions out of poverty.
Also, the DAO doesn’t have to sell tokens immediately. If we feel the in-game token value is underpriced, we hodl until it is valued higher. So regardless of a bear or bull market, we can achieve our mission of helping people. Also, do people stop playing games in bear markets? I don’t think so. Perhaps blockchain gaming can be one of those uncorrelated spaces in crypto that doesn’t suffer the dramatic price declines.
What about competitors like YGG and Merit Circle?
I don’t view them as competitors. They don’t either. YGG invested in Merit. And neither of them have anywhere near 8k scholars yet. So we are at the beginning of this scholarship phenomenon. We are also at the birth of P2E, this is the 0–1 moment. Even if P2E only takes market share from the traditional gaming world, that still provides an opportunity to impact 10s of millions globally.
I feel P2E will eventually consume most of the traditional gaming space AND bring many who were never gamers into the fold. Like the famous P2E doc featuring Lolo and Lola. There is plenty of room for all of us to grow. But it is necessary again to note that we are not only a gaming guild. HumanDAO will give you exposure to P2E and more.
Who are you?
Who I am is not important, only the message…. Just kidding. I’m Chris2pherChase on Twitter, Discord, and Telegram, a builder of the humanDAO. Before that, I created volatility vaults for Chain Haven, which uses volatility to make more coin. Before crypto, I worked in the for-profit education industry. I found bitcoin in 2013. Andreas Antonopoulos guided me down the rabbit hole and I was lucky enough to leave the corporate world behind.
People like to say crypto is a scam, but for-profit education is a government-sponsored scam detrimental to society. Nearly 90% of tuition is guaranteed through financial aid. So these “schools” started popping up like ICOs in 2017, trying to shove as many people in their doors as possible, with promises of high-paying jobs and massive financial aid debt. Of course they preyed on those most vulnerable and tuition wasn’t reasonably priced for online schools with no credibility because the gov covers 90%. Why not charge as much as possible? Hopefully, regulations and rules have changed, but talk about a real Wild West sh*t show. At least in crypto you aren’t saddled with five figures of debt just to participate. I digress.
What is the Metaverse to you?
I see many people and businesses talk about this Metaverse, that Metaverse, our Metaverse. To me, the Metaverse is one gigantic place we all interact. It’s not Disney’s Metaverse, Facebook’s Metaverse, etc. One place, interoperable with all else, open to all.
IMO a true metaverse could never happen until there was a way to earn inside. Enter P2E. We see the seeds and foundation being built, but it will be on an open decentralized blockchain, not a walled garden. This is web3, not web2.1. We have better incentives, transparency, and accessible, they can’t compete. We only need to inform the populous. That is also what humanDAO will do.
Anything you’d like to add?
Yes. As these P2E games become more popular and attract more players, they will inevitably experience massive exponential growth. It is only natural that the floor prices of the assets needed to play the game will rise considerably. This will price out many smaller scholarship programs and latecomers, benefiting those with the most money and the earliest adopters. Smaller programs tend to treat their scholars better.
In the P2E future, would you rather a few private conglomerates be the sole gatekeepers and beneficiaries of these virtual worlds and games, or a DAO? Especially a DAO with a mission to improve society?
So participate in the launch. Those that do will be rewarded a 20% bonus on their token purchases. More details will follow about the token and launch, so subscribe to our newsletter at the site or follow us on Twitter.
WAGMI🤝
