Building A New Infrastructure For Work
Blockchain and the Decentralised Workforce
This article is an excerpt from the original article “Blockchain and the Decentralised Workforce” on Workforce Futurist Newsletter.
The Tectonic Plates of Work are Shifting
We are at the intersection of some mega-trends that have been moving slowly but are coming to a crunch. These include:
The Decentralised Workforce — more ways to earn and learn using digital infrastructure, allowing millions to achieve their economic potential outside of traditional employment.
A New Infrastructure for Work — moving from the 1st generation internet business models to Web3 with self-sovereign identity, tokenisation of work, NFTs, digital credentials, and DAOs.
Industries Restructuring due to the economic impact of the pandemic.
We can be optimistic about the future of work, however, we need less extrapolation of 100-year-old management practices and more rethinking of work itself.
My article on what will drive the future of HR mentions these trends in the context of one business function but applies more broadly.
We all have a role to make work better for the next generation. Those who flourish will be those that can make the required mental shifts.
Decentraland and DAOs
Decentraland is the first fully decentralised 3D virtual world.
It operates as a multi-player role-playing game and allows users to build an entire virtual world. You can buy land, then build whatever content and experiences you want including music concerts, games, casinos, art shows, exchanges. Recently 12,600 square meters of virtual land was sold in Decentraland for about $1 million.
Decentraland is also a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO).
The community vote on policy updates, future LAND auctions, and whatever the community deems relevant. Voting takes place on the Decentraland DAO’s governance interface, powered by Aragon.
A DAO is a new way to finance projects, govern communities, and share value.
Early adopters are in virtual environments, and publishing, but the potential for any new organisation is obvious.
DAOs will only be as good as the trust within a community, but provide a promising mechanism to facilitate the next generation of organisations.
What Crypto Creators Tell Us About the Future of Work
In my article NFTs and the Tokenization of Work, I highlight how crypto artists are finding ways to monetise their work.
In a global labour force of about 3.4 billion people, those working independently in the creative industries are relatively tiny, and ‘Crypto Creators’ are a small subset of a small subset of a small subset.
The way creators are making a living and selling directly to customers could be a model of how other industries work in the future. They illustrate how technology will lead to disintermediation between buyers and sellers.
The potential scope of new frameworks such as DAOs is much bigger than creators, and will be useful for anyone building communities of value — new organisations, products, social enterprises, education, and artistic projects etc.
In the broader supply of work tasks, this will reduce the need for intermediaries, making the relationship between employer and worker more direct and transactions smoother and more efficient.
The story here isn’t all about solo workers, but the new teams that will form. We are already seeing new reinvigorated forms of communities.
The glue that holds communities with common interests together is Trust.
DAOs will work where they help to build trust between members.
The Emerging Use of Blockchain in HR and Work
Blockchain technology is being developed in the following areas.
Work Matching Platforms — here we can see blockchain versions of Upwork or Fiverr. Check out LaborX, Experty, HireVibes.
Credential Verification Platforms — using blockchain to verify credentials such as work history, references, employment history, skills, university degrees. See companies such as APPII, Zinc, and Veremark. Just think of all the checking that would save in HR!
Identity Management and Career Profiles — including self-sovereign identity (SSI) used to validate who someone is in a more efficient, private and secure way. Check out the work of the Decentralized Identity Foundation DIF.
Three Waves of Blockchain Work Platforms
Blockchain provides the database plumbing for the new infrastructure of work, driven by social and demographic changes. This is a world of digital skills passports, peer-to-peer work-matching and payment platforms, and easy to create DAOs.
A new decentralised workforce will emerge from the rubble of our 20th-century organisational structures.
How might this develop over the next decade?
The shorter-term impact in the next 3–5 years, will be the industry organising our career data better. We will see better candidate verification, more efficient labour markets enabling more Trust in work.
In the medium-term, we will have more seamless work-matching and more teams of decentralised workers. Regulators, and wider society, will adjust to changes in the workforce.
Key Takeaways
As work unbundles, it will rebundle in interesting ways, enabling new ecosystems of workers.
1. The biggest change needed isn’t to our databases, but our mindset — how we think about work, money, value.
2. Technology will enable billions more people to learn and earn in diverse ways.
3. THINK ABOUT how digital credentials, the internet of careers, and work platforms will impact your organisation.
4. GET INVOLVED! A new infrastructure of work is being built, let’s try and make work better.
5. TRY OUT new decentralised products e.g. Internet Browsers (Brave), Digital Wallets (Metamask), Virtual Worlds (Decentraland), Publishing (Mirror)
Some Nodes For Your Knowledge Network
This article is an excerpt from the original article, which you can read here “Blockchain and the Decentralised Workforce” on Workforce Futurist Newsletter.
Blockchain and the CHRO — downloadable PDF research report produced with Blockchain Research Institute, with a video introduction by Don Tapscott (6 mins).
Unleashing the Decentralised Workforce — a longer essay highlighting how people are earning in diverse ways from labourers to playbourers, carers to sharers, preachers to teachers, and tippers to strippers.
How Blockchain Will Change The Way We Work — 30 minutes speech given in Singapore at TechHRSG.
Blockchain and the Decentralised Workforce — video and slides of talk available to delegates at PAWorld21.
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