Announcing The 2C IndieDAO
Empowering Indies worldwide.
On July 1, 2021, 2C announced long-awaited plans for the IndieDAO.
Expert Indie designers and developers around the world can now become members of The 2C IndieDAO. We are building the best freelance network in the world, so that Indies can live their dream, without all the hassle.
Update: The IndieDAO has launched on October 1st, 2021. Applications will be available soon for designer and developer Indies!
Update: The IndieDAO has begun to formalize it’s legal and operational frameworks, taking a giant leap towards complete decentralization and a long term hyper-structure foundation, beginning January 1st, 2023.
What is a DAO?
A DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is a digital entity that allows a distributed group of members to manage assets and decision making. Members interact through a shared governance model, enforced by smart contracts on a blockchain.
Working independently is tricky.
Being an independent, a “freelancer” or an “Indie”, can be risky, challenging, and rewarding. Being responsible for your own business practice grants freedom and flexibility, but also comes with serious drawbacks.
The 2C network picks up responsibility for the mundane, and allows Indies to focus on what they love. Keep the flexibility and independence, but ditch the boring business parts.
Responsibilities of the Indie lifestyle:
- ✅ Constantly honing skills to remain expert in your field
- ☑️ Creating and marketing your brand — provided by 2C
- ☑️ Pitching to clients — provided by 2C
- ☑️ Negotiating sales deals — provided by 2C
- ☑️ Finding good teammates — provided by 2C
- ☑️ Doing administrative work — provided by 2C
- ✅ Get paid
We handle the work pipeline, customer management, and time consuming marketing & admin work, so that Indies can focus on their specialization. Instead of working solo on a gig platform, Indies can join teams at 2C and live their Indie dream.
2C has served dozens of Indies since 2018, and carries huge plans to continue improving the Indie experience.
We realize this model is providing tremendous value, but will eventually trend towards a traditional corporate model, unless we do something to change it. In order to maximize 2C’s chance of long-term success, and avoid the pitfalls of traditional corporations, we’ve decided to implement The IndieDAO as a governing entity in the ecosystem. The DAO will incrementally receive network governance power, business support, and cash grants from 2C, beginning with an initial grant of $25,000 on October 1st, 2021.
Rethinking the future of work.
Two’s Complement (2C) was initially founded in 2018 by Indie designer Katy Jeremko and Indie developer Nico Valencia. In late fall, they volunteered to help organize ETHBerlin and transformed inspiration from the event into a distributed network that supports the Indie lifestyle. In order to unpack the significance of implementing a DAO within 2C, we need to begin with a brief context of historical business organizations:
Corporations
A result of the Industrial Revolution — corporations emerged as a method for pooled resources to build manufacturing pipelines and limit risk for associated members. The required tools were far too expensive for a single worker to afford, so investors would provide capital, and executive leaders would protect the interest of the investors. This system was disruptively effective, and allowed tremendous growth for hundreds of years.
Unfortunately — an unintended consequence — corporations produced an extreme wealth gap due to the centralization of risk, control, and profit. Corporations were an incredible advance in business technology, but we have outgrown their direct need for the majority of workers.
Gig Economy
The media has focused on Gig Economy marketplaces disrupting classic corporate models. These marketplaces award schedule flexibility to workers by providing a platform to match available workers to jobs. Unfortunately, most of the control and profit remains with the investors and executives, while flexibility is actually paid for by workers accepting some of the risk involved with market volatility.
The larger consequence of the Gig Economy is an intense “Race to the Bottom”. Most marketplaces for professional services are designed such that competition drives a good bargain for the customer. The unintended consequence is a model that incentivizes customers to match with the lowest acceptable quality at the lowest acceptable hourly rate. This drives worker compensation down and pushes expert specialists out of the marketplace. A preferred Indie model would highlight expert specialists that will result in the most cost effective overall solution for a customer.
Gig Economy continues to evolve, but an even bigger disruptive force may end Gig Economy’s transition early.
DAOs
A DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) properly distributes risk, control, and profit to its members. DAOs blend the benefits of corporations and Gig Economy into a more efficient and profitable system for all members. Blockchain smart contracts allow members to organize and govern the organization’s operation and assets in a trustless system.
Rules are programmed onto the blockchain, and enforced programmatically, creating a fair and transparent mode of operations. Private and complex legal agreements between privileged wealthy parties are replaced with an active community of workers, who vote on policy and asset management.
DAOs may have been a more effective model than corporations, though the required blockchain technology didn’t exist over 200 years ago. The maturity of DAO technology is finally reaching a point capable of transforming entire industries into a more effective and equitable model, largely capable of outperforming traditional corporations.
The IndieDAO
Enter The IndieDAO.
We have invested the past several years designing and bootstrapping a consulting practice that will lend itself to an extraordinary transformation. Rather than bootstrapping a DAO from our inception, we’ve offered a hypothesis that incrementally migrating layers of a traditional corporate model into a DAO will increase our chances of eventual success at scale.
2C has designed an incremental approach that will systematically transform a services corporation into a DAO, while optimizing its growth potential along the way. The approach focuses on continuously testing and maturing governance protocols in order to minimize the amount of risk that early members must bear.
Our goal is to design the best Indie network in the world, so that Indies can live their dream without all the hassle. The IndieDAO is optimized for flexibility, fairness, and fun.
Flexible 📅
Work
- Indies match to work engagements that fit their life schedule
- Indies choose when to work extra hard, and when to rest
- Indies can mix project and personal work, as they choose
Location
- Indies live wherever they want
- Asynchronous optimized project workflows minimize meeting requirements, and maximize global collaboration
Technology
- Indies select projects that fit their preferred technology and design specialization
- Edge-technology opportunities provide continued specialization growth
Fair ⚖️
Ownership
- Indies earn ownership and governance in the Indie DAO, as they contribute their skills and time to the community
- Community earnings are governed by a diverse and active community, not a narrow percent of wealthy individuals
Experimentation
- The IndieDAO aims to neutralize location-based compensation, replacing large gaps with more equitable payment terms
- The IndieDAO aims to transition hourly work towards task based compensation over time, promoting specialization and rewarding efficiencies created by members
Referrals
- Indies earn governance power and corresponding reputation when they invite others into the DAO
- Indies earn governance power and reputation, and are compensated when they introduce additional project opportunities to IndieDAO
Fun 🎈
Matching
- Upon growth milestones, Indies will be matched with projects that fit their specialized interests and skills
- Upon growth milestones, Indies will be matched with other Indies with similar workflow preferences, interests, and business practices
Gamification
- 2C continues to build software that brightens up the boring parts of work, and brings joy to work deliverables
- 2C offers paid contracts to work on these projects, providing interesting work and contributing to stable deal flow
What’s Next
We are excited to continue this journey at 2C, transforming feedback from our partners into realizing our collective Indie dream. Please reach out to learn more or get involved, and follow us at 2C on Twitter and the IndieDAO on Twitter to stay in the know.
