DAOs and Human Capital

I’ve been paraphrasing Slack members a lot recently, but there are so many good discussions going on it’s getting really hard to keep track. Felix made such a point yesterday, so much so I thought it deserved it own post.

An aspect of DAOs we haven’t yet talked about much is Human Capital. There are now nearly 3,000 enthusiasts on the Slack who will very soon have a direct incentive in every Proposal their DAO votes for. In the old-fashioned crowdfunding model, you’d put some money in and hope someday a product might come in the mail. Here DAO Token Holders actually become managers on the projects, the rewards from which will go back to them in the form of Ether.

So instead of having 1 or 3 founders vested in the success of a company, DAOs will potentially have thousands, all around the world. People from all walks of life helping with meetups, with marketing, with social media, with coding, with partnerships — all evangelizing the DAO and its projects. This is incredibly powerful.

This opens the door to grassroots international marketing at a scale only a company like Microsoft or Google could compete with. And if the incentive of voting power, rewards and tradable tokens was not enough, the DAO even will have the power to formally contract these people through separate Proposals to contribute to the marketing efforts of their Contractors going forward.

That is just one of the several network effects progressively coming to life with DAOs - underrated yet growing increasingly harder to compete against every day that passes.

All of this before one even launched.

About the Author

Stephan Tual is the Founder and COO of Slock.it.

Previously CCO for the Ethereum project, Stephan has three startups under his belt and brings 20 years of enterprise IT experience to the Slock.it project. Before discovering the Blockchain, Stephan held CTO positions at leading data analytics companies in London with clients including VISA Europe and BP.

His current focus is on the intersection of blockchain technology and embedded hardware, where autonomous agents can transact as part of an optimal “Economy of Things”.

Twitter: @stephantual
Contact: stephan@slock.it

If you enjoyed reading this, please log in and click “Recommend” below.
This will help to share the story with others.