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A lot of people like to talk about the Great Resignation and alternative working models. Enter DAO’s and Web3. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations promise to make you your own boss and worker. They seem to appeal to folks interested in DeFi movements. So what are they and how do they work?

First, you join a DAO – usually by by purchasing a token. Then you can then start participating and contributing to the community forum (usually a discord channel) and voting (using Snapshot or similar). As one’s reputation grows, the DAO community may reward you based on their discussion and participation KPI’s. Once you prove your reputation, you might start contributing to the core DAO project. At this point, you might be able to participate in completing a bounty: a small task. After your reputation grows enough, you might even be picked up for a full or part time role. Part and full-time positions in DAO’s are still rare and people that earn money often participate in several of them at the same time. It’s similar to many other hustle culture jobs. This tweet fits the experience:

The draw is that you can quickly put together a community of like-minded people interesting in pushing forward an idea or project – and let people contribute to it and work on it as they can. You can work when you want from wherever you want.

There are some serious downsides besides the difficulty of making a living doing it. Many people are ok with low/no pay because they’re more interested in the community organization around an idea than the pay, but organization can be difficult. Coordinating work and incentives so everyone is focused towards a solution can be problematic. Further, there are no guarantees. You may never get paid. There is no retirement contributions, stock, employee gym, no medical coverage, no sick/maternity/paternity or annual leave. All the work you do is in a legal grey area of ownership since you are neither an employee nor contractor – but liability claims might apply to every participant. Harassment, discrimination, and other workplace issues can also become problematic as the DAO might exist in countless different countries and jurisdictions. Still, it hasn’t stopped them from forming.

The takeaway

I get the idea, but have serious doubts about these organizations – just like I had serious doubts about cryptocurrency promises. The reason we have laws about companies is to protect employees from unscrupulous bosses/exploitation, help resolve conflicts between owners that want to go different directions, protect a company’s hard work from competition, defend themselves from patent/IP/financial attacks, and to hold companies liable if they do harm. Their ideas and work could easily be stolen by others and it’s questionable that anyone could protect their IP. It would be interesting to see what happened if there were copyright claims against a DAO’s work if it was plagiarized. They could easily be infiltrated and overtaken by subversive elements. They could be run by competitors to destroy a competitor’s market or by foreign powers interested in subverting a government, legal system, or its financial systems to start a revolution/cause massive riots. The reality is that enabling people to overthrow existing systems can be used for evil just as quickly as for good – and we don’t seem to have nearly as many controls on the former to justify the latter.

I worry that, just like crypto-currency, we’re going to have to re-learn why these laws exist and just changing names doesn’t change human nature. Lets hope we have more skepticism and learn our lesson before another entire population of people get run through the ringers like happened with the completely predictable crypto collapse.

Other links:

• https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/2022/09/22/toss-in-your-job-and-make-300k-working-for-a-dao-heres-how

It seems games are branching out to different kinds of marketing

Resident Evil paired with Cocalero to produce their own tequila. Resident Evil Cocalero Tequila

Assassin’s Creed Straight Bourbon Whiskey

“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I’ll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man without a goal, and I’ll give you a stock clerk.”

J C Penny

My dad would have one of Zig Ziglar’s many tapes playing in his car every time we’d get in. It was inevitable that if you got in his car – the moment he turned it on you would hear the click of the tape deck and out would come Zig Ziglar. I don’t think my dad even programmed the station buttons on his radio.

I can almost recite some of his presentations word for word – and I can tell you firmly that they work. I remember being about 10 years old and writing down several goals using his method. The most audacious of the lot involved a goal I set 15 years in the future. And you know what? It worked. Even though I thought it was an impossible goal at the time. It was far too far away, too impossible for a kid from a rural school with a middling education and less than affluent upbringing. I followed his simple plan and led me along the way. Sure enough, it became reality.

I think we give far too little focus or credit in our efforts to help others on how very simple individual habits of success and simple goal setting will change a life. History shows that works infinitely faster and better than someone, some organization, or society to change things for you.

I’m a huge fan of the original game Homeworld. It was visually stunning – creating a grand visual scale that really helped you feel the vastness of space and the isolation of the fleet trying to get home. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the later entries (especially Deserts of Kharak), but Homeworld 3 looks to recapture that original stunning style.

Targeted towards June 30th, 2023 release, they sure are making as much of the pre-launch hype as they can. They hosted a very successful online funding campaign that included tons of different goodies like art books, special discord access, signed prints, models, and more. The original Art of Homewold book often sells for hundreds of dollars (over a thousand USD at one point but falling fast now they’re doing re-prints with this release).

I’m excited to see how this new game comes out. I don’t buy many games, but this might be on the list.

Until then, maybe I’ll just download the original Homeworld source code (released in 2003) and see if I can build my own copy. Or maybe just look around at some of the original digial models or maybe get a few 3D printed ones or maybe the whole fleet from the Tempest Ship Yards.

This looks like a promising game – but not due out until 2023.

A mix of storm and ghost chasing in first-person, Pacific Drive invites you to survive a drive through hell.