At a glance

The Promise of DAOs

DAO is a new type of legal entity that uses some/all of the following ideas:

Further reading: Kinjal Shah's guide, Cooper Turley's DAO landscape

Why creating a DAO?

Growth incentive = give DAO equity for usage, referrals, social media activity Collective action = resource building, advocacy, co-marketing, standard creation
Status systems = private communities with public display of membership Labor equity = share financial upside and governance with platform workers Liquidity = package assets to be traded on crypto exchanges, e.g. IP rights Investment = pick, fund, and promote winners together: startups, tokens, NFTs... Value discovery = SPV for equity sharing and early adopter community building

Verticals

Crypto Blockchains, protocols, marketplaces, exchanges, infrastructure, data

NFT and Art Community-led curation, boosting and featuring powers on marketplaces

Nonprofits Charity, movements, politics / money pooling and spend coordination

Gaming Governance participation, IP rights management, upside sharing with gamers

Marketplaces and B2B DAO alongside corporation for labor equity and growth incentives

Media and entertainment Equity and exclusive access for fans, IP rights licensing, revenue collection

Finance Investment syndicates, index funds

Sports Fan participation in governance

Social Private clubs led by internet creators and traditional celebrities

Why now

Increasing liquidity = demand for investment-worthy assets from DEXes and NFT marketplaces Demand for equity and governance rights from customers and platform workers Next gen blockchains: lower fees, better performance Remote work, distributed teams, peer coordination vs. chain-of-command, business collabs