In 2019-20, I wrote a thesis on the future of work when I didn’t explore the potential of Web3 and blockchain. When I circle back to the thesis, I believe I was bang on, especially with advancements in Web3. We are moving towards that world.
Let’s try to unpack it.
The future of work is going to be decentralized, and more local, wherein the power will be in the hands of people to make their ends meet.
With Web3, we are having a fundamental shift from platforms owning the data and monetizing it for their sole profit gain to participatory economics, i.e., where the contributors like gig workers, artists, creators, and other forms of contributors are incentivized for the value creation.
Hence decentralization of value and monetary incentives.
These contributors make or break the platforms, but now they will have the power and incentives to add more value and create more financial value for themselves. All contributors become owners and partners in the organization's success.
With this shift to this kind of participatory economics, our reliance on governments and corporations will reduce to a greater extent. We can have better redistribution of wealth based on value creation and ownership.
Imagine a world where everyone working with Uber’s of the world as a gig worker gets the fair share of tokens in the company, which have very high liquidity and allows the gig workers to create wealth as the company grows. Or, gamers playing a game are incentivized in the form of tokens to finish more tasks and challenges, just like how Axie Infinity1 did and let people make up to ~500 dollars in the Philippines. Many call it Play-to-Earn, but the same concept can be applied to almost every platform which relies on contributors in the form of gig workers, creators, coders, etc., to finish specific tasks that require human intervention. Or, as Flow (founded by Harshit Jaiswal) is trying to build a Learn-to-Earn platform by exploring ways to set up a Curator DAO for curating opportunities and sourcing talent. The Curators DAO will let the curators contribute in a decentralized way and earn actual money in the form of Flow tokens based on how much time and effort they put into the platform.
The reliance on governments and corporations will end or primarily reduce, a world where everyone is equally valued for creating and consuming stuff.
We are moving towards an ownership economy, where all the contributors and creators also own the piece of the organization where they are creating and contributing. It is the best example of stakeholders becoming shareholders that a lot of conscious capitalists like me are advocating for.
I have always firmly believed that:
We will move away from the industrialization of work, that means the onus will be on each of us, and not on governments or companies to take care of us.
We all have a voice with the ownership economy model, but we need to care for ourselves. Governments and corporations will not cover us. We will be incentivized to cover ourselves by better redistributing wealth and value by making all stakeholders shareholders.
With the advent of blockchain, we try to limit the extent to which banks control us by decentralizing and automating the ledger, so we all have our bank with our Metamask2. To be honest, it sounds that's scary to many, but that’s where we are heading.
We need to leverage blockchain, Web3, and DAOs to build and invest in technology ventures to solve development problems at scale for the next billion users in emerging economies. This time, we need to treat these next billion users as consumers and contributors, creators, and owners, moving towards shareholder capitalism and participatory economic models.
Curated Resources for further curiosity:
[Report] DAOs The New Coordination Frontier by Bankless
[Podcast] 101 - The Ownership Economy | Li Jin by Bankless
[Podcast] Ryan “Fwiz” Wyatt: Head of YouTube Gaming on the Future of Blockchain Games, Web3, and the Creator Economy by The Delhi Podcast
[Blog] Organization Legos: The State of DAO Tooling shared by Harshit Jaiswal
If you are building a Web3 startup or investing directly in Web3 protocols or startups, please do write to me. I would love to learn more from you and would be happy to help in any way.
"first followers" is founded by Sagar Tandon. You can reach out to me at sagar@firstfollowers.co.
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