A New Genre of Work

On the one hand, the silhouette of a self-deterministic, dream-bearing, free-roaming, modern-age worker emerges as an aspiration. Ironically, these workers are also often the most alienated from the fruits of their labor. The dichotomy between 'us' and 'them' is stark. The product sees an absence of credit or attribution to freelancers at an organi... See more

Power and authority in the contributor economy must be emergent, not assigned. In traditional systems, compensation and authority are explicitly defined and pre-negotiated (titles, roles, and compensation), even though trust and responsibility are implicitly earned. Token mechanisms create infinite possibilities for how credit can now be attributed... See more

The product sees an absence of credit or attribution to freelancers at an organizational level. While their work may have persisted in sustaining the essence of a product, their very own identity as a contributor is abstracted away by the company.

We've seen a collective stirring around redefining work through the creator economy and platform economy, which offer individuals the flexibility and autonomy to discover demand for their gifts. The last generation of innovation in platforms accelerated the inevitable rise of a globally distributed workforce. Companies now recognize that, without a... See more

It’s clear that the most thorny problems facing humanity today—climate crisis, cybersecurity, income inequality to name a few—will not be solved by one corporation or one individual. These problems need to be addressed with the scale and efficiency of a corporation, without compromising on individual autonomy, creativity, and ownership. They requir... See more

The promise of DAOs lies in self-governance. With the appropriate tools and mechanics, contributors can onboard, coordinate, reward one another, rather than relying on one single point of failure. In absence of such infrastructure, decisions will continue to be made arbitrarily and consensus cannot scale across the network.

Contributors must be able to port their body of work across organizations. In the current labor system, workers are made legible by the institutions they belong to. A worker's entire identity—their work, reputation, relationships—exists in the blackbox of an insular permission-controlled database. Once a worker leaves the organization, their identi... See more

While freelancing offers the flexibility in individual lifestyle, individuals may not feel incentivized to invest in the long-term success of the collective. Traditional companies, with rigid hierarchies but abundant resources, make competing for attention internally exhausting for all participants.

In an interoperable world, a contributor's work to one community can be leveraged in another, as on-chain data and smart contracts are largely interoperable by default. Reputation is another currency coveted within a traditional corporation, and one that is often lost in the realm of purely individualized work. There is no standard for inter-organi... See more

In the absence of a management team or an HR department to delineate the paths of a contributor, how can we incentivize everyone in a network of communities to discover where they can contribute the most value? How can we empower each other to work flexibly and autonomously, while still fostering a sense of security, belonging, and identity?