"Let's Run The Experiment": A conversation with Chris Dixon about DAOs and the future of organizations online

A few years ago, people started asking whether these governance systems could be improved by using “on-chain” governance, which basically means giving network participants a more formal way to vote using tokens. Probably the first and most important on-chain DAO is called MakerDAO.

One reason this is personally interesting to me is that I sense a comparable network happening here at Substack, where a huge amount of the value created is flowing to the creators. Now, it's true Substack authors don't participate in the enterprise value of Substack, Inc, but theoretically that could be part of the package through more traditional... See more

I’m all for peer-to-peer collectives, but what is preventing people from implementing these kinds of org/governance structures off the blockchain? Basically I’m sold that the world needs decentralized autonomous organizations. Why do we need the blockchain to make them reality?

DAOs can also be used to fund public goods on the internet. An interesting recent example is the Ethereum Name Service (ENS), which is essentially a blockchain-based name service analogous to DNS that maps human-friendly names (“cdixon”) to human-unfriendly names (IP addresses, blockchain public keys, etc). ENS has been around since 2017 and has be... See more

My conclusion after observing and participating in this over roughly 20 years is that it’s not a problem with the people but a problem with the model. The core issue is there is a fundamental misalignment between the needs of a corporation and the needs of a network.

The reality is that if your goal is to optimize revenue to the company, shutting down APIs, algorithmically manipulating users, harvesting personal information for better ad targeting, reducing revenue shares, and all the things people don’t like about internet companies is the optimal strategy.

But I guess I’m a little blurry on the details. Friends With Benefits has a manifesto where they describe themselves as an organization of “creators, rebels, artists, thinkers, and doers.” That sounds great! (I would like to be all those things, though maybe I wouldn’t say it out loud if I was.) And there’s an admirable statement of principles that... See more

New DAOs can be spun up in minutes. If those communities instead tried to form traditional companies, it would take weeks and require lots of paperwork. Many of the prospective members would likely need to be excluded due to variations in local laws and other reasons. There would be thorny challenges around governance and enforcing rules.

When you have an internet service that serves hundreds of millions or billions of people, there is a huge asymmetry of power and knowledge between the service provider and individual users. To fix this, you’d want a system that provides a way for users to organize and act collectively. You’d want users to receive a straightforward digital represent... See more

Wikipedia, for instance, is one of the most astonishing triumphs of the past twenty years, and no collaborative enterprise—as far as I know—has ever been organized at such a vast scale, with that particular architecture, with such world-changing success.