DAO's Most Popular Areas
There is considerable disagreement as to where DAOs will occur in the future.
According to a spokeswoman for HashCash, a company that provides blockchain and AI products and services,
“Yes, we expect a good number of startup organizations to resort to the DAO model in operations. However, this move will impact certain sectors more than the others due to their structure being more pertinent to some sectors than others,”
Subsectors where HashCash anticipates the appearance of DAOs:
- Operating Systems
- Protocol DAOs
- Investment DAOs
- Grant DAOs
- Collectors DAOs
- Service DAOs
- Social DAOs
- Media DAOs
As an example, HashCash's spokesman asserts that "DAOs of this sort are likely to top the charts in terms of popularity" for NFTs and artists to enable fragmented or entire ownership of art and material in Collectors DAOs.
This may be seen in projects like PleasrDAO and Flamingo, for example.
Among the many sub-categories of DAOs, social DAOs are often cited, with Kyle Weiss naming it as his significant focus of interest for 2017.
According to him,
“FWB, [Bored Ape Yacht Club], and others have shown that people are interested in finding ways to connect outside of Facebook groups or subreddits alone. While DAOs offer interesting advantages to coordinating, they also offer a true sense of belonging to those in and working on a project,”
According to Weiss, the ConstitutionDAO expanded in part because individuals wanted to participate and be able to say, "I was a part of that."
Weiss expects to see a rise in social DAOs this year, despite the fact that many DAOs will be based on protocols (i.e. voting on governance proposals and the like).
Some critics, on the other hand, believe DAOs might exist in a wide range of contexts, given their adaptability to practically any kind of organization or social structure.
“Finance, art, entertainment, media, technology, you name it. DAOs help distribute ownership and decision-making, which are universal concepts,” stated Kevin Rose.
With the concept of DAOs expanding practically everywhere, Rose argues that we may witness a "fantastical convergence" of ideas around DAOs in gaming.
Gamers controlling their earnings may be more complicated than most people expect, as the phrase "ownership equals power" suggests.
"It has consequences for how this USD 180 billion business is organized from the top down as well as how we regard gaming as an activity in our life," he continued.
Rose anticipates that groups like Game7, which recently started a DAO to distribute financing to game creators seeking to incorporate blockchain-based components into their works, will assist push this conversion in the coming years.
“Ownership is power, and the idea of gamers owning what they earn is perhaps more deeply complex than people anticipate right now. It not only has implications for how we see gaming as an activity in our lives, but also for how this USD 180bn industry is structured from the top down,”
Fundraising and investment are two more expected trends for 2021.
As YAP DAO key contributor MiaKoda Grodsky points out, the emergence of DAOs like ConstitutionDAO and others like LinksDAO, BlockbusterDAO, and MoonDAO is already evidence of a fast funding model enabled by DAOs.
“I expect to see this trend continue in art, fashion, music, and every other cultural subset where individuals are able to leverage the collective power of the community to accomplish things that are impossible to do alone,”
"The regulatory environment must develop."
We couldn't talk about the future of decentralized autonomous organizations without mentioning how rules can impact their development.
Compared to other parts of the crypto economy, such as DeFi, commenters predict that DAOs will do better.
There will be greater acceptance of DAOs than DeFi since the financial system is an important part of society and provides legitimacy and control.
People like Namik Muduroglu are intrigued to watch what happens in developing countries because they are taking away power that was used to control populations and giving it back to them.
“I think DAOs will be much more welcome than DeFi because the financial system is a critical piece of society and an integral source of legitimacy and control. I am really curious to see what happens in emerging markets because you are taking away power used to control populations and redistributing it to the people,”
In contrast to other cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and DeFi, several industry insiders believe that authorities have not yet taken notice of DAOs since they are still relatively new.
This could only be determined by the DAOs themselves creating a commotion in order to pique regulatory attention.
A spokeswoman for HashCash remarked,
“To predict if or when the DAOs should gain interest from the regulatory authorities, they would have to create a stir. This will happen when instances of resounding successes are aired,”
A spokeswoman for HashCash remarked, noting that Wyoming approved a legislation in 2021 recognizing DAOs as limited liability corporations.
The case of Wyoming suggests that DAOs can benefit from a level of regulation that does not interfere with their general growth and development.
In the immediate term, as long as DAOs have systems in place to pay taxes to US corporations or organizations, they will be good.
When it comes to decentralized organizations,
"The regulatory environment must develop to be more inclusive," Kyle Weiss stated.
“As long as DAOs put processes in place to pay taxes for US entities or [organizations], they will be fine in the short term. Medium term, the regulatory landscape needs to evolve to be more inclusive of how decentralized groups want to work,”