Tag Archives Social Tokens

Zuckerberg Wants in on the Web3 Action

Meta (fka Facebook) is stepping up its game to help creators monetize on Facebook and Instagram, before they lose them to, not only TikTok, but the Web3 world. Last month Meta had announced it will be incorporating NFTs on its platforms – which was a huge mainstream win for NFTs. They now plan on releasing their own “social tokens” and “creator coins.” These are informally being called “Zuck Bucks.” Catchy but do we like? These social tokens will only work in the Meta ecosystem (and inevitably the Metaverse) – not the decentralized ones we understand on the blockchain.

Understandably so, as they had attempted to launch their own cryptocurrency project called Diem (fka as Libra) back in 2019, which was shut down due to regulatory issues.

There has not been a formal statement issued on how these social tokens will work, but if it’s at all close to how Web3 enthusiasts envision it – that’s a closer move to a “Web2.5.”

Meta had announced it would commit to paying $1 billion to creators through 2022. This included paying for Facebook and Instagram reels views (Reels Play Bonus Program) ranging from $600 up to $35,000 – a way to compete with TikTok. It seems recently Meta made changes to the payout system, without any real explanation, increasing the views threshold, making it harder for creators to earn. Yet another reason why it’s important to never build entire businesses on rented land.

Giving Meta the benefit of the doubt on this one, and considering the timing of it all, I’m guessing they’re allocating a portion of their budget to roll-out these social tokens to creators. I’m still not convinced Zucks is a robot and think he might actually care about putting more money back in creators’ pockets.

On a recent podcast episode with Tim Ferriss, Zuckerberg briefly shared his view for the future of the creator economy:

“If you just think about how many people today basically do jobs that they – might not actually like that much, but they’re supporting themselves”

Interpretation: A lot of people today are in jobs they hate to pay the bills.

“Compared to where I think and hope that the world is going, which is just a much more robust creative economy – where way more people can do things that are intellectually or physically interesting to them. And in doing so, build up communities around that and have enough monetization and economy around that to support that”

Interpretation: The creative economy is what will propel the future of work as more people will be able to do what they love and care about. Individuals will be their own economies, driven by these communities that support their work. The “monetization” will most likely have to be these social tokens/creator coins.

“That, to me, is the modern version of how do you upgrade the way that people live and work to fulfill human potential”

Interpretation: 🙌🏻

0

It’s Going DAO’wn – Corporate Takeover

Okay, not really

“If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together”

source: A. Shuraeva

A dream always starts first with one person. As an individual unit, the advantage is speed, but they can only take that dream so far without a team. As the business grows, so will the team – but not everyone will be treated equally. It will be efficiently hierarchal – executives, managers, staff, interns… a top-down approach, and the wealth will be distributed accordingly. The owner gets most of the profits because, after all, it’s his/her mission being executed. The workers, in return, get compensated for their specialized skills and time.

What inevitably happens to workers (especially those at the bottom) is they get burned-out, uninspired or unmotivated.

source: pixabay

The greatest disruption to the workforce happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether people were laid off or chose to quit – it broke up our autopilot routines, and forced us to take a step back and reflect on our lives and careers. This most assuredly led to the Great Resignation, Big Quit or Great Reshuffle of 2021 (and a spike in divorces/breaks-ups, but I digress).

Individuals care just as much about growth, flexibility, autonomy and meaning in their work, as much as compensation. Most companies know this and have invested a lot on improving work culture, work-life balance, and opportunities for growth within their organizations. But what may be really missing are a lack of autonomy and ownership (sure there’s stock options, but let’s be real – it’s just not the same).

DAOs (decentralized autonomous organization) attempt to solve just this. It proposes to flip the entire corporate structure on its head – a bottom up approach.

This one was hard to write about and keep light. Most articles out there really got into the economics and (unbuilt) technology of it. There’s so much to be said for something that’s theoretical and experimental. But that’s the beauty of it all – we don’t really know for sure how DAOs will look like in the years to come.

What I know for certain is it can turn off a lot of non-techie people (like myself) in trying to get to the heart of how it can be an absolute game changer. I will narrow this discussion down to its parts at a bird’s-eye view. If you want a deeper dive, I recommend this comprehensive article from The Generalist as a starting point.

Decentralized 

There is no CEO. A group of people agree to a set of rules which are written in the code of smart contracts. The self-executing contract can rid of unnecessary meetings and administrative tasks, as actions can be programmed to run when a condition is met.

For example, a DAO is in the business of investing in NFTs (eg., PleasrDAO). Tokenholders can vote on which NFT will be their next investment. Once a majority vote is casted (condition is met), the smart contract can automatically move forward and make the purchase (action executed) with the DAO’s crypto wallet. For this to happen within a traditional company, meetings may have to be held and tasks to be delegated. In this hypothetical, an actual person doesn’t need to go into the OpenSea NFT marketplace – it’s all built into the smart contracts. In theory, the DAO can run itself and eliminate self-interested leaders.

Autonomous 

Freedom to govern itself. Individuals can choose to contribute in ways they think best.

Access to DAOs can be achieved via social tokens. As the DAO grows, so does the value of the tokens. This provides a financial incentive for individuals to be invested in its success in the long term. Everyone is an owner.

“Essentially, DAOs are owned by the people who create value in them…DAOs empower a broad ecosystem to take action and create value on its behalf.”

-The Generalist

Organization

A group of people come together to collaborate on a shared purpose and mission they care about.

source: K. Subiyanto

The biggest question is how you can even begin to trust strangers over the internet. It also doesn’t help that members can join with pseudonyms. It may level the playing field, especially if they’re a public figure, but some people can take advantage of that anonymity when personal reputation isn’t on the line.

Full transparency on the blockchain would be a start to build this trust. Every action taken is recorded and open for everyone to see. Most importantly, it cannot be tampered with (it’s immutable). Ideally this encourages individuals to act accordingly and follow the rules. If anyone violates the rules, the smart contract might be triggered to lock the individual out of the DAO.

I would say a successful example of trusting strangers to execute on a shared mission, currently in the Web2 world, is Wikipedia – anonymous volunteers collaborate to create a living digital encyclopedia for everyone – for free.

source: Wikipedia

Anyone can go in and edit (within community guidelines) and a consensus must be reached, because there can only be one article on such topic. It’s self-policing and relies on its community for fact-checking. This should in theory reduce issues user-generated platforms face (like Facebook and YouTube) with misinformation, fake news or conspiracy theories. If anything is ever made by the people for the people (and actually works) – it’s this.

A problem it does face, is it runs on non-profit grants and donations. We’ve all at some point seen the red block pinned to the top of every article asking for donations or Wikipedia is in danger of being shut down. An interesting question to pose is how Wikipedia would look like as a DAO 🤔

What can go wrong with DAOs?

Probably everything – and it did with the first DAO that entered the scene – TheDAO (I know, so original). Launching in April 2016 as a venture capital fund, it became “one of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in history.” By May, it had 11,000 investors and 12.7 million ETH or $150 million (today it would be valued in the billions).

In June it was hacked with 3.6 million ETH sent to a holding account. Fortunately, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin stepped in and was able to put a “hard fork” in the Ethereum network – which basically splits the entire blockchain at that moment in time, with the new version entirely wiping out the hack event – the one we all know today. Nonetheless, that left behind a bad rep for DAOs, followed by a long “DAO winter.“ People are finally slowly building in the space and gaining some traction.

A popular one today is the Friends With Benefits (FWB) DAO, as described in the NY Times – “a group that has been compared to a “decentralized Soho House” and a V.I.P. lounge for crypto’s creative class — is succeeding at generating hype and making money.” Basically a decentralized, digital world of what Anna Delvey wanted for ADF. IYKYK.

source: Netflix

Launching in 2020 and raising $10 million, FWB now has around 6,000 members. Among other creative projects, FWB is currently developing their first physical product – a yerba maté drink. I know, so millennial, but I kinda love it.

TAKEAWAY

There’s still a lot of experimentation and infrastructure that needs to be built out in this space. It all sounds fascinating in theory, but there are lots of holes to patch up and work to be done to make this vision a reality.

Corporations have issues of their own, and DAOs may attempt to solve some of them – but that introduces a whole set of problems of their own. How DAOs evolve in the future might be entirely different than what the Ethereum Whitepapers envisioned in 2014 – it might even be somewhere in between the spectrum of centralized vs decentralized, autonomous vs dependent. A hybrid that we can all get comfortable with.

With that, I’ll leave you with this interesting excerpt from BanklessDAO:

“We’re leaning toward a more fluid way of working, where individuals will follow their interests, collaborate on multiple projects simultaneously, and not have the constraints of working at a single company. At the same time, these individuals often need to collaborate with others to achieve their goals and don’t want to work independently for the rest of their lives….

The next generation of workers might start their professional career in a DAO, starting by simply vibing into these tokenized communities, helping to grow the projects they love, getting paid for having fun, and ending up never working for traditional companies.”

0

Hello World…

Web3, Metaverse, Cryptoverse, or Whatevers

The year is 2030.

The early adopters and Gen Zers are taking full advantage of the crypto space – a space us now geriatric millennials (ugh whoever coined it I hate it too) missed the memo on during the 2020 pandemic and are now just trying to wrap our heads around. A bubble or two might have burst during that time, but they all HODL (held on for dear life) as the third wave of the internet on the blockchain had finally arrived. Web3 was no longer a theoretical, egalitarian utopian controversy of the past.

“First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” -Arthur Schopenhauer 

These people seem like they’re all just vibing online and generating income – not working that 9 to 5 grind like most of us still are. NFTs, social tokens, DAOs, individual IPOs, owning a piece of the internet, play to earn, etc. are all commonplace terms… We had Googled it once upon a time back in 2021 when it first hit the mainstream media but got too overwhelmed by all the crypto jargon. So we just got back to mindlessly scrolling through IG and TikTok.

It was, after all, an escape from our jobs – which still sucks 6 years later. What’s another decade or two left of the grind before we reach that retired promise land? Besides it’s way too late now, we’re in too deep. Yet another missed opportunity.

Back to today – 2022.

That first part was just to trigger some FOMO and get your attention.

Don’t worry though I’m not here to onboard you with the latest crypto hype. I’m here to start the conversation of what happens next when all the dust settles and we in fact enter the next generation of the internet. How will this pan out for the creative economy and the future of work?

I’ve been ruminating for quite some time on the evolution of this idea of “work” – the very thing that shapes our existence and identity in society. Yet if it’s what we do for the majority of our lives – why are so many of us unhappy in our careers?

source: A. Piacquado

We’ve heard a job is a jobwork is called work because it’s not supposed to be fun – or your job title doesn’t define you.

At some point around 2010-2020, we witnessed the rise of the full time “social media influencer,” and got a glimpse of what it might mean to actually make a creative living doing what you enjoy.

But we were already on a career trajectory we mapped out in our 20s. So complacency and stability wins over because change is scary for a 30-something year old.

Are we really the cursed generation just trying to catch up with the rapid pace of technology causing multiple industrial revolutions in our lifetime? Not to mention experiencing two Great Recessions and a Pandemic where millions of people lost their jobs. Most must have also had time to reflect on their careers because what came after was the Great Resignation. People either jumped ship to another company or changed their entire career.

The latter is what I’m really fascinated by. The once monogamous career path may be a thing of the past. After all, we aren’t robots and shouldn’t be chained down to a specific role we continue to do until we retire or die (noted other cultures might disagree).

“Be too complex to categorize… specialization is for insects”  -Tim Ferriss

As we get older, it’s easy for us to brush aside ideas that disrupt our current views or doesn’t fit our narrative. Our brain develops habits and doesn’t need to think anymore as we go on autopilot with our everyday routines. Social media and everything we consume these days do not help, with all the algorithms that reinforces the same ideas – keeping us in our bubble.

At the start of the new year, a time when we all make resolutions we can’t keep, I decided that I really needed to just pull myself out of this creative rut I’ve been in for quite some time now. I came to realize my continual hours of scrolling on Instagram through a loop of similarly curated photos of fashion, food, home decor, celebs, and travel for years was not helping my cause but actually creating this rut. My mind needed a big blow across the head so it can build new connections and ideas. I thought what is the least likely thing I would ever do…

For whatever reason, I decided to take a free online computer science class (Harvard CS50) and then activated a Twitter account – since it seems where a lot of these people were hanging out.

I went down a rabbit hole and ended up in a foreign world of technologists, cryptologists, and futurists.

source: T. Miroshnichenko

I was so lost and was tempted to leave this space but something was tugging at me to stay and delve a little deeper.

And when something feels overwhelming and highly speculative you can either make a run for it – or dive in and blog about it until you understand it. I did just that. Blogging is not dead!

source: V. Karpovich

It’s not to say I don’t still love Instagram with all its filtered photos of people’s seemingly perfect lives – why must we be pigeonholed to labels?

I’m a mama to a stubborn 2 year old, lawyer, small business owner, and now a content creator about the future of content creators. Because why not?

1/3 of the people will love you, 1/3 will hate you, and 1/3 dgaf.   

We live in a permissionless economy – let’s take full advantage of it.

Forget that you got your degree in x or spent y years doing z. If you feel you built your foundation on grounds that no longer serve you or make you happy – don’t be afraid to start over and build something new.

Don’t keep building on autopilot until you hit your 40s or 50s and realize damn – I should have just followed my heart and start over 5 or 15 years ago. It is never too late.

Your story can be one of reinvention to reclaim your narrative and reach your fullest creative potential – and the timing is ripe during this pivotal moment in history.   

Nobody is far ahead of the game. If you believe Web3 is around the corner, the game has just begun. By just understanding the fundamentals now, you might find real opportunities you never realized existed.

All this might not have been on your radar – it definitely wasn’t on mine and had no reason to be (liberal arts major / millennial mama in the burbs here).

But now that I caught wind of it and seeing the forest beyond the trees – it has my attention and should have yours.

We don’t know what we don’t know. And now that we know – what now?

Welcome to Nat 3.0.

8