Narrative #1 — A Decentralized Factory
None of the articles so far really went on explaining the narrative I’m proposing here.
“Save the world” obviously isn’t a realistic narrative to start with, so let’s keep that for late phases and focus on what’s palatable now.
But first,
Remember the old question of “who should own the means of production”?
- It became irrelevant once we started fitting factories inside our backpacks, and outsourcing assembly lines to distant parts of the world.
So, what happened there?
Turned out owning the means of production isn’t enough; you have to own the memes of production — and that seems to stem from being the first to execute.
Problem #1 — The ownership seems to disproportionately stay in a small number of hands, with none of it flowing down to the ones to whom the execution is outsourced to.
Sure, the first to believe and execute should be most handsomely rewarded — but everyone, no matter how late, should be given a choice of being paid in ownership.
Problem #2 — All of a sudden, there come another 5 companies building the same thing and fighting it off in the market free-for-all.
Instead of everyone putting in effort winning, it’s the most vicious that win.
Let’s not even mention the waste of resources and brainpower for everyone repeating the same R&D.
Cutting to the chase
Instead of calling it a DAO — since nobody knows what it means anymore, here’s a narrative:
The idea is summoned and lives inside a smart contract — surrounded by a network of small teams and freelancers, providing it service.
Being the one to summon it, you own 100% of it.
For anyone coming in, new shares are minted as work is contributed.
Wait, what if the OG doesn’t approve it, she does own 100% of it after all…
She owns 100% of it — but it’s 100% of nothing. If she’s a dick about it, others may just re-summon the idea and do better — incentivizing her to be a benevolent dictator.
Until the late funding phases, the number of shares may expand indefinitely.
It is only when “serious” investors come, that the predictability of, or non-dilution of shares becomes a requirement.
What you end up with…
Instead of startups keeping everything to themselves as “competitive advantage”; people would be collaborating and competing under one name, trying to expand the collective pie to take a bigger slice.
There’s competition on execution “inside” the organization, and the appearance of a monolithic coordinated machine — which it is — on the outside.
Skeptic: So you get over-coordination and a monopoly?
Me: Sure, but what kind of a monopoly?
- If research and code are open source — it may only remain a monopoly for as long as it isn’t extorting users. As soon as it tries to, there’d be new entrants ready to offer the service for cheaper.
How?
And how might we achieve this vision of a decentralized factory?
By creating an easy way for agents and agencies to find and interface with each other and the ideas, offering and delivering products and services.
The platforms for launching these “ideas that live on their own” are just starting to come online. Things like Aragon, DAOstack and Colony — they already are a kind of decentralized factories.
On the other hand, we have the likes of Moloch DAO and MetaCartel, with big unstructured communities, and bare bone funding allocation mechanisms — ready to spare some ETH and offer a hand for projects to get off the ground;
What we’re missing now is a common social layer. And don’t tell me we have Twitter and Reddit, because we’re both aware those aren’t designed to handle economic relationships, especially not on a large scale.
We need a mapped out system that helps you make sense of the space and makes it easy to find people and service providers you can trust.
A space where decentralized organizations and free agents come together, to build things.
A space that offers anything an idea needs to get realized.
A space where we don’t outsource, we source.
And that’s why we’re building MetaGame.
Aligned with the idea?
Then come get some of that skin in the game.