This study investigates companies’ blockchain implementations and employees’ opinions to understand how companies can be ready for the metaverse.
Here are the main findings of the research
- ✅Most people think implementing DAOs on a departmental scale is better than doing it for the whole company. This statement is also supported according to deep internet research about DAOs. Managing a company as a DAO has so many adverse and unpredictable effects. For example, if a company is operated with a smart contract, the token holders can decide every employee’s salary, working hours, and even their working style.
- 👨🏻💻Many employees are willing to work for a company that does not have any hierarchy. However, most people do not want to work for a company managed by a community. This situation raises the question: How can we combine the best parts of the DAO and the traditional management method?
- 🤝 Most of the participants believe that they deal with a lot of unnecessary approval processes and these processes can be automized easily.
- 👩🏻💻One of the most important findings for companies is that most respondents think they deal with many processes that can be automized quickly. Using a DAO structure in departments with many simple approval processes will be an intelligent move for increasing efficiency and decreasing costs.
- 💻Companies in the software industry seem more suitable for DAO and token implementations because their products and services are entirely digital. The survey results also support that the software industry seems better for blockchain implementation than other industries; however, there are not enough findings to prove this statistically.
Why and how do companies use tokenization?
🪙Tokens have been used in a wide range of industries, from finance to technology, by companies worldwide. The ways of using tokens and tokenization can be without limit.
The tokenization procedure makes it simple for any company with significant assets to generate money via a rapid, effective, and legally compliant approach. Companies can offer digital shares to approved investors via tokenized assets. Companies can decide how much percentage they would like to put on sale before they start the tokenization process. They need to determine which assets can be a good fit for tokenization. After this step, they list their digital shares on an open platform and generate cash by selling them.
Here are great examples of some startups using tokenization
NextEarth 🌍🖥
This platform has been one of the first to create tokenized real estate. They have created a blockchain registry system where the land deeds are registered on the blockchain and therefore become decentralized. They also launched a token called NXTT. This token will be used to access the land and to make it tradable on the NXT cryptocurrency exchange. It can revolutionize the real estate industry and solve some associated issues, such as corruption and lack of transparency. Also, they have a smart-contract-based ecosystem that will be able to solve the problem of the title registries of properties.
Maecenas 🖼🎨
They are an online marketplace that will connect collectors of art with artists. It will connect investors looking for investments with the artists they represent. Their goal is to increase the art's liquidity and value of works of art. Tokens facilitate the process and help make the connection between the investors and the artists more efficient and secure. Their token has an iconic name which is ART. The token is linked to the Ethereum network and can be traded on ERC20-compatible wallets. The company uses blockchain technology to create transparency in its transactions and protect investors' interests.
Tourist: Travel the World 🚙🗺
The startup is currently developing a mobile application that allows users to travel virtually around the World. They plan to integrate crypto technologies to allow users to earn crypto tokens during travel. Users will be able to gain tokens by voluntarily sharing their travel experience, selling their visual content (possible NFTs), making reservations, and inviting friends. The Tourist team is planning to let users use their tokens as payment to purchase products, flights, activities, hotel rooms, souvenirs, transportation tickets, and other touristic services and goods. They can also be traded for currencies such as USD, BTC, ETH, or other crypto tokens. The Tourist team plans to work with Solana or Avax infrastructure and call their token TOTR, which includes the first two letters of "Tourist" and "Travel" words.
Sorare ⚽️🏟
The goal is to connect football fans all around the World to play fantasy matches based on accurate football data. There are regular fantasy football games where fans compete against each other, but Sorare takes it to the next level by adding elements of blockchain technology. They have created a digital representation of players that can be purchased as NFTs. Players can be traded among the fans, and their value can be increased as the players become more popular in the football industry.
Decentralized Autonomous Organization
💼In other words, an entity with a DAO structure does not have decision-makers such as the board of directors, senior management members, or CEO. Since nobody supervises the decision mechanism, the members make joint decisions and work collectively. According to the smart contract of the DAO, a certain number of members should vote during the decisions to change the existing smart contract or add a new rule to it.
📝Blockchain-based smart contracts offer new possibilities for collaboration and collective decision-making because they enable organizations to transact with one another without the necessity for mediators. Eliminating the middleman allows companies and organizations to act faster in business transactions and decisions. Thanks to blockchain technologies, most of the processes an organization needs are decentralized.
🔖DAOs are divided into three different aspects in terms of membership: token-based membership, that is, anyone who wants to buy tokens and gets membership and voting rights; share-based membership, people get a share to join the DAO by getting tokens or offering jobs; and reputation- based membership, in such DAOs, reputation is earned through participation and is subsequently non-purchasable and non-transferable.
🗳When discussing equality by membership, the most democratic form of membership can be seen as token-based because, in a share-based system, the power of voting rights can be thought of in proportion to the size of the share. In contrast, in a reputation-based system, it is expected to gain a reputation first in order to gain voting rights. The main thing that can regulate and change democracy in all these types of systems is smart contracts. As a rule, when it is coded that each member has only one vote, no matter how many tokens, shares, and reputations they have, everyone can be equal, regardless of membership type.
🔎There are several disadvantages and risks to full transparency where a company is a DAO. First, when a single wallet is linked to the DAO, this can cause several problems, as every single transaction made in that wallet will be visible to everyone. For example, from an ethical point of view, all employees can see the salaries and bonuses everyone receives. In addition, from a competitive point of view, rival companies can see the actions taken and use this kind of information for their benefit. Another possible issue is a security vulnerability since any hacker.
Traditional Management versus DAO
Here, a comparison will be made to understand the different propositions by the traditional big companies and the new DAOs in the same industry, offering similar values to their clients.
Spotify vs. Moda DAO 🎧🎤
Spotify is one of the internet's most prevalent streaming music services, with 433 million individuals, including 188 million customers, spread over 183 regions. Spotify is the middleman in the music industry between the audience and the singers. Just like every intermediary in all sectors, there is a blockchain solution that creates a rival for Spotify: Moda DAO.
Moda DAO is a decentralized technology, management, and economics for the Web3 audio market. They even call this innovation in the music industry as Music3. They introduced a peer-to-peer system that eliminates the middleman, in this case, Spotify. They introduced the MODA token because the big technology companies in the music industry make so much money over the artists and only pay a tiny portion to the actual creators.
It can be expected that some artists will start working with DAOs like Moda DAO instead of Spotify in the future because working with DAOs allows them to make more money and connect with their fans directly. Currently, instead of DAOs, many artists are choosing to release their music independently through their own channels, such as YouTube or Soundcloud, but these platforms are intermediaries as well. Day by day, with the rise of Web 3.0’s popularity, the singers will be able to get to know Music 3.0 and join DAOs like Moda DAO.
Airbnb vs. DTravel 🏡🏝
Airbnb has changed the travel industry significantly by offering travelers to stay in private homes rather than hotels. Airbnb is one of the world's most well-known and popular vacation rental platforms, with more than 4 million hosts and 6 million active listings worldwide. According to Airbnb's report (2022), the latest data reveals that the average US Airbnb Host's earnings have risen to more than $13,800 in 2021, an 85 percent jump over 2019.
Like Spotify, Airbnb also acts as a middleman between travelers and people who want to rent their house or room for a short time. It is a win-win situation for the hosts as they will get to make some extra money on the side while sharing their home with others from all over the world. However, they could make much more money if they directly rent their property to travelers. DTravel already knows that and offers this solution with the features of DAO.
The difference from Spotify is that Airbnb is not just a middleman for money transactions but also a trusted entity between both sides. The host or the traveler knows that their money is safe, and even if there is a problem, Airbnb will help them to solve it. The trust mechanism of DTravel works is fascinating because it will be based on blockchain technology and not on the centralized database as in Airbnb. Every transaction made through the platform will be stored on the decentralized blockchain, preventing anyone from accessing this information. According to DTravel, there is no limitation to communication between the host and the traveler; if there is a problem, they can solve it themselves. However, the DAO community and voted policies will resolve the dispute if this fails.
Survey: What do employees think about DAOs vs. Traditional management methods?
The survey was completed by 60 people from different industries, age groups, incomes, and education levels will be interpreted. 👩🏻🦰🙋🏼♂️👩🏽⚖️👨🏼🦳
The hypotheses we have tested in this survey are as follows:
- H0: Employees feel free to express their creative ideas when they do not need to get approval from their managers, regardless of their industry.
- H0: People think that the implementation of DAO should be in a department instead of the whole company, regardless of their industry.
- H0: Employees in all of the sectors think a DAO would be better than the traditional one in their industry/company.
According to the results, we did not reject any hypothesis and came up with the results shared at the beginning of this notion page.