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Rowan Spencer, Editor In Chief
The DAO Difference
A statement on the value of structuring Myosin as a DAO
At Myosin we believe that cryptocurrency and blockchain are enabling a new digital order. A central development of this technological shift is an emerging form of global coordination: decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs.
DAOs self-govern through token-based incentive mechanisms and a transparent, shared set of rules enforced by a blockchain. As Myosin co-founder, Simon Yi, explained in a previous blog post, DAOs — which first existed to manage open source protocols built on blockchains — currently encompass a vast number of various groups and businesses.
Turning our attention towards the marketing landscape, traditional agencies suffer from scalability issues and the high operating costs of retaining long-term talent, as the best marketers end up freelancing or starting their own agencies. By structuring our network of experts and creatives as a DAO, Myosin combines the autonomy and agility of freelancing, with the scalability of the Internet.
For this post, I took a deep dive into the Myosin DAO. With the help of leadership and fellow members, I explored specific advantages associated with the DAO structure, and how the benefits are distributed among members, clients, and partners.
Using such collective insight, let’s take a look under the hood of the Myosin DAO.
When to DAO?
The transparent, cryptoeconomically-secured record-keeping of blockchain technology has created a new form of global trust, while the digital tokens deployed on top of this trust layer enable the decentralization of decision making and ownership within distributed groups.
With these new capabilities, DAOs have emerged, empowering individuals to self-organize and self-govern without the hierarchical scaffolding required by traditional institutions.
But just because you can build something, doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
To be sure, DAOs often suffer from inefficiencies resulting from a lack of formal decision-making structures, as well as decentralization theater resulting from plutocratic governance systems. Still, we decided to build Myosin as a DAO to solve the glaring problems with existing marketing agencies, demonstrating how the potential benefits of DAOs can far outweigh their problems today.
This experience has revealed the following three key advantages DAOs maintain over other organizations and businesses—features that should be considered when deciding whether to also build a DAO:
1. Curating and growing global distributed networks
The technological foundation of trust gives DAOs the ability to exchange value in a globally-distributed, permissionless manner. Together with their inclusivity and flexibility, these attributes allow DAOs to best access and leverage the network of every member. By offering the more active, value-added roles of contributor and owner, DAOs elicit strong network effects and widespread participation, engendering more sustainable, scalable, and innovative growth.
2. Accumulating transparent, credibly neutral reputation and social capital
The transparent attribution recorded and stored on a blockchain enables DAO members — and DAOs themselves — to accumulate verifiable reputation and social capital in a credibly neutral way. To incentivize contributions, DAOs issue fungible and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which can then be used by individuals to gain access to further opportunities. Importantly, DAOs also accrue their own reputation in a reflexive relationship with the activities and reputations of their constitutive members, as the value exchanged via tokens represent not only financial capital, but social capital as well—that is, the value of memberships, connections, and relationships.
3. Building closely aligned enterprises
A DAO's growth and success is bolstered by new incentive structures that promote widespread alignment. Token-based incentives give all members the ability to accrue financial and social capital according to the actual value they contribute to an organization. This environment, in which the most impactful members progressively gain more agency, control, and upside, motivates quality work and better performance. Further, the freedom to self-govern grants members a greater sense of community and autonomy, and thus, greater interest and attachment to the overall success of the DAO.
When your group or business would benefit from the above, consider organizing as a DAO. For Myosin, we believe these advantages will help advance our mission to reshape the digital marketing and growth landscape.
A Primer on Myosin: Agency in the Front, DAO in the Back
The Myosin whitepaper states, “Myosin.xyz is a headless marketing Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO).” But what does this really mean in practice? Now that you understand why we are building the Myosin DAO, let’s explore how it’s structured and how it operates.
The Structure
At a high level, Myosin is a selective network of top-tier growth marketers, creatives, and builders organized into a series of concentric circles. From inside (or highest involvement) to outside, this structure is composed of:
- Core Team (Co-Founders + essential FTE members)
- Governance Guild (Core Team + trusted community members)
- Guild Leads + Guilds
- Members
In contrast to many DAOs — where simply purchasing the related token grants membership — membership in the Myosin DAO is determined by a stringent vetting process that considers professional background, references, and quality of work. By capping the total number of members at 150, while periodically removing individuals based on their level of activity and verifiable reputation, the community will keep elevating its standards of quality.
Members organize into guilds according to their experience, expertise, and interests. Guilds — sub-groups within the DAO that work towards a shared mission — include strategy, design, community, and content, among others. Importantly, “headless” does not mean leaderless. Each guild is directed by a Primary Lead and Co-Lead, while the overall strategic and operational framework is provided by the core team and governance guild.
While it would be easy to say that this structure merely mimics traditional corporate org charts (perhaps just substituting the word “guild” for the certainly less vibey “team” or “division”), this would miss the point.
The real DAO difference manifests within the open and democratic processes by which the DAO self-governs and distributes value. Again, from the Myosin whitepaper, “Our decentralized structure ensures that all DAO members and stakeholders can participate in the governance and financial upside of the DAO’s continued success, contingent on the effort and value they contribute to the community.”
Leadership positions are selected through an election process that all members are eligible to participate in, both as voters and candidates. Additionally, membership and ownership are assigned through our native token, $MYO, based upon value-added contributions assessed by all stakeholders.
Believe it or not, this structure is what peak performance looks like.
The Ops
Myosin DAO operations are designed to produce maximal value for its network.
Async work primarily takes place over Discord — the preferred, yet perpetually bemoaned social platform of web3 projects. This communication is augmented by weekly community and guild calls that discuss DAO-wide and guild initiatives, as well as foster a healthy sense of community.
While this arrangement also appears to mirror more corporate systems, the primary DAO difference here is felt within project staffing, deal sourcing, and compensation.
Any member can indicate their interest in working on a particular project, solving the problem of incomplete and siloed knowledge within large organizations. Because members possess the most accurate knowledge concerning their skills and bandwidth — and are enabled by the DAO’s flexible structure—this process improves staffing efficiency and the final work product.
As the DAO’s social currency, $MYO is also progressively decentralizing this process, which will eventually help automate and optimize staffing as the DAO scales. While everyone is airdropped $MYO when accepted as a member, in the future, access to projects will be tied to $MYO holdings—a system that will be supported by a proprietary staking portal. Soon, members will stake $MYO to join a project team, for which they will earn yield for a job well done or get slashed for being a bad actor, adding another layer of quality assurance and accountability.
A 75-15-10 revenue distribution between the project team, DAO, and deal originator, respectively, is then used as a base model to align incentives across the organization. This split provides a high percentage for work successfully completed, as well as an opportunity for any member to share in the deal upside as an originator, thereby leveraging the DAO’s network to the fullest by incentivizing all members to source potential projects. The purpose of the funds allotted to the DAO treasury is then determined by a member vote, and is typically channeled towards collective initiatives including shared office space, merch, and events.
Importantly, total individual remuneration depends upon peer and client perceptions of performance, using the web3 application Coordinape to organize feedback aggregation and payout distribution.
The responses within Coordinape will also be used in Myosin’s upcoming decentralized ID (DID) system, currently being built with Station Labs. The future implementation of DIDs—Myosin Membership Cards issued as the latest ERC-6551 token standard—will reflect a member’s dynamic reputation accrued and stored on-chain, promoting their standing within the DAO and demonstrating their experience to other DAOs and companies. Both DIDs and continual $MYO distributions take further steps towards decentralization by also unlocking robust on-chain governance.
Altogether, the DAO’s structure and operations are dedicated towards supercharging Myosin’s network, ensuring better talent, and creating more value for all stakeholders.
Value, Distributed
So why are we building Myosin as a DAO?
Simply put, a DAO structure allows us to offer the best services and design the best products, all while building a global network and business.
Incorporating aspects of both traditional agencies and freelancing, Myosin is able to attract a dynamic talent pool of the best marketers from around the world dedicated to helping web3 companies scale and web2 companies enter the space.
For members, there exists high upside in becoming a co-owner of a globally-distributed marketing agency and product studio. And by sharing resources and leadership teams, members are able to focus on doing their best work, while operating within the expanding Myosin network boosts the growth of their own business workstreams.
The collection of curated talent being captured by the DAO’s global networking capabilities and novel incentive structures is truly hard to find anywhere else. As a result, clients and partners benefit from a combination of freelancer flexibility and agility, with the engagement of a dedicated account team. Representing an integral part of the future of decentralized work, on-chain reputations powered by DIDs will further ensure member quality.
Rather than focus on control, the emerging DAO architecture encourages collaboration by providing a framework of autonomy and collective growth. Members are fully invested in elevating each other, which in turn, elevates the DAO.
All efforts are focused towards growing the network and advancing the mission. In the end, all value generated by the Myosin DAO is distributed among its members, clients, and partners, rather than extracted and captured by the organization.
All this is not to say that our work as a DAO is done. But rather, this environment of autonomy and collaboration enables a more grassroots formation of culture and identity, as opposed to the general mandates imposed by hierarchical corporate entities. And so, wherever Myosin goes next, we as a community will decide.
Believe us, you’ll definitely want to be following along for the ride.
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