Dao should learn from Burning Man for mainstream adoption
As of today, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) do not scale to the masses.
Shining examples like PleasrDAO, Uniswap DAO, Synthetix's DAOs and Maker DAO are thriving in their respective niches. Still, none of these came close to becoming household names.
Why, you might ask?
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They are very crypto.
Three of these four are DAOs, the protocol that drives the day-to-day operations and future development of the DeFi ecosystem. The other, PleasrDAO, is a group of well-known crypto builders, investors and general thought leaders shaping the future of the state of the art on-chain.
Although it is said that these DAOs should be “crypto-centric”, we still need a model for DAOs that transcends the industry.
Consider Burning Man: A DAO before DAOs existed. A DAO truly outside of crypto.
In the year Since its inception in 1986 with just 20 guests, as a global event (with an estimated 73,000 attendees this year), its draw has always been simple yet powerful in bringing people from all backgrounds together.
Burning a person is for almost anyone, but for everyone it is an escape from traditional society and an alternative that money can't buy and money can pay for. Every year the city gets bigger, and the surrounding camps give a lot, although money is not used during the event itself.
With the crypto bear market continuing and DAOs still struggling to cross the chasm, perhaps it's time to draw inspiration from the most popular DAO in the physical world.
Central planning, but decentralized management
What if DAOs don't always need to be fully decentralized?
Burning Man is a non-profit organization that thrives on a model that plans the city and everything else, ensuring that the festival and camps thrive there. At the same time, campers are allowed to provide whatever services they choose, as long as those services are consistent with the event's larger mission, vision, and values.
If that rings a bell for DAO experts, it's because some DAOs have a similar structure. Take Ukraine DAO and VitaDAO, both Ethereum Vitalik Buterin itself in DAOs vs. In his seminal essay on corporations, he discusses
The Ukrainian DAO works with a General Council that makes major decisions, such as creating working groups or “pods”, funding and choosing what organizations or initiatives to receive from the DAO. The working groups below the Council are free to act on their own, like Burning Man camps, as long as they don't work in a way that conflicts with the DAO's mission, vision, and values.
Vitadao has been integrated into three working groups since this year, namely: long-term service flow, community and awareness and coordination. Each group has a steward who oversees its activities and ensures that all their activities are always aligned with the common goal of pushing long-term research to new heights.
Both DAOs continue to operate and expand in their own ways, going beyond the typical “DAO as an investment fund” model. If many DAOs take inspiration from both their examples and the fireman interaction between foundations and camps, we can see the DAO model moving away from crypto and into a bright example of what the future of all communities could be. .
Network states can work, right?
Burning Man, in itself, can be considered a kind of “mini-network situation.”
Balaji Srinivasan, who pioneered the idea, defined a network state as “a highly organized online community with the potential for collective action that straddles states around the world and ultimately garners diplomatic recognition from former states.”
While the Burnt Man movement is largely based in the physical world, it thrives on the idea that it is for everyone, an escape from traditional society and, in general, the pressures of everyday life.
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It is in the power of the idea that the potential exists as a network state. If Daoists hope to be ubiquitous, they should learn from the success of Burning Man here.
Why not put all or almost all crypto on the back-end, and by doing so make it easier than ever to understand the power of DAOs? We promised it again and again, and still, Ukrainian DAO and VitaDAO are the best known examples of attracting people from the crypto-sphere to DAOs.
Let's start with better manifestos.
When Daoists begin, they must begin first and foremost with a small segment of the audience that pushes their goals forward into augmented reality and “gets” Tokinomics and related fields.
Beyond attending conferences and other industry events, consider making the physical world part of their activities. Why not have festivals supported by DAOs that everyone can access?
It's a start.
Crossing the chasm means educating the masses about the impact we can make beyond our industrial bubble. We're not there yet, but with a sprinkling of magic from initiatives like Burning Man, we can be.
Crypto and Dao by extension desperately need better ways for the rest of the world. Why not the extreme physical events that help us get there? The simple vision of Burning Man, when done right, can turn into a global movement that will continue and grow for generations.
Let's put together the first proper crypto, Burning Man.
Kushagra Agarwal is the co-founder of Samuday, a DAO project management platform for admins, project managers and contributors for collaboration and bonus management. It also serves as a member of Kernel Block III in Gitcoin, which successfully created a token platform for content creators to generate and distribute social tokens. He was previously part of the IBM Digital Transformation Lab. He holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the Vellore Institute of Technology.
This article is not intended for general information purposes and should not be construed as legal or investment advice. The views, ideas and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
