[extracted from “DAOs will be the future of online communities in five years”  ]

A decentralized autonomous organization provides power for users to create an online community with as little friction as possible.

We, as a society, are naturally communal, so it makes sense to engage in ideas and interests with others online. Whether we build relationships with people directly or indirectly, communities are built. However, how we do so differs.

In 2006, web expert Jakob Nielsen proposed a 90-9-1 rule based on participation inequality in social media and online communities. According to Nielsen, in most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers, i.e., those who observe, but don’t contribute, nine percent of users contribute a little and only one percent account for the most contributions.

But as the influence of online communities continues, their nature is beginning to change. The previous era was dominated by a user, customer and creator relationship. Now, though, we’re starting to see online communities taking ownership of what they want to share.

The next logical step moves away from this sharing economy toward that of an ownership economy. Jesse Walden, the founder of Variant Fund, calls the ownership economy something that is “not only built, operated, and funded by individual users, but owned by users too.”

It’s the advent of crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) that is helping to take online communities to the next level. As the sector uses assets that are shared by all shareholders, creating something that aligns with their interests, crypto and DeFi are a natural fit. Empowered by frictionless finance, the ownership economy enables novel approaches for real-world communities to leverage digital tools to create, capture and exchange value more effectively in virtuous cycles.