Kimbal Musk, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Alex Zhang took to the SXSW stage on Monday for the “Move Over NFTs. Here Come the DAOs” panel at the Austin Convention Center. Tolokonnikova is a former member of the Russian protest punk rock group Pussy Riot, and the co-founder of UnicornDAO and UkraineDAO. Zhang co-founded the DAO Friends With Benefits social club and is its mayor, while Musk co-founded the philanthropic Big Green DAO. Journalist Michael Casey was the moderator.
Throughout the discussion, panelists outlined their distinct and contrasting use cases behind their own decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, and concluded that ownership, transparency, and localization are the main tenets of a successful DAO. .
Tolokonnikova, a self-proclaimed anarchist, said the reason she entered Web3 was “to find better tools for activism” and found that DAOs could provide a “better governance model than a national government.” He claimed that UkraineDAO was more than a $7 million fundraising effort that brought people together behind the image of the Ukrainian flag, and is a “huge leap for the crypto sector” that even Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin supported.
He added that UkraineDAO shattered the perception that NFTs are “just cartoon pictures” to show how NFTs can solve local problems. In this case, she was able to “distribute money really quickly” that went towards providing medical aid to those affected by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
On the other hand, The DAO Friends With Benefits, or Zhang’s FWB, began as “an online accident” in 2020 and has since grown into a community of “socially and financially aligned” people. FWB is made up of 6,000 token holders, including some public figures and celebrities, working together to launch Web3 productsincluding the recently announced FWB.Archive tool, which archives digital events.
Musk stepped in to expand on the idea of a DAO as a community that is “not regulated by the United States or any country in the world” and allows its members to own the value of the results of the organization.. He said Big Green DAO “really wanted to experiment with the governance system” of nonprofits “empowering a community” over their treasury and grant making process.
Tolokonnikova added that bureaucracy is a big problem in non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, because there is no such transparency around the treasury or the distribution of funds. DAOs not only avoid bureaucracy and promote transparency, she said, but could offer a better governance model than nation states around the world.. The co-founder of UkraineDAO, who was jailed for two years in Russia for hooliganism, offered her “best example” of a strange personal limitation: “A chocolate bar can move from one country to another without problems, but not me.”
Next, Musk pondered the idea of legal protection. Since Big Green DAO deals with the responsibilities of non-profit organizations, he wondered if Web3 companies operating as DAOs have the potential to go against centralized government legal systems.
According to Zhang, “laws are working to catch up” and in the meantime “a lot of amazing DAO infrastructure is being built that wants to operate in the real world,” which he says is important for a DAO like FWB to harbors physical experiences. When asked by Cointelegraph to expand on this point, dHe said that he hopes that DAOs end up replacing LLCs or C Corporations and “no one says DAO anymore” but simply organization. Zhang also revealed that the FWB is working to automate payroll and issue W-2 tax forms to its members, who can choose the form of currency they would like to be paid in.
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