The future is for communities and not for individuals and intermediaries.
The future is for decentralized governance of any community around common goals and interests. Blockchain has new digital primitives and toolboxes to achieve that.
The current model of governing online communities is broken and not sustainable. An example of such a community=(Followers, Creators, Web2 platforms).
(Followers, Creators) have been responsible for creating a lot of value on the Web2 platforms (intermediaries), but they have not really been the beneficiaries of that created value instead, they go to the owner of the Web2 platform that they're working on.
Web2 platforms are unuseful without creators and followers. Creators help Web2 platforms to make revenue around their followers, but they take a tiny part of the created value. All are part of the community that is helping to drive value to the collective output. Everyone needs to be compensated proportionately for how much value they drive to the community.
(Followers, Creators, Web2 platforms) community is totally controlled and owned by Web2 platforms(intermediaries). They maintain this relationship as they want on their behalf. They can change the community's rules when they want without permission from the creator or the follower through a closed door. The community must be owned by its participants, not by one.
This is one example of a community governance model based on web2 platforms as an intermediary. You need to trust those platforms in order to use their online services.
The new era of decentralized governance
The idea began with Bitcoin when on top of the internet, we can govern a set of parties(nodes) that provide resources(computation and storage) to run a distributed ledger(Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System).
The idea of governing online unknown parties around common goals and interests(aligning all participant's incentives to achieve the common goal) was too difficult, but Satoshi Nakamoto found all the ingredients to achieve that.
The version introduced by Bitcoin was limited to governing multiple unknown parties around a specific goal: providing storage and computation to run a distributed ledger.
After the smart contract innovation by Ethereum, the idea is generalized to govern any community around any common interest and goals.
Bitcoin —> Ethereum
Specific purposes governance —> General purposes governance
Using a smart contract, we can codify the protocol, a set of rules governing the community. We can align participants' incentives to achieve the common goal.
We have a decentralized autonomous organization(DAOs) movement. We are at the early stage of technology. In the incoming years, we will have more tools and ideas around how to govern any community in a decentralized and transparent manner and owned equally by community participants.
Blockchain has the technological aspects, mindset, and philosophy to have a more efficient model for governing communities online like:
Protocol rules execution in a decentralized and transparent manner.
True ownership of the community by its participants.
The token can be used to align participants' incentives.
The protocol rules can be upgraded through votes by all the community participants based on their degree of ownership, proportion in creating value, etc.
Fairness in reward distribution and decision making
etc
The first generation of such governance is run by decentralized protocols like Uniswap, Compound, OceanDAO, MakerDAO, etc to vote on proposals around the protocol's future, grant funds to other projects, etc.
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