An apprentice' story: Web3 is where becoming and being converge.

September 18th, 2022

At times it can be difficult to make sense of Web3. Even with analogy from history, contemporary community formation cannot be fully explained. After all, guilds, DAOs or cooperatives in the decentralised web are new phenomena, which create new forms of organisation by matching characteristics from different institutions throughout history. To remind us of our practice, where we invent organisational modi by mixing institutions into a ‘collaboration blend’, I have chosen the header that displays a modern skyline with historic features.

TL;DR

Guilds are not a new concept, but were revived as forms of organisation to accommodate for the market conditions in an emergent Web3. To navigate the space and eventually become a member to one of the many decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) you have to be specific and stick to your playbook. To help you start your journey, I have compiled a short guide that outlines three key steps for you to maximise your chance of success. By recursing to features of historic guilds, your path from research over discovery to engagement is explained in non-technical terms. The path described in this article lends itself credibility from sharing my experience of starting as an apprentice at Raid Guild.

When purpose collides with your wish to belong.

When you first start out researching DAOs and choosing which one is worth applying for, you will be overwhelmed by chats on Discord you are unable to follow. It feels like being thrown half way into a conversation of people you do not know and who are not showing their faces. Opposed to joining a thread on Reddit, you are left without a heading or question. Before you even start engaging, you must have read some documentation the DAO provide, followed one or more members on social media, and most importantly not be afraid to ask important but redundant questions. You may be asking yourself how you ever will get a foot in the door. This article addresses what it takes for you to make a difference in a DAO.

After I followed the best practices and reached out to about five DAOs I was interested in joining, I received emails like the one below. Somehow I convinced myself that Web3 is not like the corporate world. It turns out that in the decentralised web, incumbents’ reputation counts just as much. Engagement and commitment are not enough to get yourself in.

You have either to prove yourself in an onboarding process, have something to show for, or both. Yet, you should not be discouraged by a few negative responses. Try and use this experience to build a small portfolio that showcases who you are and where your strengths lay. Joining a DAO should not be about producing a result. You grow in the process and learn about the purpose that drove you into Web3.

On my journey I discovered DAO aggregators, such as DAO Directory. These are a good start to explore various communities, in which you might be interested. Use it to organise your search for documentation, or operating principles. Yet, you should not solely rely on desk research. The most important part is to get involved and immersive yourself. For example, Raid Guild, where I am currently serving as an apprentice, redirects most incoming applicants to a standardised application form. While it is good practice to fill it out and submit it, when I joined Raid Guild’s Discord a community manager welcomed me. I responded with a short introduction and statement of purpose, which you should think of as a 160 character bio on Twitter. After that it was a matter of days until I became an apprentice.

Best practices for selecting DAOs to join

Scrape your social media and see who in your network is a member of a DAO.
If you do not have any connections in Web3, go to DAOHaus and see which DAOs you might like.
Try to find medium sized DAOs with onboarding programs and manageable sizes of their Discord communities.
Join their Discord and follow the conversations for a week or two.
In the meantime read their documentation, Github repositories, and Twitter.
Apply through their formal onboarding channels.
Pivot with an introduction on Discord and evaluate the responses.
Make a decision. After all, it is you choosing where to best allocate your time.

The bitter truth of decentralisation

You may question the purpose of this article because it could seem more complicated than it actually is. The truth is, however, I had help by a great individual, who I have met face-to-face. In our remote first, work from home world with virtual workspaces, meeting a person and having a conversation matter heaps. Remember that in most Web3 community servers on Discord almost everyone uses nicknames and forming personal connections becomes difficult.

If you were lucky and had the chance to attend soft skill trainings in graduate school or the corporate world, you know how overemphasised networking is. It does not need to be a stiff and artificial encounter. Instead, just try to find someone, who you bond with because you are sharing interests or have problems you can help each other solve. It does not need to be in the Zoom call or breakout session the organiser set up for you, nor do you have to have this conversation right away at an on-site conference. You can choose the place, conferencing software, or medium both of you feel the most comfortable with, but have this conversation.

Without having met my now fellow apprentice at the RxC Conference 2022, I would not have ended up diving down the Raid Guild rabbit hole. I am thankful for being able to make these encounters. The best thing about participating at such events is that most people show their faces there and you can get a deeper understanding of you are talking to. In short, get yourself out there. Personal encounters matter in the age of the meta verse just as much as they did before.

Building your reputation

After you attended some conferences online or offline, you will have made interesting finds, generated new ideas for blog posts, learned something, and made meaningful connections. Once you have gotten to this point, it is important to define your goals and build your reputation. You create a track record by being accountable, as well as engage in discussions and selected projects. To maximise your impact and keep your focus try to limit yourself to two projects, at most. Web3 has seen many contributors getting lost by moving from one ‘big thing’ to the next, without creating sustainable relationships. I have chosen Raid Guild as a project I would like to engage with and became an apprentice.

Raid Guild

Raid Guild is a community of loosely affiliated freelancers and builders, who gave themselves a governance structure to set a minimum price for their services and redistribute excess profits to the community as a club good. Raid Guild’s branding follows a World of Warcraft theme, which is present throughout the user journeys of members, apprentices, and clients. While it sets the scene for most interactions within the DAO, it is not overly intrusive or deterministic. It only gives a credible account of the state of the economy in Web3.

More specifically, guilds as organisational structures match the state of the Web3 economy. It is an emerging market akin to the economies in the early stages of modern capitalism, when markets were not yet bureaucratically regulated. Guilds formed in late medieval Europe to legitimise the social status, protect against free market competition, and increase profits of its members [1]. Hence, Raid Guild lends its members a reputation that allow them to charge a surplus, a portion of which is accumulated as club good. The limited access to financial means and knowhow, then, can be used to reinforce the guild's good standing, finances its market infrastructure and attracts new members who pay for accessing the good [2].

When looking at Web3 through the lens of sociology and economics, it appears to be not just any other emerging economy. Indeed with its guilds, DAOs, or tokens similar to early banknotes, Web3 mixes organisational principles from several epochs of capitalism. it gave reason for inviting a social scientist to the well known podcast The Scoop for cover the significance of crypto-asset adoption. Hence, ecosystems or economies around organisations like Raid Guild are a sandbox for society to concurrently experiment with different modes for the facilitation of trade.

DAOHaus

Many of the Origin Stories of Raid Guild centre around the theme of organisation, adding value, and greater societal questions. In the late middle ages and early modern period guilds did not form on centralised order, rather the organisational structure had established itself in many different cities. Today guilds are considered one of the constituting elements of European cities of this time [1]. They not only denominated an emerging class of bourgeoisie, but also integrated into a larger socio-demographic structure. During that time societies were organised through monarchy with backing from the Catholic Church. In todays terms, think of Satoshi Nakamoto as a god like figure, crypto-whales to wield monarchic wealth, and members of guilds as entrepreneurs.

For the last group, DAOHaus provides a framework to deploy guilds. It functions as a platform where you can build a governance structure for the collective you aim to organise within the Web3 ecosystem, without being a seasoned Web3 developer. In medieval terms, you can build a guild without having to build an entire city around it. Yet, just like five hundred years ago, the general structure remains constant. For this reason you can find many organisations on DAOHaus, even one where you belong.