(See end fot tl;dr answer.)

Here’s a very personal, slightly weird, unsolicited and seemingly random detail to kick us off. As I get closer to finishing a prototype I have so far invested an insignificant chunk of my brittle life in, I came to realize that the type of DAO it produces is not as “first principles” as I thought it would be but rather quite opinionated. I’m not going to bore you with the 3AM existential crises that accompanied it and the envy on the people that “are in it for the tech” that tries me at 4AM as I write this… but the thought that all my work will never be used or understood as to be constitutive of a wider body of work got me asking myself, what are really DAOs for? My DAO is for sure not a group chat with a bank account. Why would a group chat need a bank account? Nor is it really the simple organisation which I tried to previously reduce to ‘a membrane that moves forward’. A DAO needs a third thing. It needs a shared interest; and the only interest ‘a chat with a bank account’ has is about the money. And that goes in circles. You don’t make chat groups with bank accounts for the sake of the money you put in the bank account of the chat group with bank account…

The point is that DAOs need a shared interest. A common interest is not good enough. It’s common to be in the chat group for the money. It’s common to go into the coal mine from 9 to 5 for a salary. It’s common to be a field hand on the estate and common to seek to accumulate potatoes. The uncommon thing would be to actively pursue an interest with others in the same situation. The uncommon thing would be for the slaves on a plantation to have a shared interest. The common thing is for them to individually try to survive. The dangerous thing would be for them to share in and coordinate around an interest. You might ask something like - but surely the coal miners have a shared interest in the orderly functioning of the mine and the slaves… . Please continue. There’s a jump in there that the political left has historically struggled with: if only the workers would realize! In another register, what you are confronted with is a cold start problem best portrayed by the observation that: “workers don’t write”.

So what’s the difference between a shared and a common interest? Omg, so excited you asked! Well, for our purpose and best I can do for now, common interests are kind of like the inertia that acts on individual atoms, it’s common, it’s gravity. It’s not money, but the desire for money. The effects of money are those produced around enacting the common interests of the holders of money. The instrument or mechanism, money, is an interest you share in. Possessing is caring. Owning money, storing world affecting potential in the premier reserve currency of the world, the US dollar makes one a bearer of a shared interest in the supremacy of the US navy. Owning ETH makes you share an interest in the flourishing of the ethereum ecosystem. Whatever it may be, simply bearing it is generally sufficient as to prove some degree of allegiance. You have stake. Your balance is proof of stake at t snapshot in time. Now if you want to enroll in the Navy or stake your ETH as to act as guarantor for the trustworthiness and uneventful working of a particular computing node in the network, well, now that’s the spirit! I salute you! 🫡 Such efforts need recognition and, of course, redistribution.

To recap. If you have EUROs, US dollars or ETH in your wallet, you benefit from and are signalling alignment with the purpose and direction of said opt-in instruments. Opt-in here is crucial. Like Money (more or less) shared interests are opt-in. The moment they stop being so, they become common or obligations. DAOs  are opt in, and the best way to opt in is to hold the asset which that entity uses to throw its weight around. If you want to enroll in the navy of that waterver shared interest, join the DAO. Stake your DAO coins on the idea that all this DAO needs is your input, your perspective, your resource allocation and analysis. You might be wrong. You might get donoWalled and pay for the wasted attention. Or your efforts might be recognized as work by your peers and rewarded as such. If that is so, Congrats! You are a DAO governor!

Anyway. That’s what I wanted to get ‘out there’... (like I’m important enough to use that expression) the distinction between common and shared interests. Which, I could have done a better job of driving home. But anyway, it seems useful, now, at 5AM. And if I was not clear enough, DAOs are for shared interests. For missions where your neighbour doing well is good news. Where there’s more than an exchange at stake. Where there’s values. DAOs don’t make sense for plantations or mines. They make sense for structuring resistance against extractive practice and concentrated ownership. They might also make sense for constituting increasingly shiny, better plantations to later revolutionize against. And if you’re in a chat, that needs a bank account or in a bank account that needs to have a chat; a DAO is overkill. Just use a multisig or venmo or revolut, vkontakte, weibo or use rai. Be careful about the latter though, moving it around with the other involved parties is likely to result in a DAO.

Stone money known as “Rai” are large stone disks, sometimes measuring up to 4 meters, with a hole in the middle that was used for carrying them. It was and still is used as a trading currency.

So that’s what DAOs are for, shared, uncommon interests. 
Which… is it just me or that sounds hella creepy? ‘Special interests’ sounds better?
Anyway. Stop being a baby and eat the got-damn bugs already!