What:  A paper on the future of work, which is already “here but still unevenly distributed”.

Why it is important:  The notion of work as we know it might be very well challenged and redefined, however, even though the possibilities offered and endless and fascinating, it is stlll very early to  understand what direction all this is going to take and to what extent it is going to influence larger organisations not involved in tech as a primary activity.

The author argues that in the future, people will not work anymore for large companies, but will rather earn income in a non-traditional way (playing games, learning new skills, curating content…). To support this view, crypto protocols are seen as ways to coordinate, measure and reward contributions to complex ecosystems, based on decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) outside of the corporate world.

The argument is based on the fact that the traditional corporate system has become outdated, as we  see alternative forms of earnings (influencers, contractors, creators, gig economy…). Those possibilities are still limited in number nowadays because the whole business model is still operated by corporations. However, the most advanced ones (such as Apple) have created “orbital stakeholders” (in the case of Apple, all the companies developing apps for instance) and, according to the author, as companies grow, they are no longer able to maintain a sustainable relationship with these orbital network participants and are therefore tempted to extract value from these participants instead of maintaining an cooperative mindset. This is the reason why DAOs will grow in importance, as they will allow the “orbital stakeholders” to exist independently of corporate organisations.

The combination of several DAOs and crypto will help people to generate an income based on a mix of things we already do, but with the notion of earnings at the core of these activities. There are several types of profiles identified:

• The core contributors (work to earn), which could be compared for instance to the present days consultants, in management and growth development areas,
• Bounty hunters (contribute to earn), functional experts who will provide services at one time and fulfil tasks with clear boundaries, in Finance, development, design…
• Network participants (participate to earn, play to earn, learn to earn, create to earn), which could basically include everyone, and could be seen as a way of rewarding people for living their life online.
• Token holders (invest to earn), or shareholders.

However, it is not clear how much income can be earned through these outlets and if it could suffice to make a living.

Considering Crypto and Decentralization for the future of work