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Decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs. are changing the world. DAOs are digital entities managed by code and run on the blockchain. DAOs can be thought of as modern organizations which leverage crypto primitives to unlock new value creation. They will exist as entities on smart contract-enabled blockchains like [Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/), [Polygon](https://polygon.technology/), or [Binance Smart Chain](https://www.binance.org/en/smartChain).

DAOs can generate revenue and pay out dividends (or share profits) to their token holders, and DAO shareholders are token owners. From companies organizing around communities to networks of virtual workers, decentralized organizations offer new business ways. In this blog post, we will explore these organizations and the future of work. 

## Centralized organizations will compete against decentralized organizations (aka DAOs).

The core issue with a centralized organizational structure is the centralization of power. It's not uncommon for traditional organizations to have a pyramid structure, with a minimal number of people at the top who have all the power and everyone else working below them. In the case of startups and corporations, CEO and C-level executives are the drivers of the business venture.

As we've seen with both governments and businesses, centralized organizations tend to make decisions that favor those at the top. Those at the top typically have ownership of the business but no accountability or responsibility to those below them. On the other hand, front-line workers have no ownership but are highly accountable to their manager and the executive teams. Employees or front-line workers are not motivated to implement change in the company.

Decentralized organizations offer one solution to these challenges. These are often called decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, which do away with hierarchy altogether. Instead, they use smart contracts to allow members to vote on decisions. DAOs are organizations run by rules (smart contracts) encoded as computer software and distributed across protocols (blockchain networks). In a DAO, no one person has more power than anyone else. A DAO has no boards of directors and no management hierarchy. Its employees, contractors, or members can be worldwide and participate equally in its development, marketing, or growth.

## Founders and makers will create digital entities (aka DAOs) first, legal entities second

Startups need capital to form legal entities and build products. Legal entities require ongoing maintenance and overhead that are easily avoided by launching DAOs first, achieving product-market-fit, then incorporating.

DAOs can be managed with software or the wisdom of the crowd. They are more resilient in the face of censorship/shutdown attempts, more flexible, and owned by multiple parties simultaneously. DAOs can also be built on top of other people's smart contracts, can have mutable ownerships, and can transition into legal entities when it makes sense for them to do so.

## Groups of creators and communities will launch DAOs.

Today, we see hundreds of DAOs managing billions of dollars. The top 167 DAOs are managing USD 12.5B in assets with 1.2M organizational members and token holders ([deepdao.io](https://deepdao.io/)). In the following year, we will see thousands of DAOs. 

DAOs will be formed by creators and communities who wish to self-organize and use crypto-enabled primitives to unlock new ways of delivering value. The people in these groups will launch web3 projects, get paid for their work with cryptocurrencies, and take their profits in crypto coins or crypto tokens.

A DAO is a community of people who have a common interest in a particular project or product. They take their ownership of the project very seriously, and they earn tokens for it. They want to know what's going on, they want to know how it works, they want to participate in decision-making processes, and so on. 

The difference between a traditional company and a DAO is that there is no upper management structure, no CEO who makes all the decisions and tells everyone what to do. Instead, everyone who has invested in this DAO can participate in decision making processes and influence the development of the product or service.

## Businesses will manage funds (aka DAO treasury) using blockchain technologies.

Most companies today have centralized management of their finances and treasury operations. The treasury is responsible for managing the company's accounts payable and receivable. A DAO would allow a company to decentralize this function and automate the financial management of its treasury operations. Thanks to solutions like [Gnosis Safe](https://gnosis-safe.io/), DAOs can manage digital assets on Ethereum using multi-signatures.

As we move toward a work environment that's more distributed and less hierarchical, DAOs will allocate funds with more transparency. They will allocate these funds based on proposals and consensus-based voting.

DAOs run through governance rules encoded as smart contracts and driven by consensus-based voting. These smart contracts execute actions based on pre-defined rules. DAO members can manage treasury funds and other similar tasks:

*   Allocating funds to projects in need (e.g., developing the next generation of this technology)

*   Paying contractors for their work

*   Distributing profits based on the stake in the DAO (e.g., to investors or early contributors)

*   Asking for input from its stakeholders when making decisions (e.g., voting on which projects to fund, whether to add new team members, when to change DAO rules)

## Token holders (aka DAO members) will achieve alignment with consensus-based voting.

Some would argue that DAOs are the future of corporations. Here's why. DAOs decentralize decision-making, hiring, firing, and ownership through voting and smart contracts. A DAO's members gain alignment with the rest of the organization via consensus-based voting. DAO voting is similar to shareholder voting, where shareholders decide on direction of startups by democratic voting. The DAO's token holders will vote on any proposals that need to be made to the system.

The foundation for any DAO is it's token. The role of the token is to align incentives across participants in the network, which are typically stakeholders, customers, or members. Tokens are not only the internal currency of a DAO; they are also its governance system. The concept of using tokens to make decisions is called "token voting." 

Here's how it works. DAO members are issued tokens when they join the organization and pay a fixed fee for them. Each DAO token gives its owner one vote in the decision-making process. A DAO member can vote on any issue brought before the organization, and each member's opinion counts as one vote. If most members agree to pass a proposal, it will be activated as part of the smart contract code and executed by the computer.

## Work will be token-driven.

One of the most exciting things about blockchain technology is that it could significantly reduce the cost of coordination. Coordinating large groups of people to work together requires a lot of effort, which translates into money. 

I think that digital or crypto tokens will be at the center of this transformation. The tokens don't need to be monetary: you can use reputation or karma tokens, and the dynamics will be similar. These tokens can be replaceable or non-replaceable—fungible tokens (FTs) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), respectively.

How do you pay people to work on a platform? With equity? With cash? With reputation? With tokens that are worth something outside the platform? Let's talk about the last one.

A token system would create incentives for individuals to contribute and benefit those who provide value. Work will be token-driven, and DAOs will pay each person in tokens. Contributors earn tokens for doing work on a platform, and DAO members can exchange them for other tokens, cash, or equity in the platform itself. They are not monetary value, but they have a monetary value.

## Future of DAOs.

DAOs are still very much in their infancy today, but we will begin to see them emerge in the coming years as more people experiment with smart contracts and blockchain-based networks.

In the future, DAOs will enable a new form of crypto-enabled projects. Instead, groups of creators and communities will launch DAOs to run their ventures. The process will be open and transparent, bringing everyone's skills and resources together to create something bigger than they could achieve alone.


Everything you need to know about decentralized autonomous organizations

DAOs And The Future Of Work

## What are DEXs?

As consumers, we love to purchase stuff. This trend has given rise to the ownership economy. Creators, on the other hand, are playing a different game. Artists, musicians, writers, or other creators are investing in their creative process. Creators are operating in the creator economy. As technology evolves and creates more opportunities for wealth creation, these economies are rapidly growing. Thanks to blockchain and peer-to-peer technologies, the ownership economy is catalyzed by the creator economy and vice versa.

Society is starting to value digital assets—stuff that can be deployed and accessed by anyone online. While traditional digital assets are easily copied and replicated online, they are not exchanged or traded since they often lack digital licenses of scarcity. Buyers of conventional digital assets often go to marketplaces and are not allowed to resell their purchases. Modern digital assets, powered by blockchain and peer-to-peer technologies, empower buyers with modern tools. In the new ownership/creator economy, buyers and sellers of digital assets give rise to exchanges and auction houses.

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs), decentralized auction houses (DAHs), or decentralized marketplaces (DEMs) refer to the same thing. These decentralized platforms allow anyone to exchange digital assets with another without third parties.

DEXs create a bridge between buyers and sellers. These decentralized exchanges enable peer-to-peer transactions without the need for trust, infrastructure, or highly specialized knowledge. They effectively create new markets where there were previously none.

DEXs are online marketplaces where you can buy and sell digital assets using blockchain and peer-to-peer technologies instead of centralized platforms. DEXs operate with no trusted third party and function similarly to marketplaces, only instead of buying and selling physical products, users can buy and sell crypto coins and crypto tokens.

Decentralized exchanges enable the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies without relying on centralized infrastructure and intermediaries. Buyers and sellers do not need to be registered, licensed, verified, or accredited with a DEX. They do not need to maintain any relationship with each other. The only reason for using a centralized exchange is buying or selling something crypto to fiat or vice versa.

Crypto DEXs provide a convenient way to trade crypto assets (crypto coins or crypto tokens). On [Aug 7, 2020](https://web.archive.org/web/20200807103012/https://www.coingecko.com/en/dex#:~:text=dex%2024th%20trading%20volume), the daily crypto DEX trading volume was 258M $USD. [On Aug 13, 2021](https://web.archive.org/web/20210813051332/https://www.coingecko.com/en/dex#:~:text=dex%2024h%20trading%20volume), the daily crypto DEX trading volume was 5.2B $USD, which represents a 19X increase in one year.

In 2017 and 2018, centralized exchanges (CEXs) were the most used platforms to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Today, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are the best way to swap one cryptocurrency for another. DEXs are also more secure than CEXs and have fewer trading limitations. CEXs deal with fiat-to-crypto on-ramps and crypto-to-fiat off-ramps. As a result, CEXs have more compliance requirements, often requiring account holders to send them a photo ID of their driver's license to exchange one crypto asset for another. DEXs allow you to buy Bitcoin ($BTC), Ethereum ($ETH), Bitcoin Cash ($BCH), or any other cryptocurrency directly from others without needing an intermediary or paying marketplace fees. With DEXs and decentralized wallets (aka non-custodial crypto wallets), you hold your private keys. You're directly sending data around the internet without having anyone involved with the transaction know anything about it. CEXs, on the other hand, often act as custodians of your funds. They generate new addresses on your behalf and hold your private keys.

## What are DAOs?

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are teams that operate without central management or top-down organizational structure. Unlike traditional companies, DAOs do not issue payroll or issue equity for long-term compensation. Instead, DAOs issue grants or distribute tokens to their members for their contributions.

DAOs are groups of individuals who collaborate in a decentralized matter through votes. Blockchain technologies enable modern teams to cooperate in a decentralized way. Blockchain technologies allow voting-based decision-making and governance to determine the direction of the organization.

DAOs aim to automate certain aspects of running a business while leaving certain decision-making powers in the hands of active members. DAOs create and manage crypto tokens. These tokens provide a means of exchange for goods and services and are transferable between individuals or DAOs. The creation of crypto tokens, also known as fungible tokens, is a prerequisite to creating DAOs.

DAOs are challenging organizational compensations. For example, one of the primary concerns of many organizations is the high cost of employee or contractor compensation. Crypto tokens provide alternative ways to compensate for team member's contributions.

Historically, the most expensive part of any organization has been human labor. While freelance marketplaces like [Fiverr](https://www.fiverr.com/), [Upwork](https://www.upwork.com/), and [Freelancer](https://www.freelancer.com/) have made it possible to hire cheap labor from all over the world, modern organizations no longer need to rely on fiat-based compensation. Thanks to blockchain technologies, modern organizations can rely on code (aka smart contracts) to coordinate agents (employees or contractors) based on crypto tokens thanks to blockchain technologies.

## Why do DAOs need DEXs?

Before we touch on the significance of DEXs and their application at DAOs, we need to understand the decentralized economy better. How do you build a decentralized economy when no central authority issues crypto coins or tokens? The existence of these decentralized exchanges allows people and projects to transact without relying on payment providers. Developers also use these decentralized exchanges to build decentralized apps efficiently.

DEXs are a revolutionary approach to funding groups or organizations. Unlike traditional venture capital or early-stage funding, DEXs provide powerful yet flexible tools for any team or organization to bootstrap project liquidity or generate project capital.

DEXs solve decentralized finance (DeFi) problems. These decentralized platforms allow users to buy and sell cryptocurrencies without needing an actual financial institution. In addition to becoming a popular tool for buying and selling crypto, DEXs are the perfect mechanisms for crypto experiments. DEXs allow DeFi communities to experiment at the speed of the internet with collaborations, royalties, incentive structures, and value propositions.

Since DEXs allow users to buy and sell crypto assets without needing an exchange based in a country, they are popular with individuals or organizations that prefer to purchase or sell their non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or fungible tokens (FTs) without relying on a centralized platform. In essence, DAOs can use DEXs to enable their team, investors, and community to exchange NFTs or FTs.

DAOs can use existing DEXs, or even launch their own, to empower their communities to buy, sell, or exchange digital assets. DAO-managed DEXs fulfill the needs of token holders and community members. Although DEX platforms are still in the early stages, their superiority over CEXs is undeniable.

DEXs will revolutionize the way users access and manage DAO's financial (aka FTs) and non-financial assets (aka NFTs) by offering a frictionless user experience across all digital asset exchanges. DEXs will enable users to buy, sell, store and trade digital assets, thereby making it easy for everyone to invest in token-driven projects.

DEXs are relevant because they cut out the middlemen and provide a secure, fully transparent way for buyers and sellers to communicate with each other efficiently without needing a trusted third party mediating the process. DAOs can use DEXs to allow their community members to swap one token for another quickly. By removing intermediaries involved in the buying and selling process, users get more for their money while enjoying a more convenient and DAO-brandable experience.


What are DEXs and Why Do DAOs Need Them

## Introduction

There is an increased interest in token economics, or tokenomics, which explores the use of cryptocurrencies. Crypto coins or tokens allow greater financial transparency, control resources, and unlock infinite use cases for decentralized organizations.

You need to understand tokenomics to achieve sufficient decentralization. While outcomes differ from one organization to another, tokenomics helps community members project vision and mission around a crypto-enabled currency, coin or token.

Tokens are used in many ways by decentralized autonomous organizations or DAOs. They allow token holders to vote on decisions that affect the network as a whole. Token holders can use to exchange goods or services without leaving the network.

Understanding the fundamentals of token economics is essential to using tokens effectively. A token is a digital coin that allows its holder to participate in crypto economies. You may have heard about Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dash, and Dogecoin. Each has some utility, but unlike conventional fiat currency, each has unique intrinsic value.

Blockchain technology allows anyone to create, also known as minting, their crypto tokens. Smart contract developers can mint tokenized communities and deploy them on blockchain networks, such as Ethereum, Flow, Binance Smart Chain. This blog post will present a brief overview of tokenomics, dive deeper into its pillars, and help DAOs define their own.

## Token economics

Tokenomics is the study of crypto-enabled economic models, and it is the study of how crypto coins or tokens are created, distributed, and used in financial systems.

Token economics encourages interactions between agents (members, community speculators, and stakeholders) in a network or a protocol. It uses cryptographically secured coins or tokens to represent products or services, typically digital asset ownership.

Tokenomics is defined by what tokens can do and cannot do. DAO members or speculators are encouraged to take positive action to achieve its mission and vision.

Token economics deals with the relationships between producers (products or services) and consumers (members or speculators). DAOs use crypto tokens to incentivize token holders, community members, and investors in a virtual economy.

## Token design

Token design is where you ask, "What does this token do?" It is important because the value of a token depends on the decisions you make about it. While there are infinite use cases for tokens, equity, utility, and governance are the top three. 

Equity tokens are fungible tokens that represent ownership in an asset or a pool of assets. Utility tokens incentivize participants to participate in a network by providing scarce resources (units of work, time, or capital). Equity tokens incentivize participation in a protocol. Smart contracts unlock utility tokens using on-chain or off-chain systems. Utility tokens unlock functionality in a protocol while easing coordination among participants. Governance tokens represent percentage ownership over voting rights.

A new coin issued by a blockchain's creator might inherit its value from the exchange of capital or time, for instance, to pay the developer to share their computer compute time. Tokens designed for this purpose are known as utility tokens. And people use tokens to pay for services; it's an equity token. If people purchase tokens with an expectation of future profit, the token is a security. Tokens designed to vote on the direction of the DAO are known as governance tokens.

## Token distribution

Token distribution is essential, but it is even more important that the tokens you distribute are valuable. Tokens are worthless if no one wants them. But if no one wants them, why distribute them in the first place? 

The distribution of tokens is fundamental to the economy of any smart contract ecosystem. Simply put, tokens are valuable because they allow control over a specific asset from one owner to another without a mediator. Tokens represent ownership or other attributes of certain digital assets. Community members may exchange these tokens for goods or services on specialized blockchain-enabled marketplaces or apps.

Token distribution can boil it down to two things. One is whether to give away tokens for free or not, and the other is how to give them away. Popular token dropping mechanisms include crowdfunds, auctions, and airdrops. Cryptocurrency airdrops are free coins that are dropped directly into your wallet.

Token distribution is an art and a science. You don't want it to be too hard for people to get tokens. If it's too hard, then no one will bother to acquire them. And if it's too easy, people will stop caring about the utility of the token and instead focus on how many tokens they hold in their wallets. 

I think there is a sweet spot between these extremes: you want to make it easy enough for people to get tokens, but not so easy that no one cares about what the tokens do. The best way to accomplish this is to try different things and see what works best for you and your organization. By considering all incentive structures, you validate not only the token itself but how your community responds to your tokens.

You can gift your tokens to your early adopters. This process can help DAOs build communities while boosting the value of their tokens. Please resist the temptation to distribute tokens by giving them out to anyone. DAOs must resist this temptation by airdropping tokens to only the most engaged community members. Remember to account for the costs of minting and distributing tokens, which incur transaction costs depending on blockchain networks. By airdropping tokens to your community members, the DAO increases the number of coins in circulation and increases the asset's value.

You can also sell your tokens for profit. If people see value in your project, they will buy your tokens. Let's say your goal is to generate 10 $ETH (30,340 $USD or 38,410 $CAD) from the drop. You can use different pricing tiers to accomplish this. If you charge 1.0 $ETH (3,034 $USD or 3,841 $CAD) per token, you need to sell 10 tokens. If you charge 0.1 $ETH (303 $USD or 381 $CAD) per token, you need to sell 100 tokens, and so forth.

While some blockchain networks have costly transaction costs for minting tokens, others have zero to low minting and transferring costs—Ethereum for the former; Polygon, Flow, Binance Smart Chain for the latter.

The token release schedule, including token supply or token price, can be hard programmed into smart contacts. Developers use smart contracts and programming languages (Solidity, Cadence, Go) to mint and release tokens on DAOs. 

Token distribution differs depending on the project use cases. Here are some of the most common economic models for tokens:

1.  Deflationary Model (Currency). There is a hard cap on the number of tokens created in a deflationary token economic model. In this economic model, demand increases with time, but supply does not. Examples: Bitcoin ($BTC), Litecoin ($LTC), Bitcoin Cash ($BCH)

2.  Inflationary Model (Utility). In an inflationary token economic model, there is no hard cap on the number of tokens created. Some token issuers limit token creation yearly, others go off a set schedule, and some opt to determine supply-based on-demand data. Examples: Ethereum ($ETH), Polkadot ($DOT), Solana ($SOL)

3.  Duel-Token Model. In a dual-token economic model, two tokens exist on a single blockchain. This model generally includes a store of value token as well as a utility token. This model aims to incentivize users to hold the store of value token to receive returns in the form of the utility token. Examples: VeChain ($VET) & VeThor Token ($VTHO), NEO ($NEO) & GAS ($GAS)

4.  Asset-backed Model (Stablecoins). In an asset-backed token economic model, an issuer pegs the value of an asset to the token's underlying assets, similar to asset-backed security in traditional finance markets. Asset-backed models can rely on fluctuating valuations such as gold or fixed assets like the US Dollar. Examples: PAX Gold ($PAXG), Tether ($USDT), USD Coin ($USDC)

## Token incentives

DAOs are modern organizations, but they act more like crowds. And like crowds, they need ways to coordinate using incentives. DAOs can define crypto-enabled incentive structures to motivate positive behavior and discourage negative behavior. Token incentives can reward people for their contributions, which might be contributions to development, marketing, or sales. DAOs can also punish people for their misbehavior but imposing restrictions on specific tokens.

Tokens can be for anything from funding scientific research to building infrastructure to solving the world's most complex problems. Aligning token holders, communities, and investors around a token is essential for the long-term success of DAOs.

Token incentives must appeal to the project's ideal customers, including the project team, community, and investors. You can design token incentives to increase engagement so your ideal customers continue to interact with your tokens.

## Token supply and demand

There are two parts to any economy: producers (people who make or produce stuff) and consumers (people who use or consume stuff). Crypto coins or crypto tokens are the financial tools that allow for exchanging value between producers and consumers. Think of tokens as digital representations of goods or services—like Bitcoin ($BTC) or Ethereum ($ETH)—that you buy and store in your wallet. These crypto primitives allow everyone to move capital (crypto) without requiring permission from banks.

In economics, supply and demand are related but different. Supply means the number of tokens issued or distributed; demand means how many people are willing to buy tokens. The community's perception drives the demand for tokens, and the demand for tokens on a protocol or a network is related to their utility, equity, and governance. Perception is how users perceive the token's value, either its utility, security, or governance. Tokens are valuable because they enable applications to take risks and meet users; they afford the developer access to an unbanked asset class.

Think of tokenomics as a token supply chain controlled by smart contracts. The smart contract controls the tokens and enables the use of the tokens in various applications. Smart contracts control the supply of crypto tokens and the minting or burning of tokens. 

DAOs use various supply control mechanisms to manage and control their financial economies. Here are some of the most important mechanisms we see today:

1.  Hard Cap (MEME $MEME)

2.  Reserves (Ethereum $ETH)

3.  Inflation (Bitcoin $BTC)

4.  Lockups (XRP $XRP)

5.  Node staking (Dash $DASH)

6.  User staking (EOS $EOS)

7.  Vesting and transaction penalties (NEM $XEM)

8.  Buybacks and burning (Binance Coin $BNB)

## Define your tokenomics

Tokenomics is a new way of thinking about organizational success. By understanding tokenomics, you will prepare yourself for token drops. 

Understanding the supply and demand for tokens, including how it affects the price you pay for them, is crucial to understanding how mass adoption can occur. In addition, understanding the differences in technical and cultural contexts allows us to frame questions in more relevant ways to future users.

A successful token sale and growth of the tokens value depend heavily upon how well the tokenomics is structured. DAOs are encouraged to drop their fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens to maximize revenue. 

DAOs often rely on founders, teams (data scientists and developers), communities, and investors to maximize their project potential. Defining your tokenomics is more than considering token use cases for governance, utility, and equity.

Successful token projects consider the following pillars:

1.  Token distribution (how tokens are released)

2.  Incentives (how tokens motivate individual behavior)

3.  Token supply (how many tokens there are)

4.  Token demand (how much someone is willing to pay for them)

There are many factors that DAOs must consider when designing their tokenomics. Combined with the technical expertise necessary for project success, tokenomics are challenging to implement.

DAOs often hire data scientists for tokenomics modeling (Python, R, Jupyter Notebook) and developers for smart contract development (Solidity, Cadence, Go). 

Are you a DAO interested in defining your tokenomics? Reach out. At 🦄 Unicorn Team, we can help!


A Guide To Token Economics

Tokenomics 101

## What are NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens (aka NFTs or nifty's) are crypto tokens representing digital ownership of assets. NFTs act as digital deeds and allow anyone to become owners of digital or physical items. Unlike traditional currencies, each crypto token is unique. NFTs are commonly used to represent one-of-one or one-of-many images (JPG, PNG, GIF), videos (MP4, MOV), audio (MP3, WAV, FLAC), or AR/3D (GLB) files.

NFTs are digital collectibles that can be bought and sold on online exchanges, auction houses, or peer-to-peer (aka P2P) platforms. NFTs represent assets, each with unique characteristics thanks to blockchain technologies and P2P networks.

In 2017, [Dapper Labs](https://www.dapperlabs.com/) released [CryptoKitties](https://www.cryptokitties.co/), an Ethereum project that defined unique crypto tokens and proposed [ERC-721](https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-721), which would become the default token standard. Since 2017, the demand for collectible assets, digitally verifiable on the blockchain, has grown exponentially.

NFT-focused marketplaces like [Rarible](https://rarible.com/), [Zora](https://zora.co/), [OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Foundation](https://foundation.app/), and [SuperRare](https://superrare.com/), have emerged to fill the space. On March 21, the total art trading volume on NFT marketplaces surpassed 205M $USD ([CoinGecko](https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/q1-2021-quarterly-cryptocurrency-report#:~:text=total%20art%20trading%20volume)). That's 1,281X growth in one year ([CoinGecko](https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/q1-2021-quarterly-cryptocurrency-report#:~:text=volume-,1%2C281x%20compared%20to%20a%20year%20ago,-CEXs)).

The market fluctuations of cryptocurrencies heavily influence nFTs. On Sep 3, 2020, the market cap was $371M $USD ([CoinMarketCap](https://web.archive.org/web/20200903060236/https://coinmarketcap.com/#:~:text=market%20cap)). Today, cryptocurrencies' global market capitalization (market cap) has surpassed 2.24T $USD ([CoinMarketCap](https://web.archive.org/web/20210901013215/https://coinmarketcap.com/#:~:text=market%20cap)). That's a 6X growth in one year!

## What are DAOs?

Decentralized autonomous organizations (aka DAOs) are digital teams that collaborate without a central controlling authority. DAOs operate on computer networks (aka blockchain nodes) and rely on decentralized technology to govern and record transactions (aka smart contracts).

DAOs are token-driven organizations that launch and manage their own branded crypto tokens. These decentralized organizations can also manage non-branded crypto tokens (say Ethereum $ETH). DAOs issue tokens (aka governance tokens) to allow their community to vote on proposals and make collective decisions. DAOs can also issue equity tokens or utility tokens with rewarding and incentivizing their members towards positive behaviors. DAO members collaborate to maximize value using crypto tokens and blockchain technologies.

Launching a DAO is easy; the hard part comes after minting your own DAO tokens. Here is a simple three simple step method in creating your decentralized organization:

1.  Choose a token name (say Unicorn token or $UNI).

2.  Define your token supply (say one billion).

3.  Then launch your smart contracts.

This blog post will cover three DAO use cases for NFTs: liquidity, revenue, and rewards. Liquidity and project revenue are essential for the continual evolution of your organization. Community rewards are necessary for incentivizing people to perform positive behaviors.

### NFTs as Liquidity Tools for DAOs

As a DAO, you need liquidity to fund your mission. Liquidity, or the ease of buying or selling assets, is based on current market conditions and deployed infrastructure. Not enough liquidity or capital means that you and your team will fail to reach your full potential. Capital is crucial to ensuring token-driven organizations can leverage labor, code, and media to maximize their potential. Every startup and company faces similar issues from Day 1. Modern organizations need modern tools to raise capital.

DAOs have a hard time raising funds from traditional investors. DAOs often lack legal entities, and as a result, have a hard time convincing traditional investors (aka web2 investors) to send capital to a blockchain wallet. DAOs often lack compliance, and as a result, have a hard time raising money with fungible tokens (aka FTs).

NFTs provide friendlier alternatives to traditional crowdfunding mechanisms and traditional investors. When DAO founding members have little or no personal savings, they can turn to NFTs drops. These crypto mechanisms allow founding members to bootstrap modern organizations. DAOs can mint their own NFTs to incentivize community members to become token holders. Community members who purchase these branded tokens own part of the organizational history.

NFTs are modern tools for community engagement, creativity, and decentralized finance (DeFi). DAOs can use NFTs to tokenize everything, from material things (such as DAO swag) to ideas (such as DAO milestone), artwork (a DAO painting by Satoshi Nakamoto), or even time (such as DAO tokens). NFTs can be used to increase liquidity in DAOs, increase investor confidence, and increase the transparency of organizational assets, content, or intellectual property (aka IP).

How does a DAO go about dropping NFTs? DAOs can use existing NFT marketplaces ([Rarible](https://rarible.com/), [Zora](https://zora.co/), [OpenSea](https://opensea.io/), [Foundation](https://foundation.app/), [SuperRare](https://superrare.co/)) to drop their own NFTs without developing smart contracts.

### NFTs as Revenue Tools for DAOs

One of the biggest challenges facing DAOs is revenue. Without product revenue, DAOs become trapped in a never-ending cycle of borrowing money. They have to keep launching new products or features to stay alive, but they have diminishing returns without project revenue.

To maximize revenue, DAOs must shift from selling non-tokenized (aka web2) products or services to tokenized (aka web3) products or services. Thanks to NFTs, it's possible to tokenize goods and services.

NFT marketplaces, auction houses, and platforms empower DAOs to generate revenue without relying on traditional means of revenue gain (subscription models, advertisement models, or sponsorships).

NFTs have proven to be highly effective at increasing DAO sales. NFTs act as crypto sales tools. Sales could range from a single purchase for an NFT to recurring revenue through token-gated content or token-gated communities.

NFTs are often viewed as an investment vehicle to purchase crypto art or crypto-collectibles. Still, they've quickly become one of the most popular forms of digital sales. Why? It's simple – they help get your product into the hands of customers who might otherwise not have access to it. Since NFTs are highly portable and can be sent across the internet quickly. They make practical onboarding tools for any digital product. DAOs can use NFTs as keys to get access to token-gated content.

The rise of NFTs has facilitated a new kind of sales channel – more dynamic and scalable than before. NFTs have been used to quickly raise funds for worthwhile projects through the use of token sales.

NFTs are highly versatile, allowing you to buy practically anything on the internet with them. NFTs will enable you to do transactions similar to sales directly from the website where you purchased them.

### NFTs as Marketing Tools for DAOs

Modern organizations are looking for ways to increase community engagement.

NFTs are alternatives for building community without raising money through traditional fundraising campaigns or venture capital firms.

Building community around a mission or a product is one way to gain traction, but it can be easier said than done. There are many ways to launch communities, but none have the engagement factor of the thrill of purchasing NFTs. This thrill is even higher for NFT auctions, which encourage multiple bidders to bid on NFTs. NFT owners feel proud of their unique tokens and are more likely to engage with others.

Marketers and marketing practitioners use NFTs to promote digital collectibles and share a story of the evolution of the DAO.

Are your DAO tokens linked to your decentralized organization's values, mission, or vision? If not, then defining your why will help you and your team use NFTs to drive more return on investment (aka ROI). NFTs are unique assets in that they have a built-in incentive to attract new audiences and engage with existing ones. Marketing campaigns for NFT drops can maximize project ROI and boost community engagement.

As more marketers and teams dive into the world of NFTs, new marketing use cases emerge. These use cases include but are not limited to dropping NFTs, sharing a story around the DAO, or sharing a story around NFTs.

Since KryptoKitties (2017) launch, we've seen an explosion in NFTs as tools for decentralized organizations. For entrepreneurs looking to launch decentralized applications (Dapps), NFTs offer an elegant solution for capturing value through governance, equity, and utility.

With NFTs, you can launch marketing campaigns without investing any money in them. Instead of spending capital on advertisements, you can leverage existing NFT marketplaces or platforms to launch cheap marketing campaigns. By being featured on third-party platforms, others are promoting on your behalf. Platforms have network effects similar to how social media networks like Twitter, Reddit, or Facebook get new users.

DAOs who use NFTs adopt a modern approach to marketing. Instead of relying on outdated marketing strategies such as print ads and radio and television ads, NFTs leverage an emerging virtual economy and evolving cryptocurrency to market their products directly to consumers.

For DAOs, time is money. DAOs often spend marketing dollars in the so-called "crypto gap" or media channels that will not reach their core audience. We can help DAOs with NFTs drops and NFT campaigns so they can avoid the crypto gap and maximize project revenue.

NFTs allow DAOs to convert their marketing budget into tokens. Traditional companies spend fiat for marketing. Modern companies pay crypto for marketing. Crypto spend on NFTs converts better to your target audience, eliminating the necessity to convert fiat currency to cryptocurrency.

## Conclusion

DAOs are the future of token-driven teams, communities, and brands. NFTs are the future of token-driven collectibles. DAOs can use NFTs to maximize token value, incentivize the community to contribute, and increase project revenue.

DAOs face many operational challenges, from capturing market interest to increasing revenue and growing the community. Thanks to blockchain technologies and NFTs, DAOs have crypto-enabled tools to accelerate community adoption. NFTs provide the financial leverage necessary to fuel DAOs


Non-Fungible Tokens and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

What Are NFTs And Why Do DAOs Need Them

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are becoming more and more popular thanks to cryptocurrencies. While these decentralized organizations thrive, they need an operating system (OS) to manage their resources better. At 🦄 Unicorn Team, we help decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) develop their infrastructure by serving as a software development agency.

Does your DAO have an operating system? This blog post will explore what DAO infrastructure looks like and why it is necessary to maximize revenue, increase reach, and minimize risks.

## We provide DAOs with infrastructural tools to run an effective ecosystem.

We live in the crypto era of the DAO. DAOs are companies that run without any human intervention, using smart contracts on a blockchain instead. DAOs mark the beginning of the decentralization movement, where power is distributed among peers rather than concentrated in the hands of centralized authorities.

The problem with today's DAOs is that they are still operating under old paradigms where individual interaction is necessary to keep things running. The vision of DAOs is to enable efficient collaboration among peers to achieve shared goals, but current implementations require each participant to perform tasks manually.

This results in two main issues:

*   Increasing costs and complexity of running a DAO

*   Reduces the ability to scale by adding more participants due to lack of automation

By providing infrastructure tools for DAO management, we enable efficient collaboration between peers. Where possible, we delegate tasks to bots or AI so DAOs can increase efficiency. At the same time, this creates an opportunity for people who can program bots/AI to participate in profitable projects without needing to know anything about the specific business processes. Where possible, we consider oracles to enable DAOs to communicate with third-party APIs. 

At 🦄 Unicorn Team, we believe that DAO infrastructure will expand opportunities for everyone involved and lead us to collective intelligence by combining the efforts of humans and machines. 

## We'll develop smart contract libraries to help the ecosystem standardize around common patterns.

The best way to enable increased productivity and increased automation are through increased standards and interoperability. We're still in the early days, and there's a lot of low-hanging fruit we can pick in this area.

An excellent example of the kind of thing we should be building is an OS for DAOs. Do you want to build a DAO? You'll need some essential services: identity, messaging, payments, storage, analytics, and so on. Those services will need to interact with each other in specific ways. The DAO will also need a few higher-level services: rules engine, reputation system, conflict resolution system, etc. Those will need to interact with each other in specific ways.

If you're a developer using a DAO framework ([DAOstack](https://daostack.io/), [Aragon](https://aragon.org/), [DAOhaus](https://daohaus.club/)) or programming language ([Ethereum](https://ethereum.org/en/), [Solidity](https://docs.soliditylang.org/), [Go](https://golang.org/)), you'll want all that stuff already built into it. But what if you need additional support? Reach out to the Unicorn Team.

## We'll build data visualization tools to collect actionable feedback.

The people running a DAO need to understand what's going on as well as possible. They need to know if it is delivering value, and if not, why not, and they need to be able to correct course whenever necessary. All this means that they need a lot of information about what the DAO is doing.

Most DAOs will need to build additional tools to collect feedback from their community and token holders. The sources for this information could be many: user-facing applications, internal metrics, oracles, and so on. There must be a simple way to gather data generated by these disparate sources into a single place to be visualized and analyzed.

We'll build data visualization and analysis tools that will allow anyone using a DAO to see what its constituent parts are doing and how well they are doing it. The purpose of visualization tools is to create a feedback loop that lets the DAO test ideas and iterate quickly toward success. 

## We're the OS for new DAOs.

A DAO to succeed requires a platform that will enable other decentralized applications (DApps) to run on top of it. Just as there are multiple DAOs available, there will be multiple operating systems available as well.

The OS for DAOs provides an abstraction layer where developers can build applications without running their blockchain nodes. In the same way, the OS for DAOs abstracts out the underlying blockchain framework and provides core services such as identity management, transaction management, consensus management, and others. DAO infrastructure also includes payroll, expenses, token distribution, and human resource management.

## We are bringing some serious muscle into the crypto industry.

Our team serves the crypto community so DAOs can develop their decentralized applications (dApps). We are starting by reinventing the user experience of interacting with smart contracts. Users who want to interact with a smart contract should do so through an intuitive interface, where they can see and understand what is happening. 

That's why we're building the 🦄 Unicorn Team: to give DAOs everything they need to run an effective ecosystem. Our goal is to empower people across the world to quickly and securely manage their decentralized organizations. The 🦄 Unicorn Team will act as your decentralized partner in creating a new form of wealth.


An operating system for decentralized autonomous organizations

OS for DAOs

🦄 Unicorn Team is a software design & development team which helps crypto founders and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) build and launch their own decentralized apps (Dapps), decentralized exchanges (DEXs), decentralized marketplaces, decentralized platforms, and decentralized interfaces.

## Mission

Our goal is to empower modern organizations with crypto tools so they can achieve self-ownership, self-reliance, and self-sovereignty.

> "Our mission is to empower 100 DAOs with crypto tools and web3 technologies." — Slava Kurilyak, Founder at 🦄

## Vision

Individuals are motivated by mastery, autonomy, and purpose. Organizations are motivated by capital, built on trust. Modern organizations use cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies to collectively solve global problems.

> "We believe that DAOs can solve global problems using modern technologies." — Slava Kurilyak, Founder at 🦄


About

We partner with decentralized autonomous organizations to launch decentralized marketplaces, auction houses, exchanges, platforms, and applications.


🦄 Unicorn is a token-driven product team.

Launch Your Own Product

Tokenomics is the science of the token economy. It covers all aspects involving the creation, distribution, management (governance), and removal (burning) of tokens. At 🦄, we help you and your DAO design their own token economics.


Token Design & Tokenomics

Interested to launch your own decentralized marketplace, decentralized auction house, decentralized exchange (DEX), decentralized platform, or decentralized application (DApp)? With 🦄, we will help you and your DAO accomplish exactly this!


Web3 Design & Development

🦄 provides smart contract development services. We have a team of highly experienced Solidity, Cadence, JavaScript, GoLang, and Vyper developers who are experts in blockchain technologies.


Smart Contract Development

Don't find what you are looking for? Reach out and let us know how we can help.


Custom Service

We offer various token-driven services

Our Services

We help DAOs and crypto founders launch their own platforms to benefit from the same technology that is used for the most successful decentralized applications—Ethereum and IPFS on the backend with React on the frontend.


It’s not just the building. There are many other challenges that come with running this type of business, including legal and regulatory compliances, technology stack design, cyber-security, app store approvals… And more.

Building a marketplace, auction house, exchange, platform, or application is hard.

🦄 is a team of blockchain experts. We take the time and work with you to build your very own DAO products.


The decentralized world is going up fast and it’s leaving you behind?

Managing DAOs or token-driven projects is difficult. It requires time, money, and a lot of technical experience.

We make marketing easy, blockchain application development accessible, and product design affordable. Our mission is to be a one-stop-shop for DAO services, security audits, token creation, and more.


Whether you realize it or not, your team is already drowning in complex solutions that don’t make your complex problems simple.

DAOs and crypto founders get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of technology and their multiple needs.

Three reasons why DAOs work with us

Our Benefits

Get in touch to learn how we can help you achieve your goals.


Get In Touch

Slava Kurilyak, Co-Founder at 🦄

“We help DAOs define their own tokenomics, launch their own products, and maximize their token-holder value.”

Here's our latest blog posts

What's New

Are you a DAO? Get in touch and see if we can assist you on your journey to own your own product.


Work With Us

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Founder at 🦄 Unicorn Team

Posts by Slava Kurilyak

We offer three plans, Option A, B, and C depending on your risk preference. Don't know your risk profile? Check out Option D.

Pricing

***

### $

per project

*   Tokenonomics design
*   User interface design
*   Software development

Payment: 100% upfront


More risky for you

Option A

***

### $$

per project

*   Tokenonomics design
*   User interface design
*   Software development

Payment: 50% upfront, 50% upon completion


Somewhat risky for you

Option B

***

### $$$

per project

*   Tokenonomics design
*   User interface design
*   Software development

Payment: 33.3% upfront, 33.3% halfway, 33.3% upon completion


Less risky for you

Option C

***

### TBD

per project

*   Tokenonomics design
*   User interface design
*   Software development

Payment: TBD


Determine your own risk

Option D

We accept any stablecoins including $DAI, $USDC, $USDT. For an additional list of stablecoins, visit [CoinMarketCap](https://coinmarketcap.com/view/stablecoin/).

Our crypto address is:

    unicornteam.xyz

What payment methods do you accept?

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