DAOs & Digital Communities In Web3 Culture Explained By Sarah Lu

Sarah Lu, a graduate of Columbia University who has one of the most fabulous stories falling down the rabbit hole, joined us on this episode of NEWFORUM. Sarah started as a pretty idealistic freshman majoring in Political Science at Columbia University. Their goal was to eventually get into Yale and become the first Asian-American supreme court justice. Upon graduation, their next step was to study LSAT and go to law school, but Covid had altered Sarah’s sense of things, and pursuing law didn’t feel right anymore.

“The world was ending, and I felt I was headed towards monotony panic set in: WTF did I want to do with my life” — Sarah

Sarah decided to make a quick carrier switch and started working at a Chinese social media/e-commerce startup which was their first experience in the private industry; where they picked beneficial skills and work ethics, but it was time to move on. Sarah didn’t like that the startup operated in service to a giant platform and stumbled upon Li Jin’s articles and began thinking about the Creator Economy differently.

“I created a Twitter account to explore Web3, and I immediately fell down the rabbit hole” — Sarah

Sarah admits that the beginning of their journey was difficult, thinking their first step was to secure a job in Web3, knowing she didn’t have any technical background. Yet, with DAOs, bounties, part-time work, and new projects so prevalent in the space, they realized that they could carve out their back door just by pursuing non-traditional opportunities.

“Creator Economy in Web 3 is this idea that you can build and monetize your community without having to go through someone who will take a large chunk of that from you. What is exciting is that creators are now owning their communities, and their communities in return can also own a part of their work, or they can also own a part of the community in the form of social tokens or creator tokens or you know all these brand new sorts of concepts that are very Web3” — Sarah

Digital Communities are a big part of Web3 culture. Sarah shared that one of the first communities they joined recommended by a friend in Crypto was a learning DAO called Dencentraliens. Sarah is currently a member of Dencentraliens, known as an invisible college. She explained that an invisible college is essentially a learning DAO where students or people who are in the DAO get to own a part of the school. Members get to determine what resources they want to see, whom to bring on to talk, and overall contribute to the general direction of the organize.

If you ask us the NewForum community, we will say, this is a pretty cool DAO!

Sarah shared more about their excitement for Decentraliens DAO and their first experience navigating Discord and Twitter to participate in it- they also talked about other exciting NFTs and DAO communities they’re members of in the interview. If you are reading this and new to the Web3 space, we recommend watching this episode!

“I think that’s the exciting thing about Web3, that you no longer have to subscribe to one platform where everyone knows how to be popular or knows how to create content or knows how to interact with other people in this specific way; each community has their niche and their interests and goals; as long as you align with that then your incentives are aligned, and you still get to own a part of it…” — Sarah

The word community has become a buzzword in Web3 culture, and we ought to define this word, especially to beginners in the space. NewForum hosts posed the question to Sarah to gain her definition and perspective of what this word represents in the space.

“When I first entered, I was wondering, what is this community everyone’s talking about? is it some kind of a place? A time? It was vague to me, and I think people intentionally keep it that way is one thing…” — Sarah

Sarah did her best to define what Community means to her, sharing that-

“What I’ve seen is that a community is a group of people whose incentives are aligned, and that’s often harder to do than you think; because how can you get everyone’s incentives to be aligned within a group and not overcomplicate things or not mismanage things…” — Sarah

Sarah suggests that DAOs can bridge these potential challenges caused by human nature. They also made an interesting point on Social Tokens’ role; in defining what a community is in their full interview.

Sarah discussed how they think DeFi and Cryptocurrencies empower creators and people worldwide. They gave honest and transparent examples on this topic.

“People don’t see the benefits of putting all their assets into one institution; these institutions don’t have your best interest in mind. I think that’s the true potential of DeFi, is this global permissionless system for us to move around money, and I think that’s going to help people who are affected by financial sanctions or economic warfare…” — Sarah

Sarah predicts just as many Web3 enthusiasts that DeFi and Cryptocurrencies can give us Economic Freedom in the future.

“I think that everybody should have the right to determine where their assets are going as well as not be affected by one company pulling out of the country; that I think is highly unethical, and in the future, that is something that people are going to think about…” — Sarah

Watch Sarah’s full interview and hear them dive deep into defining Communities, DAOs, Creator Economy in Web3 in a very stimulating way and yet digestible enough for beginners in Web3. They also explained why and how DeFi and Cryptocurrencies enable Financial and Economic Freedom in the future.

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#web3 #social3 #cryptocurrencies #daos #defi #nfts #creatoreconomy #community