Introducing $FWB (Friends With Benefits)
It is long overdue that I wrote a more descriptive piece on DAOs, and why exactly I am excited about them. In this piece I will write about the first DAO (Decentralized Autonomus Organization) I have joined and why Iām so thrilled about it.
Looking back through my MetaMask (crypto wallet) transactions, the initial day in which I joined my first DAO, Friends With Benefits was on May 11th, 2021. After reading the Friends With Benefits manifesto, I was sold.
āWe are a collective of unique individuals pushing for a bright future. A world in which prosperity is abundant and technology acts as a communal connective tissue. We believe in a web3 world, where data and payments are fluid and controlled by the creators. We believe in the pursuit of open knowledge for the greater good. The tools for connecting the dots are finally here.ā - $FWB Manifesto.
I just had to join.
Turns out, Friends With Benefits would be my first endeavor into the world of DAOs. To be honest, I didnāt even realize that I was joining a DAO initially.
What the heck is a DAO again?
āA decentralized autonomous organization [[DAO]] is a group organized around a mission that coordinates through a shared set of rules enforced on a blockchain.ā
- Packy McCormick (The Dao of DAOs)
What did I have to do to join Friends With Benefits?
To join Friends With Benefits ($FWB): I had to walk through three simple steps.
1) Completing a Member Application.
This consisted of some brief questions on oneās background, interests and goals for joining $FWB.
2) Purchasing & Holding $FWB Tokens.
āTo join this exclusive community: I had to transfer ETH (Ethereumās Native Currency) from my MetaMask crypto wallet using Uniswap to then acquire $FWB (Friends W Benefits) tokens.ā
- Adam Bartley (Web2 Pessimism and Web3 Optimism)
You can view the present value of an individual $FWB token on CoinGecko.
3) Join the $FWB Discord Server.
Once having the proper amount of entry tokens to become an active member of the community, you will gain access to the Friends With Benefits Discord! The current amount of tokens required to join our Discord Server is 75 $FWB.
$FWB TokenEconomics
It is worth noting that I wanted to join Friends With Benefits after being inspired by the idea of joining a community built around a social token. By unifying a community in this way, all of the fellow members of $FWB have a sense of shared skin in the game. Friends With Benefits is an experiment built on tying economic value to shared values.
But how does the value of $FWB tokens work?
With the $FWB token, there will only ever be a total supply of 1 Million $FWB in existence. This is akin to the OG Cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. Bitcoin also has a fixed supply of Bitcoin that is able to be mined as it caps at a 21 million supply.
Having a cap on the total supply of tokens implies an inherent amount of scarcity. It is often believed that scarcity drives the shared assigned value between prospective buyers and sellers of something to go up. When something is scarce this means it has a limited supply. This isnāt the primary driver of price, but it definitely has an impact. Just ask Beeple.
Beeple, is the artist who sold an NFT (non-fungible token) of a digital collage he created for a total of $69 Million. When something is non-fungible this means it is uniqueā¦ i.e, it has a limited supply.
^Beepleās astounding digital collage he sold for $69 Million.
Previous to the sale of this digital collage, Beepleās highest grossing print piece had only made $100 dating back to October. This is a dramatic example: but it is the story that initially grabbed my attention towards NFTs, and the cryptocurrency movement at large. This subsequently led to my questioning of the incentives behind token economics.
What are the incentives for $FWB?
Members of Friends With Benefits are placed in a unique situation, where one is able to earn tokens for being an active member within the community. One can be active in the community by attending community calls, helping set up reocurring events and leading the charge for a collaborative program such as spearheading the $FWB Crypto Learning Group for example.
In the middle of July, members of FWB were airdropped the first bundle of $FWB tokens for our participation in the community. 2000 $FWB (of that 1M limited supply) was distributed among 225 members of Friends With Benefits.
How did $FWB calculate and credit the individuals these top 225 members in terms of their engagement? By using Sourcecred.
SourceCred is a new system for figuring out who deserves credit and rewards for making contributions to a project. Sourcecred compensates you directly for your engagement you provide on the Discord server, which is $FWBās main hub for interacting online.
This is revolutionary, especially as it relates to our typical experience online.
But wait thatās not all?!
Around this same time, the $FWB token threshold to have access to FWBās HQ (Discord) was increased from 60 to 75 $FWB tokens after being voted for on Snapshot (decentralized voting system).
One of the messages relayed within our Discord discussed how there was a $FWB Grant Program, which sounded ideal, especially given my workstatus as a freelance graduate student. Needless to say, I applied as soon as I could for an $FWB grant, becauseā¦ what was there to lose?!
A few days later in the $FWB Discord Server, I was sent this message from Patti Hauseman (Head of Membership).
Hey there, I just wanted to let you know we are running behind on our grant airdrop but we anticipate dropping you the tokens you need to get up to 75 FWB at some point today.
I WAS SO STOKED.
This is akin to a DAO scholarship wouldnāt you say? Especially given the fact, that one is able to sell $FWB tokens if they so desired to.
You theoretically could cash out your grant if you wanted to, just as you did (on all that pizza) with the scholarship from your local high schoolās booster club.
However, I have no intention of doing this, the reason being is I am in LOVE with the incentives $FWB creates.
In Friends With Benefits we are directly incentivized to take ownership within the community by being rightfully compensated based on our motivation and the daily actions we take.
THE CRAZIEST PART
The wackiest part about all of this: is that this is a group that is built entirely in the ācloudā. Yet, already as a group we have had two IRL meetups!
The first IRL events took place in Miami for Bitcoinās 2021 Conference, whereas the latest $FWB adventure is in Paris (oui,oui indeed).
(NEXT TIME I WILL BOOK THE FLIGHT TO THE NEXT IRL EVENT.)
I have only been a part of this experiment of being a member of the $FWB DAO for the past 3 months or so. Yet, in this short amount of timeā¦ I have taken a direct flight to the wild side of the internet with an integrated cryptocurrency, a place where value provided to an online community is more easily derived. As a result this has me feeling very optimistic about the future of the internet, as well as society.
DAOs are the new LLCs.
The next-wave of higher education will be lead by a DAO.
DAOs are reshaping the future of work as we know it.
So can you see why Iām stoked about this?
Cheers to lifelong learning,
Adam Bartley
PARTING NOTE
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DAO Excitement
Awesome post, Adam! I love the bits about Sourcecred as a tool for incentivizing community engagement, and also the part about how you got airdropped FWB almost like a scholarship :)
Great stuff! And I'm super excited to be a part of FWB