Web3 continues to be a hot topic and for good reason. In the sphere of the future web, work, and a decentralized economy, many theories and questions are coming to light. If 2021 was the buzz of Web3 and the metaverse, 2022 is the year we will start to understand more about the huge potential impact future emerging technologies may have, especially concerning a decentralized economy and remote workforce.
Web3, the umbrella term for the future of the web on the blockchain, has the potential to disrupt the remote workforce and the economy as we know it now. The term was coined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood as a "decentralized online ecosystem based on blockchain”, which we are currently moving towards, seeing huge opportunities, successes and problems.
Due to Web3 and the metaverse’s increasing presence, organizations, employees and creators have begun to shift their thinking to incorporate these concepts of decentralized and token-based economics and governance.
The new iteration of remote work and the web 🌐
While it’s still not clear how Web3 will exactly play out, many groups, large organizations and venture capital firms are investing huge sums experimenting with, and creating the new digital landscape. With hybrid and remote working now the norm for millions worldwide and an increasing reliance on a complex online ecosystem, the effects Web3 and the metaverse has on the future of work and the economy are starting to appear.
Web3 is changing not only how we work, but why we work, and for whom. We’ve already been part of the huge shift to an online and remote workforce across the globe, and now we have moved further into the digital sphere of web3 and the metaverse.
Web3 is creating opportunities in a decentralized economy for a remote workforce 🕸️
Falling under the umbrella of Web3, which is best thought of as the next version of the internet that runs on public blockchains, includes various cryptocurrencies, decentralized autonomous organisations (DAOs), decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and smart contracts. They all come with interesting implementations of how organisations and economics operate.
The entire basis of the blockchain, which is the backbone of Web3, is that it’s a system of recording information in a way that makes it difficult or impossible to hack the system. A blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that are duplicated and distributed across an entire network of computer systems on a peer-to-peer network. It’s secure and immutable, creating collective trust as it cannot be tampered with.
This essentially makes NFTs and DAOs workable, trustworthy, and appealing, allowing strangers online to work together in completely new ways. With Web3 on the rise, we are moving into a new era of technological advancement where blockchain technology creates a decentralized token-based economy. Tokens and NFTs are digital goods that can be owned, sold, and used to get profit for each transaction.
How Web3 is changing the workforce 🔨
This new emerging technology enables people to create completely decentralized remote organisations to achieve their goals. Web3 affects how companies are managed, without hierarchy and with employees and users of the service owning company shares or tokens, and are actively engaged in decision making. This new structure of flat fully-democratized organisations and shared ownership empowers a new workforce to create a more collaborative environment and assets. It could be seen as not only new tech but also a social and cultural movement.
With Web3, the members and users themselves will be able to decide on the product's road map and receive profit from the company's token capitalization. People’s success, and profit, is tied to the collective work in their network or membership. Joint assets or goals are created by the group, with the users and members making up not only the governance, but also often creating the service or assets, and jointly benefiting from the profits rendered. Web3 is not only potentially beneficial for large profit-driven organizations but is also unlocking new potential for charities, freelancers, educators, artists and more, which is the entire appeal of its ethos. Complete transparency of all transactions is the key benefit that blockchain brings to the public organizations, investors, employees, and everyone involved in the decision-making process.
NFTs are already disrupting the remote workforce 🔥
While people have been speculating about what Web3 would look like since 2006 at least, we are starting to see early signs of it moving into the mainstream with the rise of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. NFTs, an adopter of blockchain tech, became hugely popular in 2021 with the market surpassing $40 billion. Broadly referred to as non-interchangeable units of data stored on the blockchain that can be sold and traded, artists and digital creators in the realms of digital art, gaming, music, and film are succeeding and profiting in this space.
NFTs are part of the future of work known as a “create to earn” model which has transformed the way artists and creators work and make their income. With this new way of selling and trading assets through tokens, come further opportunities for those who may not have had access to more traditional ways of succeeding in the workforce or economy.
Not only are NFTs unlocking a new digital economy, but they are also changing the way we think about the ownership of assets, and the broad ways we are starting to think about the future of work as a whole. By creating a more even “playing ground”, allowing artists to profit off their work in ways that they may not usually be able to in the traditional art world, Web3s flat non-hierarchal structures are beginning to emerge.
For example,
DAOs are at the forefront of a new decentralized economy and governance 🧑🏻🤝🧑🏻
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), are member-owned entities without centralised leadership. Like NFTs, they are also becoming more significant, with a global market value of around $13 billion, according to DeepDAO. Let’s take a look at several examples of how such decentralized organizations succeed in their work.
rLoopDAOis a great example of a community-governed organization dedicated to accelerating the research, development, and adoption of new technologies that address the environmental and natural resource challenges of climate change, energy, water, food, and waste. To achieve this, rLoop employs a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure for collective participation, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to represent intellectual property assets, and novel financial engineering tools that operate on the blockchain network.
It will hold its intellectual property rights and data assets as NFTs in an attempt to bridge the physical world and the virtual economy. These assets can then be traded and exchanged in new and unique ways to promote open science and permissionless innovation.
Ownership and governance of the rLoopDAO are entirely managed by the rLoopDAO collective which is achieved through RLP tokens. The token can be obtained by contributing resources, work, or funds to rLoopDAO. Ownership of RLP allows its holder to engage in decision-making and governance of rLoopDAO’s research, support for specific projects, and govern its data repositories and IP portfolio.
“Ultimately, our intention is to enable a global community of researchers and engineers to rapidly deploy resources to innovations that can address some of our greatest environmental and natural resource challenges,” shares Ilyas Vali, Co-Founder of rLoop. Ilyas shared how remote work empowers DAOs in one of his session at the Running Remote conference.
Web3 and the future of work 🚀
While vast opportunities are arising in what the potential future of work could look like and what models and avenues may be created, so are challenges that must be considered for many organisations, the people behind them, and those who are in and will move into this space. The promise behind Web3 is that it will create a more democratized internet, which is already happening and also presses further questions about regulation and technological roadblocks.
Web3 creates a decentralised token-based economy affecting not only how companies are managed, but who will own and control the future of the internet. All of these emerging technologies will change the way we work as we move further into a digital-first workforce. Not only does Web3 have the potential to create more flat-line opportunities and ways of creating economies, but as it’s far more digital-first than any mass working global environment to date, it places implementations upon an already vast worldwide remote workforce.
Communication in the Web3 sphere is taking place on various technologies like Discord, to what will become metaverse conferencing and other forms of new communications tech. With millions of people working remotely and relying on real-time connectivity online, congestions can happen. As we move onto Web3, this brings up more questions on what telecommunication solutions are possible.
The future of work lies in decentralized remote organisations with teams distributed across the world. Such type of work model requires a completely different approach to technology (from data routes to metaverse), workflows, and communication practices. Moreover, The opportunities from Web3 create even further reliance on the digital sphere. Data is sent from one user to the other in real-time passing along multiple routes, and often hitting multiple bumps along the way. This makes the user experience, velocity of working, and the global adoption of real-time applications like Web3 and the metaverse difficult. The future of work depends on how fast companies will be able to solve these technical issues.