About two months, ago Jill Carlson published Free Company. The Decentralized Future of Work | by Jill Carlson | Medium
The Big Question
The how to achieve effective coordination and economies of scale in open, decentralized development ecosystems
Summary:
State of the Ecosystem:
For the Projects
- There is little learning happening between siloed project teams despite opportunities for synergies and collaboration
- Protocol projects are the most financially well endowed open source projects in history
- Protocol projects are struggling to recruit due to the overall low supply of talent, and what little supply there is being locked up in individual projects or as service providers
For Contributors:
- Primary option for talented contributors who wish to work broadly across the space is contracting, but this is difficult to scale
- It is challenging for key contributors to fully participate in the upside of what they are delivering (without putting their own capital at risk)
- Projects need to ship and to do this they need to source contributors
- Contributors want to work in an open, decentralized, and collaborative manner
Solution
The creation of a “system” or free company that can bridge top talent with top projects in a multi-protocol and multidisciplinary way, with a focus on shipping in the form of code, products, partnerships, educational initiatives, contracts, or content. The ex-consultant in me sees this as a multi-protocol, decentralized (I cringe when I use that so broadly), consulting firm/service provider working across protocol development, product, UX, community, marketing, ecosystem development, developer relations, and developer experience.
The Free Company could collect revenues from:
- Contracts with protocol projects
- Winning bounty programs put forth by projects
- An investment fund that takes a stake in projects
Contributors could be given a stake in what they are shipping and can share in the upside of a protocol’s success.
Using a DAO
It could be interesting to explore this free company as a DAO, and understand what aspects of the system could be “decentralized”.
I would love to start a discussion on:
- Measuring/Quantifying Contribution: How do you measure labour and output from contributors? In a multidisciplinary environment, shipping will take many forms and could become quite subjective…
- Contributor or Service Provider Reputation / Trust
- Governance Processes: Can anyone join the free company, do contributors need to apply,
- Resource Allocation/Shared Infrastructure: Would there be any resources shared by contributors, and how would those resources be allocated? How are contract terms drafted, negotiated, closed? How are contributors paid?