Inside a Social DAO: How an Online Community Becomes a Digital City

Kelsie Nabben
2 min readOct 17, 2022

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As Friends With Benefits DAO continues to scale, how will it incorporate decentralized governance principles and processes into its next phase of growth?

‘A Digital City’ — courtesy of FWB

If I was part of any DAO, I would want it to be “Friends With Benefits.” It is just so darn cool. As a vortex of creative energy and cultural innovation, the purpose of its existence seems to be to have fun. FWB is a curated decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) filled with DJs, artists and musicians with banging distribution channels for writing, non-fungible token (NFT) art and more.

FWB’s vision is to equip cultural creators with “the community and Web3 tools they need gain agency over their production” by:

  • Making the concepts and tools of Web3 more accessible
  • Building diverse spaces and experiences that creatively empower participants
  • Developing tools, artwork and products that showcase Web3’s potential

The DAO has already made significant progress towards this mission, with some of its members finding major success in the art world. One example is Eric Hu, whose generative AI butterfly art “Monarch” raised $2.5 million in presale funds alone.

The DAO crosses from the digital realm to the physical via its members-only ticketed events around the world, including exclusive parties in Miami, Paris and New York. The latest of these events was “FWB Fest,” a three-day festival in a forest two hours east of Los Angeles.

FWB wants to grow in a decentralized way by having its members run local events around the world based on the FWB Fest model. But the problem is that FWB’s governance and funding isn’t exactly decentralized, which is paradoxical to its mission.

‘Evolution of the FWB DAO’ — Alex Zhang on Mirror.xyz

Read the full story at CoinDesk

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Kelsie Nabben
Kelsie Nabben

Written by Kelsie Nabben

Social scientist researcher in decentralised technologies and infrastructures. RMIT University Digital Ethnography Research Centre / Blockchain Innovation Hub

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