Ethereum is a decentralized platform that runs smart contracts: applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud or third party interference.
These apps run on a custom built blockchain, an enormously powerful shared global infrastructure that can move value around and represent the ownership of property. This enables developers to create markets, store registries of debts or promises, move funds in accordance with instructions given long in the past (like a will or a futures contract) and many other things that have not been invented yet, all without a middle man or counterparty risk.
The project was crowdfunded during August 2014 by fans all around the world. It is developed by the Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit, with contributions from great minds across the globe.
Look at the world around you from a global development perspective. What do you see? Personally, I see a saturation of the market with countless thousands of half funded or half implemented ideas. There are thousands, or maybe tens of thousands of entrepreneurs building social media apps, traveling apps or Groupon for everything. Each one with a ring of familiarity but out of all the unique and valuable ideas, only a few of these uniquely funded ideas make it to some kind of liquidation event for tangible exits for the stakeholders involved. Only a few, if they are well funded, are fortunate for the founders to survive to the series b or c rounds of funding only then to be replaced by a more “experienced” VC chosen CEO’s. Others start out great, taking on larger than life ideas, building and bootstrapping great products only to suffer leach of talent to more established companies killing the startup.
New Model, Crypto Currency, Ledgers and Global Truths
In all, these products and services all claim to add value to the end users while charging exorbitant costs to improve their bottom lines. Whether it’s the 20% transfer fees charged by western union or 30% Apple music or Google play stores these services add extra burden to consumers in exchange for convenience. The unique selling point of convenience will not be enough to compete with new disruptive cost cutting models transforming the globe. These new models permeate the global landscape. Models that flip the VC seeking startup model on its head, putting end users first, community backing contribution and support second and all manner of contributors, backers behind such initiatives.
This new model is enabled by decentralized ledger technology. A decentralized ledger means that for a transaction or an exchange of value to take place, there is no longer a need for one central entity to mediate the transaction or an exchange. The finality of an exchange is facilitated by the agreement of a number of witnesses to such an exchange. Such an exchange could represent exchange constituting monetary value, tokens (crypto stocks or shares) in a virtual organization and other financial instruments facilitated by such witnesses. The witnesses usually work together like ants in a colony and exist as a network of computers owned by individual across the world, running the same set of instructions for validating exchanges and finalizing a truth Ledger which holds that last state of accounts. So what is the value of such a network? Because the ledger exists in perpetuity, anything built on it will exist as long as the Internet exists. It also means that the cost associated with socio-economic middle men like banks, money transfer agents like western union and servers are a thing of the past for the early adopters first, then the general public.
What does this mean for entrepreneurs, developers and tech consumers/average man? It means entrepreneurs can build new business models that adds more value to customers for a fraction of the cost. Developers can innovate and build mega structures, new decentralized economically driven apps (dapps) rewarding users with monetary value for participation, games or even financial instruments for general public to use and the end users you ask? You got it… a completely free market participation without the need to ask for permission, a license and can even earn a living for their diligent usage of certain Dapps or tools. Examples of platforms that enable such building are Ethereum: a decentralized platform for building decentralized apps, on which any JavaScript developer can learn to build dapps. Then there is also Bitcoin a pioneering decentralized network, which is predominantly used for value transfer.
Crowd funding and Crowd Driven DAO Organizations
With platforms like Ethereum, innovators and developers can implement proof of concept of a unique product, pitch such an idea to global online community supporters and fund the idea from prototype to production.
An example is Augur, which funded its decentralized prediction market completely in 45 days, with about $5million in Ether (Ethereum platform currency) directly from the community. The funders of such projects in turn could get a piece of the company or product in the form of crypto stocks that automatically receives profits. Such a model is so powerful in that the backers of the service or product also become the early adopters and word of mouth marketers. More so, the chances of failure of such a crowd driven service are very slim since there are so many backing interests desiring for the service to succeed. It’s the perfect form of capitalism ignited by innovators and or developers and fanned by community supporters. The encapsulation of this crowd driven transparent and decentralized model without geographical restriction is usually referred to as a DAO or decentralized autonomous organization. A DAO usually governs the direction and growth of a DAPP (decentralized app like Augur prediction market).
What is Means for The Laymen and Innovators
Crowd driven organizations are usually called a DAO or decentralized autonomous organizations in which decisions on major issues are finalized through proposals and voting processes. Usually tabling a proposal or having a say in any proposal means possessing a certain amount of the organizations tokens. What this means for the layman is that they can be part of any number of DAO organization without restrictions or the need to ask for permission from anyone. Individuals can vote, table proposals, which means having a say in the direction in which the organization grows and maybe earning residual income without geographic restriction.
SuperDAO is a classic example of such an organization that is developing multiple dapps governed by one set of deflationary tokens. Superdao also allows the deployment of completely new organizations, which can facilitate governance of other dapp ideas. The power of such technology is freely available to emerging technology hubs in underserved communities around the world including South America, India and Africa. These are communities where 100 million dollar valuations are from the norm with hardly any VC funding. Incredible opportunities exist for the most astute and brave innovators and or developers to take a chance, test markets for inefficiencies and see where valuable cost cutting multi-billion industry disrupting dapp alternatives, that a community can get behind. Such model replicated enough would re-distribute wealth to more people in the world, rewarding pioneers and opening up more than enough financial benefitting opportunities to ordinary individuals where there was none before.
Nigerian developers are preparing to be ready
Recently, I had the privilege of meeting some of the young developers in Lagos during an Ethereum meet-up at IDEAHUB where I presented general ideas behind Ethereum and how to leverage its decentralized collaborative power in Lagos tech community. Surprisingly, majority of the audience immediately grasped one of the major opportunities Ethereum offers; conceptualize a unique value adding idea before taking it to be backed by global communities. The most astute of them immediately saw the potential in being part of a grassroots kind of movement and requested for information about ongoing opportunities in such an organization. Luckily, I was also there to present www.Superdao.io to them which most of them readily signed up to be part of.
Generally speaking, for Nigerians and Africans, South Americans and Asians living in places where inflated VC valuations are scarce, it is worth taking a look at these kind of applications in global governance in order to leverage the power of decentralized crowd intelligence to create more powerful resilient organizations. The old world is fading away, the technological elites are leaving you behind, look up from your VC chasing and do something to empower yourself and the people around you by disrupting old industries with new powerful technological platforms like Ethereum and SuperDao.
The crypto space is growing. Are you ready to be a part of it?
This Article was written by Ola Ajayi
Ola Ajayi is the founder of Superdao.io, an Ethereum-based decentralized autonomous platform for innovators and communities to facilitate block chain-based collaboration on value adding products and services called Dapps. He is also the CEO at CEV STUDIO, a video production outfit globally operating from NYC. Connect with him on Twitter @CryptoInnovator.
