What is DAO and its real-world applications in Gaming?

I had the opportunity to partake in another virtual conference this week, and this one was about DAO and some of its applications in the real world. For those who don’t know what DAO is, I am going to give you two definitions because it can be seen in two different ways. There is the DAO Genesis which is the company that started the idea of DAO, then there is DAO the blockchain concept. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are going to be what runs the world one day. The concept of DAO means that an entity uses smart-contracts to facilitate the happenings and decisions of an organization. It allows all investors to participate in the DAO entity and removes any hierarchical management. A DAO can automatically run itself and keep users anonymous. Its applications are far-reaching and will be how companies and communities form governance in the future.

The conference I went to this week was mostly about the applications and inner workings with the tech and ideas behind DAO and how it related to the gaming community. Things within the gaming community seem to be the start of where these micro DAO ideas are created, incubated, then thrust into the real world. I find it to be practical because if it can work in a video game, it can work with governing communities’ decisions in the real world as well. Ideas that were discussed were geared around the governance of guilds, in-game rewards, sharing digital assets in-game, fundraising, and giving a say to players. For all my call of duty players out there, this could not be more important than ever. I feel like since I have downloaded Call of Duty Warfare there have been too many updates to count. On top of that, they are taking away aspects of the game that I love and adding in bullshit that I don’t want. For example, I loved the fact that you could play warzone with two players. They shoved an update through my Xbox that took away duos and added in trios. I could accept this at first until I was getting merked by teams of three constantly when I would run a duos match. The next update I had they took away the trios format for the game type of Plunder. Now there are teams of four all over the place and a duo doesn’t stand a chance in Plunder from a strategic or tactical standpoint. My buddy and I would absolutely dominate the old format of plunder (trios only), but it will never be the same with the new updates that got thrust into my virtual world. You had famous gamers like Ninja tweeting out their displeasure with the developers throwing in new game rules to some game types, and changing objective types without notice so people other than myself have definitely been disgruntled with Call of Duty’s governance of in-game changes and updates.

The developers of Call of Duty have a huge audience and community involved with their game now and they continue to shove updates through changing game types and modifying rules within the game. I can understand bug fixes for updates or fixing the auto-aim bot for PC gamers, but this is getting out of control. After attending this conference I thought to myself wouldn’t it be really cool if DAO was applied to a game like Call of Duty. Each player would have a vote on certain game types they would want by voting for changes to the game by the developers. It offers a high-speed feedback loop that would tell the developers exactly what the users want. I’m sure they are recording everything I say when I am in the game anyway for feedback, but wouldn’t it be nice to not have every conversation recorded. It would be a much more fair way of making game modifications for the end-user while not feeling short-changed or being pushed to the side. Right now, I do feel a little excluded because they completely removed several game types that I enjoyed playing, and they have made changes to gameplay rules without really seeking out feedback from end-users. DAO would make it so that the end-users voice is heard and they would feel a part of the governance of the game.

You can see the DAO has a lot of potential as soon as you start pairing it with already real-world things like Call of Duty. The other DAO (organization) that I mentioned earlier was also the first company to create the concept of DAO. The company created its ecosystem based on Ethereum. What that means is that they built the concept of the DAO using the Ethereum blockchain. The smart contracts and all the voting that happens would go through the DAO software and would be validated and exchanged through the Ethereum blockchain.

So what happened to the organization of DAO is they released their cryptocurrency and many people got involved; however, there was an issue with the code where users could recall transactions before they got inputted on the Blockchain. This would allow users to pull money out of the DAO ecosystem and a hacker did so. Luckily the Ethereum network got wind of this and pulled a hard fork to regain the funds before they reached the hacker. This was a big outrage to some because it defeated the whole purpose of the blockchain when one central entity could govern the entire blockchain with this move. Long story short, the organization of DAO was brought under scrutiny for its lapse in security and was also pursued by the SEC for a number of things. DAO the organization crumbled but left behind its legacy which is the concept of DAO. Even though the company died, they left behind something that will be used for a very long time. The ability to govern with smart contracts is a big deal and something very powerful to give power back to the people.

The starting points for DAO seem to be taking roots in Defi and gaming first and foremost. Many of the presenters on Thursday had developing backgrounds and spoke of many of the detailed nuances that were way over my head, to be honest, but I did understand the overarching uses of the concepts. It seems very promising and I am very excited about the future of DAO. The Defi network will obviously have a lot to gain by onboarding more users across the world into this new financial system, but I think gamers will ultimately benefit from the impact of DAO secondly.

One of the speakers from Maker DAO, Jonas Lamis, used a great analogy to describe humans and their interactions with each other over the course of history. We as humans are very tribal and like to organize with like-minded participation. This means that we like to be around people who participate in the same things that we enjoy. We all like to play under the same set of rules where equality and fairness are the foundational elements to mostly everything. The great part about DAO is that it allows communities to come together from any inch of the globe and organize without having a central entity. The internet does this today in many ways but reimagines and internet without the Googles or Facebook controlling how things are run. Imagine participating in a DAO system that helps govern our country, our lives, and our world. Pretty powerful stuff. I’ll let that sink in.