Getting Educated in the Global Village - Phase 3

Web3 represents the next iteration of the World Wide Web. It’s built upon blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, and is characterized by greater decentralization, transparency, and shared ownership. Web3 looks set to transform work as we know it.

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During Phase 1 [2020-2021]of the transition from the Industrial Park model to the Global Village model, educators were forced to question long-standing assumptions and develop strategies that were both affordable and available. Those strategies forced school administrators to distinguish between the superfluous and the essential elements of getting educated in the Global Village. Phase 2 [2022-2025] applied Lessons Learned during Phase 1 to create a robust and sustainable system of education for the Global Village. Phase 3 brought the metaverse to educators. Schoolhouses had given way to hibred learning environments. These environments provided the perfect foundation for curriculum designed exclusively for the metaverse.

 

Web3  transformed learning as we once knew it. And the decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, was the vehicle that led the charge. 

DAOs are effectively owned and governed by people who hold a sufficient number of a DAO’s native token, which functions like a type of cryptocurrency. For example, $PROB is the native token of popular social DAO called Problem Solvers, and students who want to build their problem-solving skills  can buy, earn, or trade it. Today, there are many permutations of DAOs as there are skills valued by Residents of the Global Village.  DAOs run the gamut from education organizations, to venture funds and grant programs, to social networks, video games, financial and tech platforms.

 

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More Autonomy Over Where, When, and How We Learn

 

As DAOs proliferate, instead of having one teacher and a weekly "class time" schedule, learners might spend an entire week acquiring "problem-solving" skills. This is already typical amongst early adopters to the space. The Global Village creator economy, populated by would-be vloggers, bloggers, and podcasters earning $POB tokens from a variety of projects. These may include coaching, consulting, and content curating. In turn, these tokens finance increasingly more complex problem-solving sessions in which these skills are both learned and practiced in real life simulations.

 

Freedom to Do More Fulfilling Simulations

 

The technology-centric nature of DAOs may result in routine learning  being automated, freeing learners up to cultivate all of their skills and talents. In turn they can  spend more time on activities that most benefit themselves and fellow Residents of the Global Village.

While 85% of today’s global workforce is disengaged at work, DAOs will give people more freedom to choose learning tokens that resonate with them, and  work with others who align with their talents, and values. 

More Decision-Making Power

 

Learners will be able to use their DAO’s native tokens to vote on key decisions. These kinds of decisions by DAO members evolved from the eBay and Amazon use of the star rating system to weed out distrusted vendors and reward those most praised by buyers. In the Global Village this same system is used to separate "just in time" skill-building from "just in case" skill-building. Young Residents who are anxious to find their place in the Village have little time to waste building skills that may not have immediate application. So the "just in case" skill builders are left to senior Residents who want to refresh their knowledge base.

 

Different Compensation Structures

 

While early DAOs had a set of core contributors (at least in the early stages) who were engaged on a full-time basis and even earned salaries, Residents are now contributing to DAOs by completing individual tasks, or given “retainers,” when they have attained a high level of the skills in Leadership, Team Building, Problem Solving, Sales, or Communications.

An early version of "retainers" was the  learn-to-earn (L2E). An example is the platform RabbitHole, which paid you to learn about Web3 applications. Other versions include create-to-earn (C2E) — such as writing articles or designing artwork in exchange for tokens, and use-to-earn (U2E), such as posting comments and engaging with Web3 social media applications such as Minds.

In addition to all of this, token holders can also speculate on their tokens, the price of which might increase in value over time based on supply and demand, much like traditional shares in a company.

 

Learn From Anywhere

 

As many traditional educators with apparent trust issues continued to hide behind the cloak of “team bonding” while sending everyone back to in-person instruction led by a teacher in the wake of the pandemic, DAOs not only don’t care where you learn, they also don’t care when you learn or what you look like while you’re learning — in fact, many contributors are recognized only by their Avatar.

Instead of in-person learning from a classroom  all year long and having two to four weeks off, most DAO contributors will likely work remotely, bond in virtual social spaces such as CryptoVoxels or The Sandbox, and for several days or weeks a year, get together in real life for nostalgic "homecomings".

 

Traditional organizations that demand that their employees go into the office for two to three days a week effectively anchor their employees to life in one place — usually close to a central business district. Firms with such archaic and mobility-limiting positions will likely find it increasingly difficult to win the battle for Millennials and, in particular, Gen-Z talent.

Some might argue that DAOs, like many gig economy companies, threaten labor rights, but DAOs themselves are looking to address this. For example Opolis, a digital employment cooperative, helps DAO contributors and contractors get their health insurance and 401K retirement plans in order.

 

The DAO movement is still in its infancy, and has a number of its own challenges to work out when it comes to governance and trust. The mainstream adoption of Web3 rests upon the resolution of questions related to user experience (UX), security, scalability, and regulatory clarity. However, at the current pace of talent acquisition, capital-raising, and innovation in the space, mainstream proliferation could happen sooner rather than later.

 

At its core, Web3 promises more fulfilling and outcomes-focused work, with a fairer distribution of ownership and rewards — and that is a future worth building.