Co-Founders of UkraineDAO and Friends With Benefits DAO Talk DAOs at SXSW

On Monday, Kimbal Musk, Nadya Tolokonnikova and Alex Zhang took to the stage at SXSW for a roundtable discussion “Move Over NFTs. Here Come the DAOs” at the Austin Convention Center. Tolokonnikova was a former member of Russian protest punk rock band Pussy Riot and co-founder of UnicornDAO and UkraineDAO. Alex Zhang is the co-founder of the social club DAO Friends With Benefits, while Kimbal Musk is the co-founder of the charity Big Green DAO. Reporter Michael Casey served as moderator.

Throughout the discussion, the panelists described the different use cases behind their own Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), and concluded that ownership, transparency, and localization are the main tenets of the DAO's success.

Tolokonnikova, a self-described anarchist, said she got into Web3 "in search of better tools for activism" and discovered that DAOs could offer "a better model of governance than national governments." UkraineDAO, which has raised more than $7 million and brought people together behind the Ukrainian flag, is also a “big leap in the crypto space,” she said, and is even backed by Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

She added that UkraineDAO shattered the notion that non-fungible tokens are “just cartoons,” showing how NFTs can solve local problems. In this case, it was able to "distribute funds very quickly" to help provide medical aid to those affected by the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Zhang’s Friends With Benefits (FWB DAO), on the other hand, has now grown into a community with “social and financial alignment.” FWB is made up of 6,000 token holders, including some public figures and celebrities, who have jointly launched Web3 products, including the recently announced FWB.Archive tool to archive digital events.

Kimbal Musk added that the concept of a DAO as a community "is not regulated by the US or any country in the world" and gives its members ownership over the value of the organization's outcomes. Big Green DAO "really wanted to experiment with a nonprofit governance system," he said, by handing over the power of its finances and donation process "to a community."

Tolokonnikova added that bureaucracy is a big problem for NGOs because of the lack of transparency when it comes to finances or allocation of funds. DAOs not only avoid bureaucracy and increase transparency, she said, but could offer a better model of governance than nation-states around the world.

Kimbal Musk then shared thoughts on legal protections. Since Big Green DAO focuses on the responsibility of non-profit organizations, he questioned whether Web3 enterprises as DAOs may violate the legal system of the central government.

According to Zhang, "the law is trying to catch up," and at the same time, "a lot of amazing DAO infrastructure is being built that they want to run in the real world," which is true for a DAO like FWB that hosts a physical experience. very important. When Cointelegraph asked him to elaborate on this, he said that he hopes DAOs will eventually replace LLCs or C corporations, and that “nobody even says DAOs anymore,” but simply organizations. Zhang also revealed that the FWB is working to automate payroll and issue W-2 tax forms to its members, who can choose to receive payroll in whatever currency they prefer.

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