Author: Jerry, Cherry, BeeGee

Produced by: TheprimediaDAO

If we place the Builder economy at the height of human civilization evolution, it brings about the foundational transformation of economic systems: clan tribes (small nations with few people, collective labor, collective distribution), agricultural civilization (slave owners, monarchs, and religion), industrial and commercial civilization (capital and politicians), technological/information civilization (technology, capital, and politicians), digital civilization (user Builders co-creating and sharing in the blockchain/Web3 era), and interstellar civilization (unknown)……

We have the opportunity to write a new narrative for humanity's "civilization to stop" with "the distributed/decentralized nature of blockchain/Web3, Token incentive mechanisms/Builder economy, and the organizational governance structure of smart contracts/DAOs," and we can even coherently anticipate the interstellar civilization that follows the digital civilization (humanity will only have the ability to chase the stars and the sea after completing the digital advancement).

In the historical perspective of human civilization advancement, the evolution of civilization is driven by the adaptation and transformation of survivors to their environment. Therefore, in the era of digital civilization, the iteration of individual survival paradigms/labor value and the economic structure/production relations of the entire ecosystem will be of decisive significance. We should first explore how Builder users can play a spontaneous construction role based on interests and expertise in the digital civilization/Web3 ecosystem, and obtain corresponding identity status and value returns based on their contributions in the construction of Web3 infrastructure.

After the seminar organized by TheprimediaDAO to address the three major obstacles to "the integration of Web3 technology and industry," we conducted a follow-up interview with SafeTreasury, a one-stop asset management and collaboration platform for Web3. It is dedicated to providing DAO/Web3 applications with a focus on the contributions of Builder users to complete the construction of user assets/rights and reputation/credibility as DID elements, and to provide users with on-chain asset management tools, promoting user collaboration and ecological co-construction in DAO/Web3 applications as a case study. In the context of digital civilization advancement, we analyze the realization path and systemic value opportunities of the Builder economy in the iterative process of Web3 applications.

1. Iteration

First, we clarify the broad concept of the Builder economy. For example, Bitcoin mining, DeFi liquidity mining, and Play2Earn practices are all manifestations of the contributions/data assetization rights returns of Builder users. Therefore, the term "Builder" here is not limited to developers but encompasses all builders in the Web3 ecosystem, including miners, developers, creators, operators, and anyone who provides valuable labor in the construction of the Web3 ecosystem and can thus obtain corresponding rights returns.

1.1 Universal Survival Paradigm Shift

In the context of iteration, the best comparative effect is the content creator economy. Content creators/Builders in the Web2 era could earn income by doing what they love, facilitating the monetization model of the creator economy. However, this is not sufficient to promote the iteration of the economic structure or provide opportunities for a survival paradigm shift for all content creators/Builders in the ecosystem, as it can only offer limited income opportunities—only the top 1% of creators with a large number of fans and views can sustain commercial operations. For instance, in Spotify, 1.4% of musicians account for 90% of revenue; more than half of Twitch's revenue goes to the top 1% of streamers.

More importantly, it still represents an economic relationship where centralized institutions exploit/harvest laborers—centralized platforms in the Web2 era took the majority share of the economic value contributed by content creators/Builders. For example, record companies and streaming platforms almost completely monopolize market share and content product distribution rights, with typical music artists earning about 10% of licensing royalties.

According to data from a Linktree report, 35% of content creators in the Web2 era could not make a living, and 59% had not achieved content monetization at all. Watashi, the founder of SafeTreasury, who has nearly a decade of product design and management experience in the Web2 era and has engaged in NFT trading market projects and community building, believes that Web3 is evolving the content creator economy of the internet era into a survival paradigm for laborers/Builders in the digital civilization era.

Taking Play2Earn as an example, although it has gradually devolved into a gimmick for speculators in the crypto space and is exiting the center stage of Web3 applications (replaced by Web3 games and metaverse games), it has still effectively rehearsed a digital economic activity with personal survival paradigm utility that everyone can participate in.

Source: Nansen.ai

Watashi believes that this mainly depends on the low-cost creative value and high-efficiency asset circulation/trading provided by blockchain/Web3. For example, using the number of active wallets participating in the native token SLP as a representative of Axie users, it peaked at nearly one million. Most of these users do not need to master technical skills or programming languages to understand and use complex financial infrastructures, but when they can complete payments through SLP in a few minutes, Play2Earn is exploring the survival paradigm of Web3 laborers/Builders in the iterative process of digital civilization.

As more and more laborers/Builders engage in user production behaviors at the survival paradigm level, the convenience of on-chain asset management and services becomes particularly important—this is precisely the problem SafeTreasury aims to solve: reading all on-chain transactions and displaying them in a more readable manner; tracking all tokens and DeFi assets; supporting single-signature and multi-signature Gnosis Safe transfers; filtering transactions by wallet, tags, tokens, and dates; adding financial labels to transactions in bulk, and adding notes… After completing payments and on-chain data records based on individual contributions for Builders/contributors, SafeTreasury is also developing on-chain DID to establish individual reputation values and other DID elements in the community, thereby empowering the Builder economy process.

1.2 Iteration of Organizational Management Forms

The centralized decision-making and contribution (salary/options) transformation and evaluation system of the Web2 era are iterating simultaneously—DAO/Web3 practices indicate that through cryptographic technology, decentralization, no third parties, and resistance to censorship, there is a new way to manage social organizations—contributions from laborers/Builders can be recorded, rights settlement methods are public, and Builders receive corresponding value returns based on their contributions, which will inevitably motivate members to engage more wholeheartedly in team building.

Laborers/Builders can also gain corresponding rights to participate in community governance and decision-making based on their contribution levels, which to some extent avoids the subjective influence of single-point decision-making in the centralized era, further optimizing the economic structure and governance paradigm based on the Builder economy.

1.3 Necessity of Community Quantification Mechanisms

The founding team of SafeTreasury believes that serving contributors requires tracing the historical data of each contributor. This corresponds to quantification mechanisms and the rights and permissions behind them. Smart contracts and blockchain have brought the internet into the ownership era, where the contributions owned by users can be directly applied to the calculation of user rights, and the value of contributions in the Builder economy is linked to the incentives received by Builders.

To complete a quantification mechanism suitable for the current community, the community needs to achieve the following:

1. The rights obtained by Builders are not determined by the platform but are jointly decided by Builders and the community based on objective facts and community positioning.
2. The community itself has a clear positioning and vision, using effective and lasting measurement standards to assess user contributions.
3. All contributions and behaviors of users in the community can be persistently stored and unchangeable, provable without third parties. That is, user contributions need to be recorded on-chain at the right time and in the right way, and after data persistence, offline analysis of Builder contributions can be conducted, ensuring that Builders do not need to focus their energy on their contribution records and worry about the returns from their contributions, while also enabling personalized recommendations, analyzing Builders' preferred fields, strengths, and work habits to help them participate more efficiently in division of labor and collaboration within applications.

2. Path

In the context of technological, product, and application iteration, looking at the economic system, comparing the point systems/equipment incentives of Web2 applications with the Token/token incentives of Web3 applications, the point systems/equipment of Web2 applications can only circulate and be consumed within isolated applications, lacking an economic mechanism for investment, consumption, and trading within the application ecosystem. The contributions/data/assets of users in Web3 applications are attributed to Builder users' DIDs in the form of Token/NFT asset rights, and can circulate across protocols and applications, providing financial functions for investment/arbitrage based on consumption/payment/trading scenarios.
Each Web3 application is an independent "small nation" with a closed economic system, and the Tokens issued are the "currency" for the operation of that application/"small nation" economic system. Therefore, on a macro level, a singularity will inevitably occur, where the entire Web3 ecosystem has enough applications/"small nations" operating freely, and Builder users engage in co-construction and sharing of the Web3 ecosystem based on their interests/expertise (approaching the Marxist ideal of human self-fulfillment and comprehensive development), thus supporting a non-competitive economic ecosystem of "small nations with few people, mutual benefit, and win-win" in digital civilization.
However, on a micro level, especially in the early stages of co-construction in the Web3 ecosystem, a non-competitive economic ecosystem will not spontaneously form. On the contrary, there are no "borders" between applications in the Web3 world, and Builder users' DIDs can be active in multiple competing Web3 applications. Therefore, each Web3 application needs to capture more Builder users to participate in its project co-construction.
The founding team of SafeTreasury believes that Web3 applications need to consider how to better incentivize Builder users to participate more persistently and deeply in collaboration and ecological co-construction when their Token/token incentive mechanisms do not yet have a closed economic system or when Builder users are trading for survival. Compared to an all-project token incentive, a combined approach of "project token + stablecoin + fiat currency" would be a better way. The value of a project token starts at zero in the initial stage and can only be continuously solidified and raised through the collective efforts of Builders. However, Builders are human and will have real needs in the current environment. Therefore, a flexible compromise approach is needed to incentivize contributors. Once the project's value is established and the business flywheel starts to operate, it can gradually transition to an "all-project token" incentive, thus forming self-closed on-chain ecosystems.
Token incentives can be roughly divided into two types: Commitment compensation, which resembles formal employment, where a certain amount of time is invested in DAO work each week, with specific tasks being ongoing and arranged according to the organization's needs, without requiring individuals to produce specific results at fixed times; and Retroactive Compensation, which corresponds to temporary gigs with clear work outcomes, usually tasks that can be completed in the medium to short term and are easily quantifiable.
Compared to traditional equity incentive mechanisms, incentivizing work in the form of tokens has the following advantages:

• High asset liquidity, short listing time (no need to wait for acquisition or IPO)
• Automatically matches market compensation (the equity value of a startup is linked to the company's value at the last fundraising round)
• Rewards are more directly related to the company's technological products and community value, not constrained by the company's capital structure
• Compensates for employee benefit losses caused by external factors (capital gains, wage taxes, and local regulations) in various ways
• Obtains basic liquidity from the lending market without triggering taxable events
• Gains additional token staking, lending, and yield incentives
• Token dilution processes are transparent. Coordinating feasible plans for the total token supply with stakeholders in a transparent manner.

In the Web3 community, incentive methods (and their pros and cons) include:

• Retroactive bonuses (funds/tokens), providing retrospective rewards after contributors have made contributions (flexible for DAOs, no long-term commitments required, but with significant uncertainty for contributors);
• Wage flows (funds/tokens) (can encourage long-term, stable contributions, but not suitable for special tasks);
• Collective rewards (funds/tokens), evaluated collectively by the community for individual contributors' deserved rewards (decentralized collective evaluation mechanisms, but making individual rewards more uncertain);
• Governance rights/tokens (allowing members to have a better sense of participation, but governance token values generally fluctuate greatly);
• Tips (funds/tokens), directly allocated by central institutions (can quickly reward contributors, but very centralized, and income may be uncertain);
• Bounties (funds/tokens) (suitable for special tasks, but correctly supervising task completion is a challenge);
• Donations (suitable for incubating complex plans/projects within DAOs, but also difficult to verify effectiveness);
• NFTs (can be used for tickets, establishing reputation systems, but with limited liquidity);
• SBT (SBT can become proof of individual reputation, combined with DID to form resumes in the Web3 world).

This incentive system attempts to solve the very real problem in the early stages of co-construction in the Web3 ecosystem—how a certain Web3 application can address the survival issues of some outstanding Builder users who do not have other full-time/commission jobs in the real world while relying on the Token incentive mechanism.
For example, if a Builder user of ThePrimediaDAO participates in collaborative efforts more than three times in a month, contributing approximately the equivalent of two independently completed content research and analysis articles, while receiving corresponding amounts of Token incentives, ThePrimediaDAO can infer that they are almost participating full-time in collaborative efforts. Therefore, to better leverage their role, they may be given a monetary incentive of 600U-1000U, ensuring their survival in the real economic world.
Thus, for early Web3 projects, effective fund management and on-chain asset management are equally important. Based on the above analysis, SafeTreasury has formed a service platform for the Web3 ecosystem that combines "Web3 application fund management + Builder user on-chain asset management." Therefore, in addition to on-chain related services, SafeTreasury also attempts to provide a more transparent financial disclosure solution for Web3 community governance, trying to establish financial norms for Web3 and generate financial statements, creating an aggregator that integrates all assets for Builder users and Web3 applications.

3. Value

In the long history of human evolution, the formation of each civilization era is a reflection of human social order adapting to changes in external environments/survival structures. Digital civilization is no exception. Human nature is complex, and the laws of the real world are the bottom-line norms of human morality that regulate social behavior. In the Web3 world, smart contracts regulate Builder behavior and ensure the normal operation of community governance.
Internal coordination and governance within the community require shared values and goals among members, and the constitution (smart contract) serves as the interface for these shared values. The existing forms and structures of DAO constitutions mainly mimic modern constitutional concepts, defining powers and responsibilities through clauses; imitating declarations to express values and guidelines to be followed; and applying digital constitutions to communities and Web3 projects, encoding the mentioned goals, values, and rights. This is referred to as computational constitutionalism, meaning that the community is defined by their use of smart contracts.
The constitution acts as a product of decentralized power, and decentralization also defines the specific narrative of how the community collaborates. This is mainly reflected in: proposal rights, proposal questioning rights, voting rights, non-discrimination, and exit rights. The constitution defines the community's goals and values. The goals are mainly divided into: developing Web3-specific technologies; spreading technology for the benefit of the world; and building communities. The expressed values include: openness, inclusiveness, freedom, and decentralization.
The founding team of SafeTreasury believes that under reasonable decentralized governance rules, early Builders and contributors can obtain a portion of the value they help create for the platform and ultimately govern and control it more. Essentially, this hands over these companies to Builders—this is the greatest social transformation created by decentralization here.
We can imagine that in the digital civilization process based on the iteration of Web3 applications, this represents a new survival structure paradigm, a bit more equal, a bit more socialist, allowing every Builder to participate in the economic creation and sharing happening in the world, and to have corresponding social governance rights based on their contributions, rather than being limited to a few people in capital/technology/politics. Web3 applications will thus greatly unleash human creativity, and as humanity completes the evolution of digital civilization, it can also embark on the imagination of interstellar civilization……
Note 1: This article was collaboratively completed by TheprimediaDAO, with major collaborators including TheprimediaDAO initiator Jerry (@ThePrimedia) and TheprimediaDAO Builder, Open Knowledge DAO core-builder Cherry (@cherryyangcn), and TheprimediaDAO Builder, TigerVCDAO Investment Head BeeGee (@BeeGeeETH) also contributing to this article.
Note 2: This article is the second piece of "Breaking the Integration of Web3 Technology and Industry," belonging to the TwitterSpace series themed "Finding the Next Bull Market" planned by TheprimediaDAO. Seminar participants also included TheprimediaDAO advisor Dyson, TigerVCDAO initiator Peter, NonceGeekDAO Founder Li Dagou; Co-founder of CrossSpace and Type V DAO leoninweb3; Assure _ pro Chief Growth Officer, Assure Wallet developer Terry.