Finding My Goldilocks DAO

Last week, I sold an NFT for $7,000.

I bought it two months prior for $1,200.

The NFT was not an image of a cat or monkey or punk, but rather a governance token for a web3-community called CityDAO that is building a decentralized city.

A decentralized city is the idea of an internet-based community buying land in multiple locations and building a web of physically-disconnected cities with likeminded peers.

And a DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization: basically a collective of internet friends rallying around a purpose like climate change, buying a basketball team, extending the human lifespan, etc.

While CityDAO was the first to buy land on the blockchain and is still a leader in the space, they grew far too rapidly after Vitalik Buterin mentioned them in his blog and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong bought the NFT.

The hype led to 5,000+ people joining the Discord before the CityDAO team had even figured out if their plan to buy land was legal. Basically, the core team was overwhelmed, confused, and sitting on $8 million in the treasury.

As all the CityDAO confusion was going on, I joined Cabin, a DAO that is also working to build a decentralized city. They are a much smaller community, what I'm calling a Goldilocks DAO.

In a 6 month-span, they’ve built cabins onto leased land in Texas and have already hosted multiple cohorts of creators for a residency program.

There was no buy-in for Cabin.

Rather, I just joined the Discord and earned $CABIN for writing essays and interviewing core contributors. I immediately jumped on the opportunity and have thus far written two newsletters, an essay about the Constitution DAO fiasco, and 3-5 core contributor profiles.

Instead of spending $1,200 on an NFT, I was earning thousands in $CABIN.

With a core team somewhere between 3-7 people, all of CityDAO’s articles are written by 1-2 people. For a decentralized autonomous organization, they’re completely centralized.

Cabin's core team is a similar size, but articles are written by 10-20 people on the content team. Yes, there's one editor, but there's dozens of people getting paid to write and earning their way into the community.

As the CityDAO NFT rose in price, I reflected.

Much like concert venues and colleges, a larger population is not always better.

With the click of a button, $7,000 appeared in my crypto wallet.

Much like a bowl of porridge being just right, there is no exact population for a DAO to be considered Goldilocks. Rather, it must be intuitively felt by joining their calls, participating in the Discord, and watching the hype online.

My dear reader, please go out and find your goldilocks DAO.

The world wide web3 awaits you.