Exploring the Best Differences in DAO Contributor Identity: Why Multilateral Work Continues?
Author: Joey DeBruin
This article is from The SeeDAO.
This article is from The SeeDAO.
Contributors who are active in multiple communities are often seen in DAO organizations. The author uses the "best difference" theory to explain this phenomenon: multilateral work is driven by the dual needs of belonging and differentiation, and Web3 and DAO are more powerful. this trend. This paper also points out that the design of DAO tools should take into account the objective reality and needs of contributor liquidity. At the end of the day, it’s all about fluid identity and contribution.
Contributing to multiple communities at the same time is the norm for many people who earn a living in Web3. Feel free to open the twitter profiles of some DAO contributors and you'll find that they usually list 3-5 communities. Doing so may seem lacking in focus, but academics have something to say. In fact, the academic community has studied for decades how to obtain the "optimal difference" for brain workers in decentralized networks.
The best variance is the theory of cascading multiple affiliations within a single identity, which not only makes intuitive sense but is also mathematically predictable. In essence, people always seek a balance between the two needs of belonging and differentiation. The polyglot (or "multilateral work") created by Web3 is not a casual betrayal of Web2's "9-to-5 job" - it's a logical step forward for mental workers in an increasingly competitive labor market. step. An employer may expect an employee to work for him full-time, whereas in a more competitive market, a self-reliant employee would prefer to work for multiple communities.
The rise of digitally native work will make us all act like scientists—a claim born out of my own personal experience. I have explored digital native communities from many different angles. I'm a former laboratory neuroscientist who helped build ResearchGate, the main platform for scientists to connect with each other. More recently Backdrop was created, a platform that leverages tokens and other Web3 infrastructure to make community participation easier and more fun. The reason why I left science and came to Web3 is because I firmly believe that we are building a foundation that allows distributed communities such as academia to get a better share of the value they create. I love talking to people working in Web3 because they sound so much like scientists, especially with the cascading sense of how they think about identity building.
Best Difference - "Different Fireworks"
Dr. Marilynn Brewer is a psychologist who has devoted her career to studying how individual identities are shaped by group identities. In 1991 she wrote for the first time on the theory of optimal differences. The beauty of this theory is that not only can it be a paper spanning 50 pages, but it can also be succinctly summarized in one sentence:
"The human individual has two basic, competing needs, the need to belong and the need to be different. Both needs can be satisfied by joining groups that are moderately inclusive (optimally different)."
It is fundamentally human to desire to join the best differentiated social group in order to survive and cooperate. This explains why we are so happy when we feel a true sense of belonging in a community we love, and why lefties are more likely to form deep social bonds than righties (as a community, righties child does not have sufficient differentiation).
In science, the sweet spot of difference is: working in a desirable field without being "chopped up" by others (other scientists publish before you). Our research at ResearchGate shows that scientists typically define their fields of research by the intersection of 3-5 themes, such as "CRISPR genes | cystic fibrosis | Drosophila" or "regeneration | multiple sclerosis | mice" ( my laboratory area of expertise). 3~5 topics seems to be the "best difference" for most scholars.
Hopefully the 3-5 average will still work in Web3. Although the Venn Diagram looks different, for example it might be "NFT|Lawyer|Music", the logic is the same. Contributing to an NFT, legal and music DAO at the same time doesn't make someone lose focus, it makes them unique.
There is one common exception to the 3-5 community rule in the scientific community and in the Web3 world: Founders and Core Contributors. If you create a successful community, or invent some kind of technology or research field, you don't need to cascade additional affiliations, just get the best of the difference. This opposition brings a contradiction in user experience to DAO tools: founders don’t care much about diverse work, and even have to guard their own communities in some aspects; DAO tools designed for founders do not take into account the majority of contributors Multiple simultaneous affiliations need to be managed.
UX lessons learned from COVID-19 research
What problems can arise from designing without cascading communities in mind? A product built for the COVID-19 research community is a good illustration:
In response to COVID-19, many scientific organizations are doing what they can to help scientists working on vaccines and treating COVID-19. In the early days of the epidemic, scientists were unable to follow up on published information in a timely manner for three reasons:
quantity. As the entire scientific community turned its attention to COVID, the rate of publications about the coronavirus increased dramatically in a matter of weeks. Some studies estimate it is about 100 times higher than before the pandemic raged.
quality. In addition to the increase in volume, there has been a corresponding increase in low-quality publications, as most of them are published on preprint servers (where anyone can publish), bypassing the traditionally slow peer review process.
Breakdown of existing query and integration tools. Many of the tools scientists use to stay up-to-date take time to cope with the surge in preprints. For example, the two major scientific search engines, Google Scholar and Pubmed, do not index most preprints.
In response, many organizations have developed tools to collect and curate preprints and publications related to COVID-19. We've built the COVID community on ResearchGate, which is like a subreddit connected to a fairly exhaustive database of publications. Similar efforts have been made by institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and companies such as Semantic Scholar. We're just trying to help frontline scientists, without considering the long-term experience of users.
Working on these solutions felt motivating and helped plug the holes early on. But since then, most of them have been removed or folded back into the original product. (Our COVID community ended just before I left ResearchGate.) The reason these offerings didn't last is simple: the COVID topic isn't a bucket that fits scientists perfectly—it's an intersection of several topics within science. Stacked like clouds in the sky.
Suppose you are a mathematician who studies the spread of infectious diseases in developing countries. You dive headfirst into COVID research, occupy the domain of "coronavirus|mathematics|epidemiology|developing countries" and get the best variance here. You need to stay up-to-date with COVID publications on mathematics, but also keep an eye on mathematics journals, as well as epidemiological publications related to other infectious diseases. An exploration-targeted community would not be complete by offering only COVID-related publications. But it's not as simple as adding mathematical and epidemiological sources. Because Sarah's field of expertise may be "New Crown | Epidemiology | Mouse Models", she needs publications on mouse models for research on other infectious diseases. In other words, a product that treats the community as stuffy isn't going to be optimized for anyone.
Playing with Web3──Why Twitter works but Discord doesn't
A simple solution to a user experience problem is the internet's most powerful tool: the web. I build my best areas of differentiation in the network, and Sarah does the same. The reason why Twitter is still the most important platform for Web3 is because people can manage their interest graph more smoothly. Twitter becomes your one-stop destination for the latest news and connections with everything and everyone you care about.
In contrast, Discord envisions communities as stuffy tanks or gardens surrounded by high walls, with little or no movement between communities. You can't create shared chats across servers, co-host events with another community, or even have to jump between servers typing to notify everyone in order to get work done. These are times when you feel like a cloud trapped in a stuffy tank.
However, all of this is not black and white. Some features of Discord do take into account the cloudy nature of online communities. For example, private chat messages can be cross-server, or shared servers can be displayed on the profile. I'm not disparaging stuffy tools like Discord, they're very important for building deeper connections within a single community. However, as work multisects, especially with the interoperability of data brought about by web3, there is great potential to build experiences around facilitating interactions across cross-communities.
Why multilateral work will continue
Research such as the best-of-differences positions the DAO and its ease of use for multilateral work as a response to trends beyond cryptocurrencies. The rise of side hustles and the emergence of multilateral work in DAO organizations are part of this macro trend.
Critics of The DAO argue that the multilateral way of working will ultimately get nowhere. Such criticism should not be about cryptocurrencies, but about the high-level debate about whether the sideline market will slow down or disappear. This kind of discussion is much more valuable, and it is more difficult to overthrow it with simple "blockchain is expensive" rhetoric.
As an academic, based on research and product development experience, my take is this: only a reduction in competition in the global talent market will slow the trend toward multilateral work. But given the new energy that telecommuting brings, I can't imagine that happening. As the job market becomes more employable, I expect other intellectuals to have 3-5 multilateral jobs as in the sciences. People usually focus on their main business and use side hustles to explore, but multiple simultaneous projects will become the norm.
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