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, $FWB is the native token of popular social DAO called Friends With Benefits, and people can buy, earn, or trade it.

Contributors will be able to use their DAO’s native tokens to vote on key decisions. You can get a glimpse into the kinds of decisions DAO members are already voting on at Snapshot, which is essentially a decentralized voting system. Having said this, existing voting mechanisms have been criticized by the likes of Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, the open-source blockchain that acts as a foundational layer for the majority of Web3 applications. So, this type of voting is likely to evolve over time.

Record and fashion labels use the actual word “label,” but publishing houses, art galleries, filmmakers, and other collectives are all examples of a category we might call “culture labels” — entities that exist to fund, distribute, and promote culture of one kind or another.Most culture labels exist to promote a specific aesthetic, region, or point of view. A punk label flies the flag for punk rock with every record it puts out. A postcolonial fiction publisher creates space for marginalized voices in wider culture. These labels establish this perspective incrementally, release by release.

Labels provide seed funding to new ideas. Labels find, sign, and support talent. Labels signal to the rest of their ecosystem what matters. Taken all together, we can better appreciate what labels are. Labels are startups and institutions for culture.

It’s no coincidence that the push against labels coincided with the rise of the so-called “Creator Economy” and its new heroic myth of the independent creator who out-hustles and out-competes their way to millions of subs and riches. But the truth of the Creator Economy myth has become clear: billion-dollar platforms turning people into content factories and offering little in the way of creative support, financial security, or context in return.