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A16z-invested FWB DAO: Entry into the digital world

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Club with $10,000 tickets, only one full-time employee when it raised $10 million.

The Mysterious FWB DAO -- The Next Version of Thinking About the World

原文作者：王超

原文来源：Empower Labs

Friends With Benefits. But if you've been watching a lot of American TV shows, you'll know that this term mainly refers to friends with benefits. It may now be given a new meaning by a DAO.

我很早就听说过这货，当时的第一反应是「 WTF! 约 pao 还要搞一个 DAO？」偏见让我没有继续往下去深入了解，直到我身边有越来越多的人提到 Friends With benefits (FWB)，9 月的时候我突然发现他们竟然还获得了来自 a16z 等几家顶级投资机构一千万美元的投资（估值一亿美金）。这时我知道，我肯定又犯了个错误。

So I added myself to FWB's Discord server to make up the lesson.

What is FWB

Any DAO that grows to a large scale becomes difficult to describe, especially FWB. This is a private club with over 2000 members. Joining the club requires a strict identity check and a ticket that costs nearly $10,000. When a member holds the ticket, he also owns a part of the club and can participate in the operation and decision-making of the club. Therefore, the club is also a DAO.

FWB's main stronghold is in Discord, which has a 100-channel server that generates a lot of discussion and communication every day. Study area, art area, creative area, trading area, living area, including music, games, film production, technical learning, market information to food and a large number of channels. If you try to understand it the DAO way, it can be very confusing, with very little organizational structure. Isn't it just one big chat group? In fact, it is.

But it's certainly not that simple.

"FWB is the intersection of technology and culture. & have spent we are a group of unique individuals to pursue a bright future. In this prosperous world, technology plays a common bond. We believe in the web3 world, is the flow of data and assets and controlled by the creator. We believe that the pursuit of open knowledge can bring the benefits to the society.

Technology continues to evolve, and blockchain technology is a fluid and open system suited to help us catalyze change. FriendsWith Benefits are creators, rebels, artists, thinkers and doers who form an organization to discuss and shape the future. By bringing together people who want to create change, Friends With Benefits is embracing these new tools and helping web3 grow in a variety of ways."

The paragraph above is taken from FWB's community manifesto. Despite all this talk about shaping a bright future, I didn't feel it directly in the community. At first glance, it is also a group of interest exchange, but more activities.

I happened to see a summary from a vlogger who was also playing FWB.

"FWB is a random group of people on the Internet, meeting each other, hanging out and working on cool projects, whether it music production, digital art, learning about crypto or even just meeting up and having a good time.

FWB is a diverse group of people on the Internet, meeting, mixing together, working on cool projects, whether it's music making, digital art, learning Crypto, or just meeting and having a good time."

Well, that's a bit of a summary.

The threshold of the FWB

As mentioned earlier, joining the FWB server to learn is easy to say, but the process is not easy.

FWB uses a strict identity verification + ticket system. The first step to joining is to fill out a form. Here's an excerpt of the rules:

· Membership application is an important part of the membership selection process. All applications are reviewed by a committee of FWB members.

· Anonymous and pseudonymous applications have a much higher rejection rate. Where possible, please include your IRL (in Real Life) information in your application.

· Sharing your professional background and projects is an important part of the application, but it is not the only thing we care about. We are not just a Crypto community, we are more interested in understanding your interests outside of Crypto.

· Please include your Twitter and Instagram as much as possible (and related personal websites), which helps us understand your interests and who you are. But we are not a business group, do not provide your Linkedin.

· FWB wants to create community diversity and therefore gives priority to community members with unique backgrounds. We also give priority to artists, musicians, creative thinkers and doers, as well as friends who are already deeply involved in the web3 ecosystem. If you meet the requirements, please do let us know.

Submissions are reviewed by a 15-member membership committee. The members of this committee are all from the community, mainly from artistic and creative backgrounds. My first application was pending, and I was told that there were too few materials to supplement, so I had to supplement a lot of materials carefully, and finally it was approved. The current rejection rate is almost 60 percent, according to the commission.

Being screened by the committee is only the first step. To join the community, you must also have a ticket (a certain number of community tokens). And the price is not cheap, like ten thousand dollars. Looks like a crypto version of a rich man's club? It wasn't, but now it might be.

FWB club

As a private club with a strong artistic feel, FWB's members are very different from other communities. Only a small proportion of people understand Crypto, and a higher proportion are creative workers, artists, and traditional entrepreneurs, but everyone has strong interest in Web3.

It's the kind of thing you see on FWB every day introducing new members.

The FWB Club channel is divided into seven sections, almost all of which maintain a high level of activity.

· Public area, chatting and blowing water self-introduction meme

· Learning area, mainly web3-related learning, including DAO, meta-universe, Crypto, etc.

· Trading area, talking about various trading opportunities, including Crypto and traditional investment market

· NFT area, all kinds of NFT topics, from learning to production, to project promotion and bottom price NFT exploration.

· Creative area, art creation, music production, development and other creative work

· Quality living area, food, reading, games, fitness, home decoration, etc.

· Governance area, club governance related topics

See this, the feeling is thick douban interest group style.

In addition to the networking space, the FWB club has more services open to members. Including all kinds of online and offline activities, city guides, abstracts, private information, special benefits to various projects, etc.

The activity of FWB

As a club, various activities and corresponding social opportunities constitute an important part of the value of the club. FWB activities fall into two categories, Digital Events(online Events) and IRL Events(offline Events).

· There are 5 fixed online activities every week, respectively

· Coffee Time -- Guests from all walks of life will be invited to talk about creativity and inspiration.

· Seed Club -- Collaborate with Seed Club to talk about Web3 people, projects, and interesting things.

· MAX PAIN -- Talk about investing.

· Into the Weeds -- From 0 to 1, all kinds of things in Crypto field, from security to infrastructure to investment, will cover, one topic in each issue.

· Lifestyle Hours -- focusing on the combination of culture and Web3.

These events are run by regular hosts, such as Derek Taylor, the Coffee Time host, who is a real cafe owner and Web3 entrepreneur. Most of these events also include guests.

In addition to the regular weekly program, there are special events on a monthly basis. For example, Crypto Learning 102 for members to do web3 popular science, new members welcome, taxes talk, etc.

Offline activities are offline gatherings held by the club from time to time. There were big events in Miami, Paris. There are even more spontaneous gatherings of club members.

Starting in October, FWB introduced the concept of the urban subDAO. Standards for city membership will be lowered, and tickets will drop from $10,000 to $600. You can apply for a city membership with a lower threshold. However, subDAO members hardly enjoy any benefits of full membership. The main benefits are that they can get to know and socialize with groups who are members of the city, and all kinds of exclusive offline gathering activities can be organized by city leaders.

This is how FWB parties look.

Although IRL activity is not currently a major component, this direction is one of FWB's priorities for the future. In their view, Web3 needs to go offline to form more social impact. And that's what sets them apart from other Crypto communities. First social, then creative.

"We're more interested in how the digital can integrate into IRL, and amplify and strengthen our existing human connections.

"We're more interested in how digital fits into real life and expands and strengthens our existing relationships."

-Alex Zhang, FWB Mayor"

FWB products

FWB is not positioned as a productivity organization. But even then, some products have evolved over the course of the past operation, and more innovations are on the way. FWB's products are primarily related to social culture

· Weekly Digest -- a content product, similar to a newsletter, containing interesting events and important discussions in the community, and commenting on these discussions and social developments.

· Semi-finished product - Also a content product, the product name is semi-finished product. Low frequency update with some thoughts on culture, Web3 and the future. Each article will have a separate channel for members to discuss, and all discussion content will eventually be added to the article as part of the content output.

·Gatekeeper - an application for verifying on-chain identity status during offline activities, used in all FWB offline activities.

· Gallery -- an NFT exhibition and auction platform.

·FWB University - a Web3 training product, not yet online.

· Events -- Both offline and online, events are the core products of FWB.

In the Bank Lesson Dao, we can see that when members get together, there is a heated discussion, and many projects are quickly formed. In FWB, there are so many interesting people together, and nothing happens?

Yes, and more. However, in FWB, most of the ideas generated by the collision of members are directly dried up under the combination of resources. It does not wait for the DAO to be funded or the framework incorporated into the DAO to collaborate. In fact, at least dozens of projects and new DAOs have been bumped in FWB. Especially at NFT Summer, these guys were in their element and they had a lot of imagination, and they were working on new projects 24 hours a day.

Organization of the FWB DAO

By the time it closed its $10 million funding round in early September, FWB had just one full-time employee.

But it has more than 2,000 members, about 200 contributors to its membership, and forms 31 active contributors (Leads) with significant responsibilities.

They work in seven different directions to form the FWB's organizational structure.

The editorial team

The editorial team is responsible for guiding the culture and scope of the community and, in the future, for outward cultural exports.

Responsible for weekly digest and "semi-finished product".

The membership team

A committee of 15 members is responsible for reviewing membership applications.

Runs several diversity programs to support underfunded members from diverse backgrounds to join FWB.

Responsible for online activities.

Responsible for extending other member benefits.

Product team

Responsible for design and development of products needed by the community.

Completed two projects, Gatekeeper and Gallery. More new projects are on the way.

City team

Responsible for the organization and operation of city SubDAO.

Activity team

Responsible for the planning, operation and organization of various offline activities.

Cooperation team

Responsible for various ecological cooperation.

The DAO team

Responsible for DAO infrastructure operation, strategy and financial management.

Create the next version of the world

FWB is diverse and complex. It's like a club and beyond. A member can realistically pay attention to whether there is a talk about wealth password on the Trading channel, what new projects are on the NFT channel, or just participate in various activities, meet interesting people and enjoy a good time to expand their network. But many more people are passionate about culture, Web3 and what they can do to society. They are constantly colliding, thinking about what the next version of the world will be and trying to create it. Of course, the two are not in conflict. It is a wonderful thing to meet more like-minded people through parties and enjoy the fun of social interaction while thinking and creating the future together, no matter whether it can be achieved or not.

People are hanging out every day and having a good time, rather than forming guilds like the banklessDAO where everyone is crammed in and the whole DAO is organized in a highly structured way. The result is that very little documentation survives, let alone a community Wiki. History and thinking tend to remain in the minds of key personnel and early members.

But it is also a community with such complex idiosyncrasies that a few days on the channel is not enough to understand it. To find out what FWB was, I trawled through the channel's extensive history, read all the proposals and detailed documentation, listened to about 10 hours of podcast interviews and various media articles, and finally managed to piece together what it looked like and what it was like.

However, for such a small world, just a few weeks of exploration really dare not say how deep to understand it, some information and understanding may even be wrong. But the magic of a good community is that no matter what purpose you come to it, you will eventually become infected with it and develop a passion for belonging. I'm excited to see what FWB will look like in the future.

Back in early September, FWB received $10 million in funding from a group led by A16z. Since FWB is a DAO, acceptance of the investment itself requires member consent. So a proposal was launched, detailing why the investment was being made and what the money would be used for, and the proposal was overwhelmingly approved.

The proposal ends with this:

"If you look at FWB as a digital city, this proposal is how we're going to develop the suburbs of the city.

When we extend this to the whole community, we are also putting a model into the blood of the society. In this model, strangers on the Internet can come together and redefine the way we create and fund culture.

The brothers and sisters who have been with us since day one, make this blood pledge the beginning of a new chapter.

Grab your snack and make your voice heard.

We are all gonna make it."