A decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) called ‘Friends with Benefits’ has grown into a social club of 6000 members for crypto’s ‘creative class’. Culturally, the membership skews less “Lamborghini-driving Bitcoin bros” and more “D.J.s from Williamsburg who dabble in Ethereum on the weekend.” In a recent orientation session, new members introduced themselves: an intellectual-property lawyer, a poet-slash-investor, a brand strategist for Nike, a handful of musicians and software engineers!
“We’re kind of the anti-crypto crypto club,” Raihan Anwar, a founder of Friends With Benefits, told the newbies. Being organized as a DAO, rather than a traditional corporation, has advantages. The group can easily take stakes in members’ projects, or reward them with $FWB tokens for contributing useful work. Members can leave anytime by selling their tokens. And if the price of $FWB rises, every member stands to benefit. But attaching a community to a volatile crypto token has risks. Last year, a service that Friends With Benefits used to create its tokens was hacked. $FWB’s value plunged 99 percent. The community voted to issue a replacement token and avoided a total collapse. Still, $FWB tokens now trade at around $50, roughly 75 percent lower than their peak.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/technology/friends-with-benefits-crypto-dao.html