One incarnation of Web3 philosophy is found in DAOs–Distributed, Autonomous Organizations. In DAOs, work, decision-making and financial transactions are decentralized and community-led. This model has led to a new freelance economy of sorts, where people can do work that they choose to do for multiple DAOs, and receive multiple sources of income on their terms.

This new freelance economy is different from the gig economy in that there aren’t centralized corporations creating those jobs–the people doing the work have ownership of the end result. “In the gig economy, earning is linear—most people earn an hourly wage or per-gig wage,” Lipton explained. “In Web3, earning is non-linear because freelancers will own part of the marketplace. Additionally, freelancers working for Web3 projects can earn a combination of stable coins and tokens, and those tokens can offer uncapped upside.”