Davos 2023: Metaverse Economies Are A Testbed For Entrepreneurs, Dacoco CEO Says

The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently held its 2023 annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where topics pertaining to post-pandemic fragmentation and multipolarity were addressed.

While there, Benzinga got the chance to interview Sarojini McKenna, the co-founder and CEO of Dacoco — producer of Alien Worlds, the largest blockchain metaverse by users.

Here's what McKenna, an Oxford grad and former London-based investment banker with Rothschild & Co., had to say. The below text was lightly edited for clarity and concision.

BZ: Talk about some of the first projects you were involved in.

McKenna: One of them was a decentralized autonomous community or DAC which ran block production activities on a number of different blockchains. The mining rewards that came in went directly into the DAC account and were disseminated according to smart contract permissions by the community governance. This was a revolutionary model in that a community could fund itself through activities like mining. From this project, we created a tech stack for DACs and DAOs.

Any others?

My co-founder had this idea to put NFTs into a metaverse mainly centered around a community or persistent space. Because of our DAO background, we thought to put DAOs in there as well. So the pillars of Alien Worlds are NFTs and DAOs within a single metaverse.

Was the pivot into gaming difficult?

We were fortunate because we had fairly proven technology by that point. Though we pivoted into gaming, we were building scalable tech for years and we already had a company set up.

What are you focused on daily?

One big focus is developing our roadmap and releasing the six-planet DAO; there are six competing teams within the metaverse, each of which is a DAO or decentralized autonomous organization. These DAOs have their own token and are governed by their own community. It's collective play to earn, as well. We’re also continuing to develop our mining game, which is our flagship play-to-earn feature, NFT reward mechanisms, and ways in which users can use NFTs in the game.

What's significant about DAOs?

It's very significant to be able to represent groups of people acting collectively around a single objective on-chain. That's what DAOs do so for us.

In our roadmap is a universe of DAOs — a metaverse of DAOs — in which anyone can create their own DAO communities and get play-to-earn rewards for that. Within that environment, communities are signaling what they're doing, and you will have a collection of communities undertaking different types of tokenized actions on-chain.

For example, an airdrop of tokens, an NFT drop, creating utility NFTs that get used within something that they're offering or doing token swaps between DAOs. Each of these things signal to members of those DAOs, and others in the metaverse, what they are interested in.

What you’re talking about is creating a powerful Web3 discovery mechanism.

In Web2, the discovery mechanisms were data. All of the big platforms observed a person's behavior and then monetized that through advertising. Then came more sophisticated profiling and Web3 where you own your own public blockchain account. It is more within your control and you have an identity within that metaverse. You can pursue objectives collectively or individually within that metaverse, and then be able to be marketed to.

Talk a bit about your roadmap.

We became the dapp in history and, then, the largest game by user numbers and transaction volumes. We have slowed down our roadmap delivery in order to focus. The product of that is our planet DAOs. Our community released a fighting game, which was on our roadmap. I am happy with where we are with our roadmap now.

How did you learn about these ecosystems?

You have to be involved. I joined a project, showed up every day, and that’s how I learned.

What challenges are you facing?

We're all building a category for the very first time. There are many challenges that come from that. The tech is still not super user-friendly. Wallets and onboarding are still quite arduous for users. The tokenomics are being developed.

Do you think the play-to-earn model is sustainable?

Play-to-earn is not a sustainable tokenonomic model and we've always known that. We have a closed-loop model in that people earn the token through some things but have to use the token through other things. Getting that balance right and building the things that people want to use the token for is a challenge.

Any advantages to being based in Switzerland?

Zug is a canton in Switzerland and home to the Crypto Valley. Zug was forward-looking in terms of crypto. They bothered to get to know the technology early on, which was pretty unusual, and they also took an intelligent approach. The regulation is well-drafted and specific enough that you know if you're complying. It's also a good environment for lawyers and accountants.

What does the metaverse economy symbolize?

The metaverse economy is where entrepreneurialism is born. It’s a liquid and vibrant economy with hundreds of thousands of people all interacting with each other directly in a peer-to-peer way, within a single environment. That's a great place for people to test business ideas, find business partners, find communities in which to incubate, and then grow businesses. A lot more people will be developing products and services within this metaverse context and releasing them into that context. In Web3, any type of commodity has value, including communities themselves. So it's a much broader way of people being able to directly access a market than just through content. And I see that as being very valuable for people in their lives.

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