DAO culture is nothing new, it is a tale as old as time. Refer to any movements that were disruptive at their time and hated by the establishment and you found it: the culture of counterculture, the revolutionaries, and the punks.

Rising from the ashes of centuries of anti-establishment resistance, DAOs have their own industrious cultural demon to tackle. Burning against the iron cage, this culture reflects the rise against bureaucratic dehumanization in the name of progress and efficiency. It is about reclaiming the potential of technology from centralized authorities and giving it to self-governing communities.

Unlike its predecessors, its contributors should not be reduced to mere coders, lawyers, entrepreneurs, but also include the underdogs and misfits. It is the culture of the people who through their skills and motivations are speaking truth to power by stripping corporations of their most important resource, human potential, and democratizing it.

Think about weeds. In popular culture, they are a metaphor for corruption and impurity, at least from the perspective of a gardener. From the perspective of the plants, however, weeds are doing what they are supposed to do, growing, flourishing, and creating eco-systems where similar plants can develop and grow organically. The beliefs and expectations of gardeners are irrelevant to the weed, but their mere existence disturbs seasons of pre-planning and organization. Just like weeds which naturally flourish in even the most organized spaces, so does DAO culture arise in society. The more centralized powers try to eradicate it the more likely it is for them to arise in another place.

If you read this with the hope of engaging with something never seen before, you might find yourself being awfully disappointed. The rise of the DAO culture is not a novel story. It is the old story of resistance in the face of top-down authority and intervention, with a heavy sprinkle of technological and cryptographic innovation. The mere existence of DAO culture proves that regardless of the time and the society, the human need for self-organization and determination will rise just like weeds in a brokenly perfect garden. DAO is the culture risen by the people, for the people.