Myosin: Empowering a New Era of Marketing Networks
Updated: Jul 31
I recently had the opportunity to chat with Blake, co-founder as well as Head of Product & Community of Myosin. Myosin is a groundbreaking platform that has revolutionized the concept of marketing networks and continues to form a powerful ecosystem that is reshaping the way marketing is approached in the digital age.
Myosin's journey began when the co-founder Simon, driven by a vision to establish a marketing DAO reached out to Blake, about a year and a half ago. Blake, with a background in building early-stage tech companies and agency experience, was immediately captivated by the idea. He recognized the need to redefine the role of DAOs, shifting the focus from mere technological innovation to enabling a superior experience.
The Agency Structure DAO
Through its agency structure DAO, Myosin addresses challenges faced by freelancers in the digital economy. Traditional agencies often fail to provide fair compensation, equity, and benefits to freelancers. Myosin leverages the DAO model to aggregate top-tier talent globally and ensure excellence. Every member becomes a co-owner, fostering collaboration and shared purpose.
One of the key strengths of Myosin lies in its meticulously crafted economic incentive alignment within the agency setting. Through its shared treasury, business development fees, and project collaboration opportunities, Myosin creates a system that rewards initiative, deal-making, and the pursuit of new initiatives.
A Multifaceted Team
Myosin distinguishes itself by attracting exceptional global talent. The founders bring expertise in brand strategy, innovation, and technical marketing, while the community comprises diverse professionals in brand strategy, innovation, growth marketing, community management, content creation, PR, partnerships, development, and design, which ensures comprehensive client support.
Within the DAO, Sub-DAOs, aka Guilds, represent specialized areas like community, content, design, and growth. These guilds retain individual networks and skills while leveraging Myosin's talent, resources, and connections, providing clients with a wide range of expertise.
Cultivating Quality and Collaboration
Myosin prioritizes quality over quantity in its membership, with a deliberate and selective approach. Currently, they have around 70 active members, reflecting a commitment to excellence. The organization believes that a vibrant community is built on meaningful connections rather than sheer numbers. By limiting membership to approximately 150 individuals (Dunbar's number), Myosin fosters genuine relationships and a sense of belonging.
To maintain membership quality, they are developing an off-chain reputation scoring system that will transition to on-chain implementation through their upcoming ERC-6551 launch with Station Labs. This system measures contributions, reliability, and overall standing within the community, ensuring accountability and encouraging active participation.
Streamlining the Onboarding Process
Joining a DAO can often be as simple as purchasing a token. However, Myosin has taken a different approach to ensure that its membership roster consists of talented individuals who align with its vision.
Prospective members undergo a rigorous 3-round application process, providing detailed information about their skills, experiences, and aspirations.
1. Applicants submit detailed information and have an initial conversation with the Head of DAO Operations to verify authenticity and alignment with Myosin's values.
2. Successful applicants move to the second round, where guild leads evaluate their skills and proficiency in the respective disciplines.
3. The final round involves a direct conversation with co-founder Blake, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of Myosin's vision and goals.
This multi-stage process allows for efficient onboarding, informed decision-making, and effective contribution from new members as Myosin expands.
Incentivizing Success
As a global marketing agency, Myosin incentivizes members to source and secure projects aligned with its mission through its 75-15-10 economic structure. When a project arises, 75% of the gross revenues go to the project team, recognizing their valuable work. The DAO retains 15% for operational costs and collective needs, while 10% is reserved for the individual who brings in the deal, encouraging active project-seeking. This approach recognizes members' diverse skills and interests, allowing them to leverage their strengths and collaborate on larger projects, creating a win-win situation for everyone involved.
The CharmVerse Advantage
Myosin's adoption of CharmVerse has been instrumental in supporting its business goals and has helped overcome organizational challenges. CharmVerse is a web3 community platform for managing members, coordinating tasks, facilitating decisions, and holding each other accountable. Prior to adopting CharmVerse, Myosin faced challenges in effectively combining Web2 and Web3 tools to manage their organization.
The transition to CharmVerse provided seamless integration between their Myo Token ($MYO) and workspace, allowing for improved permissioning and transparency across the organization. CharmVerse supports most EVM-compatible chains, including but not limited to, Optimism, Polygon, Harmony, Avalanche, Celo, making it quite versatile when setting up a permissionless space. Admins of a Space can assign roles based on token holdings and control access across the entire space down to individual pages. You now possess the ability to customize permissions for specific roles, ranging from read-only access to the power of creating pages and Forum posts, leaving comments, and casting votes. Myosin utilizes $MYO to token-gate access to their CharmVerse space and various events. Sensitive client information and internal documentation can now be effectively token-gated, granting access only to those who need it.
The Member Directory, which is automatically built as members join the space, facilitates easy identification of team members, enhancing collaboration and fostering a sense of community within Myosin. Additionally, CharmVerse's native integrations with other Web3 tools such as Guild and CollabLand, offer a consolidated solution, simplifying the management of multiple software providers. And recent updates now pull in your ENS, Lens, and Link3 profiles unifying your identities across web3.
Within CharmVerse, the Bounties feature has become an essential tool employed by Myosin to tackle various tasks across the organzation. These tasks range from designing NFTs for Myosin House experiences at web3 conferences to tracking analytics for the W3G podcast, along with other initiatives that benefit the network as a whole.
By utilizing bounties, Myosin assigns specific tasks to be completed, allowing members to apply for these bounties and submit their work for review. If their work is approved, the bounty is directly paid through CharmVerse. This streamlined process not only facilitates efficient task management but also ensures timely and direct compensation.
Bounties serve as an effective way to inform members of the ongoing list of tasks that need to be accomplished. This feature provides transparency and encourages active participation, enabling members to contribute their skills and expertise where they are most needed.
Multiplayer Editor is a feature that Myosin has employed, and one that we have continued to improve with much helpful feedback from their community. Mostly utilized for extensive meeting notes being collected collaboratively, this feature proves to be an essential tool for Myosin.
By leveraging CharmVerse's features, Myosin has increased productivity and enhanced collaboration among team members. We look forward to their continued work on CharmVerse, as their feedback has been invaluable and continues to show us how web3 communities are utilizing the platform.
MYO Empowering Progressive Decentralization
In the world of web3 and DAOs, the concept of governance and token-based decision-making is gaining prominence. Myosin has implemented an innovative approach to membership and governance using $MYO.
One can't simply purchase $MYO to be granted membership to Myosin, its purpose extends beyond mere entry into the organization. In addition to utilizing $MYO to token gate access to their CharmVerse space and various events, by requiring a certain amount of $MYO, Myosin fosters a sense of commitment and ownership among its members. This ensures that participants have a stake in the organization's success and actively contribute to its growth.
$MYO also plays a crucial role in voting within Myosin. While the amount of $MYO held does influence voting power, the approach is designed to avoid an excessive concentration of power. Myosin employs quadratic voting, a mechanism that prevents disproportionate influence. As the number of tokens held increases, the multiplier effect tapers off, ensuring a more equitable distribution of voting power. Although on-chain voting is yet to be implemented, Myosin's vision of governance revolves around the concept of progressive decentralization. The organization recognizes that voting power should not solely be determined by the number of tokens held. Instead, Myosin plans to leverage DIDs (Decentralized Identifiers) as the basis for voting. These DIDs, represented by ERC-6551 membership NFTs, serve as an individual's voting rights.
Beyond its role in voting and governance, $MYO serves as social currency within the Myosin ecosystem. It represents a measure of an individual's contribution, commitment, and reputation. Myosin rewards members who actively participate in bounties, allowing them to earn more $MYO and increase their stake within the network. Furthermore, the staking portal acts as an incentive mechanism, rewarding individuals who perform well on client projects and penalizing those who fail to meet expectations.
Through token gating, voting mechanisms, and social currency, Myosin empowers its members, encourages active participation, and rewards valuable contributions. While striving for progressive decentralization, Myosin strikes a balance between centralized decision-making and member autonomy. As the organization continues to evolve, $MYO remains a vital element in shaping the future of Myosin's decentralized ecosystem.
Building a Business as a DAO
DAOs have gained significant traction in recent years, offering an alternative approach to traditional business structures. Myosin, as a global marketing agency, has embraced the DAO model, successfully navigating the challenges and opportunities that come with it. While they may make it look easy, the transition from business to DAO is not a decision to make lightly. If you’re considering this, I suggest reading Blake's 'Reflections on Building a Marketing DAO Part 1 and Part 2.
These articles offer valuable insights into the factors that must be considered from the increased workload, your approach to community, and of course the level of decentralization among your community.
Envisioning a Better Future
It has been a pleasure to have Myosin using CharmVerse, and they have been an integral partner with their continuous feedback and examples of use cases throughout exploring the platform.
Myosin represents a transformative force in the marketing industry. By bridging the gap between web3 innovations and mainstream consumers, Myosin believes in nurturing a deeper understanding and acceptance of blockchain technology. This forward-thinking approach positions Myosin as a vital player in reshaping the future of marketing networks and empowering both businesses and individuals to thrive in the digital landscape.
With an emphasis on global design talent, economic alignment, and decentralized collaboration, Myosin is revolutionizing the way marketing networks operate and paving the way for a more inclusive and rewarding future for all involved.
