The rise of Web3 has paved the way for new business models that could shape the next phase of the internet. For instance, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will play a large part in the open metaverse as the underlying assets people interact with. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are also coming to fruition to allow for community governance within virtual environments.
The growth of Web3 has essentially allowed NFTs and DAOs to flourish. For example, recent data from DeepDAO — a DAO stats platform — shows that DAOs have experienced 130-times growth over the last year, reaching a market capitalization of $24.8 billion. In December 2021, DeepDAO found that the total assets under management (AUM) for DAO treasuries listed on the platform increased from around $380 million in January to a peak of roughly $16 billion in mid-September. Nonfungible tokens are also on the rise as a number of crypto-platforms and mainstream organizations continue to implement NFT use cases.