# ShapeShiftDAO x Colony

## The Emerging Frontier of DAO Work
A profound evolution in the crypto world is taking place right before our eyes. Most do not recognize this growth as they are too distracted with things such as dog coins or chasing the latest DeFi 2.0 fork. The things of substance we speak of are the emergence and future prominence of DAO's -- Decentralized Autonomous Organizations -- and how they will come to redefine the "cryptoscape" and open the doors to new technologies, capabilities of governance, and opportunities for individuals to participate in a community in a way that serves to provide them with a "community career" that rewards the contributor for contributions of value to the endeavors of the community.

What the potential of a DAO represents is the ability to utilize and tap into the transcendent technological potential that is latent in and inherent to web3 technology. Thus far the nature of crypto work has been mostly rooted in investment and trading constantly subject to and dependent on the extreme volatility of the market. DAO's are ushering in a new era and conception of crypto work. That is, they are being propped and built out by up by communities of like-minded individuals seeking to value-align behavior and skills spread across a multitude of categories that all contribute to the healthy, prosperous, and problem-solving functioning of a single decentralized entity. In most cases, these DAO's are emerging in response to problems woven into the fabric of the legacy world.

## DAO's are a Natural Evolution
What is interesting to note about the emergencce of these DAO's -- entities built by communities seeking to improve the human condition -- is that they mirror the macro properties of behavior that can be observed in nature. That is, the operation of the whole is a function of value-aligned behavior of each part. Just as a colony of ants functions as one whole which is the sum of each part pursuing the same outcome, a DAO operates in a similar manner. The behavior and skills of a community become aligned on a macro scale in pursuit of incentive-aligned goals that can only be achieved through a decentralized network of individual parts.

ShapeShift has been an entity in the crypto space for quite some time -- in fact, for most of "crypto's history." Originally founded in 2014, ShapeShift arose from the need to provide a mechanism with which users could exchange one token for another without any sort of third party custody of funds. The hacking of Mt. Gox served to be a stark and dire example of why this was necessary. However, from its origins until recent time, it relied upon a centralized structure to provide a decentralized solution to the problems it perceived.

## Emergence of ShapeShiftDAO
In following the path laid out to them in their quest to provide users a means to swap digital assets without token custody of third parties, evolving from a legacy-like corporate entity seeking to provide decentralized solutions into a DAO was the only natural and logical progression for it to take. The DAO emerged as a necessary next step to not only provide a decentralized solution, but do so in a decentralized fashion

- hierarchical laws and structures arise out of complexity at different scales
- emergence of large scale coordinated behavior

## Chaos Organized into a Colony