A Brief History of the Yakuza Cats Society and YCS DAO 

The Yakuza Cats Society and YCS DAO, a metaverse cat based DAO, states its mission is “building a community owned Play to Earn Metaverse ecosystem with $DAMA & Yakuza Cat-themed #NFTs.” 

To an outsider, the Twitter bio may seem nonsensical and insignificant. However, over the past few months, the YCS DAO has amassed over 50,000 Twitter followers and over 30,000 Discord members. And the YCS DAO is far from an outlier; in fact, they represent the emerging focus the Web3 community has on community-building and decentralized ownership.

Explaining YCS DAO

The YCS DAO parallels their Web3 journey with NFT cats; as the storyline progresses, one can track the emergence of the YCS DAO and their token. Originally, there were many warring factions of cats, until eight senior “Yazukas” minted 8,930 cats. DAMA tokens, tokens utilized within the DAO community, were the utility token of the NFT collection. The DAO’s website explores opportunities such as merchandise, branded Sake, and a metaverse.

Originally, early Genesis Yazuk Cat NFT owners were given DAMA, or a token accepted within their Metaverse, to reward early loyalty. As the project progressed, the YCS DAO released the 2nd generation of their NFT, called The Killer Cats. As the project evolved, the YCS DAO launched new ways for members to recruit other members and stake their NFTs.

While the emergence of the YCS DAO and similar DAOs signal early signs of Web3 and community building, they also beg the question: can such DAOs continue to remain decentralized at scale? What’s more, can the DAOs provide any utility beyond exclusive tokens or branded merchandise?

Beyond the Usual Benefits

Already, the YCS DAO reports to eight central authorities. While new participants, or Kobuns, have voting rights as evident on the YCS DAO website, the question arises on how this DAO, or any DAO, can remain decentralized at scale. If the benefit is limited to early adopters or initial community members who are able to afford the initial tokens, parallels can be drawn between VCs and other institutional organizations, who normally invest in companies for some portion of equity.

Tomio Geron explains how DAOS “lower the barrier to entry and facilitate decentralized decision-making.” DAOs present opportunities of shifting decade long power structures into virtually anyone. And while there initially may be some financial barriers, the increasing prominence and varying structure of such organizations continue to make this problem less significant. 

“DAOs have simpler share structures, with fewer or no share classes, and are able to manage decision-making using tokens rather than shareholder votes,” Tomio Geron explains. This  makes them a clear, democratized alternative to current funding and community building methods.

While the initial goals of the YCS DAO may seem insignificant, the DAO represents a larger shift in the way institutions raise money and build communities — from expensive, established organizations to new, authentic, and widely available DAOs available to anyone and everyone.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Jibran Khalil is a computer scientist and entrepreneur from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a Tech Innovation Fellow at Identity Review and creator of My Workout Group, an iOS app that uses social accountability to help people workout. 

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