All of these Discord and Telegram "DAOs" are almost always scams. Crypto makes them easier, but they would probably still exist in some shape even without it.
It is hard to argue that "they don't represent crypto" when they are 90% of what people see, and many people's first exposure to it, but of course, they don't represent crypto. They bring zero innovation, except for the best marketing copy to bring in gullible victims. Real projects (for instance, zkSync) are a lot more quiet about their marketing.
> but they would probably still exist in some shape even without it.
I don’t agree. The people who run traditional scams know that what they’re doing is a scam, and they take precautions to avoid criminal prosecution. This deters general people from trying to do the same thing.
Crypto has this veneer of “innovation” and “disruption” that everyone has seen play out over the past decade, with huge winners (Amazon, Uber, etc.). And others are jumping on the bandwagon. They don’t believe they’re running a scam, or at least they believe they’re operating in the Wild West of no regulations and everything is fair game.
There are definitely people doing crypto stuff who would not be otherwise running cons on a street corner.
It is hard to argue that "they don't represent crypto" when they are 90% of what people see, and many people's first exposure to it, but of course, they don't represent crypto. They bring zero innovation, except for the best marketing copy to bring in gullible victims. Real projects (for instance, zkSync) are a lot more quiet about their marketing.