Power to the people: The shift towards community-owned networks

"The current form of capitalism is very exclusive," declared Yat Siu, "and in this form of stakeholder capitalism, we can be much more inclusive."

Siu is the founder and CEO of Animoca Brands, a Hong Kong–based game software company and venture capital firm. The company initially focused on developing mobile games, then shifted to blockchain gaming and NFTs in 2018.

He was in Dubai to speak at the ABC Web3 Conclave and also at the GITEX Global event. In his speech he laid out a bold vision for the future of capitalism.

Siu’s words carried a sense of urgency, reflecting the growing discontent with the stark inequality that has come to define the global economy. "Most of the world is really divided between the ones that have the one percentile, which is maybe a lot of you in the room, actually, and the most of the other part of the world, which is 90% or more of the world, which is actually at the bottom tier," he said.

This divide has fuelled the rise of socialist movements and a growing skepticism towards the traditional capitalist system. But the entrepreneur believes the solution may lie not in the physical world, but in the rapidly evolving Web3 ecosystem.

Unlike Web2 platforms dominated by tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Apple, Web3 networks are community-owned, allowing participants to directly capture the value they create. "When you actually own a token, you have both [application and financial] network effects," he explained.

"This doesn't matter whether it's a memecoin, whether it's a metaverse project, whether it's a gaming project, the better they can sort of connect these network effects, the more powerful the value proposition is of the token, which is very different from a traditional sort of equity construct."

Siu estimated that the total value of token economies and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) could reach tens of trillions of dollars in the coming years, "governed by hundreds of millions of users". This shift towards community-owned, equitable networks, he argued, could fundamentally reshape the future of capitalism.

Of course, realizing this vision will require solving key challenges around identity, trust, and reputation in the Web3 world. But he was optimistic that solutions are emerging, with the gaming industry playing a pivotal role.