AI has reduced software development costs and flipped the economics in favor of DAOs for the first time.
Aigen Labs researchers say DAOs currently offer substantial cost advantages.
As the cost of construction becomes cheaper, DAOs could become the fastest way for independent builders to launch and fund their products.
Building a software product used to cost about $215,000. Now, with the advent of AI tools, that number has dropped to less than $450. This gap is why some experts believe DAOs are about to become popular.
Kydo, a researcher at Eigen Labs, shared a detailed breakdown of X that explains why DAOs are no longer just a governance experiment. His argument is simple and clear. AI has made building software so cheap that the cost of starting a company is now more important than the cost of building the product itself.
The numbers behind the change
In a traditional setup, hiring a software engineer for 12 months costs approximately $200,000. Add in $15,000 for legal and LLC formation, and you’ll need about $215,000 to get MVP off the ground.
Using AI tools like Claude Code and Opus, a single builder can now ship a working product for about $200. Setting up a DAO costs between $50 and $250. Total: Less than $450.
“It’s not a marginal improvement. It’s a structural reversal.” Kido wrote.
Back when construction was expensive, no one cared that an LLC cost $15,000. It was a rounding error. Thanks to AI, production costs are close to zero, and that $15,000 is your biggest expense. DAOs can suddenly provide significant benefits at a fraction of that cost.
old pitch and new pitch
DAO has always touted ideologies of decentralization, community ownership, and resistance to censorship. Kido argues that these ideas alone were never enough to justify the friction of working without a traditional company.
The new case for DAOs is purely economic. And the economic argument is what he calls “scale.”
He backed this up with real-life examples. Noun DAO caused more than $50 million worth of damage to the Treasury without any legal entity behind it. Botto, an AI-generated art collective, used DAO to enable community members to mentor autonomous artists and share in the revenue.
What this means for solo crypto builders
Kiddo highlighted an issue that many builders are already familiar with. Buildings are cheaper now. Distribution and financing are not.
A working app built for $200 is just a side project without a community behind it. Adding a DAO with tokens and associated contributors makes it what Kydo calls an “economic organism.”
He also confirmed that Eigen Labs is working on a solution to create tokens. “It’s something that actually owns something and means something, rather than this speculative fluff that we have right now.”
not everyone agrees
In response, cryptocurrency lawyer Gabriel Shapiro argued that the real reason DAOs have not become more popular as a financing method is regulation, not cost.
Kido retorted: “Cryptocurrency regulation has never been clear, but that hasn’t stopped tokens and companies from making hundreds of billions of dollars here.”
