2023-01-22 12:00:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
One of the things website owners don't spend much time thinking about is what will happen to their website after they die. Once they aren't there to maintain it, and perhaps more importantly, to pay the hosting and donain name costs, then the site will most likely ultinately go offline.
Some folks make arrangements with long running organisations / foundations to host their site, but that night not akways be possible if you don't have content that these institutions are interested in preserving, or just don't have the contacts to make that happen. There's also the internet archive which could keep a backup, but that won't help the live site.
In web3 there exists somethibg called a decentralised autonomous organization, or DAO for short. They are essentially code hosted on a blockchain with an associated digital wallet address. People are using them for all sorts of things, often to help with project governance and organisational tasks.
What if you created a DAO to pay the costs to keep your site online? Theoretically that way you could keep your site online after you pass. I'm not an expert in this area, just thinking out load.
Your DAO would need a way to make money, it could be related to the content, but maybe it could be a simple AI that could access the stock markets. Make little bets everyday, make a few pennies here, a few pennies there. It could be as simple as donations from site visitors.
It's an interesting thought experiment, because one could imagine a whole ecosystem that would be built to accomodate such activity. Assuming your site is fully static files, your website DAO might want to be able to perform tasks such as migrations between hosting providers, offsite backups etc. Who knows maybe even a bit of web design to keep it looking fresh?
I wonder if anyone else is thinking about self sustaining DAOs?