It seems like the times when you could study for a certain profession and devote your whole life to it are irrevocably becoming a thing of the past. According to experts, the old professions take off about 100 million jobs, while the new ones give only 10 million, and only for highly qualified personnel. Nine out of ten fired, in fact, have nowhere to go and no one to retrain — there is simply no adequate replacement for such a huge number of jobs.

The reverse  of progress looks exactly like this: according to the WEF forecast, up to 75 million people will lose their jobs by 2023. And this is the reality in which we live today.

Autopilot technology is making  taxi drivers and trucker professions unnecessary.  Ever received commercial product offers by phone from robots? You'll agree that sometimes you could confuse them with a living person. This proves how far along Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come and how much of a threat the technology is becoming.  In India for example,  there are about 1.5 million people  working as call centre operators. This is 1.5 million jobs that could be lost if AI becomes the norm. 

Call centre operators aren't the only ones that should feel threatened by this growing tech.  Other creative professions are under threat too. From Software Developers to Graphic Designers to Content Writers, none of these professions are entirely exempted from the phenomenon that is AI. In just a couple of seconds, AI generates stunning paintings that can compete with man-made works of art. This obviously, is not in the  favor of humans who work as artists.

Looking at new ways to earn a living would be a solid solution to combating this AI problem for creatives. There are no guarantees for the safety of one's job (there weren't before AIs) and it would become much worse now that AI is becoming an option.  Again, looking for new and creative ways of earning is strongly advised, because in the near future,  5-7 years spent on  tertiary education would not give any guarantee that a person will  be employed..

Attention Economy: the New Millennium's Gold

All of these changes happening now aren't coming as a shocker to people who have been paying attention. In fact, they were predicted.  In the last century, Nobel laureate Herbert Simon came out with the theory of the attention economy. Its main idea of the theory is that a person's attention can and should be converted into income. One of the principles of Simon's theory  is that you pay attention to what you are interested in and get paid for it. Because attention has a specific value, it becomes the main currency, and therefore, the main resource of the future economy.

A Solution from the Gaming Industry

Today technological progress has made it possible to bring Simon's ideas to life. The GameFi's global “Do-smth-to-earn” trend set by blockchain games  between 2021 and 2022 allows you to earn money regardless of age, education and profession. The essence of the Play-to-earn idea boils down to the following: for paying attention and spending time on a gaming platform, the player gets tangible and not-entirely-virtual profit. 

Despite the abundance of growth triggers, there are restraining factors that are still present in GameFi. One of them is an excessively expensive entry into the industry . As a norm, a user has to pay from hundreds to several thousand dollars to get on board. Such investments are not affordable for everyone. Despite this obvious onboarding problem, a lot of players from low-income countries still do whatever they can to get on these play-to-earn games.  This is not surprising as the average salary in such countries is often less than the possible earnings in the games.

A project embodying the ideals of the play-to-earn mechanism is Dexsport. Dexsport an innovative betting protocol. Transactions and gameplay in the online betting industry can be daunting and this proves troublesome for regular users and small organizations. The decentralized structure of Dexsport however prevents any single entity from having a monopoly, unlike centralized companies. The platform offers sports betting, market prediction, P2P betting, and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) art collection services.

Attention economy doesn’t have only the gaming sphere going for it. The content-making industry is also a part of this economy. In our world today, information is no longer a limited resource. What is limited is attention and this is what is being tapped into to earn content providers money. An example of a company making moves in the attention economy today is Cheelee.

Built with GameFi mechanics, Cheelee is a platform for short videos where users can earn by watching videos on the feed. Cheelee's economy is thoughtful and sustainable due to income diversification. Advertising, brand collaboration and in-game purchases provide 40% of it, while 100% of the income from NFTs and internal transactions go to the stability fund. As a result of this, the platform is less dependent on the market vagaries and influx of new users.

These platforms (Dexsport and Cheelee) have features of NFTs where players earn them and in other to sell or swap them for tokens and/or fiat would need a marketplace. Ayoken is such a place. Ayoken is the digital collectibles marketplace that is dedicated to empowering and connecting creators to global audiences. The platform has a vision to onboard 10 million new crypto users & digital collectible owners, as it aims to catalyze the mainstream adoption of crypto in emerging markets.

Move2Earn

Move2Earn (M2E) appeared as the ‘2Earn’ trend grew. With Move2Earn, you need to perform certain actions in real life to receive rewards in tokens. In 2022, even amidst the bear market, M2E managed to attract a huge army of users. However, after the general euphoria, a common problem emerged.

The M2E projects payback, which was impressive at first, now takes six months, or even a year. This happened with the sensational StepN whose tokens' value grew first, and then collapsed, leaving many holders with a huge minus and deceived expectations. And all because of an ill-conceived economy, where the project's development was completely tied to the new users' influx — which is by the way, the main feature of Ponzi schemes.

Nevertheless, it is Watch2Earn, the only viable of the 2Earn concepts so far, that seems destined to become the solution to the problem that is the disappearance of old jobs. Watch2Earn looks to be hoisting the attention economy’s flag high. 

Conclusion

Automation is taking millions of jobs without offering enough alternatives in return. There will be ten times fewer new professions, and only for highly qualified specialists. That is why projects that make it possible to monetize your attention look promising to become an absolute trend soon. Look for new opportunities. As we can see, they have already begun to appear.