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The DAO ecosystem is a cornucopia of innovation that is still nascent but burgeoning exponentially: in scale, complexity, and scope. Before the advent of configurable and no-code DAO tools in 2018, there were a scant number of DAOs-around a few dozen. As of today, there are more than 2000 DAOs with a sizeable treasury.

A fundamental pillar of Web3, DAOs have the potential to upend the very first principles upon which we build the organizational frameworks that accomplish humanity’s most complex and ambitious endeavours. 

In this report, we shall elucidate upon fundamental principles about DAOs, including the basics on what a DAO is, what one’s salient characteristics are, and how and why the ecosystem has seen a Cambrian explosion over the last few years. In addition to discussing challenges for the broader ecosystem, we also glean novel and tangible economic value propositions that DAOs provide from their first principle characteristics, aspects often overlooked in the space. Finally, we end the section with a conversation with EarthFund DAO, a DAO working on utilizing Web3 to help environmental ventures across the world.

If you are acquainted with the fundamental factors in the space, we recommend that you skip to the section on governance. In this section, we discuss governance from a first principles perspective, anchoring our discussion of the steps required to grow the ecosystem within a macro historical and socio-economic context. We then discuss specific means through which governance is undertaken in the ecosystem, a facet of DAOs that enables a sandbox for socio-political experimentation. We also posit theoretical frameworks to solve some of the most foundational issues that need to be addressed for the ecosystem to reach its potential in the years to come. 

Finally, we delineate a case study on Proof Of Humanity, an organization that is imperative to solving Sybil attacks, a point of weakness which undermines the very purpose of DAOs as a whole.

**To view the full report, [click here](https://www.daolens.com/content?modal=open)**

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Governance - Magnified by DaoLens

This issue of Magnified offers insights, analysis and perspectives into the current DAO Governance landscape and provides tools and theoretical frameworks for solving the most pressing issues faced by DAOs today

The **Byzantine General’s problem** is one that  lies at at the heart of crypto. It is a thought experiment that illustrates the challenges of achieving consensus among distributed parties that may not trust each other. It describes a scenario in which multiple generals of the Byzantine army are encamped around an enemy city, each commanding their own troops. In order to successfully attack the city, they must unanimously agree upon a plan of action. **However, some of them may be traitorous** and may attempt to undermint the plan by sending conflicting messages to other generals. 

Therefore, the problem is how to reach consensus on a plan when it is not possible to know which generals are untrustworthy and may be sending false messages. 

Given that Bitcoin’s Proof of Work consensus mechanism helps solve this problem, it may be said that Satoshi Nakamoto solved the Byzantine General’s problem. 

Now, while the problem is usually contextualized within the realms of computer science and game theory, it also applies within sociological and economic contexts. By exploring how that could be the case, we’ll be able to understand how DAOs can solve the same problem for large scale coordinational problems that involve people the same way Bitcoin did for distributed networks of computers. 


Within conventional organizations, we see that the problem has not in fact been solved. This is because the ‘consensus mechanism’ that is employed almost invariably boils down to hierarchical structures.We are not claiming that hierarchies are intrinsically problematic and thus inferior. However, it is true that they essentially give those at the top undue influence over what the ‘truth’ is, de facto giving them authority by fiat.  Of course, given human nature, this can (and often is) a **significant weak point in corporate governance**. Corporate malfeasance runs aplenty; Enron, Madoff, Wells Fargo; all of these were claimed to be caused by just a few bad apples at the top. 

Now, the fact of the matter is that this would be true or false to differing degrees in each of these examples in every organization. However, the very fact that there is no central **repository for the truth** is what even gives people (such as SBF) the ability to argue that they did not know what was going on. 
**It enables the obfuscation of responsibility.** 

Furthermore, such organizations are far more likely to be susceptible to **groupthink**, given that people have a selfish incentive to not antagonize their superiors and are thus more prone to conformity. 

Therefore, we have identified two problems related to strictly hierarchical organizations: malfeasance abetted by the obfuscation of responsibility, and groupthink caused by an increased chance of conformity. 

Efficiently disseminating information within an organization in a manner that is **transparent and verifiable** could prove to be an antidote to the matter of malfeasance. Evidently, the blockchain can help with this (and is no doubt already being used), with on-chain notation of data being an excellent means to record data (to clarify, this does not mean that public blockchains like Ethereum would be necessary as private ones would do the job just as well). Furthermore, using **zero knowledge proofs**, data can also be stored in a manner which makes it so that it is incontrovertible public knowledge that something is the case, but the specifics of the data data are still hidden by and large. In other words, a company like FTX could **computationally show** that it has not moved customer funds without having to reveal confidential information about specific customer accounts. 

This is where a sort of structure that involves **DAOs subsumed within corporations** could prove to be valuable. This is similar to how ‘startups within companies’ is also a model that many companies use-often to great success. Some examples include **Waymo and Nest** from Google, and **Audible and Zappos** from Amazon. 

(Before being too taken aback by this-do recall that startups themselves are younger than 3 decades as a concept.)


#### How does come into the fold

Let’s say a company like OpenAI (creators of ChatGPT and DALL-E 2)  realizes that it is close to creating AGI. 


Before tying this in with DAOs though, let’s back up a bit by revisiting the Byzantine General’s problem. It’s based upon the possibility that any given general could be traitorous, and could thus act in a manner that is **incongruent with the rest of the generals’ plans**. The motive for why a general might do this is irrelevant; it is the **fact that they would not collude** that is important.

In ethically charged matters such as Artificial Intelligence research, it is palpable that researchers will have differing opinions on how to proceed-and not in terms of execution to get to the same goal, but **in terms of what to build at all**. Currently, this final decision is left to executives. For something  as significant as AI, it is both highly undesirable for any individual to unilaterally decide what to build, and also highly likely that people will be dishonest actors (if they think the venture being successful would be potentially dangerous). 

In addition to the perils of unipolar deliberation, conventional companies are also prone to groupthink and malfeasance (as discussed above). If any sufficiently advanced model (let alone AGI) has negative real world ramifications, it would be easy for Sam Altman or Greg Brockman to pass the buck to one another. It would also be likely that OpenAI already has some level of groupthink within it-something you would not want when discussing ethical matters of this magnitude, given that groupthink inherently creates blindspots. 

Nevertheless,  it is significantly more likely that **some** kind of centralized entity or company will be needed to successfully build increasingly improving foundational models. 

A ‘DAO within a company’ can help resolve this tension. In the context of OpenAI, let’s imagine that Sam Altman realizes the peril of the unilateral creation of AGI (as he seems to). Therefore, to mitigate the possible ramifications, he sets up a DAO within OpenAI that governs the development of at least some aspects of the AGI (say, those related to alignment). This DAO could be treated as a separate entity altogether, even as an executive with ultimate executive control over the direction of the project. 


Let’s see how such a framework might help solve the issues of groupthink and malfeasance as we have spoken about. 



Firstly and most importantly, a DAO would bring an essential **diversity of thought** to the fold. This is because of two reasons: there is a lower amount of pressure to conform to others’ opinions, and a DAO would open up the opportunity to bring in ‘intellectual mercenaries’-people whose opinions and votes would only be considered for specific topics in which they have expertise in. This would ameliorate a significant proportion of the issues with groupthink. 

Secondly, through voting based deliberation (which need not be 1 person 1 vote), a diversity of opinions would be cemented in actual decision making. This would ideally be done through those **that are working on the project themselves**, as it would bake in a sufficiently decentralized set of thoughts directly into the development of the project. To clarify, this does not mean that every technical or operational aspect should be voted on-merely those that could have ethical ramifications. 

If this voting is done in a manner that is on-chain, this would remove the **obfuscation of responsibility** as well, as each individual would know that their actions would ultimately be assigned to them and them only. Indeed, this is how DAOs actually solve the Byzantine General’s problem, not by ensuring that each general does the same thing, but by each general knowing what every other general has done. 






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From Computers to Governance: Solving the Byzantine General's Problem

The Byzantine General's Problem is one that is at the centre of crypto. Solving it through Proof of Work is one of the most significant aspects of Bitcoin.

DAOs can help do the same for networks of people, the same way Bitcoin did for networks of computers. 

**Gaming Guilds** are groups of gamers that come together to play a particular game or games together (typically within the context of Massive Multiplayer Online Games). Guilds may have leaders, rules, and specific roles for members and offer a sense of community and support. Guilds in Web3 operate in a simlar fashion to conventional ones, but with a few added aspects. For example, they may be able to  earn and manage in-game assets (in the form of NFTs) and earn money (in the form of in game tokens like with **[Axie Infinity](axieinfinity.com)**. 

Therefore, it could be said that a significant differentiator between Gaming Guids and conventional DAOs or communities is that they are **collaborative efforts to mutually benefit from virtual economies**. 

So how can our tool help such collectives? 

#### 1: Sub-Guilds

Firstly, our tool can help **manage sub-communities/guilds**. Our  implementation of **gated channels for discussion** enables coordination on a fragmented basis so that smaller groups of people within guilds can come together. This is of particular value to gaming guilds, as much like with ‘real’ economies, virtual economies have multiple moving parts. If we consider guilds to either be **managing or leveraging** any individual virtual economy as a whole (such as those in Treasure DAO or Star Atlas) , then it is also apparent that there will be smaller moving parts of these economies that must be managed or can be profited off of (for example, Bridgeworld, Smolverse, and Battlefly within Treasure’s ecosystem). 


So, using **conditionally gated forums**, you can create de-facto subguilds by using token based gating (both NFT and token based). So, for example, if belonging to a certain guild involves owning particular NFTs, such forums could be created in an automated fashion on our platform. 


![image2.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672828215/image2_1ce8361d3e.png)

#### 2: Rewards


Badges and ‘xp’ based progression are native to video games. Therefore, using in-game progress to reward community members for **contributions to the community** and **progress made** is an obvious use case. This would be implemented with an **API integration** with a given community’s game. What this would mean is that **progress made in interacting with one’s community on the platform and progress made in the game itself** (in the form of missions accomplished, money and items earned, etc) could be **mutually dependent**. 

This is to say that you could use our platform to **integrate the gamified mechanics** of whichever game your community plays with the **social aspect of your community**. For example, if a person has onboarded multiple users into either the game or community, the rewards they receive on the platform could **seamlessly translate** to rewards within the game itself. Of course, such a mechanism would also work for accomplishments in game that could translate to rewards on the platform. For example, the rewards ensuing from such in-game accomplishments could be used to give leadership positions within the DAOs or any other role or responsibility. Indeed, this mechanism could even be in the form of XP points that are one and the same on both the game and the DAO Manager.


![Screenshot 2023-01-13 at 11.56.45 AM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1673591211/Screenshot_2023_01_13_at_11_56_45_AM_70f124a58b.png)

_Tasks, rewards, and badges like this can be implemented to mutually interact with in-game activities._

#### 3: Inter-Guild Discussions

If a game’s economy has multiple moving parts, then it is also apparent that these moving parts would need to **interact with each other**. This implies the necessity of inter-guild discussions. This could work through each guild having ‘chiefs’ who have been delegated the responsibility of representing their particular guild. 

You can accomplish this on our platform. Guild chiefs can come together to shape the general vision of their particular economy or even collaborate on how members from each guild can participate in other games’ economies (if each guild represents one game). 

Through our **integrated discussions and voting**, this would also mean that guild chiefs could do so in one spot and minimize context switching. 


#### 4: Manage Gaming Quests

Quests are essentially tasks in game. Given the monetizable aspect of them in Web3, they are the work that Gaming Guilds are in charge of managing and operating. Therefore, the **integrated task manager** that our platform provides can be implemented with **in-game tasks**. 

![Screenshot 2023-01-13 at 11.59.28 AM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1673591374/Screenshot_2023_01_13_at_11_59_28_AM_696e176cc1.png)



The same can be said for the **discussion forums**, which can be used to discuss possible quests. Furthermore, because these forums can be **token gated** (as is demonstrated in an image above), only those that might be eligible to participate in particular quests would be able to see and participate these particular discussion forums/channels. This would simultaneously **streamline the discussion** and prevent members from seeing messages about quests that are **irrelevant to them**. 










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DAO Manager Use Cases: Gaming Guilds

The DAO Manager can support Gaming Guilds in Web3 by helping manage sub-guilds, rewarding members for contributions and in-game progress, facilitating inter-guild discussions, and managing in-game assets and payments.These features are meant to aid in the collaborative efforts of Gaming Guilds to mutually benefit from virtual economies.



In Game Theory, a **Schelling Point** (named after economist Thomas Schelling)  is a solution that emerges as a result of individuals independently choosing the same option or behaviour without any explicit communication or coordination. **Essentially, the default option**. Schelling’s initial experiment when postulating the concept was to ask students in NYC the time and place they’d meet if they had to meet a stranger in the city. One would expect people not to have a common answer, but there was one: **noon at Grand Central**. 

Before we understand why becoming a Schelling Point would be crucial for our platform, let’s understand why it is such a significant concept in general. This has everything to do with the relationship network effects have with Schelling Points. 


Now, Schelling Points and Network Effects can interact positively to in a dynamic which strengthens both of the two.  Let’s talk about the positive relationship. For example, consider a social networking site (Twitter would be a good example here given its importance within Web3). As more people within the space use Twitter, being plugged into Crypto Twitter becomes increasingly important. As has now become the case, it is the default option to keep up to speed with the frenetic pace of crypto. As it becomes the default option, the importance of being on Twitter only increases, which of course increases its network effect, which in turn further cements its role as the default option. 


This importance would persist even if Twitter’s UX got substantially worse somehow (and is indeed the reason there hasn’t been any significant exodus from Twitter despite many decrying its new owner on Twitter itself). **Therefore, we can see how a network effects create Schelling Points, and the status of an entity as a Schelling Points further increases the network effects, thereby creating a self-sustaining cycle of growth**. 



On the other hand, Schelling Points and Network Effects can also prevent themselves from occurring in a broader context. For example, if there are multiple sites with disparate functionalities that are **nevertheless serving the same broader purpose**, each site may be a potential Schelling Point for users for that **specific use case**, and accordingly develop a network effect-Schelling Point growth loop. However, precisely because of the strength of the network effect for each particular function (such as Discord for Web3 community management and Gnosis for multi-sigs), platforms that subsume all these features under one roof would have a harder time becoming Schelling Points with respect to becoming the ‘default’ apps for users’ overall Web3 experiences. 

As you may have realized by now, this is a problem that amalgamating platforms like our DAO Manager may be confronted with. 

#### So how do we plan to combat it?

Through a staggered approach towards **what kind of Schelling Point** we are trying to be. **When and what** we trying to be the default option for, and how becoming a Schelling Point on different steps of the product’s journey would result in it becoming the default option that subsumes every significant vertical of functionality: **communication, governance, contribution management, and reputation management**. 



Firstly, we would become the **default option for individual users’ attention**. As of now, Web3 is still an incredibly nascent space, and the fragmentation of tooling that is available in the market is exemplary of the same. This is because whilst tools like Discord, Snapshot and Gnosis are indeed default options for their individual purposes, there are still no such all in one tools for overall DAO management that attained the network effect required to make them Schelling Points. On the most fundamental of levels, what this entails is that the **end user’s experience is sub-optimal**. 


The context switching that using Discord, Discourse, Snapshot, and Gnosis to accomplish the same overall goals is self-evidently an impediment to efficiency. Furthermore, this impediment to efficiency and user experience is for existing or already onboarded users. For onboarding new users, such tool fragmentation poses arguably a more significant problem for the space at large as it dissuades new users from joining the space because of the increased barrier to entry it entails. 


Therefore, by integrating platforms like Snapshot and Gnosis within our DAO Manager, we are simultaneously leveraging their **familiarity, technology, and ease of use** whilst  removing **context switching** by creating a one stop shop that can become new users’ **portal to Web3**.

We wouldn’t be supplanting the tools (such as Gnosis and Snapshot) that this space is built on, but rather synthesizing with them in a manner that makes them more accessible, especially to those not already immersed in the space. What this means is that we are solving a problem for DAO contributors and members without detracting from the experience in any way.

So what does this have to do with Schelling Points? Well, by creating a one stop shop that brings the same functionality, familiarity, and most importantly, **backwards integration with existing communities and tools**, we will become the default option for individual users’ attention-a Schelling Point. As users’ screen time on our platform increases, (driven by nothing other than an enhanced Web3 user experience), it is apparent that our **discovery** tool will be used more: 


![Screenshot 2023-01-11 at 8.34.40 PM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1673449487/Screenshot_2023_01_11_at_8_34_40_PM_c5f1cd90d0.png)

The rationale for this is as simple as the fact that people will simply be exposed to the discovery tool more by virtue of increased screen time. This will be a particular advantage for **newly onboarded users in the space**, as they are far likelier to enjoy the simpler and easier UX we provide, in addition to needing the Discovery tool more. 

So, **new users** will be likely to use our platform as their ‘home base’ or default option for wading into the DAO ecosystem.

 Now, why would new users in the space specifically opt for our Discovery tool?  Because one of the biggest problems with the way with communication across Web3 is that it is either completely **open and thus disorganized** (such as is the case on Twitter) or that it is is completely **siloed** (such as is the case with Discord). What this means is that while **particular projects’ community members have no difficulty communicating with each other**, there is no means through which they can organically find other projects in the same ecosystem.
 
 This is a highly significant and yet often overlooked problem. If I join a community from a particular ecosystem, it should make it likelier that I will organically be able to learn about other products or communities within the same ecosystem-but this is not usually the case. While more acquainted users in the space would be more likely to know how to navigate Crypto Twitter and use tools like Dexscanner (to see tokens with high volumes on different ecosystems), this would clearly not be the case for new users in the space. 



#### Context Switching

Essentially, by solving the problem of **context switching**, we would incentivize existing users to use our platform as their ‘home base’ for whichever communities they participate in. This would then increase the likelihood that those unacquainted with Web3 would be onboarded to the platform (through organic word of mouth) , thereby increasing the use of the Discovery tool because of more eyeballs on the platform. Given the combined utility for existing Web3 participants (in terms of operational efficiency) and for new Web3 participants (to find new communities), our platform would help communities **onboard new members** and also **increase the engagement** of the existing ones. This would incentivize communities to onboard themselves and their members onto the platform. 


In turn, as more communities join the platform, the role of the platform as a Schelling Point for individual users’ attention will be strengthened. This will help give the platform a position as a default option for **community discovery**. Because discovery is the aspect of Web3 that perhaps involves the **most context switching** (as there is currently no tailormade Schelling Point for it), the user experience with regards to discovery would greatly benefit  from the platform. Therefore, Discovery, (alongside the removal of context switching in other verticals) will consequently feed back into the status as a Schelling Point for attention. 

Now, in a scenario in which users both **discover new communities** and have an improved user experience (because of the elimination of context switching) on our platform, it is likely that they will spend more time on our platform relative to other ones. **Therefore, they will engage more with communities which utilize our platform as opposed to ones that don’t**. 

This will then incentivize new communities to onboard themselves onto our platform. In turn, this will then further cement the platform’s role as a default option for both discovery and day to day community participation. Of course, this will then incentivize users to spend more of their individual time on the platform, which will then cause more communities to onboard themselves onto the platform: further solidifying the platform’s role as the default option for participation in Web3. 









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Gradated Schelling Points: A Springboard for Growth

More than anything, DAOs are a social technology. This simultaneously emphasizes the need for new contributors in the ecosystem and also the more than sub-optimal user experience that currently exists. Given that it largely stems from the intimidating array of platforms required for people to effectively participate in DAOs, this is a problem that is easily solved, and it’s exactly what we’ve set out to do. 

Let’s see how we’re approaching it. 

Jack Dorsey recently wrote about how to have a truly democratic, censorship-free medium of expression on the internet, the world needs [a free and open protocol for social media](https://www.getrevue.co/profile/jackjack/issues/a-native-internet-protocol-for-social-media-1503112?via=twitter-card&client=DesktopWeb&element=issue-card). 

Dorsey’s vision is based off of three factors:
1. Social media must be resilient to corporate and government control
2. Only the original author should be able to delete what they produce and distribute
3.  Algorithmic choice is the best implementation tool for moderation


These factors may seem obvious. But the fact is, all three must be fulfilled for a truly free, uncensored and equitable social media platform. One that empowers conversation and maintains accountability. 

Given that the problem is the existence of any kind of centralized entity and not which centralized entity (in Dorsey’s own words as well), a decentralized organization would be the only recourse. If an organization is  ‘based’ out of any country on the planet, the country’s regulations would inevitably apply. To truly resist governmental control, the underlying infrastructure cannot be under any government jurisdiction. It’s a similar argument for corporations, or individual actors like Musk-regardless of how benevolent or astute they may be. 


Whenever power rests in a few hands, no matter who it is, public conversation will inevitably gets fractured. This fracture then  leads to more control exerted by corporations and governments in the name of reining in ‘bad actors’. The problem isn’t any particular individual or entity, it’s the very notion of **unilateral control**.  

With regards to the second factor, Dorsey believes that content takedowns and account suspensions should simply not be possible. Any content produced and published by anybody should be permanently available until they decide to pull it down themselves. Dorsey argues that censorship complicates important context, learning, and enforcement against illegal activity. While he acknowledges that there are problems with this stance, he argues for it to be a  great starting point that will allow for far better solutions than the current path we are on.

The third and last factor of his vision is with regard to moderation. He argues against centralized content moderation and in favor of ranking and relevance based algorithms that sort via localized implementation. Clicking on the ‘follow’ button should deliver every bit of content from that account on your feed and all other content is picked through a relevant lens that the individual predetermines. He refers to this as a default ‘G-rated’ algorithm. Crucially, these algorithms ought to be open source and transparent. 



The thing is, such protocols already have substantial precedent. 

#### Hyperstructures

Dialing it down to the basics, **[Hyperstructures](https://jacob.energy/hyperstructures.html)** are crypto protocols that can run free and forever, without maintenance, interruption or intermediaries. 


Here's a few characteristics that exemplify a hyperstructure:



- **Permissionless**
Hyperstructures are universally accessible and censorship resistant by nature. No builder or user can be deplatformed.


- **Unstoppable**
A hyperstructure can run for as long as the underlying blockchain exists. It simply can't be stopped by anyone. 

- **Free**
The protocol does not charge any fees of its own, with users only having to pay the network gas fees. 

- **Valuable**
Hyperstructures while not valuable in the traditional building a company sense can still be used by owners to accrue and exit value. 


Salient examples include Uniswap and Aave. 

Moreover, there are some examples that exist within the social media realm as well: 

[Lens Protocol](lens.xyz) is a composable and decentralized social graph. It lets creators maintain complete control over their content, even enabling them self-sovereignty in the monetization of their social media content. 

![image2.jpg](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1673423412/image2_8d30db8521.jpg)


**[Farcaster](farcaster.xyz)** is another example; of a ‘sufficiently decentralized’ social network. It’s an open protocol that supports many clients. Users are free to move to any client within the network and developers can build clients on top of the protocol forever.

Desmos is a proof-of-stake blockchain protocol on top of which social networks can be built. Specifically designed for social networking apps and projects, the protocol utilizes game theory and on-chain governance to decentralize the business model of social networks and prioritize in the users’ best interests. 

![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1673423414/image1_90758a9658.png)

#### DAOs & Hyperstructures

Now, with something like a social media hyperstructure, it is self-evident that there ought to be some sort of governing body. Given the dire need to prevent unipolar governance for such an endeavour, DAO based governance seems like a logical choice. 

Nevertheless, DAO based governance, as it currently stands, is not up to scratch to govern something as significant as a large-scale social media protocol. 

Let’s have a look at another potential method:  **on-chain reputation based voting**. Consider every time you join a DAO, you’re asked to create/enter a DID (Decentralized Identfiier). This DID constantly tracks your contribution to the DAO, including votes, operations, suggestions etc. If you take out time to contribute to another DAO, the DID records that activity too, increasing the diversity of your data, and subsequently your reputation. Indeed, existing systems such as ENS could be amenable as well. 


This DID can be linked to your reputation, denoting various kinds of qualitative factors about you-your expertise in certain realms, certain matters, and perhaps most importantly, an assessment of your political polarization (if any) based upon an open source algorithm that determines it. 

#### Summary

Dorsey’s  vision for a democratic, censorship-free social media platform is based on three key principles: social media must be resistant to corporate and government control; only the original author should be able to delete or censor their own content; and algorithmic moderation is the best tool for moderating content. 


This article looked at how Dorsey's vision is essentially that of a hyperstructure, built on a native internet protocol  for social media. Hyperstructures are free, valuable, and neutral by nature, making them excellent tools to build any public infrastructure on. Several entities have started working on building hyperstructures for similar purposes. We also looked at how DAOs can be used to govern these hyperstructures, with a primer on how effective decentralization can be achieved by leveraging voting tools like quadratic voting and SBT enabled on-chain reputation management. 

Like all things Web3, native protocols and their governing methods are rapidly evolving. But as the technology matures, adoption increases and more experimentation happens, DAOs are bound to redefine the way we work. 








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Permissionless Networks: A Hyperstructure for Social Media

Jack Dorsey recently wrote an essay about his ideal vision of social media, and how he thinks that Twitter in its current form is exemplary of how it ought not to be done. 

We explore his alternative vision, and an alternative means for how it could be governed. 

While DAOs are going to be the future of work, there is currently a large amount of fragmentation and lack of product optimization within the ecosystem that leaves a lot to be desired regarding the end user experience-for admins and contributors alike. A noteworthy factor here is the fact that this is not the result of hard technological barriers; it is the result of a lag in **social technology**. The fact that virtual doctors’ appointments only gained significant traction after COVID despite their possibility and advantages existing before it is a testament to that fact. Therefore, the problems we will discuss in this piece

Indeed, it is requisite that these problems are solved before the space is in a position to be able to gain mainstream adoption.  Let’s explore a few of these problems and see how they can be solved with DaoLens’ Contribution Management Engine. 


#### 1: Lack of Gating and Permissioning in Discussions and Proposals

Currently, there are two primary avenues through which DAO communities coordinate and deliberate collectively: Discord and DAO specific forums (like [Optimism’s forum](http://gov.optimism.io)). 

Each of these tools has its own issues pertaining to the lack of gating within deliberation; **a tool which reaches a happy medium is needed**. 


Firstly, Discord **does not have static communication channels** at all. Of course, one can search for and pin specific messages or create announcement channels, but as anyone who has tried to use Discord for deliberation would attest, this makeshift mechanism is far from optimal. Pinned messages (by definition) only allow for one message at a time, and announcement channels do not allow for non-admins/mods to discuss the matter at hand. 

Secondly, while they provide static communication channels, **DAO specific forums do not have tiered/fragmented gating.**

This leads to two problems: 

 I: **Information overflow for contributors.**
As each contributor has the ability to deliberate upon (and are thus shown) **every** proposal, forums are often firehoses of information. This makes it harder for individuals to use their best judgement and can dissuade governance participation. 

II: **Imperfect knowledge**


It is perhaps self-evident that people will have differing knowledge about different domains, and thus that they will have differing expertise for various governance proposals. 

Currently, governance forums do not account for this at all. 

Therefore, whilst Discord enables gated communication, **it does not provide adequate static repositories of information.**

On the other hand,  forums provide static repositories of information but **do not allow for post specific gating.**

DaoLens’ DAO Manager enables both static discussions alongside fragmented deliberation and discussion. This can be on the basis of NFTs, SBTs, and even tasks completed. 

![Activity based rewards.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436431/Activity_based_rewards_02b3509964.png)


![Forum gating.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436433/Forum_gating_8178b0be12.png)


By enabling this, DaoLens gives DAOs the power to have more **efficient communication** in addition to **improved collective decision making because of a streamlined information flow**. 


#### 2: Importance of Tight Knit Discussions


 A corollary to both the aforementioned problems is the fact that **dynamic discussions are hard to keep up with** because of the pace of conversation. Group chats are obviously hard to keep up with, and most of the time, people don’t scroll up to read whatever messages they missed. This takes away from how **intimate and tightly knit** the discussions could potentially be. 


This can take away from contributors’ **depth of knowledge**, as they get flooded with a barrage of information that may pertain to multiple matters. While it is possible (and commonplace) to utilize multiple channels within servers, the fundamental problem with dynamic chats still exists-it's not too common to scroll up and read all the preceding messages when you miss a few hundred messages on a group chat. 

Furthermore, within forums, non-gated and non fragmented discussions hinder the **development of social familiarity** within larger DAOs, which in turn hinders the crucial emergence of sub communities within the larger community. This is a simple result of numbers; most personal relationships made within such a context are made through private messages. 

Thinking about how decisions are made at conventional companies would exemplify why a degree of closeness is essential with regards to effective deliberation (and thus effective operation) of any DAO. The very existence of organizational charts within companies-whether a seed funded startup or FAANG is testament to this fact. Imagine if your job was to make a small number of high quality decisions, but the people you interacted with to bounce ideas and opinions off changed everyday. This is effectively how DAO governance works in any large DAO that has a high governance participation rate. **Who someone is** is important as well; not just **what they are saying**. People’s intonation, perspective, and expertise are things one ought to know before interpreting and processing them. 

Therefore, it is apparent that there is a need for **tight-knit discussions** for effective deliberation. 

Given that DaoLens’ tool removes dynamic and ungated discussions, it is also able to enable more tight knit discussions because of the aforementioned reasons: static and gated discussions aid ease of conversation and also social familiarity. 


![Tight knit tasks.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436429/Tight_knit_tasks_24425fd63e.png)

#### 3: Need For Cohesive Workflow and Information Management

In addition to better means of **deliberation**, DAOs also need tighter and more cohesive means of execution. 

This has to do with the high levels of fragmentation within the essential tools required for project management within Web3. Discussions, voting, payments, project management and information flows are all done  on separate platforms.

DaoLens integrates these into one app; leading to the near elimination of context switching.

![Inbuilt Payments.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436432/Inbuilt_Payments_fd32603bb3.png)

 As anyone that switches through many apps works, it is a boon to be able to do so on one platform. This problem is multiplied when managing a project in a group. Managing multiple projects, each with multiple people, on multiple  tools, is clearly not the most efficient way of execution. Let’s dive into how these functions are implemented on our tool: 

i: **Information Flow**

As of now, keeping up with any particular DAO’s calendar/list of announcements is quite cumbersome. This is compounded by the fact that there is no ‘standard’ means of doing so, meaning that one must be acquainted with each particular DAO’s specific way of doing things. For example, some might rely more on Discord-through an announcements channel, pinned messages, or just mere messages from the admins. Others might use Twitter more-either through spaces or simple Tweets. Evidently, this implies that one must either use multiple platforms to keep up to date with whatever number of communities they are a part of. This is both an annoyance and invariably leads to people missing out on sometimes vital information. 

DaoLens’ tool solves this issue by using a ‘one stop shop’ including an **events feed, discussion forum, governance proposals, and a bounty board**. Furthermore, **voting and payments** are also integrated into DaoLens’ platform. Contributors no longer need to trawl through Twitter, Discord, and individual forums to be able to know the happenings of their DAO and to find work. The tool also includes the ability to upload certain **documents** and **news** pertaining to any bounties, proposals or events, unlocking the ability to **contextualise the nature of the action at hand**. 

They will also not have to jump to another app in the case that they are coordinating with a small group of people on a particular project, to vote, or to pay each other. 


#### 4: Automation In Tooling

The two primary tenets upon which DAOs are built (indeed, eponymously) are those of **decentralization** and **autonomous operation**. While the current state of the ecosystem leaves a lot to be desired with regards to these tenets, tooling in particular can help augment the latter. Let’s dive into some potential ways in which DAO operations can be further automated: 
**
**Automated creation of proposals based on engagement**


![Automated discussions.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436430/Automated_discussions_fc73214e74.png)

There are two aspects of discussion posts that are easy to glean using code (and thus automate): the title itself, and the engagement it gets. Therefore, it is tenable to create a mechanism through which discussion posts that are phrased a certain way by the original poster and get a requisite amount of engagement automatically become proposals. This brings three advantages: 

1. **Discussion and proposals get amalgamated**: 

Because there is no longer a need for participants/admins to **manually** create formal proposals predicated upon, discussion and proposals are no longer two discrete verticals within governance, leading to more efficient management. Furthermore, each DAO (and SubDAO/committee) could set their own parameters for triggering proposals from discussion posts. 

2. **Funnel for proposal creation**

 Currently, a lot of DAOs have no requisite parameters or threshold for members to create proposals. This often leads to misguided proposals that do not and should not gain traction, but nevertheless waste members’ time who read them and clutter every member’s screen -worsening information overflow. Through automation, people could be free to post discussion posts, but these would only be made into proposals based upon a requisite amount of engagement or upvotes. 
Then, these selected posts could appear at the top of people’s screens or in a different tab altogether, signaling their relative relevance compared to the other posts. 


3. **Objective standardization for proposal creation**: 

Automation brings another benefit; code is unbiased. By using transparent code for proposal creation (that is communally agreed upon), admin bias could not play a role in which proposals come to the forefront.


#### 5: Integrated Voting and Discussing


An aspect of current DAO voting is that voting and discussion do not usually occur in the same place. What makes this particularly peculiar is the fact that the integration of discussion and voting is something we have seen on the internet for almost two decades and is one of the most used features on the internet in large. Therefore, it is apparent that as the space matures, voting and discussion will occur in the same place-mere contextualisation on the voting page will not suffice. Furthermore, it is obvious that people having to pay to vote will not last: **voting must be gas less**. 


Indeed, even the largest voting tool in use today, Snapshot, utilises **off-chain voting using wallet signatures**. Nevertheless, its votes are easy to verify and hard to contest, and the results are stored in a decentralized manner utilizing IPFS. DaoLens’ DAO Manager will imminently include this feature. By integrating Snapshot into the platform, our tool will allow people to vote without any fee, adjacent to the discussion post itself. Just like anyone that has used Reddit or any forum is used to. This will lead to increased **participation in governance**. Despite it being a relatively tiny step to simply click on a link to vote on a matter, it is just more intuitive to click on an arrow right next to the header of a post and will indubitably lead a higher percentage of individuals reading the discussion posts on the actual vote. 

![Off Chain Votign.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436431/Off_Chain_Votign_2c0246fc48.png)






























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DAO Manager Use Cases: An Overview

Our DAO manager tool is an all in one solution that removes fragmentation in DAO members' workflows. 

We elaborate on what this entails. 


The existence of separate channels within servers on Discord demonstrates one thing: the need for smaller and discrete contexts for both- different topics of conversation, and different groups of people. Nevertheless, these groups are almost never gated in any manner that goes beyond a binary ‘yes or no’. 

This means that there are effectively **no  qualitative means of distinction between community members that can be automatically created** (other than NFT ownership, of course). We say ‘automatic’ here because of course admins can assign roles on their subjective volition, but this essentially defeats the purpose of relying on Web3 infrastructure at all. 
By using reputation based **SBT gating**, channels/sub-communities can be created without having to rely on manual approval, which is both liable to bias and inefficient with regards to time. 

Furthermore, this gating is not at all prevalent within governance forums in any shape or form. 

Therefore, every post is liable to be flooded with members of any kind-or even those that aren’t members at all! Self-evidently, this often leads to **scattered discussions, with individuals who either do not have the requisite  expertise or real affinity for DAO’s** being able to participate in each and every discussion. In addition to the obvious problem of those without any stake (whether literal or ideological) in the DAO having the ability to participate in governance (which renders forums incredibly susceptible to Sybil attacks). Furthermore, reputation based gating allows for forum posts to be gated according to expertise levels. As a corollary, such gating could also potentially be used to gate certain voting. To clarify, the focus of this ought not to be to gate on the basis of having a higher investment in the DAO (although that would also be tenable), but rather on the basis of relative expertise on different categories of discussion/voting. 

![29.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671509459/29_4d0363c82b.png)

The same problem exists for bounties; without any form of gating, anybody can submit them. This is of course very much in the spirit of bounties, but for ones that are highly technical, it would be beneficial to be able to gate using on-chain reputation so that the average quality of submissions is higher (thereby saving time for the evaluators). The same  can be said for tasks, but perhaps even more so, as tasks would likely be assigned to only one individual, thereby increasing the importance of timely and quality work. 

With the DAO manager you can gate your **tasks, bounties, forums, channels, and discussions with tokens**, NFTs and on-chain reputation:

![Screenshot 2022-12-20 at 2.40.27 PM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671527732/Screenshot_2022_12_20_at_2_40_27_PM_274786739e.png)

Want to built a robust gating for your community? [Let's talk!](https://daolens.typeform.com/to/UMoMixKf)

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Community Streamlining with Multi-Modal Gating

Looking for a way to create exclusive, qualified communities within your Discord server or governance forum?  Use tokens, NFTs, and on-chain reputation to gate channels, discussions, forums, tasks, and bounties. Streamline your community management and ensure that your members are engaged and qualified to participate in important discussions and tasks.

#### How did you get involved in crypto? 

**Devika**:  So one of the first questions I wanted to ask you is what made you choose crypto? Why not AI/ML for example? 


**Elijah:** I did come from a data science background. My background is in molecular biology, which is also what I went to school for my PhD. So, I started a research lab studying cannabis and genomics, which focused on developing new technologies for the cannabis and diagnostic space. Essentially, genetic testing to understand more about the plant. So our focus for the last 5 years has been to democratize access to this technology. 

In this journey, we’ve been enabling customers to generate a lot of data for themselves. We act as consultants, and so our customers retain full ownership of their data. It’s kind of like hiring a designer; you get the logo at the end and it's yours. Similarly, in this situation, you get the data and it's yours. So this has created sort of data ‘silos’. In the effort to advance science and my own research, i’ve done a ton of experiments that I know have been done. 

However, no one published the data: there could have been a lack of financial incentive, publication bias, lack of access to a platform, etc. There’s a lot of reasons  information is isn’t shared or kept secret (for example, to patent something down the line). Web3 changes this model.  It enables people to **monetize their data however they see fit whilst simultaneously maintaining ownership and provenance of it.** Currently, the paradigm is ‘iNFTs’ (intellectual property NFTs).  So that’s where Cannabis Genome DAO came from! So that’s what we’re trying to do with the DAO, a **tokenized data marketplace** where a small fee goes back to the DAO and that funds the community through further development, grants, etc. 

#### Ownership and Decentralization

**Devika:** Thank you! I feel like a lot of people don’t understand the value in ownership and decentralization. Would you like to expand on that? 


**Elijah**: So to me the fundamental part of Web3 is the ability to flip the ownership and governance model for so many substantial things that people are interested in-whether a protocol, a community, or the idea of sharing data! So the ability to **participate and own **something. So it’s kind of like the gig economy except instead of getting paid a few bucks an hour (like for Uber or Lyft) you actually get governance tokens and ownership where you get the ability to direct where the community is going. 

#### Transition from Delta Leaf Labs to Cannabis Genome DAO 


**Devika:** You recently tweeted about your desire to quit as CEO of Leaf Labs and work full-time in Cannabis Genome DAO. I’d love to hear about that. 


**Elijah:** So it’s been a hard decision. My joruney at Delta Leaf has been extremely rewarding and challenging. Launching a startup bootstrapped (I literally converted my bedroom into a lab!). So after grad school I needed to make some money, so I switched to diagnostics. Of course, it was quite building a biotech company from scratch without investors! It’s been a while, so it’s hard for me to come up with new ideas and things like that after so long. It does feel like the natural progression as well-my goal is to decentralize the lab’s governance too. In fact, I recently wrote a piece on Mirror thorugh Cannabis Genome DAO which discussed the possibilities of the DAO acquiring the lab. 

#### Dealing with Ambiguity In The Space

**Devika**: Well, good luck! How are you dealing with the ambiguity and skepticism around the space at large? How does it feel to transition your entire career to such a nebulous space?


**Elijah**: It’s been super exciting. I’ve met nothing but awesome people in the space across the space in the past  year or so. I got my start with Bankless DAO, whose contributors are invariably consummate professionals. The connections and ideas I made and learned there informed a lot of Cannabis Genome DAO. 

#### Passion For Cannabis

**Devika:** Where does your passion for cannabis come from? 


**Elijah**: Personal experience; I’ve been a cannabis consumer and advocate for 20 years now. It helped me level out my angst and focus during my teenage years. It really did give me direction for my career. So when I was in my final year of my PhD, Proposition 64 was passed in California (to legalize recreational cannabis), so I thought it was an opportune moment to leverage what i’ve learned over the years in an industry i’m passionate about. 

#### Pain Points in Running Cannabis Genome DAO


**Devika**: What were some of the pain points you felt in operating Cannabis Genome DAO in terms of onboarding and contribution? How sporadic was it? 


**Elijah:** This was definitely one of the bigger ones. We have multiple levels of domain expertise that we’re trying to bridge to a wider audience. One is the cannabis space, which of course has a lot of specific knowledge. But then there’s also the scientific aspects, which includes data science and genomics. And finally, the Web3 space itself! 

So merging this educational path for participation has been quite challenging; onboarding is a huge challenge, it’s hard to get people to easily use a new technology. So that’s also why we initially chose NEAR Protocol, given their focus on an accessible front-end for onboarding. 


#### Getting Exposure


**Devika:** How are you going about spreading the word? Whether you’re looking for contributors, admins,  community managers. Are you doing it on Twitter, Discord, where are you guys living and existing?


**Elijah**: Mostly Twitter right now, given that we’re still in the early stages. The people we’re trying to reach out to from the cannabis industry requires having the tech in place and the onboarding rails. So it’s mostly been focused on Twitter and other DAO communities, trying to find builders who understand the concept of **build now token later **and **Retroactive Public Goods Funding**. So that’s where we’re focused, but the majority of the cannabis industry is focused on Instagram. So we’re focused on bridging that. 


**Devika:** How are you dealing with the prevalent negative connotation behind crypto (that it’s not going anywhere, etc.)? Especially since you have basically bet your life on the space, and it’s not a side hustle. 


**Elijah**: Well, luckily, in the cannabis space, people see the value of it. Given that cannabis is still federally illegal, banking regulations are still a nightmare-**the cannabis industry doesn’t have banking**. So the crypto industry is a solution to that, and people see the value right away. **The issue becomes more operational, then. "How do I use this safely?"** So a lot of it is just education and accountability; getting people to do those first few transactions, understanding what a liquidity pool is, what staking is, etc. 


**Devika:** A lot of the times people are speculatively minded, thinking they’ll buy DAO tokens and flip them for a profit later; not exactly focused on building. What are your thoughts on that, especially given your ‘build first token later’ approach? 


**Elijah**: I think switching to the paradigm of providing value first and getting paid later (for example, through bounties) has been extremely significant. The fact that we're in a bear market right now helps too; a bear market is a builder's market. 












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Cannabis & DAOs: A Conversation with Elijah from Cannabis Genome DAO

Dr. Elijah Spina (aka Flowscience) is the CEO of Delta Leaf Labs and has also started Cannabis Genome DAO, which incentivizes open source cannabis research. 

#### Introduction:

**Devika:**
How did you get introduced to crypto? 


**Laurence:**I heard about Bitcoin in 2013 and was instantly intrigued-I loved the name and was already a Computer Science geek!  I was already dabbling in machine language, and I had the realization that we need money to be controlled by technology, not old people and governments!


#### What is Longevity? 


**Devika:**To evoke the voice of the audience, why would you want to work on longevity? Given that some people might say it’s ‘gods plan’ and all that. 


**Laurence:**People said this about everything-even antibiotics. It’s unnatural! It’s going to increase the population too much and put a strain on resources! Nobody wants cholera to come back? Even cancer was seen this way-as death by natural causes. But then we started seeing the link between DNA mutations and cancer. Cancer can be fought. We gotta look at aging the same way-a lot of bad things are natural, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do something about it.  


#### Story Behind VitaDAO


**Devika:** Thanks! I’d love for you to talk about VitaDAO. The start, the story, and the journey. 


**Laurence:** So i’d started to notice an intersection between the top Key Opinion Leaders in crypto and ideas in longevity and biotech. Vitalik and Balaji were two, for example. It does make sense, they’re individuals who are futuristic in their thinking and are generally dismissed by the incumbents. How I’d wanted to do it initially was to create a non-profit DAO, create a bonding curve, and give money away to labs that are lesser known. It just made sense to give a crypto-native way to support longevity research. 


VitaDAO, then, was born from Molecule’s IPNFT framework, which enables it to have a treasury backed by real assets: IP, real drugs that DAO owns through NFTs that represent the legal contract. I joined Vita a few months before launch. We had a fair auction for the token, with no presales or pre-allocation. After everyone received their tokens, we had a vote (on the budget and so on), and it’s been around a year now. 


**Devika:** So initially, you started VitaDAO to be able to fund these lesser known labs? 


**Laurence:** That was the way  we were trying to do it before VitaDAO. With VitaDAO, we were trying to simply buy assets or IP and funding research projects in that way. The idea is that at some point, these assets (like patents) will be spun into startups of their own. These would be conventional startups, of course, raising money from VCs and what not. However, unlike other areas (such as crypto itself), within science, you usually raise money through government grants, and you can only raise money after your idea has been fleshed out. Of course, this is not how stuff is done within tech. This is similar to how programmers used to operate in the 90s and 80s; so I think the biotech industry is ripe for disruption the way tech did at that time. 
 
 
 **Devika:** What was the date VitaDAO was born? 
 
 
 **Laurence:** June 18th (2021) was when we started the auction and june 23rd was when we ended ther auction. The smart contract was deployed sometime in August. 
 
 
 **Devika:** At that time did you expect your community to become so big? Given that the space is still a niche. But today you have 14,000 followers on Twitter with a robust community working towards such an important goal. Do you think about that? 
 
 
 **Laurence:** Well, by now I thought we’d have a billion dollars in the treasury…Of course I am not always realistic in my hopes! I’m definitely humbled by what's happened  so quickly though; the space has grown so much with DeSci. We definitely have a good position in this. The inflection point is in front of us! The world will realize soon. We’ve proven it too, having funded 14-15 projects, and deployed almost $3M and have a lot more to deploy. 
 
 
 **Devika:** What even is realistic! What’s realistic for you could be outrageous for me. Really, it’s about the audacity to have such a big dream in the first place. Is crypto even realistic in the literal sense? 
 
 
#### Pfizer Partnership

**Devika:** So you guys recently had a partnership with Pfizer; obviously huge news! Talk about that please, how did it happen? 


**Laurence:** Honestly, they came on our Discord and meetings and started talking to us. Someone from Pfizer Ventures wanted to get involved and started asking good questions and providing value on our governance forums. So we allowed  our first institutional fundraise. For institutions like Pfizer to contribute to VitaDAO, not only do they have to contribute capital, but also actually contribute as members of the DAO. It can’t be passive, since our token isn’t a security.


**Devika**: I’d love to ask you, what’s your mission personally? What drives you? 


**Laurence:** I really love life, I want to do everything that's needed and possible.  I’m really curious to see the future and quite optimistic, so I want to prolong our lives as much as possible. Nevertheless, i’m realistic, so i’m trying to use a scientific approach to do this-working on aging is the answer. 

**Devika:** What would you say made you passionate about Web3 and especially its intersection with science? 

**Laurence:** With science, you need to rely on government grants. Imagine if crypto needed government grants instead of just VCs and individuals providing the funds. This is the future of science. Even though its dismissed by the incumbents at the funding agencies. We should prevent, and not just treat. We want to create our own incentive mechanisms for 
i-**Funding**
 ii-**Execution** (removing red tape)
 iii-**Publishing**: Journals still requite review pre-publication. I’ve seen delays of until a year between papers being submitted and published, caused by lengthy peer review processes. To this end, we are trying to revamp how we do peer review, utilizing mechanisms similar to Hackernews and Reddit. This is called Longevity Decentralized Review. This will be a panel that actually pays people to review and be editors, as opposed to the usual way in which no one is paid, researchers review other people’s research for free, and receive government funding for their own research. 
 
 
**Devika:** I think what you’re doing is really great, and that that’s exactly what Web3 is about-ownership and self custody! 

#### Why work specifically around DAOs? 

 **Devika**: Why did you specifically choose DAOs to work in? 
 
 **Laurence:** Because of our vision of doing science in a decentralized way, questioning how things are done, and having a quick iteration adn experimentation cycle and not being constrained by any centralized regulator. So, I see a lot of hindrances to the longevity movement, so i’m hoping that in this space, we can thwart some of these hindrances because of its permissionless and open nature.
 
 
**Devika**: While it’s definitely exciting that DAOs are permissionless andopen, people still aren’t being able to go full time in DAOs, since most DAOs aren’t that well funded, and of course, people need money. Even if they are well funded (because people are motivated by the mission), it’s always harder for poeple to be committed to something full time as compared to part time. Did you face these issues?

**Laurence:**I’d say no. Before we launched, we already had a great team of people that were excited about the vision. We were also lucky enough to do it without having too many constraints. I’m quite happy to say that a lot of people are really intrinsically motivated, and the scalability and permissionless definitely helps a lot -especially with dealflow! The nature of the work is amenable to part time work too-the professors that scrutinize our work for example just need to be paid on a piecemeal basis. They get paid for each review that they do. 

#### Passions Apart From Crypto


**Devika:** Apart from crypto and DAOs, what are some of your side passions or projects? 

**Laurence:** None that I spend a lot of time on, I guess! I really love having a lot of geeky conversations on things like Effective Altruism and existential risks in general-especially after we cure aging, which is a 100% chance that we die! I’m also interested in personal health and biohacking, which isn’t exactly a part of longevity and lacks concrete approvals, but i’m still looking at it. I think another piece i’m really interested in is mind augmentation and brain machine interfaces, and transcending and preparing for the technological singularity that I think is coming. I’m also a burner and interested in Burning Man and exploring consciousness and psychedelics and all that! 

**Devika:** So have you ever been to Burning Man or something similar? 

**Laurence**: Yes, but I went for the wrong reasons. After going, I connected with people, which was actually the spark that made me realize what’s important in life and pushed me towards longevity! 

#### Current painpoints at VitaDAO

**Devika**: Given the rapidly changing and nebulous nature of the space, what would you say are the major pain points you’ve faced at VitaDAO? 

**Laurence**: I think scaling, especially around part-time contributors and how we can enable people to have agency and do a lot of things without needing approval or permission. We do try to maintain a flat organizational structure. Even though i’m the steward of the dealflow group, that doesn’t necessarily mean i’m anyone’s ‘boss’. 
We definitely need more people that are intrinsically motivated and are willing to grind, even full time. 

Furthermore, we need a lot of help in spinning out the projects we’ve funded, some are already ready to be spun into proper startups and operated like real companies in biotech. We need experienced people to do that! 

#### How can someone join VitaDAO? 

**Devika**: How can someone apply to VitaDAO? 

**Laurence:** On our Discord. We have some general channels; just don’t be a stranger. Get involved, show that you care. Come up with ideas. Make it easy for us to empower you to add value. 

#### Perspective on people's negative views on crypto

**Devika**: Given that you’ve been involved in the space for a while, i’d be interested to hear your take on the negative press and connotations that crypto itself brings out.


**Laurence**: Well, we’re heads down and building. We’re creating value that will flow back to the treasury. So, all these thins don’t really matter as much. Of course if people start seeing deeper, our token will increase in value and we’ll be able to fundraise in the billions.  So of course, it does helpa  lot if people open their eyes. Nonetheless, we’re doing good work, and people are gonna come. 

#### Message you'd give to people

**Devika**: What’s one message you’d give to people in the Web3 space? And even just any personal advice. 

**Laurence:** Think about what matters to you, and how you can minimize your bias and have the biggest impact on whatever the thing that matters to you the most it. Then look at if Web3 is the best tool for that.  Might just be an experiment you want to try! 







 
 

 
 

 
 







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Can Humans Live to 100? A Conversation With Laurence Ion Of VitaDAO

Longevity research is one of the most ambitious and important, yet woefully ignored fields of research. 
DeSci has the potential to change that. 


#### Introduction To Crypto

**Devika**: Lukas so the first thing i’d like to ask you is what was your introduction to the world of crypto? 



**Lukas**: My introduction to crypto was around a decade ago. I was studying biology at the time. It was kind of funny because I was playing videogames like World Of Warcraft with my roommate a lot. So my roommate and I got acquainted with crypto because we were able to buy some **in game currency** using it! We were always interested in technology, so we dove in pretty deeply. We got into mining, it even paid off our student loans! 

#### Views On Phytotherapy and Psychosomatic Therapy


**Devika**: So for the audience, Lukas has specialized in various fields of medicine. So Lukas, i’d like to ask you to explain cryotherapy and psychosomatic therapy. Later, i’ll ask how you moved from these fields of research to 


**Lukas**: So I was always focused on **holistic **medicine. This is medicine that is not necessarily focused on any specific symptom or disease. I was focused on the connection between your mental well being and the well being of your whole body. This is why I was very much into **psychosomatic** medicine, which is how **your mental status affects your physiological well-being.** For example, if you recently fell in love, your pain level will be substantially lower than if you hadn’t, or say if you were depressed. 

**Phytotherapy is about how you can treat people without using conventional pharmaceutical or chemical products.** It’s about using certain natural supplements instead of these chemicals/pharmaceuticals. 



I found it really interesting to see this in the DAO space. So I came across a lot of biohackers-people interested in self improvement and how they can optimize their physical and mental performance and well being. So it’s really cool for me to be in **DeSci DAOs that focus on the bio-hacking, longevity spaces, as this really connects with what I was previously working on and I really enjoy it.**

**The Current DAO Ecosystem**


**Devika:** How would you say you see the DAO ecosystem today? 


**Lukas:** I think the most fun and valuable part of DAOs is the community, so the aspect of a bunch of like minded people coming together for a common purpose is something I really enjoy. It’s kind of hard to find people with similar interests in your daily life, but it’s really easy to do so in a decentralized and remote network. 

#### Passion For Web3

**Devika:** So I wanted to ask you, what makes you so passionate about Web3? 
I know you put a lot of effort and time into the space, what drives you? 


**Lukas:** Honestly for me its really about finding a group of like-minded people. When I try to think about the benefits of DAOs or DeSci though, I like to think about the benefits to the overall population. So i’m really energized by the long term potential and vision for the space. 

#### Why DAOs specifically?

**Devika:** I would love to know why you specifically chose to work in DAOs and not say AI? 


**Lukas:** The startup vibe is one of the reasons. I mostly join DAOs that are young. So I think you can really make an outsized difference there. You can also co-mingle various different things. For example, although i’m a doctor, i’m also interested in governance. In other realms, what I work on would be more specialized and limited. 
**So basically, DAOs let me work on multiple verticals and not just medicine.**

#### Disadvantages Of Working in DAOs

**Devika:** You’d previously spoken about the advantages of working in DAOs, but what are some of the disadvantages? 


**Lukas:** I’d say the first thing is the **financial instability.** At the moment its definitely more of a part time job, because obviously you need a stable job for sustenance. Also, for early stage DAOs or ones that aren’t live yet, it’s really hard to make the money that you would from a traditional job anyway. Then there’s the lack of health insurance, etc that you would have to deal with if you work full-time in DAOs. 

#### Views On Funding Within DAOs


**Devika:** So I remember when startups began, it was extremely difficult to work for them as well; they were unstable, etc. Now, it’s one of the most exciting and coveting things to work for a startup because of the culture and ownership.  
Do you think DAOs can eventually transition to that, where they go the traditional route of say raising funds from VCs and angels? Because of course, unless you have a stable and substantial amount of compensation, you’ll miss out on talent. 


**Lukas:** I think so. I have seen some promising events in this regard. So for example if you look at  [**Molecule** ](molecule.to)in the DeSci space, they received a good amount of funding. Other DAOs have received VC investments too. So I think as the space garners more attention, any kind of investor is going to want to fund DAOs.  

#### Perspective On Prevalent Skepticism Around Crypto

**Devika:** What would your opinion be on people’s negative attitude towards the broader crypto space? 


**Lukas:** There’s two options for me, personally. Either I don’t say that i’m in crypto at all, I just let people have their opinion. But the other times I compare it to the internet or like smart watches or smartphones. I just emphasize that sometime’s there are potential futures that we can’t really imagine. I try to help people understand that the space is more complex than just Bitcoin and speculation. 


**Devika:** Thank you so much for a lovely and amazing session Lukas! 
















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Biohacking Through Blockchain: A Conversation With Dr. Lukas Weidener  

Dr. Lukas Weidener is a crypto OG and the governance lead at DeSci. 
An expert in both biology and governance, Dr. Weidener is an ideal person to speak to about the intersection of science and governance. 

As a community manager, it's important to increase engagement in your online community in order to foster a sense of belonging and drive user retention. Here are 30 strategies to boost engagement:

1. Host discussions and **ask open-ended questions** to encourage participation. This does not necessarily need to be limited to just the scope of your community, conversations about anything people care about help engagement! 

2. Encourage members to share their own content, such as blog posts or videos.


3. Offer **exclusive perks or content** to create a sense of exclusivity.

4. Host events or webinars to connect members and provide value.

5. Encourage members to share their personal successes and failures with the community. This can make your community a place where people come to celebrate their accomplishments, and also a safe space for them to seek support.

6. Use **personalized greetings** and thank members for their contributions.

7. Offer **rewards and incentives** for participation. 

8. Use **polls and surveys** to gather feedback and insights.

9. Encourage members to answer others' questions. 

10. Host contests or challenges to encourage content creation and sharing.

11. Use gamification techniques, such as **badges and leaderboards**, to drive engagement.

12. Use multimedia content, like images and videos, to make your community more visually appealing.

13. Host Q&A sessions with experts or industry leaders to provide value. 

14. Allow cross-promotion by letting members share their own content or events. 

15. Create **subgroups or sub-communities** within your larger community to foster a sense of belonging.

16. Promote your community on social media to drive traffic.

17. **Establish community guidelines** and enforce them to create a welcoming atmosphere.

18. Host **virtual events or meetups** to bring members together in real-time.

19. Use **personalized recommendations** or **curated content** to surface relevant information.

20. Allow members to have a say in the **direction and future of the community** to create a sense of ownership.

21. Encourage collaboration and co-creation by hosting hackathons or other events that allow members to work together.

22. Use analytics and metrics to understand what works and what doesn't in your community.

23. Host regular calls to informally discuss relevant news, updates, or even interesting content and ideas that are relevant to your niche. 

24. Offer educational content like **courses and tutorials**. 

25. **Use Twitter optimally; be funny, make memes!**

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25 Strategies For Increasing Community Engagement

Looking to increase engagement in your online community? Try these 25 strategies to foster a sense of belonging and drive user retention. From hosting discussions and events, to offering exclusive perks and personalized support, these tactics will help you boost engagement and create a valuable resource for your members. By building a strong, engaged community, you can drive success for your business or organization.

While the DAO Manager does come with plenty of functionality that leverages Web3 technology, its fundamentals are useful for any community that seeks to enhance members’ experiences, bolster engagement, and remove operational inefficiencies. 

Indeed, because of the seamless integration of Web3 tools, it could also help onboard Web2 community members onto Web3!



There are a few basic aspects of any online community that  our platform can help with. These include **discussions, content creation and distribution, task management, and payouts**. 


Let’s dive into these one by one. 


#### 1: Gated Discussions

Firstly, any community that involves even a modicum of communal collaboration would of course require avenues for in-depth discussions. For getting anything substantial done, **dynamic chats do not cut it**. As anyone that has participated in any group chat can attest, having to manually use the search function for keywords to acquaint themselves with the preceding conversation on any topic is quite the inelegant experience. Forums do a much better job with this. 


Furthermore, in any sizeable community, there ought to be channels that are **gated on the basis of member category**. The reason for this is similar to the reason **static messaging is needed**. Information and knowledge must be funneled for them to be easily digestible and thus actionable. If forums have posts pertaining to any topic by any member **regardless of subject area expertise**, this will not be the case.  

For example, if a community is building a project on top of Stable Diffusion, there will obviously be different parts of the community with different focuses and expertise working on different aspects of the project. **Discussion gating would be greatly beneficial here**. 

To be clear, we are not implying that every discussion channel ought to be gated, or even that every community needs gated channels; just that in some cases, it is greatly beneficial. 

![image2.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672822402/image2_153b2bd756.png)

![image4.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672822399/image4_b445f60851.png)


#### 2: Task Management

Another significant value add our tool can provide is to enable **integrated task management**. Ordinarily, the applications used by communities and teams (such as Jira and Notion) are **separate** from where discussions take place. This causes a substantial amount of **context switching**, which can lead to communication and coordination failures in addition to generally increasing burnout and contributor fatigue. 

The DAO Manager enables you to a**ssign tasks and keep track of milestones** across your community/team in the same place that **discussions and payments take place.** 

Furthermore, our tool has a **bounty marketplace**, which will allow you to outsource one-off tasks to anyone willing (both in and outside your community). This can also function as a means to onboard new members to your community! 

![image3.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672822399/image3_18d7509c0d.png)


While there is just one bounty listed here, you can list as many as you like! 


#### 3: Payments

Payments are an area where crypto can greatly add to any Web2 community’s efficiency and admin’s ease of function.  As anyone  that has tried to make cross-border payments would know, getting bank account details and paying  contributors, even through platforms like PayPal is far from reliably smooth. 

This problem is only compounded by the variegated regulations that exist worldwide! And let’s not even get started on the fees, and **being able to pay in such a manner using a quorum of members through shared bank accounts**. 


Using our payment mechanism, you can pay contributors with just a couple of clicks, and you’d only need to know their name! No need to meticulously note down each contributors’ bank account details-or even wallet address! Futhermore, our integration of multi-sig wallets (for example, ⅗ signees on an wallet would need to approve a transaction) enables **seamless multi-approval payments as well**. 


![Screenshot 2023-01-04 at 2.29.23 PM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672822769/Screenshot_2023_01_04_at_2_29_23_PM_ac840c70d1.png)




Finally, we’d be remiss not to mention the ease of use such a feature enables simply by the amount of **context switching it removes**. Indeed, the amount of context switching required for Web2 communities would in fact be a lot more than Web3 ones. Upon a task’s completion, for example, one would ostensibly have to ask  Being able to **directly pay** contributors in the same place their work is analyzed is a blessing. Instead of leaving the app, either finding or requesting for bank account details, and figuring out how to pay a contributor in whichever country they’re in, you can instantly pay them as easily as you would with Venmo or Apple Pay!

![Screenshot 2023-01-04 at 2.30.52 PM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672822858/Screenshot_2023_01_04_at_2_30_52_PM_6316814004.png)






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DAO Manager Use Cases: Web2 Communities

While our DAO Manager undoubtedly provides many benefits specific to Web3 communities, it also has plenty for conventional Web2 communities. 

Creator Communities would ostensibly focus on education, specifically with regards to **skill improvement/expansion, community building/outreach, and intellectual property distribution/monetization**. 

Let’s explore how our DAO Manager can help such communities. 

#### 1: Cohort Management

Firstly, it can help in **managing cohorts for your courses**. This can be in the form of both **onboarding** them into your course through a synopsis:


![Screenshot 2023-01-04 at 1.42.12 PM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672819937/Screenshot_2023_01_04_at_1_42_12_PM_41809be3b6.png)



And also for both admins and participants to keep tabs on their past progress on the course and overall lesson plan or syllabus: 

![Screenshot 2023-01-04 at 1.43.53 PM.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672820038/Screenshot_2023_01_04_at_1_43_53_PM_309cff124f.png)

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Let’s look at some other use cases as well. 
 For example, if you’ve enrolled 50 people to take part in a 3 month long course on DeFi, you’d probably have milestones for every week or so. These milestones can be in the form of **tasks** on the platform, with each task submission being **time sensitive**. 
 
 Hypothetically, if you’d choose to, you could also setup parameters through which a given number of non-submissions could result in members being removed from the cohort, or alternatively moved to a **sub-cohort** for exemplary performance on tasks. 


This completion can help you sort participants by their level of **skills and expertise **:

![image3.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672819793/image3_53020695fc.png)


![image4.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672819794/image4_9313d122db.png)

Furthermore, **each task or course completion** could result in participants being awarded with **badges** (that are represented on-chain). Such badges could also be used for **screening** with regards to potential applicants to be allowed to courses. 

Essentially, **Proof of work or expertise credentials**. 

Such badges could be used for **gating** in your course or others; the more creators use the DAO Manager, the more badges will be issued, which means the easier it’ll be to have **course gating solely using on-chain data**. 


![image6.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672819798/image6_6347035f98.png)

#### 2: Catalogue

Our tool could also be used to **catalogue courses** and **merch **for your IP. 

![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672819797/image1_22c3bdb87e.png)



#### 3: Sub-Communities

**Reputation management tools** will also make it easier to automatically create **sub-communities on the basis of course performance**. 

For example, if certain participants are weak at a particular topic or module, they could automatically be funneled to a sub-community with a focus on strengthening their weak points. 


4: Events

Our platform is also ideal to create events for specific groups of people within your community. 

For example, people who have received certain kinds of badges could be let into channels that are only for people with those specific badges. This could function as **de facto gating for events**, both virtual and physical. 










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DAO Manager Use Cases: Creator Communities

For Creator Communities, our platform can help educators manage and track course progress, award badges for expertise, catalogue courses and merchandise, and create sub-communities and events. 

Because of the large size of their communities, **protocols** (like Aave and Uniswap) and **ecosystems** (Like Polygon and Solana) often face a problem with maintaining cohesive communication across their communities. This communication can pertain to **grants, cross-ecosystem discussions, distributing bounties and jobs, and partnerships between builders**. 



#### 1: Grant Management


Let’s dive into how our DAO Manager helps such communities with their operational functioning. 


Firstly, our **grant management tool** aids you in managing grants. Now, the most important aspect of successfully making an impact with the grants any protocol/ecoysystem gives out is of course the scrutiny and judgement that was applied to do so. Furthermore, anything that affects reviewers’ judgements would be antithetical to making the optimal decision with regards to one’s grants. **Therefore, it is imperative that reviewers’ attention does not get affected by a lack of organization with regards to managing the large amount of grant proposals that significant protocols and ecosystems are sure to receive.**

To serve this end, we have developed a few features that would help reviewers’ stay on top of the grants they receive. 

**Dashboard**: Reviewers will have access to a dashboard through which they can access all pending grant applications. This will include details such as the **deadline, grant amount, and number of proposals**. 

Additionally, this dashboard will also have a section which **displays the total amount of grants given out, the number of proposals received, and the number accepted**. 

![image3.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672758009/image3_da12125e27.png)



**Templatization**: We provide access to **multiple proposal types**, **fund allocation methods** (for example, tokens used or payment schedule) and multiple **review mechanisms** (such as quorums required to approve grants, vetoes, or the structure/number of grant voters). 

2: **Cross Ecosystem Collaboration**


One of the biggest problems with the way in which  Web3 communication is that it is either completely **open** and thus disorganized such as is the case on Twitter or that it is is completely **siloed** (such as is the case with Discord). 
What this means is that while **particular projects’ community members have no difficulty communicating with each other**, there is no means through which they can organically find other projects in the same ecosystem. 

For example, if I am participating in [Treasure DAO’s](treasure.lol)  Discord server, I am not going to be exposed to any other projects in the **Arbitrum ecosystem**-even if I want to. My best resource would be to literally search for ‘Arbitrum DeFi’ on Twitter or see the Arbitrum tokens with the highest volume on sites like dexscanner. Of course, such a process would be extremely bewildering. 


**This is obviously not an optimal user funnel, clearly undercutting Arbitrum’s user acquisition.**


This is precisely where our DAO Manager’s **partnership and discovery tool** can make a substantial difference.

By allowing onboarded projects to **assign partners**, users will be able to peruse through other ecosystem projects on the basis of **predetermined categories**. 

![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1672758009/image1_2c931ae431.png)


This integrates a discovery tool in the same place community members would participate in discussions, voting, and task management. By doing so, the **context switching would be almost entirely eliminated**, and new project’s would be at a user’s fingertips, rather than them needing to haphazardly try to find other projects in any given ecosystem. 

3: **Bounty Marketplace & Job Boards**


The biggest problem for bounties is often the simple fact that **enough people don’t know about them**. The cause of this problem is similar to the one discussed above. As is the case with bounties today, people need to go to entirely new websites and platforms to find them.  if people need to entirely switch contexts and **learn about avenues they didn’t previously know about** to discover things (whether new communities or bounties), they are significantly less likely to do so.  

The explanation for this is common sense; people are less likely to do things that involve going through more hoops, and essentially **never** going to do things that are **unknown unknowns** to them: I can’t going to look for bounties if I don’t even know they exist. By placing bounty and job boards on the same place that contributors would discuss, vote, and discover other platforms, our DAO Manager becomes a **Schelling Point** through which users would discover new information about the space. 

Indeed, the becoming the default point of accumulation (Schelling Point) for **discovery** is undergirded by the fact that our tool’s multi-purpose functionality first makes it a default point of **attention**. In turn, this increases the odds that discovery tools on the platform would be used, with each discovery vertical feeding into the others because of increased individual usage of the platform by community members. 

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DAO Manager Use Cases: Protocols & Ecosystems

Protocols and Ecosystems have some of the largest communities in Web3, and face many problems because of the nature of this scale. 
Our DAO Manager can help solve a lot of these significant issues.

![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671611138/image1_1aa59d7617.png)


One of the biggest problems with regards to crypto UX is its most fundamental aspect: making payments! 

This problem is only compounded when it comes to doing so in the middle of one’s workflow whilst simultaneously having to use several other platforms. 

Now, a very significant problem for DAOs in particular is the **fragmentation of workflows across multiple tools**. In addition to Discord, forums, and Snapshot, DAO admins are also likely to be using multi-sig wallets to make payments, further increasing the context switching. 

Therefore, for DAO admins, payments pose a particularly significant problem. This is because the **context switching** involved in using multiple tools within their workflow only exacerbates the inefficiency and indeed risk of irretrievably losing funds. Try and visualize this in the context of your own workflow; whilst evaluating a task or bounty, you can make the payment there and then. Usually, you’d first either have to make a mental note to pay the contributor later, or completely switch contexts and retrieve their address manually and feed it into either Metamask or Gnosis Safe. Of course, this is nothing to say about the intrinsic inelegance and anxiety of sending money to 26 character hexadecimal addresses in the first place! 


Our DAO Manager solves these problems through its **integrated payments**. 
Want to pay someone for a task? Just click on their name! Want to approve a transaction for your **Gnosis multi-sig?** Do it in-app, adjacent to the task/bounty you are compensating for! Moreover, this is integrated exactly with where you would judge tasks and bounties for their quality!

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In addition to the added ease of use enabled by the reduction in context switching, we would be remiss not to reiterate the security benefits that such integrated payments provide. Anyone that has spent long enough in crypto has likely made an incorrect on-chain transaction, which is of course irreversible. Being able to pay someone’s name rather than address **removes a layer of abstraction and makes paying contributors as easy as Venmo or Apple Pay. The transaction might not go through, but it’ll never go to the wrong person**. 








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Pay Where You Work: Integrated Compensation Management

Are you tired of the inefficiency and risks of context switching while making payments as a DAO admin? 

We solve this problem with integrated payments, allowing you to pay contributors with just a click of their name upon task submission. 

Currently, DAOs use many tools within their governance pipeline. This includes community wide Telegram/Discord group chats, smaller group chats for core contributors, governance forums, and voting tools like **Snapshot**. Essentially, this translates to the fact that for one to be adequately knowledgeable about both the context and content of a proposal, one needs to keep abreast of happenings across multiple channels and **withstand a significant amount of context switching**. 

Quite a tall order, especially in the informational barrage that is Web3. 
This is problematic for both new entrants and existing members alike. 

This has to do with the high levels of fragmentation within the essential tools required for project management within Web3. **Discussions, voting, payments, project management and knowledge management** are all done on separate platforms. This is also a significant hurdle to onboarding new individuals into Web3. This is because telling people that they would need to acquaint themselves with multiple platforms and their UIs (Discord, Snapshot, Gnosis, Discourse) to be able to effectively participate in a DAO greatly increases their **perceived knowledge barrier to entry**, thereby being extremely intimidating. 

 This poses a particular problem when it comes to DAOs tackling particularly complex and impactful goals, as **they need to attract experts from outside the Web3 silo to be able to reach their goals**. For example, DeSci DAOs like VitaDAO, Cannabis Genome DAO and BitDAO all need world class researchers to bring their visions to life. The perceived barrier to entry is greatly increased because of the **fragmented nature of DAO workflow tools**, thereby making it significantly harder for such DAOs to be able to onboard essential contributors into Web3. 

Context switching is damaging to existing contributors’ participation too, as it can lead to operational inefficiencies such as misunderstandings and communication breakdowns/failures. 

DaoLens integrates **discussions, forums, and voting into one app**; eliminating **context switching**. 

![image2.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671508618/image2_48e1b2f224.png)

 As anyone that switches between the patchwork of tools to participate in DAOs currently can attest, it is a boon to be able to **link tasks and proposals to discussions**.  Managing multiple projects, each with multiple people, on multiple  tools, is clearly not the most efficient way of execution. Let’s dive into how we solve this issue on our tool: 

**Knowledge and Task Management:**

As of now, keeping up with any particular DAO’s calendar/list of announcements is quite cumbersome. This is compounded by the fact that there is no ‘standard’ means of doing so, meaning that one must be acquainted with each particular DAO’s specific way of doing things. For example, some might rely more on Discord-through an announcements channel, pinned messages, or just mere messages from the admins. Others might use Twitter more-either through spaces or simple Tweets. Evidently, this implies that one must either use multiple platforms to keep up to date with whatever number of communities they are a part of. This is both an annoyance and invariably leads to people missing out on sometimes vital information. 

DaoLens’ tool solves this issue by using a ‘one stop shop’ including an events feed, discussion forum, governance proposals, and a bounty board. Furthermore, users can create **proposals and tasks from discussions themselves.** This removes the need to use Discord or Discourse, Snapshot, and project management apps like Notion or Jira in order to accomplish the same goal. 

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Furthermore, voting and payments are also integrated into DaoLens’ platform. Contributors no longer need to trawl through Twitter, Discord, and individual forums to be able to know the happenings of their DAO and to find work. The tool also includes the ability to upload certain documents and news pertaining to any bounties, proposals or events, unlocking the ability to contextualise the nature of the action at hand. 

They will also not have to jump to another app in the case that they are coordinating with a small group of people on a particular project, to vote, or to pay each other. 

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Want to upgrade the documentation experience of your community? [Let's talk!](https://daolens.typeform.com/to/UMoMixKf)

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Unified Knowledge and Task Management

Knowledge and Task Management within DAOs is scattered across a host of platforms. The constant context switching this entails leads to substantial hurdles in efficiency and information loss. 

We can help with that. 

![Off Chain Votign.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671436431/Off_Chain_Votign_2c0246fc48.png)

The fragmentation of voting and discussions is a widespread and highly pertinent issue within DAOs today. In large part, it is caused by the **context switching** that is required of voters to be able to be **frequent** and **knowledgeable** participants in governance. The reason this context switching exists is because informal discussions, forums, and formal proposals/voting **all occur on different platforms**. 

A member would keep up with their community’s day to day chat and operations on Discord/Telegram, read governance forums for deeper and more nuanced discussions, and then finally vote using Snapshot. The context switching in this user flow is sizeable, and a perfect recipe to cause **contributor fatigue and voter apathy**. 

Despite the significance and prevalence of the issue, there is still a dearth of solutions to this problem. 

Our DAO Manager presents an elegant solution through its **two-way voting**. On our platform, **votes made on Snapshot are reflected on the DAO Manager, and votes made on the DAO Manager are reflected back on Snapshot as well**. 

This in app **Snapshot integration** is highly significant because it means that relevant **discussions** are adjacent to the vote, thereby decreasing the context switching required by users. While the benefits accrued by the decrease in context switching (and thus user fatigue and voter apathy) are significant enough, the benefit to **ease of onboarding new users** is perhaps even more significant. 

Onboarding is particularly pertinent when it comes to DAOs tackling particularly complex and impactful goals, **as they need to attract experts from outside the Web3 silo to be able to reach their goals**. Therefore, it is relatrively more crucial for them to attract people from outside the Web3 ecosystem. For example, DeSci DAOs like VitaDAO, Cannabis Genome DAO and BitDAO all need world class researchers to bring their visions to life. The **perceived barrier to entry** is greatly increased because of the fragmented nature of DAO workflow tools, thereby making it significantly harder for such DAOs to be able to onboard essential contributors into Web3. 


**Therefore, by integrating voting adjacent to discussions and payments, our DAO Manager dramatically decreases context switching. By doing so, it decreases contributor stress, and thus voter apathy for existing contributors. Furthermore, it removes the need for new users to acquaint themselves with multiple platforms, making it considerably easier for admins to attract people outside Web3 into the ecosystem**. 

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Try the DAO manager for free! [Signup here](https://daolens.typeform.com/to/UMoMixKf)

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Boost Contributor Retention with Two-Way Voting

Want to make your community members' experience easier? Want to onboard people outside Web3 into your community? Find out how Two-Way voting helps you accomplish exactly that. 

On-chain reputation management is an incredibly promising but as of yet underserved vertical within Web3. Implementing it in a gamified way only compounds the benefits. 

The implementation of badges for accomplishments and proof of work done would instantly ring a bell with anyone that has spent any time on a Playstation or Xbox. The dopamine kick aside, **badges are a brilliant tool for engaging players**, as they function as a means through which people can track both their own progress and others. Of course, these benefits are substantially more beneficial when it comes to achievements that also function as **inter-operable resumes**! 

![Desktop - 128-1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671528586/Desktop_128_1_bfbf629667.png)

The possibilities that reputation management unlocks are plenty: 

**Reputation based gating:**

As demonstrated [here](https://www.daolens.com/blog/gate-tasks-bounties-forums-with-dao-manager), the usage of on-chain data for reputation management through **Soul Bound Tokens** enables **qualitative distinction** between your community members using **on-chain data**. This is because without on-chain reputation representation, the only on-chain data that can be used to distinguish between community members is in the form of token holdings. This is to say that it is either binary (in the form of owning or not owning certain NFTs) or only comparative in quantity (in the form of tokens). By solving this dilemma, the enabling of qualitative data on chain provides two significant unlocks: 

Organizational structures (with differing roles and responsibilities) can be based off of on-chain data. This pertains to both voting and role delegation. This is highly relevant as it enables DAOs to actually live up to their name and **function entirely on-chain**. 

Currently, most large DAOs (especially those governing critical protocols and infrastructure) are DAOs in name only; the real governance occurs through conventional companies. (The ENS DAO's [saga ](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/02/07/ethereum-name-service-removes-brantly-millegan-as-steward-over-2016-tweet/)earlier this year with Brantly Millegan is highly telling in this regard). 

Now, there is good reason for this as well, for without on-chain qualitative data, the only way to distinguish between contributors using on-chain data is through their token holdings, which are obviously not a good means through which responsibilities and roles ought to be distributed. Therefore, for the sake of governing any sufficiently complex venture, it is essentially a necessity to utilize means of organization that do not rely on on-chain data in any which way. So, **by enabling on-chain qualitative data**, reputation tooling enables the use of on-chain data to assign **differential roles and responsibilities** within DAOs and thus build out robust organizational structures that are nuanced enough to adequately govern complex protocols and DAOs.

![28.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671509455/28_dab0941f79.png)

With regards to voting, on-chain reputation enables DAOs to move beyond voting models that involve **voting weightage on the basis of token ownership**. It does so by **quantifying skills and expertise on-chain**, therefore enabling **differential voting weightages.**

This is an essential step for DAO governance, as the voting frameworks currently in use leave much to be desired. Moreover, **reputation weighted voting enables different individuals' vote to count less or more depending on their expertise on particular matters.** This is bound to lead to more informed community decisions and prevent plutocratic voting (as token based voting essentially is) and the tyranny of the masses (as 1 person 1 vote essentially is). 


Try the DAO manager for free! [Signup here](https://daolens.typeform.com/to/UMoMixKf)

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Rewards and Reputation Management

Reputation management is an essential aspect of DAO operations and governance. 
We describe how our gamified approach to reputation management encourages contributor stickiness and helps DAOs truly live up to their name. 

If one were to look at the ecosystem for scientific research today, one would see that there’s a proper system in place-albeit a sub-optimal and outmoded one. Scientists research various scientific topics at a glacial pace, jot down their research, and publish subsequent findings in the form of research papers, which are then reviewed by ‘peers’ (other scientists in the same field of study). If enough ‘peers’ deem the research credible enough, it gets accepted as a new discovery/finding. 

This system, of course, has its pros and cons like any other. The biggest benefit is that whatever research that’s widely accepted is in fact likely valid, implementable, experimentable and trustworthy. The biggest downside is the presence of intermediaries who end up having a startling amount of control over which research is published and which isn’t. This is because of the involvement of intellectual property laws, coupled with the difficulty associated with obtaining research funding. Since funds usually come from big pharma or government agencies and thus with the resulting red tape, many research projects are never even initiated. Moreover, researchers’ spend half their time writing grant proposals, only for the bulk of proposals to be rejected.

These limitations and restrictions rankle the researchers themselves more than anyone else. A lot of research scientists have several projects they never got the funding to look into or have had to abandon due to political and other pressure. 


DeSci has the potential to change this. 
Still nascent, DeSci aims to remove the gatekeeping barriers to scientific funding and research, ameliorate reliance on profit-hungry intermediaries like publisher conglomerates, and substantially improve the collaborative atmosphere across the board. 

To combat the paywall problem, the Open Science movement took off a year ago. Subsequently, publishers moved from a pay-to-read model to a pay-to-publish model. So now readers don’t have to pay, but scientists who want to publish their research must pay a publishing fee (some publishers charge ridiculous amounts to publish a single paper). This just ends up concentrating even more power in the hands of publisher conglomerates. 

Enter DeSci
While DeSci is in fact aligned with the Open Science movement, it is calibrated towards a different objective. The biggest difference that DeSci brings to the research table is an enhanced ability to collaborate and a democratized access to knowledge by leveraging blockchain. It is akin to how Web3 and the blockchain are disrupting other industries. Nevertheless, research is arguably one of the (if not the most) significant drivers of human progress, so to see it instilled with the benefits that blockchain brings is incredibly exciting. 


Put a certain way,  DeSci is only trying to do what DeFi did, but with research and science. 
How the ‘De’ in DeSci can improve standard research
Democratizing funding 
We’ve already looked at how traditional research is funded. Tldr; researchers write grant proposals that are then submitted to authoritative bodies, which then take ages to get accepted, if at all.
Web3 enables systems that function independently of legacy systems. For DeSci, this means being able to financially support researchers. Infact, this is happening at a breakneck pace in the aging/longevity field. DAOs like VitaDao, Impetus Grants, and Gitcoin are funding projects in the $100K-$1M range. This is huge, and as the trend grows, researchers will be able to rely less and less on traditional funding mechanisms. 

Overhauling the peer review process
Another process DeSci can massively impact is redefining how research is published. Today, researchers have to pay to publish their research with journals like Nature, Science and Cell. DeSci can revolutionize this process by ensuring that researchers who need funding need to only preprint their research on servers like BioRxiv, MedRxiv, and Arxiv. This will leave them with a lot more time to focus on researching instead of getting bogged down in administrative tedium. This also helps circumvent the elaborate, time-consuming and inherently difficult peer review system, making research come out to the world faster. 

A simple preprint requirement would eliminate the need to pay to publish, while also speeding up the entire research process. 

How the ‘De’ in DeSci can improve clinical research
Decentralizing Clinical Trials
In the US, the FDA is overburdened with a huge backlog. This means that only large corporations with huge resources can get their products tested and pushed to the market on time. With DeSci, the underlying collaborative tools can empower research anywhere in the world, helping us progress and innovate our medicine faster. For example, trials for treating conditions more prevalent in certain areas are far easier to conduct in those regions, but this isn’t something that is currently prevalent. DeSci can enable this, alongside deeper collaboration between doctors and pharmaceutical researchers. 

Prioritizing hitting shelves instead of patenting
In the current system, the costs of drug development are extremely high, often costing billions of years and between 5-10 years. Owing to how long it takes, patents are an integral part of the system as break-even points are attained over long periods of time. If DCTs are cheaper and faster, the drug development process immediately reaps the benefits too. When a treatment becomes cheap enough that doctors and patients together prefer it, how can other drug makers undercut? Point being, the faster their work hits shelves, the better researchers are protected against other players stealing their work. 

Thanks to crypto, the general public can pay for this research and bypass the often stifling conventional institutions. There’s no shareholders to pay dividends to and no corporations who need a profitable balance sheet. Medicinal research can be actually overhauled into something owned and grown by the general human society. The inherent transparency of the blockchain also ensures that these research funds are used and reused appropriately. Furthermore, there is of course the potential for NFTs to replace traditional patents.

Which brings us to our next major point.

Tracking research with NFTs
Imagine, if any scientist in any field of study can distribute his research to anyone, anywhere with no fear of it being stolen if the paper is an NFT. The most promising venue here is of patents or scientific intellectual property being registered as NFTs,, providing unprecedented composability and traceability compared to traditional intellectual property protection methods. In fact, this is already happening. At the University of California, Berkeley, an auction was held for an NFT linked to documents related to the research of Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher James Allison. They ended up auctioning the NFT for more than $50,000.

Of course, NFTs of the biggest inventions and discoveries will turn into collectibles too. Just like how scientific memorabilia is coveted today.

DAOs and DeSci
With all this talk about DeSci, it must be evident by now that DAOs will play a pivotal role in the growth of DeSci. Today, there’s new DeSci DAOs emerging almost every week. 

Opscientia is a DAO building a network of knowledge foundries, kind of like a library of libraries. PsyDao is furthering research into psychedelic medicine. 
LabDao is another community of dry and wet laboratories working to advance research in the life sciences. 

DAOs form the foundation on which scientists, researchers and other interested stakeholders can collaborate. DAOs also provide an excellent platform to share knowledge, raise funding and prioritize research based on relevance rather than profit. A prime potential use case is those affected with a rare disease coming together to fund research that’ll improve their condition. Most big pharmas don’t develop drugs for rare diseases (because it’s a smaller market) and this would give those patients an excellent avenue to get better treatment. 

Looking into the Future
It’s easy to get excited about DeSci and all that it’ll enable. After all, DeFi grew to be worth $40 billion in just 2 years. Moreover, participants did not wait for the blessings of the SEC, Federal Reserve. DeSci needs the same, if not more momentum to grow in relevance. DeSci DAOs ought not to wait for the blessings of gatekeepers like the Ivy League.

As it stands, DeSci lacks a clear set of shared values. Right now, different DAOs are defining themselves by the problems they’re trying to solve. For a new scientific culture to emerge, the DeSci movement must rally behind common principles. 

There also needs to be governance systems in place, and the movement needs to establish common protocols and standard practices. Yes, that’s how new DeSci is. Given how nascent it is, DeSci also needs proper governance and operational frameworks to be put in place. 

Cross-pollination turbo charges innovation. We already know that DAOs revolutionize and empower how we collaborate. Our relationship with the financial markets and money in general  has already reaped the benefits of this unbarred collaboration. While DeSci calls for different protocols, we’ve already seen that it isn’t impossible. Right now, the movement is in desperate need of experienced, quality talent to increase collaboration. From doctors and pharmacists, to philanthropists and entrepreneurs.


An Introduction to DeSci

DeSci is one of the most exciting new realms to sprout within Web3, revolutionizing the way we disseminate and evolve knowledge. 

Building an online community can be a great way to connect with like-minded individuals, share ideas and interests, and even grow your business. However, creating and maintaining a thriving online community is no easy task. It requires planning, effort, and a commitment to fostering a positive culture. In this guide, we'll provide a step-by-step guide to building an online community, including tips and best practices for success.

#### 1: Identify your Target Audience: 

The first step to building an online community is to identify your target audience. This means figuring out who you want to attract to your community and what they're interested in. For example, if you're a business owner, your target audience might be potential customers or clients who share your values and interests. If you're a hobbyist, your target audience might be others who share your passion for a particular activity or topic. 

Having a **clear understanding of your target audience** will help you create content and activities that are relevant and engaging for them. It will also help you choose the right platform and set appropriate community guidelines.



#### 2: Choose a Platform

Once you know who you want to attract to your community, the next step is to choose a platform. There are many different platforms you can use to build your online community, such as **forums, social media, or dedicated community-building tools**. Each platform has its own strengths and weaknesses, so it's important to choose the one that best fits your needs and audience.

For example, forums are a popular choice for online communities because they allow for threaded discussions and allow members to easily search for and find past conversations. However, forums can be difficult to set up and manage, and they may not have as many features or be as user-friendly as other options.
On the other hand, social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, are user-friendly and have a large user base, but they may not provide as much control or customization as other platforms. Dedicated community-building tools, such as Discourse and Vanilla, offer more features and flexibility, but they may require a paid subscription and may have a steeper learning curve.

Ultimately, the right platform for your online community will depend on your specific goals and audience. Consider the pros and cons of each option and choose the one that best fits your needs.


#### 3: Establish Community Guidelines

To keep your community healthy and positive, it's important to set clear guidelines for behavior. These guidelines should outline the expectations for how members should communicate and interact with each other, as well as any moderation policies you have in place.


For example, your community guidelines might include rules around language, content, and communication, such as no profanity, no spamming, and no personal attacks. They might also include policies for dealing with problematic behavior, such as banning or suspending members who violate the rules.

It's important to communicate your community guidelines to your members and enforce them consistently. This will help create a **positive and inclusive environment** for your community and prevent problems from arising.

#### 4: Create Engaging Content

Once you have your platform and community guidelines in place, the next step is to start creating content for your community. This can include blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other forms of media that align with your community's interests and goals.


Creating engaging content is crucial for building a successful online community. Not only will it provide value and entertainment for your members, but it will also help keep them coming back and participating in the community.
To create engaging content, it's important to know your audience and what they're interested in. To this end, you can use the following tips: 
Here are several ways that community creators can learn what their community members might be interested in. Here are a few options:


I: **Ask for feedback and input**:  One of the easiest ways to learn what your community members are interested in is to simply ask them. Consider setting up a feedback or suggestion forum, or creating a survey or poll, to gather input from your members. This can help you get a sense of their interests, concerns, and ideas for content and activities.

II: Monitor Engagement and Activity: Another way to learn what your community members are interested in is to pay attention to how they engage with your content and activities. For example, you can track which posts and topics receive the most comments and shares, and use that information to guide your future content creation.

**Our onboarding tool can help you find and understand such analytics**: 

![image1.gif](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671516773/image1_9681f4e107.gif)


III: **Join and participate in other communities**: In addition to monitoring your own community, you can also learn from other communities in your niche. Join and participate in other online communities related to your topic or interest, and pay attention to what their members are talking about and engaging with. This can give you ideas for content and activities that might be relevant and interesting for your own community.

Iv: **Conduct market research**: Finally, you can conduct market research to learn more about your target audience and their interests. This can include **analyzing trends and data in your industry or niche**, as well as conducting surveys or focus groups with potential or existing community members. Market research can provide valuable insights into your audience's preferences and needs, which can help guide your content creation and community building efforts.


In summary, building a successful online community requires careful planning, effort, and a commitment to fostering a positive culture. To get started, it is important to identify your target audience, choose the right platform, establish community guidelines, and create engaging content that aligns with your audience's interests. Additionally, it is important to foster engagement and participation by asking for feedback, providing resources and support, and creating opportunities for members to connect with each other. By following these steps and best practices, you can create a thriving online community that connects and engages with like-minded individuals.










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How to Build an Online Community: A Comprehensive Guide

Building a successful online community requires careful planning and a commitment to fostering a positive culture. First, identify your target audience and choose a platform that fits your needs and audience. Set clear community guidelines, create engaging content, and stay active and present in the community to encourage participation. Follow these steps to build a thriving online community.



How many Twitter followers or Discord members your community have is one thing, but actually leveraging it is quite another. **You must maximise the impact your community can have.** This can be on a few different dimensions: 

#### 1: Enthusiasts are evangelists: 

If members or contributors are truly enthused by the vision for your DAO, they are likely to function as **organic tools for growth.** The reason for this is simple-people talk about things they are excited about. For example, if you’ve used **[ChatGPT](http://chat.openai.com)**, you are likely to tell others about it (much like we are doing right now)-it is just that 


phenomenal a product. Similarly, the vegan movement does not really need a ‘marketing budget’ because people’s motivations to follow veganism are **intrinsic**. 


Now, it is imperative to distinguish between those that evangelize because of the mission, and those that **evangelize because it is in their financial interest to do so.** Of course, even speculators/investors often evangelize by using theses that are based around the DAO’s future value proposition. However, they are not likely to continue doing so should the price action of the token fall-which is essentially inevitable during macro bear markets. To borrow from Balaji (who quotes the legendary venture apitalist John Doerr), DAOs **need missionaries, not mercenaries**. This means that people should be spreading the word about your DAO **because it brings to life a future that they are excited to be a part of.**


A way through which this can be done in your community is by **passively dissuading price related discussions**. By emphasizing on the DAO’s mission, this changes the culture or the ‘vibe’ of the DAO, thereby being more likely to attract individuals who are themselves attracted to the vision. If I am enthused by a DAOs vision after hearing about its vision or reading the website but only read price related information on the Discord, I am likely to be put off and far less likely to productively contribute. Furthermore, this also means that community engagement is not predicated upon market conditions. Because of the very nature of crypto, it is inevitable that your token will see sharp drawdowns at some point of time. If the price action is negative or not volatile, a chat that is largely based on price action is likely to die down. 

DaoLens’ DAO manager can aid you in attracting missionaries through its integration of voting systems into informal discussion boards. Discussion posts can be **rank ordered** on the basis of upvotes, thereby making people less likely to see price related discussions in the first place. 

![image6.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671430668/image6_6eff3b9db1.png)


#### 2: Communication of opportunities:

Bounties are an obvious place to let members in your DAO become recurring contributors. They get a taste for the work, and the team gets to see a glimpse of their skill level. However, it is imperative that **members hear about them**. Therefore, utilizing concise and frequently updated avenues for bounties is essential. A significant problem here is to **minimize context switching,** as this greatly decreases the chance that they will check the bounty board in the first place. Our DAO manager can help you with this as well, by having a discovery page for DAOs integrated within members’ workflow-

![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671430671/image1_471cbc0e9c.png)

 Furthermore, bounties should have the requisite amount of details, such as the skills required, the reward, and **possible-subtasks**. 

Our tool can help here as well: 


![image2.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671430673/image2_6f0f1e6c10.png)


![image3.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671430671/image3_bf17db6061.png)

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Leveraging Your Community: DAO Manager

Building a community is a necessary but insufficient step to a successfully functioning DAO. 

Being able to maximise the impact this community can have towards accomplishing your stated goal is imperative. We describe how that may be executed. 


Given how nascent the entire ecosystem is, the specific ways in which DAOs manage every facet of member contribution are rapidly iterating. In many aspects, they still need a lot to be desired. In this post, we’ll explore the various pieces that comprise contribution in DAOs and analyze how they could potentially be improved. These pieces include **payments, reputation management and organizational structures**.  As all these facets are intertwined, we shall be tethering how both the inefficiencies and potential improvements in some could improve others as well. 


#### 1: Payments

There are three primary aspects of payments: **how, how much, and who to pay**. 


Currently, DAOs primarily use **multi-signature wallets** to collectively hold their funds. In this, relevant team members are given the authority over a shared wallet in which a pre-detemined quorum must be reached before any transaction is made. Therefore, any use of communal funds necessarily requires (or should) the approval of relevant individuals. 

Currently, there are three primary currencies that most large DAOs use to pay their contributors: dollars (through established stablecoins like USDC, USDT or DAI), ETH, or their in-house tokens. The use of house tokens can often pose self-perpetuating problems. 

Now, ostensibly, people would prefer to be paid in stablecoins, or will likely instantly liquidate whatever ETH/token they receive for stablecoins. There are two problems that house token payments can end up entailing: **a decline in prices and a decline in overall treasury $$$ value**. If DAOs use house token payments, both problems perpetuate each other. 

A large reason why DAOs use their house token in payments is because their treasuries are often denominated in it. However, over the long term, this is invariably harmful to the token’s price-people are likely to sell it for stablecoins or at least ETH to de risk their exposure. This selling pressure is evidently bearish **outside of general market dynamics-tokens lose their value against ETH, not just dollars**. 


If a large proportion of the treasury is denominated in the token, this leads to the overall treasury value dwindling, which means the DAO has lesser ‘real’ value to be able to distribute to contributors. On the other hand, if incentives or contributor rewards are given through ‘unlocks’ (like Optimism will be doing in the second round of their [**Retroactive Public Goods Funding**,](https://twitter.com/optimismFND/status/1600187625649803265) this means that the **circulating supply** of the token will also increase, which is also evidently bearish for the token’s price. Now, for better or worse, DAO tokens’ prices have a lot to do with their public perception and the attention they gather. A decrease in the token’s price is therefore also likely to both leave a ‘bad taste’ in many token holders (who are likelier than others to be existing supporters of the DAO) mouths and also lower chances of contributors joining their ecosystem to contribute due to the lowered exposure caused by negative price action. 

The obvious answer to this would be for DAOs to simply keep stablecoin treasuries. However, the answer to this is not simple. because the usual means through which DAOs gather funding in the first place is through their house tokens. **Intuitively, then, for them to gather stablecoins, they would either have to liquidate their tokens** (which brings up the same problem discussed above), or **simply have ‘real’ revenue streams.** The latter here is not always tenable, especially in DAOs with long economic gestation periods. 


**CabinDAO’s** mechanism is exemplary of what could be done here. Tokens could be used to **gain funding** from private investors (and grant corresponding governance or revenue sharing rights), but **liquidity could be locked** so that the tokens are not speculatively traded. Therefore, DAOs would have both the functionality of governance tokens, but no house token that continues to decrease the overall value of their treasuries-thereby being more attractive to investors whilst also keeping the option open for contributors to be paid at least partly in stablecoins (as no token liquidations would be required that would contribute to the treasury being devalued). 


#### 2: Reputation Management

Anyone that has applied for almost anything within the ‘real’ world would know that resumes are paramount-they demonstrate your body of work and credentials. However, currently, there is no well entrenched equivalent within Web3. 

SBTs and ‘on-chain resumes’ offer such a solution. 

On-chain resumes can currently already be used to demonstrate an individual's depth of activity (such as number of transactions made, voting participated in, or age of wallet) and on-chain trading profits. Platforms like[ **Degenscore**](http://degenscore.com)  provide a taste of such functionality: 



![image2.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671445699/image2_aaa6eab0fc.png)


SBTs will extend this further, with the use case of **qualitative data or ‘social’ proof on-chain.** For example, courses taken, or work done by individuals could be made into ‘badges’ demonstrating this proof of accomplishment. These could be akin to Coursera certificates or university degrees-**universally applicable credentials**. Indeed, Bankless DAO is already working with the SBT protocol [**Otterspace**](otterspace.xyz) for the same. 

DAOs could then create their own individual badges for just their contributors too, denoting specific kinds of work for the particular DAO-functioning as on-chain recommendation letters. This would be particularly relevant for scaling, as individual contributions could be tethered to [**Decentralized Identifiers**](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/) such as their ENS names rather than any particular wallet.

![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671445698/image1_1cb95b54bc.png)
















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Contribution Management: Problems and Solutions

How to distribute compensation to your community members is a question of the utmost importance, and is directly related to DAOs' organizational structures. 

We examine this from a deeper perspective and suggest possible solutions. 

#### How did you get started in Web3?


**Brandon:** I’ve been an entrepreneur for around a decade now and currently host a podcast called Quorum, which is about what it's like to work in Web3. I launched the show in April after receiving a grant from **Bankless DAO.** So in my previous business, we used blogging to help educate people on CBD, and ultimately ended up selling $12M worth of product, which I deem quite a success. I learnt a lot about a typically misunderstood topic like cannabis, and that’s one of the things that excites me about DAOs.  It’s an esoteric and hard to keep up with space, so I kind of wanted to share my journey with understanding the space and what it’s like to work in Web3. 




**Devika**: So what product were you guys selling exactly? 


**Brandon**: So you could consider it an online retailer; we had everything from tinctures to ingestibles to capsules and vapes. 


**Devika:** That’s really commendable, it is not easy to start and run a business, let alone a profitable one	! Also doesn’t hurt that it's in something that's your passion-that always helps during those hard days! 

#### Transition To Web3



**Devika:** So what was the transition that led you to think that you want to be in Web3 now, and have you discontinued the business now? 



**Brandon: ** So as far as businesses go, we had a great run. Back in 2014, no one had really even heard of CBD. I had to get the word out! 2018 was a big change legally, so the market opened up significantly. New competition, new investment. Essentially, I was in the **right place at the right time.** That’s kind of what Web3 feels like to me right now. Everyone listening to this space right now is early, and being early gives you a great opportunity to make an outsized impact. 

 So to circle back to what you asked, the business just ended naturally, we couldn’t keep up with the competition. So I started listening to more podcasts, including Bankless. So listening to a Bankless podcast about how **Ethereum is the next nation state.** So that really opened my eyes to the fact that really interesting things are happening in crypto-**that aren’t just financial! **So that’s when I decided to dig in more. 

#### Starting With The Bankless Bounty Hunter Podcast

**Devika:** So i’m sure everyone here finds it super intriguing how  you managed to work with Bankless, would love to hear about it! 

**Brandon:** So I was already listening to the Bankless podcast, and I saw that they’re a DAO. So I joined the Discord on what happened to be a Friday. So they had their community calls on Friday, in which they then discussed something called a ‘**Podcast Hatchery**’. It was an accelerator for podcast and content creators. So this is what piqued my interest. However, the way in which I actually raised funds for the project was **definitely rocky to say the least.**

So when I got into the Hatchery, they were looking to invest in making new shows. So they were looking for a host. I put my name out there, and after a 48 hour voting period, my name came **dead last in the group!** So of course a part of me was dismayed, but I then realized that I hadn’t really made any friends in the DAO-no one knew me! 

So I stuck around and decided to add value. I became the secretary and began contributing generally in an operational sense. A couple months later I got a call from someone who said it was really urgent.  He said that the person they had gotten for the podcast had decided to quit because of burnout. So I told them that i’m ready to go-I really wanted the opportunity. Since then, my team and I have been able to show that we’re able to hit our milestones and are good at the job. 


**Devika: **That’s a great story! I’ve noticed that whenever I ask people about how their journeys began, it always starts with them attending a community call. The common thread i’ve heard is that you just want to hang around, contribute, and be a cool person! I feel like that’s the crux of this point. Usually, when people join a DAO or community, they’re like ‘what can I get out of this’ and spam channels, etc. You were just there, you were a known entity-that’s such an integral part of participating in DAOs-reputation management!  

#### Thoughts On Grants


**Devika:** So while a lot of DAOs have compensation plans, it is still hard for people to rely on DAOs for sustainable full time incomes. Where do you see grants as a part of this picture? 

For example, where would Bankless get the funds to give grants to give to community members (assuming they don’t want a quick ROI)? 



**Brandon**: I think this pertains to tokenomics, which I have to say I don’t know much about. But to go back to your original question of how people **can get paid for their work**, that’s a really challenging question in the space. That was actually my biggest question going into this too-can I replace my income through DAO work? 

So when I started working in Web3 (April/May 2021), the market was great, so lots of people were saying that they quit their jobs to go Web3. So it seemed like an enticing proposition. IN my opinion, the only way you can actually do it is if you get a **full-time role in some kind of DAO that pays in stablecoins**. Even if the DAO pays in their native token, we’ve seen what happens to DAO tokens-Bankless’ token is down 90%. The tokens are kind of like fun money.  Ultimately, I think this distinction boils down to DAOs that are more aligned with the goal of being public goods and DAOs that are more ROI focused. 

SO if you want funds, go where the funding is. Go to a DAO or DAO centred company that actually has non-crypto assets that you can break into.

#### Pain points across the DAO ecosystem


**Devika**: As host of your podcast, you’ve connected with many DAO admins and insiders in the space. What are some issues that you would say they struggle with? 



**Brandon:** The hardest part is onboarding. That’s probably the biggest difference i’d see between conventional companies/startups and DAOs, which is that the flow of people coming in and out is very different. In startups, there are small openings thatr you have to fit yourself into and then there’s gatekeepers that gatekeep certain jobs. With Bankless (for example) on the other hand, you have hundreds of people coming in, **with everybody saying yes-no one says no to them.  **

So it’s a totally different paradigm and **so requires new tactics and tools.** So people are trying to find automated ways to do onboarding, especially with a lot of people. However, **that’s at odds with what a lot of contributors want.** When you join a DAO, you want to talk to people. You want to make friends and connections. To me, automated onboarding tools are at odds with that. 

#### What are some things DAOs can do to provide a liveable income?


**Devika:** You know, tokens don’t pay for groceries. So of course there are going to be some people who participate and want to contribute but cannot because of a lack of bandwidth. So what are some things DAOs can do to change that?



**Brandon:** So I think compensation and onboarding are quite closely related. So so far, the process has been you **see a DAO, hop on their Discord, read their documents, see how you can add value, and then a community manager notices you. **While just organically participating then, a community manager or someone else from the community/core team notices you.  


What I like about that is that it's **organic.** What I don’t like is how nebulous it is. You don’t know how much you’ll get paid, if you’ll get paid at all, your roles and responsibilities. So its like wading into a swamp in which you’re hoping that it’ll take you to the treasure chest on the other end, but you’re not really sure if it will. 

There’s a funny quote by **Brandon Kumar** from Layer3 which is that ‘**every step of onboarding onto a DAO is like walking over barbed wire because you can trip at any step.**’ I think there needs to be a lot of work on transparency so you can give people an idea of what to expect. 

#### Mental Health and Burnout

**Devika**: Given how many hats you’re juggling, how do you manage your mental health and avoid burnout? 


**Brandon**: It can definitely be hard. I think what plays a large role is the fact that as opposed to a regular 9-5, the barriers between work and life are blurring in this new paradigm. Of course its great because of the flexibility it gives you, but its challenging in other ways because you have to setup your own boundaries, and I know a lot of people haven’t built up those skillsets. 
What’s been really helpful for me is figuring out what my typical rhythm is; when I do my best work. If its a time that I don’t, I do something else! 

So I do my best work in the morning, so I always try to get the ugliest task done in the day. Then in the day, I try and go for a run outside. I know its not that revolutionary an idea, but its about the consistency! **I also can’t emphasize just getting off screens enough.**

**Devika:** On that note, thank you so much for your time! 












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Workable Income Through DAOs: A Conversation with Brandon Nolte from Quorum

Brandon Nolte is the host of Quorum, a Web3 podcast. He started with the Bounty Hunter from Bankless. 


#### Something that made your week difficult


**Devika**: What is something that has made your day or week difficult? 


**Roxine**: I think with Cabin right now we’re doing this push with our co-living pass, so as someone in growth, a challenge i’m facing is **how much do people know about co-living, how do I reach out to people through our work?** Do I teach people about co-living or teach them about Cabin right away. So i’m having a lot of fun positioning Cabin as a DAO. However, what if someone doesn’t know about crypto or Web3  but would still be good additions to the community. So it’s made my week difficult, but in a good way!


**Devika:** In your Discord spaces, do you find yourself getting bogged down in the basics of crypto and Web3 a lot or are people more self-sufficient and self-starting? How is that something that you’re tackling? 


**Roxine**: So on one hand, members would have to understand not just crypto and  the space in general, but also the purpose of being in a DAO. So with Cabin, it’d mean understanding what we mean by **conserve, co-live, co-create**. Then there’s also someone who hasn’t even setup a wallet or a bounty before. So I think that’s something I found as a core contributor to have to parallel process. If someone is new to the DAO, i’d onboard them into Cabin,  but also answer questions about our token, roadmap, etc. 


#### DAO ownership 101

**Devika**: My next question is based on your article DAO ownership 101. Something we’ve understood is that DAOs need owners to succeed. Of course we say that people should work for DAOs instead of traditional organizations because there’s a clear advantage. However, I feel like the bniggest point of discussion becomes that people still behave like employees, **not as owners**. In your article, you discuss where this problem stems from, that **school never trained us to live like owners**. It trained us to be obedient work bees. Of course, being an employee/having a job lets you to clock out at 5pm, not be accountable for end outcomes with the business, so not everyone is ready to be an owner. 

**So does that mean that the majority of people aren’t ready to be in Web3, and that most DAOs will end up not succeeding? **


**Roxine:** I think everyone should at least try working in a DAO, even if they’re not full-time in it. There is still a lot we need to figure out; i’d say the space is similar to the beginning of the computer/internet age-working at Microsoft and Apple was a huge risk initially. 


So I think everyone should try if they have the time and opportunity. Personally, i’m a full-time contributor at Cabin, but not everyone has the luxury or is at the appropriate stage of their lives to be able to do that. I think with ownership is a mindset. It’s a skill we have to develop in ourselves, especially since school didn’t teach us that. So I think everyone should tip their toes into DAOs and develop that ownership mentality; have a portfolio of work across different DAOs rather than just at one place. 


#### How has your journey creating sustainable DAOs been?

**Devika**: How has your journey been with finding, empowering, and cultivating this owner mindset in your own community, which is the key to sustainable growth in DAOs.
So has it been a challenge for you to make people care about the mission of decentralized cities from people who just want to live in cool cabins?

**Roxine:** It really varies. Some
 people come into Cabin with a sense of purpose,  and they might already come with a set of skills that is  valuable to Cabin. These people can become freelancers/consultants for Cabin, and we hand over problems that these people might be better suited to work on. On the other hand, some people love the community. They might not have the skills that we need right now, but that’s a different kind of ownership mentality in that they love and contribute to the community a lot. 

So in terms of developing the ownership mentality, it’s been an interesting journey of me figuring out how much time to give to developing ownership vs the time I spend on actually doing my job and finding someone who can do the job. So the way I think about it is that there’s context I have to give people about the DAO, context about where it is at this time, and then if there’s a project, asking people what skills they have or want to develop and then pointing out which projects they’d be good fits for. So it becomes really similar to a **freelance/consulting relationship, in which I basically try and incubate people to do as well of a job as they can. **


#### Building ownership mentality/accountability in contributors 


**Devika**: So just piggybacking off that question, a lot of people aren’t ready to be owners, right. For DAOs to be sustainably decentralized, that mentality is imperative. So, when the majority of people don’t have it, do you feel like it’s very challenging for DAOs to exist until they have a requisite amount of owners in the community?  


**Roxine:** Definitely. It’s very natural for us as humans to discuss the reasons why we need decentralization, but we often miss out on talking about the cons and requirements of actually doing so. If we want the **privilege of autonomy, we must also have responsibility and accountability.**


On one hand, the DAO has to be the place where there’s almost this SOP or ethos where everyone is responsible for executing a certain project. It needs to be super clear, and that’s where we’re able to say that okay, you can have autonomy on how you do something, but there need to be agreed upon KPIs that demonstrate how what you’ve done fulfils the broader purpose of helping the DAO grow. So in terms of not being ready to be owners, it’s applicable to both sides. 


Because the space is so new, not everyone has figured out what is important to **execute in the first place, and how it should be measured**. How do we build accountability into all the work that we’re doing? On the other side, as contributors, how do we push the community to be accountable-it’s easy not to be accountable. It’s easy to work on a proposal or bounty that one might want to do personally but might not move the needle overall. 


So that’s basically where both us and a lot of other communities are struggling right now. On one hand, there’s no structure from the DAO, and as contributors, we don’t know how to ask (the DAO)or may not even want the accountability or structure. 


**Devika:** How autonomous would you say Cabin DAO is right now? How much of it is being driven by a core group of people?


**Roxine:** I think it’s autonomous but not in the way people would think when they first come into a DAO. I think we’re still at a stage that when we talk about decentralization, the connotation is about  how everyone is in charge of their own work or does their own thing. At Cabin, we’re trying to straddle the line between **people doing good work and them having freedom.** The way we approached this initially was through Guilds that were under the DAO and that whenever there was a DAO that needed to be done, it would go to the Guild. What we found is that that structure actually needed to have a centralized place where every project was coming from. **That is similar to a corporation**! Where this huge centralized body would delegate work and setup metrics. So we’ve thought about how **there’s a difference between the social part of our community and the work part of our community.** So, right now, our Discord is purely for having fun, connecting with people, etc. Then, there’s people like me who are core contributors, and we are separate in what we call a fellowship. 

#### Compensation and Token

**Devika:** So Cabin DAO has aligned a lot on the lines of Balaji’s Network State. He describes one aspect of Network States as being aligned around a **cryptographic consensus**. This fact and the tech itself notwithstanding, crypto is of course very volatile. Given that, do you think DAOs can really take care of people’s needs? 


**Roxine:**  So I want to address the topic of tokens before talking about how DAOs can take care of people. So right now, our token, you can’t actually buy from a liquidity pool/DEX anymore. We’re using it **solely for governance**. The speculation side of things that comes with a financialized token really distracts everyone, myself included, from our mission of a Network City. 


In terms of how the DAO takes care of people’s needs, I think it’s a two way street. Once the DAO is asking someone to work for them, they have to create compensation structures that are fair and take care of people. The other side is that individual contributors should watch out for themselves. If you’re putting your time and effort into something, it’s worth thinking about if it’s worth working for a particular group of people or project. Aside from this, you should also develop your skillset outside of any projects you may be contributing to. 


#### Cabin's tech stack


**Devika:**  I love how John Hill wrote how decentralized cities are akin to computers, and how hardware is like physical space and land, and software is the governance and social dynamics at play.  


So the software aspect of decentralized communities is where tools are so important. 
So, what are some DAO tools that you’re using to serve your community? 


**Roxine:** Well of course, our community is mostly on Discord! To be honest we have a very **Web2 tech stack**. We use Asana, Google Docs, the whole G-Suite! On the Web3 side of things, we use Snapshot, Gnosis Safe. We’re also testing out an app called Geneva, that’s like a Discord for smaller groups. 

DAO tooling roast 


**Devika:** So I have an app of all the top DAO tools, and i’d love for you to list your top 3 tool and the top 3 tools you’d roast! 


![image1.png](https://res.cloudinary.com/daolens/image/upload/v1671023820/image1_fecde68d28.png)


**Roxine: **

Top 3 

**1-Obsidian

2-Gitbook

3-Figma **


So I know that these are all Web2 tools, but we need really well functioning tools right now, and a lot of the Web3 ones are still kind of nascent. 

Bottom 3: 
1-**Mirror:** I post a lot of articles on Mirror, and I think the writing experience/UX is a bit hit or miss. Copy pasting from Google Docs can be quite time consuming!

2- **Notion**: I know this is polarizing, but I just use a bunch of tools to do what Notion does. I don’t like to create the databases etc that’s required for Notion. It’s a bit convoluted, and that can get in the way of the work sometimes. 

3- **Discord:** Of course it’s Discord! It wasn’t really meant to run a DAO in the first place. It’s just the best tool we currently have. 
Especially if it’s not cleaned up! 

#### Biggest pain points: Knowledge management


**Devika:** What would you say one of your biggest pain points is in terms of operations of the DAO, and if you had to pay $1M to solve a problem in your DAO, what problem would it be? 


**Roxine:** Knowledge management is significant. It’s been over a year, and we’re still trying to figure out the correct knowledge management tool to use. 
We called it doing **‘multi-player’** in a DAO. What information is good for the community? What information is good for contributors? What information is good for someone who doesn’t even want to participate but wants to come live in Cabin. So knowledge management on the basis of reputation (number of tokens, NFT holdings) has been a huge struggle for us. While a bunch of people are building** pieces** of this, and i’m not entirely certain whether it’d be useful to create a tool that includes all the required pieces. 




So if I had a million dollars, i’d spend it one of two ways: 

i: Building a **monolithic tool** that solves all the problems

ii: A zapier for Web3 apps: A **no-code tool would be great to automate workflows.**


#### How are new ideas proposed at CabinDAO?


**Devika**: How are new ideas proposed at Cabin DAO? For example, in one method, the ideas are coming from the same people that create the work. In the second option, the idea comes from the community, and someone who works on a bounty executes the idea. 


Roxine: So, I think both happen at Cabin. 
 The foundation is the incentives behind our proposal process at Cabin. So in the proposal process. You need at least 1000 $CABIN to be able to make a proposal on Snapshot. We’ve also enabled the delegation feature on Snapshot. So people with say 10 $CABIN can find other people who are more experienced, ask them for feedback on a proposal, and have the other people’s $CABIN delegated to them so they can make the proposal. 
 
So that’s how we allow for the community to suggest proposals without having to go to a centralized body. 
This also solves the problem of any random person on the internet proposing something on Cabin.  


On the other hand, we, as a Fellowship (a group of core contributors with its own multi-sig and budget and technically outside the DAO) can hire out people for bounties. 


So that’s both approaches. 

#### Community questions:

**Praphul:** If the token is not liquid, how do you price the token? And how is compensation liquidated? 

**Roxine:** Right now, there’s no way to liquidate compensation if it is only in Cabin token. This is why we pay in USDC. 

The token pricing is decided on our treasury diversification. In the first round, the token price was at $25, in the second round, it’s at $35. This is the price at which people received tokens in exchange for the USDC they invested in the treasury. 










































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Decentralized Cities: A Conversation with Roxine from CabinDAO

CabinDAO has the mission of 'co-living in nature for creators and remote workers.' 

In this discussion, we talk to Roxine Kee from Cabin and discuss Network Cities and how DAOs can help us get there. 

**Q.1 Will mass adoption of DAOs really happen? I believe not every organisation needs to be a DAO. (progressive decentralisation talk)**

Ans: Yes, communities are turning into digital nations and people are looking for a new way to connect and build something together while learning about new structures, new aims and see the results we can achieve together. 

**Q.2 DAOs are inefficient for complexity. How can DAOs reduce their level of complexity?**

Ans: Dao Tooling can play a big role here. By using and building great DAO tools communities can create optimum system. Also, something to note is that the centralised orgs are not as efficient either.

**Q.3 Not all decisions need to be on-chain vs. a lot of off-chain governance ends in the chaos of countless and endless discussions. Even though many may have an opinion on everything, not everyone has the expertise on every topic that is required for constructive discussion and decision-making. How decentralised should DAOs really be?**

Ans: Yes there can be chaos with having everyone participate but it’s creative chaos. And that’s where progressive decentralisation comes into play. People will start projects in a centralised way and then, progressively decentralise. DAOs are the way we lower the barrier of entry, this is where we can scale, this is where we have transparency. 

**Q.4 Soul Bound Tokens. SBTs have been compared to China’s authoritarian social credit system, which seem straight out of a block mirror episode. They have a good side where SBTs may act like real-life achievement badges or a negative where even criminal history and negative credit score impactors could easily be applied to someone’s Soul Wallet. How do you see them?**

Ans: SBTs enable sovereign identities. Having the ability to build sovereign identities enables freedom. Freedom from state identities, you no longer have to share information which is not needed and therefore, we eliminate room for bias against age, gender, nationality. Reputation is the only thing that matters. 

**Q.5 Talk about a life defining moment that really shaped who you are as a person today.**

Ans: When someone randomly air dropped me the tokens to join the Bankless DAO. That was the start to my wonderful journey in the DAO world. Connecting with the community members there was like meeting a relative you wanna spend time with 😂

**Q.6 As the DAO Lead of Polygon, instead of asking you what’s your current biggest paint point? I’d like to ask you, what’s something that’s keeping you awake at night?**

Ans: Growth. Taking care of the collective growth of the community is something on my mind very often. 

**Q.7 What are your top 3 tools for DAOs?**   
Gitcoin                         
Gnosis                          
Guild.xyz               

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Hightlights from A Discussion With Marco Moshi

Highlights from a discussion our Community Lead Devika had with Marco Moshi, the head of DAOs at Polygon. 

Alpha on the DAO ecosystem is often hard to find. 
We provide it directly to your mailbox. 

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