The article below outlines my journey analyzing, learning and eventually joining GCR DAO. I hope this article is helpful to those looking to join, contribute or create a DAO. The memo below covers the following sectors: Summary, Product Market Fit, Market Analysis, Competitive Landscape, Governance and Tokenomics. Read on!

https://globalcoinresearch.com/

• Description: GCR is a research and investment DAO focused on Web3. $GCR is the native token of the DAO. By holding a set number of $GCR in your crypto wallet, community members are able to enjoy and participate in various events, investment deals and resources.

• Sector: Investment, Media DAO

• Token Price: $1.3

• Token Contract Address

Value Proposition: GCR provides value to community members through their novel token-incentivized media farming strategy, unique dealflow opportunities and community building.

Target User: Crypto-native independent investors (Crypto-bros?) looking for great deal opportunities and exposure through the publication of their written content

Product: What offering does this DAO provide its members? What benefits are included with membership?

The product of this DAO is access to different community features token-gated by tiers. There are four tiers to membership in the GCR community:

Price: 0 $GCR

Perks:

• Research and Content on GCR site

• Weekly Newsletter and Updates

• Educational and Research Calls (Public Events)

• Virtual and IRL Community Hangouts Around the World

• Ongoing GCR Campaigns (earn $GCR tokens and free memberships)

Price: 100 $GCR

Perks:

• Tier 0 Perks

• Access to All Community Investment Calls

• Governance Discussions

Price: 700 $GCR

Perks:

• Tier 1 Perks

• Access to Investment Threads and Discussions

• Sponsorships and Complimentary Pioneer Referrals

Price: 2000 $GCR

Perks:

• Tier 2 Perks

• Guaranteed Investment Allocation

• Monthly Airdrops

• Deal Recap Calls

• Participate in the Exclusive GCR Angel Network

• Discord Community Size: 6284 CAPTCHA Validated Members

• Newsletter Subscribers: +30,000

• Ammount invested: +$31M

Additional statistics from GCR 2021 performance reports:

• To date, GCR members have had access to 120+ crypto and non-crypto investment opportunities at various stages including pre-seed, seed, liquidity mining, growth equity, and more

• GCR members have directly met over 100+ founders through our investment deals, AMAs sessions, and ongoing events (digital and IRL)

• GCR Investments On Average Have Seen Returns of >40x***For projects/companies that have become liquid/marked-*

• As of August 2021 (GCR DAO was 4 months old) $GCR Members had Cumulatively Committed in Capital

  • $800k+in Pre-Seed and Seed Rounds

  • $5mn+in Liquidity Mining Rounds

  • $20mn+in Growth Equity Rounds

As can be seen from the statistics above, GCR DAO has shown strong signs of traction, with its large newsletter following, DAO membership in the thousands and average investment returns over 40x on projects that became liquid. With their core media farming strategy and ease of joining, this is only the beggining for GCR DAO.

Growth in the size and number of web3 VC investments

According to the Web3 Investment Trends Report, 2022

1. 2021 saw a total of 2000 deals worth over $33Bn (x2 that of 2020)

2. The web3 market is projected to grow from $1.23Bn (2020) to $8Bn (2030) at a CAGR of 45%

3. Most of the deal sourcing is happening over social media. Below you’ll find the top platforms where VCs are sourcing deals

   1. Twitter - 26.6%

   2. Telegram - 13.3%

   3. Crunchbase - 13.3%

   4. InnMind - 6.7%

4. 53.3% of Web3 VCs surveyed take 2-3 weeks to make an investment decision after the first call with founders

   1. 20% of VCs surveyed take 1 week

   2. 13.3% of VCs take more than a month

5. 86.6% of VCs surveyed invested below the $500k ticket size

6. As can be seen from the trends above, investments in the web3 space are growing exponentially, deals are being sourced from unconventional means, deals are closed much faster than traditional VC (2-4 months).

Increased need for web 3 native value add

According to Chainlink:

1. The key value adds web3 founders are looking for are:

   1. Guidance on equity distribution

   2. Guidance building an open-source community

   3. Access to wider networks

   4. Access to commercial and operational experience

   5. “Joining an incubator program or founder community oriented towards web3 founders is essential to funding early stage web3 projects”

In order to properly understand the potential of this opportunity, we need to consider the following assumptions.

• The [Global Asset and Wealth Management Industry](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/07/01/2472808/0/en/23-3-Billion-Global-Web-3-0-Blockchain-Market-Growth-with-GAGR-of-41-6-2022-2028-The-Benefits-such-as-Improved-Privacy-Secure-Network-Driving-the-Market-Web-3-0-Market-Growth-Size-.html#:\~:text=According to our primary respondents,2028%3B based on primary research.) is set to grow at a base CAGR of 4.4% for the period 2020-2025, until the sector is worth $147T (2025). Assuming that this CAGR (4.4%) holds for the period 2025-2030 we can project the value of the sector to be worth approximately $182.31 T by 2030.

• According to [Preqin Insights](https://www.preqin.com/insights/research/blogs/venture-capital-becomes-second-private-capital-class-to-hit-2tn-aum#:\~:text=The proportion of private equity,against 23.7%25 for private equity.), as of 2022, the Private Equity and Venture Capital markets have $6.3T and $2.03T in AUM, with a CAGR for the period from 2022-2028 of 11.5% and 20.2% respectively. We will make the assumption that this percentage will hold for the period 2028-2030.

• According to [Vantage Market Research](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/07/01/2472808/0/en/23-3-Billion-Global-Web-3-0-Blockchain-Market-Growth-with-GAGR-of-41-6-2022-2028-The-Benefits-such-as-Improved-Privacy-Secure-Network-Driving-the-Market-Web-3-0-Market-Growth-Size-.html#:\~:text=According

Under the assumptions presented above, the TAM for the Investment DAO sector can be sized at $162.032 Bn by 2030

What are other key players in the Investment DAO space? The Web3 Funding ecosystem is very diverse, and offers various types of funding for protocols of all stages and geographies. Below is an ecosystem map of the web3 VC space:

A more in depth analysis of the Investment DAO landscape is required to better understand the value provided by GCR DAO:

• Alliance DAO

  • Type: Investment

  • Members: 410

  • AUM: -

  • Pros:

    1. 9 week incubation program. Worked with 84 startups, 170+ founders

    2. Mentor community of 120+

    3. Small number of members maximizes contribution potential

    4. Provides Deal Flow by intros to DeFi Alliance founders and invitations to Demo Days

    5. Service Opportunities and Network creation opportunities come with membership

  • Cons:

    1. Have to apply through google form, no clear indication of entry fee requirements

  • Entry Fee: Unclear

• Stacker Ventures

  • Type: Investment, DeFi

  • Members: 1400

  • AUM: $7,289,450

The key differentiating factor for GCR is its novel community-driven media mining strategy, which is set to define GCR as a thought leader in the space further expanding their inbound sourcing efforts.

This eventually means that the GCR brand will attract founders due to their quality of content and brand image (The same way top VCs use content creation as a sourcing tool, GCR just created a new, more efficient way to perform inbound sourcing).

Due to this innovation, i am convinced that GCR will be one of the winners in the Investment DAO space. This is also the reason why I joined GCR.

Governance on the GCR DAO is handled through voting system Snapvote. Therefore to get a better idea of what the DAO’s voter activity looks like we must look there:

Total Snapvote Members: 59

Total Proposals to Date: 6

Average Vote Count per Proposal: (26+6+23+29+19+44)/6 = 24.5

Average Voter Turnout Rate: 24.5/59 = 41.52%

Who are these people? - Governance members for GCR DAO are Gold Tier and above members.

Even though membership numbers for governance on this DAO are low, the average voter turnout rate is much higher than other governance DAOs (For example, 3.2% for The Graph). What this tells us is that the governance members of this DAO have a higher vested interest in its success, and thus are more active in the governance of said DAOs.

• Total Supply: 10,000,000

• Number of Holders: 643

According to the GCR Tokenomics site:

• Community Treasury: 70% that is allocated across initial airdrop distribution, media mining program, and community treasury. Vested in a linear 4 year schedule (below)

  1. Past GCR readers from the last 4 years: 3%

  2. GCR Discord group airdrop: 3%

  3. Media Mining: 15%

  4. Community Incentives (partner airdrops, social media campaigns, community writing bounties): 49%

• Team: Vested in a linear 4 year schedule (below)

  • Current Team and Advisors: 20%

  • Future Team: 10%

  • Seed Club ($SEED) received 2% allocation of the community treasury due to GCR being a part of the second social token cohort.

40% of the total token supply is available starting today, with the remaining tokens 60% unlocked after one year, and vested for a period of 3 years in line with the schedule below.

• Year 0: 40% of the tokens vested or 4 million tokens

• Year 1: 30% of the treasury tokens vested or 3 million tokens

• Year 2: 20% of the treasury tokens vested or 2 million tokens

• Year 3: 10% of the treasury tokens vested or 1 million tokens

Given the $GCR token launch was announced March 2021, at this point in time (Aug 2022), we are into Y1 of the token vesting schedule, where there remain 3 million $GCR tokens to be unlocked from the vesting protocol. According to the GCR tokenomics website ${^8}$, the community allocation of 70% is held in a multi-sig wallet to be distributed as the community pleases.

It is important to note a couple things:

• The biggest tokenholder in the chart above is registered as Global Coin Research: Treasury

• The second biggest tokenholder in the chart is the Polygon (Matic) ERC 20 Bridge

These two wallets collectivelly own 62.77% of total token supply. Since these accounts don’t represent a single stakeholder, it is reasonable to conclude that token ownership across the GCR DAO is better distributed than other governance DAOs. But to further drive this point forward, we will calculate the Gini Coefficient for this DAO.

Gini Coefficient: This coeffiicent is calculated from on-chain data and hasa value between 0-1. Where 0 represents perfect equality and 1 represents perfect inequality.

import pandas as pd #We import required libraries
import numpy as np
df = pd.read_csv('GCR_HolderData.csv') #Import Etherscan data
df = df.drop(columns=['PendingBalanceUpdate']) #Drop unneccesary columns

def gini(x):
#Define function to calculate Gini coefficient
    total = 0
    for i, xi in enumerate(x[:-1], 1):
        total += np.sum(np.abs(xi - x[i:]))
    return total / (len(x)**2 * np.mean(x))

balances = df['Balance'].array #We convert the balances to an array data type
gini(balances) #We compute the Gini Coefficient for all wallets

After running the code above, the Gini Coefficient for all wallets holding $GCR is 0.9694601575002882, which is close to one. We proceed by looking at the top 10 GRT holders:

df.sort_values(by='Balance', ascending=False).head(10) #Represents the Top 10 Wallets

Please note that the computation of the Gini Coefficient above includes the top 2 walllets which are the DAO's treasury and Polygon Bridge. These are not representative datapoints for our analysis, as we want to gauge for tokenholder inequality amongst external parties. We will proceed to filter these two wallets out

df = df.sort_values(by='Balance', ascending=False)
df = df.drop(index = [495,165]) #Hard coded the indexes for the top wallets
balances_n = df['Balance'].array #We re-calculate the Gini Coefficient
gini(balances_n)

The revised Gini Coefficient is 0.9274933785635494, which shows a variation of 0.04201 after removing the treasury and bridge.

Token distribution amongst GCR tokenholders is inequal, making this token’s price vulnerable to big selloffs as the Gini Coefficient is 92.7%, with 100% representing one wallet owning all tokens. That being said, when compared to other governance DAOs, GCR’s Gini Index scores much lower. For reference, the computed Gini Coefficient for The Graph governance token was 99.4%, which is an increase of 6.7 percentage points.

The GCR Website expresses the following about the token’s utility:

1. Governance– The main purpose of $GCR is to be used to govern the entire ecosystem including the publishing platform, treasury, and operations.

2. Liquidity- Users can add liquidity to the $GCR <>USDC Uniswap pool and stake those to earn yield.

3. Token-Gated Access– holders of $GCR can access our exclusive $GCR community events in Discord (as shown in the membership tiers above)

4. HODL– Starting soon, GCR holders will have an opportunity to earn from the community rewards pool.

Value Proposition

1. $GCR by winning media farming bounties

2. Get unique access to dealflow

3. For Gold Tier and above: access to investing through GCR

The article below outlines my journey analyzing, learning and eventually joining GCR DAO. I hope this article is helpful to those looking to join, contribute or create a DAO. The memo below covers the following sectors: Summary, Product Market Fit, Market Analysis, Competitive Landscape, Governance and Tokenomics. Read on!

https://globalcoinresearch.com/

• Description: GCR is a research and investment DAO focused on Web3. $GCR is the native token of the DAO. By holding a set number of $GCR in your crypto wallet, community members are able to enjoy and participate in various events, investment deals and resources.

• Sector: Investment, Media DAO

• Token Price: $1.3

• Token Contract Address

Value Proposition: GCR provides value to community members through their novel token-incentivized media farming strategy, unique dealflow opportunities and community building.

Target User: Crypto-native independent investors (Crypto-bros?) looking for great deal opportunities and exposure through the publication of their written content

Product: What offering does this DAO provide its members? What benefits are included with membership?

The product of this DAO is access to different community features token-gated by tiers. There are four tiers to membership in the GCR community:

Price: 0 $GCR

Perks:

• Research and Content on GCR site

• Weekly Newsletter and Updates

• Educational and Research Calls (Public Events)

• Virtual and IRL Community Hangouts Around the World

• Ongoing GCR Campaigns (earn $GCR tokens and free memberships)

Price: 100 $GCR

Perks:

• Tier 0 Perks

• Access to All Community Investment Calls

• Governance Discussions

Price: 700 $GCR

Perks:

• Tier 1 Perks

• Access to Investment Threads and Discussions

• Sponsorships and Complimentary Pioneer Referrals

Price: 2000 $GCR

Perks:

• Tier 2 Perks

• Guaranteed Investment Allocation

• Monthly Airdrops

• Deal Recap Calls

• Participate in the Exclusive GCR Angel Network

• Discord Community Size: 6284 CAPTCHA Validated Members

• Newsletter Subscribers: +30,000

• Ammount invested: +$31M

Additional statistics from GCR 2021 performance reports:

• To date, GCR members have had access to 120+ crypto and non-crypto investment opportunities at various stages including pre-seed, seed, liquidity mining, growth equity, and more

• GCR members have directly met over 100+ founders through our investment deals, AMAs sessions, and ongoing events (digital and IRL)

• GCR Investments On Average Have Seen Returns of >40x***For projects/companies that have become liquid/marked-*

• As of August 2021 (GCR DAO was 4 months old) $GCR Members had Cumulatively Committed in Capital

  • $800k+in Pre-Seed and Seed Rounds

  • $5mn+in Liquidity Mining Rounds

  • $20mn+in Growth Equity Rounds

As can be seen from the statistics above, GCR DAO has shown strong signs of traction, with its large newsletter following, DAO membership in the thousands and average investment returns over 40x on projects that became liquid. With their core media farming strategy and ease of joining, this is only the beggining for GCR DAO.

Growth in the size and number of web3 VC investments

According to the Web3 Investment Trends Report, 2022

1. 2021 saw a total of 2000 deals worth over $33Bn (x2 that of 2020)

2. The web3 market is projected to grow from $1.23Bn (2020) to $8Bn (2030) at a CAGR of 45%

3. Most of the deal sourcing is happening over social media. Below you’ll find the top platforms where VCs are sourcing deals

   1. Twitter - 26.6%

   2. Telegram - 13.3%

   3. Crunchbase - 13.3%

   4. InnMind - 6.7%

4. 53.3% of Web3 VCs surveyed take 2-3 weeks to make an investment decision after the first call with founders

   1. 20% of VCs surveyed take 1 week

   2. 13.3% of VCs take more than a month

5. 86.6% of VCs surveyed invested below the $500k ticket size

6. As can be seen from the trends above, investments in the web3 space are growing exponentially, deals are being sourced from unconventional means, deals are closed much faster than traditional VC (2-4 months).

Increased need for web 3 native value add

According to Chainlink:

1. The key value adds web3 founders are looking for are:

   1. Guidance on equity distribution

   2. Guidance building an open-source community

   3. Access to wider networks

   4. Access to commercial and operational experience

   5. “Joining an incubator program or founder community oriented towards web3 founders is essential to funding early stage web3 projects”

In order to properly understand the potential of this opportunity, we need to consider the following assumptions.

• The [Global Asset and Wealth Management Industry](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/07/01/2472808/0/en/23-3-Billion-Global-Web-3-0-Blockchain-Market-Growth-with-GAGR-of-41-6-2022-2028-The-Benefits-such-as-Improved-Privacy-Secure-Network-Driving-the-Market-Web-3-0-Market-Growth-Size-.html#:\~:text=According to our primary respondents,2028%3B based on primary research.) is set to grow at a base CAGR of 4.4% for the period 2020-2025, until the sector is worth $147T (2025). Assuming that this CAGR (4.4%) holds for the period 2025-2030 we can project the value of the sector to be worth approximately $182.31 T by 2030.

• According to [Preqin Insights](https://www.preqin.com/insights/research/blogs/venture-capital-becomes-second-private-capital-class-to-hit-2tn-aum#:\~:text=The proportion of private equity,against 23.7%25 for private equity.), as of 2022, the Private Equity and Venture Capital markets have $6.3T and $2.03T in AUM, with a CAGR for the period from 2022-2028 of 11.5% and 20.2% respectively. We will make the assumption that this percentage will hold for the period 2028-2030.

• According to [Vantage Market Research](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/07/01/2472808/0/en/23-3-Billion-Global-Web-3-0-Blockchain-Market-Growth-with-GAGR-of-41-6-2022-2028-The-Benefits-such-as-Improved-Privacy-Secure-Network-Driving-the-Market-Web-3-0-Market-Growth-Size-.html#:\~:text=According

Under the assumptions presented above, the TAM for the Investment DAO sector can be sized at $162.032 Bn by 2030

What are other key players in the Investment DAO space? The Web3 Funding ecosystem is very diverse, and offers various types of funding for protocols of all stages and geographies. Below is an ecosystem map of the web3 VC space:

A more in depth analysis of the Investment DAO landscape is required to better understand the value provided by GCR DAO:

• Alliance DAO

  • Type: Investment

  • Members: 410

  • AUM: -

  • Pros:

    1. 9 week incubation program. Worked with 84 startups, 170+ founders

    2. Mentor community of 120+

    3. Small number of members maximizes contribution potential

    4. Provides Deal Flow by intros to DeFi Alliance founders and invitations to Demo Days

    5. Service Opportunities and Network creation opportunities come with membership

  • Cons:

    1. Have to apply through google form, no clear indication of entry fee requirements

  • Entry Fee: Unclear

• Stacker Ventures

  • Type: Investment, DeFi

  • Members: 1400

  • AUM: $7,289,450

The key differentiating factor for GCR is its novel community-driven media mining strategy, which is set to define GCR as a thought leader in the space further expanding their inbound sourcing efforts.

This eventually means that the GCR brand will attract founders due to their quality of content and brand image (The same way top VCs use content creation as a sourcing tool, GCR just created a new, more efficient way to perform inbound sourcing).

Due to this innovation, i am convinced that GCR will be one of the winners in the Investment DAO space. This is also the reason why I joined GCR.

Governance on the GCR DAO is handled through voting system Snapvote. Therefore to get a better idea of what the DAO’s voter activity looks like we must look there:

Total Snapvote Members: 59

Total Proposals to Date: 6

Average Vote Count per Proposal: (26+6+23+29+19+44)/6 = 24.5

Average Voter Turnout Rate: 24.5/59 = 41.52%

Who are these people? - Governance members for GCR DAO are Gold Tier and above members.

Even though membership numbers for governance on this DAO are low, the average voter turnout rate is much higher than other governance DAOs (For example, 3.2% for The Graph). What this tells us is that the governance members of this DAO have a higher vested interest in its success, and thus are more active in the governance of said DAOs.

• Total Supply: 10,000,000

• Number of Holders: 643

According to the GCR Tokenomics site:

• Community Treasury: 70% that is allocated across initial airdrop distribution, media mining program, and community treasury. Vested in a linear 4 year schedule (below)

  1. Past GCR readers from the last 4 years: 3%

  2. GCR Discord group airdrop: 3%

  3. Media Mining: 15%

  4. Community Incentives (partner airdrops, social media campaigns, community writing bounties): 49%

• Team: Vested in a linear 4 year schedule (below)

  • Current Team and Advisors: 20%

  • Future Team: 10%

  • Seed Club ($SEED) received 2% allocation of the community treasury due to GCR being a part of the second social token cohort.

40% of the total token supply is available starting today, with the remaining tokens 60% unlocked after one year, and vested for a period of 3 years in line with the schedule below.

• Year 0: 40% of the tokens vested or 4 million tokens

• Year 1: 30% of the treasury tokens vested or 3 million tokens

• Year 2: 20% of the treasury tokens vested or 2 million tokens

• Year 3: 10% of the treasury tokens vested or 1 million tokens

Given the $GCR token launch was announced March 2021, at this point in time (Aug 2022), we are into Y1 of the token vesting schedule, where there remain 3 million $GCR tokens to be unlocked from the vesting protocol. According to the GCR tokenomics website ${^8}$, the community allocation of 70% is held in a multi-sig wallet to be distributed as the community pleases.

It is important to note a couple things:

• The biggest tokenholder in the chart above is registered as Global Coin Research: Treasury

• The second biggest tokenholder in the chart is the Polygon (Matic) ERC 20 Bridge

These two wallets collectivelly own 62.77% of total token supply. Since these accounts don’t represent a single stakeholder, it is reasonable to conclude that token ownership across the GCR DAO is better distributed than other governance DAOs. But to further drive this point forward, we will calculate the Gini Coefficient for this DAO.

Gini Coefficient: This coeffiicent is calculated from on-chain data and hasa value between 0-1. Where 0 represents perfect equality and 1 represents perfect inequality.

import pandas as pd #We import required libraries
import numpy as np
df = pd.read_csv('GCR_HolderData.csv') #Import Etherscan data
df = df.drop(columns=['PendingBalanceUpdate']) #Drop unneccesary columns

def gini(x):
#Define function to calculate Gini coefficient
    total = 0
    for i, xi in enumerate(x[:-1], 1):
        total += np.sum(np.abs(xi - x[i:]))
    return total / (len(x)**2 * np.mean(x))

balances = df['Balance'].array #We convert the balances to an array data type
gini(balances) #We compute the Gini Coefficient for all wallets

After running the code above, the Gini Coefficient for all wallets holding $GCR is 0.9694601575002882, which is close to one. We proceed by looking at the top 10 GRT holders:

df.sort_values(by='Balance', ascending=False).head(10) #Represents the Top 10 Wallets

Please note that the computation of the Gini Coefficient above includes the top 2 walllets which are the DAO's treasury and Polygon Bridge. These are not representative datapoints for our analysis, as we want to gauge for tokenholder inequality amongst external parties. We will proceed to filter these two wallets out

df = df.sort_values(by='Balance', ascending=False)
df = df.drop(index = [495,165]) #Hard coded the indexes for the top wallets
balances_n = df['Balance'].array #We re-calculate the Gini Coefficient
gini(balances_n)

The revised Gini Coefficient is 0.9274933785635494, which shows a variation of 0.04201 after removing the treasury and bridge.

Token distribution amongst GCR tokenholders is inequal, making this token’s price vulnerable to big selloffs as the Gini Coefficient is 92.7%, with 100% representing one wallet owning all tokens. That being said, when compared to other governance DAOs, GCR’s Gini Index scores much lower. For reference, the computed Gini Coefficient for The Graph governance token was 99.4%, which is an increase of 6.7 percentage points.

The GCR Website expresses the following about the token’s utility:

1. Governance– The main purpose of $GCR is to be used to govern the entire ecosystem including the publishing platform, treasury, and operations.

2. Liquidity- Users can add liquidity to the $GCR <>USDC Uniswap pool and stake those to earn yield.

3. Token-Gated Access– holders of $GCR can access our exclusive $GCR community events in Discord (as shown in the membership tiers above)

4. HODL– Starting soon, GCR holders will have an opportunity to earn from the community rewards pool.

Value Proposition

1. $GCR by winning media farming bounties

2. Get unique access to dealflow

3. For Gold Tier and above: access to investing through GCR