I stopped tweeting and blogging about DAOs for 3 months in favor of working in and and on pubDAO and mClub. This are the 6 things I learned so far:

1) Building DAOs is very difficult.

There is so much confusion around who needs to make decisions, and the ambiguity around “what the community will think” can be paralyzing. The only way forward was for me to cultivate trust in my fellow core team members or core contributors. Healthy, safe and meaningful relationships are the glue that holds us together.

2) Not all “DAOs” are DAOs in the technical sense.

And that’s ok. We are still so early in the space that we have not come to terms with appropriate vocabulary. All DAOs are on a spectrum of Decentralization, Automation and Organization depending on what the desired outcome is and where it is on it’s journey.

3) DAOs exist to create a change.

That’s why we see so much potential in them. Ultimately we want to build something magical that creates some sort of change in our world. When that change is ambiguous, we will find less consensus on how to get there and more confusion ensues. Be clear about the change we are seeking to make.

4) Members are the most precious resource.

It’s not the governance structure, or the tokens, or the NFTs, it’s the people that are there with their time, ideas, energy, resources and diverse perspectives. If we don’t create experiences where members feel valued, cared about and have direction we will never be able to create the change we seek.

5) DAOs are like brains.

The brain does a fantastic job at taking millions of ambiguous sensory inputs and organizing them in a way that maintains functionality. When it’s done optimally, it creates a neuroception of safety and belonging. This takes an incredible amount of processing and STRUCTURE. DAOs need to do the same. With all the ambiguous inputs; time, ideas, energy, perspective that accost a DAO, there needs to be self standing structures that can process those inputs and decide where they can go in a way that helps the DAO function.

6) DAOs need more structure than centralized organizations.

Blockchains are incredibly structured because all the blocks need to know which nodes they need to sync to at all times in-order to build consensus. This is also what allows for their decentralized nature. If we want our human organizations to be decentralized we need to build similar nodes of consensus as the organization grows. There has not been a way to do this effectively at scale yet. In order to achieve this there will need to be very structured protocols designed into the foundation of a DAO at a human level. I believe this is the next evolution of DAO tooling.

Bonus: 7) We are still VERY early.

I just came back from a Blockchain conference where I was invited to speak on a panel about DAOs. There were web3 tech founders, NFT curators, NFT collectors and a lot of fancy people. I spoke to a lot of people and when the DAO topic came up, hardly anybody knew what do to with them. We are still very early days my friends. Get ready for an exciting future for DAOs.

*********************

I still have so much to learn and am looking forward to continue the journey with my fellow builders.

I stopped tweeting and blogging about DAOs for 3 months in favor of working in and and on pubDAO and mClub. This are the 6 things I learned so far:

1) Building DAOs is very difficult.

There is so much confusion around who needs to make decisions, and the ambiguity around “what the community will think” can be paralyzing. The only way forward was for me to cultivate trust in my fellow core team members or core contributors. Healthy, safe and meaningful relationships are the glue that holds us together.

2) Not all “DAOs” are DAOs in the technical sense.

And that’s ok. We are still so early in the space that we have not come to terms with appropriate vocabulary. All DAOs are on a spectrum of Decentralization, Automation and Organization depending on what the desired outcome is and where it is on it’s journey.

3) DAOs exist to create a change.

That’s why we see so much potential in them. Ultimately we want to build something magical that creates some sort of change in our world. When that change is ambiguous, we will find less consensus on how to get there and more confusion ensues. Be clear about the change we are seeking to make.

4) Members are the most precious resource.

It’s not the governance structure, or the tokens, or the NFTs, it’s the people that are there with their time, ideas, energy, resources and diverse perspectives. If we don’t create experiences where members feel valued, cared about and have direction we will never be able to create the change we seek.

5) DAOs are like brains.

The brain does a fantastic job at taking millions of ambiguous sensory inputs and organizing them in a way that maintains functionality. When it’s done optimally, it creates a neuroception of safety and belonging. This takes an incredible amount of processing and STRUCTURE. DAOs need to do the same. With all the ambiguous inputs; time, ideas, energy, perspective that accost a DAO, there needs to be self standing structures that can process those inputs and decide where they can go in a way that helps the DAO function.

6) DAOs need more structure than centralized organizations.

Blockchains are incredibly structured because all the blocks need to know which nodes they need to sync to at all times in-order to build consensus. This is also what allows for their decentralized nature. If we want our human organizations to be decentralized we need to build similar nodes of consensus as the organization grows. There has not been a way to do this effectively at scale yet. In order to achieve this there will need to be very structured protocols designed into the foundation of a DAO at a human level. I believe this is the next evolution of DAO tooling.

Bonus: 7) We are still VERY early.

I just came back from a Blockchain conference where I was invited to speak on a panel about DAOs. There were web3 tech founders, NFT curators, NFT collectors and a lot of fancy people. I spoke to a lot of people and when the DAO topic came up, hardly anybody knew what do to with them. We are still very early days my friends. Get ready for an exciting future for DAOs.

*********************

I still have so much to learn and am looking forward to continue the journey with my fellow builders.