What separates one DAO from another? And what systems bring them together?

As a social connective tissue bridging communities and contributors, Backdrop exists at the intersection of intimacy—meaning that we need to see both the forests and the trees.

DAO DNA is an iterative experiment; an investigative series into tokenized communities. We may be incubating its first few divisions, but we want DAO DNA to evolve into an organism owned by all: we’d like to facilitate partnerships across the ecosystem, both Backdrop inclusive and not, as we continue to build our intuition around how the best DAOs are structured, and how information flows between community layers.

Our goal within Backdrop is to build the best product possible, but more importantly, we want to create space to showcase DAOs from a people-first approach—what it’s like to be a contributor, a token holder, or a bounty hunter; how community leaders keep contributors engaged, excited, and active in the network at large; what the key challenges are across different tiers of the organization, and how we might build the foundations for solving these problems collectively.

Our methodology:

We’re approaching these experiments from a multitude of different angles, all with the larger ambition of “mapping” the DNA of DAOs (we’re all about the biology puns at Backdrop, much to Rapha’s chagrin…sorry Rapha!)

While this process is iterative and experimental, we’re effectively trying to identify the network effects across three tiers of the ecosystem, extrapolating outwards to form a holistic understanding of the space:

🌱 Intra-DAO network effects: what contribution flywheels drive connection, conversation, and the community in full? How can we pattern match these different systems across and between communities? Our upcoming deep dive series will be the first foray into getting to the roots of DAOs.

🌳 Inter-DAO network effects: how can we compare and contrast the key challenges pervading community, and the different means of solving them? How do we understand the culture of cross-pollination and social learning exchanges, and give shape to the symbiotic relationships forming across and between communities? Our ongoing roundtable series, a live, collaborative brainstorming session co-hosted by Forefront, is our original attempt to water the organizational “trees.”

🌍 Environmental network effects: how might we quantify the tacit collaborations, partnerships, and cooperative models between tokenized communities? Do these take form economically, through moments like token swaps, or conversationally, through cross-DAO events and the products of cooperation? By distributing insights, taking part in, and developing our own perspectives within the space, we hope to “plant” the overarching “forest” of tokenized communities.

In our quest to explore the organization as an organism, and to sequence the DNA of tokenized communities, we welcome—and actively ask for—you to join us.

The more the merrier! In the spirit of the all-inclusive DAO space, there is no cap on community, and no case for hierarchy. If you’d like to be involved, we want you there: please reach out to @vigoda_aleena or @ldf_gm to start the conversation!

We’re excited to create with you :-)