# How to Govern an Existing Town with DAO By [HelloDAO](https://paragraph.com/@hellodao-2) · 2022-11-04 --- Devoted audience should remember our previous article on why CityDAO might create the first network city. For those who haven’t read the article (I highly recommend that you do), CityDAO acquired a 40-acre land in Wyoming, US and their plan is to build a network city on that piece of land from scratch. In this article, we will walk you through how an existing town can benefit from a DAO structure with fast implementation and rollout. Granted, each country is different in terms of wealth distribution, political structure and degree of freedom. So, the scenarios covered in this article will not apply to 100% of the world. Nevertheless, introducing the potential of DAO on town governance to the grand public is aligned with the mission of HelloDAO. The issues and results discussed in the following paragraphs will highly pertain to typical middle-class towns in the USA where I grew up in. For our readers not familiar with a typical American suburban town, here is a pretty good example. For townfolks, networking, mayorship, infrastructure, and volunteering are some of the most important topics discussed on a daily basis. While there are other topics, today we will only be focusing on these aspects of DAO governance in a town. 1. Networking A town is comprised of a network of families. Most kids don’t leave their hometown until they go to college or find a job elsewhere. We often hear of these stories in which the hiring manager favors an applicant from their hometown, possibly same school, too and the applicant ends up getting the job. Sounds a bit unfair, but that’s how relationship works in society. Note that this isn’t called nepotism, but networking, which is entirely different from nepotism. Networking isn’t inherently evil because it also creates job opportunities. Many new college grads complain that they don’t know how to network. Well, DAO can help. By uploading your identity information on the blockchain, a DAO as a simple group chat outweighs a typical “Facebook group” because no one can fake an identity anymore, which adds tremendous value to the group. Most town’s “Facebook group” simply doesn’t foster relationships between townfolks because everyone knows a Facebook account isn’t that hard to fake, and malicious players are out there to get us. Most Facebook group admins don’t get anything for gatekeeping the group chat from outsiders, but in a DAO there are so many ways to incentivize valuable behaviors, and those who provide value will forever live in the history book of blockchain. For example, if you successfully created job opportunities for the townfolks, a non-transferable NFT badge can be issued to you representing what you’ve done for the community. Good behaviors shouldn’t be kept close-door, and those who consistently provide value should be rewarded publicly. Most importantly, DAO members/townfolks would be writing a history book of their own time and their own home, actually leaving a legacy that will forever be remembered. 1. Mayorship Most people feel ambivalent about politics, because politics is at times opaque, manipulative, and dishonest. However, politics is everywhere in our daily lives and some people even desire to be politicians one day. There are two main issues associated with voting in today’s world, invalid ballots, and human-induced errors/manipulations. In a town DAO, voters will vote on a blockchain. In order to be eligible, one must be a member of the town DAO and receive a voting ticket NFT that will be burned once the vote is casted. Smart contracts will first determine voter’s eligibility and then take away the voting ticket once the vote is casted. There’s won’t be any writing on a piece of paper, transporting bags of ballots to a secure location, or counting votes in a “sandbox” environment. Voting should be an unadulterated manifest of democracy, but only by decentralizing the current system can it be achieved. 1. Infrastructure Let’s be honest, America isn’t famous for its infrastructure projects. In a town, people shouldn’t have to wait years for a small bridge to be built because they have to deal with all the bureaucracy. In addition, there are projects that could benefit many folks in town, but simply won’t get approved for budgetary or whatever reason. If you want to do it yourself, you and your cousins might be short of manpower for the job. And you never receive all the credits for it because folks across the town simply won’t know about it! You ask a few neighbors whom you thought your interests are aligned, but many people are concerned about being taken advantage of. The project gets delayed again. In a DAO, for a collaborative project to start, you only need consensus because trust issue is eliminated by blockchain and smart contracts. Find stakeholders in your DAO who can actually benefit from the project, create a wallet where everyone can deposit money into, then govern the wallet with smart contracts. If it is a commercial project such as a water-sliding facility, founding members could even receive future revenue via IP-NFT. The possibility is endless. 1. Volunteering Depending on where you are from, there are many volunteering works taking place on a daily basis. In this article, I am going to classify all unpaid “jobs” to the volunteering category for simplicity. The reason why I do that is because these jobs don’t have to be unpaid, and volunteers should receive credit where credit is due. In a town DAO, “unpaid jobs” will disappear. Let’s take carpooling for an example. In a suburban setting, you can’t really go anywhere without wheels. Thus, carpooling for kids is very common in schools. Carpooling is shared in a small circle in which the parents trust each other. This small circle typically doesn’t grow due to trust issues, and no one is keeping records. In a town DAO, all volunteer works such as carpooling will be rewarded with token or NFT. Token is for economic incentives while NFT can be used as a proof of work. Carpooling no longer has to only be kept in a small circle, because an “Uber” like experience can be actually created by the town DAO. Parents with many successful carpools will have the chance to join other carpool groups because of their track record. Check out our previous article on “Uber DAO” for more details. For students who volunteer at certain clubs, their experience can be uploaded on the blockchain and act as a proof for when they apply to college or a future job. The benefits that a DAO can bring in a town governance is limitless, because DAO represents a more advanced way of distributing resources, facilitating trusts, and creating values. --- *Originally published on [HelloDAO](https://paragraph.com/@hellodao-2/how-to-govern-an-existing-town-with-dao)*