Gm Builders,
This one's a short one but it matters. To DAO is to know how to move towards full community control of an ecosystem intentionally. There are plenty of cases in which you need to progressively decentralize an ecosystem, and knowing what those are and some models through which to approach them will get you far.
That's DAOing, in practice.
It usually involves daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and multi-year steps to full community control and that's ok.
Progressive decentralization can lead to a more aligned, more secure ecosystem than a quick exit to the community can. This is the first of many posts, building on each other to show you exactly how to get there and why it matters.
Navigating the DAO-Scape
If you've been in the crypto industry for any length of time then you've likely noticed, there are more than a few kinds of DAOs. Some look like investment funds run by a collective. Some look like charities run in the same fashion. Others present themselves as a swarm of developers or designers or some other profession creating shared value for themselves and for clients/partners, they take on.
Still, more types exist, of which the most successful to date, by the value they create, maintain, and scale, are protocol DAOs or shared wallets, sets of rules, and other resources that all of the stakeholders of, an app or a chain use to run said app or chain.
Push DAO is, by and large, a Protocol DAO. Uniswap DAO is a Protocol DAO. Compound DAO and Synthetix's set of DAOs are the same, in terms of their function.
While some DAOs like on-chain charities or investment collectives can be launched at their full scale more swiftly, Protocol DAOs benefit from more time and more of an intentional approach.
Once you get why, it's easier to understand progressive decentralization matters and can lead to an ecosystem that scales higher than ever before. This post and every one that follows will only make that clearer.
Before we get too deep, however, let's start with the basics.
So you have a chain and a community, what now?
Let's say you have a chain and you want it to live up to its name of the decentralized hub for the future of consumer apps. You have a Foundation that houses the developers who made the chain possible. You have some initial grantees who are interested in building apps on your chain and you have a token and people who have bought that token.
Let's also add that you have a forum and a Discord where all of these groups discuss their ideas for the future of the chain and its ecosystem.
You've always planned to DAOify all of this.
Where do you start?
With the people.
Listen, Learn, Align
Whether you're the founder of the chain involved or just someone hired to decentralize its ecosystem, from day one, you need to be in the Discord and the Forum listening to the first community members who get active and what they choose to discuss regularly. Give that 3 months or so, sometimes less, let it build up to a critical mass of activity, and during that time, have discussions with your community on the vision for the chain since its launch and how that vision connects to what they see the ecosystem becoming.
In other words, find out what your community values.
That includes token holders, developers, grantees, and investors(who perhaps were in your seed round).
Everyone involved.
On every side of the growing ecosystem.
It's not easy but it's necessary.
Hold community calls, hold governance calls, call them whatever you want within reason but make them weekly, forever, and let the community be heard. In those first 90 days, build out what is commonly called your manifesto or your constitution and use that to guide you on your way to full DAOification.
Sometimes your community can take longer to align around your efforts and it may be best to build that document out in the first three, rather than six months.
There's no one-size-fits-all approach and it's a judgment call. Whatever timeline you choose to follow, you want as many of your members involved in the process as possible.
What is a DAO Manifesto/DAO Constitution, really?
It can be one page. It can be more. In all cases, however, it's the guidelines for the DAO as it grows, related to how it operates. Push DAO, as of now, is building its way towards a community-created constitution by the end of this year, which will be roughly six months since the start of the DAO in its current form via governance.
If there are any rules to use to guide you in the creation of such a pivotal document, it's the following:
Start with a vision, like, "to be the pioneer in a world where our favorite apps are run by us, everyday people, not centralized corporations." See the mission section below for one tip on how to craft the best possible one you can.
Center the rest of the document on that vision.
Continue with values, i.e., what your community stands for and doesn't stand for, or in other words, what they will and will not do.
Keep those values as simple as possible. Make them easy for anyone in the world to understand, not just deep crypto people.
Add in a mission, i.e., a statement that tells everyone how you plan to achieve your vision. That will look something like this: "to make DAOing more accessible and more impactful than ever before, through a dedication to seamless UX across the board in the Dapp we govern and to shared value, for everyone in the community." This can be more or less specific, depending on what you're going for. I always recommend bringing in a strategic professional who is very experienced with not just crafting mission statements but using them with a vision and values to provably scale a community. If you don't have someone like this at launch, then go out and find them. Leverage all of your community's contacts to do so.
Weave all of the above into a story. Why should someone care about what your DAO is all about if it's not presented compellingly? Think of the great presenters of our time, and draw inspiration from where it makes sense.
In all of this, don't be overly technical. You need to write for the everyday person, even though at first that's not applicable. If we can't do that with our constitutions, then how can we educate the world on the promise of DAOs as a whole?
End the document with a hyperlink to where you want to send everyone. Make it as easy as possible for them to get started, whether that's on your DAO's forum or elsewhere.
If you're focused on decentralizing the treatment of rare diseases, then you may have more of a gated sort of access to things, than if you're, say, focused on launching a collectively owned publication which anyone can, in theory, write for.
In either case, build your constitution in public with your community. Never do it unilaterally. From there, you can begin to make proposals and see which subDAOs, workstreams, programs, and overall improvements come from them.
Don't get me wrong, the opposite can also be true. A DAO can have a governance system before a constitution especially if it's very early and the founding members have a vision of reaching a certain scale before they push forward into a different, more robust leadership structure. Push DAO is one of these cases.
As the year goes on, you'll see how that plays out in practice.
In any case, thanks for reading, and from one DAOist to another, keep your eyes peeled here for a growing library on any and every practical bit of advice on DAOing that I can think of. Similarly to what I said last time, if you want to discuss anything you've read or you just want to dive in and DAO with us, reach out to me anywhere on my socials, where my handle is usually @Expatcrypto3, or to all of us on the Push DAO Forum.
GN for now.