Let’s pick up the catch phrases. Speed matters, plus a high-velocity decision-making.

Wikipedia has defined velocity in the following manner: “Velocity is the directional speed of a object in motion as an indication of rates of change in position…“ It is there fore not only about speed but includes direction.

So let’s rephrase that phrases again here. Speed matters. However, a right direction weighs more.

The writer thinks that for a DAO to remain vivacious, the same sentence finds its correct position in explaining the process. If a DAO absorb members quickly in certain time, then the whole community will seem active. New members are more than happy to participate.

But they have no direction. They do not know what is the next step. It is natural that they feel lost and get back to their original track.

One possible solution for a DAO to address such trouble is to set a proper onborading procedure just like the writer has mentioned in the previous article. But this method has its weakness that the design of story, roles, the whole process might need different people collaborating, which is very time-consuming.

The writer thinks that there is another possible way that is to keep creating new activities. These should be easy enough to participate, addressing the basic needs of members, and done by different sub-groups in the DAO. It is important to let members see new things coming up. And these activities might not be sexy enough to attract them initially, but with more practices members’ needs will be revealed.

For example, Legal Espresso as a sub-group of LegalDAO has constantly putting forward new and simple projects. Legal Espresso starts from collecting articles from contributors in any form related to Web3. Until now, there are already 6 outputs from contributors around the world. The forms are not limited to text, but will also include visual or audio in the future, like short Ti-Tok or Youtube videos and Podcast.

In continuously showing LegalDAO’s members what Legal Espresso has done and is going to do, the writer has observed that members’ participation or the willingness to become a contributor to different activities increases. The effect is formless, but actually exists. What is the most important is that it is unpredictable. The writer has never thought Legal Espresso could have such influence.

Legal Espresso, in the writer’s understanding, is such a direction for LegalDAO’s members to know what LegalDAO is doing. What’s better, they know it by participating. So in this way, all members know that they understand the community. They understand that they know each others and they unite for the same belief, by doing something for LegalDAO.

The birth and development of Legal Espresso is the perfect illustration for what velocity means for DAOs.

It is the source of DAO’s vitality.

That is the story of Plato’s Cave. It is an allegory with many possible explanations. It could be interpreted to question whether the wisdom of the crowd exist, because the crowd may only know what they think they know but not the correct answers . It could also be used to showcase the necessity of education. In DAO’s cases, it relates to the governance problem.

One of the DAO’s governance controversial issues is whether it is beneficial for the all to decide the rules by DAO’s members collectively. As we all feel but may deny to accept, crowd decisions might well be wrong. Just like the people in Plato’s Cave, it is highly possible that DAO’s members do not know the truth, or only have a fraction of understanding of what benefits the DAO. They will give wrong judgments respectively. And collectively, they may steer the DAO to a wrong direction.

Plus, decision-making by the all may even be contradictory to its very essential tenet. If the discussion is limited to the method of one-token-one-vote based on transferable token, the existence of the whale may well render the ultimate decisions conflicting with the original expectation of such a mechanism - the participation of the crowd. The people who go outside and see the real world in Plato’s Cave will be such a esteemed small group. As Vitalik Buterin suggests, it is just another kind of “Dictatorship” or “Aristocracy“.

Neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Franks developed Logotherapy, which suggests that the search of the meaning in life is the primary driving force of human beings. Adopting the same methodology, the writer thinks that it is necessary to rethink why we need DAOs, or more specifically, why we need decentralization.

The meaning of DAOs may not be as an urgent topic for discussion or research as DAOs as projects or communities. But it is unavoidable for the establishment of DAOs ecology or the curation of DAOs culture. People attend DAOs for numerous reasons, and only a few know exactly why what this particular DAO aims to do need decentralization. If more members understand, then they may be clearer about how to contribute. Generally, it activates DAOs and generates more chances for ideas to clash, inducing more DAOs. Also, it is also important in a sense for all Web3 participants and on-lookers to evaluate whether a DAO is really a DAO in Web3, or it is just Web2 traditional organizations claiming itself to be a DAO. Those projects or communities without a need to be decentralized confuse participants’ understanding of Web3, exacerbating the already chaotic environment.

Just like the above-mentioned, the possibility of decision-making not aligned with members’ expectations indicates that the necessity of DAOs may not lie in discovering the truth, or for the altogether welfare. The writer supposes that there is other possibility.

One of the advocates’ arguments of collaborative governance and participatory politics’ arguments is the education effect. In political socialization theory, people develop their perception of what the world is like and how it works by participating actively or passively through medium like schools, families, mass media, and political parties. So DAOs’ meaning, from an experimental perspective, may be in such an educational sense, that expand Web3’s audience, by attracting people who are not familiar with Web3 concepts and offering them opportunities to learn and research, transforming them into Web3 builders.

As a contributor of LegalDAO, the writer strongly feels the growth of LegalDAO. From its very beginning as a small community with no more than 30 people to the current state with 2 main project ready to launch the MVP, LegalDAO changes radically. In this process, the writer also has different understanding of what DAOs are or what DAOs should be. Though the writer has not yet clear answers these two questions, the writer has at least ruled out some possibilities. And the shape has roughly emerged. It would be more abstract if the writer did not participate LegalDAO and only accepted others’ views on DAOs.

What is more important, the writer has developed a proactive attitude of contributing to a DAO. In the process of reaching out to people who have deeper research experience and understanding of Web3, and operating the internal community activities, the writer starts to know realistically what buttresses a DAO and maintain its continuance.

Certainly, not all the experience could be described to be happy. The writer also has felt the gap of expectation and the reality. But the gap does not frustrate the writer. On the contrary, it prompts the writer to do more research and think even deeply and critically. Observation, estimation, test and revision. The writer learns to adopt a scientific method to study Web3, rather than scanning and forgetting.

Maybe we are all in Plato’s Cave in current exploration of Web3 world. We think we know what it is. But actually we only have a grasp of the shadow. The writer believes it does not matter though. Maybe none of us will be the one who free itself from the chains and see the reality. What the writer wants to extract from this allegory is that the most important is keep criticizing everything, and especially yourself. Always remember that we are in Plato’s Cave. In this manner, DAOs are the entrances and the tunnels, inviting the existing participants and would-be members to keep exploring.

DAOs’ collaboration could start from a member in the DAO reaching out to another DAO’s member. The writer has contacted with many DAOs for the potential collaborations with LegalDAO. Some work, but more fail. Successful experiences clear the fog of future roads in a practical meaning for DAOs. Failures, however, is of more value because it offers what the writer should do to improve the way of negotiation. Thus this article will talk about both the success and the failure.

DAO could collaborate with those of the same kind. In this kind of connection, a DAO build its rapport more easily, and the cost of communication is relative low. In LegalDAO’s case, the collaboration with ByteBao is a good example. ByteBao provides Web3 education to law practitioners and also legal services towards Web3 companies. LegalDAO aims at establishing the order and justice for Web3, and the early members are mostly lawyers. These two communities attract similar groups of people, though not exactly the same. And most importantly, they explore the same thing, that is to connect the Law with Web3. With these similarities, LegalDAO x ByteBao collaboration is rather quick to achieve. The writer feels the synergy of these two communities when participating the meet-up of LegalDAO’s founder and ByteBao’s founder. 40 minutes of introduction and discussion nail down the rough collaboration plan. The writer estimates that it is because two founders are both lawyers, who feel certain sore points when doing their job. So they feel the need to improve the situation and thus the vision of LegalDAO and ByteBao is very alike.

DAO could also collaborate with those of different or even opposite kind. In this kind of connection, a DAO enlarges its ecology and is capable of getting more creative work done. LegalDAO’s collaboration with zCloak is of this kind. zCloak provides Zero-Knowledge Proof as a service for public blockchains. Though these two communities are both in Web3 ecology, the interested group of members is less overlapped. Also, what LegalDAO is doing is different from what zCloak is doing, with the former focusing on application side and the latter focusing on infrastructure side. Nonetheless, they achieve the collaboration for the same goal of delivering a product. Without the assistance of zCloak, LegalDAO’s project would lack technical viability. Meanwhile, zCloak also needs the endorsement of law. In this kind of collaboration, LegalDAO and zCloak enlarge their engagement with other heterogeneous communities, and thus the influence of the whole Chinese Web3 ecology.

The DAO collaboration types of homogeneous communities and heterogeneous communities is worthy of further discussion. This article only chooses a certain angle that is the strength of these two types. Further observance and research on other factors like their corresponding weakness, collateral effects, and manner of working will be of great value. The writer, for instance, wants to see how heterogeneous DAOs interact with each others and increase their influence in the Web3 ecology in this process.

How to achieve collaboration? The essence is to offer what other DAOs want, and to ask for what you need. LegalDAO needs global publicity and resources, which ByteBao could provide. ByteBao needs Chinese influence and market, which LegalDAO has an abundance of. The writer did not know such tit-for-tat strategy at the first meet-up with ByteBao’s founder. No material result was achieved at the end of that meet-up because the writer simply introduced what LegalDAO is currently doing, without stressing that what LegalDAO could offer to ByteBao. Simple introduction is not enough, the ideas should be marshaled into expressions that could let another party exactly know what they could get from you. They are more likely become interested in your DAO if you do so. Then comes the more significant move, that is to clearly states your need, by proposing potential collaboration ways, which needs at least a basic understanding of your potential collaboration DAOs, a clear comprehension of what the goal of this meet-up, and a mastery of the grand picture of your DAO. From the hindsight, though the writer knew generally what ByteBao mainly targets at, but did not recognize the desired result of the meet-up with ByteBao. Besides, the writer lacked a broad view of LegalDAO, and thus could not figure out which module of LegalDAO better match the ByteBao. The writer learned the above-mentioned experience from the second meet-up, when LegalDAO’s founder talked with ByteBao’s founder. In the writer’s observation, throughout the discussion, they subconsciously showed their mastery of the above-mentioned three points. And they took less than 40 minutes to establish the collaboration relation.

Certainly, there are many other factors affecting the success of collaboration, including but not limited to the existing collaborations with other DAOs, the projects the DAO has done or is doing, the fame the DAO enjoys, DAO’s community activeness, the founders’ communication, and the like. But at the very core is the give and take. Just as Adam Grant argues in Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, people most likely are neither pure givers or pure takers, but matchers who eager to strike a balance between offering and receiving. In the same vein, DAOs build relations with other DAOs by the balance of giving and taking.

DAOs succeed by doing jobs which could not be done without the assistance of other DAOs. And more importantly, through collaborations, DAOs network is tighter with real connections and deep comprehension. The writer would like to keep observing the collaboration effect of DAOs.

This thought originates from the problem the writer encounters when considering the following question: How to activate the community? Sometimes members add in and just remain silent. Why?

Maybe one of the reasons is that they do not know what to do. Certainly not all members need activation. People have strong motives find their roles proactively. But a larger number of people needs guidance to find the direction. Second, early community members have advantages, knowing what the community was like. New members, on the other hand, have less information. If the community is already huge like BanklessDAO, new members may highly feel lost without proper step-by-step leading. In other words, providing necessary information, or onboarding is very important for a growing community.

One of LegalDAO’s problems as a community is that compared to other DAOs, it lacks so-called standard procedure for new joining members. The writer has observed that many DAOs have designed warm-up mechanism to familiarize them with the DAO. These techniques include opening a welcome section, delegating different roles, and telling a background story. These may be done by a robot or by a real person. But LegalDAO does not have such kind of procedure. It is what makes LegalDAO special. Even there is no such things existing, LegalDAO members are still active, though in an intermittent fashion. For example, LegalDAO members periodically raise new ideas, ranging from promoting LegalDAO’s publicity through WeChat tunnels to proposing new projects like designing a supervision mechanism for DEXs. However, the weakness of such casualty is that the ideas or the proposals might not be further developed because members could not find people with the same thought due to the lack of transparency, record and thus symmetry of information. Such mismatch of personnel might leave many potential good ideas unrecognized, which indirectly hurts the vibrancy of LegalDAO. Second, such casualty might work because LegalDAO is still young. If the size expands, the situation might be more chaotic. Just imagine different people in a small room talk at the same time. The noise will ruin the efficiency of the exchange of valid information.

One way to address such problem might be what the last chapter states, interviewing each member and showing their information to others. People have a chance to find people they want to work with in this way. But it per se might not be sufficient enough to maintain the liveness of the community.

Members need to know more clearly their roles in the community and what the community is like so that they can come up with ideas that can be more easily be recognized and accepted in the particular DAO. The writer believes that there is no nonviable idea, but only misplaced idea. Onboarding including roles and background story is therefore necessary for a DAO to find its members and for a member to find his or her kind of DAO. It is a mutual selection process. And by such matching, DAO may find its true origin of dynamism, accepting those who share the same belief and filtering out those with hostility. DAO as a community grows, by the coming and leaving of members. DAO as a community should not think about how to retain those who leave, but focus on keeping flexible and open-minded enough to welcome new comers.

The writer is inspired by and agrees with what Simon de la Rouviere has mentioned in the article Infinite Game Storytelling, that “Finite stories are written for the purpose of it beginning & ending. Infinite stories are written for the purpose of continuing the story.” Infinite story as background for new members in a DAO inspires and resonates with the creativity. It invites members to collectively work on it.

The writer thinks that such infinite story should only set up a framework, only with necessary timing, location, roles, a sparkle of conflict, and ultimate goal. The timing could be a specific point but also a not too long period. The location could be imaginary or real. The roles should be diverse enough for people to choose freely. The conflict helps members to understand the ultimate goal, but should not be too detailed so that members feel restricted. The ultimate goal can be divided into small ones for each member to come up with ideas to spot the problems to address for attaining such a goal. And there should be reward, which is a more complicated topic worthy of a discussion with the length of a book.

Let the writer serve up a quick wrap-up. Infinite story (1) attracts and engages new members; (2) helps existing members’ ideas find its perfect match; (3) keeps DAO adaptive to the come and go of the members, and keeps it alive. However, these are all thoughts. They may well be wrong. The most important is to materialize and test it. The writer believes infinite story leads to the perfection of DAO as community, and thus the ecology of Web3.

Everyone could be a creator. Infinite story opens such a water gate.

Another entrepreneur the writer has talked to also mentioned the same thing. The sore point the writer vaguely felt when proposing the idea might not be a real problem in that industry. Or maybe it is, but factors other than what the writer had in mind which brought about the project weigh too much for the project to attain its goal. It is the understanding of the industry and people’s thought that largely determines the success of a career.

These discussions push the writer to self-reflect. A proposal could be self-centered. But if it is going to materialize and be assessed by a larger group of people who may have little knowledge about the problem, then it should be inclusive. To be inclusive, the idea should be resonated with those who are familiar with the problem and be at least felt understandable by those who are not. From a project perspective, it is necessary to pinpoint the seed users by interviewing potential customers to find a market-product-fit. From a community perspective, the writer estimates by talking with members, some kind of equilibrium might be found for DAO to keep active and maintain alive. This is because when a project emerges from community, the first group of users very likely comes from the same place. These two groups share certain degrees of similarity, at least at a very early stage of a project. Knowing members in a community level benefits the project by understanding the potential users. At the same time, portraying the profile for community members may engage them in the community better, increasing their sense of belonging. To testify the estimation, the writer decided to do an “experiment“.

The writer then discussed with other LegalDAO contributors. The primary conclusion was that interview covering the whole community members costs excessive energy and time. Besides, such kind of interview might be of no effect because a large number of interviewees means generalization of interview questions, which may not tailor to each member. Therefore, the writer and another contributor decided to focus on firstly the lawyer group and from the De-Reg project standing as an “alpha test”. Then it could be expanded to other groups, covering a wider topic. It also helps improving the interview process by adjusting based on interviewees’ comments. Also, the basic results of the interview should be disclosed to all members, but not in a way that will make interviewees feel uncomfortable for losing anonymity. The form is to be decided. It may contain op-out options for interviewees who do not want their information disclosed to others.

What the writer has learned from this stream of discussion and the exploration of solution is that that though community and project should be separated, they may be somehow interwoven in certain ways. And sometimes a thought stems from specific projects might also be useful when using in community operation. Besides, it is very important to know who you want to engage either for the project purpose or for the maintenance of community. One-to-one conversation is the best method.

The writer is preparing for the interview. Currently the framework of question is established. The writer plans to interview in-person and offers follow-up observation to see whether writer’s estimation is right.

At the very beginning, members add in in a casual way. They might follow the DAO on Twitter or the official website. They might be invited by the existing members. In this early stage, DAO’s vision exist but is vague and immature. Also, members in this stage are relatively more familiar with Web3 concepts and what this specific DAO want to achieve.

Then there is a turning point when members participate in a more organized way. They might be attracted because of the [PR plans] designed by DAO members. In this phase, the vision is clearer and the targets are in shape. However, new members might not have as much Web3 knowledge as existing members. Besides, their expectation towards the goal of DAO might well be distinct from others.

In LegalDAO’s case, the writer has felt the shift of these two stages. As an early contributor, the writer became a member in the second month since LegalDAO was formally established. Members’ backgrounds are relatively alike and they easily got familiar with each other. The early members were mostly lawyers and students who were interested in Web3. Also, members easily knew what LegalDAO was working on, with rather limited activities like Twitter Space discussion and debate conference. However, the speed of LegalDAO’s expansion is stunning. In just a month the number of active contributors increases from around 30 to over 130. In this process, members are more diverse. Not limited to lawyers, there are currently investors, IT developers, business managers, entrepreneurs, journalists and college students in LegalDAO. Members are also distributed in different geographical locations, ranging from America to Africa. For instance, one of LegalDAO members is based in Tanzania as a journalist. And LegalDAO connects with a Hongkong barrister. At the same time, there are more and more activities in LegalDAO, from Twitter column Legal Espresso, to projects like De-Reg and De-Lawyers. Diversity of members brings about energy but also divergence because their understanding and expectation towards DAO is different.

The writer does not expect such changes and eagers to understand better what this DAO is becoming. This is a tracking rather than a monitoring. It is more like a so-called Ethnography. (In writer’s understanding, an ethnography is kind of diary. Please forgive the show-off.) Or it could be compared to the observation of the growth of a plant. The writer wants to record every moment of LegalDAO, from sprouting to blooming, and figures out what nutrients it needs to maintain life. But it could not be comprehensive because the writer’s sight is limited. Also, LegalDAO might die before fully blossoming. The writer recognizes and accepts all these limitations and uncertainty. And the writer believes such truthfulness finds its audience.

This tracking will start from portraying existing members.

One solution is to use the same the communication tool instead of using multiple mediums at the same time. For example, during the communication process as one of De-Reg core members, I constantly feel confused when I have to switch among WeChat, Feishu, Notion to check and find the documents I need. We feel a sheer need to use one platform in at least this project to facilitate the internal communication. But we also keep information on Notion open to everyone. We want to strike a balance between the working efficiency and transparency. In this process I feel the gap between Web3 dream world where everything is transparent and the reality where certain kind of information block smooths the workflow.

Another solution is to set up a position in charge of internal communication. Their job may include without limitation to hosting sync-up meetings routinely to keep everyone on the same page, marshalling execution plans for members to clearly understand what is the next step, and the like. So-called [Crypto Revolutionists] may deem this way too Web2 or traditional. But again, a project should be differentiated from a community, the former should prioritize steering core members’ ability towards one target in an efficient way.

In writer’s observation, Web3 participants could be roughly divided into two groups: revolutionists and reformists. The former deems that Web3 and Web2 are totally different world. On the contrary, the latter think the transition from Web2 to Web3 is slow, long-term and ongoing.

Based on these two different mindsets, the methodology they adopt to engage in Web3 diverges. Revolutionist methodology generally resists the use of Web2 [logic]. For example, they disagree with traditional company organizational methods. Also, they do not even conform to rules devised and executed by real world governments. On the other hand, reformist methodology insists the need to apply Web2 [logic] to Web3 in construction. Well established Web2 best practices in product management, operation and marketing are acceptable in building DAOs.

The writer believes that some Web2 techniques are helpful in Web3. But too much reliance will inevitably impair the core attributes of Web3. The key is to understand what practices are the minimum viable for Web3, in a way that help boost the development without causing it to lose the essence.

When the writer came up with the ideas of Decentralized Regulation and posted it in LegalDAO Discord, the writer never though it could be a project. The writer was even unsure whether it was a good idea or not, let alone thinking its viability. But LegalDAO contributors continuously discussed about it, generously offering their opinion. Some totally negated the necessity. Some questioned the trouble this idea was about to address. Some thought this idea was interesting, but not realistic. But strangely, despite such criticism, the idea has slowly become a project with a core member team with minimum required resources, preparing deck and BP for fundraising. The shape of the idea was unclear at the very beginning, but it has generally materialized. It is inspiring, but also grappling, with different opinion colliding, progress thrusted. For example, the writer has been asked the specific fundraising and product launch plan by interested investors. When the writer asked the same questions and proposed to set the milestone tracking for the whole project, some members in the core team disapproved and resisted to use traditional company management methods in such an early stage of a product, when there is still a lot of uncertainty lying ahead.

This story makes the writer think about when is the proper timing for project management to engage. It is true that this method works well for Web2 companies because the market is mature and the path is paved. But Web3 is the immature uncharted. The circle is too small and the ecology is not inclusive enough. Also, it might be disproportionate to use such a high standard for such an infant project, straining core members’ stamina and passion. In this way, the conclusion is that the proper timing might be when externally, the market is largely established enough or internally, the core members are harboring the same expectation towards the project supported by economic or spiritual incentives.

The writer maintains that DAO needs project management. DAO community is different from DAO project. Though it might be hard to draw a clear line between these two, it is nevertheless necessary. The above section: Separation of community and project has mentioned the difference of DAO as community and DAO as project, and the underlying confliction between creativity and [materialization]. If a DAO whose members tend to focus on the former, then project management either has little use or even backfires. However, if a DAO leans toward the latter, then project management has its value in that process. Broadly speaking, project management should exist or at least be considered, either actually be utilized or as an evaluation method of the DAO’s goal or position.  

The writer clearly remembers that a DAOer has said, that DAOs diverge, but at last DAOs converge. The writer eagers to figure out what is the convergent point of DAOs.

DAO governance is a broad topic. Discussion around proposal procedure, voting mechanism, incentives design and alignment blossoms. From a macro view, it is theoretically sound. But the writer has not seen the general adoption by DAO of such methods, needless to say the reflections. The reason might be that DAOs’ forms and methods are in relatively chaotic situation for which the theoretical framework is hard to establish. Therefore, the writer would like to alter the discussion based on a micro view, as an observer also a practitioner in DAO governance.

The writer has learned a lot as a contributor to LegalDAO. This series is planned to showcase some hands-on experience around the down-to-earth governance in LegalDAO. The down-to-earth governance is primarily defined in two sides. The external side focuses on how a DAO appear itself to the public (e.g., community, product and so on). The internal side concentrates on how a DAO appear itself to itself (e.g., members communication, culture [forming] and so on). This categorization is not precise. For example, community could be discussed in external way, like how to attract and onboard new members. Also, community could be analyzed in internal way, like how to activate and facilitate the participation of old members. But a rough separation smooths the way of thinking by filtering out unnecessary disturbance, simplifying what need to be considered. Besides, it invites criticism to bring about deeper discussion.

Further, the writer will try to extract some general take-aways from the hands-on experience in this series. These abstractions should be readable and replicable. Also, they are not one-size-fit-all, but adaptive on a case-by-case basis. The writer clearly remembers what a DAOer has said, that DAOs diverge, but at last DAOs converge. The writer eagers to figure out what is the convergent point of DAOs.

External

• Separation of community and project

  DAO as a distributed community inspires creativity. DAO as a specific project, however, discourage creativity to some extent, with the ultimate goal to realize the thoughts from the community. It is this underlying confliction that requires the severance.

• Project management issue

  1. Should project management exist?

     Broadly speaking, project management should exist or at least be considered, either actually be utilized or as an evaluation method of the DAO’s goal or position.

  2. When should project management engage?

     In this way, the conclusion is that the proper timing might be when externally, the market is largely established enough or internally, the core members are harboring the same expectation towards the project supported by economic or spiritual incentives.

  3. What function does project management perform?

• Community operation issue

  1. From small to big: different phases while growing

     The writer wants to record every moment of LegalDAO, from sprouting to blooming, and figures out what nutrients it needs to maintain life. But it could not be comprehensive because the writer’s sight is limited. Also, LegalDAO might die before fully blossoming. The writer recognizes and accepts all these limitations and uncertainty. And the writer believes such truthfulness finds its audience.

  2. From project to community: the need of member portraying

     From a community perspective, the writer estimates by talking with members, some kind of equilibrium might be found for DAO to keep active and maintain alive.

  3. From story to community: the power of infinite story

     Let the writer serve up a quick wrap-up. Infinite story (1) attracts and engages new members; (2) helps existing members’ ideas find its perfect match; (3) keeps DAO adaptive to the come and go of the members, and keeps it alive.

  4. From community to community: the path towards collaboration

     How to achieve collaboration? The essence is to offer what other DAOs want, and to ask for what you need.

     Simple introduction is not enough, the ideas should be marshaled into expressions that could let another party exactly know what they could get from you.

  5. The power of velocity: source of DAO vitality

     So let’s rephrase that phrases again here. Speed matters. However, a right direction weighs more.

     The birth and development of Legal Espresso is the perfect illustration for what velocity means for DAOs.

Internal

• Core members formation

• Members communication

  1. The communication issue: divergence on methodology

  2. The communication issue: misconveying and misunderstanding

• Culture creation

  1. Plato's cave: rethinking the meaning of DAO

     Maybe we are all in Plato’s Cave in current exploration of Web3 world. We think we know what it is. But actually we only have a grasp of the shadow. The writer believes it does not matter though. Maybe none of us will be the one who free itself from the chains and see the reality. What the writer wants to extract from this allegory is that the most important is keep criticizing everything, and especially yourself. Always remember that we are in Plato’s Cave. In this manner, DAOs are the entrances and the tunnels, inviting the existing participants and would-be members to keep exploring.

The separation should be considered from the following aspects: personnel, management and operation. The words management and operation are generally [interfused]. In this article, management is used in a relatively linear and restricted sense. While operation is understood flatter and more fluid.

As to the first aspect, personnel in the community and those in the project should be separated. This does not necessarily mean that there should be totally different sets of teams. Rather, the roles should be clear cut switching between community members and project participants. It could be attained by setting up thresholds like [interview selection], [tokens attribution], [continuous valuation] and the like.

Second, project management should be separated from community management. As above-mentioned, management in this article is perceived more linear, meaning that the information flow through communication is more [restricted] in a group of people who clearly understand the upstream and downstream (e.g., to whom should they report their results and to whom should they receive the results; what they’ve done and what’s next). In this way, management issues might be more properly discussed in specific projects, because projects are more results-oriented. Projects members should know what they need to know to finish the mission, which means the [transfer] of information should be as frictionless as possible.

Third, community operation should be different from project operation. DAO as a community is naturally and should be transparent which means the information flow is tumultuous. One of the causes is that contributors have different backgrounds and expectations towards the DAO. They become members because they agree with the vision of the DAO. But they will lose interest and leave if they find what inside the DAO is different from what they thought. Therefore, incentives should be designed to aligned with their expectation based on their backgrounds. What is noteworthy here is that this design should not be as restricted as project management because the value of DAO as a community is the free-flow, collision and generation of thoughts and ideas. To preserve this very essence, the mechanism should be flexible, elastic, and responsive to unexpected change.

The writer has witnessed many discussions around DAO from the angles of organizations, governance, investment portfolio, business model, and the like.

However, the writer has not seen it being widely discussed from the angle of the essence of law, which is a topic largely different from the angle of law as regulations or disciplines.

The writer believes that the boundary of DAO's discussion should be expanded in avoidance of the limitation of a narrow view thrusting the potential development.

Thus, this article is a trial to bring a fresh cross-disciplinary wind and see if any new insight could be unearthed from the writer's immature thought.

Alice and Bob: What is the point you want to make?

The main idea of this article is that DAO per se is a growing and living law.

From the writer's point of view, DAO's core concepts and law's fundamental values have a lot in common.

Without limitation, DAO's core attributes are Decentralization, Autonomy, and Network. Law's fundamental values are Order, Fairness, and Justice.

At the first sight, these two sets of words are unrelated.

However, once digging into the deep sides behind these concepts, the readers will find somehow these concepts aim for the same goal: steering people's actions by achieving consensus.

DAO achieves this goal through smart contracts and votings. Law achieves this goal through external rituals and internal beliefs.

Furthermore, these two seemly divergent paths rely on the same tool, which is incentive alignment.

On one hand, to incentivize people to comply with the consensus, DAO is exploring tokenomics, the underlying logic of which is the fluctuation and balance of demand and supply of tokens.

On the other hand, the law's incentivization forks into two ways: law as regulation adopts punishment backed by force, and law as norms relies on people's habitual compliance backed by belief.

Notably, the law's incentive mechanism is imperfect. The former is unstable because government changes lead to resentful crowds rebelling. The latter is time-consuming for the fact that habits for society need a long period to form. The imperfectness leaves room for further development.

Considering the above-mentioned, the writer would like to ask why not view DAO itself as law per se?

Readers should agree that DAO is a continuously growing new-birth. If the timeline is stretched long enough, the law is also an ever-changing set of relations.

In ancient Greek philosophy, natural law promoted by Stoicism maintained that rules are not a frame but a self-growth. Not until the 1800s did legal positivism rise to suggest that law is no more than rules devised by the human being to bring stability to society.

In light of the changing feature of the law, DAO shares the same trait of growth and liveness with infinite possibility buttressed by unbridled imagination and collective efforts.

DAO's evolution does not necessarily follow the already existed path of law but aims for the same target: consensus.

Alice and Bob: Could you help me clarify the points by examples?

LegalDAO is a great example.

At its very beginning, it was an extremely small group of people who are passionate about maintaining the order of Web3 but without clear thoughts of how to make it.

As time goes by, more and more contributors are joining and more and more projects have been proposed. Contributors are devoting their time and stamina out of various unknown considerations, one of which without a doubt is the existence of LegalDAO.

Here comes the time to look back to the three elements mentioned above.

First, LegalDAO is itself steering contributors' actions(e.g. actively proposing projects, participating in debate competitions, and so on). Participants voluntarily participate.

LegalDAO itself is also a consensus among contributors. That is to say, people reach out to LegalDAO and decide to join highly because they agree with the vision of LegalDAO.

Second, to incentivize contributors, LegalDAO has devised a set of transparent rules and a ranking system to record everyone's contributions.

Participants not only realize what they are doing is recognized, but also see what other people are working on. It may well encourage benign competition and generate unexpected ideas.

Third, also the most importantly, LegalDAO is still growing, morphed by all members into a different kind of appearance, based on various imaginations.

These members may not and should not solely focus on the activities of LegalDAO. Instead, they are fluid and self-motivated, able to work for different DAOs as they like, fully achieving their potential and goals.

LegalDAO, through this process, becomes a node of the wide DAO network and connects other nodes to boost not only itself but also the DAO ecology.

At the same time, the vision of establishing order and maintaining justice permeates into DAO as a whole and as individuals, which equally leads to the penetration of the core values of law.

Alice and Bob:Maybe a strong summary at last?

From the angle of anthropology, DAO is a new form of community.

From the angle of the business, DAO is a new type of work style.

From the angle of law, DAO itself is a new law, a growing, and living law.