"Attention, humans! Everyone is requested to buckle up and join StationX for our 'Alignment Season' starting this February. This is a special mission for Planet Earth. We repeat; this is a special mission.” - 👨🏻‍🚀

tl;dr: If you’ve led or invested in a deal before 29th January 2025 on StationX, don’t forget to claim your ownership on align.stationx.network 🚀

The golden age of innovation is upon us. Favorable regulations for AI & crypto across the world, maturing infrastructure for builders, and better onchain UX for users are setting the playground for the next wave of startups/networks to emerge. But the current system operates in silos wherein only VCs & insiders have access to early-stage investment opportunities while the rest are left behind.

StationX changes that by democratizing private investing. It enables people to permissionlessly set up investment syndicates (aka “spaces”), raise capital from their social circles, LPs, and communities, and invest in startups.

StationX, unlike AngelList, is designed to be owned by you—the community! From the very beginning, we have believed that if the platform's value is created from its community, the value should also flow back to its community, not a centralized company. It rewards you with ownership in the network every time you lead or invest in deals using the infrastructure. Numbers since launch:

Join the Alignment Season

Today, we’re excited to unveil Alignment Season—to give back to the community that fuels our growth. In the first phase of alignment, we want to recognize the contributions of people who contributed to StationX’s growth since its inception. We’re inviting everyone who has ever led or invested in any deal on StationX to own 2% of StationX collectively and become co-owners forever.

Claim your ownership on align.stationx.network

Didn’t make it in Phase 1? Here’s how you can be eligible for Phase 2

1. Sign up on StationX

2. Mint your Super Angel badge

3. Create your space or join spaces for deal flow

TL;DR: StationX is an onchain capital coordination protocol that makes investing in web2 or web3 opportunities seamless for investors through onchain SPVs. One syndicate invested in OpenAI using StationX.

Pro tip #1: Don’t forget to mint your Super-Angel badge after setting up your StationX profile here.

Pro tip #2: Mint Gmoon Zorbs on Zora to celebrate the launch!

The state of crypto venture

Since Ethereum's ICO in 2015, crypto has experienced multiple capital inflow and outflow cycles. Institutional smart money chose funds for private early-stage investing, HNIs and UHNIs chose micro-funds and syndicates, and retail smart money chose ICOs/IDOs and other public offerings like node sales. As a result, over $105B was invested in Web3 companies in the last 9 years.

Interest peaked after DeFi summer, and a strong foundation was built with stablecoins and lending. After bottoming in late 2023, it’s on the rise again with traditional funds, family offices, and "web2" capital entering web3 - driven by AI, RWAs, consumer apps, BTC/ETH ETFs, and overall favorable market conditions due to the Trump bubble.

Most of this is fuelled by high-risk capital allocators like operators, founders, catalysts, fund managers, and sophisticated investors at the forefront of hunting for winning narratives and products. They are first believers in a hypothesis waiting to be proven right and adopted by the market; other believers, backers, and capital formation are a virtue of signal.

https://x.com/naval/status/1219905291287855105

Every successful startup, venture-backed or organically grown, has early supporters and backers that bring value in the form of a signal to their company through evangelism, apart from investing capital. Such angels go on to generate wealth even for close friends and people in their social circles.

Between 2016–2024, global venture investments totaled $2.28T, with U.S. angel investments alone contributing $252B (11%). As per data, ~17% of $105B was raised via ICOs and angel investments, highlighting an inclination towards early-stage funding. This trend is driven by global opportunities, onchain liquidity, instant stablecoin deployment, faster exits, and startups favoring strategic angels and communities on their cap-tables.

But despite social media driving everything we do today, angel investing is still largely inaccessible and complex for everyone. With a firm belief that first believers and backers will onboard net new angel investors from their social circles—we’re excited to introduce Spaces.

Introducing Spaces

Spaces will make it more social for investors to find syndicates operated by verified leads on StationX. This will increase collaboration, exploration of new opportunities, and deal-making among investors.

Explore spaces here.

https://x.com/chainyoda/status/1860411400486535580

Invest in onchain/offchain deals

• Customizable deal pages: Spin up a deal in under 60 seconds with dedicated contribution links that cover deal information (memos, decks, links, etc.) and accept funds from members in stablecoins across 6+ EVM networks.

• E-mail alerts for deals: Members are informed in real time about incoming deals, ongoing raises, and other investor updates.

• Create or plug-in SPVs: Spin up low-cost SPVs on the fly for each deal (even deals as low as $25K), or plug your existing legal structure.

• Fully non-custodial: SPVs are paired with non-custodial treasuries powered by Safe multisigs, allowing investors to co-own the deals they fund.

• SAFEs, SAFTs, or RWAs with full compliance: zkMe powers privacy preserving KYC via zk proofs for investors; investors sign subscription agreements with deal SPVs to invest in onchain/offchain opportunities alike.

2024 Year in review and what’s next

Since Jan’24, around $6M has been deployed into 40+ deals through StationX SPVs. AI, Infrastructure, Bitcoin, DePIN, and apps were dominant categories whose startups attracted syndicates on the platform. While infrastructure deals like Lava Network, Peaq, and Safe attracted investors and capital in the first half of the year, the latter half was dominated by AI deals like Sentient, xAI, and OpenAI.

We are embarking on a journey to make early-stage investing more democratic, accessible, and signal-driven through a social fly-wheel enabled by Spaces. Our mission is to empower thousands of fund managers and syndicate leads to execute deals fast and grow their investor/LP base onchain.

“It makes sense that network effects would dominate the internet, the ultimate network of networks.” - quoted from “Read. Write. Own” by Chris Dixon

In a new era of the internet where ownership is the only truth, StationX enables investors to own their investments without depending on centralized entities.

It has been less than three months since we launched our public beta, and today marks a major milestone in our journey to serving communities.

At a high level, StationX allows syndicates, venture DAOs and asset managers to create and manage self-custodial SPVs—stations—at the cost of gas. Stations turn the otherwise cumbersome process of raising capital privately and managing investments—into a cakewalk.

Our infrastructure abstracts away the complexities of shuffling between tools like wallets, multisigs, sheets, and tokens. In addition to that, StationX integrates with an intent layer which allows you to seamlessly perform ops like sending funds, swapping assets, distributing returns and deducting fees.

We’ve witnessed a range of use cases

1. Sommi, a popular YouTuber in the crypto space, along with his community, raised over $700K via his station to co-invest in the pre-seed round of a DeFi project called Clip Finance.

2. A few friends decide to raise some ETH and restake in Eigen Layer via their station. This small experiment coupled with network effects led them to raise over 40+ ETH ($150K+) across two stations, putting their station’s multisig on the top 1000 list of wallets that restaked on EL by volume.

3. Mona Tiesler is an investment manager who runs a syndicate called Momentum 8—on the side. She has raised $500K across 6 stations so far and her most recent deal was an L2 blockchain.

4. Climber Collective is an unofficial syndicate of the Outlier Ventures accelerator's alumni network that includes founders, mentors and staff. They raised over $15K among members via a station to fund one of their portfolio companies.

Chain-wise Stats

To break down the protocol’s performance slightly further, there were less than 5K unique addresses that generated $1.5 Million in volume cumulatively on the two chains we were live on since Jan’24.

• On Polygon

  • 2,222 Unique Stations were created

  • 2,494 Unique Addresses made deposits

• On Ethereum

  • 141 Unique Stations were created

  • 153 Unique Addresses made deposits

Stations offer customisable deposit pages

Add customisations like a banner, profile images, and a description on the deposit page of your station to give better context about the opportunity to investors.

Utilise Public Owner Profiles

Share your profile page to showcase all your stations in one place, invite investors to check out your deals and build a strong reputation for your syndicate.

What’s next

In the coming few months, we’re scheduled to go live on Linea, Base, Berachain and Scroll among a few others. In addition to that, we’re also partnering with protocols/solutions that can help us build offerings around compliance, cross-chain, on/off ramps, and DeFi capabilities within the StationX ecosystem.

If you run a syndicate or participate in one, we’d love to help you get started on StationX. You can try creating a station on your own at app.stationx.network or get in touch with our team.

Links

1. Website: stationx.network

2. Enter dApp: app.stationx.network

3. Follow announcements on X

4. Follow announcements on Lens

5. Warpcast (coming soon)

Introducing Spotlight ✨

Today, we’re more than excited to kick off our Spotlight series where we highlight the stories of incredible communities that are pooling & deploying capital using StationX. We deeply appreciate the valuable feedback our customers give to move needles for us. This initiative is our commitment to supporting them by helping our readers discover their missions and help amplify their work.

So raise your glasses, it’s story time..

We’ll dive deeper into why CellarDAO is investing in wine & rare spirits, and other category bullish signals you should note in 2024.

Whiskey has gone up 400% in the last 10 years and there’s at least 10-20% growth in wines year-on-year.

The current market situation and volatility make alternative physical asset classes a safer option with proven and sustained growth over the last decades, making assets like fine wine & rare spirits largely immune to the booms and busts we see in traditional classes. More specifically, with 2023 being one of the hottest years on record and the climate change situation, the production of fine wine will become even harder and more exclusive, prompting prices to continue rising.

We’re already seeing countries like China, the Middle East despite religious beliefs, and India growing as new fine wine and whisky markets. One may or may not drink personally, but historical data suggest that it is more common for people to invest in fine wine and rare spirits. It ultimately comes down to understanding the value and knowing when it’s time to sell.

But there’s one problem: High entry barrier for people to invest in wine and spirits. Traditionally, investing in wine and spirits has been a complex and expensive process. Brokers charge fund management fees, upside fees, and early exit fees and require sizeable upfront investments. All of this is done without enabling their investors to truly have a say in how their money is invested.

CellarDAO solves this.

https://cellardao.io/

CellarDAO is a blockchain-powered wine & spirits investment community.

CellarDAO is a crypto-native organisational structure that allows anyone to easily invest in real-world, investment-grade wine and spirits by buying CASK tokens on polygon blockchain, and enjoy regular profit airdrops as healthy returns from profits.

How does the structure work?

1. As an investor, you join CellarDAO’s station by buying ERC20 standard tokens called CASK using your web3 wallet here.

2. The core team sources investment-grade wines & spirits as close as possible to the producers and checks authenticity & provenance.

3. These investment proposals are shared with you on StationX and all other CASK token holders who can then vote to decide which investments the community wants to make.

4. After the investment is done, the core team turns the (future or existing) wine & spirits bottles into NFTs. This means that digital ownership certificates are created for the future bottles which enables future owners/consumers to already buy the bottles digitally.

5. These physical bottles will be available when the wine or spirit has finished maturing. At this point, the owner can either leave the bottles in safe storage (organized by CellarDAO) or receive the bottles in their storage.

6. These ownership NFTs are sold on their marketplace for a markup.

7. Investment returns are distributed pro-rata to all the members who are shareholders of the $CASK token via StationX.

Following workflows are currently managed on StationX:

1. Receiving capital: Issuing CASK tokens by accepting investor deposits

2. Deal management: Private voting is done for each investment deal

3. Profit distribution: Investment returns are distributed pro-rate to all members.

Meet the team

Glenn (CEO, Co-founder)

1. 20+ yrs experience across strategy, business development, and ops.

2. Former COO of Cake DeFi, led cash flow for crypto holders assets

3. 8-year tenure as Director of Global Revenue at Linkedin

4. MBA from INSEAD Business School

Marc (COO, Co-founder)

1. A family winemaker, Marc has imbibed the essence of the family business from a tender age amidst the picturesque vineyards of Spain.

2. Strategic prowess at Google & Shopee for business & strategy

3. Successful exit after creating a thriving F&B group that stretched across Indonesia.

Alessandro (CBDO)

1. Extensive experience in IT, F&B & Digital Advertising

2. Ex-marketing for global F&B giants like Barilla, Nestle, Tesco, and wine brands like Zonin Wine Estates, CIV, Cantine Riunite and Italian Wine Brands among others.

3. Been a GTM, business planning and tokenomics mentor for web3 startups at International Blockchain Association, and Algorand Foundation along with AXL Ventures since 2017.

4. Currently at CellarDAO enabling fine wines and spirits to reside in digital wallets.

Ibay Amor (CTO)

1. Computer science engineer with expertise across AI & tokenising RWAs.

2. Proficient in Smart Contract Development, and leading technology teams.

3. Former Business Intelligence Consultant at MicroStrategy

4. Prev. co-founded DF Social Gaming in 2020

Join CellarDAO’s station

The team says that CellarDAO is currently fundraising in the pre-sale stage and $CASK Tokens are currently being sold as cheap as they will ever be. The next phase in their development plan will be to launch the NFT Marketplace to sell tokenized wines that CellarDAO invested in and by that point, once profits from the sale of the first wines come in, it is foreseeable that the $CASK Token price may begin to increase.

If you’re an investor, check out their pitch deck to learn more. It is worthwhile to note that there are some obvious risk indicators which they’ve elaborated and disclosed on their whitepaper.

Know more about StationX

1. Updated website: stationx.network

2. Enter dApp: app.stationx.network

3. Follow announcements on X

4. Follow announcements on Lens

5. Don’t have your BETA invite? Get on the waitlist here.

Despite the challenges we’d seen during the ICO craze – including scams and unregistered securities, there was a frenzy there for a reason: capital coordination globally is still way too high friction and capital itself is unevenly distributed. We'd have way more startups & ideas lifting off the ground if it were easier to raise money, and deploy money. Not just that: people raising capital for an apartment complex, or any other opportunity in private markets. Democratizing fundraising could unlock tremendous latent entrepreneurial energy across the world. We spent significant time reflecting on our own experiences in building similar systems using blockchain technology, engaging with users and iterating on what that goal tangibly meant, and we’re excited to finally share our roadmap and vision with the community at large.

StationX is building the infrastructure to enable the next wave of community-run venture vehicles called “stations”—powered by web3 technologies.

Stations help communities coordinate capital in ways that transcend borders and banking hours. The infrastructure of “the station” consists of 3 core building blocks:

1. Multisig Wallet as Treasury - A multisig wallet is spun up with you as a default owner automatically when you create a station, or optionally, you could also import an existing multisig wallet. This multisig acts as a treasury to store, track & manage your station’s funds/assets.

2. Issuance of Token-based Membership/LP Shares - Every Station has shares represented by a private token on the blockchain. This token acts as a record of ownership in the entity, deployed when the station is created. LPs receive their pro-rate membership shares after depositing USDC into the station.

3. Fund Administration - You can set fund controls to specific admin(s) to manage treasury or choose members’ agreed governance for decision-making. And utilise the no-code suite of executable onchain actions to absorb complex fund ops.

Our ecosystem’s offerings focus on three stakeholders in the industry

With StationX, we aim to push the entire crypto industry forward by focusing on three of the most important stakeholders in the crypto landscape: Fund managers, Investors, and Founders. Thus forming a virtuous cycle for innovation to thrive:

For Fund Managers: Web3 Platform for Fund Management

Rather than managing multiple wallets, spreadsheets, allocations, etc. fund managers can use StationX’s fully self-custodial structure to receive capital from LPs into one entity, and use our platform to run any kind of venture vehicle onchain to deploy funds and share profits like:

1. Venture Funds: This structure allows you to raise funds from LPs once and deploy them across multiple deals over longer periods with an administrative team.

2. Syndicates: This structure allows you to negotiate an allocation into one or multiple deals, and then accept co-investors to join your entity.

3. Rolling Funds: A new vehicle is raised quarterly with LPs' commitment to auto-renewing and funds are deployed continuously, much like a software subscription.

4. Venture DAOs: Give a membership NFT to your community members and give them access to co-invest in your dealflow by spinning up an SPV for each.

Our platform would allow you to automate complex onchain workflows involved in the lifecycle of fundraising & fund deployment like:

1. Track fund positions

2. Manage fund administration

3. Track member shares

4. Deduct carry & performance fees

5. Distribute dividends/profits to members, etc.

6. Share, sign & manage documents

7. Send Investor communications

8. ..and more!

If you’re a fund manager, we’d love to schedule a demo call with you to learn how you operate and offer simpler (and more secure) frameworks using StationX.

For Investors: Share, discover & co-invest in deals

Having invested via DAOs, pools & syndicates in the last 3+ years, we believe that a private community of founders & managers will navigate themselves into highly profitable investments even with small individual capacity by working together as a hive mind.

BackerDAO is one of the first syndicates on StationX which is 50 members strong currently & opening doors for more members in Jan 2024.

Inside BackerDAO you are incentivised to:

1. source & lead deals, earn carry if executed

2. diligence incoming dealflow

3. pick & co-invest in interested deal(s)

4. Refer & invite new members

If you’re a founder or a fund manager, we’d love to have you inside BackerDAO because we believe it’s the best time to deploy. The last date to fill out this form to apply for S2 is 31/01/24.

For Founders: Spin up a station as Roll Up Vehicle (RUV)

Rather than managing allocations from hundreds of individual angels, if you’re a founder, you can use this RUV structure to receive small angel checks into one entity. Create a station, and share a link with your investors to securely receive USDC, issue LP shares and sign agreements onchain. Fundraising is distilled down to a URL and a single line on the cap table.

Build the next wave with us

In the coming years, web3 will go mainstream and redefine people's interactions with products, platforms, applications, brands, opportunities and most importantly—each other. We’re already seeing digital currencies like USDC disrupting global payments. USDC is a blockchain-based 1:1 backed digital dollar, one of the largest stablecoins in the world and the largest US-domiciled and regulated dollar stablecoin. With the right regulatory framework, stablecoins and blockchain networks could scale to support billions of users and tens of trillions of dollars in payments and investment activity.

The formation of corporations paved the way for modern industrialisation many decades ago - these entities are so prevalent in our modern society and arguably more powerful than many nations themselves. Investors were able to contribute capital towards ventures, record their ownership, and marshal resources, and through the issuance of stock, their rewards could be distributed should the ventures be successful. And onchain communities, organizations, and economies will be realized at an unprecedented scale much like corporations of the past—and we’ve built its foundations right now.

Special shoutout to our ecosystem partners for extending support to us: Safe, Filecoin, AAVE, Livepeer, Lens Protocol and Push.

Links:

1. Updated website: stationx.network

2. Enter dApp: app.stationx.network

3. Follow announcements on X

4. Follow announcements on Lens

5. Don’t have your BETA invite? Get on the waitlist here.

DropX is a tool designed for builders to effortlessly create custom token distributions for their communities on Base in under 60 seconds.

Rewards, incentives, XPs, or tokens—call them what you will—are the building blocks of this new paradigm. These incentives are the glue that aligns early users with a project's mission and fuels sustainable growth. Imagine some cases where you have multiples of people you need to distribute tokens to:

1. Community rewards or XPs from a campaign

2. Batch USDC payouts for salaries, etc.

3. Distributing investment profits or dividends

4. Simple faucets for your org/community, etc.

*This is where our claimable Drops module comes into play. *

As the creator of a token drop, you have the power to craft a branded and optionally gamified token claim experience for a community.

With DropX, anyone can create custom token drops on Base in 3 simple steps:

1. Set up a drop page

2. Share a token claim link

3. Eligible users can connect & redeem tokens

Thus reduces the burden & costs of otherwise manually distributing.

You can either create free edition drops where *any* user can connect their wallet and claim tokens or you can also set different kinds of eligibility for which addresses should be eligible to claim tokens from the drop:

Whitelisting the holders of an NFT

Imagine a scenario where “Base, introduced.” holders should pay attention to your project.

In this case, you can whitelist holders of “Base, introduced.” NFT & only they will be able to eligible to claim tokens from the drop.

Whitelisting holders of an existing ERC20 token

Imagine another scenario where you need to distribute tokens pro-rate basis to your DAO members.

You can whitelist the DAO token & only holders of that token will be able to eligible to claim their pro-rate share from your drop.

Whitelist addresses from a CSV

Have data of user addresses and their corresponding token amounts on an Excel?

Upload a CSV file to whitelist them, only they will be whitelisted to claim their respective amounts from the drop.

Skip claims. Batch distribute tokens directly to users.

Last but not least, don’t want to create a gamified token claim experience and instead prefer directly batch distributing tokens to multiple addresses at once?

We have a distribution module too that lets you do exactly that.

Bulk distribute any ERC20 token(s) directly to users in 3 steps:

1. Copy and paste addresses with corresponding token amounts

2. Choose the token from wallet that needs to be distributed

3. Sign and SENT! 🎉

We're excited to explore the myriad use cases that DropX enables whilst we prepare to launch and eagerly await feedback from fellow builders on Base.

Follow us on X & join our telegram community.

• The process of organizing a community is extremely inefficient as we see today

• The barriers we see today in raising capital onchain & managing community assets are still very daunting

• DeFi, NFTs, and real-world (RWAs) are creating opportunities to self-organize and deploy capital into ideas or opportunities that could become the next big thing of the upcoming decade but we need better tools.

• On StationX, anyone can spin up a station to issue non-transferrable ERC20 shares or NFT based memberships on top of a safe multisig to turn any community into an investment vehicle or an onchain club respectively.

• The premise for an end user will always be to be able to join a station with one click of a button, and community operators will be able to execute any onchain workflow for usual day-to-day ops with the click of one button.

• StationX Public Beta will be launching on Gnosis Chain mainnet in December’23.

• Join 20,000+ curious folks waiting for the public beta here.

We’re incredibly excited to share what communities on Gnosis Chain can do with StationX

The process of organizing a community is extremely inefficient as we see today - resulting in many ideas never getting off the ground because they lack access to sufficient capital.

What if communities could breathe life into any idea in less than 60 seconds? What if we told you, that coordinating capital onchain has finally evolved?

Turning communities into the ultimate investment vehicles

While crypto unlocks unmatched efficiencies in the movement of money on the global stage, the barriers we see today in raising & deploying capital onchain are still daunting: we shuffle between multiple tools starting from organizing a community, collecting funds & managing shared assets. In most cases, we tend to keep records of contributions on spreadsheets with all those gigantic addresses. Imagine all of this while navigating new asset classes emerging from DeFi, NFTs, and real-world (RWAs) where the opportunities to self-organize and deploy capital into ideas or opportunities could become the next big thing of the coming decade.

We deserve better tools to help humans self-organize, share information & manage assets efficiently. Communities will be the ultimate investment vehicles if they’re allowed to do more with money, and more importantly—do more together.

On StationX, anyone can spin up a station to issue non-transferrable ERC20 shares on top of a safe multisig, raise capital & start managing shared assets in less than 60 seconds.

By setting up an investment station, communities/group chats can start investing in startups, collect NFTs, crowdfund public goods, run businesses, co-own RWAs & more. Our modular architecture allows users to create models ranging from highly trusted core team-managed funds to decentralized, trustless & governance-based DAOs.

Some immediate use cases we support are:

1. Onchain syndicates

2. Venture DAOs

3. Onchain rolling funds

4. Creation of SPVs for token investments

5. Community-owned RWAs

6. DeFi DAOs

7. Collector DAOs

8. ReFi DAOs

9. Gaming guilds

10. Community-owned brands, etc.

Onchain social clubs are the future

Humans are social beings even on the internet.

As a creator/brand, you can monetize your audiences & start offering token-gated perks like alpha, investment deal flow, airdrops, loyalty tiers for customers, exclusive services & other kinds of social experiences to members.

With StationX, users can spin up such stations with NFT-based memberships on top of a safe multisig & organize their community into an onchain club in less than 60 seconds.

Human coordination at its best

The premise of StationX for an end user will always be to be able to join any station with one click of a button and community operators will be able to execute any onchain workflow within their station for usual day-to-day ops with the click of a button.

Wen launch?

December 2023. Join 20,000+ curious folks waiting for the public beta here.

Bonus:

For our love towards gnosis, we’d love to extend early access & rewards to readers who made it this far—if you’d like to try our private beta & share feedback, send me a hi on X (prev. Twitter) or join our telegram community here.

On one hand, DAOs feel seemingly obvious to many: blockchain-based organisations which are becoming an important piece of how communities can coordinate on the web. On the other hand, we’re nowhere close to the depth of what DAOs are capable of.

For all we know, DAOs are important & they’re here not just to stay but to grow. Chances are that many of us want to understand it better, as a cryptonative or a cryptocurious person. Top100DAOs is the beginning of an exploration into the world of DAOs where we put the spotlight on the best blockchain-based organisations via case studies for you. We look forward to your thoughts and feedback — let’s dive right into it.

What are investment DAOs?

Traditional equity organisations are the most commonly used structures for investment groups today, but they often involve time-consuming processes such as incorporation and setting up bank accounts, which can take weeks.

A fundamental advantage cryptonative organisations like DAOs enable for such investment collectives is an ideally flat non-hierarchical structure to recognise an opportunity, pool capital and vote on decisions devoid of central actors and intermediaries within minutes via an organisational stack for - treasury, governance & coordination.

Pet3rpan (also a member at Hydra) explains this using an image in one of his articles:

“35% of US employment is to establish trust (legal contracts, law enforcement, auditors), this is reflected in the administrative processes needed to set up and operate an equity company — it takes weeks as opposed to potentially minutes via a smart contract enabled organisational stack.”

Essentially a DAO is a company one can spin up on blockchain in minutes where some normal processes of a traditional company are carried out using automatically enforceable smart contracts. This enables internet communities to structure as cryptonative investment organisations & start coordinating money in minutes.

• Individuals/entities can recognise an opportunity, pool capital and own proportional shares

• No need to know, trust, or even to have met each other because of the nature of blockchain

• All decision-making is carried out by voting on decisions that are transparent, auditable and highly efficient among members

Each Investment DAO is as value-generative as:

• its curation of members and strength of relationships in the community

• access to investments that may not otherwise be available

• DAO’s timing - how early is it in its vertical?

• the deal flow they attract

• the strength of the DAO’s reputation

• the signal-to-noise ratio of its filtered information — also known as “alpha”

What is Hydra Ventures?

Hydra is the world’s first fund of funds investment DAO, a community-run investment organisation focused on investing in other investment DAOs.

In March, Hydra announced their $10M fund to be deployed in communities that are both legally wrapped and cryptonative investment organisations. They’re going to invest 20-30 investment DAOs with check sizes up to $500k over the next three years, and additionally expect to help incubate another 7-8+ DAOs as a day one partner, which spans in the following areas:

• Domain-specific focuses such as P2E, DeFi, cross-chain, web3, music, metaverse, virtual beings, DeSci, and social - ideally in emerging markets to become the first community investment organisation in those ecosystems.

• Operational expertise such as service DAOs: legal, auditing, engineering, design, recruiting and talent, or other professional expertise.

• Emerging social networks that have unique deal flow and talent access such as company/school/org alumni networks, novel social graphs, or other affinity communities.

• Technology ecosystems such as L1s and L2 Ethereum scaling protocols.

Arise, Hydra.

Summoned by 1kx, MetaCartel & Thing3, Hydra is itself a community structured as an investment DAO where the entire entity is legally owned & fully operated by its 70+ members, people & entities coming from across the Web3 landscape.

Hydra carefully curated its members from DAOs, angels/funds & sector experts to hold entry into the DAO to the highest standards. The capital contributions received from members are locked in a three-year fixed investment lifetime period in which the DAO will make investments. After the three-year investment period, investments will no longer be possible and there will be a fund admin that distributes profits to DAO members after this period.

How does Hydra operate & reward contributors?

All initial capital raised from contributors is diluted at the start by 31% (23+8), which forms the contributor's incentive pool & covering the operational responsibilities of the DAO.

1. 23% shares: contributor’s incentive pool

2. 8% shares: ops & back-office

Contributor rewards

As shown in the image, 23% of these DAO shares is set aside for a contributors incentive pool which will be distributed on a quarterly basis towards the highest value contributors via a democratized, merit based process. This work takes place alongside community grants and spending proposals.

Service DAO (Operations)

Instead of a traditional bill-by-hour model, Hydra aligned a Service DAO to execute mission-critical services by giving them ownership in the DAO. This ensures that Hydra rewards efficiency over anything else.

Hydra <> Thing3 partnership frees up members who do not have this competency and whose time and contributions are best spent focused on investment.

Out of the 31% shares diluted initially, 8% is vested for a period of 5 years towards Thing3, an integrated service DAO focused on covering all operations related responsibilities like:

• Entity formation

• Subscription document preparation and formation

• Internal fund administration, including investment tracking, performance reporting, harvesting, and profit distribution

• Compliance (e.g. regulatory filings, KYC/AML)

• Tax liaison (e.g. K1 & annual tax forms)

• Outside counsel liaison

• Accounting

• Coordination with other service providers as needed

• Post-investment period fund administration

What is Hydra’s onchain architecture like?

Hydra Ventures plans to utilize Moloch v3 or 'Baal', the first implementation of a smart contract architecture that uses Gnosis Safe as its asset management foundation. This new architecture is more versatile than Moloch v2, which was initially created to establish a basic investment DAO. Moloch v3 allows for a more adaptable DAO that can evolve and grow without requiring a complete smart contract fund migration. While Hydra waits for audits to be done before implementing this architecture, these are subject to change.

Funds are managed in Gnosis Safe Treasury

The Gnosis safe treasury is the core executor for all DAO asset management transactions. This main treasury owns two additional Gnosis safes.

• Harvest wallet: The account in which profits from investments will be funnelled during and after the investment period. Hydra will only be distributing the liquid profits of the harvest account after the three-year investment period of Hydra.

• Hot wallet: The account to which the DAO will initially transfer assets after a successful investment or expense proposal for a temporary holding period before investment documents are signed and a destination asset for funds is clear

Voting & decision-making

While Hydra hasn’t implemented this yet & these are subject to change, the DAO directionally plans to utilize a voting module that lets members execute DAO asset management proposals through Moloch's voting and grace periods. They can configure these periods through community votes and use ERC-20 compatibility for Gnosis safe multisend module. This allows them to send bundled transactions to multiple addresses at once through a single proposal (e.g. a multi-send transaction to 20+ addresses via a single proposal).

Share accounting

The share accounting module enables ERC-20 tokens accounting for all voting and non-voting DAO shares while also managing minting and burning shares via proposals. This module also manages transferability for all DAO shares.

Exit investment position using “Ragequit” module

The ragequit module enables permissionless pro-rata distribution of DAO funds based on voting & non-voting DAO shares.

Profit distribution

In the current form of Hydra’s architecture, after the 3 years investment period is over - a DAO member’s pro-rata profit and asset distribution rights are represented by a non-transferrable claim token NFT (optionality to be represented as ERC-20s).

The member will use the NFT to claim their share of profits from the DAO’s investments.

Hydra’s legal wrapper works together with its onchain architecture

Hydra has modernized and digitized the concept of community-investing, incorporating many of the traits that make the blockchain so potent. By using tokens on the blockchain, Hydra efficiently allows coordination & empowers profit sharing in the verticals they invest in. The key document for Hydra with these operating agreements for both legal entities works together with the on-chain tools to allow members to coordinate and collaborate within an understood legal organisational structure.

Hydra is a legally wrapped investment DAO, assets fully owned & controlled by its members. The structure includes:

1. A Delaware Limited Liability Company (DELLC) for Non-US investors

2. A Cayman Islands Limited Liability Corporation (LLC) for US participants.

Through these entities, Hydra is able to enter into legal contracts and engage in investment opportunities without the risk of individual personal liability beyond the capital in the DAO. It will also allow registered legal entities to participate in the DAO’s membership as well as the issuance of securities to the DAO.

Big moves in an early sector often make a market

Community-first & crypto-native organisation stacks like DAOs are increasingly being recognised in the same way that corporations are from an organisational perspective; a legally separate and distinct entity from its “owners”. Hydra has formed a community of experts and investors to explore an emerging use case of community-first investing.

By investing in investment DAOs of emerging markets -

• Members have asymmetric returns as those investment areas mature

• Hydra becomes a thought leader and pioneer within the emerging ecosystem and cements a strong reputation

• Hydra’s high Reputation = high deal flow = high participation

• Scale community-first investing across web3

These early investments can result in feedforward loops for Hydra that create a flywheel of attention from the broader market.

Thanks to Danny, who is a member at Hydra Ventures & core contributor at Thing3 for helping us with his insights & reviewing this case study.

StationX is a protocol (built on top of Safe) that automates workflows for communities like Hydra.

Create Stations in less than 60 seconds & start using automated workflows to execute a range of onchain transactions as a community.

If you haven’t gotten in the line yet, join 2000+ curious folks waiting for the private beta here.

Thanks for reading,

Team StationX

On one hand, DAOs feel seemingly obvious to many: blockchain-based organisations which are becoming an essential piece of how communities can coordinate on the web. On the other hand, we’re nowhere close to the technological depth of what DAOs are really capable of.

For all we know, DAOs are important & they’re here not just to stay but to grow. Chances are that many of us want to understand it better, as a crypto-native or a crypto-curious person. This Top100DAOs is the beginning of an exploration into the world of DAOs where we put the spotlight on the best blockchain-based organisations via case studies for you. We look forward to your thoughts and feedback — let’s dive right into it.

What is Safe?

For those that don’t know, Safe (prev. Gnosis Safe) became very popular because of its multisig ability. While EOA wallets like metamask were the most adopted wallets for individual users transacting in DeFi & owning digital assets like crypto & NFTs in web3, co-managing assets amongst multiple users in case of groups, enterprises & DAOs was highly unsafe (pun intended) because users were having to share private keys with eachother or let one person control all the assets in their own wallet.

Naturally, users could risk losing all the assets if they lost the private key. Which gave rise to smart accounts, by a tool named Gnosis Safe.

Today, over 1.5M Safe smart accounts are deployed which cumulatively hold assets worth $70B.

Safe smart accounts solved exactly that by enabling multiple private keys to access a single wallet. While multisig was the most popular feature, Safe protocol offers so much more with such smart accounts. Safe is a fully programmable Smart contract accounts that can be used to cover any type of use-case or user-group through plugins.

Safe is now used by DAOs, collectives, retail users, enterprises & investors to secure their onchain assets.

What is the story behind SafeDAO's creation and the $SAFE token?

GnosisDAO decided to structure Safe as an independent entity called SafeDAO through a governance vote in 2022.

Safe, prev. Gnosis Safe was an internal tool under GnosisDAO which governs the Gnosis chain till 2022. After Safe grew as a critical infrastructure in web3 hitting a major milestone of $100B locked in Safe accounts on ethereum mainnet alone at the time, GnosisDAO decided to create a $SAFE Token to decentralise the Safe ecosystem.

Launch of $SAFE Token establishes Safe as a public good and community-owned account standard.

In July 2022, Gnosis Safe raised $100M from 60+ strategic backers as their Series B funding round & rebranded it to Safe.

Following the raise, SafeDAO was spun out given the pressing need to decentralize its development, growth and governance — preventing Safe ecosystem to be captured by the decisions of core team or investors alone which is the case with traditionally centralised companies (we see you, FTX).

This gave birth to $SAFE, a non-transferrable ERC20 token to decentralise the governance of Safe ecosystem among the 43k users of Safe as well as the Core Contributors, GnosisDAO, 140+ ecosystem contributors, and 60+ strategic backers.

It was designed in a way that no single known entity or person holds more than 10% of the initial voting power — making it sufficiently decentralised as an organisation with plans to only continue decentralizing it over time with more users, contributors & token holders.

In a nutshell, $SAFE token gives its holders the power to govern:

1. Safe protocol

2. Safe interfaces

3. Onchain assets

4. $SAFE Token supply (including the power to decide if & when $SAFE can become transferrable in the future)

5. Ecosystem growth (which chain to deploy on, budget allocation etc.)

Safe is a community-owned account standard because the total circulating supply of $SAFE is allocated among diverse stakeholders

How does SafeDAO's governance process work?

Like any traditional company, DAOs also need to make decisions to progress as an organisation. A governance structure helps Safe's entire ecosystem decide the future of Safe together -

• Investors

• Projects building on Safe

• Users

• Core team

• Other stakeholders

In the case of SafeDAO, $SAFE is the governance token that lets the holder participate in decision-making with voting power proportional to the amount of $SAFE they hold.

The DAO structure makes Safe more sustainable in the long term compared to traditional organizations. In traditional organizations, IP and technology can be steered in any direction by single actors such as high-level execs, investors, or captured by one erratic person in leadership. However, with the DAO structure, Safe becomes more valuable because all $SAFE holders can decide the future of Safe and not get captured by centralised entities.

SafeDAO follows a 3-step governance process:

Phase 0: Forum discussion

This phase is optional, this step is where community members discuss new ideas on the Safe community forum, since any successful proposal will need to garner momentum inside the community first.

Duration - No minimum or maximum time frame on how long a proposal remains in this phase

Who - Anyone can post

Form - No formal requirements

Phase 1: Safe Ecosystem Proposal (SEP)

If discussions makes meaningful progress on an idea that can be executed, an SEP is made to provide a structured overview of the proposal that acts as basis for further discussions and also as foundation for decision-making during the next phase.

Duration - Minimum 6 days

Who - Anyone create a SEP

Form: Post in the SEP section of the Safe community forum. The forum post has to follow the SEP template.

Phase 2: Community Vote

Community Vote is the final step whose outcome is implemented by SafeDAO. The final ratification of an SEP requires a successful vote on the Snapshot space that fulfills the following requirements —

Duration - Proposal must have a voting delay 10 of 1 day and a voting period of 7 days

Who - To prevent spam, only SAFE holders with at least 20,000 $SAFE can post proposals on Snapshot. Governance participants that do not reach this threshold should find a proposal sponsor (such as a Safe Guardian) to launch a Snapshot vote.

Form

• Voting system - Restricted to single choice voting. One outcome needs to be “Make no changes”

• Quorum - 10,000,000 SAFE

• Majority - Relative majority of the SAFE used for voting on Snapshot

• Proposal title - [SEP #<number here>] <SEP title here>

• Proposal description - Has to follow the SEP template

• Proposal discussion link - Link to SEP on the Safe discussion forum

Here’s how proposals reach an outcome based on what $SAFE holders’ community vote:

What is SafeDAO's Constitution and how does it guide its operations?

Defining a mission, goals, and principles in the constitution helps all members of the DAO understand its purpose and ambitions — much like nation states.

DAOs use technical methods to improve coordination, but a governance smart contract alone is often insufficient. Without a clear direction, DAOs can face conflicts and lack guidance when assessing proposals. To address these issues, SafeDAO introduced a constitution that serves as a north star for members to rally behind.

Mission

SafeDAO aims to establish smart contract wallets as the default means of interacting with web3.

They aspire to work towards this mission by establishing standards for composable smart contract wallets, nurturing the Safe Ecosystem, and catering to the needs of various user groups and use cases in web3. SafeDAO promotes the common welfare, sustainable development, robustness, and diversity of the Safe Ecosystem.

Goals

1. Foster a vibrant ecosystem - SafeDAO benefits from a thriving ecosystem that supports and empowers projects integrating with the Safe Protocol or promoting its use.

2. Resilience through decentralization - The Safe Ecosystem shall be independent from any single entity. The Safe Ecosystem components, including governance, should be decentralized and permissionless.

3. Tokenize value - SAFE should represent the value of the Safe Ecosystem. Mechanisms should be created to link the growth of the Safe Ecosystem to the growth in utility of SAFE.

Principles

1. Safe Protocol is a public good - The Safe Protocol is core infrastructure for web3. Any changes that may be introduced do not compromise its public good nature and carefully balance the interests of different stakeholders in the Safe Ecosystem. This incentivises the unity of the Safe Ecosystem and, as a result, maintains the property of Safe as a portable account.

2. Token utility is aligned with ecosystem interests - Any utility of SAFE directly or indirectly adds value to the Safe Ecosystem. Changes to token mechanisms need to consider the effects on different stakeholder including user, builder and token holder.

3. Use of treasury is limited to achieving SafeDAO goals - The usage of any assets associated with the SafeDAO treasury is credibly linked to one or more of the SafeDAO goals outlined in the SafeDAO Constitution.

Milestones - what’s next for SafeDAO?

After a recent proposal which passed the vote, SafeDAO has decided crucial milestones before any other proposal is raised on turning the transferrability of $SAFE on will be raised, as it will serve to be the next critical point in the Safe’s journey. These milestones are —

• Milestone A: The $SAFE claim period has passed ✅

• Milestone B: SafeDAO constitution has been ratified ✅

• Milestone C: A governance framework has been ratified

• Milestone D: A resource allocation framework has been ratified

• Milestone E: $SAFE token utility has been ratified

Not included above but assumed to be in place:

• Activities around liquidity provision and market making have been aligned on

• A future proposal on enabling transferability include a complete documentation of its SafeSnap specification in the proposal text

The DAO has currently achieved milestones A & B whilst the rest are still in Phase 0 on the discussion forum.

What is the role of the Safe Foundation in the success of SafeDAO?

SafeDAO, being a Protocol DAO, set up an independent foundation in Switzerland to protect its strategic assets, such as IP, Github repositories, and strategic investments, and to issue the SAFE Token. This legal structuring is important for Safe to be compliant and ensures a favorable regulatory environment, political stability, and established reputation as a global financial hub.

Often DAOs have preferred setting up foundations like this in Switzerland because of 3 popular reasons:

1. Legal framework: Switzerland has a clear legal structure for foundations. This helps DAOs create an organization with a proper legal status. The Swiss Civil Code gives instructions for creating foundations and managing them.

2. Crypto-friendly regulations: Switzerland is friendly to blockchain and crypto projects. The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) provides clear guidance and regulation for crypto-related businesses. This is good for DAOs because it reduces uncertainty and risks when they operate in less-defined legal environments.

3. Tax benefits: Swiss foundations can be set up to offer tax advantages for the organization and its supporters. The Swiss tax system grants exemptions on income and capital gains for foundations that serve public benefit purposes. This makes it appealing for DAOs with goals that benefit the community or are altruistic.

SafeDAO has made one of its highest priorities to balance pragmatism with decentralization while being mindful of legal risks.

What are the challenges that SafeDAO faces?

With sufficient decentralisation in place, Safe is constantly experimenting its way to become more efficient with time, ensuring that the DAO is run by the community for the community. However, to achieve this, there are some challenges that SafeDAO highlights as important areas for DAO tooling development from their experience.

These areas include improving transparency, providing better analytics, and enabling effective delegation for its members.

1. Transparency: Tools that provide transparency can help to create trust and accountability in the community. For example, tools that track voting records and decision-making processes can help to improve transparency among SafeDAO members.

2. Analytics: DAOs can leverage data analytics to make informed decisions. For example, tools that track the performance of proposals or provide insights into member behavior can help SafeDAO to optimize their operations.

3. Delegation: Delegation is a complex process as of today, and DAOs need tools that make it easy to delegate and manage responsibilities. For example, tools that allow members to easily delegate their voting power or that provide a transparent overview of delegated responsibilities can help to improve internal governance processes.

Why is it important for a protocol to decentralize when it attains maturity?

Decentralization is a key aspect of blockchain technology, allowing for trust to be established without the need for a central authority. This makes it an ideal technology for projects to decentralize by structuring as DAOs. When a company or organization is centralized, it means they have control over everything, including your personal data.

This can cause some serious problems like:

1. Transparency - It's hard to know what's going on behind the scenes when everything is controlled by one group.

2. Accountability - If something goes wrong, who's responsible? It's hard to say when there's just one authority figure in charge.

3. Security - If all your data is stored in one place, it's like putting all your eggs in one basket - one mistake and everything could be compromised.

Decentralization empowers users with control over their own data and assets, ensuring they have a say in the direction and operations of the network.

For blockchain-based products, decentralization is crucial because it aligns with the fundamental principles of the technology and ensures a more transparent and secure system that evolves based on the needs and preferences of all stakeholders. It is especially important in products dealing with sensitive financial and personal data.

More direct input from users and a more adaptable network, ensuring long-term sustainability and success.

Decentralisation leads to continued growth in user adoption, increased value of the SAFE token, and the development of a thriving ecosystem of projects and applications built on top of the Safe protocol.

When a network is decentralized and the decision-making power is distributed among its users like in the case of $SAFE, it allows for a more adaptable system that can evolve based on the needs and preferences of the community.

By empowering the community to have a say in the direction and development of the project, Safe can create a self-sustaining ecosystem where users have a vested interest in seeing the network thrive. By decentralizing, protocols can achieve a level of sustainability that is not possible with traditional company structures.

Thanks to Theo Butel, Lukas & other members at SafeDAO, for valuable insights that helped us put this case study together.

StationX is a protocol to automate workflows for DAOs, pools & communties.

Create Stations in less than 60 seconds to set up DAOs for any use-case & use automated workflows that execute a range of onchain transations for your community.

If you haven’t gotten in the line yet, join 1,500+ curious folks waiting for the private beta here.

Thanks for reading,

Team StationX

Hello world 🌏 🛸

As we end the first quarter of 2023 on a cozy weekend, we’re writing to you our first StationX community update of this year on the journey so far & what’s coming next. If you’re new to StationX, we’re very glad you found us & we’d love to see you stick around.

Alright, let’s dive right in!

How it all started 🚶

After being a part of some of the best crypto communities for over 3+ years, in May last year we set out on a journey to build StationX with one clear mission — push DAOs to success.

Our immediate motivation to build was the very inefficiencies we noticed through our experience in working in DAOs & countless conversations with DAO operators across the world.

After 10 months of building, we’re now an outlier. 🏃‍♂️

Ever since we started building StationX, we received support from Aave Grants DAO, PolygonDAO & Filecoin in 2022. In January this year, we got into the Outlier Ventures x Protocol Labs accelerator cohort

https://twitter.com/stationxnetwork/status/1626679384970240000

In Q1 of 2023 alone, it’s been 2 months of working with some of the best mentors in the OV network to achieve key milestones like:

• 1500+ email signups for beta access (Get in line) 🙌

• 10+ DAOs testing our product currently 🛸

• 7+ automated workflows built around the initial DAOs onboarded to go live on mainnet ⚙️

• 800+ active community cumulatively with minimal marketing 🎉

Inviting 100 DAOs into the Private Beta experience 🛸

After thorough testing & feedback from the initial 10 DAOs onboarded into the invite-only private beta, we’re finally closer to being mainnet ready & we’re opening doors for more.

In a nutshell, DAOs can easily:

• set up in less than 60 seconds

• invite members using a link

• flexibly distribute ownership & track contributions

• manage & track group assets

• execute transactions directly by voting on proposals 🔥

• add plugins to automate any workflow 🔥

We booked our tix! 🛫

We will be in Tokyo for ETHTokyo & DAOTokyo from 13th - 20th April & in Austin, Texas for Consensus from 24th - 30th April (we'd love to catch up over coffee if you're attending too)

Pulling up our sleeves for the pitch day 💪

We’re gearing up for our pitch day, Elevate by OV, on April 19th. (Register here to watch us pitch)

https://twitter.com/OVioHQ/status/1640717753614237697

We’re super excited to unveil what we’ve been working on for the past 6 months, this read will be a deep dive into StationX answering some crucial questions - what, how & why. HODL your horses because we’re just getting started!

The Next Cycle is going to be about Stations

Within the next decade, people & communities will be deploying resources on the internet towards a common goal, or collectively just own assets and govern them together. Either way, DAO framework becomes very crucial for these on-chain stations, at the highest, overall DAO assets under management market cap was $13.2 Billion in this cycle, it is said to touch $1 Trillion in the future.

As the space gets more decentralised, democratised & community-driven, we’re going to see a lot more people-collectives forming their stations for every goal.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1478927706506944513?s=20&t=iS4T65Wb4XCzO2n7qw1dLg

People will form stations to - invest together, give out grants, donate to charitable causes, run a business, own/lend/borrow assets, collect NFTs, run DeFi protocols, manage NFT treasuries, host events & so much more. We can already see a lot of such collectives today (as shown in the image below) and there are thousands more.

StationX is a single protocol for global multi-human coordination keeping capital at the centre.

The Problems

The problems with the current landscape of DAO tooling are:

1. Lack of modularity: We need DAOs to be understood, set up, and managed easily on a single tool

2. Governance mechanisms: Existing governance models are rigid. There needs to be flexibility in setting up any governance mechanism that works for their vision

3. Single token DAO structures: With current governance tools it is difficult to divide up economic & governance rights

4. NFT support: So many NFT communities have not been able to turn into efficient self-governing DAOs because of the lack of tools that can efficiently create & manage NFT gated DAOs

5. Too many tools: DAOs use different tools for different services like treasury, governance, etc. which in itself makes it tedious to efficiently run the DAO

We just need technical solutions surrounding governance systems, treasury & collaboration tied together to make DAOs simpler - with the help of Stations.

What is a Station?

Stations are on-chain clubs where groups as small as 3 to as big as 10000 members can come together from any part of the world with capital & take action on it - such as investing, grants, savings, charities, cult, events, crowdfunding, fundraise, NFT treasuries, collect NFTs and much more

Stations fundamentally:

1. will own & manage 100% of their assets on their own DAO contract that is deployed at the time of creation

2. will govern themselves in the way they want

3. will access-gate themselves in the way they want - transferable/non-transferrable membership, token/NFT gated, open/private etc.

What is StationX?

Despite the kind of DAO or its purpose, fundamentally all DAOs have two things in common: Collective ownership & collective decision-making.

https://twitter.com/lalalavendr/status/1521920429153267714?s=20&t=di7t9NErBzZGQKDc0buhJA

StationX provides a single webapp for users to deploy their stations using no-code in seconds, set governance & hold 100% ownership of their treasury. Anyone (web3 native or web2 people) can deploy and start managing their station on the app.

The pre-configured templates are formed by permutations & combinations of some key building blocks of a DAO:

• Token Gating - the platform allows users to gate members by ERC20 (transferable/non-transferable) tokens, ERC721 tokens / NFTs or any custom token

• Governance and setting the quorum

• Treasury - can be managed on Gnosis safe multisig or the token contract

Starting a DAO is a simple 3 step process (like filling a form) and inviting members is by sharing invite link or raising proposals or auctions (like NounsDAO)

The dashboard primarily allows members to:

• track treasury realtime

• monitor transactions

• raise & vote on executable proposals

How easy is it to create a Station on StationX:

1. Visit test.stationx.network & connect your wallet

2. Enter create station flow if you want to create a new station, if you’re a part of any existing stations they show up too.

3. Creating a station is of 3 simple steps, should take less than a minute if you are hands on, otherwise about 5 mins with the help of our guide.

   1. Add basic info like station name & token symbol (picture optional)

   2. Select a template based on your station’s goal (currently only ‘Investments’ template is active)

   3. Choose governance, deposits & exit parameters then deploy your DAO seamlessly in just a click of a button

   You can now start sharing the unique invite link with members who can join the station by depositing funds. Each member gets membership tokens immediately after the deposit into the treasury, which represent their share in the station. Station’s treasury is collectively owned by its members which can now be used to invest together in deals & accumulate assets.

Started in Early’22, what’s been achieved so far?

• Became a part of some of the biggest forums, DAOs and communities to learn more about DAOs and how they work

  • Joined GCR & SeedClub.xyz for Product Feedback & Advisory

  • Applied for FWB DAO & Metacartel Venture DAO

  • Initiating conversations with some core members of Cult DAOs (like LilNouns, Crypto Culture, etc)

  • Initiated conversations with folks at Aave grants to build a template for Grants

• Worked on identifying the problems, solving them and built an interactive wireframe that helped us get early feedback from users & experts in the space - you can check it out here

• Deployed our token and governance contracts on test-net. 

• Partnered with new DAOs (tools, listing platforms and DAO incubators) to onboard them

• Our Beta on Rinkeby test-net is live! Check it out here

  • Investment club template is active

  • Users can create their own DAOs & join others as members through an invite link

  • Deposit funds & get club tokens that represent their membership

  • Raise survey proposals

• Got a Grant from PolygonDAO to build on Polygon!

Here’s what’s coming in the future

1. Marketing & partnerships 🤝

2. Build a kickass StationX community 💙

3. More templates for DAO use-cases 🆕 (NFT Treasury, Grants, Charity, etc.)

4. Integrate with more chains ⛓

5. More on-chain coordination features on the product 🚀

Alright, let’s talk about the team

4 of us with CS backgrounds, ran a marketing & tech services company in India right after university from 2019 to 2021

• Rishav used to invest in crypto since 2017 (started with investing in top-tier ICOs through small pools & communities that had allocation with private investors). Invested in over 30 ICOs (including polygon, arweave, ankr, republic network, etc). Found out small communities came together to act as micro VCs, funds, and syndicates. One of the first use-cases of communities managing capital towards a common goal.

• Subham has been building & shipping products since 2017. He has more than 1 year of experience in blockchain specifically. He built a SAAS company from ground-up in the past & managed a dev team size of more than 10 developers across different roles.

• Pranav has 3+ years of cumulative experience in product design, sales, community & marketing. He started working with Web3 projects in mid-2021 and worked with 10+ projects to build their community strategy.

• Toshit is a performance marketeer with more than 3 years of experience in marketing & operations, worked with web3 projects since mid-2021 to generate traction & helped them with getting investors & strategic partners on board.

We’re thankful for the love we’re getting from the community, more details will be shared soon!