When DAO develops rapidly, what problems are likely to be faced?

Original title: "When DAO develops rapidly, what problems are easy to face? "

Original author: Marina, W3.Hitchhiker; revision: Evelyn, W3. Hitchhiker

In June, DAO’s management platform Dework completed a $5 million seed round of financing, led by well-known encryption investment institutions Paradigm and Pace Capital; DAO’s salary payment system Utopia received a $23 million round led by Paradigm US$ A round of financing; DAO operating platform CharmVerse completed a US$3.8 million seed round of financing, Spartan Group and others participated in the investment...  …

In this way, DAO continues to gain more and more "huge" financing in our field of vision. Even the founder of Polychain, Olaf Carlson-Wee, publicly praised DAO: he believes that the amount of funds raised by DAO has exceeded traditional At the same time, the amount of funds raised in 2022 will also exceed 1 trillion US dollars.

At the same time, there are many heated discussions about DAO in the market. For example, can DAO replace traditional companies to operate? DAO will have a high probability of surpassing crypto investment VC? How does DAO, as a new type of social division of labor and cooperation, attract more high-quality personnel to join?

In any case, the era of DAO is coming, and no one can stop it. Especially in the current market environment, there are not many new hotspots, except for a few NFT projects that occasionally become popular, DAO has begun to be placed on high hopes by countless people-DAO has begun to be subdivided, and various scenarios have emerged in the face of different scenarios. There are all kinds of DAOs. If we focus on a specific DAO, we will have this question: When more and more newcomers join the DAO, and the speed of business expansion cannot keep up with the addition of personnel, will there be many problems?

This article will try to discuss the common dilemmas and solutions in the rapid development of DAOs. It is for communication only, not investment advice.

1. Contributors to DAO

No matter what kind of organization it is, its core and fundamental part is the management of people, and this is especially important in the context of DAO. When the management sees more and more newcomers pouring into the community, it needs to think about how to guide and manage these fresh "blood".

(1) Newcomer "onboarding" management

Obviously, "onboarding" management in a Web3 world is different than Web2. In the world of Web2, a group of people gather in one place (usually an office) for familiarity among colleagues and immediate face-to-face work communication and coordination. There is a dedicated human resources department to lead newcomers to "integrate" into the company; while in the world of Web3, DAO needs Consider the entry path for newcomers: after knowing the DAO, how to find the entrance → after finding the DAO organization, what should I do, which task is more suitable for me → what else can I do after participating in a certain task, etc.

Of course, in a small-scale DAO, MODs can come to answer or guide, but after the popularity of the DAO is gradually opened, there should be an Onbarding page to present these contents.

For example, Index Coop (a DAO that runs best in the DeFi world, a network that bundles multiple assets into index financial products, has the clearest goal and brings a very comfortable experience to contributors The organization) is running very well. The organization has more than one community, and has successfully launched several communities. People all over the world can join, participate and contribute value. One of the ways that makes Index Coop stand out among many DAOs is that they have set in advance the difficulties that each participant may encounter after entering the community and the corresponding solutions, and every step has been carefully considered and carefully planned.

Discord is a common entrance to encrypted communities, and it is also a common entrance for newcomers to enter the corresponding community. Therefore, the first thing newcomers can do after entering the community is very important. Newcomers can start by #introducing myself, then receive a welcome from members of the community, and receive guidance on where you can go to learn more (like a manual) and answers to other questions. The guidelines in the figure below allow participants to clearly know what the community is doing and where to go when they have doubts.

(2) Participation of members

One of the advantages of DAO is that it can bring together the best talents and resources from all over the world, but the most difficult problem to solve is also the human problem. We have previously addressed how newcomers enter, participate, and how to achieve/conduct in-depth governance. In addition, the flow and vitality of community personnel also need to be considered.

There are more and more community participants, and there are also many excellent talents. How to find these excellent people and arrange them in suitable "posts" to play the greatest role? When a task is arranged, what should I do if I get flooded when "handing in the homework"? Is there a contingency plan? The community should be a group of people who gather together for a certain staged goal. There should be more than just the completion of the task, but also the warmth and atmosphere. For this, can the DAO community regularly plan interesting activities to mobilize everyone's enthusiasm and enthusiasm? Enhance cohesion?

How to ensure that the above problems are effectively resolved? Here are a few points to get started: The core point is to ensure that participants have fun in the community, can build connections, and feel that their contributions are aligned with the vision of the community.

Regularly hold all-member meetings to disclose the completion of tasks in the stage and the next work arrangement;

Invite KOL in a certain field of the industry as a special guest of Twitter Space, absorb the views of high-quality talents, and inspire new ideas of contributors;

Publish community issues, conduct focused discussions on certain types of issues, and give feasible solutions (different proposals, members who need to hold the corresponding Token or NFT can vote);

Establish connections in the #self-introduction of community bases like Discord, such as recommending this new member to enter a certain channel for further cultivation, and recommending him to try new fields;

Additional surprises, such as inviting big Vs to airborne communities to distribute benefits; after completing a task, hold an online "party" or hold offline events;

When setting tasks, plan according to the roles of contributors, and allow enough time for contributors to supplement and improve, etc.

(3) Liquidity of DAO members

Obviously, no matter in Web2 or Web3, those who create value for DAO in the early stage will not stay in one organization forever. In DAO, compared with 400 people participating in core governance, if only 4 people participate in core governance Otherwise, the risk will be much greater; if you want the healthy and long-term development of the community, it is also very important to let newcomers participate in the governance of the community. The community also needs a large number of new contributors to transfuse the community. The most important role is to decentralize governance rights and prevent power from being concentrated on a small number of people who are “familiar with each other.” The key to this initiative is to minimize switching costs.

DAO Contributor Journey, source: pet3rpan.net

DAO is actually not as automated as we imagined. In fact, it is more like a simulation of the vision of governance process on the chain, and it should be fluid. Here are two common ways DAOs grant governance and membership to members:

Based on Token Governance method: Participants can become members of DAO by holding the corresponding Token;

"Social"-based governance approach: Participants become full members by making outstanding contributions to the DAO.

Governance of the first category Token It should not be minted all at once, but should be continuously increased as the community develops, in short, with an appropriate inflation model; when DAO members exit, they can choose to sell Token thereby relinquishing governance rights.

The second approach will incentivize more participants to contribute, which is good for DAOs. God V also mentioned that based on Token Governance sucks, working group membership through contribution as a basis for giving people governance votes (and limiting the scope of voting) would be better. When core contributors need to withdraw from DAO, their participation needs to be considered, that is, when the participation in the daily governance of DAO is not so active, the weight of contribution will decrease accordingly, so as to achieve the purpose of withdrawal.

2. Governance

According to the latest data released by Electric Capital, DAO governance activities have shown explosive growth compared to last year.

DAO's monthly vote count, source: Electric Capital

As mentioned above, the governance methods of DAO are basically the above two. The following part will briefly describe: When DAO makes major decisions (such as allocating resources from the treasury, assigning roles to contributors, how to issue incentives, etc.), which aspects can be optimized, for example, the process should be: initiate a proposal - focus on discussion - vote to decide.

Collate all the questions into one document, and everyone can fill in and comment (such as Notion/google doc);

Initiate a Discord area for the formed proposal;

Focus on the proposal in a community meeting;

Publish a formal proposal on a DAO governance tool such as Snapshot;

Delegate ownership of governance Members with the right to vote

The governance of DAO is also to let the community move in a favorable direction. Of course, this process is not suitable for all DAO organizations, but according to this path, the decision-making efficiency of a proposal can be maximized, and at the same time, it can also allow DAO governance rights Members can fully exercise their power, so that the community becomes better and mobilizes members' enthusiasm for participation.

3. Processing of information flow

This is worth mentioning on its own. From the perspective of the industry, information on various tracks emerges endlessly every day; from the perspective of DAO, the fast-growing DAO is also facing a situation of "three mores", that is, more channels, more meetings and more activities.

When I'm involved in a DAO and I'm desperate to get to the parts I care about most quickly (task progress, problems encountered, when is the community meeting, etc.), I'm often overwhelmed by a lot of information. If you want members to receive actionable tasks as quickly as possible, you need a clear flow of information. Some of the above also mentioned that the core elements are to get collaboration tools, arrangement and notification of various meetings, and implementation progress (for information display and update).

The main collaboration tool is the Discord community. Due to the channel partition, it can greatly reduce the interference of information;

Meeting arrangements and notifications: set up a meeting reminder robot in Discord; sync weekly agenda/events in Google Calendar;

Execution progress: Notion is a toolbox that most DAOs will use, but how to set up the page in a clean and orderly manner, and how to allow members to quickly reach (information display and update) the path setting of the target location needs to be considered, if necessary For an example of a good onboarding page, see Index Coop's Notion.

4. Establishment of incentive mechanism

DAO's incentive mechanism includes DAO's Token, POAPs/NFTs, bonuses, salary based on stable currency, etc., which will not be elaborated here.

DAO incentive methods and dimensions, source: Aragon blog

Determine the form of incentive distribution

Because there are more than one form of incentives, a fast-growing DAO will also face the problem of designing different incentive mechanisms, that is, how to make community contributors make continuous contributions and actively participate in activities and claim tasks.

The incentive methods of each DAO are also different. For example, Venture DAOs will put more incentive methods on the project income for contributors to participate in the investment; More income; the main focus of Media DAOs is to disseminate content, and the incentives can be Token (Bankless DAO), bonuses, etc.

The process and standardization of issuing incentives

When the incentive form involves "funds", it is necessary to consider the issue of "vault" and voting, and the specific distribution standards are different according to the roles of community members. Only the former is discussed here. The premise is that DAO has specific task needs at a certain stage, small funds can be proposed in advance, and large funds (all budgets) must be voted by Snapshot and others).

It should be noted that when there are more and more members in the DAO, it is necessary to set the distribution process in advance (such as who can apply - where to fill in the application form - review process - display of the progress of the distribution) and standardization (whether it is possible to Set a class of robots to follow a certain rule, and the rules can be changed according to the development of DAO, thereby reducing human interference and serious lag in issuing incentives).

Summary

While the future of DAOs is in flux, participants will always be at the heart of it. One can buy many types of Token , join various Discord channels, try many types of DAOs, and give up many DAOs, but only a small number of people will really keep and use the DAOs in their hands. Token , and very few become long-term contributors. The measure of DAO's success is not how many members it has, but how many real core contributors can make high-quality proposals for the community; Token " way to retain contributors.

The governance and incentive mechanism of DAO has always been the center of discussion, and of course the market is constantly adjusting and iterating new methods. DAO will also start to spring up like mushrooms in 2022. If we want to be a part of DAO, we must also learn to deal with the problem of complex information flow. Of course, DAO should also be optimized in this respect.

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