NEAR
Growing DAOs
Illia Polosukhin
@ilblackdragon
Grew up in Ukraine which lacks transparency in government and companies
NEAR’s mission: a world where all people have control of their assets, data and power of governance.
NEAR
Worked at Google, successful meritocracy but the opposite of open
My background
What are DAOs?
Decentralized Autonomous Organization
“Digital Collective”
“Facebook group with a bank account”
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Communities having power to govern own operations and other applications.
Replacing conventional company structure with creating direct incentives and giving freedom.
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Investment and funding of “public good” initiatives.
Why DAOs?
Why DAOs?
Communities having power to govern own operations and other applications.
Replacing conventional company structure with creating direct incentives and giving freedom.
NEAR
Investment and funding of “public good” initiatives.
Learnings
Leadership is paramount
Governance doesn’t scale
Fragmentation is inevitable and desired
Communities with clear goals
Direct oligopoly doesn’t work. Real meritocracy is hard to achieve.
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Learnings: Coordination
“Whip” is the most important role in large non hierarchical orgs
The more specific the mission of organization - the more dedicated team is required
DAOs/Tech allow to codify some processes, social protocols fill in where code can’t: Code of Conduct, Bylaws and Constitutions.
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Learnings: Ownership & Goals
Founders have vision and take ownership
Turning vision into clear goals is an art
As DAO grows, work shifts from vision casting to “policing”
It’s important that next wave of members have enough ownership
Ownership can take different forms: identity, tokens, etc
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Learnings: Signaling
Gather opinion from the community
Splitting the “execution” from voting
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Growth stages
Starts with small group: efficient communication, no clear social protocols, initial culture is set.
New members are invited. Roles are needed to onboard new people to build their reputation in the community.
Formalize incentives (intrinsic or extrinsic) and rules for the group.
Growth and evolution of community beyond what initial members could imagine
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Roles in a DAO
Whip / Executive
Council
Member of Community
Can also have various extras like “OGs”, “Financiers”,
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Interaction between communities
Fork of
Member of
Work for / collaborate
Funded by
Compete with
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Putting it all together: SputnikDAO
Ecosystem of projects
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Interact with DAOs everywhere
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https://twitter.com/zavodil_ru/status/1440666019161247747
Create inside a telegram group
By posting on the governance forum
Via the social network
From another smart contract
DAO as an account: can be a member of another DAO or participate in any other on-chain activity
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Multitude of roles with flexible permissions: whips, councils, community signaling and more
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Easy to issue community token or adopt existing token
Modular connector for weighted voting:
Adopt existing token
Adopt token balances on another chain via Rainbow Bridge
Any kind of weighting function like quadratic voting
Adopt NFT as a vote
Issue new token directly from the DAO together with the community, making Token Generation Event a decentralized effort from day 1.
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Govern via proposals: from payment to upgrading another contract
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Signaling via polls: collect feedback from stakeholders or have an open vote
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Get work done via bounties: payout for doing some work DAO needs
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Integrate with streaming payments: pay salaries to members, streaming investment or to other DAOs for contract work
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https://roke.to
NEAR’s Ecosystem Treasury
Goal to fund other DAOs in the ecosystem
Grants DAO, Marketing DAO, Guild Sandbox, and more
Up to 200M $NEAR
Governed by small elected members from quadratic stake voting
Chair serves as a whip and executive to facilitate decisions
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Learn more: https://gov.near.org/t/near-ecosystem-treasury-dao/2946
Open Questions
Standard for different DAOs platforms to interact
UIs for custom interactions
Communication medium alignment: IM, forums, FB and on-chain
Template roles structures
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Questions?
Join 100+ DAOs
paid out $1m+ in the past 30 days
https://app.astrodao.com
Get your DAO funded up to $10k
https://daocubator.org