How to Web3 - Tools to Get You Started
These tools for beginners will get you started on your Web3 path
Web3 is the inevitable future of the web, built on decentralization of power, community governance, transparency and a permissionless economy. It will change everything. If you’re ready to build under this ethos then you are Web3.
The Web3 landscape is large and covers so much from Tokens to NFTs but the application that most embodies its values is the DAO.
Distributed autonomous organizations (DAOs) are virtual communities that come together around a common purpose, coordinated by voting through smart contracts on a public blockchain.
Impact DAOs are a sub-set focused on making social and environmental impact. For example Impact Market a DAO disburses universal basic income to the world’s poorest using the Celo blockchain.
These are some of the tools used by DAOs to execute on their mission and to uphold the ethos of Web3
Discord
A must for community building and inviting people on the internet into your space. Discord is like the virtual office where people who like your mission come to say 👋, contribute, ask questions and become part of what you aim to do. Discord has bots that are used by DAOs to power their workflows from onboarding to project management. Dework.xyz, is such a Discord bot for task management.
Notion
Widely used to document and share publicly the mission, vision, roadmap, activities, and just about anything that the organization would like to share with the world. The idea with Notion is to document everything and share it publicly.
Discourse
An open source software that allows for discussions around topics. Think of Notion as a one way channel for sharing information while Discourse allows groups to share and discuss. In the web3 space, I’ve seen Discourse used for raising new proposals and topics to the DAO for discussions or seeking proposals from the community.
Twitter
Twitter is the townsquare of Crypto. You may have heard the term Crypto Twitter, almost everyone who is in crypto is on Twitter and it has become a widely popular tool to communicate along with Twitter Spaces to share updates and have live conversations.
Snapshot, Gardens, Aragon
Web3 tools Snapshot, Gardens, Aragon are commonly used for decentralized voting. DAOs issue tokens to their community (based on various criteria) and tokens give holders the power to vote on matters of the organization. Different voting styles are used from quadratic, conviction, ranked voting etc.
Big Green DAO of Kimbal Musk uses Snapshot for grant making - they turn traditionally sourced grant proposals into a Snapshot proposal for token holders to vote on.
MultiSig Wallet
A blockchain multi signature wallet is equivalent to a joint bank account that requires multiple sign-offs before funds can be released. Multi Sig wallets build trust amongst donors knowing that no one person is going to run off with the funds. Gnosis Safe is a popular choice for setting up a multi-sig wallet on Ethereum blockchain.
Blockchain
Blockchains are used for various purposes and the degree to which ones uses the blockchain depends on what one aims to achieve. If you’d like to democratize and decentralize governance then blockchains can be used for issuing tokens to contributors thereby giving them voting rights. Tokens can also be used to kickstart a crypto economy as tokens can be listed and traded on a decentralized exchange. The commonly used blockchains for token issuance amongst Impact DAOs are Ethereum, Polygon (Ethereum’s side chain) and Celo, a purpose driven blockchain.
They are also used to create public addresses for transactions such as receiving crypto-donations. On most non-privacy focused blockchains transactions are publicly viewable bringing financial transparency.
Most blockchains can also be used to create smart contracts to automate core functions without needing an intermediary. Impact Market has built smart contracts on Celo blockchain to dispense unconditional basic income to vulnerable communities across the world. The smart contract is programmed with the predefined rules that the DAO has voted on.
Crypto Wallet
To interact with various web3 services one needs a web or a mobile wallet. Web3 apps requires you to sign-up with your wallet. “Connect Wallet” is the message you’ll see displayed when interacting with any Web3 platform. Metamask is a popular wallet for Ethereum that integrates across a wide range of Web3 services, you don’t have to hold cryptocurrencies in your wallet, it can just be used to sign-up to access various web3 apps.
Summary
The above mentioned tech tools are some of the widely used starter tools to get you on your Web3 journey. How much you want to decentralize and open up depends on your comfort and know how of the space. The Web3 tooling rabbit hole is deep. Progressively decentralize is the way to go.
You can start off with decentralizing a certain function. For example Big Green a US 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded by Kimbal Musk in 2011 launched a DAO in November 2021 to experiment with democratizing grant making.
In my view it’s best to get started minimally, experiment, find your minimum viable community and add more tools as you go along.
Go Deeper 🐇
UkraineDAO raised over $8Million in crypto donations to provide aid to Ukrainians. You can view their toolkit here
Giveth, a crypto fundraising platform and a DAO toolkit here
A very long list of DAO tools to support every function
List of DAO Resources and Tools
Why Web3 Matters by Chris Dixon of a16z.
Web3 is the internet owned by the builders and users, orchestrated with tokens.
What is Web3 by Ethereum.org
Web3 embraces decentralization and is being built, operated, and owned by its users. Web3 puts power in the hands of individuals rather than corporations.
Web3 Impact Summit
Join a diverse collection of amazing folks building for Web3 and social impact. The summit takes places on June 9th in Austin, Texas and sounds to me like the place to be. I unfortunately can’t make it this year but I encourage you’ll to go collaborate with some amazing folks.
Web3 Impact Summit is a free event, apply to join.
If you know of other great DAO tools ⚒️ to add to the list leave a comment. And as always feel free to connect on Twitter.