Top 5 Impact DAO Learnings
5 insights into why and how of Impact DAOs from conversations with DAO founders
DAOs are an internet native way to organize around shared goals. I dedicated April to learn about purpose driven DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) and interviewed many Impact Founders. Below are my learnings
Key learnings
1. Leaderless, bottom up, participatory, non hierarchical, democratic. DAOs values are inspired by the 2014 book Reinventing Organizations
2. Key drivers to use the DAO model is freedom from bureaucracy, redistribute and decentralize power, to organize globally and radical transparency.
3. Participation in a DAO is open to anyone and everyone. Contribute and earn tokens that lets you have a say over the matters of the DAO. You can earn tokens as a donor as in the case of Giveth, ImpactMarket DAO or BigGreen DAO. Big Green also allocates tokens to grantees and frontline community leaders giving them the decision making power. You can simply contribute your time and skills and earn tokens as in the case of Elimu.ai DAO. Some DAOs do not issue tokens like Ukraine DAO
Some Impact DAOs also list their tokens on Decentralized Exchanges (DEXs) to create micro economies. Some simply award tokens as a way of gratitude.
4. DAOs operations and communications are powered by tech infrastructure. Most commonly used tools are Discord for community and task management. Discourse for discussions, Notion for documentation, Twitter and Medium for communications. Aragon, Snapshot, Gardens for governance. Ethereum, Polygon, Celo for blockchain, Gnosis Safe for shared treasury.
5. Currently for mission driven DAOs that are purely internet native with no incorporation have limited real-world fundraising opportunities. They are cut off from traditional nonprofit funding systems and most crypto funding which is also designed for registered nonprofits.
So far I’ve seen DAOs being used for fund raising (UkraineDAO, Giveth), grant making (Big Green DAO), product creation (Elimu.ai DAO) community organization (All for Climate DAO), protocol DAO (Impact Market DAO).
References
My learnings are from conversations and study of some of the following Impact DAOs
Further Reading
A good Twitter thread on how to start a DAO
An excellent resource on Ukraine DAO’s learnings on building a DAO