How can we foster more knowledge exchange between and within different DAOs?

That was the central question I had in mind when I joined Seed Club’s inaugural Greenhouse programme in late November 2022. This year in web3 has been a rollercoaster. With DAOs being a relatively nascent part of the web3 ecosystem, there has been a lot of experimentation and a lot of changes within DAOs I am involved in and other DAOs on my radar.

DAO core teams and members have been experimenting with different phases and seasons, trying out various business models, testing out onboarding methods, and working with new emerging tools to better the experience of collaborating within a DAO.

From my own experience as part of the core team of the COLORSxCOMMUNITY DAO and speaking to other core team members of DAOs operating in adjacent spaces, I realised that a lot of DAOs went through similar stages this year. Hearing that others were thinking about similar things or facing some of the same hurdles we have over the course of this year made me realise how valuable it would be to have even more transparent exchange between different DAOs. This would mean we could better support each other with our learnings along the way and provide a foundation for DAOs which emerge in the future to build upon.

Ultimately, most people working in DAOs are seeking to nurture better ways of operating using web3. We seek to share these benefits and explorations with larger groups of people and onboard them to the space. There is a big upside in DAO members, especially those who are part of core teams, collaborating to drive this mission forward. Rather than being companies competing with each other, we have the opportunity to truly tap into the power of community and share our knowledge along the way.

Seed Club’s inaugural Greenhouse lab has provided an example of the true potential of bringing builders together and collaboratively working to solve problems which are applicable to most DAOs. This first cohort was made up of a globally distributed group of curious builders from 16+ alumni communities that have previously been through Seed Club. What immediately struck me when the group got together for the first time was the honesty people showed up to the session with - we were asking the hard questions that need to be answered in web3 and were very transparent in discussing these issues.

Some of the topics we focused on included:

• Thinking about how to make DAOs and DAO tooling more accessible for people who aren’t web3 native

• Examining the language we use around DAOs and how we could simplify things to connect with wider audiences

• Alternatives to Discord for DAO coordination

• Web3 considerations in different global contexts such as the global South where internet and electricity aren’t a given

• Creating better archives of DAO knowledge within DAOs and across DAOs as we learn

• Accessibility of DAOs e.g. financial barriers to join DAOs, time available to invest in DAO contribution

For me, sharing and collaboration between builders who are part of different DAOs also connects to the concept of scenius. Many people are part of multiple DAOs and looking at DAOs building in similar spaces or Seed Club’s network of alumni communities, it becomes clear how intimately linked the space is right now. The term scenius was coined by Brian Eno: “Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of genius.” I think of networks of builders such as those brought together in this first Greenhouse cohort as being part of a form of scenius and am also seeing scenius emerge in many of the web3 communities we are part of. I’m excited about the conversations that have been had during the Greenhouse lab and the work we will continue to do together. The past weeks have also highlighted to me how important it is to ask critical questions in the web3 space at this time and work towards approaching those issues in better ways to help the larger space progress in a healthy way.