OpenLaw is expanding and rebranding to Tribute Labs to reflect its focus on building tooling and supporting the growing decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) ecosystem, through open-source frameworks like the Tribute DAO framework and the OpenLaw framework.

Since they were first proposed in 2013, DAOs have been a focus of the Ethereum ecosystem. For many, these Internet-native organizations represent the next step in the evolution of social and economic coordination, with blockchain technology and smart contracts streamlining voting, decision making, and the allocation of digital assets.

The notion of a DAO did not emerge in a vacuum. Instead, these organizations build on a long lineage of technical and legal innovation.  A DAO is an organization that disperses control rather than having a hierarchy like an average company. These kinds of organizations typically use Ethereum smart contracts—blocks of code that perform instructions—to run their operations.

Supporting DAOs

Tribute Labs helped pioneer the resurgence of DAOs. We helped develop the Moloch v2 smart contracts and combined them with the OpenLaw tooling to launch The LAO—a DAO of DAOs—over a year and a half ago.  Today, Tribute Labs has helped launch and/or supports a highly curated group of nearly ten DAOs (with one to two new DAOs coming every month), which are focused on a variety of areas in the crypto ecosystem, including:

• The LAO: project support and DAO incubation
• Flamingo DAO: NFTs, curation, and culture
• Neptune DAO: decentralized finance
• Neon DAO: the metaverse, digital land, digital land development, and virtual events
• Red DAO: digital fashion
• Ready Player DAO: play-to-earn economies
• Noise DAO: music and sound
• MUSE0: a community-led internet museum
• Dark Horse DAO: internet stable on Zed run

Together, these DAOs have over $150 million in ether contributed, with NAVs that well exceed that, supporting over 150 projects, acquiring thousands of NFTs, deploying millions of dollars into DeFi protocols, and even paving the way for new forms of Internet-based museums. The DAOs are also entirely member-managed and directed, and they are exploring novel ways to enable disparate groups of capital allocators to work together, using blockchain technology, to collect, invest, and learn.  Tribute Labs provides technical and community support and assists with compliance to ensure that these DAOs stand out as best in class.

DAO Tooling through the Tribute DAO Framework

Beyond supporting a growing DAO network, Tribute Labs has been building next-generation DAO-related tools.  In July, we introduced the Tribute DAO framework to solve many of the problems we’ve seen in supporting, building, and helping to launch DAOs.

The TributeDAO framework lowers the cost of starting and maintaining a DAO.  It enables the creation of modular, extendable, and upgradable DAOs that have:

• Customizable adapters and extensions,
• Customizable UX, and
• Lower cost on-chain transactions, using an optimistic rollup that facilitates smart contract executions.

As the growing number of participants in DAOs know, there is no “one-size-fits-all” for building any organization, let alone a DAO.  The Tribute DAO framework aims to act as a “WordPress for DAOs,” and provide a core set of smart contracts and components that can be assembled like Lego blocks to fit the needs of different organizations and groups of people.

When viewed as a whole, these enhancements mean that development teams can work together to build DAO-related tooling that will benefit all teams in the Ethereum ecosystem and do so in a way that doesn’t bind specific teams or projects to a single centrally maintained dapp, UX, set of signers, or walled garden.

Tribute Labs is focused on DAOs full-time and will continue to build and support what we see as the next phase of the internet: crypto-native organizations where members from all over the world can pool funds, build social connections, self-govern, and allocate capital or services relying on DAO-based hive minds.

We are committed to empowering people to self-organize online, using the Tribute DAO framework and the OpenLaw framework, where appropriate, to facilitate a reimagination of different industries in a true, internet-native fashion.

Our initial focus has been on pooled investment and collector DAOs, which are reenvisioning how the capital formation and collecting can occur. Instead of a GP-LP relationship, all participants in a DAO have a say with respect to where the money flows.

The venture is just the first stop, and industries ranging from fashion to gaming to music and more will be reimagined by the decentralized ownership, permissionless building environment, and open networks that blockchain technology enables.

We are excited to see how the DAO ecosystem evolves over the coming years and look forward to playing our part in this unique moment in time. For those who are interested in connecting with the Tribute team to learn more, please feel free to send a note to hello@tributelabs.xyz.