I was recently on a twitter space discussing the power of DAOs as legal entities when someone asked “How do I start a DAO?”.

That question alone triggered a rabbit-hole conversation that led me to curate this list of helpful resources I’ve personally used to help entrepreneurs leverage DAOs.

Before I get into the resource list I will be giving some context to DAOs but if you are already familiar, feel free to scroll down to the entire resource list.

What is a DAO?

Before I get into the resources and their use cases, let’s break down what a DAO is.

According to the state of Wyoming,

“A decentralized autonomous organization is a limited liability company whose articles of organization contain a statement that the company is a decentralized autonomous organization as described in subsection (c) of this section.”.

Subsection (c) then states

“A statement in substantially the following form shall appear conspicuously in the articles of organization or operating agreement, if applicable, in a decentralized autonomous organization:

NOTICE OF RESTRICTIONS ON DUTIES AND TRANSFERS

The rights of members in a decentralized autonomous organization may differ materially from the rights of members in other limited liability companies. The Wyoming Decentralized Autonomous Organization Supplement, underlying smart contracts, articles of organization and operating agreement, if applicable, of a decentralized autonomous organization may define, reduce or eliminate fiduciary duties and may restrict transfer of ownership interests, withdrawal or resignation from the decentralized autonomous organization, return of capital contributions and dissolution of the decentralized autonomous organization.”

In short, a DAO is a variation of LLCs which allow smart contracts to alleviate some of the human-executed responsibilities in an organization. A common representation of this is protocol governance. DAOs typically use tokens to issue and vote on proposals to push the DAO forward.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the legal documents, you can find them here.

Starting a DAO

If you are looking to start a DAO in the United States, Wyoming is currently the only state you can file this legal entity. I expect this to slowly change over time, but for now we’ll work with what we have.

Good news is, the process is not as involved as many would expect.

Follow these steps to file online or by mail.

File Online

File by Mail

These documents were last pulled November 18, 2022 so be sure to submit the most updated versions when registering a DAO through the state of Wyoming.

DAO Toolkit / Resources

Tokenomics

This resource provided by Tokenomics DAO covers some fundamental thinking points for token structure. I recently used this tool to create a framework for the tokenomics design of a DeFi protocol and found it extremely useful. They pack a punch for a small community so be sure to show them some love if you find their framework useful.

Treasury

Gnosis has quickly become the “industry standard” for holding digital assets on-chain. It is an easy way to deploy a multi-signature wallet that restricts the movement of assets without multiple signers(users). It is also interoperable with a ton of dApps.

Fundraising

Mirror is known for easy publishing; however, it has some pretty powerful tools that allow you to raise funds and issue tokens. They are constantly expanding their feature set which is an added plus.

Communication

Discord is quickly becoming the hub for most projects community needs. It allows for announcement channels to keep communities up to date. It also provides text/voice channels that can be tailored to the needs of a specific project.

Telegram acts almost like a group text message platform, but allows teams to quickly communicate messages with their community. There are also some bot integrations that can be pretty useful but vary case-to-case.

Permission

Collab.Land serves as a tool to gate access to specific communities in Discord & Telegram. If a user holds a specific token, they can access certain channels or spaces.

Dashboard

Notion is a modular workspace that allows for easy onboarding. This is one of my favorite tools in this resource guide simply for the fact that it is effective and aesthetic. Teams can build workspaces with role-tiered access. One of my favorite features allows you to make any specific page in the workspace available online to the public in the click of a few buttons.

Forum

Forum works a lot like discord but has a much more controlled environment. With a built in mailing list, it can be supercharged to be more in touch with community members.

Voting

Snapshot is essential to any DAO toolkit. Snapshot allows holders of a specific token to issue and vote on proposals to be executed by the DAO smart contract. It can also be used to facilitate action from conversation to action.

Payroll & Expenses

I have yet to find a more streamlined payment platform for DAOs. Utopia allows for gasless transactions, payroll automation, and even a suite of compliance features to make sure the DAO pays its participants and is on top of their taxes.

Incentives & Contributions

Coordinape allows DAOs to delegate tasks with paid incentives without having to make a ton of manual transactions. Tie this in with a strong organizational tool and you can get a team working effectively rather quickly.

Analytics

Dune allows DAOs to create dashboards that measure specific on-chain metrics. Although this tool works best for those with PostgreSQL or some coding background, it is extremely useful for staying on top of important data.

Deep DAO is a analytics platform pulling data on over 10,000 different DAOs. They track treasury size, change in treasury size, quantity of token holders and a ton of other metrics. They also have a curated list of tools(not mentioned in this article) I’d recommend digging into.

Grants

Gitcoin has a ton of grant competitions and opportunities. If you’re bootstrapping and may not have access to venture capital, Gitcoin is the way to go.

Work Pods

Trust is a huge emphasis in DAO frameworks and Metropolis creates permissioned work groups that help reinforce that trust. Larger DAOs can gain a ton of value integrating Metropolis.

Wonderverse also uses work pods to get things done; however it has a pretty big emphasis in project management. If you’re looking for a tool that integrates workstreams, pods, and management tools then this would be a solid bet.

Design

Figma is used as both a collaborative design tool and whiteboard for teams to work for both synchronous and asynchronous work. Although it has heavy design elements, I’ve found it useful for it’s whiteboard feature which allows you to brain-storm and organize tasks in real-time.

Code

Github is the standard for developers working together. If this is not in your developer’s arsenal, you need a new dev… just kidding.

Wyoming DAO Documents

These are the legal documents the state of Wyoming has issued regarding DAOs as a legal entity.

Closing thoughts

I think DAOs have an enormous amount of potential to gain mainstream adoption for real-world applications. I have now participated in a handful of DAOs first hand as a builder and have enjoyed the process thoroughly, but there are some shortcomings. Most DAOs are borderless and often have remote participants making communication an innate problem. Despite that, the tooling available makes managing DAO participants easier as time goes. As more tools arise, I believe these tools will help a handful of DAOs succeed in fulfilling their vision.

If you enjoyed this read and find any of these tools useful, hit the subscribe button and share this post. Your support means tons to me and inspires me to create and learn more.

Time for another cup of coffee!