Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) are rising in popularity. So are Web3 applications. Both strive towards decentralisation but the two have not yet fully crossed each other’s path. For example, most of the DAOs use centralised social media platforms, such as Twitter or Reddit, for outreach campaigns. I believe that this is mostly due to the nascency of Web3 applications - many have only come to surface within the last couple of months or are yet to be fully deployed. I also believe that this is about to change and with that in mind, I am listing 3 promising applications that can help DAOs incorporate Web3 elements into their marketing endeavours, community engagement, and day-to-day operational tasks.

GM

GM is a Reddit-like platform that allows anyone to post, like, comment, join or create communities by singing in with their Ethereum wallet. Live from the end of 2021, the platform is growing in popularity and have a number of vibrant communities, such as /c/Korean and /c/NFTCommunity, with over 1,400 and 1,300 members, respectively. Currently, it is only available as a web application, however the team behind it is working on a mobile app. By creating their community page on GM, a DAO can invite its existing members and attract new supporters by posting regular threads and even conduct user polls. Some DAOs have already started doing the same, for example /c/Tally - a community owned Web3 wallet.

Layer3

Layer3 is a bounty platform that hosts Social, Content, and Technical tasks. DAOs can post a bounty in any of these 3 categories, review the entries, and reward the winners with cryptocurrency. Social tasks, such as creation of memes as part of a competition, can be a particularly effective marketing campaign, targeting both the social media users and the Layer3 growing crowd of bounty hunters. As another example, Content tasks are a great way to reward creators for producing content that promotes the DAO’s vision. For example, in February, Zapper run a series of Layer3 bounties on articles covering Web3. Web3 is one of Zapper’s focus areas for business development this year and promoting its education is beneficial to their product.

DeWork

DeWork is a workflow management platform, similar to Trello and Notion. DAOs can create a new workspace or transfer their existing Notion pages to DeWork and use it to organise, track, and assign tasks amongst the team and members of their community. Many of the DeWork’s features and layouts will be familiar to those who used Kanban boards before, allowing for easy transition into the world of Web3. What really makes DeWork stand out is that instead of emails, users sign in with their Ethereum wallets. This, in turn, opens a list of new possibilities for DAOs. For example, a DAO can post bounties and reward Web3 users directly in cryptocurrency. DAO community members that wish to contribute can volunteer for tasks on the board by expressing interest and get rewarded for their work in tokens or NFTs. The possibilities are endless.

But wait, there is more!

In addition to the above, DAOs can move their articles from Medium to Mirror, set up their pages on Golden (referred to by some as decentralised Wikipedia), and keep a close eye on the upcoming Lens Protocol by Aave that’s set to take on Twitter.

Closing thoughts

As you can see from the above examples, individual users aren’t the only party set to benefit from the expansion of Web3. Web3 is truly for everyone and this certainly includes firms and DAOs. Using some of the Web3 applications may not only make business sense for a given organisation but doing so also creates rich blockchain ecosystems - a positive-sum for the wider society.