The following proposal won the most votes in the Open Community Track as part of the Codeless Conduct Hackathon in February 2022.

Problem Statement: Propose a strategy on how would you transition Codeless Conduct into a DAO

Purpose: Why do we exist?

Provide a platform to learn, build, and contribute towards creating a sustainable and equitable Web3 ecosystem by lowering the barriers to entry for practitioners skilled in topics beyond technology.

Vision: What would the future look like?

For the decentralized world of the future, we will foster talent who will drive conversations on how Web3 should evolve to play a meaningful role in our lives before the technology morphing to do its own thing. The platform will incentivize those in the trenches today solving the challenges across community, governance, policy, and adoption to mentor the next generation of tinkerers, builders, and nurturers in the Web3 of tomorrow.

Guiding principles:

1. Solidarity Before Scale: Establish and align on the higher purpose for building a diverse Web3 ecosystem and codify the enabling behaviors that will bond the community before adopting decentralized tools and technology for scale
2. Governance Before Growth: The glove that provides the most warmth isn't the most expensive one, it is the one that fits you the best. Commit to tailored choices for nimble governance model in the context of the culture and needs of the community (Web3 aspirants, contributors, coaches, and sponsors)
3. Stewardship is the Soul: Establish strong stewardship practices to serve as the guiding light for workgroups to make progress cohesively to avoid the baggage in centralized orgs - blind spots, tunnel vision, unresolved conflicts, false starts, etc.
4. Tokens Alone Don't Build Communities: Tokens have the potential to capture and build a previously impossible economy around the many intangible aspects of value for nurturing the builders in Web3. However, without a sense of belonging rooted in a shared value-driven purpose, the spikes in token values are often short-lived.
5. Community Experience is the new CX: Kotler's five A's of the customer path (Awareness, Appeal, Ask, Act, and Advocacy) also port over well in the context of the community experience for Web3 aspirants. Onboarding challenges are only the tip of the iceberg.
6. The Future is Likely Hybrid: Few use cases in decentralization will have the luxury to completely isolate and thrive without bridges to the legacy world. Establish avenues for the decentralized community of Web3 aspirants to co-exist with thoughtfully carved interdependencies with the world of today.
7. Law of the Land: One of the important bridges to the legacy world is the DAO's ability to be recognized as intended in the court of law. While regulations catch up, explore choices like tethering to existing legal structures or saving for a rainy day.

Putting it all in action

The strategy outlined below advocates an approach to:

1. First, succeed as a collective: Transition the periodic engagement in the form of the hackathon competition into a continuous learning experience for Web3 aspirants enabled by a collective
2. Then, scale as a DAO: Transform the collective into a DAO over time to take advantage of transparent operations, autonomous governance, and self-sustaining liquidity enabled by crypto-native primitives

Succeed as a Collective

1. Funds raised from sponsors form the budget for community stewards to manage between priorities for learning experiences and conducting hackathons
2. The learning budget is intended to incentivize makers and community builders in the Web3 ecosystem to codify and share their learnings
3. Web3 aspirants, based on their proof of participation in the community (reputation system that tracks their involvement) vote on the proposals submitted by the coaches to offer them grant to create these learning experiences (async content, live workshops, cohort based courses, etc.)
4. Stewards utilize hackathon budget from the funding pool to complement the learning experience with hands-on problem solving
5. The outcome of the hackathon is expected to benefit from the compounding efforts from the learning experience, providing a better return for sponsors for their investment in terms of quality of solutions and potential candidate pipeline for hiring.

Scale as a DAO

• Introduce a self-sustaining funding mechanism using augmented bonding curve for raising reserve and funding capital from a curated list of members in lieu of tokens for ownership and control
• Over time, introduce investor tokens to raise subsequent funding in lieu of ownership only (i.e. no governance rights for investors)
• Stewards provide oversight for the use of the funding pool for learning experiences and hackathons, with a key difference being the use of on-chain governance and voting mechanism to distribute grants to winning proposals for the learning experiences
• The hackathon priorities are now decoupled from specific sponsors, unlike in the prior phase as a collective. The liquidity from crowdfunding provides the flexibility for the DAO to utilize hackathons for problems that will make the most impact on the aspirants.
• Explore ways to monetize outcomes from the hackathon enabling Web3 aspirants to self-assess the demand for their work and skill.

Wrap up

For Codeless Conduct to be a sustainable DAO, it is important to solve the trifecta of:

• a sustainable community of Web3 aspirants and coaches invested beyond economics
• a harmonious blend of org design and decentralized tech to transparently fund and spend on consensus-driven priorities
• a regenerative micro-economy without compromising the ethical design choices to attain self-sustaining liquidity

(Cover image by Polina Zimmerman from Pexels)