Now that 2022 has concluded, I finally have some downtime to share a few thoughts and ideas that have been brewing for the better part of 9 months.

But first, a little background on myself:

My name is Luan, and I’ve been a member of Developer DAO since late-October 2021. In addition to this, I lead the Community, Onboarding, and Server Architecture teams. Since my responsibilities call for me to be immersed in different parts of the DAO’s community, I’d like to think that my observations hold some weight.

Should I read this?

This article is targeted towards the following groups:

1. Existing DAO members

2. Potential members (i.e. those considering a Developer DAO membership, both technical and non-technical)

3. Financiers

The hope is that it will serve as a signal, and provide insights into the thought processes surrounding some of the work being done; as well as help to re-frame Developer DAO’s value offering, heading into the future.

Sections

What exactly is a DAO?

Problems (how did we get here?)

Proposal

Reframing the Member UX

Benefits

What’s Next?

What exactly is a DAO?

A DAO is an acronym for decentralized autonomous organization. It is a structure that has no central governing body, and whose members share a common interest or goal. Contrast to some traditional organizations, DAOs operate on a system that is designed to distribute decision-making from a few, to many.

And through the act of voting, members of DAOs can empower groups of people to manage the organization, and ultimately to act in the best interest of the entity.

Problems (how did we get here?)

Over the past 13 months, the assumption for many people coming into Developer DAO, has been that all members will work on building out the organization. That is how the DAO has largely been marketed. And it’s an ideology that is shared across broad parts of the web3 space. But this is shortsighted.

We found that only a small number of members have any interest in building out the DAO’s infrastructure.

Through months of observations, we found that only a minority of people who join Developer DAO, have any real interest in building out its infrastructure. The majority would much rather use their membership to:

• Connect with people

• Attend web3 events

• Join hackathons

• Launch projects

• Fundraise

• Learn/Up-skill themselves

• Find a job

But Developer DAO’s current model is largely optimized for ‘contributors’.

What does the current model look like?

When someone joins Developer DAO, they enter into a Guild (typically a workgroup of contributors). Outside of this context however, there has not been a lot of ways to meaningfully get involved. This is because Guilds inadvertently conflate the contributor and the non-contributor experience. And this makes it difficult for members to know how to tap into the community.

Thus the premise of this article, is to outline how to improve upon Developer DAO’s existing Guild model — and enable the community to better prioritize and build out a distinct non-contributor experience (since they comprise the majority of the DAO’s members).

Proposal

TLDR: The goal here, is to enhance shared decision-making (governance) across the DAO, whilst leveraging the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of both decentralized and centralized forms of working. In other words - a small number of people are empowered to work behind the scenes to build out the DAO’s experience, which the majority will vote on (and subsequently benefit from).

Under the proposed framework, Developer DAO would operate across 3 primitives:

1. Pods (Operational layer) — a small subset of the DAO who work on building out the experiences that all members get to enjoy and benefit from. Collectively, these ‘pods’ (workgroups) can be referred to as DD Labs

2. Hubs (Core Offerings) — this constitutes the member experience, such as hackathons, fundraising, learning, job opportunities etc

3. SubDAO/Sub-entity layer — these are separate entities created by DAO members that are built (in part) to exist alongside or just beneath Hubs. In both contexts, these entities work in tandem with Hubs, to make up that end user/DAO member experience.

Examples of sub-entities include: Agency, AxisOne, DevRel HQ, DevDAO Women, Eden Protocol, and P3RKS.

Do note that subDAOs/sub-entities are not core offerings from Developer DAO. But they exist (in part) to feed into that end user/member experience. Whether that is at the social layer, public goods, educational, onboarding etc. Ultimately, the broader vision is that Developer DAO can serve as a conduit for other communities, projects, ideas, and DAO’s to spin out of. This can be across engineering, sciences, marketing, media, academia etc. And I believe the above framework can help to facilitate creating a cycle of value across web3.

SubDAOs/Sub-entities are not the same as projects or startups that are intended to operate independently of Developer DAO’s Hubs.

Reframing the Member Experience

Hubs

These are the core offerings from Developer DAO (such as hackathons, fundraising, job opportunities etc). While your membership will grant you access to all hubs in the server, you get to decide which ones you see. This idea here is to allow members to have a customized Discord experience, where you only see channels that you choose to see.

Tokens

Receive token rewards for engaging with Hubs, because your engagement is what helps to enhance the DAO’s community.

Social Layers

These are online social gatherings that also exist at the DAO layer (see diagram above). They can be created by any member — and can exist as a one-off event, or as something that occurs regularly. Examples of social layers include (but are not limited to):

• Video game sessions + competitions

• Book clubs

• Wellness sessions

• Movie nights

• Podcasts etc

They allow DAO members to engage with each other in non-professional contexts. We are more than our professions, and it’s good to explore that.

Social layers are not mandatory. The premise however, is that by providing guidance (i.e. a framework) on how to create them, it allows for them to occur more organically.

Governance

A draft proposal called P-21 (see: link) has been put together by Ops Lead, Will Kempster, and one of Developer DAO’s co-founders, Erik Knobl. The proposal has not yet been elevated to a Snapshot vote, but its aim is to simplify the governance framework from its existing 3 stages, to being a 2-step process.

Two of the main ambitions behind this proposed change, is so that it can make it easier for members to vote, and to make it easy for members to understand what they are voting on (i.e. obtain context).

I believe that this can be taken a step further by leveraging platforms and tools that help to enhance what the proposal seeks to achieve. One startup that is showing some promise in this area, is Mysterious — a modular chat platform that can make voting easier for web3 communities. Rather than relying on lengthy pieces of text, Mysterious enables DAOs to present their proposals in a digestible format that is accessible on different devices. Members can easily discuss and then vote directly on the platform, thanks to its interoperability.

Benefits

• Under the proposed structure, it will allow Developer DAO to offer a far more cohesive experience to members. And will make it easier for people to know how to get involved, and how they can begin to derive value from their membership

• It is going to drastically reduce the size of the server. One of the biggest pain points for members, has been how overwhelming the Discord is. A huge reason for this, is that the Operational Layer (i.e. workgroups) and the DAO Layer (i.e. non-contributors) have been bundled into the same server. These groups need to exist in separate Discords

• A vibrant governance system that helps to ensure all members who are eligible to vote, can easily do so and can easily understand the proposals

• It positions Developer DAO as one of the preeminent launchpads for startups, projects, and sub-communities within the web3 ecosystem

• It presents opportunities to bring utility to the $CODE token, and feed into its value

• The ability to offer the token directly, which in turn will make it easier for people to acquire $CODE itself. And will allow for greater oversight over the entire onboarding flow

• It empowers the operational layer of Developer DAO (DD Labs) to establish unique revenue streams

• It positions DD Labs to be able to receive external funding 💰

What’s next?

• Defining what is a Minimum Viable DAO — this process is already underway, and it aims to establish what the DAO’s baseline looks like. In simple terms: what does a very basic version of Developer DAO (and DD Labs) look like? Start small, and scale up gradually

• Spinning out the Operational layer (i.e. legally establishing DD Labs)

If you have an interest in DAOs and their derivatives, I’m @boyluan on Twitter.

Disclaimer: This article merely offers a thought process and framework for how Developer DAO can be structured. At this time, nothing is set in stone — and any changes to the DAO will need to pass through governance first.