One week in...reflections
5 reflections after week one
Dear Bankless DAO,
We are one week into the Bankless DAO. The energy unleashed in by community is absolutely incredible to witness:
We have 294 skilled members who raised a hand to help
There are dozens of active proposal discussions
Early guilds are forming (e.g. dev, writers, translators, legal)
Information is being organized in tools like gitbook
We established a weekly newsletter and tomorrow is our first meeting
We have revenue generating projects and ideas for more
Wow is all I can say.
Now that we have this energy, what do we do with it?
Here are 5 reflections after week one:
Suggested Rules of Thumb
What phase are we in?
How do we organize
Seasons!
Lens on existing Proposals
1. Suggested Rules-of-Thumb
We’re all interns. All of us our figuring out how to DAO, where we fit, and what adds value. We’re interns for the DAO.
It doesn’t need to go to snapshot unless it involves funding. This one allow us to move fast and try many things at once.
Start something! Don’t ask permission! If there’s something you think would be valuable do it! Start small and show your results. Get feedback and iterate!
2. What phase are we in?
Some of us feel the DAO is moving too slow—other’s that it’s all too fast. But I’m feeling like goldilocks: the speed is just right.
If things feel like a shaken snow globe right now that’s ok—we’re just one week in!
It’s helpful to think in phases. We don’t have to accomplish everything at once, only the priorities for this phase.
What phase are we in? I’d say we’re in the distribution and curation phase of the DAO.
Distribution: complete the genesis distribution of tokens
Curation: find, sort, and organize our genesis contributors
I see these as the two priorities of this genesis phase.
When I say distribution and curation I’m mainly talking about the distribution of our genesis commitments and the curation of our genesis members.
Yes, we want more members. Yes, we want further distribution. But I think it’s smart for us let the first thousands of DAO entrants settle in and complete our genesis distribution commitments before we bite off too much more.
3. How do we organize?
There’s a very real sense in which I believe discord is the org chart.
But let’s get more granular.
Frogmonkee had an excellent post on DAO organization and I’ll add the diagram here:
I think this is directionally right.
We have resources. These are the 294 people with specialized skills who raised their hand. They form specialized guilds—writing, development, social, video, legal—they bring these skills to bear on projects. In the future, there’s a bounty board for awards.
The projects are the big things the DAO wants to achieve. Some are internal (e.g.create a DAO newsletter) others are external (e.g. apparel w/ MetaFactory). Some projects require funding (snapshot vote!) others can get started without funding (my favorite!). Most projects will have KPIs (e.g. sales volume). Projects are accomplished by squads.
Squads are small groups that form to accomplish projects. You squad upwhen you gather a group from the resource layer to complete a project. The Apparel w/ Metafactory project might be composed of four people: a writer, designer, developer, and social media resource. Squads are small teams—think 3-12 individuals max.
Here’s the thing: you don’t need permission to start a project and squad up. Yes, you probably want soft consensus. Yes, you want to make sure the project isn’t redundant and time wasting. You’ll want to do projects that furthers the mission, fits the values, and falls in a core category of media, culture, and education—but you don’t need a snapshot vote to start something!
Resources. 👉 Projects. 👉 Squads.
That’s how the DAO moves forward.
Let’s get to seasons next.
4. Seasons!
Seasons add a grouping and prioritization element to projects. A season is simply a collection of projects the DAO wishes to prioritize.
Seasons allow the DAO to group projects into bigger releases. Social software releases.
Seasons can have a time horizon (e.g. 90 days), but mostly they’ll be considered complete when the projects in the season are complete and the next Season is defined. Seasons can have a budget and resource allocation.
Season will also have recurring project categories.
Here’s three categories we’ll probably see each season:
Distribution campaigns (how contributors & participants earn BANK)
Member benefits (ways members benefit from holding BANK)
Media, Culture, Education (MCE) (selected projects the DAO has prioritized)
For example, the Genesis Season (Season 0) is happening now. Distribution was defined in the announcement post, member benefits are Bankless DAO Discord Level 1-3 access, and there are no MCE projects for this season.
Genesis season needs to tie off a few loose ends and then it can be consider complete.
The next question for us—what projects should we pick for Season 1?
5. Lens on existing proposal
If we apply the above lens to existing proposals we get something like this:
Season 0 Marketing Proposal - awesome, feels like possible season 1 or 2.
Badge-Based Distribution for Subscriber Airdrop (FINAL) - fits season 0, vote!
Bankless NFT Sale… - integrate w/ NFT Project, possible season 1.
Reduce $BANK Minimum to join… - integrate w/ Member Benefits, season 1?
Media Nodes Model… - awesome ideas, form a squad, feels like a season 1.
All languages and cultures unite and retro airdrop… - Distribution, season 1?
The Gwei Standard… - go do it!
BanklessCHI… - go do it!
The Liquidity Problem - withdrawn
Bankless Short Clips - first mini media node, season 1?
Those are my reflections after week 1.
I don’t have all the answers.
We’re learning how to DAO together. Progress not perfection.
Let’s help the world go bankless!
- RSA