An Introduction to Bankless DAO: What exactly is this organization that can be considered a model of decentralized collaboration?

Original Title: "Bankless DAO -- A Valuable Example of Decentralized Collaboration"
Written by: Wang Chao, Founder of Empower Labs

In the past two months, whenever the topic of community collaboration comes up, I always talk about Bankless DAO, recommending everyone to observe, learn, and participate. In my opinion, Bankless DAO, which has only been established for a little over four months, is already an excellent example of community collaboration.

People might ask, what is Bankless DAO? But I still can't provide a concise and accurate answer. If the occasion allows enough time, I would take a few minutes to share some interesting things about Bankless DAO.

If time is short, I often can only say, "You should check it out yourself; it's really good." However, when people actually go to Bankless DAO's Discord, they might feel overwhelmed the moment they enter, as there are over 200 seemingly chaotic and bizarre channels.

It's a treasure trove, but it is indeed a bit messy.

Technically, Bankless DAO is easy to define; it is a community and also an autonomous organization. But if you dig deeper and ask, what exactly is Bankless DAO? One hundred members might give you 101 different answers. Some say it is a bunch of Discord channels plus a forum, some say it consists of smart contracts, some say it resembles a company made up of various guilds, and others say there are many fun projects here.

Last month, Bankless DAO and UMA held a mutual AMA, and when asked what Bankless DAO is, even several core initiators gave different answers.

Regardless of the answers, one thing is certain: Bankless DAO is very lively.

Due to the extensive content to cover, the introduction to Bankless DAO will be divided into three parts:

1. Understanding Bankless DAO
2. The Organization and Collaboration of Bankless DAO
3. The Economic System and Community Characteristics of Bankless DAO

This is the first part.

Understanding Bankless DAO

Bankless DAO originated from Bankless, a media outlet founded in 2019 that initially started as a newsletter tracking developments in the cryptocurrency industry. In 2020, it expanded to include podcasts and other content, and in 2021, it began operating under a corporate structure and has already achieved profitability, with the registered company named Bankless LLC.

Bankless is a media outlet with considerable influence in the cryptocurrency community, boasting impressive subscription numbers and countless viral articles. Its predictions about industry trends are also very timely. Looking back at Bankless's past articles, one can find a wealth of insights. In May of this year, Bankless proposed to the community to launch Bankless DAO.

Although it was initiated under the auspices of Bankless media, Bankless DAO is a product of community consensus. It does not have a legal entity like traditional commercial societies and operates completely independently of Bankless media. The two have no overlap in business or legal terms.

In rallying community members, Bankless DAO has delivered an impressive response. Its community solicitation article was very well written, and here is a translated version (slightly abridged).

We have entered an era of organizing at scale through the internet.

The coordination capabilities of Ethereum allow strangers with shared values and goals to organize under a common banner and enable them to guide the world toward their future vision.

Internet communities combine with crypto assets and utilize them as tools to concentrate capital and labor into productive output. Under community consensus, individual skills and resources can be combined to form a powerful collective force that brings change to the world. With this, humanity has the capacity to establish new, internet-level organizations that align with the values of their members.

And we need these more than ever.

Bankless started in 2019 as a newsletter, serving as a public good to spread bankless technology to all corners of the world. The growth of Bankless has exceeded our wildest expectations. It is clear that the energy supporting Bankless far exceeds what a single media outlet can manage.

Now, Bankless DAO is the organization coordinating people under this banner. Only internet-native organizations can develop the bankless concept, which is ready to be handed over from a few to the many. It is a global banner, and we need it for transformative change at the internet level.

We want a system that comes from the people and serves the people.

We want to spread crypto culture.

We want to help the world move toward being bankless.

Bring your talents, time, and ideas, and join the reform.

Join Bankless DAO!

An Open Bankless DAO

Bankless DAO is a very open community. Anyone can join the Bankless DAO server through Discord and gain access to browse most information and historical work documents.

To participate in collaboration and meetings, one needs to become a member, which requires holding a certain amount of BANK tokens. However, this is largely voluntary; there is a dedicated channel in the server for applying for special passes. In that channel, you can introduce yourself and your areas of interest, and you can easily apply for a guest pass to unlock various functions for speaking and participating in collaboration.

The Bankless Discord has about 8,000 members, who are either drawn by a desire for a bankless society, an interest in internet collaboration, the potential to earn extra income, or simply curiosity about certain channel content, ultimately coming together.

As people gradually get to know each other, they spontaneously form more than a dozen different guilds based on their interests and abilities. The guilds resemble small departments within a company, such as design, development, and legal departments, each with its own members, specialties, and responsibilities. Upon closer inspection, the guilds also resemble business units, with each guild inclined to accomplish specific tasks, creating public products or solutions, rather than merely serving as functional departments for others.

Currently, there are 13 guilds formed, including writing, finance, translation, research, operations, marketing, legal, education, design, business development, development, video, and data analysis.

Joining any guild is completely open; the only requirement is to fill in your name and specialties on the guild's Notion page. There are many talented individuals in various guilds, including numerous legal experts in the legal guild. The data analysis guild has a group of machine learning enthusiasts.

Members of the Legal Guild

Members of the Data Analysis Guild

However, even if you are not a professional, you can still join various guilds, as many guilds have broad themes that can encompass various interests. Even in highly specialized guilds, many task-oriented collaborations are handled by non-professionals.

I myself have spent some time in the legal guild, listening to discussions about compliance, how to design legal frameworks, and the differences in operations under the legal systems of the U.S. and Europe, while occasionally helping out with minor tasks when needed.

Theoretically, the ultimate goal of all guilds is to promote a bankless society (#gobankless). The methods and processes of each guild may differ, but the goal is the same. However, this goal is sufficiently vague and broad, allowing almost any direction to be connected and justifying its existence.

During discussions in the guilds, a plethora of project ideas have emerged. Some of these projects have garnered enough consensus to transition from ideas to actions. Some projects involve developing Discord bots, others aim to initiate a blockchain index fund, some want to create a Bankless Island in the metaverse, and others are more grounded commercial collaborations seeking to expand guilds and organizations.

Community Project List

Both guilds and project groups collaborate entirely through internet tools, with the main discussions taking place on Discord. Normally, there is also a weekly voice meeting lasting 1-1.5 hours, where the consensus and conclusions formed during discussions, as well as work items, are recorded in Notion, which everyone collectively maintains to track work status.

Any member can participate in discussions or voice meetings of any guild. Almost all work documents and meeting minutes are also open to everyone.

Daily filled open schedule

All meeting minutes. It's a bit like UTXO; you can trace back to the very moment this DAO began.

It's like accidentally walking into a company and discovering that you can freely explore the company, attending meetings in every department. Almost all historical discussions and work documents of every department are available for you to see. After wandering around for a while, you finally find a department or project that interests you, and you say you want to join. A group of people says, "Come on, you're just what we need." You say, "I can only spare an hour a day," and they say, "An hour a week is fine, come on."

I can't think of a more open productive organization.

The above is a panoramic introduction to Bankless DAO, while more detailed topics about how this organization collaborates and governs will be covered in the next two parts. If you read this article and are interested in exploring DAOs, feel free to join the Discord for discussion.

Side Note: A Day in Bankless DAO

At 12:30 AM, I finally reached the meeting time, technically marking the start of a new day.

I didn't sleep well last night and feel quite tired. However, today's meeting topic is related to a discussion I had previously in the guild channel, and since I initiated it, I have to hold on. Why is the meeting scheduled at this time? It wasn't my choice; everyone's time zones are all over the place, and on Lettucemeet, this was the time that the most people could attend.

Lettucemeet is a small tool used to coordinate meeting times for multiple collaborators, where everyone selects their available times, and the darkest cell represents the time when the most people can attend.

The meeting takes place in the voice channel of the guild on Discord, with a total of six participants discussing some abstract issues regarding the collaborative structure between DAOs, and no specific action items were established. One guy who works with Salesforce said he could help build a free CRM system for everyone. Great, no matter how skilled we are, we need to keep up with the tools.

The meeting ran 10 minutes over time, ending at 1:40 AM. There's another DAO meeting at 7:30 AM tomorrow; I can't keep this up, or my health will be drained. I secretly think I must go to bed before 11 PM tomorrow.

In the morning, I get up, have breakfast, and take care of the kid. At 7:30 AM, I join another meeting to discuss a Discord bot project. It's my first time attending, and most of the people there are also new to me. I was invited by another guy a couple of days ago, who said they were working on a SaaS service, and the project sounded fun, so this meeting is about the business model.

"You used to work in IT enterprise services; why don't you give some suggestions?" Okay, even though I don't know what this project is about, I'm still interested in hearing about enterprise services and seeing how they organize a development project.

I enter and declare, "Guys, I have to take my kid to school at 8 AM, so I'll just listen for half an hour." Although I'm just listening, I did my homework beforehand and checked their previous meeting minutes on Notion. Hmm, this is a group of programmers, and the meeting minutes are all technical discussions that I don't understand.

Fortunately, the first half hour doesn't delve into specific technologies; they discuss whether to make it open-source. Not open-sourcing seems a bit inconsistent with the culture of the crypto community, but if they do open-source it, anyone can use it, which complicates the business model. One guy suggests a donation model, while another counters that donation models are the least reliable business models.

Someone else suggests a Red Hat model, where the software is entirely free, and they earn money through enterprise-level services. I can't help but chime in, "Guys, you're a DAO; everyone is here part-time for fun. Who's going to provide the services?" You all keep discussing; I'm heading out.

After dropping off the kid at the office, I handle my daily work tasks. At 11 AM, I check Discord and see someone in the NFT channel is live-streaming a tour of OpenSea. I tune in to hear his logic for judging NFT value and tips for using OpenSea, adding some strange knowledge to my repertoire. But you all are just playing; I'm broke, so I'm not buying anything.

This channel is currently just a place for everyone to exchange NFT ideas; it's a purely casual chat channel with no specific tasks. However, I remember seeing a meeting scheduled called "NFTz Alpha Chat," which likely means someone has a new idea.

After leaving the NFT channel, I notice someone @ me. It's the organizer of the bot meeting from the morning, asking if I have any thoughts after listening. I say, "I only listened for half an hour and didn't really understand what you all want this bot to do."

"You see, with this few people, everyone is doing this in their spare time. It's fine to develop something out of interest, but organizing post-service is not feasible. If you want to sell this thing, I think you could do it like this, this, and that. Alright, these are just my personal thoughts; I really don't know, so if I say something wrong, just treat it as a joke."

During noon and afternoon, all channels are relatively quiet, as most members are in the European and American time zones, and this time is usually break time. That's fine; it doesn't affect my work during the day.

In the afternoon, I take some time to review the recent discussions of a certain project in the DAO. This is a new project that I am personally very interested in. Since this project will likely operate through a registered business entity, the legal guild had previously provided a lot of compliance advice, one of which was that it cannot be mentioned in public, or there will be issues. This is also one of the few projects with undisclosed details.

In the evening, after putting the kid to bed, I check the schedule and see that there is a weekly meeting for this project. The topics to be discussed are quite important, but the meeting is at 3 AM. At this time, there's no point in resisting; I won't be able to attend anyway. I'll just check the meeting minutes tomorrow and go to sleep.

Before sleeping, I impulsively check the Metaverse channel and see someone mentioning a new Metaverse project that is open for various DAOs to apply for islands for free. This sounds fun; I should pay attention and check out the mentioned project. Finally, the day comes to an end.

In conclusion, I want to summarize, but I can't find the words; life probably doesn't need summarizing.