The Great Defeat of Domestic DAOs: Can We Achieve Decentralized Autonomy?

Original Title: "The Great Defeat of Domestic DAOs: Don't Worry! We Can't Achieve Decentralized Autonomy"

Written by: Son of the Earth, Dinghui

I believe every participant in a DAO has encountered the following issues:

1. Self-proclaimed DAOs that are no different from communities
2. Centralized governance by the core team
3. Recruiting volunteers, exploiting labor
4. Complicated meetings, difficult to reach consensus, no one takes action

In simple terms: they are neither decentralized nor autonomous, and lack even a good incentive mechanism. Surviving is a problem, yet they flaunt the name of DAO while being nothing at all.

If we believe that DAOs are the future and that more businesses and NGOs will transform into DAOs, then if these issues are not resolved, it is simply a sham.

To solve these problems, we need to re-understand what a DAO is.

1: What is a DAO?

As @felixzhou.eth said:

"In my opinion, Bitcoin is the perfect DAO, mainly based on the following three characteristics:

1. All participants are equal and follow the same rules, with no special participants;
2. Contributions to the system are objective and quantifiable, with no subjective judgments;
3. All participant actions are recorded within the system (on-chain), without needing to reference activities outside the system.

DAOs that do not possess these characteristics either have inherent flaws and questionable sustainability, or they are self-deceiving, forcefully riding on the concept of DAO."

Blockchain innovation can create a system maintained by technology, allowing DAOs like Bitcoin to emerge. However, when faced with broader human social activities, it can only provide a series of tools like Tokens, NFTs, smart contracts, etc. Although these tools inherently possess properties of encryption and rights confirmation, they do not prevent them from being used by speculators to exploit others, or even to achieve deeper psychological manipulation.

Therefore, in my view, the development of DAOs has two paths:

1. Build a system based on technology that replicates the miracle of BTC in more scenarios.
2. Build a system based on people, using various tools to continuously approach the ideals of decentralization and autonomy.

Because I do not understand technology very well, the second path is my forte and the theme of this article.

Before discussing specific solutions, we must first ask ourselves:

What is hindering people from uniting to create truly decentralized and autonomous organizations?

2: Obstacles in the Development of DAOs

In my view, there are four key dimensions that hinder the birth of a DAO:

1. The Natural Formation of Power Gaps

a. Authority Projection:

People project the "decision-makers" in a DAO as representatives of power. This is particularly evident in domestic DAOs, as people are often accustomed to management and being managed, arranging and being arranged. Therefore, often a DAO's initiator does not wish to be a dictator, but because the relational patterns and narratives in participants' minds have not changed, they project power onto the initiator. If a DAO's leader acknowledges this power projection, it means they must take on the responsibility of serving and satisfying other participants. If they show that they need to bear such responsibility, the participants projecting power will often be happy to be served and arranged, as this is what they are used to, even if it may not be what they want.

b. Interpersonal Influence:

From the perspective of social relationship networks, a central node in a system, or a bridge node linking two groups (structural holes), has a greater influence on the entire network, thus forming power gaps. Many DAOs naturally gather around the personal influence of certain individuals or are formed by the merger of multiple organizations. Participants have to rely on a few key figures to get things done, and when outsiders want to collaborate with this DAO, they will also prioritize contacting these key figures. Over time, due to the Matthew effect, these key figures become increasingly relied upon, becoming the core assets of the DAO, thus naturally forming a power center.

c. Class Solidification:

Once class solidification occurs, new members joining the DAO often feel like outsiders. Before being recognized and accepted by the DAO, they naturally feel they are in a low-power position. Indeed, those who joined the DAO earlier are more familiar with others in the DAO, and the early arrivals define the vibe of the DAO at this stage, which symbolizes power and advantage. Therefore, as the DAO develops, retention rates often decrease, making it increasingly difficult for newcomers to enter the core, naturally leading to class solidification.

2. The Internal Tension of Leaders

a. The Battle Between Idealism and Reality:

An idealistic leader often has many visions for the ideal state of a DAO. However, if a DAO is to be decentralized, it will inevitably need to leverage the power of the community to grow many things from the bottom up. Yet, often these naturally grown things do not meet the leader's personal aesthetic or are completely outside expectations. At this point, an authoritative leader may take a series of measures to correct the community's direction towards their ideal state. If the community is vibrant and not killed off by this wave, the leader often falls into deep guilt and helplessness.

b. Fear, Jealousy, and a Sense of Control:

When there are people within the DAO whom you do not trust, forming their own small circles of influence and gaining power to affect the DAO's development, do you feel uneasy? When your partner takes on a lot of external liaison work, with all connections, interviews, and collaborations leaning towards them, while you are doing all the dirty work within the DAO, do you feel jealous? When a DAO develops multiple power centers, and everyone's influence and benefits become imbalanced, it often means a continuous loss of control for the founders, leading to emotions like fear and jealousy.

c. The Backlash of Leveraging Vision:

Founders often attract more people together by painting grand visions and describing beautiful prospects to encourage participation and voluntary contributions. However, once the expansion phase is over, if the DAO's development stagnates, or if the founder becomes obsessed, fearful, or jealous, causing everyone to be exhausted, it is easy to lose trust and become abandoned by the community. At this point, the goodwill of those who contributed voluntarily due to the vision will turn into debts that the founder cannot repay, and they may even suffer backlash, losing their reputation amidst the angry accusations of contributors.

d. The Dilemma of Managing or Not Managing:

If you manage, you become a power center, contradicting the ideal of decentralization. If you do not manage, human nature may disperse in an instant, and when problems arise, democratic decision-making may be too inefficient, and the project may fail before the votes are even cast. So should you manage or not?

3. The Hesitation and Entanglement of Participants

a. Low Self-Efficacy:

A decentralized community means handing over governance and decision-making power to its members. However, due to a lack of opportunities and space for civic autonomy, people in domestic contexts often find themselves in low-power positions during education and work. They are accustomed to responding to others' management and arrangements, either becoming the ones managing others or fighting alone as lone warriors… severely lacking relevant experience, awareness, and ability to participate in community governance.

For example: How to efficiently integrate collective wisdom to form consensus and division of labor? How to effectively influence the entire team with one's opinions? How to effectively listen, ask questions, clarify, summarize, and provide feedback during communication? If these abilities are lacking, one naturally does not know how to participate in a community, watching the community develop while feeling powerless, leading to a natural formation of low self-efficacy, not knowing what they can do.

b. Survival Comes First:

In a society where material resources are not abundant, most people are still slaves, and surviving has already consumed most of their energy. Talking about dreams and creation becomes a luxury. There is neither the opportunity to find out what one truly wants nor the ability to sit down and imagine what "the free association of free people" could create, let alone contribute voluntarily within a DAO. If there are extremely few idealists who can do this, they are often very unstable.

c. Goal Confusion and Ambiguous Incentives:

If I want to contribute to our DAO, what counts as a contribution? If my understanding of the DAO's goals conflicts with the founder's goals, does my contribution become destructive? If I have contributed a lot in secret but no one knows, is there no incentive? Should rewards be determined by working hours or by results? These questions are difficult to answer.

4. Systemic Defects in the Community

a. Building Cities in the Desert:

Some fields are not suitable for building DAOs, like a desert that lacks an ecosystem to grow from the bottom up. However, for various reasons and obsessions, founders insist on starting projects in these places, attracting a group of consumers with money, visions, and product services, hoping to fool everyone into becoming contributors and forming a DAO, but in reality, it is just wishful thinking.

b. Love-Powered Operations Are Unsustainable:

Participants working for love, apart from honor and empty promises, receive no economic benefits. This is often due to a lack of a mature business model and failing to establish cash flow from 0 to 1. This often leads to contributors gradually fading away.

c. Lack of Suitable Co-Governance Spaces and Tools:

WeChat has popularity but lacks features, while Discord has low retention rates. Platforms like Snapchat, Dework, and Coordinape are both decentralized and require learning costs, making them difficult to popularize.

d. Defects in Organizational Systems:

In addition to these, some overseas DAOs seem to face deeper challenges, such as democratic tyranny (splitting giant whales) and the tragedy of community funds.

How Many of These Problems Can Be Solved by Blockchain?

I am quite pessimistic because these are deep-rooted issues in human nature and organizations.

In fact, even before the emergence of DAOs, many people were exploring management methods that match the 21st century, including the pursuit of decentralized, power-delegated, and more autonomous organizational forms, resulting in many excellent cases, collectively referred to as "organizational change movements."

They have also developed their own tools and methodologies based on organizational behavior, management, psychology, etc., such as Facilitating, Coaching, private boards, U-theory, and co-creation systems… There are also some successful cases, such as the Dawn Village in India, which has developed for over 50 years, and the Nordic caregiver service company Blog Group.

I believe that as more applications based on blockchain emerge, combined with the Web3 community's belief in decentralization, there will be opportunities to create more DAO tools that inherit the methodologies left by organizational change movements, together creating a true DAO in the future.

So how can we break through these dilemmas?

What tools and methods can help DAO operators overcome these challenges?

Before we start discussing, let’s first envision: what would a DAO based on human governance, closer to the ideal state, look like?

3: What Would an Ideal DAO Based on Human Governance Look Like?

Development Path

For the long-term development of a DAO:

An ideal DAO must first choose to grow in a fertile environment.

For example, the GenZ DAO, which I have recently been deeply involved in, focuses on the post-95 and post-00 generations of young people. This identity naturally brings a sense of identity cohesion and is more likely to gain support from other predecessors in Web3. Even without GenZ DAO, there are various Web3 groups of post-00s forming their own small communities, often preferring cooperation over competition.

Choosing a fertile environment can easily bring continuous automatic attention to the DAO.

In a DAO, various things may emerge, such as someone in GenZ DAO seeking partners, someone wanting to start a project, someone wanting to share secondary market investment information, and someone wanting to learn Solidity. These are all good, but they are not the DAO's primary duty. A DAO should define itself as a public service provider for the city it inhabits, providing services for the ecosystem it is part of.

• Therefore, in the early stages of ecological development, the most important thing is to find more people to gather together and co-build Rome. It is essential to do good publicity, design a good path for onboarding newcomers, and create community experiences that meet everyone's needs.
• As the ecosystem develops, facilitating information flow within the DAO and creating public discussion spaces for more people to get to know each other, thus forming relational networks and emerging self-organization, will also be very important responsibilities.
• When a DAO begins to gain some influence and more resources start to flow to the core team, with positive cash flow coming in, it is crucial to match appropriate distribution and autonomy mechanisms based on the core team's operations, gradually transforming the resources gathered by the core team into infrastructure that other players in the ecosystem can apply to use.
• Ultimately, some project groups that generate cash flow will emerge within the ecosystem, while others will focus more on expanding influence and serving users within the DAO, forming a multi-centered, interwoven network structure, united by the symbiosis of relational networks and a shared vision. At this point, the core team needs to further encourage community autonomy, delegating more power and responsibility to the community, and focusing more on maintaining consensus on the community's goals and vision, implementing autonomy and cooperation mechanisms, ensuring fairness in distribution and incentives, and proactively identifying potential crises to organize collective responses when necessary.

The Beliefs of Leaders

For a DAO's founders, the following beliefs and awareness are essential:

• The ultimate development of the DAO depends on collective consciousness rather than individual will; it is normal for it to differ from one's expectations.
• Their responsibility lies in gathering this community, ensuring everyone can get what they want from the system, uniting various parties to reach a consensus on decentralized autonomy, and helping everyone truly develop the capacity for autonomy.
• The attention, resources, and support from others gained in the early stages of building the DAO are resources leveraged by vision, which must eventually be repaid. If the DAO runs successfully, the founder should become part of the infrastructure, providing these resources and influence to those in the community who need them.
• Give it your all.
• If the DAO dies halfway, or if the founder is ousted, it is a normal phenomenon. After all, someone in this ecosystem will always step up to do the work, and someone will always be willing to provide basic services for more people; it will just be another person or team turning this vision into reality. Regardless, while giving it your all, embrace the cycle of life and death.
• A deep understanding of each person's goals, pain points, expectations, and obsessions within this relational network is necessary to return from one's idealized vision of the DAO to reality and create truly valuable services for individuals within the DAO.
• If one's abilities are insufficient to fulfill the responsibilities that a core team should bear, there are two choices: either bravely give up or find suitable people to take over and provide adequate compensation.

It must be said that creating a truly idealistic DAO is undoubtedly a form of practice.

The State of Participants

An ideal participant in a DAO should be a "free association of free people."

Free people are no longer enslaved materially or economically; they know what they want, have their own passions, visions, and personalities, and dare to confront authority with a middle finger, walking freely and with dignity on this planet with their skills and resources.

When these free people come closer together, they can see each other's external goals, capabilities, and value choices, as well as their internal qualities, traumas, and relational patterns. They can delve deeper into communication, not only exchanging surface-level information and viewpoints but also uncovering the beliefs, concerns, fears, and consensus behind the language. Free people see each other, choose to stand with those whose goals align with theirs and whom they appreciate, find their wishes that resonate with the DAO, and while realizing their visions, achieve mutual success with the DAO.

Everyone has their own degree of unfreedom and imperfection. But I believe an ideal DAO should help its participants gain greater freedom and self-improvement, achieving a unity of body and mind.

Other Realistic Choices

Of course, apart from this idealistic DAO, there are also more realistic options, such as:

• Converting a company's equity into tokens, paying employees with cryptocurrency, using more on-chain tools for governance, maintaining legality and compliance, and claiming to have transformed into a DAO.
• In a small team with fixed business and established SOPs, fixing the value of each process and writing it into contracts. Roles in the team are fixed, people can change, and after receiving compensation, roles are automatically allocated based on the proportions in the contract.
• The project party of a product grants part of the governance rights to the community and publishes rewards to encourage community members to contribute and gain incentives, claiming that their product is co-governed with the DAO.
• An influential KOL or media group forms a fan community, granting governance rights to excellent fans for self-governance, creating an interest group DAO.

These are all feasible and have taken traditional projects a small step towards decentralization and autonomy. I believe that in the future, many such "DAOs" that ride on concepts will emerge in the market; perhaps this is the fate of the concept of DAO after its creation.

Having discussed possibilities, let’s look at the methodologies and tools that can be used when implementing "idealistic DAOs."

4: Eight Specific Methodologies and Tools for Different Scenarios

Scenario 1: Proposal System

In ordinary communities, if a member sees a problem, they often raise the issue and wait for the DAO team to solve it.

If they have a desire to create and a sense of responsibility, wanting to try to solve it themselves, they often have to seek multiple opinions, hold meetings for discussion, and obtain authorization from the core team before they can start trying. This consumes a lot of energy and restricts action.

Especially for members with very little influence within the DAO, they often feel powerless and do not even think about taking action.

• How to encourage ordinary community members to participate spontaneously in governance?
• How to allow those who want to take action to escape the inefficiency of consensus-building meetings and focus on action?
• How to empower every member with influence within the DAO?

The "Proposal System" can effectively address these issues.

Basic Rules:

• Every member of the DAO has the right to submit proposals to participate in DAO governance.
• Every qualified proposal will be taken seriously, publicly discussed, voted on, and the results announced.

A so-called qualified proposal needs to include:

• Origin: Why is this proposal being made?
• Goal: What problem does this proposal aim to solve? What value does it bring to the community?
• Plan: How will it be solved specifically?
• Responsible Person: Who will be responsible for implementing the plan?
• Reward: What kind of reward can the responsible person receive upon completion of the task?

For example, an ordinary member publishes a flawed proposal around a topic. Based on this, everyone expresses their opinions, provides feedback, and suggests amendments. After the proposal iterates through 4-5 versions, a general consensus may naturally be reached.

Compared to aimless meetings, the proposal system encourages everyone to focus on reaching a final consensus from the start of the discussion. The discussion also revolves around how to iterate towards a better consensus. This can significantly improve discussion efficiency.

After a proposal is put forward, there are four ways to respond:

• Support: Agree with the proposal.
• Oppose: Disagree with the proposal.
• Join: Based on support, publish amendments and personally become the Responsible Person, taking on part of the responsibilities for implementing the proposal.
• Veto: Based on opposition, point out the unreasonable aspects of the original proposal and provide a revised, more reasonable amendment.

Support and opposition are merely expressions of opinion, while joining and vetoing imply taking action, thus the latter two have a greater weight in influencing the proposal itself. For example, if the proposal initiator receives a veto vote along with corresponding amendments, they must face it and respond.

A typical scenario: if the proposal initiator sets a high reward for the proposal, but the organization's treasury is limited, then a member who understands the DAO's financial situation will be highly motivated to cast a veto vote and provide a reasonable amendment.

Of course, the Responsible Person can also be someone else, but unless the other party agrees, it will not take effect.

When the proposal system becomes widespread, any community member with opinions about the DAO or a willingness to take action can use this tool to publish proposals, gaining more attention from others while participating in governance, thus developing their influence within the DAO.

PS: Blankless DAO has a more complete proposal template; click on " Bankless DAO Initial Experience" to view it.

Scenario 2: Facilitation Techniques

• What to do if every meeting is inefficient?
• How to allow everyone to express themselves equally in meetings while balancing efficiency and output?
• How to enable the community to spontaneously generate a vision consensus, rather than providing participants with one like a product?

In a community, founders often need to instill confidence in the early stages, so they project their charisma in meetings to make everyone feel that the project is reliable. However, at the same time, they often dominate the conversation, making community participants feel: this is your project, and I am just a participant.

A more ideal state is for the founder to think about how to guide participants in contemplating the organization's vision, goals, and plans, helping participants arrive at the same answers through prompts. This consensus will make every participant feel: this is my idea, my wisdom is in it, this is my creation, and I am willing to put in the effort to turn this vision into reality.

To achieve this effect, it is best to have a Facilitator involved in the construction of a DAO. The series of workshops they bring to the DAO can create a more equal and inspiring environment through precise agenda design, helping more truths and love emerge within the organization. Imperfect inspirations need to be sparked in an inspiring environment; suppressed emotions and opinions need an open and inclusive space to be expressed; questioning and self-defense often make meetings long and unpleasant, which also needs to be avoided through processes. Typical examples include private boards, retrospective meetings, vision consensus conferences, and small project incubations.

Based on research into human nature and meetings, a Facilitator can also customize meeting processes for various different goals based on the organization's situation through precise agenda design.

For a participant, having the opportunity to express themselves in a meeting and discovering that their ideas have truly become part of the consensus is much more fulfilling than merely gaining voting rights, making them feel needed and valued by the DAO.

There are countless operational details, classic processes, and insights that cannot be contained in a single book.

As someone who has facilitated over 50 sessions and designed workshops for more than 10 teams, I am just beginning to scratch the surface.

For more content, see "Facilitation: A Practical Guide to Team Collaboration" and "Group Psychotherapy."

Scenario 3: Leaders Stepping Back

• What to do when community members are heavily reliant on the founder, and the founder's presence starts to restrict the community's development?
• How to promote the formation of bottom-up power relations and autonomous order within the DAO? How to break the participants' authority projection?

Leaders stepping back may be one option.

When the once absolute authority becomes hollow, those who care about the DAO will generate imaginations and motivations for autonomy.

I hope that one day in the future, I can create a self-directed "glorious revolution" for my DAO members, helping more members feel the sovereignty gained after overcoming authority. The specific operation is as follows:

Simultaneously operate 2-3 identities within the community. One identity serves as the founder, helping the DAO run from 0 to 1, actively enhancing their authority, and through certain actions, making other members feel the oppression from the founder. At this point, actively plan an event to provoke conflict, and use my other identity as an ordinary member to initiate a revolution, kicking myself out of the DAO, and uniting other contributors within the DAO to promote the proposal system, holding a community meeting to clarify our mission, vision, and goals, allowing everyone involved to experience the thrill of breaking authority and learn the basics of community autonomy.

Of course, there are also softer options, such as gradually fading out of the community, educating everyone about the proposal system, and supporting those who are brave enough to participate in governance.

Scenario 4: Three Incentive Mechanisms

• How to establish incentive mechanisms?
• If salaries are not issued by the boss, what decentralized and autonomous incentive measures can be taken?
• How to match appropriate rewards for self-organizing behaviors that emerge within the community?

In DAO organizations, I currently see three relatively suitable compensation distribution mechanisms:

1. Community Rewards

Clarify the issues that the core team needs to address during the monthly meeting and publish rewards based on the financial situation.

Rewards fall into two categories: 1. Based on specific goals and SOPs, issued according to the matter. 2. Based on roles when goals and SOPs are vague.

2. Custom Proposal System

Community members can publish proposals to customize goals, matters, responsible persons, and the rewards they will receive upon completion. Encourage everyone to define compensation based on their needs. The DAO's core team will also provide suggestions and amendments based on the financial situation.

3. Coordinape Decentralized Subjective Rewards

A co-creation group of 10 people within the DAO worked on an NFT project for three months, generating 30 ETH from speculators. Now, how should they distribute the money?

Since there are no clear hierarchical relationships, everyone takes on responsibilities across various dimensions such as design, operations, media, and coordination based on their backgrounds. Some take on a lot, while others provide valuable assistance. Although there is no clear standard to quantify everyone's contributions, each member has their own thoughts. After three months of collaboration, everyone can see who created indispensable value, who slacked off, who did a lot of foundational work, and who helped resolve conflicts within the team; this is the basis for subjective rewards.

At the same time, because everyone's values may differ slightly, some may care more about achieving goals, while others may prioritize team growth, and some may particularly want to thank a member for their help… These different perspectives create varying rules for scoring during subjective rewards. This diversity also further promotes the fairness of the reward results.

So how can this subjective reward be implemented in practice?

For the above example, it can be operated as follows:

• The 10 team members each receive 100 points in Coordinape and must give all their points to the other 9 members.
• After all the gifts are completed, calculate the points received by everyone and determine the proportion of points held by each person.
• The reward distribution can be directly determined by these proportions.

In actual use, some people may receive many points because everyone recognizes their contributions and merits or appreciates their contributions to the team. Meanwhile, members with lower participation often receive fewer points, while those with greater influence in the team may aim to "encourage more team members," distributing points more evenly or giving more to those who are less influential but hardworking to show encouragement. This makes the entire distribution model fairer.

All of this can be achieved through the Coordinape website.

Coordinape can even display the community's relational network through each person's distribution records. Which individuals are at the core of the community, linking more members? Are there small groups emerging in large organizations? All of this can be clearly presented in this way.

From another perspective, this subjective assessment essentially internalizes the "appreciation economy" within an organization. When we give away points, it is a very direct way to express appreciation and gratitude to each other. Therefore, compared to subjective assessments, I prefer to call this mechanism "team rewards."

Coordinape goes even further: you can leave messages for your colleagues while distributing points, openly expressing your recognition and encouragement for them.

When a team member's efforts are recognized and seen, it is a tremendous encouragement and empowerment for them. Especially in the early stages of a DAO's development, when we may not have economic benefits to offer community contributors, this recognition and visibility become even more important.

Because it signifies the realization and affirmation of a person's self-worth.

Using this method of mutual rewards and expressions among team members to achieve mutual recognition is truly excellent.

Thus, subjective quantification of contributions + mutual empowerment among team members can be said to be where Coordinape creates the most value for an organization in practice.

Scenario 5: Live Team Status

• How can the core team of the DAO help community members understand the challenges they are facing and form a consensus on goals?
• How to let more people understand what the core team of the DAO is doing and spontaneously get involved in co-creation?

Many DAO teams tend to separate themselves from the community like Web2 companies, possessing a strong sense of management identity, maintaining mystery in front of the community, and periodically unveiling new activities and products. However, the underlying message is: we hold the power, we decide the DAO's development, our DAO has aesthetics and quality control, and to participate in co-creation, you need our permission.

To a large extent, the community may also feel that they are in a state of being arranged, waiting for new things to emerge, not knowing how they can help. The core team may sometimes feel isolated and helpless, wondering why so few people are doing the work.

At this point, a crucial action is to blur the boundaries between the core team and participants by chatting in the community and opening Space voice sessions to tell everyone, as a core team member:

• What problems am I trying to solve?
• What dilemmas and challenges am I facing?
• What is my vision? What do I hope to achieve with this?
• What are my feelings and vulnerabilities?
• What support and help do I hope to receive?
• What are my next plans and action lists?

Here, I recommend creating a WeChat group and DC channel specifically for the core team to share their thoughts.

When you openly share these internal matters with everyone like writing a diary, you create countless opportunities for others to help you and give more members and external supporters a chance to get involved.

When others continuously see your sincerity, vulnerability, wishes, and efforts, trust will naturally grow~

Scenario 6: Information Map

• How to promote the emergence of more self-organizing actions within a DAO?
• How to encourage the DAO's relational network to become more decentralized, forming a multi-core, deeply linked "starfish" network?

The emergence of self-organization requires mutual visibility, and multi-core structures need to form around various matters.

To achieve these two goals, a DAO can promote the openness and transparency of information and create deep social opportunities.

For example:

DAO Member Roster

Compile deep members' self-introductions and personal user manuals and make them public to other members within the DAO.

DAO Project Map

Gather introductions and joining methods for various project groups, subgroups, and social communities into a map, providing it to newcomers who want to delve deeper into the DAO.

Team Division Table

Publish the roles, divisions, and core responsible information of the team to DAO partners and external parties who want to discuss cooperation.

Scenario 7: Points Depreciation & Exit Mechanism

• How to promote the metabolism of a DAO?
• How to encourage new members to innovate?
• How to prevent early contributors from becoming whales in decision-making and profit-sharing through accumulated contribution points?

There are two typical methods:

1. Exit Mechanism for Project Groups

The exit mechanism needs to be clearly defined at the start, such as exiting the project group after two consecutive weeks of absence from meetings.

2. Depreciation of Points in a Dual Token Mechanism

Some DAOs use a dual token mechanism: points tokens are obtained through governance participation and correspond to voting weight, while gold tokens are obtained through investment or dividends, can be traded, and do not participate in governance.

To prevent early contributors from accumulating large amounts of points tokens and becoming whales, even retaining decision-making power after exiting the project, a depreciation mechanism can be adopted, such as setting a decay rate for points tokens, gradually reducing the effective portion that can participate in decision-making and profit-sharing over time. This way, newcomers can also gain substantial effective points through contributions to participate in governance and profit-sharing.

The size of the decay rate may need to be chosen based on the project's development goals. Currently, we are looking for DAO tools that can support this functionality.

Scenario 8: Improvisational Co-Creation

• How to reduce the operational costs of a DAO?
• How to achieve unexpected nonlinear growth?
• How to enjoy the joy of creation with more members within the DAO, rather than turning the DAO into just another job?

Even DAOs like Blankless can experience burnout: everyone feels overwhelmed by too many work-related matters, and the enthusiasm that once existed seems to be worn down by specific tasks, turning them into mere tools for achieving goals.

However, due to the community nature of DAOs, people naturally have more opportunities to share and express their physical, emotional, and interest-oriented aspects here, rather than pursuing professionalism and separation of work and life like traditional companies.

This creates opportunities for more spontaneous creation rather than planned activities. For example, if I feel inspired today, why not open a Space? If a funny idea comes up in the group chat, let's screenshot it and make a meme! You're an interesting person; I want to call you, and other friends are welcome to listen in!

In fact, if we do not impose preconceptions and goals, allowing life to have some leisure, it is easy to spontaneously come up with ideas that can be implemented immediately, and to do so at the moment when we feel the most passionate about the idea. The things created in this way often bring unexpected surprises.

I believe I have shared enough about these eight scenarios.

I am confident that there are more scenarios and methods that can achieve deeper decentralization and autonomy in operational aspects, and I look forward to exploring them together with everyone in the future!

5: Is Decentralized DAO the Future?

------ Some Suggestions for DAO Tool Development

Having said so much, what is the relationship with blockchain?

I truly believe that there will be company forms suitable for the Web3 era, digital nomads, and remote work, using cryptocurrency for salaries. Most of them will self-identify as DAOs, but those that can break through the limitations of human nature and organizations to achieve true decentralization and autonomy will be extremely rare.

Currently, many DAO tool development directions are also focused on finding measurable data within DAOs and designing reward mechanisms. This is essentially a tool rationality thinking centered on technology. However, we must face the reality that in the real use cases of social DAOs, contributions cannot be quantified like BTC and cannot be incentivized based on fixed results or actions.

A more practical development direction is to promote more decentralized and autonomous collaborative processes and relational networks. For example:

• Optimize the proposal system, such as
• Binding proposals to contracts and community wallets; if a proposal is deemed completed, automatically pay the responsible person from the community wallet according to the rewards set in the proposal.
• Create a better interactive space for proposal announcements, voting, and amendments.
• Identify key nodes that are growing within the DAO at the relational network level and remind the core team to pay more attention and provide rewards.
• Provide identification and calculation tools for the depreciation mechanism in a dual-token system and integrate them with other voting tools.
• For example, DingTalk serves business owners managing employees, and Feishu serves organizations and teams. We also look forward to seeing a platform that integrates various DAO tools to provide governance space for DAOs.
• ……….

I look forward to seeing more DAO tools developed that are deeply linked to organizational collaboration and finding application scenarios in the future!