Hi everyone,
I’m Daniel, an organisation design facilitator and decentralised governance nerd. I’ve been part of multiple DAOs on and off since 2017, most recently contributing as Head of Governance at Aragon to design and launch their DAO.
For the past two months, I’ve been gathering a small group passionate about DAOs and having conversations with many of the leading projects in the DAO ecosystem on how best to create a thriving Web3 and help bring DAOs mainstream. The conclusion is the following proposal, and I’d love to hear your thoughts to refine it and collaborate to make it happen!
TLDR:
We believe the future of DAO tooling is collaborative. The projects that thrive will be those that work together with their ecosystem, creating composable and modular products, reducing the duplication of work, sharing the cost and benefits of research, and helping each other grow and thrive.
From this thesis, we’ve developed the idea for an inter-DAO innovation center, funded by DAOs to serve DAOs, with a mandate to ship research and tools that make DAO operations easier, thus facilitating mainstream DAO adoption.
We’re calling it RnDAO, which stands for Research and Development DAO, by DAOs, for DAOs.
The problem (Why):
DAOs have become increasingly popular as a means of crowd-funding and tapping into the talent of a diverse community of stakeholders. However, DAOs (and particularly product-oriented DAOs) still depend on many Web2 tools and practices for their operations.
Web2 tools embed Web2 principles. Permission-based access hierarchies, per-seat pricing models, email log-ins, admin accounts, etc., were designed to facilitate top-down management and centralised teams. Conversely, creating tools for Web3 requires mental models of Web3 organisation - models that are still emerging and require applying diverse expertise to avoid repeating history.
To invent better organisations and better systems, we need to gather learnings across organisational science, psychology and neuroscience, self-management practice, regenerative economics, and more. We must combine them with user research, DAO ethnography, rapid experimentation and tight feedback loops.
Problematically, this level of cross-disciplinary research and development is too complex a task for an early-stage startup and even a difficult one for any single DAO. But even if a single organisation achieved it, the output of said R&D is likely to yield insights and solutions beyond what any single organisation can capitalise on, resulting in inefficiencies. Also, it would probably be kept private and would not be shared with the whole ecosystem.
The Solution (what):
We believe the best DAO tooling will be built collaboratively. Instead of doing things halfway, duplicating work, or reinventing the wheel, the projects that thrive will be those that work with their ecosystem, pulling resources together to lead the way in R&D and, as a result, gain positive feedback loops of talent, expertise, and better products.
A significant enough group of Web3 players have now discovered the value of inter-DAO collaboration and, as an ecosystem, we have now completed the first few inter-DAO research initiatives focused on DAO patterns and ‘best practices’ (e.g. Prime DAO’s D2D research, the Governauts Rewards Systems research initiative). We’re proposing the next step to build on top of these initiatives and move from ad-hoc, waterfall-style research (requiring a lot of upfront planning and cat-herding) to ongoing inter-DAO R&D.
As such, RnDAO is designed to catalyse collaboration across DAO tooling projects, as a inter-DAO innovation centre focused on solutions for humane DAO operations. We see this as the highest leverage point to advance our mission to empower humane collaboration.
The innovation lab framework (how):
Many of the RnDAO founding team have started and operated innovation centres within Web2 and Web3. Our expertise spans user research, design thinking, human-centred design, user experience design, and systems thinking.
RnDAO will operate a continuous innovation feedback loop, compounding learnings and continuously refining its process. We’ll position RnDAO at the cross-road of multiple research communities, combining and connecting diverse expertise to address complex challenges and help invent a humanistic, thriving Web3.
Concretely, RnDAO will:
- Bring together a community of DAO tooling projects and selected DAOs as Funding Partners;
- Identify shared challenges and ship research to inform DAO design and DAO tooling requirements (e.g. insights on decision-making in DAOs, community alignment, permission-management, etc);
- Develop product extensions, integrations, and tools that fill the gaps. Tools that fall outside the scope of our funding partners (or take a distinct approach) and/or lack a viable revenue model for a single DAO to incubate, but yet are needed and support the development of the DAO ecosystem.
Additionally, we aim to succeed by role-modelling decentralised practices and leveraging inter-DAO collaboration, working hand in hand with the likes of Gnosis Guild, SuperFluid, Agora, Snapshot, and beyond.
Funding Partners will benefit by:
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prioritising research challenges to fit their most pressing needs
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receiving early access to insights (product requirements insights, DAO operations patterns and best-practices, etc.)
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integrations, product extensions, and functionalities developed through the R&D activity and adding network effects to the Funding Partner’s ecosystem and product(s)
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facilitated community of DAO tooling projects leading to opportunities in co-marketing, integrations and partnerships, investment, and more.
Additionally, RnDAO activities will continue to showcase Funding Partners as a leading players in the DAO ecosystem through their position as ‘Ecosystem Sponsors’ in our public events and research briefings (to be co-marketed with other leading figures of the DAO ecosystem).
The Ask:
We’re inviting Gnosis to become a Funding Partner of RnDAO through a seed grant of $100,000 equivalent. This grant would enable us to:
- Complete a first research cycle including user research, ethnographic research, academic literature review and action research to map the lifecycle of DAOs and their key challenges at every stage (including researching GnosisDAO as a case study). Our guiding research question is: “What are the common paths towards becoming a DAO, and what are the problems that block that progress?” and the output is envisioned to be a framework of analysis and tool to map, assess and plan the evolution of a DAO’s governance and operations.
- Host a series of workshops to accompany GNO holders to strategise and apply the research findings to improve their own DAO operations.
- Communicate to the Gnosis Guild Team (Zodiac) any uncovered product requirements that are relevant.
- Release the first public report and public event to share the research findings (both include a section featuring the work carried with GnosisDAO).
- Setup RnDAO’s basic infrastructure (including enabling Funding Partners to prioritise problems for subsequent research and prepare for research-informed venture incubation).
The Roadmap
The Gnosis grant will enable a wider set of initiatives aimed at taking RnDAO from inception to an operating innovation centre ready to carry out additional research work:
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Complete the first research cycle (as described in The Ask) on mapping the lifecycle of DAOs and their key challenges at every stage, with Gnosis as a case study.
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Research: week 1-8
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Public Report: week 9-11
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Dissemination (Public event): week 11-12
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Setup RnDAO’s infrastructure, including:
- Enabling Funding Partners to co-define and prioritise problems for subsequent research cycles: week 11-12
- Design and implementation of a basic on-chain governance model for the operating team to govern the project*1: week 8-12
- Legal counsel to enable us to crowdfund for tool development: week 9-12
*1: The mechanism design to carry out a public sale and govern the project with multiple stakeholders will be developed at a later phase.
The team (who):
RnDAO is divided across 4 key workstreams:
- Research: research initiatives
- Organisation Design: operational infrastructure
- Sustainability: financial sustainability and beyond (includes relationships with Funding Partners)
- Development: experimentation and prototyping
The Core RnDAO team and stewards for this grant are:
Daniel Ospina
Roles: Gnosis Grant Steward Lead and Org. Design co-lead
Discord: danielo#2815
Socials: @ _daniel_ospina
Background:
- Ex-head of Governance at Aragon and advisor and contributor on DAO design and governance to multiple DAOs since 2018.
- 8 years organisation design facilitator and innovation management consultant, clients including BCG, Google, The UNDP, Daimler, and numerous startups.
- Visiting lecturer at Oxford University, Tedx Speaker, Harvard Business Review published author.
- Governauts’ Ground Control team member
Drea
Role: Research co-lead
Discord: Drea#4787
Socials: @ DecidesDrea
Background:
- 25 years experience in information architecture, interaction design, and user research. Started in the earliest web1 startups, through dot.com consultancy, then focusing on User Research and Design Management at Intuit, Google, and Asana.
- In Web3, leading User Research at Aragon and at RnDAO.
- Trained and taught design thinking and group facilitation, including work as an Innovation Catalyst at Intuit. Has taught design at the undergraduate level.
Paulo Fonseca
Role: Research co-lead
Discord: paulofonseca#1987
Socials: @ paulofonseca__
Background:
- 13 years of experience as a UX Design Leader designing teams and delivering special projects for a diverse set of organizations such as OutSystems, McKinsey, Credit Agricole, Capgemini, Vodafone, and others.
- Startup strategy and product advisor to teams that have been acquired by Google and Autodesk.
- Design teacher and mentor across several institutions and advisor to The New Digital School, an experimental physical school for career-changers.
- Volunteer organizer of the Lisbon UX and Blockc
Ray Kanani
Role: Org. Design co-lead
Discord: RayKanani#0819
Socials: @ raykanani
Background:
- Currently building a Trauma Informed Design Studio and co-creating a learning and development platform that won the DAO Global Hackathon 2021.
- Ex-VP Product at Fortive. 12 years experience building Product and Design teams for high-growth centralized orgs.
- Advises early-stage startups on how to explore unknowns in high-pressure environments.
White Flamingo
Role: Research co-lead
Discord: WhiteFlamingoXXI#0685
Socials: @ whiteflamingo88
Background:
- Ex-diplomat, Chief of Staff to 4* Cabinet Official. Additional exp. at think tanks & in market intelligence.
- Web3: IC at Protocol Labs, Genesis Team at XXI, Contributor at multiple DAOs (RADAR, Station, DAOMasters, RnDAO), Kernel KB5 Fellow, World Wide Web Foundation Future Leaders Council, University of Oxford Mentor.
- Web2: founder of Frontier Horizons - strategic advisory firm working with innovators & disruptors on emerging markets & technologies, Board advisor to various orgs (global education/leadership nonprofits, social impact consultancies, ESG start-ups, & Gen Z media companies).
RnDAO Contributors:
Armand Didier
Role: Funding Contributor
Social: Twitter: @ armd_didier
Background:
- Product Manager at Worldremit,
- Community Host for Finimize
Antoine Sakho
Role: Org-design contributor
Social: Twitter: @ antoinesakho
Background:
- ex-Head of Product at Busuu (acquired for >$400M)
- Exec advisor at Aragon
- Contributor at @ daomastersxyz and @ twoplusDAO
Claire Wu
Role: Research contributor
Background:
- Founder at Holly Health (health behaviour change)
- PhD Neuroscience
- ex product manager at tray.io
Lily Hansen-Gillis
Role: Research contributor
Discord: LilyHG#3421
Social: @ lilyhg_3
Background:
- UX research & content design
- Contributor at @ labDAO and @ Surge
- IRL community builder transitioning to Web3
Advisors, supporters and ad-hoc contributors who have helped us shape RnDAO:
Adam Stallard @ cadamstallard - Founder, BrightID
Alex Kozlov @ kozlovchad - @ chadao__
Auryn Macmillan - Seer of truth @ gnosisguild
Angela Kreitenweis - Founder TE Academy @ tokengineering and Ground Control Governauts @ GovernanceDAO
Daniel Jiang @ ikigaibydesign
Dr. Milly Perry - DAO4DAOs
Guillermo Gomez - Co-creator @ Atheos
Jahed Momand - Steward PrimeDAO, OlympusDAO Grants
Jeff Emmett - BlockScience & Commons Stack
Joshua Tan - MetaGov & DAO Star One
Jon Libera - Strategy, Operations and Growth at Skillwallet
Lea Bauer - BD & OPs whiz
Nelson Jordan - Founder at Closer & DAO Masters’ Master
Rafa0 - Community and DAO design at Mirror
Rav Singh Sandhu - Co-founder at Catapult Labs/daolicious
Reka - Founder at Agora (Guild.xyz)
Robin Dhara - Founder at Peripheral View
Richie Bonilla - Founder at Clarity
Shawn Cubbedge - Free Agent and Community Manager
Theo Beutel - VitaDAO & Colony - @ theobtl
Tyler Whittle - DAO Masters’ Master
Teo - ex-sales at Gartner, contributor at Aragon
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