DAO Platforms: Navigating the Web3 Landscape

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Since its inception, web3 has experienced surges of activity across various sectors within the ecosystem. We remain steadfast in our commitment to building and firmly believing that web3 is the future of work. New DAOs and web3 communities continue to emerge, persistently pursuing their objectives and actively seeking like-minded individuals to join their ranks. For some, DAOs embody an unrealistic, idealistic vision of organizational structure. While for others, they signify freedom, ownership, and an alternative approach to coordination and work. Regardless of the perspective, it’s evident that DAOs and DAO platforms come with unique challenges. However, where challenges arise, solutions follow, emphasizing the growing importance of finding the most suitable platform for these endeavors

What is a DAO?

Before exploring platforms for DAOs, let’s define what a DAO is. A Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is owned and operated by its members, functioning without central authority. It’s akin to an online club where members collaborate on shared goals. Governance lies entirely with members, with each having a say in decisions. Some DAOs base decisions on token ownership, while others start with a core team and gradually decentralize.

The structure of DAOs, set by a core team, varies across communities. Often, they use smart contracts for operations, adding to the framework. These contracts, essential to DAOs, are public on the blockchain for transparency. The team decides on funding strategies and governance consensus.

Once established, DAO guidelines on the blockchain can’t change without majority consent. Smart contracts protect funds, preventing single-entity access without approval. Decision-making varies: some DAOs use collective voting and automatic contract execution, while others use multi-signature approaches for transfers. Adherence to voting outcomes isn’t always consistent.

DAOs differ in purpose, like protocol governance (e.g., Optimism), public good (e.g., Nouns), venture investing (e.g., MetaCartel), and community collaboration (e.g., FWB). Essentially, they’re groups united for a common mission, moving away from traditional hierarchical structures.

For those contemplating starting a DAO, here are crucial steps to kickstart the process:

1. Mission Statement and Goals: Clearly define the purpose and goals, practicing transparency.

2. Building a Community: Determine size, public or exclusive nature, and recruit members through platforms like Discord.

3. DAO platforms: Use platforms like Discord and CharmVerse for communication, task coordination, and decision-making.

4. Establishing Funding Goals: Define how funds will be used to achieve the mission.

5. Governance: Allow community discussions and voting to shape the DAO’s operations.

6. Determining Ownership: Define membership access and decision-making through ownership representation.

Examples of Successful DAOs

Every DAO is distinct, with varying missions, members, and governance styles. There’s no universally “correct” method for operating a DAO, but here are examples of DAOs that have effectively discovered what suits them best.

The Optimism Foundation is a nonprofit committed to fostering the Optimism Collective. Aligned with Ethereum’s principles, the foundation builds infrastructure to support the development and longevity of public goods. Their software endeavors aim to scale Ethereum technology while concurrently extending the Ethereum values. By establishing the framework for profoundly impactful projects lacking a conventional business model, they amplify Ethereum’s principles.

Nouns DAO embodies the principles of decentralized and open-source blockchain technology while prioritizing community benefits over financial gains for founders and developers. Funds are generated through daily NFT auctions, where one NFT is sold at a time. These generative NFTs function as membership badges, enabling members to propose and engage in the DAO’s governance. Proceeds from Nouns sales contribute to a community treasury, and as a DAO, Nouns owners have a voting say in fund utilization.

Comprising leading experts and contributors in the Web3 space, Alliance DAO aims to assist startup founders and provide its members with access to deal flow, partnerships, insights, and more. With the belief that Web3 will significantly transform lives globally, offering lower costs, improved coordination, ownership, and novel use cases, the Alliance DAO’s mission is to accelerate the transition to Web3. Their overarching goal is to grow Web3 to 1 billion users by 2025 by uniting top builders and industry experts within the space.

Myosin is a marketing DAO comprising top-tier growth marketers, creatives, and builders, dedicated to building and enhancing the internet. Differentiating themselves as a DAO rather than a traditional agency, their decentralized structure ensures that all members and stakeholders actively participate in the governance and financial success of the DAO. Operating as a DAO presents a unique opportunity to develop marketing and advertising products tailored for a web3-first world.

DAOs: A work in progress

While DAOs offer a means for communities to come together and ideally bypass some of the challenges associated with traditional organizational structures, they still encounter a number of pain points.
As DAOs enable global collaboration, the significant challenge of efficiently organizing and managing members, whether they number 5 or 500, arises. Despite the promises of web3 technologies in unlocking vast potential and opportunities with commitments to transparency and trust, the complexity lies in coordinating and collaborating with individuals who are essentially strangers. Crucial questions about skills, knowledge, past projects, and contributions to other organizations become essential for fellow members. The absence of insights into one’s reputation leaves minimal reassurance when dedicating time and effort to a community of unfamiliar individuals.
Navigating decision-making within DAOs is a formidable challenge, primarily due to the reluctance of individuals to participate in voting and the time constraints they face when confronted with numerous decisions. Additionally, people are frequently called upon to vote on matters outside their expertise. The delicate equilibrium between effective and decentralized decision-making remains elusive for DAOs.

Contributing energy to a community becomes more meaningful when there’s a sense that others are actively involved as well. However, engagement within DAOs often tends to be concentrated among a small group. While this subset actively communicates, creates proposals, and participates in voting, a majority of members may exhibit a lack of engagement, placing the burden on the active group. This can be particularly challenging when DAO governance requires a certain number or percentage of votes for initiatives to pass, creating frustration when a significant number of members remain passive.

 

Accountability and attribution present additional challenges within DAOs. Determining who is responsible for specific tasks, their completion status, or the current phase of a project can be complex with numerous moving parts.

Another recurring issue in many web3 communities is over-financialization, where everything revolves around a financial token. While this approach may work for some DAOs, it doesn’t necessarily foster genuine passion and engagement among members who might be involved primarily for financial incentives rather than a true commitment to the project. The good news, we are seeing more web3 communities that are operating without a financial token and are seeing that genuine engagement due to their passion for the mission of the community.

DAO platforms addressing pain points

As web3 communities and DAOs thrive, a multitude of DAO platforms exists to assist them in accomplishing their goals. These tools encompass DAO governance and analytics, access control, reputation management, and much more, aiming to alleviate the challenges faced by these emerging web3 communities. Below are what we consider to be some of the most effective and viable platforms serving these communities.

DAO Governance

Governance is often at the center of discussions when looking at DAOs, and there are numerous DAI platforms that support this process but we’ll be looking at three that we feel are the most valuable.

Let’s start with Tally, an on-chain voting protocol that not only facilitates voting but also enables the creation of DAOs, token distribution, treasury management, and the formulation and voting on proposals.

Snapshot is an off-chain voting protocol that provides extensive customization options for the voting process, catering to the diverse needs of users and organizations. It allows customization in areas such as determining users’ voting power, selecting the voting mechanism, and validating proposals and votes.
CharmVerse is fully integrated with Snapshot. Members can vote and view vote results on Snapshot via CharmVerse without ever leaving the platform.

Lastly, DAOHaus, is an open-source, community-owned platform empowering communities to coordinate and govern in a decentralized manner based on their values and mission.
In the realm of on-chain DAOs, smart contracts are employed to propose, vote on, and execute proposals, automating DAO operations, making them trustless, and enhancing decentralization.

Access Control

Each web3 community seeks a membership management and curation tool, a solution that enables the granting of access exclusively to approved members. A tool that serves the dual purpose of maintaining transparency within the community while safeguarding content privacy from external entities. Tokenized communities often use digital collectibles to as a key to grant access to content that is exclusive to the DAO.

Collab.Land is a comprehensive community management tool that uses tokens for membership curation. The process involves verifying that potential members possess the necessary tokens to join a community, followed by regular checks to ensure they maintain their status. Moreover, Collab.Land provides a miniapp marketplace equipped with diverse platforms designed to enrich communities through pro-social activities. CharmVerse has integrated with Collab.Land and offers several mini-apps accessible through this marketplace allowing you to select and install a template that aligns with your community’s needs and utilize the Collab.Land bot to synchronize the roles you’ve established on Discord or Telegram.

Guild offers automated membership management for your community across various platforms. Seamlessly integrate your community into preferred communication platforms, management tools, or games with built-in integrations and external APIs, providing maximum flexibility.

Lit Protocol provides a decentralized solution for creating and managing distributed cryptographic key-pairs, facilitating condition-based encryption and programmatic signing. It serves as an alternative to centralized key custodians and other key management solutions. Lit supports the use of both on and off-chain data to define access control conditions, such as membership in a DAO, ownership of specific ERC-721 or ERC-20 tokens, outcomes of smart contract calls, or results from API calls like Twitter follows.

Coordination and communication

Finding a platform to enhance communication and coordination is essential for all DAOs, and there are plenty that attempt to do just this. 

The one you will hear about most and likely already use is Discord, a free communications app originally designed for the gaming community. Discord has become a staple tool for web3 communities to communicate, collaborate, and even carry out DAO governance. While I mentioned it has become a staple, that doesn’t mean it has proven to be the most effective way to carry out these functions.

CharmVerse is a web3 community platform built for coordination and collaboration. This all-in-one tool encompasses various features designed to enhance your web3 experience, such as decentralized access control, a member directory facilitating better acquaintance with your community, a structured discussion forum, a proposal builder enabling members to actively engage in initiatives right from their inception. Additionally, it offers a rewards feature, enabling crypto payments for various forms of member engagement and participation. Tailored for productivity, CharmVerse is purpose-built to empower your work in web3.

Quests and gaming

Gamification is an effective way to harness engagement in web3 communities. Creating quests can be an effective way to make mundane onboarding tasks fun. As tasks are accomplished, community members may earn rewards or “level up” encouraging them to continue engagement and task-seeking. 

 

Summon is a tool revolutionizing community management. It’s designed to manage, motivate, and reward contributors, extending beyond just monetary incentives. Summon automates assessing and recognizing contributions, offering points, ranks, and NFT materials for participation. Higher ranks mean more influence, while points and materials unlock rare, status-representing items. This creates a merit-based governance model, inspired by MMOs, that rewards productive community members.

Recently, Summon has teamed up with CharmVerse. This integration lets web3 communities track and gamify DAO contributions using on-chain credentials in the CharmVerse app. Members’ CharmVerse profiles will display their Summon Profile card, showcasing their Rank, XP (experience points), Achievements, and Skills.

Station’s Group OS is a revolutionary platform that merges blockchain technology with gaming, introducing innovative solutions. It simplifies the creation of player wallets, enhances the value of in-game assets, and instantly rewards player loyalty. GroupOS transforms the gaming experience by introducing features such as player-driven economies and smart contract-powered quests, creating new revenue streams. Overall, GroupOS ensures that games stay engaging, rewarding, and profitable.

Payments

As we embrace web3 and its advancements, along with our focus on crypto investments, we expect cryptocurrency use for various services to grow. This includes payments on DAO platforms, where offering crypto payment options is crucial. Thankfully, more platforms are adopting crypto for subscriptions, backed by tools for a smooth and secure process. Our ongoing goal is to draw more people into web3, and simplifying standard business transactions is a vital part of this journey.

Safe, formerly known as Gnosis Safe, is a prominent decentralized asset management and custody protocol operating on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). Safe prioritizes flexible and secure digital asset ownership.
A standout feature is the Smart Account, which allows user-defined rules like multi-signature requirements or spending limits. This adaptability extends to key modification and transaction payment options, revolutionizing the account concept for enhanced security and user control.
The Safe Wallet, a web3-friendly app, acts as a bridge between users and the DeFi and Web3 ecosystem and facilitates seamless interaction with various protocols, emphasizing decentralized co-ownership. Operating as a multi-signature platform, the wallet enhances asset security and supports shared asset management.

Loop simplifies the implementation of autopay in web3 by offering APIs, tooling, and smart contracts to enhance the user experience. Embracing a decentralized and interoperable future, Loop focuses on automating crypto transactions. In contrast to the traditional web2 approach where companies store payment information and have unrestricted billing access, Loop, in collaboration with web3, empowers users by enabling full control over wallet interactions. Through the allowance function, users can limit the amount a company can bill, modify, or revoke this limit at any time, putting users in complete control of their transactions in the decentralized landscape.

Den offers a self-custodial, multi-signature wallet designed for on-chain organizations, including DAOs and traditional entities. Utilizing Safe Contracts (formerly Gnosis Safe), Den leverages the most trusted on-chain asset storage mechanism. The platform addresses challenges faced by signers on multisigs, such as time-consuming coordination, complex understanding of onchain transactions, and the risky, slow process of creating new transactions. Den streamlines these processes, saving time, minimizing vulnerabilities, and optimizing engineering resources for more critical tasks.

NFT minting

Major brand names are increasingly incorporating NFTs into their strategies. The ongoing growth in utility for these digital collectibles underscores the importance of streamlining the creation, minting, and transactional processes associated with these tokens.

Decent offers multi-chain NFT infrastructure, streamlining the creation and transaction of NFTs for a user-friendly experience. Developers benefit from straightforward SDKs that abstract Solidity and facilitate cross-chain transactions, allowing them to focus on their applications rather than blockchain intricacies. Creators can utilize the Creator HQ to deploy, manage, and analyze NFT collections without the need for coding. Collectors have the ability to browse and curate their favorite collections deployed through the Decent protocol on the Explore page, using API endpoints.

Zora champions the idea that NFT minting information not only makes it universally accessible but also adds value to the creator. By bringing the world’s imagination onto the blockchain, Zora aims to empower more individuals to realize the full potential of their ideas. The platform prioritizes people as creators, emphasizing creative sovereignty over the extraction of value. Zora’s approach focuses on building experiences that support and validate individuals’ creativity on their own terms, fostering the creation of value without compromising values and authenticity. The choice of Ethereum as the foundation stems from its alignment with values, security, and scalability, providing a solid base for Zora’s expansion.

Analytics

Web3 users want the ability to analyze their cross-chain data, allowing them to understand and aggregate information from various tokens, wallets, and protocols across different blockchains.

Dune offers just this and enables users to share their analyses with the Web3 community. Dune provides free access to blockchain ecosystem analytics, covering Ethereum, xDai, Polygon, Optimism, BSC, and Solana chains. Users can explore pre-existing dashboards showcasing analytics on Defi projects, dApps, and NFTs. Additionally, users have the flexibility to create and customize their own analytics dashboards for specific Web3 projects.

Do we really need so many DAO Platforms

Whew! That was quite a thorough overview! We’ve seen an impressive range of DAO platforms supporting web3 communities. While these tools boost DAO efficiency, they can also lead to fragmented workflows as members switch between different platforms for various tasks. Enter CharmVerse, the solution to this challenge!

CharmVerse is a comprehensive web3 operations platform that integrates all these tools. It’s built for web3 community collaboration, offering a unified space for everything from onboarding to voting. It’s like a set of productivity and blockchain “Legos” customized for your community’s needs. Imagine consolidating communication and voting, which are often spread across platforms like Discord and Snapshot, into one streamlined system with CharmVerse.

The platform simplifies the governance process, from idea generation to voting, and can integrate with Snapshot for those who prefer it. Member engagement is enhanced with features like forums, onboarding tasks, and directories, making it a welcoming hub for new members.

CharmVerse also excels in task management, offering DAO platforms for assigning tasks, gathering feedback, and fostering member interaction. We’re continuously building CharmVerse alongside our community, integrating with various DAO platforms to provide a complete solution.

With integrations like Dune, Decent, Safe, and others, CharmVerse offers a blend of Web3 functionality and familiar Web2 components. To truly understand its unique offerings, let’s dive deeper into the key features that make CharmVerse stand out.

Role-based access control

Web3 Communities require a collaborative space built on a foundation of trust and transparency. CharmVerse is the solution, serving as a token-gated platform that empowers admins to grant roles based on a wallet’s token holding, by using NFTs or custom tokens as keys to allow access to specific actions in specific sections of CharmVerse.

 

CharmVerse is currently compatible with most EVM-compatible chains, and allows you to establish a permissionless collaborative space, offering both trust and transparency.

 

 

In addition to token-gating, if you already have an established community in Discord or Guild, you can simply import those roles into CharmVerse.

Member Directory

The CharmVerse Member Directory allows members to build meaningful connections with their peers. The directory is automatically generated as contributors join the space. Admins have the flexibility to customize profile properties and permissions, while members can choose which records to display, granting them control over their privacy.

 

Member Profiles are auto-populated with Snapshot and on-chain proposal/vote history fostering transparency within the community. The option to link your ENS, Lens, and Summon profiles provides fellow members greater insights into their collaborators. You can also select which NFT/POAP holdings to showcase and connect your X (formerly Twitter), Discord, Email, and Google accounts, streamlining communication like never before.

Forum

The Forum provides a designated space for the community to engage in structured discussions within a token-gated CharmVerse space. Whether it’s sharing photos or discussing critical community initiatives, the Forum’s flexibility accommodates various use cases. In fact, we recognize that many DAO proposals often originate from informal conversations, which is why we’ve made it effortless to convert a Forum post into a Proposal with just one click.

 

While external platforms like Discord, Telegram, or Discourse primarily serve casual conversation, the CharmVerse Forum enables threaded discussions on specific topics. We place great value on the role of meaningful discussions in unifying communities, and thus, the CharmVerse Forum is an essential and unifying feature.

Rewards for engagement

Rewards are paid tasks and a great way to reward members for engaging with the community. In addition to being an excellent task management tool, CharmVerse gives you the ability to attach rewards to any task. Once a community member completes a task and it is approved, the reward can be paid out via your connected wallet or Safe. With Safe you even have the ability to pay multiple rewards with one transaction. CharmVerse supports payments in USDC, ETH, Matic, and other custom ERC20 tokens.

Community governance

Whether it’s Web3 community governance or evaluating Web3 Grant and Hackathon proposals, the CharmVerse Proposal Builder has you covered. 

 

With two evaluation methods available, CharmVerse offers flexibility to facilitate your process. The Vote method, when utilized directly in CharmVerse, provides both single-choice and multi-choice voting options. However, through our Snapshot integration, you gain access to additional voting methods, such as ranked voting, quadratic voting, weighted voting, etc., and the results are accessible on both platforms. 

The other option is our Rubric evaluation style, perfect for Web3 Grants programs and Hackathons. This method empowers a core group to assess proposals using a customizable set of criteria. Feedback can be given and reviewers can assign scores. The Rubric option proves invaluable in helping Web3 communities effectively evaluate and reward participants.

Reputation

Remember earlier, when we mentioned Summon, the gamification engine? Well, CharmVerse has integrated with them to track and gamify DAO contributions through on-chain credentials.

Credentials

As Web3 strives to decentralize legitimate credentials, CharmVerse is committed to building out a platform that will empower individuals to take control of their web3 contribution histories.

 

For example, when you apply for a CharmVerse-powered Grant, CharmVerse will provide an attestation to confirm your application submission. If you happen to be a grant winner, we’ll attest to your victory. These attestations will be showcased on your member profile, underscoring achievements like winning the ReFi hackathon, while offering transparency and verification. As we expand this feature, we will also incorporate attestations from various domains to assist you in building your Web3 resume.

 

 

Over time, you can amass a collection of credentials based on significant events, prominently displayed on your profile. Whether you’re a grant recipient, a hackathon champion, a successful proposer, or leading a major project, these attestations serve as indisputable proof of your accomplishments, eliminating the need for additional references. We’re quite excited about this attestation feature so be sure to stay tuned for more exciting developments on this front!

What are you waiting for? Start using Charmverse today!

There will always be a free version of CharmVerse that is 100% open-source, we call this the Public Goods Plan. If you choose to have a space that is 100% viewable by anyone on the internet you can use CharmVerse for free! 

 

Even 

if you don’t plan to have a public space, you can start building your space today with our Community Plan. The first 30,000 blocks of every space are free! Once you build your CharmVerse space, you can decide what plan is right for you.

 

With CharmVerse, you can build a space to manage members, coordinate tasks, facilitate structured discussions & decisions, and hold each other accountable.