Chris 🤝 Adam

DAOs

How other DAOs work

How do you see that happening in other protocols?

The SafeDAO is the first crypto community I've participated in from the beginning of its creation so this is a great learning experience for me. I have participated in Dash.org's DAO and other open-source communities within Android.

Dash

In 2019 I learned in-depth about DAOs and proof-of-stake (PoS) while living in Colombia for 3 months, meeting a part of the Dash.org's core team, and pitching 2 open-source projects.

• Dash's DAO had a dedicated treasury with allocations determined by the monthly voting process of DASH token holders. Funded projects ranged from funding the core team, merchant solution app development for small-to-medium businesses, educational podcasts, and local marketing in cities like Medellín and Caracas.
• The core Dash development team participated in the same funding process as the rest of the ecosystem, although they applied for longer term 3 or 6 month grants than newer participants.
• The results of monthly voting were not fully on-chain. The core team/treasury sub-DAO had to distribute assets to the grantees or take other manual actions based on the results.

What worked well

• Having a dedicated treasury to the DAO
• Recurring revenues of DASH, I believe from running the PoS masternodes.

Rocket Pool

I recently started following Rocket Pool's DAO the past few months and will continue to see what works well with their grants program. Similar to Dash, from what I understand the results of their voting grants are manually distributed. The community is extremely active on Discord and supportive to newcomers and educating others.

🔰 What to adopt for Safe

• Product market fit
  • The Dash community did not have product market fit for the Dash token and protocol for any one geographical region or product category which resulted in constant debate over what types of projects to fund.
  • Potential solutions
    • The DAO to prioritize developing a strong product market fit (PMF) and revenue model for SAFE token. This should be clearly communicated as it develops to reduce confusion and to point to as a source of truth. The DAO can vote to formalize iterations as needed.
    • PMF helps inform treasury investment.
• Decentralize governance by making voting decisions binding on-chain
  • Potential solutions: Progressively integrate processes on-chain, e.g. Snapshot and other voting protocol results to on-chain actions.
• Dash's Discord and communications process were not efficient
  • Lots of repeated messaging and spam when trying to reach consensus on given strategy and/or idea
  • Potential solutions
    • Define sources of shared info to reduce repeating the same content and info, e.g. Wikis, guides, forums, etc.
    • Experiment with sybil resistant solutions and/or token-gating to help ensure every user has anonymity if desired and an equivalent share of voice, e.g. Proof of Humanity, Gitcoin passport, ERC-721 distributions based on roles, etc.

Balance between moving fast and decentralization

Do you have any thoughts on how this can/should evolve in the future for Safe DAO?

Comparison to Android

As a full-time Android developer from 2016 - 2021 I initially relied on the open-source communities as I taught myself Java and Android to transition from my business development role. I continued to participate in the open-source communities to debug issues and publish content and talks. While learning Android development in 2016 I also learned about Ethereum. I was excited about Ethereum's ecosystem because of the similarities to Android and the ability to create global solutions on top of an open-source protocol. Safe seems similar to Android because Safe is an open layer for a healthy app ecosystem.

What works well

• The Android community has a major impact in driving technical innovation to the core protocols
  • JetBrains invented the open-source Kotlin language which was later adopted by Google/Android as its official language after feedback from the app dev ecosystem.
  • Square consistently publishes open-source libraries adopted by the largest app companies, e.g. okhttp, retrofit, picasso, etc.
• Google/Android invest in building communities, e.g. Developer relations (DevRel) and Google Developer Experts (GDEs)
  • DevRel consistently publishes tech guides, prototypes, speaks at conferences, and consults with teams on strategy.
  • There's city-based communities globally supporting GDEs who are outside of Google and thought leaders and organizers in their city.

🔰 What to adopt for Safe

• Build a protocol ecosystem that encourages projects and companies to build off of and also contribute improvements back to the core protocol.

  • This is a major factor for balancing speed and decentralization. It allows the core Safe team to build important infrastructure at a more likely slower pace, while allowing outside teams to experiment and develop rapidly.
  • Support teams with feedback and guidance.
  • Publish opinionated architecture design resources.
  • Adopt outside innovations into core protocol.

• Start off building SafeDAO Guardians program to encompass similar roles to the Google Developer Expert program with support from the core Safe team.

  • Over time Guardians should have more ownership and control over the Safe ecosystem than once governance and treasury models are developed.

Progressive decentralization

I would be interested in your view towards "progressive decentralisation" and the community having impact/influence on product decisions.

Do you have any thoughts on how this can/should evolve in the future for Safe DAO?

From a high level technology decisions that are programmable offer the opportunity to decentralize over time. For instance, I like HackMD as a collaboration tool because it offers programmability/incremental decentralization.

• Starting off I can use the centralized version hosted on AWS
• Over time I can decentralize with their APIs, e.g., Self-hosting on a decentralized server provider, automate publishing to Arweave/IPFS using continuous integration/continuous depoyment, and etc.

Governance

1. Increase SAFE token distribution across a wider set of active users.
   • Lower the concentration of SAFE token power.
2. On-chain governance for role-based management
   • Votes on Snapshot or other voting protocols providing on-chain rights to individuals through token-gating, decentralized registries (Delegate.cash), and etc.
3. Develop Safe token product-market-fit (Mentioned above).
4. Build environment that encourages ecosystem contributions.
   • Build strong Dev Rel and Guardians programs (Mentioned above) that creates contributions back to the core protocol and product.
5. On-chain governance for treasury management
   • Moving towards the long-term all funding comes through the SafeDAO and provides the community with product development responsibility.
   • SafeDAO becomes a primary governance body of Safe Ecosystem Foundation (SEF) as a voting committee.
   • Both sources of product development, the core team and the outside ecosystem are funded through the same treasury (Similar to Dash, but on-chain).
   • This assumes the DAO is sufficiently decentralized and effective at making decisions.

Product

• Improve tools for advanced users to customize and decentralize
  • Integration to choose "operating system" for Safe, e.g. Den, Multis, Firm, and etc.
    • Similar to Android user choosing Pixel OS (Safe) or Samsung (Den, Multis, or Firm)
  • Specific access control
• Make it easy to connect to your own Ethereum or other network layer node
• Backup and recovery
  • Be able to recover and run a Safe completely independent of the the current centralized backend services.
  • Given a tech-savvy user that can follow tutorial steps, but not necessarily a software engineer.