---
# System prepended metadata

title: '**DAO Framework Landscape**'
tags: [Product]

---

---
tags: Product
---
# **DAO Framework Landscape**

### DAO frameworks / platforms
- Gnosis safe (multi-sigs)
- DAOstack
- Colony
- Aragon
- DAOhaus / Moloch

### DAO personas / types
- Grants / accelerators
- Ventures / investments
- Guilds / services
- Clubs / social
- Non-profit / impact
- Product / project
- Enterprise 
- Protocol governance
- Meatspace management 

### DAO framework attributes / dimensions
- Modularity
    - low modularity
    - high modularity
- Interaction with other protocols / contracts
    - DAO goes to the protocol
    - Protocol comes to the DAO
- Permissioning
    - permissioned
    - permissionless
- Configurable
    - not configurable / parametizable
    - highly configurable / parametizable
- Consensus / voting
    - 1 member 1 vote
    - Weighted by shares or rep
    - Futarchy or holographic
    - Timelock or conviction
    - Quadratic - tokenized with each votes costing the square of that vote. 


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## Gnosis Safe
Gnosis doesn't market Safes as DAOs, but since they allow a group of people to manage and use shared funds, they count!

Safes are conceptually very simple: a group of signers have equal say in how shared funds get spent or used. Transactions can be proposed, and are executed if they receive a quorum of Yes votes. Transactions can be simple transfers or more complex interactions.

Gnosis has recently made it easier for Safes to interact with other smart contracts with the introduction of Apps. Anybody can create an App for Gnosis Safe, which allow a Safe to easily interact with the protocol underlying the App. Apps are the Gnosis Safe version of Aragon Agent and Moloch Minion, with the key difference that the App comes to the Safe rather than the Agent or the Minion going to the app.

Like Molochs, Safes are permissioned.

### Strengths
- Simplicity. Pretty much everybody understands the basic concept
- Easy to create and manage
- Has become the industry standard for teams to manage shared funds
- Extensible with Apps and contract interactions
- Voting with signatures rather than 
- Permissioned nature creates a safe space for members
### Weaknesses
- UI is fickle and buggy
- 1 owner 1 vote; no weighted shares limits the types of use cases to where owners have roughly the same share of the funds or where there is already significant trust between owners.
- Apps have to be purpose-built
- Quorum requirement (and lack of ragequit) limits social scalability
### Opportunities
- Make Apps easier to built so that any new protocol will create a Safe App alongside their main front end
- Move up-market by enabling weighted shares and ragequit => compete directly with molochs
### Threats
- Weighted multisigs (e.g. molochs) becoming just as easy/cheap to create and use

## Colony
Colony is a DAO framework focused mostly on creating and incentivizing communities to do work on projects. This puts them somewhere in between a bounties network and standard DAO framework. This also means they are well positioned to compete with Molochs, if product DAOs become a very popular DAO type. As of today, Colony seems to be in a distant fourth place when it comes to DAO platforms, with only three DAOs showing up on Deep DAO. https://colony.io/ 

### Strengths
- Simple, focused on incentives / bounties
- Focuses users on tasks / actions to take
- Built-in reputation and payment system
- Domains create a flexible structure for managing funding and tasks on a project basis
### Weaknesses
- Pay for username on platform (i.e. cost before engagement)
- Clunky DAO creation process without much explanation / help
- No arbitrary interactions with other contracts or protocols (i.e. nothing like minion or agent)
- Dictator-first: admins have lots of power by default
### Opportunities
- Minor pivot to Initial DAO offerings to compete with DAOHaus IDOs
- Replace bounties network 
### Threats
- More customizable / flexible DAO frameworks 
- Fully non-permissioned future of work platforms like Gitcoin
- Negative brand impact if an admin steals funds


## DAOstack
DAOstack's original plan was to leverage it's holographic consensus mechanism to make DAOs easier for large communities and to be more autonomous. Holographic consensus, however, proved to be a complicated idea to explain to many communities, which left DAOstack falling behind Aragon in terms of competing for large DAOs. DAOstack still has a number of pretty well capitalized DAOs on its platform, including DXDAO, which is a large DeFi funding mechanism. https://daostack.io/

Currently, DAOstack is working on a mobile-first DAO application called Common that will target social entrepreneurs and groups focused on supporting public goods. Common's goal is to abstract away much of the crypto-UI, so that users feel like they're dealing with any other mobile app with payments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vefFCodgSPw&feature=youtu.be

### Strengths
- DAO creation allows for lots of customization without being overwhelming
- DAOs are upgradeable 
- Talented technical team
### Weaknesses
- Seems like they're low on money
- Common is behind schedule on launching
- Holographic consensus is too complicated of a mechanic
### Opportunities
- A successful Common launch could cross the chasm to traditional users for DAOs 
### Threats
- Running out of money
- Unsuccessful Common launch means being left with a product inferior to Aragon and Moloch
- Splitting focus between building for large DAOs (which can best take advantage of holographic consensus) and building Common for social entreprenuers


## Aragon
Aragon is trying to be everything to all decentralized organizations. It has built out a number of modular apps, all of which can be extensively configured and composed together in different ways to meet the needs of the organization. 

The result is a large amount of flexibility and control, which on the flip side places a significant burden on the summoner to figure out what their organization needs and how to create it.

To help reduce this decision space, Aragon has created a number of templates to use as starting points.

### templates
- [Dandelion](https://www.notion.so/Dandelion-User-Guide-58216bc8a82340c0aa87cd39774a15ef)
    - basically a moloch
    - "redemptions" = ragequit
    - permissioned membership
- Company
- Fundraising
- Open Enterprise
- Membership
- Reputation

### Strengths
- Modularity
- Extensibility
- Treasury / funding
- Brand recognition

### Weaknesses
- summoner decision paralysis
- DAO setup complexity
- low meme-ability
- reliance on core team(s) for development + foundation for development funding
- gas costly

### Opportunities
- create an ecosystem of interoperable apps to generate a network effect-driven moat
- copy any new DAO framework that emerges and plug it into existing ecosystem => instant improvement

### Threats
- Risk of being unbundled => competitor that can significantly improve on one of Aragon's verticals, e.g. better support a single type of DAO
- Lack of focus (i.e. Aragon DAOs vs. Aragon Court for dispute resolution)
- Governance failure (plutocracy)
- Fighting the last war => trying to make DAOs fit existing conceptions of a company
- Some apps (e.g. Aragon Court) work with non-Aragon protocols, diminishing their impact on Aragon's network effect
- transaction costs
- No clear business model beyond ICO (and consulting services??)

### References
https://bravenewcoin.com/insights/aragon-price-analysis-robust-dao-infrastructure-remains-waiting-for-users

## DAOhaus / Moloch
DAOhaus empowers communities of humans to coordinate and iteratively align around shared goals. It uses the Moloch DAO framework to provide minimal infrascture that supports decentralized coordination within a non-adversarial environment while protecting minority parties from majority decisions.

### Strengths
- Decentralized; no hierarchy
- Weighted shares enable a multitude of use cases and mix of members (e.g., compared to the rigidity of Gnosis Safe)
- Ragequit...
    - protects minority parties from unwanted impact of majority decisions
    - drives the community towards iterative alignment around a shared goal or objective
- Permissioned membership creates a safe environment for the community to coordinate and grow, protected from the adversarial external environment
- Minimally codified governance structure...
    - embraces fuzzy, informal social coordination
    - undergirds governance by social norms, opening up a huge design space for different types of coordination that would be impossible to codify on-chain
    - sidesteps Goodhart's law
- human-friendly user interface
- Minion enables interactions with other protocols and contracts
    - Supports both "DAO-goes-to-protocol" and "protocol-comes-to-DAO" modes
- Hyper focus on community and iterative alignment
- Simple for most people to understand without a steep learning curve

### Weaknesses
- Proposal -> voting period -> grace period flow makes quick decisions difficult
- Key functions are gas-heavy
- Lack of user-friendly extensions and modules (e.g., relative to Aragon)
- Lack of explicit roles creates all-or-nothing decentralization over control of DAO resources. Bank is decentrally controlled, but web2 tools currently must be managed by trusted members.
    - However, threat of guildkick does mitigate this

### Opportunities
- Be the first DAO framework to successfully support L2 -> attract new-forming DAOs blocked from creating on other frameworks by high gas costs
- Build and foster ecosystem of modular capabilities to give DAOs more options while maintaining the relatively simple core Moloch functions
- Enable DAOs to collectively control web2 resources
- Strengthen "iterative alignment" property
    - enable ragequit on more DAO decisions to force more stay-or-go member decisions
    - improve visibility and member awareness of each DAO decision to make member stay-or-go decisions more explicit
- Foster inter-DAO engagement to strengthen community focus and create a network effect
- Longer term: execute "land and expand" strategy to displace DAOstack and Aragon among larger, permissionless DAOs
    - create mechanisms for Moloch DAOs to transition to permissionless / token-driven DAOs over time

### Threats
- Gnosis Safe implementing weighted shares and leveraging their large user base to move up-market into true DAOs
- Aragon progressing its Dandelion product faster than DAOhaus can gain additional traction / users / distribution (classic incumbent::startup relationship)
- DAOstack successfully pivoting to lighter, more accessible DAOs on the back of a well-executed Common launch
- Colony perservering through its current challenges and emerging as a way for product teams to simultaneously self-organize and engage their communities
- High transaction cost environment
- Losing focus on what makes Moloch DAOs unique; trying to generalize to support more types of DAOs too quickly
- Trying to codify too many DAO policies rather than leaving them open to 
- Running out of funding / runway