Exploring Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

I'm playing around with Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) tonight and I thought I'd share some stuff here in case others are interested in that space.

These notes will assume you have a basic understanding of what a DAO is. If you don't, check out this book section here: https://github.com/sherminvo/TokenEconomyBook/wiki/Institutional-Economics-of-Web3-Networks-&-other-DAOs

DAOs with Aragon.org

So, one of the platforms I'm looking into is Aragon.org

Creating a DAO

Aragon Client vs. Aragon Govern

One of the options you are faced with is whether you want your DAO on "Aragon Client" or "Aragon Govern".

I had no idea what to pick… 🤔

Time to find some docs!! 📚 📖

Here is what seems to be an important difference: Decision Making.

With Aragon Govern, votes are not the default decision-making mechanism (they call this "Optimistic Governance"). With Aragon Client, they are.

I wanted to explore the Optimistic Governance first.

Aragon Govern Config

Here are the available options that help explain what "Optimistic Governance" translates to.

All that stops your transaction from moving forward is basically the "Execution Delay". During that time frame, others can challenge this transaction. If they don't, your transaction goes through.

Having said that, it is common for some organizations / communities to have some other decision-making process that they coordinate off-chain.

The "Rules/Agreement" text is there to ensure those rules have been communicated accordingly and people know what to do before putting up a transcation.

Collaterals?

The next step is titled Collaterals.

Once again, I have no idea what that means.

Luckily, there is a section on the top right of the screen, helping explain. Kudos Aragon UX team!! 👏👏

So, the main option here is if people will schedule transations by staking (i.e. risking to lose) an existing token (the default is the DAI stablecoin), or whether all these transactions will happen in the newly created token of your new DAO.

I went for DAI (the default).

Otherwise, the main option is the address whitelist (Hey, @Aragon folks, how about changing that to allow-list? ;) ). This feature allows you to limit which addresses can schedule transactions. One thing that was not clear to me from the wizard was whether this is option can be edited in the future (and how)…

Ok, I'm ready to create my DAO on Ethereum Mainnet!!!

Oh wait, I just need to confirm on metamask, right? … Ok, let's try that.

Say what !?!?

227 USD !?!?!?!?

Note: We'd obviously need some ETH to test it. But 227 USD gas fees really is something… Looks like we'll need to move to Rinkeby Testnet to run our tests. To be continued…

DAOs with Colony

Colony seems to be in a more early stage than Aragon. One think it really made me a good impression is their whitepaper. It's a long read but it clears things up about colony's terminology and how it works.

One of the problems they currently try to solve is the high gas price on the ethereum chain. This is the main reason Colony's app is suspended. I cannot test it till this is solved

Theoretically, one can use Colony's App to create their own DAO but it's not feasible until they move to another chain xDAI.

Colony is organized in a tree-like structure of Domains. Something like departments or teams of a company, or even projects.

Access control is organized around the concept of Permissions. There are six different permissions, some of the limited to the Domain and others about the whole DAO.
I think we can skip digging into the whitepaper if we use their app when available.

Another interesting point is that Colony itself is a DAO based on colony

Decentralised Borderless Voluntary Nation (DBVN) in BitNation

//ToDo: https://tse.bitnation.co/

Creating our very own DAO

After playing around with the test networks and figuring out how a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) works, now it is time to try to set up our very own DAO.

We want to create an organization that unites individuals who want to run validator nodes for various blockchains, but lack the resources or knowledge to do it themselves.

FAQ

• Why would individuals want to run validator nodes?

  • To make money from gas fees
  • To help decentralized networks

• "Lack resources" ?

  • Running validator nodes costs money. By pooling their individual resources, they can afford to run (better) nodes.
  • Members who contribute with money should get rewarded

• "Lack knowledge" ?

  • Running validator nodes requires some pretty specialized knowledge.
  • Members who contribute this knowledge should get rewarded.