# DAO Drop - R&D

## Project Description

The EF has the funds but lacks the information needed to effectively allocate resources beyond primary tracks like ETH2 R&D. It is simply too difficult for any single organization to focus on all of the needs of such a large and diverse ecosystem. The individuals and communities that know what's needed are highly distributed.

DAOs could leverage the domain knowledge of these actors to serve as more effective and transparent allocators over time. We propose a program to score addresses based on past on-chain activity (dapp usage, development, event attendendance) that gives them influence over fund allocation decisions. The program could be seeded with funds and the minimal marketing and UI necessary to start allocating resources as they see fit. This project encompasses the R&D phase needed to get the program to launch-readiness.

- **Month 1: Research**
- Investigate current resource allocation practices across the ecosystem to identify gaps and potential areas for improvement
- Evaluate different governance frameworks
- Generate list of possible cohorts
- Research and spec out technical implementation and operational rollout plan
- **Month 2 & 3: Development**
- Script for cohort creation, merkle root contract, and distribution scripts
- Configure and make modifications to the chosen contracts
- Mock-up the app's landing page and UI
- **Month 4: Feedback & Plan for Next Steps**
- Develop criteria to measure impact of allocation decisions
- Test the deployment process
- Plan for potential pilot launch and future iterations to extend DAO drops into an iterative ecosystem-wide game

## Team Profile

This project will be executed by the [dOrg](https://dOrg.tech) web3 development collective, spearheaded by the following members:

| Name | Role | Bio |
|-|-|-|
| [Magenta Ceiba](https://twitter.com/magentaceiba) | PM & Research | Organizational development consultant, specializing in decentralized leadership and cross-sector finance. Past work includes ICV philanthropic investment bank, Bloom Network, Tabula Rasa Ventures, and Giveth.
| [Louis Parker](https://github.com/lpscrypt) | Contracts & Frontend |Full-stack web3 developer, experienced in web3 integrations, front end implementation, smart contract design and development, and subgraphs. Past work includes Askolend, OVR, and Zer0.
| [Christopher Dixon](https://github.com/stan36) | Contracts | Full-stack web3 developer, specialized in smart contract design and development with a particular interest in the potential of DAOs. Past work includes StakeOnMe and meToken, OVR, and Zer0. |
| [Muath Juady](https://github.com/MuathJ/) | Design, Frontend, Web3 Integration | Front-end web3 developer & designer. Past work includes DyNotify, MillionAPI, reNFT, and Opolis. |
| [Ori Shimony](https://twitter.com/orishim) | Advisory | DAO operations specialist with experience in governance design and web3 project architecture. Involved in the planning phases for dOrg projects such as Starkware, The Graph, Aragon, DAOstack, Tezos, Badger, Boardroom, and Gnosis. |

## Impact

This program will address the need to decentralize the funding of the larger Ethereum ecosystem, in order to more intelligently allocate capital and resources to development.

We believe that these DAOs will help the EF acheive its core mission:
> Our mission is to do what is best for Ethereum’s long-term success. Our role is to allocate resources to critical projects, to be a valued voice within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to advocate for Ethereum to the outside world.

This work will benefit the Ethereum community and the world at large. Beneficiaries may include local communities adopting Ethereum tools, engineers who see the need for specific advances, and more.

A long term goal of this project is to establish reliable decision/expert hubs capable of leading ecosystem domains (potentially allocating $5M+).

## Needs and Challenges

Governance is hard. Our primary concern will be choosing and adapting the best on-chain governance solution for tackling the EF's resource allocation problem. dOrg is intimiately familiar with the governance design space, having worked with many of the top governance-related projects (Aragon, Gnosis Safe, Compound, Boardroom, DAOstack, Tezos) and operated ourselves as a DAO for over 2 years. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for governance– our approach will be lean, iterative, and data-driven.

We'll be exploring potential solutions based on existing options, getting feedback from EF members, and prototyping the best option. Our initial idea is to use a Compound-style governance fork with forced delegation (inspired by Gitcoin DAO) to ensure high participation. We plan on using a merkle root contract to allow eligible participants to claim their governance tokens within the eligibility timeframe (e.g. 30 days). We will make the governance token non-transferrable to keep decision-making power in the hands of the chosen cohorts and prevent gaming.

Our other biggest challenge will be selecting the right DAO cohorts. We want to avoid risks such as popularity contests, overbiasing towards DeFi users or whales, and large overlaps between cohorts. Our goal is to represent a diverse range of ecosystem participants, including users, developers, infrastructure operators, community organizers and educators.

We'll need to closely interface with EF members to decide on each month's DAO cohort. Here our some initial ideas we have:

- DevCon POAP holders
- EthGlobal winners
- Kickback attendees
- Smart contract deployers (deployed >5 contracts)
- Gitcoin donors (funded >10 different projects)
- Local leaders in different Ethereum communities around the world
- Most active voters in exising DAOs
- Addresses initiated before 2016

## Quote

| Name | Description | Quantity | Unit Price | Amount |
|-|-|-|-|-|
| Builder hours | Design, research, development, project management ([hour projection](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pWoLh2e_nXYKA-noK5uo286dKeuYIsqxi0LP5ZvyhkU)) | 450 | $100 | $45,000 |
| Software Licenses | Purchase domain name, hosting, and design assets | 1 | $500 | $500 |
| Delivery Bonus | Finishing all the code, processes and tutorial necessary to launch the DAO | 1 | $20,000 | $20,000 |
| | | | TOTAL | $65,500 |

## Previous work

[dOrg](https://www.dorg.tech) accelerates development and adoption of diverse projects in the Web3 ecosystem. We are organized as a DAO and believe that DAOs have the potential to support wiser human collaboration, and more freedom in how people work and coordinate resources.

In 2019 we made history by [incorporating the first DAO legal wrapper in the US](https://www.coindesk.com/dorg-founders-have-created-the-first-limited-liability-dao). Since then we have built sofware for projects like Gnosis, Starkware, Aragon, Balancer, The Graph, Badger, Rarible, DAOstack, ParaSwap and Boardroom.