DAO Business Models and Consultants

As @Amazongirl mentioned in this thread, there’s a lot of opportunity to bring DAOs to market. Currently there’s a gap between those who are interested in using DAOs and those who understand DAOs. A program (or DAO) dedicated to educating and training people on various DAO business models and DAO design/architectures could help fill this gap. This would:

  • create information about DAOs that speaks the language of users and business owners rather than just developers
  • incentivize research into DAO business models and resulting architectures
  • allow “DAO consultants” or a “Consultancy DAO” to generate profits to fund the above activities through paid consultancy and/or sales referrals to teams that build custom DAOs or provide paid support for DAOs and Aragon apps.

@joeycharlesworth had some ideas around this regarding Expert Networks and it’s been mentioned in the StrategyWG calls that more research into DAO business models is essential for current and future Aragon teams to succeed.

Starting this thread to discuss how to make all of this happen :slight_smile:

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FTR there’s a few teams already working on similar endeavors, however there is no clear business model (that I know of) for these teams to connect their consult services to paying customers and/or earn sales referrals.

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Summarizing and sharing a conversation between @Amazongirl and I around creating a DAO and/or business model for paid DAO consultants. We’d like to design an efficient and scalable sales funnel to onboard projects that want to start using Aragon DAOs. This will help more DAO curious projects convert into projects that actually use Aragon DAOs.

  • There’s currently a huge gap between those who understand DAOs and those who are curious about DAOs. Many projects would like to decentralize their operations and governance, but don’t know how. These projects are also real businesses and they don’t have time to dig through dozens of forum posts. A DAO dedicated to onboarding projects to use Aragon DAOs could help. This would allow more teams to use DAOs to empower their organizations.
  • Currently experienced Aragon teams are doing this work, but we don’t have the bandwidth to scale these types of operations as the network grows. Having a DAO dedicated to these functions would be incredibly helpful, esp because the goal of the AA is to decentralize itself as much as possible.
  • The first step would be to draft a whitepaper for the DAO design. We could then dogfood the model. Hopefully other teams will do so as well. As we try stuff out we can update the model accordingly.
  • The DAO would have members (consultants) who scout deals and/or get leads from the Aragon community. Aragon community members would get rewards for sending the DAO deals. The DAO would have a system to assign deals to members. Members would then charge a flat fee for basic services such as explaining the DAO templates in the Aragon App Store and helping clients make a decision as to which is best for them. If clients have extra questions or needs the DAO and/or member could negotiate a deal for additional work or services. This might involve more consulting and/or premium services such as working with lawyers to understand legal implications, getting insurance for the DAO, or getting premium developer support for the DAO to make sure it’s always up to date. Regardless of the premium services, the client would have a single point of contact to manage all of those things.
  • The DAO referral process should have a system behind it. Otherwise leads will just go to the most popular members. This will create a power law distribution that does not incentivize new members to contribute and also skews results towards popularity rather than skill. To guard against this a system (could be public or private) that ranks members could be created. It would measure key metrics such as conversion rates, deals closed, and availability/response times. This would prioritize consultants who are either very experienced or immediately available. The default would be that the system sends deals to consultants, but clients could also select the members they want. This would allow consultants to source their own deals and/or get their own referrals from current customers or community members.

The mechanics of all of this would have to be ironed out, but in general this seems like a promising path forward. The next step is to gather feedback and draft ideas into a workable model. That’s where you come in! What do you think? Do you like it? Does it suck? Let us know :slight_smile:

The things we are the most interested in are:

  • Help designing and pricing a basic onboarding package that meets the needs of many organizations.
  • Ideas or preferences as to how to optimize the DAO’s workflow.
  • Volunteers who would like to help design the DAO and/or contribute to a pilot project.

Thanks!

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I think besides initial brief feedback, those who contribute their time and skills toward designing this DAO should be compensated.

I value everyone’s time.

This is why I would like to help create a model where people’s time and skills are rewarded and they are incentivized to add the most value to Aragon.

There is a baseline where every consultant gets fixed compensation but there is no upper cap on their earnings potential. This compensation comes from client revenue and not from the Aragon treasury or a grants funding pool.

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It would be an amazing initiative. I am starting a DAO and i would be greateful to learn about handling it better by being part of a Consultancy DAO. I don’t want to repeat again some failures i had in the past by trying to launch a ICO or any kind of crowdfunding campaign.

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Personally, I find specific DAOlandscape entries not up-to-date or too shallow or both.
If I can find the info myself after 10 minutes of googling, then the value add of starting with the directory entry, that mostly belabors generic DAO truisms, is not really there.
The Aragon entry ends in April, with the 2nd vote, which is pathetic, in this quick moving field, and I’d think that Aragon folks could be maintaining it, given a chance.
No entries for Moloch or MetaCartel or dxDAO or necDAO, seriously?
Just maybe, if this effort operated as a DAO, pulling in reps from respective efforts, with recognition and rewards for the updaters…

@burrrata, you have great and relevant ideas listed.
Any updates, meaningful ways to contribute, get involved?

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As I mentioned to @burrrata previously, I have encountered multiple crypto projects seriously considering the formation of a DAO. For some, it was on their roadmap and to-do list. I wasn’t thinking of Aragon when these opportunities came up and so I didn’t chat with them specifically about forming an Aragon DAO. But my feeling was that they just didn’t know how to take the next step nor what their best options were in moving forward.

So the availability of DAO consultants could very well be the missing link between contemplating a DAO to successfully implementing an Aragon DAO.

I think a soft approach works best. So getting feedback from founders on what their DAO needs are would be a helpful way to distill the most important features in the DAO they are contemplating, as well as give them a gentle nudge toward taking the next step.

Maybe a Google form or Typeform could be shared with project founders asking them whether they would like to enable a list of specific DAO features for their community. They would be asked to rank the importance of each feature on a scale of 1 to 10. Finally, they would be asked whether they would like to implement such features within the next 30 to 60 days if they received full support, and whether they would be willing to pay $X for this implementation + 30 days of support.

We could gather this feedback and see what are the most commonly requested features. And then we would solicit a list of community members with the necessary knowledge/skills to act as DAO consultants for these “pipeline” projects.

@Burrata had mentioned that a white paper would need to be written about the formation of a DAO specifically for offering DAO consultancy services.

So I don’t know if gathering feedback from “pipeline” founders should come before or after the white paper.

If we really do get projects signing up with DAO consultants, do we still need a white paper?

Please let me know what you think! :nerd_face::grin:

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@wkarshat Welcome to the community and thank you for weighing in :slight_smile: Totally agree that there needs to be more up to date information available for people to understand, design, and use DAOs. Would be happy to work with you to improve this situation.

Currently the best way to get involved is to do exactly what you did: reach out on the forum and start a conversation. If we wanted to move forward, and it sounds like we do, then the next step might be, as @Amazongirl said, to talk to projects about their goals, pain points, and how they want to use DAOs. Then we could do research to develop consulting and support programs to solve those pain points and help teams achieve their goals with DAOs. A survey might be a good start. Also might be good to just start talking to people if we already know people who might be interested. Open to other ideas as well.

Regarding the whitepaper: that should actually have said “lightpaper.” Really just meant a rough sketch of the DAO’s architecture, the goals of the organization, how people would be rewarded and recognized, how decisions would be made, etc… The whole point of the DAO was to provide structure around the work, but what really matters is that DAO consultants can help teams solve problems using Aragon DAOs. Everything else is a detail.

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In the subject of business models:

The consultancy business model is simple - selling time for money. It’s simple, it’s well understood, been doing that for many years at various jobs.

I’ve been observing Ethereum and the whole Blockchain space for a few months and other than having an ICO I haven’t seen any business models to compensate all the devs in a project’s team for their hard work.kamukta

I realize the whole point of decentralization is to remove the middleman and thus the middleman does not need to be paid, but then what incentive is there to develop things on the Ethereum Blockchain if the only way to make money is by having an ICO.

If there are other ways to monetize your work in this space I’d love to hear how because having an ICO just to get rewarded for your work seems like overkill.

Hello! We are happy to help with our experience. Our DAO works since April 2019 as a DeFi asset management. It s organised mostly for a group of people, who know each other well offline, so we haven t done anything about legal status. But we’ve made many different operations, like lending through compound.finance, staking liquidity in uniswap.exchange, buying ENS domains, or even parcels in Decentraland. We have also elaborated several governance models, projects management and participants motivation schemes. We ll be happy to share our knowledge. We are ready to provide consulting.
Name: UniDao
Telegram english chat: @unidao_en
Web site: unidao.fund

We have in our team (founders) about 20 people and among them:

  • Financial people with experienced working in top international banks (like Citi etc.)
  • Blockchain specialists, which are in the area since 2013
  • IT people
  • Lawyers
  • Venture funds owners and advisors
  • Fintech founders/advisors

UniDao is a framework on top of Aragon for building different DAOs.

Right now we have in our network

MarsDAO - DeFi staking and management
SaturnDAO - Metaverse land management
AutolycusDAO - ENS domains management and…well…cybersquatting :slight_smile:
EarthDAO - management and ownership of the patents and intellectual property in the form of ERC721 tokens

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Hey @namanjohnson101,

Welcome on the Aragon Forum!

The DAO space is still early and most products do not have product market fit, which partly explains why development teams are still running on ICO funds.

However, revenue/funding models do exist). For example, Aragon teams have been working on a bonding curve fundraising module (a powerful evolution of the ICO). More recently Aragon Nest has been looking to develop a suscriptions app for Aragon DAOs.

Hope this helps :slight_smile:

Hey @voronkovventures,

So cool to see that :smiley:
What I’ll do is create a list of people interested in consulting so we can start putting people consultants in touch with users!

I’m wondering which one of these DAOs/use-case is the most important to Unidao?

Hi everyone. Happy 2020!!!

I have just created a new post in the Community section of the forum requesting for a grant to test the viability of DAO Consultants:

Please check it out and fire away your questions!

@burrrata Please let me know if I did that proposal right and what needs to be changed. I am really busy right now finishing up a project, but I will check this thread and the grant proposal thread daily. DM me too if you need to! :smiley:

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As far as I can tell it looks great. Thank you so much for putting in the work to structure this and move it forward :slight_smile:

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:grin: I look forward to feedback from the community.

I’ve started a related thread in the Community section about how DAO Consultants can bring synergy and a ripple effect to the Aragon ecosystem and social responsibility initiatives:
How Aragon DAOs can empower and enhance Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Shared Value (CSV)

Would this be a DAO Business Model and Consultant Firm? https://daomaker.com/offer

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Hey Mouyou, DAO Maker does mostly social mining. Projects can sign on to their platform to grow their community by giving rewards for marketing tasks, like sharing on Twitter, Facebook, and creating memes, etc. It’s almost like a bounty hunting platform except that each project can integrate DAO Maker’s platform on their own website (e.g., https://community.elrond.com) and only that project’s bounty/marketing campaign is featured.

I checked out what they did for Harmony and I believe Harmony’s community social mining platform (provided by DAO Maker) required staking ONE tokens in order to participate in bounty rewards.

I believe DAO Maker built their own software and it is not Aragon based.

I thought that something like DAO Maker for Aragon could work. Like searching for Token / DAO Business Models in a community effort (DAO style) and bundle them together into products and then consult businesses with which product they could empower their community/users to create more value for the business.

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