[GUIDE] Using a reputation DAO to organize a community initiative

[GUIDE] Using a reputation DAO to organize a community initiative

You can customize your Aragon Organization with many apps or deploy it from Templates. In this guide, I’ll do my best to explain how one can use the Reputation template available on Aragon mainnet to organize a community initiative.

Reputation template in 3 lines?

  • The reputation template allows you to issue non-transferrable tokens to your current or future Aragon Organization members
  • Holders of reputation tokens can collectively vote on decisions
  • You can decide to issue reputation tokens upon achievement of tasks

Example Use Case

The CommunityDAO (CDAO) is run by Aragon community members. Its goal is to incentivize community-sourced documentation of Aragon apps, templates and user guides.

In the CDAO a reputation token is used to reward the contribution of new documentation. With their tokens, reputation holders approve new pieces of documentation. They may also vote on the future direction of the DAO and how it should spend its resources.


How to use it?

Deploying the Aragon Organization

Here is how it can be done:

  1. Have Metamask set-up (or a browser based wallet of your choice)
  2. Make sure you have ETH (for mainnet you’ll need to visit an exchange, but on Rinkeby you can just visit this faucet)
  3. Go to aragon.mainnet.org (mainnet) or rinkeby.aragon.org (testnet)
  4. Browse templates and pick the Reputation template
  5. Go through the onboarding funnel to choose your organisation name, voting quorum and support (see Governance below)
  6. Sign transactions using Metamask to finalize deployment

For more details, follow this step-by-step guide detailing how to deploy a Reputation Template.

Almost there, but wait! Deploying your Aragon DAO is only part of the preparation work. In order for your community initiative to work for real, you need to define a few key elements which I am going to cover now :slight_smile:

1. Goal of the DAO

The goal of your DAO has to be determined early in the organization design. As a general rule, the narrower and the more precise the goal is, the better. A best practice is to cover an area that you understand in depth. If your goal is to run a community meet-ups program, its going to be easier if you have a clear idea of how a meet-up is prepared and run.

2. Seed members

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”. Once the goal is there, you have the option to invite other ‘founding’ members to join. Seed members are special members of the organization. They will help you design and build the DAO until it runs smoothly in real world conditions. On the one hand, more seed members means more brains to think things through. On the other hand, involving more people may slow down things a bit.

3. Governance

In our case, the reputation token of the organization is automatically linked to the voting app of the DAO which has control over app permissions, minting or burning tokens as well as transferring money. You may also use voting as a way to take important decisions about your organization’s goals and rules. One reputation token equals one vote.

More details about permissions, tokens and money management

4. Incentives & compensation

If you are expecting community members to contribute their time to the initiative, some form of compensation may help. Reputation tokens are a great first step. But you may want to come up with a monetary reward for contributions. The simpler the better.

5. Workflow

How are contributions made? Where are they submitted? Is there a specific format or template? Who reviews and approves them? These are essential questions to answer for fluid collaboration. Generally, a mix of tools is ideal. Aragon for governance and fund management, a versioning system and a forum or some other platform for work coordination, and a chats for communications.

6. Communications

Online communications is the bread and butter of DAOs. There are more static or more fluid communication tools in existence. Among static communication tools, a forum tool like Discourse might do the trick. For chats, you can use Discord, Keybase, Rocket chat, etc…

7. Funding and legal

Funding might be needed if you issue rewards or compensate contributors. At this point chances are that you will need a legal entity to hold funds and receive invoices. This has to be thought of case by case and depending on your jurisdiction. Deploy a legal entity only if you really need one.

8. Testing

Testing your DAO processes, permissions and tools is important to make sure everything runs smoothly. During this early phase, Rinkeby will be your network of choice. It might be optimal to let seed members iterate quickly with the different components of the DAO without going through the full governance process (in our case voting). When a version is stable, you may deploy your DAO on mainnet!

You are now ready to go!


Related Notes

Help

  • If you have more questions or want help getting started with an Aragon reputation DAO, please add a comment to this thread and mention @burrrata or @louisgrx :slight_smile:

*This guide might be updated as we learn more operating the Aragon CommunityDAO

1 Like

I am missing mindmap strucutre. I really like mindmaps they help me understand stuff quick and i see the connection directly. I think gudies need mindmaps and those guides with mindmaps should then be connected in a big mindmap. I like more brainmaps because in a brain everything is connected with everything and in a mindmap its mostly all sperated like a tree. I think the brainmap should be adaptiv to the persepective of the subject. for example if someone is a beginner he gets the beginner brainmap or if he is interested in the aragon client only s/he gets the aragon client brainmap. so you can filter the brainmap for your needs and when you click on filter you see the brainmap changing its appearance.

When a version is stable, you may deploy your DAO on mainnet!

you got the URLs backward here: it’s mainnet.aragon.org and rinkeby.aragon.org :slight_smile:

Also: did you mean to link to some docs here?

1 Like

Sounds like a good idea when we have more guides and resources to build this :slight_smile:

1 Like