In part 1 of this series, we explored how a Space Collective might benefit from a DAO.
Part 2 explored why a DAO improves human coordination.
Today we attend to some patterns for getting the collective started and evolving as it grows.
The DAOhaus blog suggests 10 basic DAO patterns. Our purpose here is not to do a deep dive on these patterns, but to see how they fit the collective, so let's start with a whirlwind tour.
Pattern Overview
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Fund Pooling - a collective's members make a "tribute" to the treasury and receive a proportional number of shares in exchange. The funds are used collectively by members voting with their shares and using ragequit to keep control over their portion of the funds. The collective could fund real-world projects with low risk and high control and reward to the backers.
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No Ragequit - the collective's members shouldn't be able to remove money that isn't theirs. Ragequiting members shouldn't have access to funds contributed by external investors or raised by the community. By moving these types of funds out of the main treasury and into vaults, the DAO retains voting on proposals, but without ragequit.
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Tokenization - The collective's members who contribute funds receive voting shares for contributions, as in Fund Pooling above, but the funds are held in the DAO's token rather than ETH or DAI. This is equivalent to staking tokens for voting rights common on many DeFi platforms, with ragequit for un-staking. The collective holds other funds in non-ragequitable vaults as in No Ragequit above.
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Reputation - The collective uses voting shares, as in Fund Pooling, (voting rights and a claim on the treasury) and "loot" (non-voting, non-transferable claims on the treasury) to track context-specific reputation. The collective fully controls reputation by generating it from peers and storing shares and loot immutably on-chain, without admins or intermediaries. Weighted voting based on shares then becomes a proxy for reputation and the collective controls who influences actions.
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Staking Compensation - collective contributors periodically stake their compensation in return for shares. Those who create the most value for the collective receive increasing influence in the organization's direction.
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Loot - loot was introduced in the Reputation pattern above as a non-voting, non-transferrable claim on the treasury. Funders receive loot shares in proportion to their capital contributions while the core collective team could keep full voting shares on proposals. A core of collective members may retain autonomy over spending while decreasing the funder risk for those that don't agree with proposed directions.
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Replace Multisig - just like business bank accounts require multiple people to sign cheques, cryptocurrency has multisig accounts that require three or more people to agree before the smart contract initiates any action. Multisig offers better security than allowing a single person to control funds. Moloch DAOs use Minion Vaults to mimic multisig functionality with two advantages: minion vaults support variable weight voting among members and scale to 150 members, whereas multisig is capped at 15.
The collective can use this pattern to enable subDAOs together with the Token, Reputation and Staking Compensation patterns. Members would stake the parent DAO token to receive subDAO shares when joining the subDAO. They earn more shares by creating value within the subDAO.
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Membership Tiers - the collective distinguishes between contributor types based on experience, contribution, or other factors. Moloch DAOs use share thresholds to trigger membership changes. As members earn more shares (as in the Reputation and Staking Compensation patterns above) they change tiers automatically. Adding loot tiers as a second dimension creates even more customizability to membership categories.
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Delegated Work - As the collective grows in complexity, it can delegate work to subDAO with dedicated vaults using middleware software called "Minions". (Vaults were discussed above in the No Ragequit, Tokenization and Replace Multisig patterns). Members can join the subDAO to work on projects they find interesting or to apply special knowledge or experience.
By delegating work, the collective shares control and concentrates responsibility into domains that drive action and eliminates free-rider problems as it scales. The collective can either control the minion directly (i.e. No Ragequit) or delegate a set of multisig signers (i.e. Replace Multisig). Worst-case scenario, the collective can still retrieve funds if delegates disappear or mutiny.
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Progressive Decentralization - starting with a small core team, the collective gradually increases transparency and decentralizes governance. By using a Moloch DAO, the collective is decentralized and open from the start and thoughtfully applies the patterns nine patterns to progress. Your mother may have called this, "Starting as you mean to go on". Being a DAO from the beginning builds a culture and set of practices around non-hierarchical decision-making and collective actions that lay a sound foundation for further progress.
Putting It All Together
With a single flexible DAO, the collective can start incredibly simply with a group of like-minded people to coordinate and discuss ideas.
As ideas gel, and excitement grows, the Fund Pooling pattern might choose to grow financial resources. They might later apply the Reputation pattern to track and recognize valuable contributions with additional shares.
When funding grows beyond initial the initial contributors, the collective would start using Loot to attract a broad range of contributors, Replace Multisig to hold and manage funds, and Staking Compensation to improve contributor incentives with more reputation. Finally, when fully mature, the collective launches the Token pattern offering value outside of the DAO.
Thanks for reading! The series continues with an exploration of what a Space Collective's vision, mission, and initial projects might include.
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash