DAOs

As the former Head of Community and Platform Architecture at DD Labs / Developer DAO — I've come out of that experience with a great deal of insight into some of the ways that people coordinate, how DAOs (and other community formats) are commonly structured across web3, and then a range of perspectives spanning everything in-between.

Proactivity

When mapping out community management: preventive measures will almost always serve you better than remedial ones. This holds true when constructing CoC processes, community guidelines, reward structures, accountability frameworks etc. They are guardrails.

Interoperability

If you exist at the infrastructure layer of a DAO, you want as lean a tech stack as is humanly possible. There are a lot of moving parts, and a convoluted backend will inevitably translate to the member UX. This is why interoperability is important, when vetting which platforms to adopt.

Group Work

DAO's can become susceptible to dynamics that allow mediocrity and unoriginal ideas to obfuscate members passing off other people’s efforts as their own. And when this occurs, it's typically done under the guise of group-work. ‘Contribution’ tends to be the buzzword.

But it’s a warped (albeit selectively applied) notion of what a decentralized ecosystem looks like.

Collective Drivers

It’s disingenuous to say that activist groups should pay attention to DAOs that fund frivolous pursuits — without first examining the dynamics at play, which drive people to band together and spend $4 million on 1 album, for example. Or (what was very nearly) $20 million on a copy of the US constitution. The ownership itself, is an opportunity to boast. It also comes with access to future monetary pursuits. Thus there's a potential to earn back one's initial investment, plus more.

You cannot commodify activism, however. Not necessarily. The contexts are not the same. So people should be more mindful when trying to draw these parallels. For example, DAOs such as PleasrDAO have members who can afford to spend money on NFTs. The premise and the appeal for many of them, is ownership. Even if that constitutes only a fractional ownership. Collectively, they spent in the region of $4M for the coveted Wu-Tang album. It’s fun, yes—but it also comes with bragging rights.

DAOs are not better by default

Many DAO structures merely extrapolate the same ideologies which exist in a lot of our current systems. Approaches which do not foster diversity of thought, equitable value extraction, nor meaningful participation. Thus, it’s possible to utilize web3 without really being grounded in any of its initial philosophies.

Safety & Security

In web3, people have a tendency to buy the same NFT or crypto token or join the same DAO and immediately start referring to themselves as friends, a ‘community’ etc. But oftentimes, seldom is there anything substantial that is undergirding that dynamic. From my own observations, this has struck me as rather forced, and insincere.

And I find that this approach is quite monolithic in nature, and based on linear (sometimes also opportunistic) perspectives. The truth is: it’s okay to share a common interest without trying to feign a deeper connection/philosophy. This is one reason why a number of DAOs/spaces within web3 have questionable practices.

Something to consider as a DAO Lead or Community Manager, is that fostering spaces that are authentic, is also about pre-empting bad actors. This is why crafting credentialing and accountability frameworks are vital. You mustn’t make it easy for nefarious characters. Feigning community is very much an attack vector. And a culture of feigning ‘community’ runs the risk of becoming rife with exploitation, and a hotbed for social engineering.

Systems Integrity

Community management is not a popularity contest. And if you aimlessly incorporate peer reviews into your rewards structures, credentialing frameworks or accountability measures — the integrity of the system is undermined. Incompetence is typically elevated to positions of influence and leadership, through friendly/kind sentiments and gestures.