Operations
The DAO Operations is a working group within the DAO that is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the DAO. The DAO Operations is responsible for organizing, maintaining, and executing the DAO ongoing activities. The DAO Operations supports the following tasks:
Organizing and maintaining the DAO's work calendar and workflows
Developing and maintaining the DAO's communication channels
Collaborating cross-functionally with other Working Groups to maintain DAOs alignment and to improve their processes and implement tools
Managing DAOs finances: expenses and Contributors payments
Implementing and maintaining DAO’s tools
Onboarding new members to the organization
Measuring and
Coordinating the DAO's Contributors
Reviewing and approving task submissions
Maintaining the DAO's task repository and workflows
Organizing and conducting the DAO's weekly Contributors meetings
Planning and organizing DAO’s travels to conferences, on-sites, etc.
Contributors
The DAO needs to identify the main working groups and the different tasks and projects within them that are ripe for contributing efforts by the broader community. The Contributors Program is designed to grow and engage the DAO community by inviting those with specialized skills and backgrounds to contribute to DAO's mission. The program is open to individuals and organizations with expertise in a variety of areas, including but not limited to: science, dealflow, technology, law, finance, governance, tech, design and marketing. The program will offer opportunities for contributors to engage with the DAO community through a variety of activities, including but not limited to: writing articles or blog posts, speaking at events, participating in online forums and chats, and providing feedback on DAO proposals. In exchange for their contributions, contributors will receive DAO tokens that can be used to vote on proposals and participate in DAO governance.
Tools
Google Meet/Zoom, Discord Voice channels or Twitter Spaces for Community Calls occasional talks and discussions.
Airtable for project and task management.
Notion for project and task management, staff directory, organizational chart and the knowledge base.
Dework for managing Contributors program: adding and working on tasks, contributors payments, etc.
Twitter - is a short-form, text based social media platform where most of the web3 community communicates externally beyond their internal network. To make the most of it: engage with other accounts by replying to tweets, creating tweet threads of your own to establish your DAO as a thought leader in the space, and joining or hosting your own Twitter Space voice conversation. Then enable Twitter Analytics to keep track of your growth and how to best engage with your audience.
Discord - is a forum communications platform where many DAOs host their communities. It is great for internal and external communication, all announcements, community building activities, questions and suggestions, sharing events, general discussions and, of course, memes. To make the most of it: roles/tags can be assigned to members giving them gated access to different channels, bots/integrations can help automate processes (onboarding, metrics, member mapping, etc), and there are multiple different channel types to engage your audience (voice, forums, etc) which are good places to hold discussions. Many DAOs use a voice channel for their working group or community calls. Check out Discord Settings → Community → Server Insights to learn more about your community’s engagement.
Telegram - is a messaging platform that the broader web3 ecosystem frequently uses for 1:1 messages and group chats centered around various goals or subjects. It can be a great place to coordinate around an event or across organizations, especially for selected announcements, short questions and directing new joiners into better communication channels.
Reddit - is a public forum that has a strong crypto community and niche topics community. It can be a great place to connect with others who have similar interests to the work of your DAO to drive collaborations.
Youtube - is a video sharing platform that can be a great place to repost recordings of Twitter Spaces, podcasts, events, and talks. Creating both long form and short form content in playlists can appeal to different audiences to drive awareness and understanding. Education is key in DeSci and Youtube is a great platform to explain complex topics.
Podcasts - podcasts are a powerful way to connect with experts and leaders in your field. Post recording, each podcast can be turned into a ton of pieces of content (Youtube video, snippets, quotes, discussion topics, community calls, etc) that can drive deeper engagement with your community while establishing yourself as a thought leader. Joining other podcasts as a guest speaker is a great way to expand awareness of your DAO too. A great tool to record podcasts remotely is Riverside.
Discourse - Discourse is a community forum used by VitaDAO and many other DAOs for proposals and their evaluation before moving to on-chain voting.
In Person Events - are a great way to drive connection within your community and forge connections across organizations. DeSci Global - is a collaborative hub that showcases all DeSci events across the globe. It’s a good platform to list and discover all upcoming DeSci events. DeSci Luma Community - is an event platform that is well suited to list 1 off events to the broader ecosystem and collaborate at events across organizations.
Finance
Treasury Management
A percentage of the total supply of DAO tokens is allocated to the DAO. The assets are held in a gnosis safe multi-signature wallet. In the initial stages, an internal governance council governs the multi-sig wallet. Treasury funds are highly secure and locked in smart contracts, requiring multiple approvals for each transaction.
DAO core members are long-standing members of the core team who are known for their engagement and ethical behavior.
DAO Treasury is stored in digital wallets requiring the use of two private keys, with each private key held by a different DAO member.
Multi-signature wallets
Safe is a smart contract wallet running on a number of blockchains that requires a minimum number of people to approve a transaction before it can occur. If for example you have 3 main stakeholders in your business, you are able to set up the wallet to require approval from 2 out of 3 (2/3) or all 3 people before the transaction is sent. This assures that no single person could compromise the funds.
Treasury Wallet vs. Operational Wallets
The Main Treasury Wallet (capital and asset holding - i.e. IP-NFTs) should have a higher signing threshold (5 out of 9) in order to have enough signers that you can operate when people travel or are on vacation. For the daily operations and expenses you should set up an Operations Wallet which receives limited allocations from the Main Wallet. The Operations Wallet should be used to pay for all services and bounties. It should have a lower signing threshold (3 out of 5) to allow for faster execution.
Accounting
Web3 tools are not yet up to the standard of trad-fi tools (i.e. there is no solution that is the equivalent to Quickbooks for web3), but hope is on the horizon in the upcoming years.
Current best tool stack options:
Utopia Labs (crypto payment management) - utopialabs.com
Cryptio Accounting - cryptio.co
Other options like Parcel (payment management) are available
Always be prepared to weather the crypto ups and downs:
Maintain a buffer of 6 months of operational costs in fiat or stablecoins at all times (once you have funding). Assume 70% of your budget costs will be contributor bounties and payouts. People are your greatest resource and your greatest cost. Budgets are only as useful as the policies that drive them - agree on your governance around expense management (travel, compensation, etc.). If you don’t have governance you can’t enforce a budget.
Crypto tokens are not cash (even stablecoins) - they are assets.
Accounting Policy
IFRS Compliance
Blockchain Reconciliation
Payouts and Compensation
The contributions made to the development of the DAO are being rewarded. Incentives consist of three main types: Bounties, Personal Services Contracts and Payout Governance.
Bounties
DAO’s main force is its contributors. An incentives program aims to reward the contributions made to the DAO’s development and also to grow the number of active contributors. The working group can put up a task on a bounty board (like Dework) and allow the contributors to pick it up. For more information, see Contributos Program section.
Personal Services Contracts
For its most active contributors, DAO will offer ongoing compensation to incentivize proactive, long-term contributions. Typical services provided are: design, tech, deal-flow advisory (like projects evaluation and project management), etc.
Payout Governance
Core contributors are those who define the DAO’s strategy and are the most active members and have the strongest commitment to the DAO. They demonstrated their engagement by creating the groundwork for the DAO, like governance structure, tokenomics scheme, fundraise, etc. They are typically the first members of the DAO and they have a vested interest in the success of the DAO. Each core contributor is compensated on a monthly basis with DAO tokens. The amount is determined in the Governance charter.
Banking
How to use fiat currency as a DAO - tackling payments IRL
KYC/AML policy and liability
Legal requirements for banking off-ramps for your DAO.
Jurisdictional Issues and Tax Status
Agency Model
K.I.S.S. - how not to invoke the ire of regulators.
DeSci Events
The DeSci event is a combination of talks, interactive workshops, and discussions encouraging attendees to self-organize and explore collaborations in the Decentralized Science topics.
Examples of DeSci events:
Hackathons
DeSci Hackathon is a code and no-code hackathon event focused on decentralized science (DeSci) to help drive innovation. Participants are forming teams with people who have a range of skill sets from traditional science backgrounds and web3 backgrounds and knowledge. It helps participants to expand and diversify their current networks. Teams are experimenting with web3 tools (e.g. SNARKs, knowledge graphs, NFTs) to solve specific problems in modern science. Teams are encouraged to think through risks and follow the values of Science as a public good and improve the quality of science.
Examples of DeSci Hackathons:
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