XDAO

xdao

Now we are on a new stage in the development of decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). We discussed the DAO concept in general , but we didn’t cover the details of for whom and how DAOs can be helpful. Web3 as an industry was created by the people for the people living online to build an independent and decentralized internet infrastructure. The main idea is that . And with the same mission, people created DeFi protocols. Then the here digital services should be governed by users and correspond to their interests DAO was invented to structure and frame Web3 community intentions. A DAO is a great idea, and together with blockchain technologies and digital currencies, it will completely change the internet’s governance structure in the coming years, making it more open to users. DAOs will affect not only the governance of internet services but also e-money, payments, and investments. Right now, DAOs are available to any group of crypto enthusiasts, but not all of them understand how DAOs work. Those same people frequently have issues with crypto investments, since making investments without experience is a big risk. DAO has a solution for crypto investors. Imagine you are a . You chat with other private investors who are looking for alpha, big profit, or interesting DeFi protocols. How successful will you be? Not very. Because you can only rely on your own experience, and you can’t take too many risks because your savings are limited. private investor Currently, only venture funds can provide successful investments in crypto with a low-risk level, using portfolio diversification. On the other hand, venture funds take big individual risks and invest in many crypto startups, knowing that the profit from one successful project can cover the losses on 10 unsuccessful ones. VCs prosper because they can afford to invest large amounts of money and diversify their portfolio, knowing that one successful project can cover the losses of 10 unsuccessful ones. Individual investors gain in bullish markets, but lose their money in bearish trends. The problem is that to do the same as the funds, you need a big budget… big… Or from your private investor chats enormously you can get together with a few people and start mutually offering projects and voting for which one to put money into. How can XDAO facilitate that? With a DAO! In this case, Don’t panic about this being a serious structure: everything comes together and is organized over time. We recommend starting the mutual investment process with a few interested people, then growing and inviting new members into your collective little by little. individual investors just need to form their own foundation and become an investor collective. We recommend starting the mutual investment process with a few interested people, then growing and inviting new members into your collective little by little. Choosing the type of investment DAO Your DAO may be a local community, you and your work colleagues, mutual Discord server or any other type of community. The first step is for you and your partners to choose the type of organization. There are several common types of investment DAOs: All DAO members have voting rights on investment decisions. To take profits, an investor leaves the DAO. Friends&Family DAO. the same . All DAO members have voting rights on investment decisions. To take profits, an investor leaves the DAO. Joint Investment DAO . An analogue of traditional finance’s mutual funds, operated by professional . To take profits, an investor leaves the DAO. Mutual Fund money managers . It works the same as a joint investment DAO, but it has a dividend distribution mechanism. The investors in this DAO don’t need to leave to take profits. Joint Investment DAO with a dividend model . It works the same as a mutual fund, but it has a dividend distribution mechanism. The investors in this DAO don’t need to leave to take profits. Mutual Fund with a dividend model Members pool their money somewhere and invest; usually once. When the investment returns, the syndicate closes or enters into a new deal. Syndicate DAO. . Similar to a syndicate DAO, but after entering a deal at an early stage, the blockchain connection is often broken by the investment object (since the entry takes place in SAFT or other paper document); requires reliable managers, whom DAO participants will trust with the task of returning investments when they appear, for example, on a new blockchain. Venture DAO . Operates in the field of NFTs & Metaverses. This DAO collectively owns NFTs — art collections, memes, lands, gaming items, etc. For example, it may work as a syndicate for the purchase of specific high-price collectables — CryptoPunks, Bored Apes, or others — in a pool, collecting collections. Collector DAO Different types of investment DAO have different rules, though they share certain important terms: . DAO voting rights can be equal or not equal. Voting rights . The money available for investment, whether from DAO members, external investors, or both. DAO Treasury . Where the DAO will invest: seed, private (with or without SAFT), presale rounds on launchpads, NFT purchase, investing in metaverses, etc. Subject of investments . When and how members receive returns: taking profit at the moment of exiting the DAO, or using a dividend distribution model. Profit You can implement any rules in your DAO. The entire organization’s management rules can be configured through the XDAO interface, without writing a single line of code. Providing liquidity The next important step, after creating a DAO and establishing rules, is providing liquidity — organizing your DAO treasury for investments. Any cryptocurrencies can be chosen by the organization for purchasing “liquidity provider” or LP tokens. By purchasing LP tokens, a DAO investor provides liquidity to this DAO. This liquidity is called AUM (assets under management). The essential advantage of is the possibility to XDAO hold and manage all cryptocurrencies, provided by LP holders, for collective purposes. Each member of the organization with voting rights can influence decisions that are made on behalf of the organization. Want to add a new member to your organization, reward someone with a bonus, or issue shares to attract investment? Just ask what your teammates think about it. If they agree, the action is performed automatically. Any member of the organization can initiate and, when a quorum is reached , activate a vote. Another key benefit of our platform is that your DAO can interact directly with all DeFi protocols through Wallet Connect. Make collective financial management decisions and be completely confident that your finances cannot be stolen by intruders. Don’t forget that our platform is built on the most advanced tech stack, which allows you to gain the most complete and comprehensive experience with DeFi. Be ready for mass adoption of DAOs. To start a DAO, you need nothing but desire and like-minded people ready to become your partners in financial management. Do you or your friends own cryptocurrency and do trading? Would you like to combine your efforts and earn more? Are you running a business or want to start one, earning income in crypto, quickly and cheaply exchanging assets? Why hesitate? Get ready for a quick transition to our platform.

Decentralized Autonomous Organization for Investment Groups

Decentralized approach and XDAO Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) need a clear product management process to provide trust. One of the sensitive points for this type of startup is capital management. Every DAO needs a trust account in which to store its assets. However, current decentralization of governance for crypto and IT includes geographic decentralization, where company management and token holders live in different countries — including the CEO and developers. And many so-called DAOs have a risk of manipulation, including theft, by attackers or their own management (rug pull). At the beginning of 2022, the management of experienced an exit scam, proving that trust and understanding inside a DAO team may not be enough to prevent risks of fraud. Fortress DAO The Fortress DAO case Fortress DAO is one of several crypto projects that tried to repeat the success of Olympus DAO. For the time being, Olympus and its ponzinomics created great results in OHM token price growth reaching $1,500, but then it plummeted to under $100. Even some experts still think that OHM has strong potential, but that opinion doesn’t apply to many other projects that use similar mechanics. So the problem with such types of DAO is that they use aggressive DeFi mechanics that are similar to pyramid schemes and their decentralization is more a slogan than reality. Fortress DAO is an Olympus DAO fork on the Avalanche blockchain. Formally, It had $14 million in its treasury. But in reality it didn’t, since the DAO and its members had no real governance. The control over funds and project code remained in the hands of its team. These funds were used by Fortress CTO Avraham Eisenberg to launch his own project — and no one could stop him. The situation with Fortress proves that DAO is not a slogan and that decentralization and community governance must be real. However, if you organize a project in advance as a true DAO, all participants know that the agreements will be respected. Members need to understand that they are joining a real DAO that is decentralized, transparent and controlled by the community. To achieve this, it is important that the community has control and information about the activities of the project developers and their ability to control the DAO. At the very least, if a protocol has a proxy or can be controlled and changed by developers without community permission, it should not be subordinate to a single developer. What is DeFi Project Management? Talking about the DAO and DeFi, we should understand that they both use blockchain and have decentralized infrastructure. The creation and management of this infrastructure is a complicated thing as it needs integration of existing blockchain solutions and/or the creation of proprietary DAO tools. Project management of DAO and DeFi is about asset storage and management and the creation of a proper decentralized infrastructure for this purpose. In the DAO case, this mainly consists of community treasury governance and smart contract governance. After creation of the DAO and collection of funds, the community treasury should be fully transferred to DAO ownership, with multisig wallet governance by the DAO. Also, smart contract governance should be transferred to DAO control and governance tokens (GT) distributed to DAO members. We can distinguish the following steps in the creation of a DAO. First stage In the first stage of DAO development, . At this point, there is a minting of GT tokens to the entire team responsible for the project, in equal shares for the head and in smaller shares for the rank-and-file employees of the project. GT tokens can only be held by the founders Then (i.e. the transfer of all project tokens and also additional funds raised from investors to the address of the organization). the whole project treasury is poured into the DAO Finally, . From now on, all votes on protocol changes and the use of funds pass from the hands of individuals, developers and CEOs to the whole team. This ensures that the interests of all parties will be respected. the project’s smart contracts are transferred to the DAO Let’s take an example. An important parameter in DAO management is the quorum value, which indicates what percentage of DAO tokens must take part in a vote for a decision to be made. Let’s say the quorum is 81%. 100 votes are distributed in our example DAO as follows: CEO — 20 GT CTO — 20 GT CBDO — 20 GT COO — 20 GT Lead analyst — 4 GT Business developer — 4 GT Senior Developer — 4 GT Developer — 4 GT Community manager — 4 GT This means that if all members with 20 GT and one of the five smaller GTs vote, the proposal will pass. But if at least one of the managers with 20 GT does not agree with the decision, or all five junior employees do not agree with it, the vote will not reach a quorum and cannot be executed. In the latter case, participants propose a different solution. And any of the team can initiate a vote, which makes the process transparent and allows any of the participants to put forward a proposal. Each of the participants in the project is to some extent responsible for the decision of the issue put to the vote. Note that the large size of the required quorum guarantees the rights of investors, but complicates the decision-making process. And yet, especially when it comes to managing large sums of money and large communities, a high quorum threshold is a great way to maintain control. Community Stage In the second stage of DAO development, the whole community should be involved into the project management. There are 2 types of community voting: Off-Chain and On-Chain. . It is similar to any recommendation mechanism. For example, which project contract update should be released next. In this case, the team should listen to the opinion of the community and begin to develop the update that users voted for. Off-Chain voting doesn’t have a result fixed in code and smart contracts . For example, a decision to send a 1,000 USDT airdrop to a competition participant. In this case, community voting will be followed by the execution of a smart contract to send funds to the user who won the contest. On-Chain voting results are recorded on the blockchain In the case of Off-Chain voting, the DAO creates a cell on the Snapshot and sets up a vote with a project token. These can be completely off-chain votes. In this case, the community with project tokens votes on the Snapshot platform and the result of these votes will be visible to the team and executed by the team in the future. In the case of On-Chain voting, XDAO should be connected to Snapshot to manage decisions on behalf of the community through the XDAO Snap solution (technically the same as ). This solution will be implemented in the near future and will give the community more power over the project. Gnosis However, we do not recommend to allow community make decisions about the treasury and protocol directly. If you still want to connect the community directly to the treasury, limit yourself to electors from the most active members of the community (no more than 5) who will be able to put forward decisions, but whose GT tokens will not be enough to execute decisions on their own. Conclusion Projects need tools for secure money management as it is more difficult to control the activities of an organization and ensure the safety of the protocol for all participants in today’s decentralized world. However, implementing these solutions without third-party expertise and auditing can greatly diminish the community’s trust. That’s why professional support is so important when creating a DAO. XDAO is the tool that can help solve these issues and set up the protocol's project management in the best way. We are happy to support teams and help them set up a DAO over the protocol in the most decentralized way. If you need any help, you are welcome to join our community! DAO is not just a beautiful mark—this is the concept of decentralizing the rights to manage DeFi project.

Project Management for DeFi Protocols: An Overview

Collector DAO is a type of DAO that collects, sells, and issues NFTs. As NFTs have grown in popularity and adoption, they have become a large part of the crypto investment landscape. The main goal for Collector DAOs is, as the name suggests, to acquire NFTs from chosen collections or artists. This article will be split into two main parts. The first part will be dedicated to existing collectors to understand their mission and value. In the second part, the process of creating your own collector DAO will be described. The connection between NFTs and DAOs is a connection between two of the most popular phenomena in crypto. A DAO is a form of social organization in the digital space that helps to distribute crypto assets and NFTs are digital assets that have a large demand in the crypto community. Moreover, NFTs embody values and transfer them from real life to the digital space. Many conservative economists think that NFTs have no value, but that’s very short-sighted. NFTs mirror the demand to have something in digital space that reflects the values that are important to people and are a very handy tool for the creative economy that allows creators to easily monetize their work or famous memes, as well as make money from trading them. Any painting, audio recording, video or other digital art can be easily tokenized in the form of an NFT. And a DAO allows you to share ownership of that NFT among a wide audience of its members. There are several Collector DAOs founded in recent months that were highlighted in ’s report. Some of these DAOs, like BAYC and Bright Moments, were also included in ’s list of Social DAOs. This happens because of the mass adoption of NFTs, encouraging some Collector DAOs to become Social DAOs since they have a large community and measurable social impact. Let’s take a look at four Collector DAO cases: Coopahtroopa Coopahtroopa Bored Ape Yacht Club (BRT) Bright Moments DAO Flamingo (PEEPS) Pleasr DAO is one of the most popular projects in the field of NFTs. Over the last few months, the brand made headlines in top crypto media and has as a basis a collection of 10,000 apes in the form of NFTs. In September of 2021, 101 NFTs created by BAYC were sold in a for $24.4 million. The project was launched in April of 2021 and the initial price of 1 ape was extremely low — only 0.08 ETH. BAYC’s success gave inevitable impetus to copycat collections of animal-based NFTs. Although BAYC is not simply an NFT collection, it’s a DAO that has a channel in Discord where BAYC’s community operates. DAO members and BAYC holders get additional rewards in the form of NFTs, some of which have already been distributed. The MAYC collection contains 20,000 NFTs of mutant apes and also a collection of 10,000 dogs. BAYC DAO membership is available for both mutant and BAYC holders (but not holders of the dogs collection), totaling 30,000 possible members. The main channels of monetization of this membership are still selling NFTs on marketplaces and the ability to get drops. Bored Ape Yacht Club Sotheby’s auction also stands out in ’s report as a Social DAO crossover. According to made by its representatives, the Bright Moments should unite artists, developers, and NFT/DAO specialists. This DAO has its own gallery on Venice Beach in Los Angeles. The governance of the DAO belongs to holders of BRT token. Each of the 40 founding members got 25,000 BRT, meaning 1,000,000 BRT belongs to DAO founders. The remaining 9,000,000 BRT will be spent as rewards for NFT creators and other DAO members for their activities. This DAO has celebrities as members, including such household names as Snoop Dogg and Paris Hilton, and the gallery in LA has Seth Goldstein and Louie Ryan as founders. The vision behind this DAO is to create a system of offline galleries that will exhibit NFTs and to give rewards for DAO members and useful social activities connected with digital art. Bright Moments DAO Coopahtroopa comments Another case of a successful Collector DAO is . The idea of this project is to give its members the ability to easily act in the field of NFT investments. According to the on Flamingo’s website, DAO members can fractionalize their NFT holdings: “purchased NFTs can be lent, held, displayed in a digital art gallery, or used as collateral in other DeFi platforms”. The membership in this DAO is available to US-accredited investors and the total number of members is limited to 100. Applicants must buy from 100,000 to 900,000 Flamingo Units; a block of 100,000 Flamingo Units grants 1% voting power. The current total amount of Flamingo purchased is worth 7,920 ETH. Flamingo DAO info began during the DeFi summer and was founded by Uniswap community members to buy an NFT of the Uniswap V3 . The NFT was created by artist @pplpleasr1. The DAO has about and works like a combination of an NFT investment fund and a production studio. It is famous as the owner of Wu Tang Clan’s album and the , and boasts famous and successful members in the field of IT and crypto, such as Alex Svanevik (Nansen), Leighton Cusack (PoolTogether), Andrew Kang (Mechanism Capital), Tarun Chitra (Gauntlet Network), Leo Cheng (Cream Finance) and Calvin Liu (Compound). Pleasr DAO promotion video 74 members “Once Upon A Time In Shaolin” Doge Meme NFT The above cases are, of course, not the only Collector DAOs. There are other popular projects in this area, including , , , , , , , and Gremlins. Squiggle DAO Fingerprints DAO Whale Museo herstoryDAO BeetsDAO JennyDAO MeebitsDAO Nevertheless, by observing these DAOs you can get an idea of what Collector DAOs do and how they work. According to the number of participants, they can be divided into two types by size: some are small organizations that have dozens of participants, while others, like BAYC and Bright Moments DAO, have thousands of participants. The success of each of the Collector DAOs is very much tied to a community and media exposure, the latter being more extensive with a larger community. It is a large community, appeal to famous brands, and the participation of celebrities ensured the success of the above projects. In one way or another, the work of these organizations combines elements of investment funds, which distribute the profits received among their members, and production studios. In terms of the business solutions that XDAO presents to its users, we recommend considering the creation of a Collector DAO, especially if your business is in the creative economy and you already have media coverage, a strong community, or both. Existing regulation in this area already allows for legal distribution of revenue from creators’ activities through DAOs. Create a Collector DAO XDAO allows you to create a DAO with unlimited participants and investors. Once you are ready with the collector idea, for example, collecting all the cute doodle NFTs, you can go to , choose the blockchain where your DAO will buy NFTs (XDAO currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, BSC and 7 other blockchains) and create a DAO. https://xdao.app/ To raise funds for your Collector DAO, create an LP token that people will buy in order to have a share. All money from the purchase of LP tokens will be accumulated in the DAO and used later to get desirable NFT. Once your DAO has enough money to buy NFTs, go to , , , , , or any other NFT platform, connect to your DAO via XDAO Connect and buy your NFTs! Opensea Rarible Looks Rare Super Rare Fandefi After your proposal is successfully passed and your NFT is obtained, all LP holders will have a right to this NFT equal to their share in the DAO. If you want to sell this NFT, you will need to take absolutely the same actions as for purchasing it. And when the NFT is sold, a DAO as well as all the LP holders would also have a profit from it! First published here

A Getting Started Guide to Collector DAOs

Looking at the headline, it’s clear that the is quickly becoming extremely popular. New trends in the crypto economy point to mass adoption, as even large DeFi protocols and investment programs have large communities governing them. decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, This is the birth of the real DAO - a massive institution, not a small company of crypto enthusiasts like it was at first. DAOs are becoming global, uniting thousands of members. And the future holds more growth, uniting millions or even billions of members, since the DAO is a simple and effective form of organization governance and joint digital asset management. What is a Social DAO? Currently, there are no clear criteria for which DAOs can be referred to as “social”. This type of DAOs was mentioned in ’s research as a type of “digitally native tribe” and a place to “meet people with similar interests”. Coopahtroopa Since today the crypto metaverse is changing really fast, whatever definition we create for Social DAOs will likely evolve. Developers, businessmen, and crypto media reporters all analyze different projects, tools, and mechanics that are hot right now, and combining their different perspectives is the only way to keep a finger on the crypto pulse. We can analyze the different cases mentioned by Coopahtroopa to get an understanding of what to expect from a Social DAO. Coopahtroopa refers to social DAOs by grouping the projects below, with their token names in parentheses: (FWB) FWB (CLUB) Seed Club (RAD) Radicle FiatLuxDAO (KRAUSE) Krause House ProsperDAO Bright Moments Meta Gamma Delta Song Camp (CABIN) Cabin DAO (UBI) Proof of Humanity is focused on Web3 and the future of culture. Currently, it has 2,000 members. FWB DAO is based on Discord, where its members cooperate in chat rooms. Friends with Benefits DAO (FWB) is a type of community DAO based on accelerator mechanics. In their own words, “it helps creators, communities and brands launch and grow social tokens and earn a percentage of their tokens in exchange”. The project is supported by and has among its members strong professionals from crypto, as shown below. Seed Club The LAO is dedicated to building a community governed, self-sustaining network for software collaboration. is distributing NFTs related to Berkeley University and also focused on academic-related projects. is a platform that brings songwriters together, holding events called Song Camp. Radicle FiatLux DAO Song Camp DAO As for , it is an organization for real meetings (IRL) of the community of people related to Web3. For this task, Cabin DAO uses special spaces in New York, San Francisco and other regions. Cabin DAO Another interesting case is the . The purpose of this project is to support women founders and help them attract funding for their startups. This DAO is clearly focused on its target group - women who are interested in tech and want to launch their own startup. The Meta Gamma Delta DAO gives grants to women who want to start their own startup in the decentralized application space. The organization functions as a community on Discord. Meta Gamma Delta DAO is currently one of the most popular social DAOs. And it’s not surprising, because it is the DAO's goal to make its members the owners of an NBA team. I think this is the kind of social initiative that fans of any sports team in the world can support - especially if they have enough money and influence to run the team. We can see a possible vector for the evolution of the sport based on the example of Krause House. Krause DAO All these projects are different but they have common features. These DAOs unite people with common ideas and purposes related to social or political activities into groups with active communities, either on a local or national level. They can be non-profit organizations or have different types of monetization that they give to their members directly, or DAO members cooperate with profit purposes on their own in Discord groups. But the brightest characteristic of these DAOs is that they have a clear common goal and unite people with similar social status or interests. Political and Charity DAOs If right now we predict the future evolution of Social DAOs, we may reasonably expect idea-focused grouping into new subtypes: Political ideologies Ethnic and national origins Professions or industries Charitable activities Religious organizations Sports activities As an example of this division into sub-types, Proof of Humanity DAO fits the “political ideologies” item on our list. This community is (in its own words) “the first-ever truly democratic 1-person-1-vote governance system with open participation”. It has the UBI token and builds an identity protocol where every member has equal voting power. The common idea for this community is to build a decentralized list of people based on video submissions and social validation. Since Coopathroopa introduced the concept of the Social DAO, many new organizations have launched. One of them is Constitution DAO, which has the hallmarks of being a possible prototype for future political DAOs. The organization was launched in November of 2021 to buy a historical artifact - a rare original copy of the U.S. Constitution. In total, the DAO raised about $47 million to buy the document in a Sotheby’s auction. In the end, the initiative failed and the project team stopped the DAO. However, we cannot say that this effort was in vain. First, there was a powerful social mobilization of people with a general interest in the history and tradition of the United States. The social and political group united by this DAO mobilized a record number of donors and participants. In addition, there was great speculative interest in the Constitution DAO coin itself - PEOPLE. Its rate was subject to sharp fluctuations and in the end, all the donors got their funds back, thus once again confirming the reliability of the DAO as a fundraising tool. Nevertheless, the Сonstitution DAO has shown not only the strengths and potential, but also one of the biggest limitations in the construction of decentralized organizations. This weakness is now demonstrated by all DAOs, everywhere - a low coefficient and percentage of community participation in the management of the organization. We at XDAO see one possible solution in such cases: DAO teams need to reward voting members and hit those who do not with penalties. By the way, we can see that the Social DAO is becoming a strong type of remote online community that currently unites tens of thousands of people and offers a future with social cooperation for millions. You can also join this wave and start your own DAO right now with your unique vision and approach. While XDAO will take care of all the technical work on writing and deploying DAO smart contracts.

Social DAOs: An Essential Guide

The impact of blockchain technologies on the minds of people is inevitable. In fact, blockchain technology has taught us surprisingly useful financial skills. We began to learn how to independently build economic models, share information and experience, make economic transactions and everything without intermediaries. There are more and more of us, and now we are ready to unite on the basis of the same idea of blockchain technologies to build the next level of relationship. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) are a logical step for this. DAO Minimum Requirements Let’s take a look at this definition first. — means any association of people; Organization — in this context, independent, working on the principle of making an informed, uncoerced decisions; Autonomous — refers to the blockchain technology on which these autonomous organizations are build. The principle of decentralization is achieved by some functions (rules) that are added into the blockchain and known as a smart contracts. In this article we will refer to smart contracts on the Ethereum and Ethereum compatible networks. The opposite can be organizations built on legal documents ratified by a central authority, also known as government. Decentralized From the definition above, we conclude that DAO is an association of people whose relationships are built on top of blockchain technologies with the principle of making informed, uncoerced decisions in accordance with pre-established rules written in a smart contract. These rules enter into force as soon as a group of 2 or more people is formed. To make decisions, people will need to vote. This means it is also necessary to establish a quorum. Upon reaching this quorum, the proposal will be either accepted or rejected. Participants and quorum are the determining factors in a DAO. These minimum requirements are enough to set up decentralized organization on the blockchain immediately. But there is something more. Proposal Types In a DAO DAO can be run with the variety of rules and presets. DAO can be made for media, for social club, venture capital fund or just for a simple mutual assets management, run by NFT or by project’s native token. But the main significant difference lies in the proposal types: Voting with execution; Voting without execution in case of positive decision will be instantly executed by the DAO’s smart contract and will be written in the blockchain. This way, a DAO can execute any transaction via voting, for example, sending part of the funds from DAO’s treasury to the DeFi protocol, or to a wallet. The screenshot shows this process in followed by the execution of voting. We see that the token holders of this ComplexDAO have the right to manage and make decisions. Voting with status “Ready to activate” were signed with a quorum (here is 51%) but have not been executed yet, Voting with status “Activated”— were signed and written into the blockchain. Voting with immediate execution XDAO can jointly manage their treasury without the fear that one of the members will disappear with the whole money one day. If they wish to perform any actions with the DAO wallet, they will be forced to create a voting, where according to the established quorum the decision will be either accepted or rejected. can safely store their funds in the DAO. Use them for marketing, bug bounties, rewarding users, team salaries. They can do this publicly, showing the community that their business is absolutely transparent, and non-publicly, just to solve the problem of trust in the team.
They ALSO can use a DAO model to actually change the state of the protocol via upgradable proxy. However, to do this they should proceed to vote token holders first. In the screenshot below taken from dashboard anyone can go and see what decisions are made on the protocol. Companies and venture capital funds DeFi Protocols Tally akin to a SnapShot are used to involve the community into governance. These votes doesn’t need to be executed, added into the blockchain afterwards. Further implementation of these usually lies within the team. DeFi projects prefer such governance model because it is cheap (via off-chain voting). The community also have a voice and rights to take part on it. And again, anyone can publicly go to user-friendly dashboards and see what is going on with the project. Voting without execution Is DAO model successful? Although the first DAOs were invented back in 2016, a wave of public interest was catalysed only now. DAOs act as an alternative to corporations. In one with Dapper Labs “…Gharegozlou (Dapper Labs CEO) and McFedries (founder of Friends With Benefits DAO and Brud) suggested this could also be a way for legacy projects to effectively “exit” to the community — to transform from a traditional (or Web2) way of corporate thinking to a decentralized, collectively owned approach.” Refusal of third parties, transparency of communications and actions in the DAO attracts more and more people around crypto space. interview On the one hand, DAOs simply copied the governance principles from traditional institutions, as they have already done with finance, but made the process simpler, more open and sincere. On the other hand, DAOs have many tools that bring business and technology closer together. Let’s recall what was said at the very beginning of this article — Decentralized technologies for DAOs are smart contracts. Until now, writing these smart contracts and adding them to the blockchain so that the DAO can work has been a difficult task that only highly qualified developers could do. After the DAO boom, we see tools emerging on almost every modern blockchain to create and manage DAOs. By tools, we mean protocols that, through the interface, will help you configure DAO for certain tasks, like on the WordPress website builder. This is a huge step for the development of blockchain technology, because with the emergence of such manageable DAOs, an influx of money into decentralized finance begins. If you are already managing other people’s finances, you can make this process transparent to investors. You love NFTs, but it is too expensive to buy them yourself — let your DAO with 20 like-minded people be theirs holder! As mentioned above, even 2 people on board can manage a DAO. Person can join any DAO as well. As we can see from the statistics provided by Deep DAO, the total AUM of the all largest DAOs in the last month. People are actively buying governance tokens to participate in any kind of a DAO. Decentralized organizations generally possess significant funds and thus contribute to the blockchain economy. increased by $ 6.9 billion Look towards the DAO.

Decentralized Organizations or DAOs: The Founding Principles

With the recent publishment of about decentralized management, we wanted to further expand upon the Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) topic which is gaining huge popularity on the now well-established DeFi market. Vitalik Buterin’s article It has been a while since the first smart contracts have been deployed on the Ethereum blockchain, however, the will never be forgotten. But the crypto community has learned from those mistakes. We now have more than involved in DAO operations with more than . mistakes that were made during the creation of the first DAOs 700,000 people $8B in total assets under management What does it mean? It means that managing DeFi and supporting a blockchain (whether it is Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain, Polygon, or other) becomes a more challenging task for developers and investors to support this rapidly growing demand. Well, the majority of DeFi users have one main goal – personal wealth growth. People mostly do not realize that someone needs to support and develop this ecosystem. Thankfully, we see more and more enthusiasts willing to get involved in the development and management of these blockchain protocols. DAO is a successful attempt of thousands of people to join their efforts and finances to contribute to blockchain development and increase universal wealth. Technically speaking, DAO is just a series of smart contracts which define two main functions: is being managed; What it is being managed. How These two functions can be applied to any company, fund, community or nonprofit organization. DAO is the digitalization of our day-to-day life. The same way we moved: from newspapers to → the internet; from fiat currency to → cryptocurrency; and now we are witnessing companies converting from centralized to → decentralized management. Management of DAO is becoming more sophisticated. The DAO pioneers overlooked such important issues as conflicts of interest, excessive influence of large players (“whales”) on decision-making, and bribery of voters. These issues are becoming more relevant as DAOs become more open to the general public. Moreover, the access to creating DAOs is now open to everyone. Coordination, responsiveness and alignment are the major triggers of growth and DAO operations. There are many examples of how small projects with joint governance have become the largest DAOs. It was the right and logical decision for Uniswap and Compound to set their governance in the form of a DAO and thus contribute to DeFi ecosystem growth. It was a risky step, but now it facilitates the protocol growth and the prosperity of all participants. With growing popularity of NFTs, we even saw the appearance of such protocols as , which allows people to jointly purchase NFT assets and profit from it as a group. . Thus, a DAO became the owner of the NFT and its value was distributed among users in the form of special ERC-20 tokens. And this is also a DAO, even though it is completely different from serious protocol funds. PartyBid Nearly 400 people teamed up to buy the super cool Crypto Punk What tools are needed to manage a DAO? We expect to see a large-scale growth of projects that facilitate DAO operations. The first of these famous projects was MakerDAO in 2014. Before the advent of DAO builders and different management tools, DAOs were written and supported using internal resources. We now have apps that enable votes and allow DAO participants to make joint decisions. Among them are and , just to name a few. Now, DAO founders can fully focus on working out the concept, the rules: is managed and it is managed, while the building platforms will wrap these rules in the smart contracts, safely and effortlessly. what how Boardroom Snapshot There are protocols allowing for multisig (the requirement for a transaction that implies that more than a single key is needed before a transaction can be accepted), such as . Gnosis Safe DAO treasure management tools like or . Lama Parcel There are also dashboards to track DAO balances, like (mobile app), , and . Finally, there are powerful constructors that provide everything you need for a DAO, combining all listed above tools in one place. Among such are and . dFox DeBank Zerion xDAO Aragon What DAOs need and what needs to be sacrificed? We understand DAO as a fully transparent and public organization. Due to the fact that any action on the blockchain network and any data recording is accompanied by a gas fee, complete on-chain transparency becomes an expensive privilege for the DAO. Vitalik Buterin in his last post also spoke about his support for . Off-chain voting could become an issue if there is an urgent need to make a hard-fork of the current state of the protocol. If it happens, all off-chain data will be lost. off-chain governance This wouldn’t be a problem for most DAOs, since only the voting process is stored off-chain, and the subsequent execution is transferred on-chain. Yes, off-chain voting loses the absolute transparency of the DAO. Anyway, there are several reasons why we keep some of the data off-chain. SHOULD and most important argument is built on security guarantees against the influence of external factors on decisions made, pressure from a third party during the voting process, the result will nevertheless be saved on the blockchain forever. The first , the off-chain votes are a lot cheaper and faster. Let’s say we have a DAO with two members. An average, non-urgent transaction on Ethereum takes about 3 minutes. Thus, we need 3 minutes to create a vote + 3 minutes to record a signature of a first member + 3 minutes to record a signature of a second member + 3 minutes to record a final decision on the blockchain. Secondly In total, this vote will take 12-15 minutes. Now let’s imagine that we have not 2 but 200 members. We will have to spend about 10 hours assuming that all participants would vote instantly! And if we wanted to speed up this vote by increasing the gas allowance, the vote would become very expensive. (0 minutes to create a vote, 0 minutes to record a signature of a first member, 0 minutes to record a signature of a second member and 3 minutes to record a final decision on-chain). Off-chain method would speed up a vote to 3 minutes in total In the case of 200 members, it will also only be 3 minutes, if all voters will vote immediately. That’s why the upcoming xDAO v2 will provide this mechanism of voting for DAOs, which will keep the balance between transparency and quick and cheap voting. HYBRID Undoubtedly, DAO has a positive effect on DeFi in many ways. DAO has more capital than individuals. DAO has an opportunity to grow. DAO supports DeFi platforms. DAO as a form of management of a DeFi protocol speaks of the consistency of the project as a whole. To sum it up: Participation in the DAO is much more beneficial for an individual than managing their assets themselves. It is true that DAO management is a complex process and there are still many unresolved issues related to it. However, we must move up the technological ladder, taking into account the positive and negative experiences and changing the situation for the better, trying new solutions and methods of voting regulation. P.S. We highly recommend taking a closer look at existing DAOs, at least to understand their role in DeFi. To start with we highly recommend to visit that provides a comprehensive list of all major DAOs with their main characteristics. DeepDAO

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations or DAOs Are The Future of Management: An Overview

Where does the money come from? How do we have liquidity in DeFi? Many of us might have heard that somewhere, somehow, there is that magical place in DeFi where you can just throw your money into, and it will be laying there brining you a nice income. Staking? Farming? What is it and how does it work? . Egor Gavrilov, CTO and co-founder of xDAO, will answer those questions for us "The right way to approach this is to, first, divide all DeFi projects into three main categories: Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) Lending Protocols Yield Aggregators The first category is . Everyone knows how centralized exchanges (CEX) like work. is a huge bag of money and it tells you: ‘here is my money, come trade with it on my platform!’. Decentralized Exchanges (DEX) binance.com Binance.com However, people already got tired of big bosses aggreagting the whole money, got tired of centralized control. And the creators of the first DEX, before creating it, saw, that there was a quickly growing trend for decentralization. So, they decided to adopt to this trend and they came up with the following: everyone would contribute their money to a joint pool so that people can trade in it. And they called it DEX. The money would still belong to depositors because they would have a certificate, proving that they contributed to the pool. In order for people to invest in these pools, there has to be an incentive — commission. Hence, on decentralized exchanges, such as Uniswap, Panckeswap, and many others (that appear nearly every day), the payment from each transaction gets proportionally distributed among all liquidity providers. The first way of making money in DeFi is to deposit money in Pools on the DEX so that other people can trade. So, the first way of making money in DeFi is to deposit on the DEX so that other people can trade. This ‘profession’ is called a ‘Liquidity Provider’, and in return they get LP tokens. When people come in to DEX to swap their coins, ~0.3% from each transaction goes to LP Providers who contributed to this pool. The second category is . One might think that borrowing on DeFi is free money. If it is all anonymous, then you can just walk away without paying back. Not that easy. Lending Protocols are a bit more complicated than you might think, so you will be held liable without a doubt. So how do these Lending Protocols work? Let’s review it with an example of a bank. You come to the bank and make a deposit for a fixed period of time; the bank uses your money to give out loans to other people, and you receive a very small portion of the profit from the paid interest. The same way it works in DeFi. You can borrow from a Lending Protocol, or deposit into it and make money from commissions paid by borrowers. The only difference is that the commission you get is a lot higher than the one you would get from the bank. Lending Protocols You can borrow from a Lending Protocol, or deposit into it and make money from commissions paid by borrowers The third and the most interesting category of DeFi projects is . Let’s review AutoFarm, one of the Binance Smart Chain yield optimizers. AutoFarm summarizes all of the most known Decentralized Exchanges and Lending Protocols in one place, and lists their TVL (Total Value Locked) and APY (Annual Percentage Yield). One important thing to remember here, is that stated profitability isn’t fixed. It changes all the time, depending on the number of transactions per day that a particular pool has. Yield Aggregators Through Yield Aggregators people can find the best DEX Pools at each moment of time, and move their investments accordingly. Thus, always maintaining the best profitability available. For example, imagine today pool “A” gives you 0,08% of Daily APR (percentage rate) and 32% of APY (annual percentage yield). If tomorrow the number of transaction in this pool increases, it will give more APR and APY, because you will be paid more fees from this pool and vice versa. Through Yield Aggregators like AutoFarm, people can find the best deals at each moment of time, and move their investments accordingly. Thus, always maintaining the best profitability available. So, if you want to make a return on your money, and you are tired of low yields offered by traditional banking, xDAO suggests using Yield Aggregators to always stay on top and make consistently high returns.“ How to determine the best DeFi project nowadays? TVL * Project Lifetime— a good DeFi protocol has the proper support in the community, and therefore a large amount of funds lying in there. It is also important that the project lasts for a while. It means that people have already tried to hack it several times, but they failed. This is a simple metric, but the most effective at the current time.

The Down-Low on Decentralized Finance (DeFi): Where Does The Money Come From?

The concept of (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) has been known since 2013, when the co-founder of EOS, Dan Larimer, first mentioned the term. Currently has become one of the most innovative concepts. The main philosophy of is to create an organization without the centralized control. DAO DAO Blockchain-based DAO Simply is a smart contract, where all rules are written in the source code instead of the piece of paper. All decisions in are made in a completely democratic manner by the vote of its shareholders according to the previously established rules. These rules are adopted by all participants, at the moment of creation. In other words, does not have top-down hierarchy, there is no centralized power. DAO DAO DAO DAO As said above, works by using smart contacts (encoded rules) to automate all its essential and non-essential processes. The core idea of smart contracts is that they are , and — once recorded it could not be changed. DAO open transparent immutable All operations within — transactions, offers, and voting (including results) — are stored in an open register. uses native tokens that can be distributed between shareholders and be used to vote to make a particular decision, tokens give several rights and privileges within the environment, one of these privileges is to have the right to vote on certain matters. DAO blockchain DAO Unlike traditional businesses with hierarchical (top-dawn) structure provides an operating system for people and institutions that do not know each other, who might live in different countries and are subjects of different jurisdictions. Instead of legal contracts in , all agreements are in the form of open-source code that is implemented by majority consensus of all shareholders. Once is deployed it is totally independent from its creator and can not be powered by a single individual. DAO DAO DAO The creator of , said: . Not everyone probably agrees with this potential change, but there is no doubt that a is a business model of the future. Ethereum Vitalik Buterin “There are a lot of intermediaries that end up charging 20–30%, if the concept of decentralization takes off and does well, those fees are going to decline to almost zero” DAO

Decentralized Autonomous Organization - Core Concepts

There is a simple legal rule: “everything that is not prohibited by law is Allowed”. While creating a DAO by itself is usually legal, one would run into many troubles trying to engage in any meaningful economic activity with his DAO. Taxes are the first set of conundrums that is particularly hot for US citizens. If you earned any profits with a DAO, you would generally become liable to report the gains, assess, and pay the tax. Otherwise, you may be fined or even put in jail. The payment by itself might not be such trouble. The main issue comes at the tax calculation stage. The rules on crypto-gains and especially on DAO participation are desperately lagging behind emerging business activities. In many cases, the rules become obsolete right at the date of their adoption. It goes on to such a degree that sometimes tax agencies completely give up on precision and humbly ask people just to pay “reasonable taxes”. It tends to get especially complicated when your DAO issues its own tokens and distributes them under various terms. Lack of DAO legal subjectivity is the next issue, which is closely interlinked with the first one. Almost all jurisdictions do not recognize the DAO as a subject of law. The DAO can not make contracts or own property. It can not file a claim or defend its rights. Most countries would treat the DAO as a “general partnership” (including for tax purposes). This brings on the  following consequences: DAO members shall calculate and pay their taxes as persons and as personal gains (sometimes the taxes might be surprisingly high); DAO members would bear unlimited personal liability to counterparts with whom they made contracts, even while acting as a representative of the DAO. Currently, very few jurisdictions have an actual legal framework for the DAO. Only , the US and state, and to some extent — have clear DAO incorporation procedures and treat them as actual subjects of law. Other countries are still the Wild west from a legal standpoint. Lawmakers worldwide are slowly probing their way into DAO regulation, and major jurisdictions are yet to find their own solutions that would fit legacy infrastructure. Marshal islands Delaware Wyoming Swiss All right, you are willing to engage in business via your DAO. What should you do? First off, Yes, you can use your DAO for a meaningful economic activity in most countries. You just have to take some preparatory steps: Take legal advice Consult a lawyer for the current legal landscape of your country regarding DAO and crypto gains that are likely to occur in your business. Do not rely just on Internet articles — their authors do not bear legal responsibility; the data can be obsolete and there is a good chance that you can just misinterpret a correct article because all people are prone to believe what they want to believe. Doing background research is a good idea, but for the sake of reason, consult a lawyer with relevant experience. It is important to understand for what activities you are going to use your DAO because it determines whether you need additional licenses or permissions. In most countries, you must get a license if you: keep crypto-funds of others; manage and invest crypto-funds of others; exchange crypto to other crypto and especially to fiat money; issue and sell your own tokens; deal with security tokens. Generally, you do not need additional licenses as long as you use your DAO as a treasury to make payments and receive rewards under usual contracts with a legally capable entity. Be aware that some countries do not allow crypto as a reward under contracts. Do some research on that matter and avoid those jurisdiction-specific problems as a set-up platform. https://www.blockfi.com/licenses/?embedable=true To obtain some crypto-licenses, governments often demand significant corporate capital, hire residential compliance officers, or rent an office. You shall also expect to pay lawyers for the set-up and accountants to form and submit the reports. The choice of jurisdiction is an important step, and you should consider: the set-up costs (drafting company by-laws, registration, and legal fees); maintenance costs (salaries, office rent, taxes); list of regulated and restricted activities; licenses you need to get and the cost of such an endeavor; personal risks in the case of breaching the law. In practice, it takes some form of legal research to choose an appropriate jurisdiction that would fit your budget and desired activities. There are three solutions that you are likely to stick with after taking legal advice: Register a DAO in a jurisdiction that directly allows that action (the Marshall Islands, Delaware, or Wyoming in the USA); Register a classic legal entity in a crypto-friendly jurisdiction and use your DAO as a multi-signature wallet (BVI, Caymans, Swiss, Singapore); Form a partnership with other persons via a DAO. Let us dive into these options. Direct DAO registration The fancy procedure of a direct DAO registration, which is boasted by a few jurisdictions, does not actually add much to your business flow. It does cut some corners at the set-up stage, but afterward, you essentially manage your DAO almost like a classic legal entity. You file an application to register your DAO and then you file the same tax reports — all as usual. The only difference you will have is that, from the very beginning, a state would recognize blockchain deals made by your DAO as legally valid. The trick is that you can achieve the same result in many other jurisdictions with a classic legal entity. And the prize can be huge because other jurisdictions can offer more attractive options when it comes to taxation or regulated activities. For example, the Marshall Islands would not allow you to use a DAO for for-profit activities. On the other hand, the USA might require you to pay quite high corporate taxes and compliance costs can be severe since US lawyers are among the most highly paid in the profession. Legal entity merged with DAO The second option for doing business as a DAO is to register a classic legal entity in a crypto-friendly jurisdiction and use your DAO as a multi-signature wallet and a voting tool. The idea is that your DAO would not be a subject of law by itself, but it would rather be a tool of your company and will mirror the processes going on within it. Many countries allow paying in crypto and using sophisticated technical tools as an equivalent of a handwritten signature. It means that you can: draft an Article of association of your company; specify in it personal blockchain accounts of shareholders and directors; specify DAO treasury account; describe the procedure of blockchain voting and decision-making; create a DAO that mirrors the power structure of your company. As a result, you get a DAO that acts as the hand of your company. A director can sign a paper contract but the payment would be sent to the DAO account and directors would pass a blockchain vote in order to collectively manage DAO funds. The DAO voting process shall be tuned to mirror the governance procedures of your company when every owner and manager has a white-listed account with appropriate powers. It is a merger of the existing corporate legal framework with blockchain technology. Blockchain vote for corporate resolutions To push it even further, you might look for solutions to hold corporate meetings and pass company motions and resolutions via blockchain DAO votes. It eliminates the necessity of holding a slow and expensive live meeting and empowers to manage your company completely on a blockchain. There are a few solutions that allow one to attach a blockchain signature to a document made in a natural language. Imagine that you propose a motion to . You draft a .pdf file with the full text of the resolution and then put it to the DAO vote. When a DAO member supports the vote, he applies his private key to sign that .pdf file and when the quorum is reached, the resolution deems to be effective. “Appoint Smith a director of “Goldfish LLC” A skilled lawyer can draft an Articles of association that would make legally binding such a blockchain resolution vote for your company and its members. Partnership via DAO This is probably the cheapest and fastest solution. From a legal standpoint, the partnership is not a legal entity but a collective of individuals that jointly do business. A partnership is an ancient and common legal device and it is acknowledged by a majority of jurisdictions and it is usually regulated by a similar set of rules. So, it would not be a problem if a partnership is formed between people of different citizenships — they are likely to receive similar treatment at home. The major advantage of a partnership is that it usually does not require registration. Partners just draft which govern their relationship, responsibilities, decision-making process, and profits distribution. Partners from different countries can wet-sign the by exchanging copies sent via post and that is it. Articles of association Articles of association There is only one-layer taxation for partnerships, i.e., the partnership itself does not pay taxes (since it is not a subject of law). Each partner pays taxes individually in his home jurisdiction, and his tax decisions do not affect other partners. The partnership essentially shifts a significant part of the compliance burden to its members, and each member can individually choose a risk-efficient approach. You can combine the partnership with blockchain voting (see above) and link the blockchain accounts of each partner to their personality and thus launching a legally capable DAO that acts as a forum and a treasury of your partnership. Each partner can make contracts with third parties. The partner can (and shall!) disclose that he acts on behalf of the partnership, but the contractor would have a legal claim not to the whole partnership but only to the contracting partner as an individual who will bear the whole responsibility under the contract. To mitigate that risk, the can specify the joint liability of all partners for the deals made by each of them within their powers. Risks to fair partners caused by the reckless or malicious deals of others can be shielded via a detailed description of the contractual powers of the partners. Articles of association There are plenty of legal devices to protect fair partners from the bad deals of others, like: designate only a specific partner to make contracts with third parties; specify the necessity of getting the approval of other partners before making a deal; specify a value limit for contracts that can be made without the approval of other partners; specify categories of deals that require approval of other partners (like an IP assignment); Deals made by a partner beyond his contractual powers will not affect other partners. It would take a skilled lawyer to carefully draft the of your partnership, which would take into consideration the specifics of personal relationships between partners, their risk appetite, specifics of their DAO activity, rules on loss and profit share, etc. Articles of association However, you should be aware of the following downsides of the partnership: — Unlimited liability: partners are liable as individuals with their whole personal wealth, and a bad deal can bankrupt all partners; — Licensed activities: you are still required to obtain licenses for regulated activities and to bear the respected compliance costs. It is common for governments to not grant most of the licenses to a partnership, requiring them to register a corporation for that. The penalties for breaking the rules on regulated activities will also be borne by partners as individuals. Conclusion Business as a DAO is still in its infancy, and many solutions that work on paper are yet to be probed and tested. One should be particularly mindful while choosing a jurisdiction and a legal form for a DAO business and the tasks that such a regulated DAO is intended to solve. There is no universal “one-size-fits-all” solution. Each case shall be considered individually according to its budget and business specifics. Also published here.

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