Joining a DAO: Five Tips on How to Onboard Newcomers to Your DAO

DAOs can be very different. Somewhere the system is built as simple as possible, somewhere - you can get lost from the first steps. Therefore, it is very important that newcomers to DAO begin their journey competently.

Not everybody knows how a DAO works. So let’s make it easy for them to get started with five steps that cover the main activities for DAO members.

1. Proposals

Any DAO member (i.e. anybody holding a governance token or NFT) can submit a proposal. This is the only way new initiatives can happen in a DAO and how every decision is made. A proposal can be about anything at all related to the DAO: how to spend the treasury, collaboration ideas, marketing programs, questions about the DAO’s direction, polls, election of delegates (more on that below), collective investment, and much more.

Proposals are first submitted for discussion so other members can comment with their thoughts and the proposal submitted can incorporate any ideas he thinks improve the proposal before submitting it for voting. Here is a sample forum where proposals are submitted for discussion. If the proposal gathers enough support, it advances to the voting stage.

What newcomers should do:

In order to better understand the essence of the proposals, we advise you to study in detail the votes that are already closed or active at the moment of your entrance to the DAO. See who makes Proposals, what their standard structure is, and how this mechanism works in your particular case.

Don't be afraid to pose questions to other members. Ideally, other members should walk you through the steps and introduce you to everything in detail.

2. Voting

Any member can vote on proposals. This is how decisions get made in DAOs. Once logged into your account with the wallet that has governance tokens/NFTs, you can see all the proposals up for voting (as well as the ones up for discussion and the ones already voted on). Read through the proposal carefully (look at the comments others made under the proposal for additional perspectives). Then vote as you see fit. In the most basic system, your number of tokens equals your number of votes. For specific voting settings, check with the DAO’s settings and description.

What newcomers should do:

Take a detailed look at the voting system used in your DAO. Remember that they can be extremely different. So your task is to investigate the voting mechanism, and then participate in it.

3. Delegation

Obviously, not everybody has the time and interest to vote in every single proposal. Some proposals may be very specific to certain areas of the DAOs operations about which many members have little expertise (technical, marketing, sales, etc.). In those cases, it may make practical sense to delegate your votes to someone else. In DAOs built with DeXe’s DAO Constructor, it also makes financial sense.

What newcomers should do:

Research who in your DAO is responsible for specific areas and has expertise in their business.

Directly aside from activities in your organization, a person's skills can be demonstrated in other ways: for example, he or she may publish materials, speak at conferences or online.

4. Expert Delegation

To promote effective and knowledgeable decisionmaking, DAOs built on DeXe can delegate to groups of experts that are either certified as experts within your specific DAO by a vote within your DAO or are certified as global experts by DeXe itself. Experts can be categorized by subject matter.

So when you want to delegate your votes on technical issues to someone, you choose the Technical Expert of your choice (or a group of them). To encourage decentralization and prevent excessive power by any single expert, DeXe’s DAOs have a mechanism to reward a plurality of experts. So giving the most popular expert all of your votes will not necessarily give you the best financial reward nor voting power.

What newcomers should do:

Also, as in the last point, we advise you to study in detail the experts and their activity, and then make a decision.

5. You can do it all!

Remember, this is your DAO. You are already an investor in it by holding government tokens/NFTs. You can also be a lawmaker and an employer within the DAO by submitting proposals that will spend the DAO’s budget (treasury) on programs to be completed by someone. And once a proposal sets aside a budget for something, you can be the person to do that task and get paid.

For example, if someone creates a proposal for someone to create a meme, you can submit a proposal (with meme samples) to be the one chosen to do that meme and get paid for it. Or you may prove your skills so much already that a DAO proposal specifically mentions your name, service, and compensation. There could be proposals establishing contests or giveaways. And you can participate in them. You can even be an expert for your DAO or all DAOs. You can propose and then create a subDAO with a specific focus. These are just some of the roles available to members — and they are not mutually exclusive. This is the whole idea of DAOs: every member can be and do anything within the DAO as long as it’s done through proper DAO channels. Makes sense? Go try it out.