Reimaging Our DAO’s Direction: Harnessing Value and Fostering Sustainability

General
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Gm all,

I haven’t been active in DAO wide discussions earlier so hope I’m not kicking in open doors. My 2 BANKs on @cryptodad’s question: how do we effectively capture the value we create and establish a sustainable revenue stream?

I don’t have the answer to that but I have another question that I think is important to answer before solving cryptodad’s challenge: who are we?

@hirokennelly is saying we’re a media DAO and I’ve heard that earlier as well. I’ve always seen us as a “University DAO”, any other takes? :slight_smile:

  1. We have onboarded (trained) maybe 1000s of people into web3 (myself included) according to @salmanneedasjob
  2. The discussions Friday afternoon (EST) are often philosophical and often on topics like “how to run a decentralized organization” etc. bDAO is already taking the role universities holds IRL
  3. Our name Bankless is a political statement. Few industries have done better than higher education after the financial crisis in 2007-08. We are in position to challenge that monopoly.

These are just some of the trademarks that tell me bDAO is a university DAO. I might be the only one with this opinion and in that case, I’ll follow the conclusion. But I would argue that we need unity in what and who we are. That’ll make it easier to address how to build a strong image and capture value from our work.

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23

I think the point @Jengajojo is making is valid.

In the grant bid I put in to dYdX, I tried hard to find value for dYdX, but that’s not so easy without proper immersion in a partner DAO, or without GPT style tools to locate key values and concerns in a partner DAO. They are blind bids, especially where a partner grant is not very specific about needs and requirements, which my one wasn’t, although I did ask.

Are there deeper lessons to be learned about structuring grant bids and applications, and by looking at previous applications as @Jengajojo suggests?

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The grant narrative is part of the strategy. The narrative can be effectively crafted by sense making which comes by absorbing context.

The second part is reputation, if no one in the DAO knows who you are they will not be interested in voting for your proposal

When we participate in governance both problems are addressed. You gain reputation and absorb context which helps crafting the grant narrative and gaining support from voters for your proposal

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This comment does suggest rapid immersion in partner DAO governance, and I’ve seen this activity before, in Bankless Research Guild, to a degree.

I wonder, @Jengajojo , whether some like minded folk in Bankless should even create a guild for this, providing a service across bDAO, which can certainly be fee earning on a success basis, to boost the trading levels here in Bankless. Seeking to shift the trading dial way north of the 1% you mention.

Is that creation something for respectively Research Guild and Education Guild to consider?

What would you suggest?

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Join DAOstewards

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I did have an introduction to dYdX from their Grants Role Holder. But he did say dYdX were having a reorg and building their own chain. Probably lots more lessons to learn about why the bid didn’t work, and hopefully one bDAO project one day will want to have a look and make some use of the learning.

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I voted yes, it seems a good idea.

However, DAOStewards do need to have a retrospective, and then I don’t have to ask for a bit more clarity on how this is growing, over what period of time.

But the Optimism result looks encouraging, and @Oakfloors and I are discussing further ways to work with Optimism. So maybe we three / project leads will discuss this in due course.

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29

I have been thinking if it’s too late to drop my thoughts but I have come to the conclusion that this post is timeless and should perhaps be pin somewhere we can revisit often. that said, let’s take a dive…

ToddlerDiveChildGIF

:one:
Value Capture with the Bankless Brand!

Traditionally, in terms of revenue generation and monetary value accrual, I would say that BanklessHQ has monopolize that front. Since we produce content that covers the same space in similar fashion, hardcore sponsors would rather give HQ their advertising money than projects from the DAO. The creation of bDAO created an open & competitive market for Bankless media monetization.

bDAO Podcasts suffers to generate sponsorships-> HQ podcasts
bDAO Newsletters/publishing struggle to get sponsorship → HQ newsletter/publication(btw, recently crossed 300K on substack🤯)

Let’s assume you are a potential sponsor looking to throw some dough to get max returns/exposure, which project/entity within the Bankless Ecosystem would you give your money to? I would bet on HQ in this case.

I believe core projects champions on the forefront of content production will know how people reach out and say Bankless, but they mean BanklessHQ when it comes to money matters, mostly.

It’s been quite unsuccessful on the traditional sponsorship front. On the web3 front, we have had little success with some DAO and web3 projects sponsoring a couple of the media projects. But it keeps getting more and more difficult to secure new or keep sponsors.

So it’s safe to say, BanklessHQ has captured the traditional sponsorhsip/monetary value accrual front in the Bankless ecosystem. if there’s was marketcap table, HQ will have a big chunk of the pie. And to be honest, they deserve all that and more. they are wonderful folks.

GiraffePieGIF

So to accrue monetary value to the DAO, web3 is the wei - I can bet my last gwei - Here are some thoughts!

:two:
Projects are bDAOs goldmine!
Create a project graduation ceremony - this could use a better name​:joy::joy_cat:

There’s a reason why DAOpunk has been the project with the most revenue to the DAO. I remember like it was yesterday, the rally the entire community had behind that project was phenomenal. these days, it’s not like that. Projects champions are basically left to their fate with the DAO(GC) on their tales about revenue. sheesh, tough time to be a project champ!

TLDR
→ Bootstrap project graduators. just like the way we have GC. Let’s spin a group and fund them well!
When projects pass MVP and grow to a sustainable level, Project graduators job would be to help those project scale to the next level. through tokenisation(mostly NFT first).
→ The main focus would be to rally the bDAO community, affiliate communities, HQ and it’s influence behind these projects.
→ When done well, this could potentially unlock huge value to the DAO, financially. DAOpunk is a case study.
→ Not all candidates will have the same class(success), but we sure will be graduating lots of impact projects.

Good in branding, Bad in funding! → Ecosystem funding and public good funding
When it comes to pure, unadulterated impact😂, some bDAO projects rank very high. Per public good funding criteria and principles, these projects should be added to a lot of the public goods funding rounds happening in the crypto ecosystem. unfortunately, due to brand confusion, they aren’t getting added. tbh, it’s a huge loss to the DAO imo.

spidey thinking
spidey thinking901×1280 102 KB

So what do? I am of the opinion that projects should take a look at their branding.

Share the same root - but assume individual traits/brand.

One of the best ways the DAO is getting revenue is through projects getting outside funds and sharing a portion with the DAO. there’s a rise in public goods funding and it will continue to get bigger, if we want to accrue value to the DAO, we need to figure out a way for high impact projects from bDAO ecosystem to participate because in all principle and criteria, they more than qualify to participate.

some thoughts
→ Some projects should perhaps rebrand and update the Bankless name attached to them. for e.g, localize the name, what does Bankless mean in spanish? is there a word or a concept that captures the Bankless way in spanish or in Africa? use that term instead of Bankless.

I believe this could have the ff positive effects.

  1. contextualize the Bankless term and movement more and makes it more easier for folks to understand and get onboarded.
  2. removes confusion of people always thinking we are the same.
  3. Give projects fair chances of getting into public good funding rounds!

The Bankless vision will be realized when the Bankless ethos permeates society at a level where folks are Bankless without knowing they or even the term!

:three:
Let’s take what we have built to a chain!
bDAO is not just the biggest mediaDAO in the world, it’s revolution of media. it continues to empower people all over the world to voice out their thought, propagate their truths and share a collective culture of wanting to make a change with the power of crypto! If web3 is the future, bDAO is essentially a key global media/social/coordination layer in this future. So wen bDAO chain? we should spin up an L2 chain! I believe this will scale bDAO itself - maybe more on this later but the chain could basically become crypto’s media/onboarding chain where we fund initiatives to take us to a billion. this might shift the focus from the constant need for revenue to funding initiatives with the chains native token to achieve our goal. it also unlocks many ways to ease onboarding.

Btw, are we for profit? can we be?
Are we a public good, seems that’s how we have predominantly been so far?
if we are a public good, then does it make sense to have a chain? seems like a good idea to me.
In the age of L3s and superchains, global level DAOs will have their own chain to facilitate the achievement of their objectives. and it will be normal. it will be great if we can also start thinking in that direction!

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30

You should connect with AV. I understand there’s this whole idea of “luxury media” just set up a program to just create, with that there expertise of yours.

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Here is an example on how we can fund the DAO for many years

TLDR: Make an OP L3, outsource operations and fund the DAO with fees. LFG!

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Fantastic :fire: BDAo got greater community

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Optimizing your treasury is a MUST. There are so many better ways to make revenue then just hodling ETH

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Thanks for the suggestion! How/where do I get in touch with AV?

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wonderful write up keep it up bro…

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I forgot to answer this question :sob:

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Why would people use the L2 over other L2s? What protocols would be interested in building, or would we also have to create the dapps on top of the L2? Tbh, this doesn’t feel as financially sound to me as some other profitable non-DeFi business ventures might.