Tom Marx

Building a DAO to build DAOs (and all kinds of projects)

Tom Marx -

TL/DR: we have created a POC for a decentralized task management tool. We are thinking about creating a DAO to develop and maintain the project.

Hi! Long time since I didn't write on this website. My interests had since clearly shifted to crypto and DeFi, this article will be in the theme.

Previous articles will be progressively imported on this new blog.

Now, let's jump in.

Context

I have a friend (@ldemesla) with who we built a play 2 earn game. This is not the topic of this post so we won't enter in the details, but we encounter a major problem while building it:

how to pay contributors to a project, when contributors don't work at the same pace?

We were three of us working on the game, one was full-time, and two others were part-time. The thing is that it's really hard to quantify the work of each contributor.

We thought about:

  • engaging for a fixed amount of days worked by week, but it's not flexible and does not incite contributors to give the maximum energy to the project (if you're paid for 2 days, you won't work the 3rd one even if you have time)
  • calculating the number of days worked, after every month, but requires to be tracked, and will create an incentive for contributors to cheat by inflating the number of unproductive days worked
  • making every contributor work the number of days available by the one who has the minimum time, but it obviously a very bad thing for the project as everyone will limit their efforts to the weakest contributor

It quickly appears that the number of days worked is not a good indicator of the value brought to the project.

We want to maximize two things:

  • individual rewards for the contributors that bring the most value, to create an incentive for contributors on an individual level
  • project success, by making sure that every contributor is at the maximum of their capacity

We also want a clear framework, we want to focus on building, not losing time on conflicts linked to the remuneration. Conflicts make some contributors feel bad and waste brainpower.

With all that in head, the question is now:

How do we remunerate contributors of a project, in a fair, transparent way that maximizes both individual and collective success?

Hackathon and POC

We participated in a hackathon with the following theme: web2 to web3. It was the perfect occasion to find a solution to this problem and even develop a POC.

So we came up with the following ideas:

The easiest way to valorize a contribution is by breaking tasks into elementary tasks, like in sprint planning. All tasks are created, then contributors blind-vote the value of the task, following an in-house framework (it can be based on time spent, revenues generated, users fetched...).

A good tool to manage tasks sub-division is the kanban board. Like Trello, or Notion. You can easily break down your project into sub-categories (dev, marketing, business...), and then add atomic tasks in it (implement this feature, following these requirements).

So the concept is simple: this is a kanban board, on which people can add tasks, vote for their value, claim it, and receive funds (as an ERC-20) once the task is voted done by other contributors.

We developed a basic POC during the weekend, it's available here: https://gifted-almeida-fb8f3a.netlify.app/

It's important to note that there is no backend. Everything is open-source and on-chain. The POC is on the Polygon mainnet.

It means that any organization can clone the code, make a personalized fork, and manage its tasks.

All the code that Louis and I made during this weekend is available here.

What's next?

Here is the thing: we need a team to develop this project with a production grade and ambition.

The idea is to create a DAO, so people can build the tool... using the tool. We could issue an ERC-20 token, and people are rewarded for contributing to the project. This token can be used to vote for decisions or for raising funds to provide liquidity against stablecoins.

For this, we need motivated people, that believe in this model, and are ready to take responsibility. If you think you can help us build this project, join this freshly created Discord: https://discord.gg/egrqkPqyMk

You can also DM me on Twitter.

What do we need to build?

On top of iterating on the concept, there are a few things to integrate before shipping a V1:

  • create an open-source ready project (coding norms, review formatting...)
  • creating a commit system, to batch operations made on the smart contract (to avoid having to confirm every action by a tx)
  • creating a role system
  • making cards drag&dropable
  • setting team goals and rewards (if we gain 100 users by the end of the month, 10k USDC are released to contributors)
  • review and fix all voting mechanics
  • make multi-claim possible for big cards
  • make smart contracts migratable to newer versions without losing the data
  • having a draft queue where people can vote for future features
  • integrating a comments system on cards, to debate about features or reviews
  • and everything more that can be useful...

The great advantage of this project is that we can build the tool using the tool. It's a perfect context to build the right features, and be able to quickly identify the flows.

Conclusion

We created this cool POC, but we need help to build a real product. If you have feedback, or you want to be part of the adventure, please contact me on Twitter (@AirM4rx), or join the dedicated Discord: https://discord.gg/egrqkPqyMk

We're still iterating on the product, so don't hesitate to come and tell us what could be the killer feature.

Update (June 2022)

Louis took the lead of the project, and this became crew3.xyz. Good luck to them :)