ViaBTC Capital Insight丨Dynamic Tracking of The Trending DAOs: Krause House DAO, CityDAO, and BanklessDAO
2020 was dominated by DeFi, while 2021 saw the explosion of NFT, GameFi, and DAO. Over the past year, we witnessed more profound discussions, basic tools, and new DAOs in this crypto segment.
In 2021, many DAOs with different visions emerged, covering ConstitutionDAO that aims to purchase a US Constitution copy, FreeRossDAO, which aims to free Silk Road founder Ross, BanklessDAO, which strives to go bankless, CityDAO, which aims to achieve blockchain-powered urban governance, and Krause House DAO, which plans to buy an NBA team. In particular, after raising $40 million, ConstitutionDAO provoked strong market excitement with the launch of its token PEOPLE. For a more detailed analysis, please refer to our article on Medium: Who Will Be the Next ConstitutionDAO? (@ViaBTC_Capital).
From the many DAOs, we picked three interesting ones to explore their governance system, collaboration approach, and recent developments from inception to the normal operation.
Krause House DAO
Krause House DAO is a DAO organized and managed by fans and crypto enthusiasts who have set their eyes on a crazy vision of buying an NBA team. Driven by such an ambitious goal, members of the DAO plan to acquire their first fan-managed NBA team through consensus rules. This approach complies with the fundamental mission of DAOs, i.e. things that are beyond the reach of one individual could be achieved through joint efforts of many people.
Krause House DAO was founded by several core members in May 2021. After months of preparation, they raised 1,000 ETH (about $4 million) on the Mirror platform within a few days by selling ticket-like NFTs and airdropping its governance tokens. This big fundraising campaign brought more market recognition to Krause House DAO. During this fundraising, which had been undoubtedly successful, the sale of NFTs not only brought 1,000 ETH to Krause House DAO’s treasury but also attracted many fans, who followed the DAO on Twitter and engaged in discussions on Discord. Meanwhile, media agencies including NPR also covered this story. However, the market cap of $4 million is not enough for Krause House DAO to buy any NBA team. It couldn’t even pay for the annual salary of a player. As such, many also questioned whether the vision of Krause House DAO is just a slogan.
In this regard, Krause House DAO has released a roadmap (https://krausehouse.club/roadmap). Step 1, the DAO will raise funds to build and expand its community. Step 2, Krause House DAO will bid for a small franchise, such as a small team in the sub-league of a country, to learn through practice and prove that the DAO could succeed in running sports projects. Step 3, Krause House DAO will acquire the minority ownership of an NBA team and become a shareholder. During the final stage, Krause House DAO will acquire the majority ownership of the team. Although the roadmap looks great, just as the DAO suggested, Krause House DAO still has a lot to learn. After the end of the fundraising, the DAO still has to face a number of problems, including how to build a community, how to enable an effective framework for governance and collaboration, etc.
The governance of Krause House DAO primarily consists of community discussions, and then token holders would cast their votes on Snapshot. During the first month after the fundraising, the DAO passed the proposal for building a management team and set up a management team of eight core members. The token holders then approved the media team proposal and determined the media-relevant goals and budget for the next quarter. Finally, they passed the proposal for optimizing the DAO operation tools, which was intended to integrate information from various internal channels through Notion and create a project management page to better track the progress of different projects. Apart from the optimization of internal collaboration, Krause House DAO also passed certain proposals concerning external matters, such as appointing a two-person team to seek cooperation with the NBA Development League and fund research teams to study how sports teams could be decentralized, as well as the benefits of having such teams.
CityDAO
As its name suggests, CityDAO is an organization about urban governance. Aiming to govern cities through blockchain, Scott Fitsimones launched the DAO on Twitter for the first time on July 2, 2021. Considering that Wyoming is the first state in the United States that recognized DAOs by law, CityDAO was officially registered as a business entity (CityDAO LLC) in Wyoming at the end of July 2021. It purchased Parcel 0 (a 40-acre plot of land in Wyoming) on October 29, 2021.
Following this, CityDAO released three different NFTs: 10,000 Citizen, 50 Founding Citizen, and 1 First Citizen. The success of CityDAO’s early-stage execution brought it to the attention of people like Vitalik Buterin and Brian Armstrong. While CityDAO was selling its NFTs, Vitalik Buterin released an article on urban governance through blockchain that mentioned CityDAO and suggested that he had purchased the DAO’s NFT. This had drawn more attention to CityDAO and brought more members to its community.
The terrific NFT sale raised handsome funds for CityDAO and attracted many members to join the community. Citizen NFT comes with certain privileges, such as first access to land NFT drops, access to exclusive community Discord channels, and voting power. However, they do not grant land ownership or promise revenue in any way. Additionally, becoming a citizen of CityDAO is merely a symbol and has nothing to do with the citizenship issued by national governments. Anyone in any country could become a citizen of CityDAO. The core team of the DAO carries out the primary management tasks, which would be discussed in the community on Discord or Forum, and then the team would ask NFT holders to vote on the matter on Snapshot.
There had been heated discussions about how Parcel 0 should be used among members of the community. According to the map and site survey, Parcel 0 is a wasteland with just a well. It borders the Shoshone National Forest in Clark County, Wyoming, with uneven terrains that make most parts of the parcel unsuited for housing. Finally, after community voting, CityDAO declared that Parcel 0 property will be used primarily for conservation and wildlife. To be more specific, CityDAO will authorize up to 2.5 ETH from its treasury to fund cameras and sensors. The community will stream the parcel via the cameras and use temperature sensors and IoT devices to send data. The developer team will create a dashboard for viewing the camera, temperature, and IoT data. Additionally, the DAO will authorize up to 2.5 ETH from the treasury to design, print, and install signs to indicate CityDAO and provide visitors with collectible NFTs. Meanwhile, it also plans to take 2.5 ETH from its treasury to buy a drone and pay an operator or production studio to make a promotion video for CityDAO.
BanklessDAO
Many people have heard about Bankless, a crypto media created by Ryan Sean Adams and David Hoffman. According to incomplete statistics, Bankless Shows have hit over 400,000 monthly downloads, with 116,000 Youtube subscribers. On May 4, 2021, BanklessDAO, led by Bankless, was officially launched, with the mission to coordinate and propagate bankless media, culture, and education. Its goal is to drive adoption and awareness of truly bankless money systems like Ethereum, DeFi, and Bitcoin. Backed by a large community of crypto enthusiasts built up by Bankless, BanklessDAO managed to start running within a very short period.
Compared with other DAOs, BanklessDAO has built a more established governance framework and collaboration system powered by over 10 guilds, including Writers Guild, Translators Guild, Operations Guild, Marketing Guild, Design Guild, Developers Guild, Legal Guild, Treasury Guild, Research Guild, etc. Similar to SubDAOs, these guilds further specified BanklessDAO’s vision and actions centering on the Master DAO.
Members of BanklessDAO can choose a guild according to their interests and talents. Each guild has its Discord section for communication. Only members of the guild could browse messages from the relevant channel and receive notifications. On the other hand, this also saves community members from getting bombarded by hundreds of Discord messages.
Similar to other DAOs, BanklessDAO regards every three months as a Season. For each Season, the DAO plans different projects, the plan and budget of which are determined by voting on Snapshot among token holders. Season 2, its latest plan, covers updating the website, developing a new Dashboard, and optimizing Discord Bot. The DAO, in its entirety, could also coordinate resources between different guilds and appoint project teams according to the relevant needs. Right now, BanklessDAO publishes newsletters every week. Plus, the DAO also issued community-based NFTs. Here, it is noteworthy that BanklessDAO not only has an internal team dedicated to project development but also works with other projects or DAOs to provide paid external services. For instance, BanklessDAO is able to draft professional reports for project teams.
BANK, the DAO’s native token, is primarily a certificate for community voting and member-only Discord channels. However, on Discord, members are further divided into different levels, covering visitors, level 1 members, and level 2 members. To obtain membership, you’ll need to hold a certain number of tokens or contribute to the DAO for more recognitions. In terms of governance, BanklessDAO features a flexible voting mechanism, and consensus at different levels comes with the corresponding voting mechanism. For example, matters that do not require a budget could be directly voted on Discord. Based on the impact of an item, members could choose to vote within the guild or the entire DAO. Items that require a budget from the DAO require voting by token holders on Snapshot.
Although it has been less than a year since the inception of BanklessDAO, it has built a well-established governance framework. On BanklessDAO, there are 10 guilds with different functions, and each guild is powered by professionals who carry out different tasks. It should be mentioned that BanklessDAO excels at document management. They store the relevant records on Notion, including the visions of different guilds, minutes of each meeting, and even financial documents.
Summary
Based on the above DAOs, we can tell that the blockchain space, backed by its rapid growth, is expanding its influence to include a wider audience. DeFi is designed for financial users, NFT is for art and music, and GameFi is for game users. DAO, on the other hand, is not limited to any specific field. For instance, a DAO can focus on sports, urban governance, finance, etc. With the help of different DAO tools, groups with common values could quickly build their own communication channels (Discord) around a shared vision (simply expressed in a slogan). They could then raise funds and distribute voting power through tokens or NFTs. In the next stage, a DAO ought to determine its specific actions based on its vision, build different groups or guilds to achieve collaboration, and start voting on the likes of Snapshot to pass proposals, determine budgets, and approve project development. We are confident that driven by increasingly better DAO infrastructures, the future will see the emergence of all kinds of interesting DAOs.
