Social DAOs: An Essential Guide

Looking at the headline, it’s clear that the decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, 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.

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 Coopahtroopa’s research as a type of “digitally native tribe” and a place to “meet people with similar interests”.

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)

• Seed Club (CLUB)

• Radicle (RAD)

• FiatLuxDAO

• Krause House (KRAUSE)

• ProsperDAO

• Bright Moments

• Meta Gamma Delta

• Song Camp

• Cabin DAO (CABIN)

• Proof of Humanity (UBI)

  
  

Friends with Benefits DAO (FWB) 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.

Seed Club 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 The LAO and has among its members strong professionals from crypto, as shown below.

Radicle is dedicated to building a community governed, self-sustaining network for software collaboration. FiatLux DAO is distributing NFTs related to Berkeley University and also focused on academic-related projects. Song Camp DAO is a platform that brings songwriters together, holding events called Song Camp.

As for Cabin DAO, 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.

Another interesting case is the Meta Gamma Delta DAO. 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.

Krause 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.

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.