Baby Steps Into DAOs
a gentle guide to your first DAO
Maybe you have bought some bitcoin, Eth, or other layer 1, animal coins. And maybe you have flipped NFTs. (Or maybe none of the above which is totally fine.)
What’s next? Working for DAOs of course!
You’ve heard about people working for DAOs, where there’s total freedom over what you work and how you work. Welcome to the future of work, where you work on what you love and have ownership of it!
In case you’re not too familiar with the concept, DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) is a happy place where governed by a group of people and work towards a common mission with shared ownership supported by the blockchain technology.
There are many kinds of DAOs, anything you can or cannot think of — Protocol DAOs, Media DAOs, Service DAOs, Collector DAOs, investment DAOs, social DAOs, photography DAOs, music DAOs, science DAOs...
Don’t feel overwhelmed, you don’t have to learn how blockchain transactions work to start with DAOs. If you are curious to join a DAO but don’t know where to start, then this article will help you get started with your DAO journey.
1. Twitter & Discord - the home base for DAOs
Twitter is the social layer for Web3 and DAO community.
The most popular Web3 social circles on Twitter are called Crypto Twitter (or CT for short) and NFT Twitter. Crypto Twitter is the social circle where industry leaders and community members alike share ideas and resources, make educational threads, discover new projects, shitpost for entertainment, and finding alphas. NFT Twitter is like a subgroup within the Crypto Twitter sphere. It’s basically whatever community members belong to, I guess we can start calling DAO Twitter for DAO members on Twitter.
If you’re not comfortable using your personal Twitter account, you can start a new account just for your crypto identity, many others are doing the same.
After some Crypto Twitter entertainment, Discord is the place where the hard work happens. the messaging app usually popular among gamers is also the “home base” for DAOs. It’s like Slack but for Web3.
2. Down that rabbit hole
Explore on Twitter, see what your interests lie, whether you’re interested in finance, NFT, science, music, art, legal, or whatever, you will find a DAO fits your interest. Here’s a list of different types of DAOs and examples within each type to give a general idea:
👨👩👧👦 Different types of DAOs:
Protocol DAOs
Maker DAO
Compound
Uniswap
AAVE
Investment DAOs
theLAO
Collector DAOs
PleasrDAO
FlamingoDAO
FingerprintsDAO
Social DAOs
FWB (Friends with Benefit)
Seed Club
Protein
Media DAOs
Bankless DAO
ForeFront
Design DAOs:
VectorDAO
theIndie DAO
Raid Guild
Social Impact DAO:
HumanDAO
Science DAO:
Education DAO:
DeveloperDAO
You can also utilize these projects to discover more DAOs that peak your interest:
🧰 Tools for discovering DAOs:
Deep DAO is an analytics tool with DAO listing, financial, social and governance data dashboards. At the moment of writing, there are 1073 DAOs listed. It’s like the Coingecko for DAO.
Daopedia is an education project aims to be a wikipedia for DAOs, making it easy to discover, learn and join a DAO. Currently it’s on the Season 0, writing descriptions about various DAOs.
Dao Central aims to be the Glassdoor for DAOs, with DAO overview, core contributors information, reviews, news and more.
DAO discovering feeds with essential resource links and token data.
Other learning resources:
🎙 Top 5 podcasts for learning DAOs:
🧚♀️ DAO leaders to follow on Crypto Twitter:
3. Be a lurker and Vibe Chcek
Now after some exploration on Crypto Twitter and wherever the rabbit hole leads you, you find some good options for a DAO you want to join and maybe contribute to.
The first step is to join the Discord. People usually look around after they join, and that’s totally ok, being a lurker is the first step of your onboard. Some DAOs have very good onboarding experience. Some you might find a little intimidated. Don’t worry.
Be a lurker
Look through each channels on Discord. See what’s happening in there, what are people talking about and what are they working on. Other places to check out are the team’s notion pages, snapchat, and forums.
Vibe check
It’s time to ask yourself. Do you feel like this is the place for you - the culture, value and overall “vibe”. If it’s not for you that’s totally fine and normal, just move on to the next DAO. There are so many communities out there, you’ll for sure find the right one just for you.
4. introduce yourself
Now you feel more comfortable with the DAO you’ve been lurking for a while and vibe check confirmed. You have a general idea of which channel is for what, what people are working on, it’s time to introduce yourself!
Usually, there’s a #start-here and #introduction channel.
The #start-here channel is usually where you can find the description of the DAO, its mission and value. Sometime you can select different role available to unlock certain channels. Yes, there are public channels for everyone to see and there are channels are just for that particular team members.
Introduce yourself in the #introduction channel, tell people who you are, your skills, interests, and more. If you already know what you want to get involved, then you should mention it. If not, no big deal, just say you are open to contribute and start from there.
What’s next
Hopefully you have a better idea on how to start with DAOs, start your adventure in DAOs and have fun down that rabbit hole!
In the next article, we’ll be exploring DAO Tooling to help you equip for anything possible!
Thank you for reading! I hope you find this article helpful.
Let me know your thoughts in the comment below, reach out to me on Twitter, or send your feedback here.
See you next issue!
This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only, not financial advice. Always DYOR.