As we move from embracing the theoretical underpinnings inspired by Christopher Alexander’s profound insights into architectural wholeness to the practical implementation within the realm of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), we find ourselves crafting a nuanced Form Language. This transition marks a pivotal evolution, from a Generative Language of theoretical principles to an actionable Form Language of DAO governance and operational systems.
The Form Language isn’t just a rote application of patterns — it embodies a lexicon and syntax for creating and evolving DAO structures that metaphorically ‘live’ and ‘breathe’ within their digital ecosystems. It offers the skeletal framework necessary for outlining, refining, and implementing governance models and operational strategies that reflect our foundational philosophies while addressing practical needs.
Transitioning to Utilitarian Design
In architecture, form follows function, and the same applies to the design and operation of DAOs. The Form Language we develop will dictate the flow channels of communication, decision-making processes, and overall governance structures that make each DAO uniquely adept at managing resources—capital, human, and informational—across decentralized landscapes.
Painting the Big Picture with Small Strokes
The Form Language does more than merely depict the organizational structure; it encapsulates the activities, contracts, and roles necessary for DAOs to function efficiently. This language allows us to describe complex systems with a simplicity that promotes understanding and interaction, inviting both seasoned contributors and newcomers to participate in the DAO’s ongoing evolution.
The Form Language constructs a multi-layered narrative where each element, from Smart Contracts to Community Activities and Role Definitions, acts as a building block towards a robust DAO ecosystem. Here we capture the essence of dynamic and static forms encapsulating diverse functionalities:
Smart Contracts
These are the backbone, encapsulating the DAO’s rules and procedures in code—immutable, transparent, and executable. From governing membership admissions to managing fund distributions, these contracts are foundational elements, reflecting reliability and trust in DAO operations.
Activities
Activities breathe life into the static structure formed by smart contracts. They are the events, routines, and processes that ensure community engagement and maintain the DAO’s pulse. Activities like Voting Sessions, Community Teach-Ins, and Benchmarking Meetings ensure that the DAO remains dynamic and responsive to its members’ needs and external changes.
Institutions
Institutions within the DAO Form Language represent the more permanent fixtures that orchestrate longer-term objectives and methodologies. These can include various committees, councils, and working groups each assigned with specific governance tasks, ethical oversight, member interaction, and project facilitation responsibilities. These structured bodies are fundamental in managing the DAO’s internal operations and external relationships effectively.
Support Software
Support Software involves the digital tools and platforms that aid in the fluid operation and interaction within the DAO. These tools make the processes within the DAO transparent, efficient, and accessible, enabling members to actively participate, track progress, and manage resources effectively. This technological infrastructure supports the dynamism and adaptability of the DAO by providing a solid, user-friendly foundation for engagement and administration.
Roles
Roles define participation within the DAO, detailing responsibilities and privileges. By defining roles such as DAO Council Members, Working Group Leaders, or Ethics Councilors, the Form Language provides a clear structure for governance, accountability, and contribution, ensuring that everyone knows their part in the DAO’s narrative.
Thus, our DAO Form Language defines itself as a vibrant tapestry of interconnected patterns, smart contracts, roles, and activities. It’s through this language that the DAO’s principles manifest into tangible actions and structures, enabling a coherent, coordinated effort towards achieving the DAO’s objectives while adhering to its ethos.
As we continue to refine and expand our Form Language, it will evolve, informed by the experiences, challenges, and innovations that arise from the DAO’s operations. This living language, therefore, not only guides the current framework but also adapitates and grows in response to the emergent needs of the DAO community and the broader ecosystem it interacts with.
Smart Contracts
- Description: Enables management of user roles, group memberships, and permissions within the DAO. Supports the creation of role hierarchies and group compositions, along with dynamic addition or removal of roles and permissions.
- Purpose: To streamline the management of access and authorities within the DAO, ensuring that members have the appropriate permissions consistent with their roles and responsibilities.
Role Rotator
- Description: Facilitates the automatic rotation of roles among members according to pre-defined rules and eligibility criteria.
- Purpose: To ensure diversity and fairness in role assignments, preventing stagnation and promoting equal opportunity for all members to contribute.
Badge Minter
- Description: Allows the creation and awarding of digital badges as NFTs within the DAO ecosystem, based on achievement or contribution milestones.
- Purpose: To recognize and incentivize member contributions and achievements, fostering a culture of recognition and encouragement.
Fund Distributor
- Description: Automates the allocation and distribution of DAO funds based on specified criteria and triggers.
- Purpose: To ensure timely and accurate distribution of resources, minimizing manual oversight and enhancing efficiency.
Membership Admission Contract
- Description: Controls the process for new member admissions, ensuring compliance with DAO criteria such as token staking or endorsements.
- Purpose: To maintain a high standard of membership and ensure that all participants are aligned with the DAO’s goals and values.
Voting Booth Contract
- Description: Provides a secure and transparent platform for conducting votes on DAO proposals, supporting various voting mechanisms like quadratic or conviction voting.
- Purpose: To facilitate decision-making within the DAO, ensuring fairness and transparency in vote handling and results tallying.
Conflict Resolution Contract (Veto Contract)
- Description: Offers a structured approach to handling disputes within the DAO, possibly integrating formal mediation and arbitration frameworks.
- Purpose: To ensure effective resolution of conflicts, maintaining harmony and operational efficiency within the DAO.
LP Token Contract
- Description: Issues liquidity provider tokens representing a stake in the DAO’s pooled resources, enabling token holders to claim a share of the distributed returns.
- Purpose: To manage and track participation in liquidity provisions, aligning stakeholder interests with DAO performance.
Sweat Token Contract
- Description: Issues tokens that represent the non-monetary efforts and contributions of DAO members, often tied to specific tasks or milestones.
- Purpose: To provide a tangible record and reward system for contributions beyond financial investment, encouraging active participation and engagement from members.
Activities
Prioritization Votes
- Description: Members participate in a seasonal conviction voting process to set priorities for the DAO. Members can propose priorities, and other members allocate a portion of their commitment votes to these priorities using either quadratic or straightline principles.
- Purpose: To democratically determine the primary focuses and resource allocation for the upcoming period within the DAO, ensuring that all members have a voice in strategic direction.
Ratification Days
- Description: Designated days during the year focused on garnering broad participation from DAO members to deliberate and resolve high priority, organization-wide issues.
- Purpose: To foster community engagement and collective decision-making on critical matters, ensuring alignment and commitment to shared goals.
Mentorship
- Description: Regularly scheduled mentor-mentee pairings within the DAO to facilitate knowledge transfer, member integration, and community bonding.
- Purpose: To support new members and enhance the shared knowledge base within the DAO, fostering a supportive and cohesive community environment.
Festivus
- Description: An annual event for members to constructively express their concerns and suggestions about the DAO, fostering open dialogue and continuous improvement.
- Purpose: To encourage transparency, unfiltered feedback, and proactive problem-solving within the DAO community.
Working Group Meetings
- Description: Regular meetings of working groups, either weekly or bi-weekly, to drive progress towards specific goals and objectives.
- Purpose: To ensure ongoing communication, task coordination, and accountability among working group members.
Benchmarking Sessions
- Description: Initial sessions held by working groups to establish clear targets and objectives aligned with the DAO’s strategic goals.
- Purpose: To set actionable and measurable benchmarks that guide the working group’s efforts and assess their performance.
Stakeholder Interviews
- Description: Conducted by working groups to engage with members, investors, and partners, collecting valuable insights and feedback for informed decision-making.
- Purpose: To ensure that the working group’s directions and strategies are deeply aligned with the broader expectations and perspectives of key stakeholders.
Mitosis
- Description: A strategy to be employed when a DAO’s size and scope reach a predefined threshold, leading to a split into two distinct entities.
- Purpose: To maintain operational efficiency, manageable size, and focused goals within the DAO by dividing resources and responsibilities as needed.
Last Rites
- Description: A process to gracefully dissolve a DAO when it is deemed to have fulfilled its purpose or is no longer viable, including pathways for transitioning projects and members to new opportunities.
- Purpose: To ensure an organized and positive conclusion to the DAO’s activities, preserving its legacy and reallocating its valuable resources effectively.
- Description: Educational events led by community members or external experts to enhance the DAO members’ knowledge and skills relevant to their roles and the DAO’s missions.
- Purpose: To foster a learning environment within the DAO, ensuring members are well-informed and capable of contributing effectively to its goals.
Grantee Touch Points
- Description: Regular interactions between members of the Grantee Relationship Committee and grantees to monitor progress and provide support.
- Purpose: To maintain open lines of communication with grantees, ensuring alignment with the DAO’s objectives and timely completion of funded projects.
Exit Interviews and Feedback Loops
- Description: Structured interviews with members exiting the DAO or rotating through various roles, aimed at gathering insights to inform continuous improvement.
- Purpose: To understand the experiences and perspectives of members, integrating their feedback to enhance the DAO’s structure and operations.
Institutions
DAO Membership
- Description: A cap of 150 members ensures the DAO remains agile and each member’s contributions are meaningful. This limit is grounded in the idea of Dunbar’s Number, which suggests a limit on the number of stable relationships one can maintain.
- Purpose: Promotes effective communication and meaningful engagement among members.
DAO Support
- Description: Non-members who hold tokens or have interests aligned with the DAO but do not participate in daily governance.
- Purpose: Allows a wider community to benefit from and contribute to the DAO’s success without formal governance responsibilities.
DAO Houses
- Description: Members are divided into competitively cooperative houses, each focusing on different core areas of the DAO. Each house has a seasonally rotating focus which allows for spotlighting specific initiatives.
- Purpose: Encourages a dynamic, gamified, and distributed form of engagement and accountability within the DAO.
RFP Task Force Working Group
- Description: A team dedicated to creating and managing Requests for Proposals (RFPs) for new projects that require funding.
- Purpose: Ensures continuous innovation and proactive exploration of new ideas and implementations in the DAO’s field of interest.
RFP Evergreen Working Group
- Description: Focuses on the periodic review and updating of existing RFPs, determining their relevancy and potential need for modifications or retirement.
- Purpose: Maintains the relevancy and effectiveness of ongoing projects and ensures alignment with the DAO’s evolving objectives.
Standards Task Force Working Group
- Description: This group sets priorities for new standards development within the DAO and guides the formation and funding of new permanent working groups.
- Purpose: To streamline standard setting, ensuring all DAO projects adhere to high-quality and uniform criteria.
Standing Working Groups
- Description: Permanent committees focused on sustained areas of interest or sectors where the DAO aims to make an impact. They develop standards and preparations for RFPs.
- Purpose: Provides consistent, in-depth focus on key areas crucial to the DAO’s mission, enhancing expertise and outputs in these sectors.
Budget Working Group
- Description: Manages the allocation of the DAO’s financial resources across its different arms and projects.
- Purpose: Ensures effective use of funds, aligning financial resource distribution with strategic priorities and project needs.
Audit Working Group
- Description: Manages producing the annual audit for the DAo.
- Purpose: Ensures the report is produced and is accurate.
Bounty Working Group
- Description: Identifies and sets bounties for specific projects and infrastructure needs within the DAO.
- Purpose: Catalyzes action on key tasks and incentives completion of essential projects.
Grantee Relationship Committee
- Description: Manages relationships with grantees, ensuring ongoing support and alignment with the DAO’s objectives.
- Purpose: Maximizes the success rates of projects funded by the DAO through active oversight and support.
Grants Committee
- Description: Evaluates grant applications, conducts interviews with applicants, and makes funding recommendations to the DAO based on strategic fit and potential for impact.
- Purpose: Ensures only the most viable and aligned projects receive funding, maintaining the quality and focus of DAO resource allocation.
External Liaison Office
- Description: Responsible for managing relations with other DAOs, businesses, and stakeholders, important for collaborative projects and external engagement.
- Purpose: Ensures the DAO is plugged in to the entire ecosystem.
Recruitment and Retention Office
- Description: Handles the strategic recruitment of new members and the retention of existing members through engagement strategies and structured feedback.
- Purpose: Ensures the DAO grows with qualified and committed members while maintaining a high level of engagement from current members.
Support Software
Institutional Dashboards
- Description: A unified platform where members can view their current roles, activities, and status within the DAO’s diverse institutions. Allows users to navigate through different sectors of the DAO to view ongoing activities and project statuses, even those they are not directly involved in.
- Purpose: To provide members with a comprehensive overview of the entire organization, fostering transparency and encouraging cross-participation and informed decision-making.
- Description: A dynamic registry where members can list their skills and capabilities, and also align with or qualify for specific roles or tasks within the DAO based on their competencies.
- Purpose: To optimize role allocation and task assignment within the DAO based on actual member skills and experience, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of project teams.
Budget Browser
- Description: A tool for detailed tracking and visualization of financial allocations and expenditures within the DAO.
- Purpose: To maintain financial transparency across the organization, allowing members to see where and how funds are being spent and the financial status of ongoing projects.
Member Onboarding System
- Description: An automated system designed to guide new members through the DAO’s operational, cultural, and procedural subtleties. It includes interactive tutorials, vital resource links, and integration steps to ensure that new members start on strong footing.
- Purpose: To ensure smooth integration of new members into the DAO by providing them with all necessary information and training, fostering effectiveness and alignment with DAO values from day one.
- Description: A collaborative platform to aid members in drafting proposals with real-time co-editing features. It provides commonly used templates, historical data for reference, and an amendment tracking system to maintain transparency of changes.
- Purpose: To streamline the proposal creation process, enhance collaborative efforts among members, and increase the quality and consistency of proposals submitted for consideration.
Task and Project Management System
- Description: A comprehensive tool for managing and tracking tasks and projects within the DAO. Integrates with the DAO’s token systems to automatically distribute incentives as milestones are achieved.
- Purpose: To ensure effective project management and accountability within the DAO, correlating task achievement with token-based incentives and real-time progress tracking.
Roles
Working Group Lead
- Description: Responsible for leading a working group, setting agendas, ensuring progress, and serving as the point of communication between the group and the broader DAO governance structures.
- Purpose: To ensure that working groups are effective, focused, and contribute constructively to the DAO’s objectives.
WG Thought Leader
- Description: An influential role within working groups explicitly recognized for expertise and insight, providing guidance and critical feedback on matters discussed within the group.
- Purpose: To enhance the quality of discussions and decisions made within the working group by providing experienced insights and thoughtful critique.
WG Voting Member
- Description: An active role within working groups tasked with voting on decisions. Members are expected to actively participate and cast votes in line with the group’s schedule and protocols.
- Purpose: To democratize decision-making within the working group ensuring that various perspectives within the DAO are represented and considered.
WG Member
- Description: Official members of a working group who contribute towards discussions, research, analysis, and other group tasks.
- Purpose: To provide diverse inputs and support to the working group’s objectives, leveraging individual skills for collective goals.
Mentor
- Description: Experienced DAO members dedicated to guiding newer or less experienced members through the DAO’s processes, culture, and projects.
- Purpose: To foster a nurturing and knowledgeable DAO community, ensuring knowledge transfer and member growth.
Grantee Advisor
- Description: Assigned to monitor and support a set of grantees, providing regular advice and helping them navigate the DAO’s expectations and resources.
- Purpose: To enhance the success rate of projects funded by the DAO through effective guidance and accountability mechanisms.
External Liaison
- Description: Manages the relationship between the DAO and external entities, including other DAOs, partners, and stakeholders.
- Purpose: To strategically manage external partnerships, ensuring alignment and beneficial relations that support the DAO’s long-term goals.
House Council
- Description: Members of a council representing different houses within the DAO, helping in driving the house’s initiatives aligned with DAO’s overarching goals.
- Purpose: To ensure robust intra-house governance and alignment with the broader DAO strategies.
Court
- Description: A select group within the DAO responsible for adjudicating disputes and making judgment calls on contentious issues.
- Purpose: To provide a fair, transparent, and effective resolution process, maintaining the order and integrity of the DAO’s operations.
DAO Council
- Description: A body comprised of elected or appointed members who oversee significant DAO functions and high-level decision-making processes.
- Purpose: To ensure that critical DAO activities align with its mission and values and that strategic decisions are made thoughtfully and inclusively.
Member
- Description: An individual who has been granted membership status within the DAO, holding voting rights and the ability to participate fully in DAO activities.
- Purpose: To contribute to the DAO’s development and decision-making processes, reflecting the collaborative and decentralized ethos of the organization.
Supporter
- Description: Involves individuals who support the DAO’s goals and may hold tokens but do not have full membership rights or responsibilities.
- Purpose: To broaden the community involved with the DAO without diluting governance, allowing for an inclusive yet structured participation framework.
Prospective Member
- Description: A supporter who has been nominated for membership and is in the process of fulfilling any required criteria or awaiting formal induction.
- Purpose: To ensure a qualitative growth of the DAO by carefully integrating new members who share the DAO’s vision and values.
Ethics Council
- Description: Composed of members tasked with overseeing the ethical standards of the DAO, including the formulation of ethical guidelines and resolution of ethical complaints and violations.
- Purpose: To uphold and advocate for high ethical standards within the DAO, ensuring that all actions and decisions are conducted morally and justly, fostering a culture of integrity and respect.
- Description: Facilitates and oversees interactions within the DAO’s community platforms, ensuring discussions remain productive, respectful, and aligned with the DAO’s values.
- Purpose: To maintain a positive and constructive online environment, fostering meaningful engagement and healthy discourse among community members.