Crypto Sapiens - DAOlens | Improving the contributor journey in DAOs w/ Vikram Aditya, Co-founder, DAOlens
Primer: There are many issues that impede people from contributing to DAOs. One of the main reasons for this is an ununified and clunky user interface. Find out how Vikram Aditya is solving this problem with DAOlens in this episode of Crypto Sapiens.
Background
First discovered Bitcoin in 2015
Joined Merkle Science, a crypto monitoring firm
Started exploring the DAO space
Co-Founder and CEO of DAOlens
DAOs And Regulations
Two interesting news pieces have come out:
WEF’s guide on how you should be thinking about DAOs
A CoinDesk article on the European Union considering a framework on DAOs
When people start DAOs, they think of 2 main problems:
How to get people to interact and collaborate with one another
The legal aspects of structuring a DAO
However, the above is the bare minimum. Have to talk about what happens when things go wrong
Communities are bringing in experts and heads of legal
The US government sued Ooki DAO. Ooki DAO skipped the hearing
DAOlens
The Beginnings
Wanted to make it easy for people to understand what they are doing
Started by answering 3 basic questions:
What is the DAO about?
How do you join it?
How do you start earning?
Came across 4 problem areas:
Discovering a DAO that you might be interested in
Onboarding people to a DAO
Doing incrementally more work in a DAO and succeeding
Streamlining the operations in a DAO
What they do is sit down with communities and ask them what they are really trying to do
A team is assigned to work with each community to modify the existing products
Has developed a whole host of products that could be used by communities in a plug-and-play fashion
Customers
Their typical customers are Web3 communities/DAOs, specifically the community admins or core teams that have been tasked with operations
Communities use multiple tools (e.g. Discord, Snapshot, Dework, reputational tools, etc.) individually
DAOlens brings everything into a single platform (known as DAO manager)
The welcome journey is different for different types of creators (e.g. designers, content writers, etc.)
Working with DAOstar and Gitcoin around grant management
One community they worked with wanted creators to take quizzes and examinations, with takers getting an NFT that affects their reputation
Have a service arm that sits with communities that help them brainstorm about deployment
Composability And DAOlens
In Web3, we use the word composability
In the Web2/VC world, the trending term is infrastructure
Views both terms having overlaps
An example of an infrastructure play is Twilio
Venmo was built on top of Twilio. By default, Venmo users are using Twilio
VCs love infrastructure plays like Twilio because of the revenue that will flow to it
In Web3, users are able to fork the chain and redesign the base layer to anything they want
Getting Started With DAOlens
Used Nouns as an example
Somebody might be interested in Nouns but find it too expensive to purchase one
They might go to Discord or a forum, but nobody engages with them, demotivating them further
DAOlens would come in and help someone to get started with Nouns (e.g. what is a private key, smart contract, MetaMask, etc.)
“Launching a DAO two years back was so complicated. Now launching a DAO is like a no-code tool with five clicks. And it's still many clicks. It should probably be one click or two click for you.”
- Vikram Aditya
In Web2, when you join an organization, you will get introduced to people from the different departments
In Web3, you are left on your own to read the Discord
“Oh, welcome to Discord, scroll through till the end of the world. Now you're supposed to find out where you belong. It's like shaking hands with 2000 people on your floor and asking, hey, I am good at XYZ, do you have work for me? Right? Like it's so bad.”
- Vikram Aditya
Today, there are lots of complaints about DAOs being slow, unorganized, and unreliable
Need to have more contributors who are willing to do the hard work
How DAOlens Improve The User Experience
Don’t over-engineer stuff
70% of his team are not Web3 natives. Had to do the hard work to educate them
His focus is on simplifying things and making the UI friendly and recognizable
Unnecessary things should be kept invisible
His design and product background has helped him
Anything Else That He Should Cover
Beginners should just jump into a community
If you have issues, reach out. People are very collaborative and will respond back to you
Will be hosting an event during ETHDenver. People are invited to join in
Something Influential To His Crypto Journey
Jeff Bezos’ quote on living life without regrets
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