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Seven common DAO mission categories were identified across the explorers (see part 2). The descriptions were either found on the pages themselves or in corresponding articles (see Messari, DAOcentral, DAOlicious, Coopathroopa, Discover DAOs, and The Generalist).

In the case of DeepDAO, the descriptions were provided via an e-mail request. Sometimes, the description was shortened for clarity, mainly the sections with sample DAOs. In a few cases, a category description was missing (it can be assumed that categories were added later), these are indicated in the data table. In the first step, we tried to extract the common aspects in the mission descriptions, before trying to summarize them in a short statement for every category.

Collector DAOs

Collector DAOs are relatively new and have emerged primarily with the increasing popularity of NFTs.
There were multiple aspects present in the descriptions that overlapped (see Table 1), we identified three main ones:

  • community-funds for NFTs: collector DAOs buy digital artifacts (mostly NFTs) as a community, which are usually not affordable for a single person. Pooling together funds, this kind of NFT “funds” lower the entry barriers for NFT investments. Therefore, they are also described as investment DAOs focusing on NFTs.
  • for-profit/valuable artifacts: besides the aspect to buy highly valuable NFTs, collector DAOs try to leverage the resources of the community to identify the most promising collectibles to rise in value.
  • shared governance: collector DAOs can have large collections that need to be curated (e.g., in certain DeFi applications, NFTs can be collateralized to earn interest, some NFTs also have voting rights attached). Therefore, the group decides on the use of the collection.

We, therefore, suggest the following mission description for collector DAOs:
“Pool together capital and resources to buy valuable artifacts (mostly NFTs) and curate them as a community to generate profit.”

descriptions collector DAOs

For clarity, I just put the table for collector DAOs in this article. The descriptions for the other DAO categories can be found in this spreadsheet.

Grants DAOs

Grants DAOs are a small, but still significant category. Some of the very early DAOs had the mission to collect funds for the ecosystem when there was not much investor interest in web3 projects. Looking at grants DAOs, we already found similarities with collector DAOs:

  • community-funds to donate: grants DAOs aim to raise funds for a grant pool, to donate them to web3 projects. The funds are collected from community members, sometimes also from external entities.
  • non-profit/impact: they are described as a non-profit version of investment DAOs. The proposed projects are evaluated according to their impact on the ecosystem (e.g., infrastructure or social good projects, development tools). Often, they are non-profit projects themselves that don’t have other sources of funding.
  • shared governance: members can propose projects and vote for the use of the grant pool, if or which share of the donation pool a certain project gets rewarded with.

Mission description for grants DAOs:
“Pool together capital and resources for donations to promising projects to generate impact.”

Investment DAOs

Just like in collector or grants DAOs, investment DAOs pool the funds of their members and use them according to their mission. The investment category was the only one present in all the analyzed sources without any modification. This suggests that investment DAOs have a clearly defined scope and are easy to distinguish.

  • community-funds to invest: they accelerate funds to invest in web3 projects, acting as decentralized venture funds. Just like collector DAOs, investors DAOs aim to democratize investing in web3, allowing small token owners to buy a share of the pool. The descriptions differentiated, whether they just invest in early-stage projects (which are typically open for retail investors) or all stages. It can be assumed that there is a focus on early-stage projects, but there are some DAOs that evolved into larger acquisitions.
  • for-profit: unlike in grants DAOs, members of investment DAOs usually have a claim on the returns of the investments. Therefore, investments are selected according to the expected profit. Two of the descriptions mentioned the need for an alignment with the values of a DAO (sometimes investment DAOs have a “manifesto”, declaring the rules in what projects to invest in). Otherwise, the selection relies just on the governance process.
  • shared governance: members can propose, and vote, on which projects the DAO should invest in. Investment DAOs pool together the experience of the token holders to make better investments. DAOlicious wrote additionally, that this process is faster than in traditional organizations.

Mission description for investment DAOs:
“Pool together capital and resources for investments in promising projects to generate profit.”

Media DAOs

Similar to grants DAOs, media DAOs are not very frequent. Because of their unique focus on content creation, they are nevertheless a separate category in most sources.

  • create media content: this aspect was mentioned in all the descriptions. Unlike other DAOs, they are focused on pooling resources rather than money, to educate about and advertise for web3 through media (articles, newsletters, podcasts, etc.).
  • self-governed: the content is proposed and created by the members themselves. Regarding the media’s significance for the public discourse, they aim to be independent of “centralized” media outlets. Media DAOs are usually not operating based on financial contribution, rather than providing resources, information, or content for the DAO.

Mission description for investment DAOs:
“Create media content as a community.”

Protocol DAOs

Protocol DAOs are the largest — and therefore very diverse — group. They are, as already mentioned, dominated by DeFi protocols. These DAOs are a typical application of governance tokens, intending to own and operate a single protocol.

  • operate a protocol: due to the variety of protocol DAOs, the descriptions are rather general.
    An aspect present in all the sources was that protocol DAOs tokenize a web3 project (similar to company shares) to operate it in a decentralized manner. Members own a small share of the project and are involved in the success of the protocol via the token price, while they are not required to provide additional funding or resources.
  • shared governance: protocol DAOs can become very big, having large treasuries and many (rather passive) members. Often, the tokens have a utility inside the protocol besides the governance function (e.g., paying fees). Despite this, just like in any other DAO, members can propose and vote on changes regarding the protocol.

Mission description for protocol DAOs:
“Operate and govern a web3 protocol as a community.”

Service DAOs

Service DAOs have similarities with protocol DAOs. However, instead of running an application, they provide other kinds of services. Given that these services can be very different, there is also a large variety of this type of DAO.

  • provide services: as the name suggests, service DAOs are about certain services, and the descriptions were differentiating regarding the clients: If they are restricted to services for DAOs, or also for other entities like external protocols. The range of services also varies, from DAO tools (e.g., for voting), to consulting, to building and developing projects for clients. The sources were indifferent, about if service DAOs rather focus on operating/governing a certain service or if the service is the members themselves, being employed by the DAO.
  • employ members: Accordingly, these kinds of DAOs can also serve as employers for their members. That’s why they were also described as “talent aggregators” or “agencies for professionals”. This kind of DAOs aims to combine the workforce and their skills to match them with the client’s needs, but in a decentralized way (on-chain and globally).

Mission description for service DAOs:
“Aggregate the talent of the community to provide services for other DAOs and entities.”

Social DAOs

Social DAOs are also frequent, even though there are different understandings of what “social” means. They can be focused on exchange in the community, as well as following a social goal. Therefore, the actual “mission” is often very present in social DAOs, especially since, as Turley described, this kind of DAOs doesn’t necessarily have financial goals or the need for on-chain management (cf. Turley, 2021).

  • like-minded community: what nearly all social DAOs have in common is a community focus. They are a place of exchange, often these DAOs have common topics and a distinctive community culture or organize community events. The descriptions differentiated in how far these communities are open: there are DAOs, who are exclusive and need an invitation, while others are quite open and do not even require members to own the governance token to participate.
  • social goal: many of these DAOs also share a common overarching goal, usually in a social good area (e.g., environment, education, or art).

Mission description for social DAOs:
“Operate a like-minded community and follow a social goal.”

Others

Some categories were just mentioned in one or two sources, mainly at DeepDAO and DAOcentral. Based on the frequency of these additional categories, as well as the number of DAOs classified in them, we would rather suggest them as sub-categories of the seven suggested DAO mission types.

“Product DAOs” for example have similarities with protocol DAOs, while “DAO operating systems” overlap with service DAOs. Both these categories are mentioned two times. Depending on the category, there is no complete match or several matching top categories, yet some unification can be made.

In the last part of the series, we will summarize the characteristics and conclusions.

Previous parts:

Part 1: existing classifications
Part 2: comparing DAO explorers

Sources:

Dao
Blockchain
Decentralization
Ethereum
Classification

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Marlene Marz

Written by Marlene Marz

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