The Peeps DAO is Coming
Get on the Peeps DAO waitlist today!
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don’t try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy…
~ Lao Tzu, Dao De Jing
In our journey to decentralize politics and social action, we’ve made a decision to go further down the crypto rabbit-hole. For the past couple weeks we’ve been working quietly and obsessively to make this vision a reality. Peeps DAOs will be permissionless, digital organizations where people (and organizations) can pool crypto for a cause and decide democratically and transparently how to spend that crypto to make good sh!t happen.
The Future is DAO
For those who don’t live on crypto twitter, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are all the rage again. DAOs are based on the simple idea of pooling resources in a way that builds upon their pre-blockchain predecessors like giving circles, sou-sous, donor advised funds, investment clubs, etc. DAOs are digital organizations that can expand these types of giving and donor tools to wider audiences (who are willing to try out cryptocurrencies). People pool a cryptocurrency like Ether towards a general cause or shared interest and then vote on how those funds are spent. DAOs are powerful tools for coordinating efforts and leveraging community to make bigger impacts.
Over the past few months we’ve seen a resurgence of DAOs in the Ethereum community. After the OG DAO failed because of a flaw in its smart contracts, it took a few years for DAOs to make their comeback. Credit has to go to MolochDAO and MetaCartel for kicking things off. MolochDAO launched to pool ETH to fund projects improving the Ethereum architecture, but its greatest contribution may be providing a simple, open-source codebase to serve as a foundation for future DAOs. OpenLaw’s announcement of the LAO was the next big leap forward, because it showed that you could take the Moloch code and restructure it to work as a venture fund or LLC with a real-world legal wrapper. We’d like to think that Peeps DAO will be another step forward for DAOs.
Introducing the Peeps DAO…
We’re staying true to our mission of decentralizing politics and social action. Peeps DAO will be focused on giving power back to the people anywhere and everywhere people want to fight for a worthy cause.
We feel that the time is right for giving people a way to pool funds around an issue or cause in order to democratically fund “grants” for the activists and organizations who commit to making change happen. Ultra-wealthy individuals and governments already have the power to do this. But they’ve failed us. They used their power in self-serving ways or prioritize issues or solutions that leave too many outside of the conversation. Political and social movements are also becoming more decentralized and fluid — just look at leaderless movements like the protests in Hong Kong or flat, democratic movements like Black Lives Matter and Occupy. We’re building Peeps DAO in the hopes of making these movements more powerful, effective, and long-lasting.
With the power of blockchain and crypto we can give more power to the people. We’re providing a permissionless, but trustworthy, mechanism for committing funds to a cause-based digital organization and then democratically deploying those funds. MolochDAO did this for Ethereum development and YangDAO for the YangGang. Peeps DAO opens the door for any purpose-driven group or organization to create and run a DAO. We think DAO creation just needs to be easy, intuitive, and work in concert (or at least not in conflict) with existing legal and organizational structures.
We’ll publish another Medium post in a couple weeks that goes further into the organizations we hope will use our Peeps DAOs, but for now let’s leave it at this: we’ve built Peeps DAO for political organizations, like 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, SuperPACs or other independent expenditure organizations. However, Peeps DAOs will be flexible enough to also work as non-profits or donor-advised funds — just ask Bill Gates, sometimes a 501(c)(3) works really well for advancing your vision of the future.
How PeepsDAO will work (in short)
We built the Peeps DAO beta for crypto-friendly activists, organizations, and political movements. Like We the Peeps, a Peeps DAO will allow you to pool your funds with others and then vote on how those funds are deployed. Unlike We the Peeps, a Peeps DAO will allow you to vote on funding proposals that can range from political meme teams to micro-grants for climate actions (i.e. users won’t be restricted to just donating to federal politicians’ campaigns). In order to provide this flexibility, users will need to use crypto-currencies, such as Ether or a stablecoin like DAI, that can be locked in smart contracts until the DAO members vote on how to spend those funds. We believe this greater flexibility will meet users where they are and truly give ordinary people the resources to make good sh!t happen.
To get started with a Peeps DAO you’ll just need the MetaMask browser extension to interact with our smart contracts and some Ether or DAI, which can be purchased from an exchange like Coinbase. Once you have MetaMask installed and some crypto in your wallet, starting a DAO is as easy as filling out a webform and deciding what kind of change you want to fight for and where your DAO will operate (US vs. the rest of the world). Joining an existing Peeps DAO will be just a matter of inputting how much you want to donate and then waiting for that DAO’s administrators to approve your membership application and issue you voting shares proportional to your contribution. We know that onboarding into crypto world is still more difficult than it should be, so once you’ve joined the crypto revolution, we want to make it easy to use your Peeps DAO to fight for the change you want to see in the world.
If you’re interested in getting in on the ground floor or starting your own PeepsDAO, you can sign up for our waitlist at www.peepsdao.com.
Next week we’ll go more into the technical changes we’ve made to Peeps DAO for all the blockchain nerds. In future weeks, we’ll also try to answer “why crypto” and “who is this built for.”
