Understanding AlgoDAO’s structure and how it functions

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AlgoDAO

5 min readMar 28, 2022

This year is shaping up to be the year of DAOs. In the last year, the total treasury managed in DAOs has grown to more than US$10.6 billion, the number of governance tokenholders in DAOs now exceeds 1.7 million people, and there are more than half a million active voters and proposal makers.

At AlgoDAO, we believe that the open and transparent nature of DAOs, the decentralized decision-making process, and easy access can be powerful drivers for shaping global communities that will supercharge Algorand’s dApp, DeFi, and Web3 ecosystem. In this piece, we describe AlgoDAO’s DAO structure and how it embodies the key principles of decentralized communities.

A recap membership tiers AlgoDAO

Members are in the driver’s seat of the evolution of AlgoDAO’s ecosystem. There are three tiers of membership in AlgoDAO; namely

Vanguard
High Council
Federation

The Vanguard

This is the highest membership tier in the DAO.

Vanguard holds the power to put out a proposal to consider projects for incubation and vote on the proposals that will be accepted into the incubator. Vanguard can also vote to admit new members. The Vanguard members get access to participate in funding rounds for projects in both the pre-money financing and IDO rounds.

As the highest membership tier in AlgoDAO, Vanguard has the power to set and vote on governance proposals. The members of Vanguard are also saddled with the responsibility of approving projects that proceed to the pre-money financing rounds and the IDO rounds.

Unlike the High Council, one cannot become a member of Vanguard by stake delegation. You can also become a member of Vanguard on AlgoDAO by the unanimous vote of existing Vanguard members.

The High Council

The High Council is the next tier of membership right after Vanguard.

Members in the High Council can also propose projects for consideration and they can vote on projects under consideration. The High Council members can also set and vote on governance proposals. Being a member of the High Council qualifies you to participate in a project’s pre-money or IDO rounds, but not both.

You can become a High Council member by stake delegation if the Federation members delegate enough of their stake to you to cross the threshold. Federation members can also pool their stakes to collectively attain the High Council status. However, it is important to note that current High Council members cannot delegate their stake.

The Federation

The Federation is the general membership tier in AlgoDAO.

Membership in AlgoDAO’s Federation tier is open to anyone who is willing to participate — all that is required is you stake at least 1 $ADAO token and you become a member of the AlgoDAO Federation.

Members of the AlgoDAO Federation get to participate in IDOs and they get priority access to project tokens before such tokens are listed on exchanges. As the most open tier of membership, the Federation helps to democratize access to the funding round of projects in the Algorand ecosystem. The Federation tier is also subdivided into five categories;

Federation Tier 1: Fleet Commander
Federation Tier 2: Flagship Commander
Federation Tier 3: Vice Admiral
Federation Tier 4: Lieutenant
Federation Tier 5: Ensign

AlgoDAO’s structure within the scope of decentralized communities

DAOs have shown the potential to be the next frontier in driving the mainstream adoption of blockchain technology and its applications. Now let’s take a look at AlgoDAO’s structure as it relates to the organizational principles of collaboration, democracy, governance, participation, and transparency.

Collaboration

On AlgoDAO, all DAO members support the growth of the Web3 ecosystem on Algorand through the collaborative funding of early stage projects being built on and for Algorand. Depending on your membership tier within AlgoDAO, you will get an opportunity to invest in the seed, private, and IDO funding rounds.

Irrespective of the membership level and the funding round that you can join, you will be collaborating with other community members to build out the Web3 ecosystem on Algorand.

Beyond collaborative funding, community members can also collaborate to increase their participation rights in the DAO. For instance, members at the Federation tier could pool their $ADAO stakes to collectively acquire membership in the High Council tier.

Democracy

AlgoDAO empowers internal democracy within its DAO structure through membership tiers that enables checks and balances. For the Vanguard, it is also a personal approval. For instance, members of Vanguard can set governance proposals, including proposals relating to the system parameters.

However, the Vanguard does not possess this power in totality as members of the High Council also have the power to propose and vote on governance proposals. And while members of the Federation cannot vote on such proposals, they have a clear path to democratic participation by pooling their $ADAO stakes to attain the High Council status.

Participation

To start with, members of the DAO need to have a certain stake to be eligible for a membership category. AlgoDAO employs a form of stake-base voting to align the interests of individuals to act in the best interests of the collective. Beyond staking, members are encouraged to participate in proposing improvements to the protocol and voting on parameters change.

Members also participate by suggesting a project to be considered for an IDO and signing off projects after the completion of the incubation period.

Transparency

AlgoDAO is built on inherently transparent ideals and this is evident in the structure of the DAO as well as its operations. One of the major pointers to the transparency with AlgoDAO is that all members of the community have an overview of the incubated projects. Starting from the point of consideration, members of the DAO can see what project is being considered for incubation. Similarly, members of the community can access information on projects that have completed the incubation process when the Vanguard sign offs on them.

Join the next big thing on Algorand

AlgoDAO is enabling builders to access support and funding at scale. If you are building and intending to build on Algorand, AlgoDAO is for you. And if you are associated with the wider Algorand community; you should join us as we collectively empower builders within the Algorand ecosystem.

Connect with us on our social media platforms and online community channels.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/algodao-fi
Discord: https://discord.gg/W4VWrbZnwe
Telegram group: https://t.me/AlgoDAOCommunity
Telegram announcements: https://t.me/AlgoDAOAnnouncement
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlgoDAO_fi
Medium: https://medium.com/@AlgoDAO.fi