DAOstack in 2019
To Beta and Beyond
DAOstack has had a transformational 2018. The team started the year with a value proposition for decentralized governance, and we’re ending it in the throes of execution. We’ve deployed a working product to the mainnet, doubled our team’s size, upgraded our platform and governance protocols, and launched Genesis, one of the first DAOs managing significant funds on the Ethereum blockchain.
Throughout the journey, we’ve noticed one key theme: DAOs are about community. Blockchain-based decentralized governance has immense potential, but that potential depends entirely on the number and enthusiasm of the people that participate. Communities of potential participants already exist across the globe, wherever people gather around shared values and purposes. Our mission, and the promise DAOs offer, is to serve those communities by facilitating the collaboration they are already itching for.
In 2018, we’ve gotten to know our first DAO community, Genesis, a group that has gathered around a shared interest in decentralized governance. The group that has formed Genesis and communities like it, which have an existing cause and unfulfilled collaborative potential, will be the greatest source of new DAOs in the near term.
Our 2019 will begin with connecting to the next batch of DAO communities. Specifically, we are seeking projects that want to launch a DAO in the first half of the new year as part of our Community DAO program. These pilot launches will coincide with our next major software release, Alchemy Earth, and the transition of DAOstack’s DAO community, Genesis, from closed Alpha to public Beta.
A Good Start
DAOstack’s 2018 Redux
✔ Completed Fund Raise
Our token sale successfully sold out in May.
✔ Deployed Proof of Concept
Alchemy, our DAO user-interface, and Arc, our main set of smart contracts, launched on the Ethereum mainnet in June.
The Genesis DAO became the first DAO using our Alchemy platform. In the last 5 months of 2018, Genesis:
✔ Progressed towards a Minimum Viable Product
We upgraded Alchemy to include commenting and identity features.
✔ Grew the Team
The DAOstack team doubled in size from approximately 12 to 24 full and part-time members.
✔ Supported the Ecosystem
Open-source community, we:
- Released key developer tools, such as our Hackers Kit and the Migrations repo
- Released Infra, a new layer underneath Arc, along with Infra’s first use-case, a Plantoid
- Published EIP-1480, an access control standard for smart contracts
- Participated in the EthBerlin Hackathon and hosted a hackathon at Brooklyn’s Bushwick Generator
- The Genesis community funded and held a “How to DAO” event series in Berlin
We also supported DAO research efforts :
- Launched the DAOtalk forum to serve the entire DAO community
- Began a decentralized research initiative into the future of DAOstack’s Holographic Consensus protocol
- Published “On the Utility of the GEN token,” a full description of the GEN token model
- Presented Holographic Consensus at DAPPCON 2018 and the Ethereum Community Conference
The Next Steps for a Thriving DAO Ecosystem
What’s Coming for DAOstack in Q1 & Q2 2019
Alchemy Earth
We’re happy to announce that the next major release of our DAO-interface Alchemy, Alchemy Earth, will arrive in early 2019. Earth will be the first production and client ready version of Alchemy, and it will be the interface used by the next set of pilot DAOs. This release will be the first version of Alchemy to connect DAOs with each other using an ecosystem browser — a significant step for growing the GEN Predictor Network.
Another major change arriving with Alchemy Earth is a performance and usability upgrade. We are rewriting Alchemy’s architecture to eliminate user experience issues related to loading data from the blockchain. This refactoring will bring Alchemy closer to the experience users expect from modern web applications. As a part of this UX upgrade, we will also be releasing ArcDB, a new caching layer for applications built on the DAO stack.
Alchemy Earth will also add ERC20 token support for DAO treasuries, enabling pilot DAOs to be funded with the Ethereum-based token of their choice.
The Earth release, along with the deployment of our next batch of pilot DAOs, is currently aimed for Q1 2019. With development going smoothly so far, we can’t wait to bring Alchemy and Holographic Consensus to a wider audience in the coming year.
The Genesis Beta
The Genesis DAO, DAOstack’s community-run DAO, has been an incredibly successful test of the stack thus far, growing its membership by over 100% in the past 5 months while continuing to take efficient, coordinated actions (including product development, event production, and content creation projects). This success means that the next iteration of the DAO, Genesis Beta, will be arriving along with Alchemy Earth in early 2019. In addition to running on the latest Alchemy release, the Genesis Beta will be built on the newest version of our Holographic Consensus protocol, which we are continuing to refine. The new protocol will improve the DAO’s resilience to GEN price fluctuations and fortify the game mechanics of staking, among other improvements.
With both the technology and the community making healthy progress, the team can’t wait to see what Genesis can accomplish in 2019. If you’d like to join the Genesis community, our Pollinators Onboarding Guide can help you get started, or you can view the DAO in Alchemy here (enable MetaMask).
The dxDAO: Truly Decentralized Trading
We’re excited to see the dxDAO, one of the first major external uses of our infrastructure, get off the ground in early 2019. A project initiated by Gnosis, this brand new DAO will independently govern the DutchX trading protocol.
From “Introducing the dxDAO” by Gnosis’ Eric Gorski:
“The dxDAO will be:
1. 100% community-owned. There will be no pre-allocation of voting rights.
2. Easy to get involved with. Anyone can become a stakeholder by trading on the DutchX or by locking ETH or other ERC20 tokens traded on the DutchX protocol.
3. In full control over the DutchX. In theory, any change could be made to the DutchX protocol through a proposal of the dxDAO.
4. Built using DAOstack’s holographic consensus governance framework and will be accessible through the Alchemy user interface.
5. Capable of growing beyond the DutchX with the ability to do anything that is currently possible on Ethereum.”
Participation in the dxDAO will be open to all: anyone can gain Reputation in the DAO by trading on the DutchX protocol or by participating in the initial Reputation distribution beginning on February 18th, 2019. The dxDAO aims to be the next step for governing decentralized trading protocols, and we’re excited to see what it creates using DAOstack infrastructure. Read more about the dxDAO here.
Introducing the Community DAO Program
Besides the independent dxDAO launch and the Genesis Beta, the opportunity to launch a DAO is also being extended to other projects in the form of our new Community DAO program. This program allows any project with the necessary ingredients — users, funding, and a mission — to activate their own user community, as DAOstack has done with Genesis.
A Community DAO:
- Empowers users to advance projects without central management
- Coordinates users efficiently even at large scales
- Maintains security and transparency with blockchain
The world’s most dynamic projects are user-driven. Youtube, Apple’s App Store, Twitter, and Github are each built on an engine of individual user contributions. For projects with user communities and available funding, we believe that starting a Community DAO and joining DAOstack’s emerging ecosystem is a powerful way to catalyze meaningful user contribution to the project’s goals.
Interested parties can find out more about the Community DAO program here. We’re excited to welcome a diverse range of new projects into the DAOstack ecosystem in 2019! Happy New Year, DAO-builders.
Learn More and Get Involved
- Join our Discord community.
- Follow DAOstack on Medium, Twitter, or any of the other channels you’ll find on our website.
- Interested in joining the Pollinators, our official early-adopter community, and participating in the Genesis DAO? Read our onboarding guide.
- Experience Alchemy, DAOstack’s first Dapp, currently live (in alpha) and in use on the Ethereum mainnet (enable MetaMask).
- Developer? Check out the DAOstack Github, or jump into the stack with our friendly Hacker’s Kit.
