Metacartel’s Incubation Model
by Juliana (@itsencrypted)
Metacartel evolved after more than a year of DAO history into a DAO Incubator.
As a summoner of Meta Gamma Delta I can assure that our history of success is strongly tied to Metacartel and their ability to move things fast in the DAO ecosystem.
The first thing that “starts” a DAO or “press the start button” is by summoning a DAO. Today, a newbie summoner will count on a lot of written material, and articles produced by Metacartel / Moloch members, but like everything else in the crypto space, there is no “help desk hotline”. The summoner will have to count on the assistance of others to learn certain tools.
DAO Haus was of immense help to us. From late Sunday evening calls to quick Telegram channel responses. If it weren’t for Dekan, Ven, James Waughn, Alex Masmej, Pet3r Pan, Yalor, James Dunkan, Burrata, to name a few…we wouldn’t have been where we are today.
When Meta Gamma Delta started, we had the combination of 3 ingredients:
- an existing need to help women to create their own DAO
- Metacartel looking forward to reach the next level and become an expert as “DAO Incubator”
- A grassroots movement of friends looking forward to learning by doing it.
We didn’t know much. They knew a lot.
We didn’t care if things went wrong, but we wanted our DAO to shine. We wanted to create something FUN, engaging and supportive. Without being boring. That was the initial goal.
We didn’t know about the Guildbank, we didn’t know shit about share value, we barely knew what Wrapped Ether was. But we knew we had them. The Metacartel buddies. Our older brothers in the DAO space. No legal agreements, no lawyers helping us to structure a startup corporation in a new land, no fancy shirts and ties. We had brilliant minds wearing hoodies, decentralized software developers, they knew governance tools by deploying it, not by bragging about it. They knew where to raise funds, how to allocate resources, how to “get shit done” and how to motivate people to make it happen in the DAO space.
We were not selecting angel investors or seed investors, but they knew they were key to guide us in the process. And to be honest, we didn’t need hundreds of hours of their time and fancy tutorials. We knew we could simply count on them. Any of them, any time. It was not just during the hackathon week. Metacartel was a loyal group of visionaries, looking forward to making the ecosystem grow.
And then came COVID19. No one could travel, no one could take advantage of socializing in real life. We build a DAO entirely based on weekly Zoom calls and engaged voter participation.
Mahoney took the lead to invite tons of women to our Telegram channel. Sydney took the lead to organize a weekly more structured call. Slowly we began to take the idea of a sorority. We had roles to pick, we had new channels of communication. Slack, Trello, Google Sheets, we started to onboard other strangers, friends of friends, but in the end, we all wanted to be a DAO.
Certain decisions taken in the summoning of a DAO, that you can’t look back. In the rush of deploying our DAO, we had to pick a currency, we had to pick a “voting window” and a “grace period”. We barely knew what rage quitting meant, but we knew we had Metacartel next to us. They invited us to party with them, they made us feel welcome. A bunch of hyped quick decision making brilliant guys. They cared that we would succeed. And, even though they are not members of Meta Gamma Delta, I hope they can feel proud of what we have accomplished so far. Because without them, we wouldn’t be here.
When I look back, I think the best call was to have a 10 DAI membership pledge. It meant more than a coffee at Starbucks, but nothing that someone would regret losing. It would be inclusive enough for ANY lady to join us. All they needed was to get their first 10 DAI. And I can say that the biggest challenge of Meta Gamma Delta has been on allowing women to buy their first 10 DAI. As a hacker, I obviously suggested a P2P transaction. Any hackathon participant would have 10 DAI on Mainet right away. They didn’t need to go to Coinbase, Binance, Bittrex or Shapeshift. And still today, I don’t care how they will get their first 10 DAI. I want them to learn that P2P is also a possibility, and somewhere in the world, they can find another crypto buddy willing to sell them 10 DAI in exchange for Amazon Pay, iTunes credits, Alipay, PayPal or whatever other electronic form of centralized money.
Voting is another big thing. How do we get people to f*cking vote? said Meltem Demirors once at Aragon Conference. How do we incentivize people to vote?? My answer is… by “creating the habit” to vote. If people learn how to vote, and if every election they only have a 24 hour window to do so, you will need to annoy them enough and teach them where to go to get voting done. Once they vote 2 or 3 times, they will not need your help anymore. Some ladies also “autonomously” learn how to do it. Without any assistance. Pokemol is simple. Sending the link for members to vote for other members is easy. All they have to do is receive a screenshot / videoshot of which buttons to click to allow them to connect with Metamask and vote. The more they do it, the easier it gets. But insisting on the voting routine helps. Since the beginning of the DAO. Voting is what makes a DAO gain life. Otherwise, we can perfectly just be a random telegram channel, with no accountability for the decision making. History can be randomly erased or even forgotten.
In a DAO everything is hardcoded. Similar to the minutes of a shareholder’s meeting, Pokemol tells a lot about the history of a DAO. New DAOs can always learn by looking at older DAOs. And so did we :-)
At Meta Gamma Delta, we learned that there are Membership proposals and also Funding Proposals. And how can projects be funded? Based on voting! Simple, easy, brilliant. Shares get redeemed by rage-quitting during the grace period and the money can be spent elsewhere.
But how did I learn all that? Thanks to Metacartel again. You see? It’s easy to judge them from far away, but only once you know about all those tools, can you understand their value to the ecosystem.
This article is an attempt to show them not only my immense gratitude for their support, but also to highlight the amount of invisible work that they do. Metacartel is the best DAO incubator because they have been doing it well for the past few years and because their support is real and tangible. They get things done and they will guide you with all the tools to deploy your own DAO.
When you are in doubt about certain governance aspects, they will give you real life examples of things that worked in the past and things that didn’t. The curation process of building a DAO is one of their key areas of expertise.
If you came to this article and still don’t know where to start… here’s my tip for you: https://daohaus.club/help
Happy Taco Day, chicos and chicas !
