Creating your first Peeps DAO
We wanted to make the Peeps DAO platform a place where grassroots organizers, activists, political committees, DAO summoners, and nonprofits (basically anyone) could come to create digital organizations within minutes. The advantage of these digital organizations is that they can raise cryptocurrency from donors / members and give those donors a voice in how to spend the funds, while still fulfilling any regulatory or filing requirements. They’re built to work with an existing 501(c) or 527 organization or completely new groups.
Let’s go through how easy it really is to dive into the future of social movements and politics.
Get setup with MetaMask
The first step, if you’re new to the crypto world, is to install an “Ethereum Wallet” like MetaMask. A Web3 wallet is like your personal crypto bank account, password manager, and gateway to the world of blockchain all wrapped up on one. We’re using MetaMask for simplicity, but there are a few other good ones like Fortmatic that are similarly beginner friendly and will be included in our platform soon. MetaMask will let you interact with the blockchain and your Peeps DAO. The blockchain requires you to “sign” or confirm anytime you interact with the blockchain, and you’ll see MetaMask pop up and prompt you to do this whenever it’s necessary.
Buy some crypto
The next step is to get a little cryptocurrency into your new wallet. This will allow you to pay “gas fees” which are the small fees to compensate the thousands of different people who run the Ethereum network. Each time you interact with the blockchain you’ll need to pay a little gas — often just a few cents. To create a Peeps DAO you should buy about $10 worth of ETH. Since you’re launching an entire digital autonomous organization, creating a new DAO will be more expensive than any other transaction on Peeps DAO. You’ll also need some DAI or USDC if you want to donate to your new DAO.
It’s pretty easy to buy ETH directly from the embedded Wyre option in MetaMask. Here’s a quick video that shows how easy it is to use your debit card to purchase and deposit some ETH into your MetaMask wallet.
For $DAI or $USDC, both “stable coins” that track the US dollar, Coinbase is the easiest place to buy them with a credit card . If you want to use any leftover ETH, instead, Uniswap makes it super easy to swap ETH for DAI or USDC. Note, if you do use Coinbase, you’ll have to go through one extra step and transfer your $DAI or $USDC to your MetaMask wallet by clicking the “send” button (or the paper airplane icon on mobile) and then inputting your MetaMask wallet address.
By now you’re probably feeling like a “crypto native.” Onboarding to the world of Web3 is still a little bit of a pain, but just remember how hard it was to open your first bank account and deposit money into it…now compare that to the fact you’ve basically done the same thing in 5 minutes from your couch!
Okay let’s make a Peeps DAO
Making a Peeps DAO is going to be the easiest piece of this. We intentionally wanted to make creating a Peeps DAO something that any nonprofit, political organization, or your armchair activist could do in a matter of minutes. Really the hardest part is going to be picking a cool image and writing an engaging description of your organization.
The first step is of course going to the Peeps DAO site. You might get a pop up from MetaMask asking if it’s okay for Peeps DAO to connect to your wallet. You should click “connect” since this just means that your wallet will talk to our smart contracts on the blockchain. Feel free to check out the other DAOs on the site to get some inspiration. When you’re ready to pull the trigger on creating your own DAO click “create your own dao.”
On the “create your own dao” page you’ll be taken through a three step process:
- Step 1 is naming, describing, and adding an image to your DAO.
- Step 2 is picking what cryptocurrency you’d like collect in donations (we strongly recommend $DAI or $USDC), the minimum donation you’ll accept, and whether your DAO is part of a registered political committee, a nonprofit organization, or a decentralized movement (i.e. something more informal, grassrootsy).
- Step 3 is just adding some personal information to make sure we can contact you if we need to.
Don’t worry if you get the “HODL ON” message for a couple of minutes once you click submit. Creating a new DAO is a complicated endeavor so it can take a couple of minutes for the DAO to get setup on the blockchain. We recommend setting your computer down, grabbing a coffee or beer, and basking in your newfound blockchain powers. Alternatively, look up “HODL” we promise the misspelling is intentional.
**One final note: When you create your MetaMask wallet it will provide a “Seed Phrase” and also give you a “private key.” These should never be shared with anyone…it’s the equivalent of giving out your debit card and ATM pin. Only share that public address (noted above), since the worst someone can do with that is send you more crypto.
