The Playbook in Action

We reached out to interesting communities and asked them about their journey. This is what they had to say!

The First 5

How did you attract the earliest members of your community?

  • There was a big marketing push for the token mint, so in our case, the first group of members was those who were attracted to the token mint without any pre-existing familiarity with each other. Speaking about scaling, the founding team planted the flag, but the community (mainly a small handful of community members) defined the vision. As the founding members transitioned out of the DAO, the members who put in the most work and added the most value ended up becoming the core team, and we’ve been steering it ever since. – Clinamenic from Lobby3

  • At the beginning of 2022, I wanted to gain more experience in web3. But like most early career folks, I was priced out of NFT communities. Shortly after, I came across Syndicate and realized that unaccredited creditors could come together in a group and invest in NFTs and tokens.

    I saw the opportunity to create the community I wanted and quickly sent out a feeler on Twitter about creating a group of young career professionals that would learn and invest in web3 together.

    The idea resonated with people, and I realized this could be a DAO. Out of all those that reached out, I shortlisted five people after filtering for vibes. They all agreed to join.

    After this, I asked one of the members to be the second interviewer, tweeted an application form, created a website, and interviewed about 100 people. This way, we onboarded 35 people to Season 1 and used Syndicate to pool $1,000 each. The DAO launched in April when Jakub came on as co-founder, and it’s been almost three seasons of The Symmetrical since then! – Erika and Jakub from The Symmetrical

  • Back in 2017-18, a few early members in the Moloch DAO space realized that much needed to be done to make Moloch DAOs accessible to all. Since UI and I were already working on freelance dev projects through RaidGuild, we decided to make a front-end to interact with the Moloch smart contracts, and so DAOhaus was born as a hackathon project at ETHBerlin 2019! – Dekan from DAOhaus

  • Since we were keen on attracting only the most serious members, we knew we had to go down a different route. We tried a lot of platforms, but ultimately what worked the best for us was web3 job boards. We straight up posted job openings there and highlighted the responsibilities and roles of a DAO member in the description. Of course, Myosin members aren’t restricted to the positions they applied for, but creating job postings helped us filter out a lot of the people we wouldn’t otherwise have. It worked for us and laid the foundation of our strong team today! – Blake from Myosin

  • Like any good project, the first members are usually your friends or family. In our case, the first few members were close friends I spoke with and explained the idea to. They supported the idea and jumped in based on their financial situation. – Wasabi from Kokonut Network

  • Since the DAO was essentially summonned by a few folks from MetaCartel (at ETH Denver 2020), our first few members came from MetaCartel and the broader Moloch DAO ecosystem. – QuantumAlpha from MetaGammaDelta DAO

Culture

How would you define your community’s culture?

  • For starters, we all are excited by what we are doing in/through Lobby3. We also respect each other as individuals, and that has set the grounds for a stable, collaborative culture at Lobby3. One of our fun/weird rituals was doing a series of Twitter Spaces called “Statecraft on Tap,” where we all drank beer, and I read the Federalist Papers aloud. – Clinamenic from Lobby3

  • We have a Twitter campaign called Product Roasts, where we give feedback to web3 products from a GenZ lens. This helped us put ourselves out there and is consistently acknowledged by product owners and the OGs in the space! We are also fortunate enough to have proactive members in almost every functional area of the DAO that keep the conversation going, so we haven’t had problems with community morale so far. – Erika and Jakub from The Symmetrical

  • We’ve maintained a healthy level of engagement in our community because the core team members are super active inside and outside of the DAO. We frequently interact with each other and the broader DAOhaus community on Discord, sharing their memes, poetry, music recs, blogs, etc.

    We also have a Haus Party every few weeks on our Discord server. This event is open to all and, honestly, is great vibes. – Dekan from DAOhaus

  • Since we have an extensive member screening process presided over by our membership committee, we have a very low acceptance rate (~2%). This has created an exclusive atmosphere in the DAO that no one takes for granted.

    We also have one of the most consistent gm channels. One day, one of our members created Mylo – Myosin’s own Discord bot – to replace the external bot we used to keep track of gm streaks. They also added other quirks to the bot and gamified the process to a point where people started getting competitive about their gm streaks! – Blake from Myosin

  • Our DAO members and core contributors are well aware of the significant shift in agriculture catalyzed by web3 and our role in it. This keeps us motivated at all times.

    Since there is some distinction between the team on the field and the one that looks after the web3 side of things, we make it a point to keep everyone on the same page regarding progress or roadblocks. – Wasabi from Kokonut Network

  • One of the pillars of our community, if I may call it that, is our community call. Almost all communities have one, but ours is really special because instead of adding to the information overload and the madness of crypto/web3, it’s a break away from it all. We don’t really have fixed or lengthy agendas, and the vibe is like that of a brunch with your best friends. – QuantumAlpha from MetaGammaDelta DAO

On-chain Strategy

What is your on-chain strategy?

  • In the original DAO, we had slightly over 800 unique token holders (a number that doesn’t account for Sybil attacks). We used ERC-721 transferable tokens at the time. In the new DAO, though (which will be integrated with our new legal entity), we may use non-transferable ERC-1155s or non-transferrable ERC-721s. – Clinamenic from Lobby3

  • As of Season 2, the DAO has 55 members and a treasury of $52,538.61 USDC. On-chain membership to The Symmetrical requires a minimum contribution of $1,000 USDC to get $1,000 TSYM, which gives holders the right to vote among others (like attending events, participating in consulting projects, etc.) – Erika and Jakub from The Symmetrical

  • DAOhaus itself runs as a Moloch DAO, so on-chain membership is denoted by membership shares that members receive after their membership proposal is passed and processed.

    The DAOhaus DAO recently migrated to a more permissionless DAO under the PublicHAUS name. To join, you need to stake your DAOhaus tokens (\(HAUS) during an open staking period to receive governance power (\)PUB) over the protocol. Here is a list of our members, and here is how you can get involved! – Dekan from DAOhaus

  • On-chain membership and entry to the DAO are mediated by our token ($MYO), which is airdropped to members once they clear their interviews. The DAO currently has 150 members. – Blake from Myosin

  • Kokonut Network is a Moloch DAO, so membership to the DAO is denoted via loot and contributor shares. Currently, the DAO has 54 members. – Wasabi from Kokonut Network

  • Since we’re a Moloch DAO, on-chain membership is defined through membership shares. Prospective members must pledge 10 $DAI in their membership proposals, which when passed, grants them entry to the DAO. However, one need not wait to be a member to participate. We have 100 pledgees at the moment, but our Discord server is full of active contributors who aren’t official members yet! – QuantumAlpha from MetaGammaDelta DAO

Words of Cheer

A few words for budding or fledgling communities.

  • Get involved and experiment! This is an amazing frontier of human coordination and organization practices. – Clinamenic from Lobby3

  • Building a community allows you to bootstrap a global network of participants around something you are passionate about. This is highly empowering and the best way to launch a web3 startup. Start small and determine what you can do well with a small group. Scale once you have this figured out. – Erika and Jakub from The Symmetrical

  • Experiment with Moloch DAOs, and don’t forget why you’re here. Don’t give in to centralization, and remember, we can slay Moloch! – Dekan from DAOhaus

  • Building a community is hard work with daily grinding, communicating, empathizing, and leading. But persistence is the key, like in so many endeavors. Chart a vision of the world you want to create, and leverage the power of web3 to enable and empower other aligned people so you can all get there together! – Blake from Myosin

  • Keep your monthly costs low. Try to do everything in-house. Partner with other builders whenever you don’t know how to do something. One of the greatest perks of building in web3 is that there’s no shortage of talent or hungry individuals that want to get stuff done. – Wasabi from Kokonut Network

  • Always focus on building relationships and adding value. Work hard, but also be realistic with your commitments and take breaks when your body or mind asks for them. – QuantumAlpha from MetaGammaDelta DAO