DAO Tools - Making your DAO journey easier!

[Disclaimer: Gm. Please do your own research before joining/building a DAO. This post aims to serve as a comprehensive guide to the present DAO tooling ecosystem. This is not financial advice either! Please feel free to reach out to us, in case you feel a lil lost. Kudos.]

DAO Tooling – What is it? 🎒

DAO tooling is exactly what the term suggests – tools that help run a DAO. Let’s give you some web2 world parallels for you to understand how DAO tools can transform your lives! ⬇️

Let's say the accounts team of your company handles all of the salary payouts and sends out monthly payments to each employee separately while evaluating each different bonus – a parallel in the web3 world – is Streamflow , which is a streamlined customized payment solution for your DAO. So for instance, if you want contributor payouts to take place for your DAO but different payouts for video editing contributors and different for content writers, Streamflow can help you customize and automate these payouts! 🚀

Similarly, if you want multiple people to authorize the transactions that your company engages in, and need a board meeting in the physical world to put this to a vote – a parallel in the web3 world, is Cashmere Protocol – a multi-sig wallet that enables multiple people to authorize the transaction, and this happens seamlessly. 🌊

DAO tools hence, make every DAO’s functioning easier by creating time and cost-effective solutions. 🙌

What are the DAO ops that you need DAO tools for? 🤔

We want to say everything but let’s give you some references.

Source : 1kxnetwork

You can use DAO tools for product, treasury, business development, PR/marketing, community building, governance, engineering, and soooo much more! It’s all about knowing which DAO tool fits your needs best and finding each of these to optimize your DAO lifestyle. 😏

Your most used DAO tools ⛓️

The DAO tooling ecosystem in today’s web3 universe is always evolving and you’ve always gotta be on the lookout for which new tool your DAO can adopt. 🔎

While DAO tooling in itself is at a very nascent stage, off-chain tools like Discord, Twitter, and Telegram still remain core communication platforms for decision-making and otherwise. You could be using these within a DAO on a daily basis without knowing that you are actually using ‘off-chain DAO tools’!

Off-chain DAO tools

Discord is often the preferred mode of DAO communication because it has user-friendly text, audio and video collaboration features where you can have multiple channels with sub-focus groups as well. Discord also supports token gating which facilitates implementing gate access on your choice of channel or subgroup based on specific crypto wallet holdings. Just like this, it also supports various other bots and plug-ins that only attract techies. However, Discord can be daunting for a new member of the DAO to work around or to build a DAO in the first place, so I would recommend you check out Discord documentation for a better understanding of the structure.

Twitter serves as a great off-chain DAO tool as well. It allows community-building and is focused on catering to announcements by DAOs. It also acts as a resource for A LOT of information regarding the web3 space that can help your DAO incorporation. All of the features of Twitter and how to use them can be found here.

Telegram is also a core communication platform for synchronous conversations among DAO members. It is a more professional platform – if you’re into that. The newest Telegram features allow communities within Telegram that can help you create subgroups of your channels. Telegram also has built-in polls that facilitate voting.

On-chain DAO tools 🦀

Moving on to the on-chain DAO tools, let’s divide them into broad categories for better understanding:

Building DAO Communities 🏡

Grape Protocol , a decentralized social networking platform offers a community-driven DAO and has multi-coin configurations. One of the core features of Grape is the ‘Grape Access’ which caters to a Dynamic Balance-Based Membership Solution. Members’ social accounts are connected to unique cryptographic keys and these users gain access as well as rights on the basis of their wallet balances. Check out their docs section to comprehensively understand it, if this interests you. 📃

Source : The Grape Network Infographic

Realms is an on-chain Solana DAO Tool that serves as a platform to easily create and manage DAOs. It aims to be the one-stop solution for the establishment and management of a DAO by enabling voting, treasury management, governance, etc. Realms presently offer 3 template-based DAO structures – (i) Multi-sig wallet which is kind of like a joint bank account in the physical world wherein you need two or more people to authorize transactions, (ii) NFT Community DAO specializes in providing NFT holders voting rights, and (iii) Community Token DAO that works on giving its DAO members tokens that signify membership – these allow you to vote. Head to their docs section to build your own DAO with Realms. 📃

Source: The Realms Dashboard

Bonfida, is focused on developing a suite of products that primarily provide blockchain solutions on Solana. For instance, the Solana Name Service allows you to create a human-readable identity with a domain name of your choice. Similarly, Jabber is a mobile application that provides decentralized and encrypted messaging on Solana. Most importantly, Bonfida provides infrastructural tools for DAOs that help them manage tokens and handle vesting, etc.

Treasury Management

Cashmere (implements Goki Protocol ) through its vault and wallet features focuses on treasury management with a multi-sig function. It aims to create a safer wallet solution for digital assets. It is integrated with all Solana wallets, including hardware wallets, and supports both, SOL and SPL tokens. Future plans include building NFT support, cross-chain compatibility to be increased and native integration.

Cashmere’s transparent growth.

Streamflow is a payment solution that makes it easier for DAOs to make regular payments within its community. It not only streamlines batch payments but it also enables vesting of financial records. This is all in addition to a multi-sig wallet that secures transactions.

Source: Token Vesting with Streamflow

Zebec Protocol is a multi-sig treasury management platform that is built on Solana. It is a continuous settlement protocol wherein you can stream funds on a per-second basis. It is customizable and accommodates multiple tokens. Can you predict what I’m gonna say next? Check out their docs section for further info. 📃

Governance

Squads , a management protocol for DAOs, enables democratic management of on-chain assets. The range of activities that Squads DAO members can engage in, include co-investing funds, pooling in funds, providing services, participating in proposals, etc. It’s interesting to note that even Squads is a multi-sig wallet that needs the authorization of every member for successfully transacting. An alternative option that Squad offers is a Teams option wherein members voted are weighted – and not all votes have the same value. The weight of their vote would depend on the significance of their role in the DAO. Clearly each of these DAO tools have a lot to talk about but last core feature I have to mention is the Vault which is a separate shared wallet that is widely accessible and allows teams to deposit tokens + NFTs as well as collectively initiate and approve transactions.

Source: Token Vesting with Streamflow

The Vault feature on Squads.

Other DAO Tools that don’t really fit in the generic categories ⬇️

Solanatip, operates in the form of a Chrome extension and it enables users to give as well as receive tips on Twitter. This is a cross-platform collaboration that eases the DAO’s governance. It aims to be an easy solution for understanding cryptocurrencies and subsequently, engaging in crypto transactions, via Twitter.

Truts , is a community discovery platform wherein it aims to promote different communities and helps onboard users to each of these web3 communities. There is also an interesting section wherein community reviews are actively posted. It is present across all chains and is Gasless. Worth noting – this is a SuperteamDAO project.

Ohana , is a community funding platform that promotes funding for projects and people. It is still in its beta stage and is being developed. As a fundraising platform, it lists out DAOs, projects, etc. that you can choose and fund. Worth noting – this is also a SuperteamDAO project.

How can DAO tooling advance further?

While we have a couple of DAO Tools on-chain various ecosystems coming up in the treasury management space, we can see better integration in terms of having DAO Tools focussed on interoperability. Cross-platform collaborations can also increase the efficiency of the workings of a DAO. For instance, imagine a Streamflow- Squads collab where payment protocols are sorted for each diff wallet you choose under Squads. How cool would that be? 😎

Last bit of reading – the Conclusion 🎊

The vision of DAOs as a whole, depends entirely on its community and therefore, building it as community-driven as possible is probably the incentive that the members need. Democratization of governance was once sought in countries and is now sought in digital spaces. This huge leap that we have taken with web3 is bound to result in some ambiguities like, for instance, how many members vote, what are the rules surrounding each DAO, who resolves the disputes that may arise, etc. However, these are all questions that will be answered in due time. The prime key that remains is – consensus.

DAO tooling in itself, no doubt has lightyears to grow and with different ecosystems growing and evolving every day, it is highly likely that we will see highly collaborative and integrative DAO tools coming up in the near future. The key is to keep improving and innovating in order to ensure that the governance of DAOs only gets easier from here on out. I’m excited to see how far our DAO tooling innovation can go, are you?

Buckle up cuz the DAO tooling ecosystem has only begun its chapter. 🛣️

Source: DAO Tooling Landscape