I’ve been talking with many in the ecosystem and came to recognize that the concept of a 2000 person Decentralized State / Guild sounds straight forward enough but the actual operations of them are rather unique and complex. Especially with the ability of members to launch their own sub-DAOs outside of the scope of the original DAO. So I thought I would map out what I have seen graphically. But first I want to outline a DAO DAO
Above is what I consider to be a very simple DAO. It is a technical organization that operates off smart contracts and people perform roles in them. All elements of this system is protocoled. Smart contracts operate as they were designed and people perform their defined role all supported by a treasury. Smart contracts or people can be arranged in any manner you desire and could have more or less people/contracts/treasury. I use this graphic to reference size to keep things standard across this post.
Next is a more complex DAO but still fairly small. There are a few additional roles and more contracts to automate more activities. People may have a role as a council members or general member or a unique role specific for the DAO like an Artist role for an Art DAO.
As the DAO grows so does the complexity. Now you may need new more roles as support functions may be needed. As people may need special training or a task needs to be performed a very specific way you may need to start established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for people to use when they perform more complex roles. This system can grow as large as it needs to be but it should always be trying to reduce operating costs and increase it’s efficiency. By doing so the DAO can decrease resource consumption and ensure long term sustainability. People will always be needed if the system can automate roles out it is in the interest of the DAO to do so as people are inconsistent and require extra costs to ensure efficiency.
Now I want to highlight the initial building block of the Decentralized State.
Above is a Decentralized Community (non-DAO backed Guild). It is a group of people who choose to collaborate. However many recognize the need for more structure to be able to handle capital and coordinate it’s use so they establish a DAO within the community to support it.
Above is a small Decentralized State or DAO backed Guild. This tool allows the community to execute projects, self-govern, store and invest capital along with many other things. The key element though is that the DAO does not direct the DS/Guild rather the DAO empowers the community. Social Consensus is the deciding factor in the governance process. Like DAOs these can also scale.
Above is a bit larger of a Decentralize State/Guild where there are more complex social structures included. There are additional sub-communities which could be project based or be social Cliques that have formed within the group. There can also be subDAOs which may or may not be governed by the primary DAO. I drew inspiration in this graphic from my experience within the MonkeDAO and BanditoDAO.
The large DS/Guild is the MonkeDAO which access is gate through owning a Solana Monkey Business NFT. They have ~2000 members and have formed many special interest groups, social groups and members of this group have started other DAOs. The BanditoDAO is a DS/Guild that is gated by owning a SMB with a sombrero. I joined this group because it was a smaller organization of about 50 people and by buying the sombrero SMB I had access to both BanditoDAO and MonkeDAO communities. However BanditoDAO is not governed by MonkeDAO it was set up separately and had separate governance. The only control MonkeDAO had over BanditoDAO was they could remove our members from the MonkeDAO if they wanted to but that has never been an issue.
These subcommunities created a unique phenomenon as now organized subgroups could operate as a harmonized unit within the MonkeDAO and develop their own independent reputation or coordinate their decisions for proposals to have greater influence. The issue at these sizes is that even though the organization and DAO was fairly flat in terms of leadership and organizational hierarchy people still were trying to advance themselves in social hierarchy. The term “alpha” refers to information about projects that may or may not be public that indicate a project is likely to be successful. People used alpha from their social networks as a means of incentive to be included in exclusive groups that developed strong reputations and social credibility. This gave influence and image within the communities. But also divided the community. Some people wanted to be parts of those groups and others thought those groups were the problem with the over all organization. It hurt social cohesion and gave some members more weight in governance by their ability to influence others in the organization.
I am not trying to take a side on if its right or wrong rather explain that as we scale these elements will occur. And while many DAOs right now are less than 10 members the users coming over to NEAR right now are not forming DAOs first. they are forming communities then establishing a DAO. This means that when the DAO is set up for these groups there may already be 100-250 members or more. And this is just the beginning. As more users adopt NEAR these communities will also grow.
Above is an even larger Digital State/Guild. These will scale and the only thing stopping them growing is 1. Users on NEAR an 2. Social Cohesion. My solution to solving the issues with community scalability will be based around the option for these organizations to adopt an out of the box ready DAO to power their community, then teaching them how to use it. The reason for this is because if communities fail its people who are losing money and risking their mental health. I’ve seen first hand what break downs in these organizations can cause to good individuals and much of it was preventable. NEAR has the proper L1 to manage these communities and one of the biggest opportunities sitting in front of it. We can onboard entire communities onto NEAR instead of individual users.