Overview

Hi DAO Masters,

We hope you’re rested and raring to go after a wonderful holiday break! The DAO Masters Generals have been in planning mode this week to make sure that Season 3 is our best yet, but before we get into that, we wanted to reflect on the amazing progress we made as a community last year:

• We fundraised nearly 50 ETH to get this project off the ground.
• We created a beautiful website with 40(!) amazing tool reviews and resources.
• We onboarded 60+ stellar contributors who brought their energy and skills to bear over two seasons.
• We produced high-quality research, editorial content, marketing pushes, newsletters and so much more!

Most importantly, we’ve seen DAO Masters grow into a thriving community filled with wonderful and caring people. Just a few days ago, we saw Taylor Rose, a s2 member and new DAOer, giving an above and beyond response to a new member in the #introductions channel. These types of actions are commonplace in our DAO on a scale we’ve never seen in another organization. We’d encourage you all to take a moment to reflect on the amazing accomplishments and culture we’ve created in these first two seasons. Thank you for everything you’ve done.

With that said, the DMGs are excited to put forth a plan for the future of DAO Masters!

With only 15 ETH in the treasury, this season we’ll focus on building a sustainable business model, starting to generate revenue, and establishing ourselves as the DAO experts.

Our Focus

The most successful projects build for a specific audience. They create something that those people really want or need. Mirror allows creators to easily crowdfund crypto campaigns, SeedClub accelerates communities with social tokens, Snapshot allows DAOs to vote on-chain. All of these projects provide a huge value unlock for their audience.

Last season we mentioned that we’d focus on building specifically for DAO operators, people who run DAOs and double down on partnerships to serve those organisations’ needs.

What does that mean in practice?

We propose Season 3 focuses on these three activities.

• Partnerships - The best way to onboard the next million DAO contributors is to help existing DAOs succeed. Partnerships is our version of ‘consulting,’ but with a focus on long-term engagements, versus the traditional, transactional approach.
• Research - publishing research on a range of DAO-related topics to help establish DAO best practices. This allows us to establish ourselves as DAO experts and can feed our partnerships pipeline.
• Tool Reviews - similar to our S1 and S2 efforts, but with a twist (more on this later.)

These three functions will allow us to create a fly-wheel effect. Partnerships improve based on our research team’s insights. Research improves because we uncover new behaviors through partnerships. Our tool reviews will improve because we can go from surface-level analysis to expert-level critique of which tool should be used for which purpose and why.

The above activities would be supported by key areas like:

• Governance - so we operate in the most effective manner.
• Tokenomics - so we have a financially sustainable method of rewarding our contributors and keeping the standard of DAO Masters contributors high.
• Marketing - so we create a brand strong enough to bring in quality leads, highlight our expertise and share our learnings with the wider web3 community.
• Onboarding - so we bring in the right people in the right way and make the best use of their unique talents.
• Community Ops - so we have a well-oiled machine running in the background.

What does this mean for me?

We also want to be clear about what is happening with each s2 project. In order of the channels in Discord, here’s what we’re proposing:

• Product - This channel will remain, but the product pod will become a supporting work group to augment the core team and activities. Content-resources - This channel will remain, and long-term it should turn resources into a 100% community maintained feature rewarded by our native token.
• Content-video-tutorials - This will be archived and rolled up into one ‘Tool Reviews’ channel to streamline our content workflow.
• Content-reviews - This will be archived and rolled up into one ‘Tool Reviews’ channel to streamline content workflow.
• Content-join-a-dao - Given the focus on building for DAO operators and partnerships, this project will be archived. We need to focus our efforts and treasury towards building a sustainable business model. Join a DAO won’t be pursued next season.
• Editorial - This will remain as a channel, but the responsibilities will change in order to support the core activities. Editors will be responsible for reviewing research articles and tool reviews to ensure they meet our rigorous standards. It’s an editor’s job to ensure they’re aware of the projects that are going on, what they need to review and when. It’s likely they will also be responsible for publishing our content.
• Marketing - This will remain a channel, and contributors will be responsible for social media, specifically twitter and events since that’s how the DAO community engages. This team will also be responsible for sharing DAO Masters updates and learning to solidify our position as DAO experts and leaders.
• NFT-monetization - The research done this season will prove invaluable for when we decide to launch our NFTs. We still plan to launch the s2 NFTs early in s3. Moving forward we’ll pause activity in this pod to keep our focus. It’s likely that we’ll spin this pod back up as and when required.
• Consulting-monetization - this will be archived with a new ‘Partnerships’ channel taking its place.
• Partnerships - This will be archived and with a new ‘Partnerships’ channel taking its place.
• Onboarding - This will remain the same and focus on onboarding and recruiting new contributors.
• Community Ops - This channel will have a clear goal of managing backend operations (e.g. Notion, Discord, etc.) in s3.
• Governance - This will be rolled up to governance & compensation in s3.
• Compensation - This will be rolled up to governance & compensation in s3.
• Research - This will continue as is in s3.

We see this as more of a restructuring and consolidation rather than removing areas, and we believe that there’ll be a place for our S1 and S2 contributors to fit in.

For example, if you were involved in content last season, then head to Tool Reviews, Marketing or Editorial. If you enjoyed thinking about Monetization, then head over to Partnerships.

If you’re unsure where you fit in after reading the ‘what does this mean for me?’ section above, then please message a DAO Master Guide or comment in ‘S3-planning’ once it’s available and we’ll be glad to help.

Voting

If you would like to approve this plan, please vote approve. If approved, we will move forward as described below in the ‘Next Steps’ section.

If you are not happy with this plan, vote reject. If rejected, we will work with the community to modify the proposal, and post an updated plan next week.

Next Steps

Pending approval, we’re going to be posting our thoughts on how we believe the three key functions should operate in the individual channels next week.

You’ll start to notice new channels pop up soon, and when you do, please don’t be shy about joining them to ask any questions you may have and to make your voice heard on how you think we should proceed.

As always, if you have any questions, then please let us know. You can comment in ‘S3-planning’, which we will archive once the season is underway or DM one of the DMGs if you’d rather not comment in public.

We’re super excited to get into this season and to embark on this new direction together.