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By
Leo Henkels
Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a powerful new model for collective action and resource coordination, enabled by the rise of blockchain and smart contract technology. But while DAOs' theoretical potential is vast, the practical challenges of launching and operating them are significant.
One platform that has emerged as a key player in the DAO ecosystem is Juicebox, an open-source protocol for community funding and operation. By providing a flexible and accessible framework for creating programmable treasuries and incentive structures, Juicebox has powered a wide range of innovative DAO projects across sectors.
In this article, with Jango and Filip, core contributors to Juicebox, we'll examine two specific case studies of DAOs built on Juicebox: SharkDAO and Moon DAO. Through these examples, we'll explore the key features and benefits of the Juicebox platform and the lessons learned from these pioneering projects.
One notable example of a DAO powered by Juicebox is SharkDAO, a collective formed to acquire valuable NFTs. As Jango explains:
"Remember there's SharkDAO who contributed to buying five of the first 20 Nouns as a group and several in between."
SharkDAO's primary objective was to pool funds from a community of collectors and investors to purchase high-profile NFTs, specifically from the Nouns project. By coming together as a DAO, the group could aggregate its purchasing power and acquire assets that would have been out of reach for most individual buyers.
The DAO utilized Juicebox's programmable treasury infrastructure to create a simple and transparent funding mechanism. Participants could contribute ETH to the DAO's treasury and receive tokens representing their ownership stake in the collective's assets.
Using Juicebox's flexible funding configuration options, SharkDAO quickly launched a campaign and started accepting contributions from its community. The DAO set specific targets for the NFTs it wanted to acquire and used Juicebox's milestone-based funding feature to create clear goals and incentives for participation.
Once the necessary funds were raised, SharkDAO successfully bid on and won five of the first 20 Nouns NFTs, a significant achievement for the collective. By leveraging the power of decentralized finance and community coordination, the DAO competed with wealthy individual collectors and established institutions in the highly competitive NFT market.
The SharkDAO case study demonstrates the potential for DAOs to enable new forms of collective ownership and investment, particularly in the realm of digital assets. By pooling resources and aligning incentives through tokenized ownership, communities can gain access to opportunities otherwise out of reach.
However, the project also highlights the importance of clear goals and communication in DAO coordination. For a decentralized collective to effectively mobilize around a shared objective, there must be a strong consensus and understanding of the mission and strategy.
Juicebox's platform facilitated this coordination by providing a transparent and accessible infrastructure for fundraising and decision-making. The ability to quickly launch a campaign and track progress through milestones and token holdings helped keep the community aligned and motivated.
Another innovative project built on Juicebox is Moon DAO, a decentralized collective focused on space exploration and science. As Jango describes:
"Moon DAO's case, it's getting to the Moon as a DAO and democratizing the exploration of space."
Moon DAO's mission is to make space exploration more accessible and inclusive by enabling community participation and funding. Rather than relying on government agencies or private corporations, the DAO aims to create a decentralized platform for supporting space initiatives and research.
To achieve this goal, Moon DAO utilized Juicebox's programmable treasury and token issuance features to create a unique funding and governance structure. As Jango explains:
"Moon DAO, now a year and a half or more old, maybe going on two years now, had a great setup where they set their reserve rate, a lever in Juicebox language, to 50%. They issued one million Mooney tokens per ETH coming in. That was the boundary, and it ran for one lunar cycle, 28 days. So for 28 days, anyone could come in and contribute one ETH and get 500,000 Mooney tokens, and 500,000 would go into the DAO's reserve."
This funding structure allowed Moon DAO to quickly raise a substantial treasury while creating a wide distribution of governance tokens among its community. By setting clear parameters around the fundraising cycle and token issuance, the DAO created a transparent and predictable framework for participation.
Using the initial treasury raised through its Juicebox campaign, Moon DAO was able to make significant strides toward its mission of democratizing space exploration. As Jango notes:
"They ran a very successful multi-million dollar fundraiser during those 28 days and then shut off funding from then on out and stopped the issuance of Mooney and have since thrown away the keys to their Juicebox. So basically, those first 28 days are the only thing that's ever happened. The treasury got half of the token supply; the other half was distributed to folks who contributed."
"With just those initial resources, they were able to conduct the first set of auctions. Anyone who contributed got a chance to be on one of the Blue Origin trips up to lower Earth orbit, I believe. So, it's a bunch of billionaires and influencers on that ship, except for a few folks chosen by the Moon DAO community."
By leveraging its decentralized governance structure and treasury, Moon DAO secured spots for community members on a Blue Origin space flight, a historic achievement for a grassroots collective. This demonstrates the potential for DAOs to enable new forms of access and participation in areas traditionally dominated by wealthy individuals and institutions.
The Moon DAO case study highlights the importance of clear, well-defined funding and governance structures in enabling successful decentralized projects. By setting transparent parameters around token issuance and treasury management, the DAO created a strong foundation for collective action.
Juicebox's customizable features facilitated this structure, allowing Moon DAO to tailor its fundraising and incentive mechanisms to its specific goals and needs. The ability to set a fixed reserve rate and fundraising cycle created a predictable and accessible framework for community participation.
Another key lesson from Moon DAO is the power of focused and time-bound campaigns in driving momentum and engagement. By concentrating its fundraising efforts into a 28-day cycle, the DAO created a sense of urgency and excitement that helped mobilize its community.
Finally, the project demonstrates the potential for DAOs to enable new forms of community-driven innovation and exploration. By pooling resources and aligning incentives around a shared mission, decentralized collectives like Moon DAO can take on ambitious challenges and push the boundaries of what's possible.
As the DAO ecosystem evolves and matures, the lessons learned from pioneering projects like SharkDAO and Moon DAO will be invaluable in shaping the future of decentralized organizations and funding platforms.
One key development area is the integration of DAO tooling and infrastructure with other Web3 primitives and protocols. As Filip, another core contributor to Juicebox, notes:
"Juicebox interoperates with a bunch of other DAO tooling out there. So, both of those projects, their projects were actually owned by a Gnosis Safe multi-sig NFT up front, so people had this guarantee about multi-sig signers. Then they were able to conduct voting pretty easily through Snapshot because the Juicebox project tokens, you can read them directly with a snapshot strategy for them. Juicebox projects can also have ERC20 tokens, so if you're using on-chain governance or something like that, it's not so crazy to interoperate with other popular DAO tools."
Creating seamless connectivity between different DAO platforms and tools will make it easier for projects to access the full range of capabilities needed to launch and operate successfully. This could include treasury management, governance frameworks, community engagement tools, etc.
Another important frontier is the expansion of DAO models and use cases beyond the current focus on financial and investment-oriented projects. As Jango envisions:
"Now we get to do I think the work that all of us have been wanting to do, which is build Juicebox projects. Like, no one wants to spend time building Juicebox itself; I think everyone---that's just a byproduct of us now getting to do what we want to do, which is, you know, create the things that we want to create, artistically, technologically, experimentally, whatever, and have the engine that is flexible and has mostly been used in pretty vanilla ways now being able to bend it in just the right ways that we really see the benefit of doing interesting things."
As the infrastructure and tooling for DAOs become more robust and accessible, we can expect to see a proliferation of decentralized projects across various domains, from creative and cultural initiatives to scientific research and social impact.
Finally, the ongoing evolution of DAO frameworks and platforms will likely involve a greater focus on user experience and accessibility. As more mainstream users and communities become interested in launching and participating in DAOs, it will be essential to create intuitive and user-friendly interfaces that abstract away the complexity of the underlying technologies.
By reducing the barriers to entry and making it easier for anyone to launch and participate in a DAO, platforms like Juicebox can help accelerate the adoption and impact of decentralized organizations.
The case studies of SharkDAO and Moon DAO provide valuable insights into the potential of decentralized organizations and the role of platforms like Juicebox in enabling their success. By leveraging programmable treasuries, token incentives, and community governance, these projects achieved significant milestones and created new models for collective action.
As the DAO ecosystem continues to grow and evolve, the lessons learned from these pioneering projects will be essential in shaping the future of decentralized collaboration and funding. From improving interoperability and user experience to expanding the range of DAO use cases and domains, there is still much work to be done to realize the full potential of this new organizational paradigm.
Ultimately, the success of DAOs will depend on the ability of platforms like Juicebox to provide an accessible, flexible, and robust infrastructure for launching and operating these organizations. By continuing to innovate and iterate on their offerings and engaging closely with their communities' needs and feedback, these platforms can help unlock the power of decentralized coordination and enable a new era of collective action and impact.
