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By
Leo Henkels
In the rapidly evolving world of blockchain technology and decentralized organizations, the tools that power Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have undergone significant transformations. From the early days of custom-coded solutions to the current landscape of sophisticated platforms, DAO tooling has faced numerous challenges and innovations. This article explores the journey of DAO tooling, its current state, and the exciting future that lies ahead.
Adam Miller, co-founder of MIDAO, reflects on the early days of DAO tooling:
"We were going from a world where you had maybe one or two DAO tooling platforms, maybe like MolochDAO and DAOstack, you know, fairly technical still. Most people still, if you were launching a DAO, you'd probably be writing your code to a world where you had like 10 or 15 DAO tooling platforms where you could go and just through a web interface, configure your DAO's parameters, hit a button to launch all the smart contracts, and then that tool would help you manage the DAO, visualize the DAO, stuff like that."
This transition marked a significant shift in the accessibility of DAO creation and management. No longer was deep technical knowledge a prerequisite for launching a DAO, opening the door for broader adoption and experimentation.
Bryan Peters (@BPetes), founder of Team Sobol, introduces the concept of "Web 2.5" in the context of DAO tooling:
"We started to have something invigorated last cycle. I feel like the last cycle was us testing the gaps in the infrastructure layer and noticing how much we were relying on cluing web2 solutions or building what I call Web 2.5 DAO tooling applications. As a DAO tooling creator, we created a web2.5, not a full-bore web3 application."
This hybrid approach, combining elements of traditional web applications with blockchain technology, characterized many early DAO tools. While it allowed for rapid development and deployment, it also highlighted the limitations and challenges of bridging the gap between Web2 and Web3 technologies.
Snapshot emerged as a popular solution for off-chain voting, addressing some of the scalability issues faced by on-chain governance. BPeters acknowledges its importance:
"Snapshot, I mentioned it earlier, I don't mention it disparagingly, I mention it as a gift in the same way that Polygon in the early days as a side chain and Gnosis chain as a side chain were helping. They were a gift of scaling before scaling had arrived."
DAOhaus, built on the MolochDAO framework, continues to be a significant player in the DAO tooling space. Miller mentions it as one of the few platforms showing ongoing progress:
"Maybe there are just a few—Hats has been one of the few, and then you also have some progress at Aragon and DAOhaus."
Hats Protocol stands out as an innovative approach to role management within DAOs. BPeters highlights its importance:
"It would be ridiculous to try and track all your roles and have smart contract-based automation around your DAO structure without that more performant execution layer."
BPeters expresses interest in Charmverse's approach to knowledge management and pre-governance:
"I think Charmverse has been trying to find ways to have web3 at the core as they're building knowledge-based management and what I call pre-governance, that space where you make decisions socially before you move into on-chain voting and an on-chain signature of one's comment regarding one's vote."
The early days of DAO tooling were marked by significant infrastructure limitations. BPeters explains:
"That intelligence recycles back out, but the team and what they were attempting to do too early was not conserved. I'm really grateful that Hats caught the right timing to push through, and there are many that have continued to build through as you highlighted yourself."
Scalability was a major hurdle for early DAO tools, particularly for on-chain governance mechanisms. The emergence of Layer 2 solutions and sidechains helped address some of these concerns.
BPeters points out a crucial missing piece in early DAO tooling:
"There was also another key missing ingredient: DAOs are social, and the social layer was entirely web2."
This reliance on Web2 social platforms like Discord and Telegram created a disconnect between the social and governance aspects of DAOs.
The maturation of Layer 2 solutions has significantly improved the scalability and efficiency of DAO operations. BPeters notes:
"Also, the L2s have really hit stride, and Ethereum L1 has been doing a lot to improve scaling. Think about it, the merge happened last cycle. DAOs were trying to do stuff pre-merge."
Projects like Lens and Farcaster are bridging the gap between social interactions and on-chain governance. BPeters expresses optimism about these developments:
"I think Farcaster and Farcaster channels, that protocol, and some of the clients that are now being built upon it are creating an invitation to communities to come and have an open social graph layer that's about how we socialize and follow one another that is connected to the token layer through the wallets and verified wallets and ENS that are connected."
BPeters highlights interesting experiments in the Nouns ecosystem:
"Some of the most recent Noun experiments that I found fascinating are Verbs and Grounds DAO, and it's because they're mixing an ERC-20 token with the Nouns NFT governance model, allowing for more granularity."
BPeters is particularly excited about the potential of social graph protocols and signed off-chain data:
"My greatest fascination right now is what social graph protocols, signed off-chain data solutions, and their bridging to on-chain worlds are possible in this cycle, and what relationship will those have to decentralized autonomous organizations?"
This approach could allow for more nuanced and efficient governance mechanisms that bridge on-chain and off-chain interactions.
The future of DAO tooling may see closer integration between work management and governance. BPeters shares his vision:
"Because, as I mentioned with my experiences in Sobol, just a graph of relationships between people and their marketplace interactions as they do work together in that marketplace of work, that's where I'm seeing things going, and I'm excited to participate in building into."
The experimentation with hybrid models, like those seen in the Nouns ecosystem, points towards more flexible and granular governance structures in the future. This could allow DAOs to tailor their governance models more precisely to their specific needs and contexts.
Tools like Charmverse hint at the growing importance of knowledge management and structured decision-making processes within DAOs. Future tooling may focus more on facilitating informed decision-making and institutional memory within decentralized organizations.
The evolution of DAO tooling has been marked by significant challenges and innovative solutions. From the early days of custom-coded solutions to the current landscape of user-friendly platforms and sophisticated governance mechanisms, the field has come a long way. However, as both Miller and BPeters note, there is still much work to be done.
The future of DAO tooling looks promising, with advancements in scalability, integration of social and governance layers, and more flexible models on the horizon. As BPetes suggests, the convergence of social graph protocols, signed off-chain data solutions and on-chain governance could lead to more efficient and effective DAOs.
However, challenges remain. The need for truly decentralized social layers, improved user experiences, and more robust integration between various tools and protocols are areas that will likely see significant development in the coming years.
As the DAO ecosystem continues to mature, we can expect to see more innovative tools and approaches emerge. The goal remains clear: to create tooling that enables DAOs to operate more efficiently, make better decisions, and truly embody the principles of decentralization and community governance.
The journey of DAO tooling is far from over. As Miller and BPeters' discussion highlights, we are still in the early stages of this technological and social experiment. The next few years will be crucial in determining whether DAOs can live up to their promise of revolutionizing organizational structures and decision-making processes.
For those involved in the DAO space, whether as builders, participants, or observers, the evolution of DAO tooling represents an exciting frontier. It's a space where technology, governance, and social coordination intersect, offering the potential to reshape how we organize and collaborate in the digital age. As we move forward, the continued development and refinement of DAO tools will play a crucial role in realizing this potential and bringing the vision of truly decentralized organizations to life.
