Embarking on The Way of the DAO: 8 Week Incubator for Harmony DAOs

[charlottelynnemelkun]

Embarking on The Way of the DAO: Harmony Partnership Overview

Embarking on The Way of the DAO is a 12 week program where communities commence on their journey into the liquid future of horizontal coordination through following the first stage of The Way of the DAO.

Up to 10 travelers from each of the 5 selected DAO communities currently on Harmony will learn how to chart and navigate the social and technical considerations that DAOs face while on their journeys by

Building a map of their own course and next steps in governance, community building, treasury management, financial sustainability, web3 partnerships, and tooling. Each community will build a lightpaper, pitch deck and decentralization roadmap. The program works like an incubator for communities or core teams which would like to become DAOs

The goal of the pilot is to establish a self-sustainable Harmony Way of the DAO Guild that accelerates Harmony DAOs utilizing The Way of The DAO methodology. In the long-term The Way of the DAO sees the future of a multi-chain world. To this end, we will enhance knowledge sharing and interoperability between DAOs in Harmony and DAOs launching across other protocols

Introduction to The Way of the DAO & Why Harmony

The Way of the DAO is a network of Guides with the mission to support communities and companies as they embark on their journey into the future of decentralized and progressive coordination enabled by blockchain technology.

We believe DAOs are the future of organization, where horizontal governance enables flexibility towards challenges we all are facing now and we manifest that society will awaken as a result.

Communities across the Harmony ecosystem are facing similar challenges in regard to establishing coordination, governance, token infrastructure, and financial sustainability. DAO is not just a next big thing, it’s an unknown space where communities have to find their way in the darkness of uncertainty and solve issues that keep humankind coordination centralized.

The Way of the DAO boosts the chance of success of these early stage communities by equipping them with the right tools, supplies and guidance to thrive in the decentralized future enabled by Web3. Our process is similar to the great discoveries, where we start from mapping the way, then help in navigation of the movement until we facilitate establishment of the fort posts- consistent and stable foundation for exponential growth.

The guides of The Way of The DAO have crossed paths with the community of Harmony on several occasions. We got introduced during ETH-Lisbon 2021, again in ETH-Denver 2022 where Charlotte received the HER DAO Scholarship as well as presented the DAO creation template at the HER DAO Hackerhouse and lastly in Mexico where it again resonated. Meeting the Harmony Community in person and feeling their commitment to DAOs has led us to select Harmony as a partner for boosting and accelerating DAOs.

Establishment of The Harmony Way of the DAO Guild

The Harmony Way of the DAO Guild is intended to be a subDAO of the Way of the DAO, dedicated to guiding DAOs funded through Ecosystem Grants on Harmony.

Throughout the duration of the pilot partnership grant, The Way of the DAO will launch The Way of the DAO Harmony Guild through a scholarship model.

The Scholarship Program Includes:

Recruitment and on-boarding of 10 scholars to the Harmony Way of the DAO Guild

The scholars will be apprentices and receive training and mentorship in the
methodology of The Way of the DAO

Each DAO in the program will be assigned 2 scholars which will follow the full workshop series, providing assistance to their DAO and building their experience in assisting DAOs in the Harmony ecosystem

After scholars successfully complete the program, they are issued The Way of the DAO entrance NFTs and digital credentials

Successful scholars will transition to becoming core team members of the Harmony Way of the DAO Guild following the completion of this 3 month pilot program.
Selection of Harmony DAO Communities

The Way of the DAO will work with Harmony to develop processes for the selection of the communities which will go through the workshop path proposed below.

We request that at least one of the communities selected for the pilot have a mandate that is social or environmental impact focused as creating impact through blockchain technology is one of our core mandates.

Charting the Way of the DAO: 3 Month Pilot Roadmap

Embarking on The Way of the DAO is an 8 week program where communities embark on their journey into the liquid future of horizontal coordination through following the first stage of The Way of the DAO.

Up to 10 travellers from each of the 5 selected communities will learn how to chart and navigate the social and technical considerations that DAOs face while beginning their journeys:

Building a map of their own course and next steps in governance, community building, treasury management, financial sustainability, web3 partnerships, tooling requirements, and basic technical infrastructure. Each community will build a lightpaper, pitch deck and decentralization roadmap. The program works like an incubator for communities with DAO ambitions.

Before starting the journey, each community will be assigned 2 Guides and 2 Scholars which will create a custom path to be travelled, leading communities through 10 hours of direct guidance with accompanying side missions leading to collective decisions on technical and social structures to be later implemented by the community.

Guides will further assist each community in creating weekly journey reports and address direct challenges the communities are facing. They will facilitate weekly bonfires: community calls of The Way of the DAO where the DAOs come together to share knowledge, give updates on progress of their journey, or reap the rewards of competitions won or bounties completed.

Upon completion of their paths, the communities will meet again at the Gates of Decentralization where they will be greeted by The Way of the DAO Guides and Scholars, Members of the Harmony Community, and Guests. Here they will reveal their community mappings and navigation plans and compete for prizes. The final week will be reserved for reflections on the journey and optimization of the process for future communities. The Timeline for Activities is as follows

Preparing for the Journey (week 1-4)

Landmarks: Stage 1

1. Getting to know the Travellers

   a. Partnership kick-off between The Way of the DAO and Harmony
   b. Develop the selection process for DAOs with Harmony
   c. Send acceptance letters to 5 DAOs and practical planning

2. The Way of the DAO Harmony Scholarships

   a. Recruit Scholars for the Journey and Way of the DAO Harmony Guild
   b. Onboarding workshops, training and community building for Scholars

3. Gathering Tools & Supplies

   a. Guides and Scholars assigned to each DAO (2 Guides, 2 Scholars)
   b. Getting to know your travellers: Selected DAO Survey & Evaluation
   c. Tailored DAO mapping paths and milestones created for each Community

Embarking on the path of The Way of the DAO (Incubator weeks 5-10)

Landmarks: Stage 2

1. Establishing Communications

   a. Intro to channels, processes and Telegram & Discord Groups
   b. First community bonfire: participants of all 5 pre-DAOs including introduction to methodology, milestones, and expectations, announcement of scholars/guide assignments, cross-community introductions

2. Learning to Navigate the Path

   a. Planning the Route: Introduction Meetings with each DAO
   b. DAOs are guided through the steps of mapping their DAO in 10 hours of individual community sessions over 6 weeks
   c. Weekly missions for the communities to optimise knowledge in specific areas necessary for launching a successful DAO
   d. DAOs attend weekly The Way of the DAO Bonfires
   e. Progress is documented in each community’s Journey Report which will evolve throughout the Journey into a pitch deck, decentralization roadmap, and community mapping

The Gates of Decentralization: (week 11)

Landmarks: Stage 3:

a. Initiation into The Way of the DAO and Community Pitches
b. Scholar graduation and soft launch of The Way of the DAO Harmony Guild

A Rest after the Journey (week 12)

Stage 4: Landmarks

a. Reports and performance scoring compiled for all communities and delivered to Harmony Grants Team
b. Reflections on the Journey: feedback sessions with communities and scholars

Proposal Ask: 75,000 USD for 3 Month Embarking on The Way of the DAO Pilot

35,000 USD
The Way of the DAO Scholarship Program
On-boarding Scholars
Training program for Scholars
Payment to Scholars (30,000 USD)
Soft-launch of Harmony The Way of the DAO Guild

35,000 USD
Community Guidance on The Way of the DAO Incubator
Pre-journey survey and tailored paths
10 hours of tailored sessions per community with Guides
Community missions
Weekly Bonfires
Graduation ceremony

5,000 USD
Administrative and Establishment Costs
Scheduling, digital channel creation
Community Management of communities, guides, scholars, Harmony
Setting up tooling, NFTs and infrastructure

Guides on The Way of the DAO

Charlotte While traveling around the world for seven years, Charlotte saw that the structures for coordination were not working. Then she went down the Web3 rabbit hole, joining a project enabling digital community finance by adding blockchain to the processes of women’s village savings and loan associations- effectively allowing these groups to leapfrog legacy systems and accelerating them on the path to development. She co-founded The Way of the DAO after zooming out to a macro-level and seeing the potential for the community model for finance not only within savings groups, but for the entire financial and social system through a network of DAOs.

https://www.linkedin.com/charlottemelkun/

Mike came to web3 from the academy world of theoretical physics. Mike is passionate about socio-economy and how the scientific method can be applied to empower humanity and facilitate our evolution. He has been working in a field of digital economy and governance since 2017, assisted private clients in adopting innovative solutions using blockchain, AI and BI, participated in international conferences regarding 4th industrial revolution and blockchain, provided advising and coaching in tokenomics and decentralized governance. At the moment Mike is leading the Belarusian initiative for the Grassroots Digital State implementation, where he applies his skills and creativity to find the best practices on decentralizing society and economy with the aim to embrace personal freedom and collective resilience.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ananyinm/

Lars has been working as a management, project and IT consultant through a long active career as both a traditional employee and as an entrepreneur. Being raised in the shadow of big centralized corporations and organizational business structures and being the victim of both the good things and the shortcomings within this he has understood that worklife can actually be lived in a different way. As a techie Lars has seen the light in the way that DAO’s are not only an organizational form but how DAO’s are a perfect symbiosis between people and technology enabling a new and decentralized way forward. How to get out of the shadow.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/larsmillgaard/

Nicklas had the epiphany that DAOs will enable people to do what they feel like and still survive, ultimately allowing people to feel fulfilled and enter the flow state. He realized then, that his entire combined experience of working in different fields within entrepreneurship had led him to where he is now. Today Nicklas is working dedicatedly with the acceleration of DAOs, applying his jack of all trades skills and experience in order to further the chance of the world achieving a sustainable awakened future.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicklasmillgaard/

[HarmonyUniverse]

Thank you for submitting a proposal to Harmony’s $300M Ecosystem Fund. We are in the process of reviewing your proposal and a team member will reach out for follow up.

If you have more details to add, please do so by replying to this thread. We would also love to have the Harmony community participate to ask questions and provide feedbacks.

[frwrdslosh]

Hello, @charlottelynnemelkun

Thank you for this incredibly detailed and eloquent proposal. And thank you for thinking of Harmony!

You have put this proposal under the Partners category of Funding Proposals

https://talk.harmony.one/t/about-the-partners-category/2342?u=frwrdslosh

Partners is a heavily scrutinized area and approvals are rare. Perhaps, you meant a DAO bootstrap grant? Please find the Guidelines for DAO bootstrap grant, here.

Let me know your thoughts! Thank you

[charlottelynnemelkun]

Hi Mikey,

Thanks for reaching out and your feedback regarding the placement of our proposal under the Partners category and the suggestion to relocate it to DAO Bootstrap Grants!

I believe it fits under the DAO grants as well as we have the mission to accelerate DAOs and create a Harmony Way of the DAO Guild through scholars. However, we would of course like to pursue a strong partnership with Harmony in the long-term as well.

Would love the opportunity to speak to you briefly about it before confirming with The Way of the DAO community and migrating the proposal over. Do you have a half hour of availability this week at your earliest convenience?

We are super excited to get a collaboration up and going with Harmony under whatever category is best!

Best Regards,
Charlotte

[charlottelynnemelkun]

Update 30 March 2022

Currently Harmony solves a variety of challenges below by aiding with mentorships and ecosystem grants, however we believe that partnerships can further empower the Harmony protocol to sustainably reach its ambitious goals of launching 10,000 DAOs. The mission of The Way of the DAO is to help facilitate the universal adoption of DAOs as the organizational structure of the future. Together in partnership with Harmony we wish to help guide communities on their journeys to enter Web3.

Challenges for Communities & Companies

10,000 DAOs will Not Come from the Crypto Community.

They will come from bringing new communities and their members into the Web3 space. In order for these communities to thrive, they need internal knowledge that stays in the community and boosts its capacity to navigate the challenges that arise from becoming a DAO.

Very few DAOs are DAOs at all.

DAO tooling exists and is improving by the day. But it’s not about installing a tool or launching a smart contract, it’s about implementing a tool and creating a culture. Without customization and processes, the technical infrastructure itself will not do the job of facilitating decentralized coordination and a democratic process in a community.

The Survival Rate is Low

We all know crypto. Many projects have launched, lived and died over the course of a couple months. Running a horizontal organization for the long run requires a new methodology regarding continuous value creation, retention rates and incentive structures.

Solutions by The Way of the DAO

10,000 DAOs Requires 1000 Entrepreneurs.

In a world dominated by the traditional, hierarchical mindset: communities and entrepreneurs need to learn to think decentralized. We help entrepreneurial communities reach their own tipping point - where the DAO can offer lower costs, increased revenue, optimized administration, and lower risks- naturally outcompeting other forms of organization. By providing the education for these entrepreneurs, we equip them for what it takes to create a decentralized movement and to inspire and lead other communities to become DAOs.

Education is not a Product, it’s a Culture.

Through curated methodology where a community’s mandate leads its choices in technical adoption, tooling becomes part of the underlying culture through repeatable processes- enabling the community to fulfill its objectives rather than alienating non-technical DAO creators and contributors. By working directly with communities to understand first why a DAO and later how, their mission stays the focus

A Sustainable Decentralized Future

DAOs are startups, but with their own unique challenges. Not only must today’s DAO find a product market fit but they must also implement internal decision making and governance. The Way of the DAO helps communities on all parts of their journey, from designing reward, feedback and governance procedures, but also finding their own road to financial sustainability and fair community token launch.

[_PGCL]

Thank you for proposing this initiative!!

We are going to expand our protocol EthicHub to the Harmony ecosystem and this proposal is of huge interest to us. Having partners of experience in the DAO field aiding us would be of great help.

I hope this proposal get approved, I would love to see the progress of this matter and participate when our protocol has successfully been built on Harmony

All the best,

PGCL

[MasterDAO]

Hi everyone! My name is Mike, I am one of the Guides, it’s a great pleasure to join Harmony community!
I would like to share my personal view on why protocol like Harmony should partner with us
We have skills and knowledge from experience working not just with crypto communities, but also with non-crypto societies. I am working with 2tokens foundation in DAO working group to educate and help traditional entities adopt DAOs based on EU legislation field. From other side I am working with civil society organisation from Eastern Europe, for example currently I’m coordinating metaBelarus initiative with a goal to build and implement Grassroots Digital State for Belarusian civil society organisations. Also, as a part of my research in Impact oriented economy I made in collaboration with Aragon, I have strong connections with global Impact Hub community. These are examples of my networks that I am aiming to bring into web3 in next years (approx. several hundreds of organisations with pretty huge aggregated audience). I have a great feeling that Harmony could be the port for these communities on their way into web3

[Thedaoway]

Hey everyone,

I am stoked to have the opportunity of utilizing my experience in setting up sustainable communities and acceleration within the Harmony ecosystem.

I will strive to use the existing communities I have set up, such as the Nordic Blockchain Association, to further onboard communities to Harmony and I will guide the communities in The Way of The DAO becoming sustainable by applying experience obtained in Switzerland graduating the harsh acceleration program of F10

[Chakraam_The_Great]

Love this program, and a ton of the features being implemented in it. There’s a few other edu DAO’s attempting to do similar DAO education mandates but I can’t say any have gamified it as well as you all. With that said I see some holes in the process or more efficient uses of effort that you all could explore that would help you maximize the value you’re providing the ecosystems that you’re looking to partner with. I’d be happy to discuss these in depth with you on a zoom or similar.

1. The limitation of DAO participants - even if made to scale there was 100 DAOs added to Harmony just last month. Need more reach

2. The curriculum or best practices seem too finite. Although i can’t deduct that accurately without seeing the content. It could be a case of the messaging being off. The “Way” of the DAO is a tight name but feels like singular as if there is only one way. Through reading the proposal i know that isn’t the ethos n but brand is everything

3. Is the curriculum mutable or added to as you partner with different chains that have didferent preferences for funding or even just operate differently? Or does that content already exist. For instance details on the core 10 Harmony 1M+ DAO’s, specific Harmony DAO tools, and our soon to be changing funding ruberiks would all be must have info for those looking to DAO in the Harmony exosystem

4. Why so long? In creating several online courses the humans attention span starts to wane after 6 weeks of anything. Ideal time to max excitement and effort is 3 to 4 weeks. Have y’all considered condensing for peak performance and scalability

5. Wen coin? I didn’t see anything about a governance token jn there in which case you all are missing out on a golden chance to input some learn to earn options

6. This might make for a serious bridged agnostic tool food for thought.

Based on knowledge level y’all have exuded I’m sure some of these options have been explored. I eager to hear more especially since I’m developing a in house educational solution that will be pre-approval to lower barrier and increase threshold for approval funding. Considering some applying DAO and/or existing DAOs to co create a tool to launch at SCALE. Would def like to talk more if your open. Discuss how we can get you over the hump to funded

[charlottelynnemelkun]

Thank you for your detailed feedback and happy to hear you love the proposal Let’s definitely hop on a zoom call soon: DM me at Thanksforthefish on Telegram or book a time here: The Way of The DAO - clarify, design & implement

I’m also writing up some responses to post here tomorrow for everyone to see as you ask some super good questions!

[frwrdslosh]

Quick update from Harmony, @charlottelynnemelkun

The Harmony DAO Ops team will resume approvals and funding on May, 1st. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we learn best practices and navigate the proposal process. In the meantime, please take a look at the updated DAO Funding Guidelines.

note: this comment is not an approval of the proposal

[charlottelynnemelkun]

Hi frwrdslosh,

We are moving this proposal into the DAO at your previous suggestion and retrofitting it to conform to the DAO bootstrap grant guidelines

[frwrdslosh]

I will close this thread now and look forward to seeing the updated proposal in the DAO’s category.