Dear Harmonauts & Validators,
There exists a prolific community of creators historically frustrated by their inability to develop a creator economy. Inviting, onboarding and supporting the best and the brightest of these creators will earn the good will and affinity of the larger community.
HU DAO Labs is an organization of Howard University students and alumni committed to building a sustainable economy to support our culture.
Our thesis for the HU DAO is
- Onboard - Onboard community on mission & culture, Provide builders & creatives with the tools needed to go full-time on crypto
- Activate - Align incentives between immediate and extended members of community, Bridge generational gaps
- Engage - Scale the community’s intangible resources, Reward community’s biggest contributors to culture
About the Community
The HU community is 150 years old. There are 10,000 full time students and over 80,000 living alumni. The extended Howard University family of student parents and close friends is greater than 250,000 people.
Just as there are networks of networks, there are also communities of communities. The HU community just so happens to exercise a tremendous amount of leadership and influence upon the larger, African American community.
However, we have yet to realize the full potential of our reach, largely because the HU community never developed a viable economy to mine our natural resources: creativity and energy. We believe the intersection of Web 3 technology, distributed ownership, and decentralized governance is a perfect storm of opportunity to develop an economy that can transform not only the community, but an entire people.
About HU DAO LABS
HU DAO Labs is the core team bootstrapping the HU DAO. Our aspiration is to be the voice that galvanizes our community around crypto, Web 3, and the HU DAO. Our community is hungry for education and eager to Onboard. The interest in Crypto is palpable. People are seeking answers. Our strategy is to earn the trust of our community by being responsive and sensitive to the cultural needs of our niche. We will ultimately form a DAO with the following goals and deliverables:
- HU DAO Builder Academy: Spend treasury funds to host speakers and plan larger events and conferences as well as sponsor new courses and educational content.
- HU DAO Incubator: Provide creators and builders in the community with seed funding to develop projects that align with the mandate of the DAO
- HU DAO Media: Reward bounties to creators producing content and thought leadership targeting our audience on various web3 related concepts and technologies.
- HU DAO Governance: Offer incentives for engagement on Snapshot proposals and in quarterly elections
Ask: $100K
Provided these resources, HU DAO Labs will develop the HU DAO from zero to one. We will use the initial funding to activate a minimum viable community, host educational events, sponsor members for intro web 3 courses and sell a collection of NFTs to fund our treasury.
Milestones and Budgets: Dec 1 - March 1, 2021
Success Metrics
Month 1
- 300 Members In Discord
- Onboard 300 wallets
- 100 scholarships for Web 3 Courses
- Engage 10% of Total Addressable Community via Social Media Channels (25k)
Month 2
- 600 Members in Discord
- Onboard 600 wallets
- 200 Enrolled In Web 3 Intro Courses
- Engage 30% of Total Addressable Community via Social Media Channels (75k)
Month 3
- 1K Members in Discord
- Onboard 1K wallets
- 500 Enrolled In Web 3 Intro Courses
- Engage 50% of Total Addressable Community via Social Media Channels (125k)
- Execute NFT Sale to Fund Treasury
Team
We have a core team of 9 members already actively participating in the development of the HU DAO. This team includes students, alumni, and advisors. This group will represent our 9 governors, 3 from each subset of the community, to bootstrap the DAO and encourage participation from each level of the community.
We are convinced that previous attempts to organize our community have failed due to a lack of transparency. Conversations between students never leave residence halls. Conversations between trustees never leave boardrooms. Conversations between alumni never leave private facebook groups. Siloed engagement has stifled our ability to coordinate and fostered bitterness and distrust between the sub-communities. The HU DAO is committed to sharing information with all members of our DAO. All of our discord channels will be open to all members.
Although governors will have no more authority than any other members of the DAO, we feel it is important to highlight members who are most consistent and active in the governance process. We will use Coordinape as a tool to monitor the effort and passion poured into the DAO from its various members. We will host elections every 3 months. We will encourage, but not require, members to select the most active members of the previous quarter to be the governors in the next quarter.
The HU DAO’s contributors will have a diversity of backgrounds. Aspiring actors will collaborate with retired electrical engineers. First generation college students will coordinate with 5th generation legacies. Our binding characteristic will not be our shared background or identity, but instead our shared commitment to the mandate of the DAO: "Onboard, Activate, Engage".
Additionally, we do not expect our members to have an exclusive relationship with our DAO. We want other communities throughout the Diaspora and throughout the world to follow our lead and also form DAOs that mine their own natural resources. We expect, and encourage, members to fluidly participate in our DAO AND others, resulting in a more decentralized, more harmonious world.