Community Lessons from MetaDAO
That have nothing to do with Futarchy
There are some amazing things I’ve learned from being part of MetaDAO, and I'm not sure how much of that is because of Futarchy, but its worth exploring and sharing some of those findings.
If you have been living in a cave and have no clue about MetaDAO, skip reading this and enlighten yourself on the ways of the Futard here
Initial Distribution
Genesis of a token is where the community DNA gets created. It is often overlooked, but those early holders are the ones that take the mission upon them to build something special. MetaDAO has assembled some of the greatest minds in crypto and some of it happened through clever decisions on how to get $META into the right hands.
- Airdrop to a small crowd. The META airdrop (now worth over $100,000) was sent to about 86 recipients. This led to a hyper focused and super concentrated group of individuals. There were a few that didn't get involved, but over 90% are still very active today.
- Prequalify with action. Unlike most airdrops that use holdings or Defi actions like staking or borrowing to reward initial users, Proph3t created a “Futarchy Quiz” to help select the airdrop recipients. It was not a massive effort for people to complete the quiz, but by creating a barrier that wasn’t financially aligned (ie using Wormhole to move assets cross-chain or using Margin.fi to lend assets out), he was able to find people that were interested specifically in Futarchy
- Switch it up. Initially, everyone thought that $META was going to be auctioned instead of airdropped. This was a genius move that acted as an airdrop hunter deterrent. By making people think that there was no free lunch, those that stuck around showed, through small effort, that they were interested in the mission. This move might not be replicated so easily now that the cat is out of the bag, but it is evidence that you dont want to over-market your process to get the token into deserving hands.
Community Processes
The Discord is impressive. Scroll through the channels and you’ll quickly see that there is more depth and giga-brain gold than most Discords out there. (Seriously, upgrade your game right now and get in there to see what I mean https://discord.gg/metadao )
There are many big W’s for MetaDAO, but what the community has been able to achieve without a “core team”…this is a part of MetaDAO that goes beyond the promise of superior decision-making. It’s community lightening in a bottle that I hope to capture in these observations.
There is no hierarchy, no positions, and no project management software, yet everything at MetaDAO is getting done at high efficiency
- Aligned Vision. This is the most critical element that has influenced the rest of the community cohesion. The goal of building, exploring, and evangelizing Futarchy is simple and powerful. Add in “number go up” for $META and everyone knows exactly what they are trying to accomplish and how it benefits them.
- Roles through contribution. I’ve never seen a permission-less community so well organized. No one is expected to specifically do any one task, and yet everything gets done. People simply are doing what they can to help, and there is no definitive reward schema for those contributions. The server is filled with altruistic members doing what needs to be done. There is a discussion about retroactive compensation and no one seems particularly concerned about it. That being said, this model might only work for a few months without seeing significant progress in the project. Had the $META token not performed so well, I cannot know how many people would have continued to contribute at the same rate. Many of the members are there solely for the Futarchy mission, which highlights how important a clear vision is. We all know that we are earning “META points”, but I personally don’t care and I think that has alot to do with my fellow futards.
- Clear process/few obstacles. Other than holding $META to see some of the channels, there is no requirement to getting involved or making a proposal. Documentation is bountiful and there are so many people active in the server that anyone looking to start contributing really can start doing so without waiting for anyone. Most other DAOs have confusing or straight up mysterious ways of creating a proposal. This is another critical point that differentiates MetaDAO; you can only have a real DAO when people can join without waiting for another persons permission.
- Proposal drafting. The process of creating a proposal is super simple and doesnt require any initial discussion, but (perhaps due to the nature of Futarchy), every proposal has ALOT of discussion leading up to its launch. This community gets into the weeds on every aspect of a potential proposal, with at least 20 members chiming in on how they would change/tweak a proposal and asking questions that dont shy from conflict. The decision to keep the discussion in Discord makes it easier to keep track of what is happening and I have found it more inviting to participate than in the Discourse segmented versions of soft governance. One day, someone will publish these discussions.
- Spontaneous multi-sigs/councils. The status quo for many DAOs is creating a definitive council of signers for transferring assets and program upgrades. This is usually the “core team” or people selected by the “core team”. MetaDAO has proven that an even better model is to allocate signer responsibilities on a per-proposal basis. This is superior process as it doesn't require any separate voting process and keeps responsibilities fresh since they are set as part of each proposal. This removes the problem of absentee signers and removes the cumbersome process of electing members at a pre-determined frequency. Each signer allocation is set by the proposal drafter, and if the proposal passes, the signers are already set by the proposal.
MetaDAO’s mission to bring Futarchy into the mainstream is an effort to improve human coordination, and many of the community improvements I’ve seen are a better way to execute on the decisions we make together.
