Categorising DAOs

A template to grok the emergence of the DAOs

DAO is a “container” term that we day by day shape what it is. I do not try to define it pedantically except it is people doing things together, which also requires some coordination and decision making. Lots of it. For me to start calling it DAO, the only thing you definitely need is decision making and having a decentralised governance structure that is also transparent(can be private), traceable(history) and unchangeable.  The rest is composable in my opinion how you form one, or how you evolve yours

3 years ago, I wanted to help a group of people create a DAO. We could not succeed to make it last but succeeded to learn a lot in the whitespace. At the moment it was ok to not define what a DAO is, there were only a few DAO tools. It now is many and easier to leverage templates.

I will now attempt the most futile and also useful task in human history. Categorising things that grow organically, hold complexity and change very fast.  Let me take the short stick. Someone had to do it to understand and map the territory. What I do will change tomorrow but I hope it gives a template for you to partition and think about DAOs, while also understanding the in-between and the emergent ones.

Well let me say it first before anyone

-          Your DAO can have several or one type of activity. That is ok.

-          Yes defining the future by the things that exist is skeuomorphism. A new construct like a DAO can go beyond what exists, what we knew.

-          Categorising DAOs is hard, and can never be MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive )

-          It will change the moment you defined it.

Let’s do it.

DAO in the end is an organising structure for humans (and non-humans) doing things together. Listing the type of DAOs is even more complex than the type of a company,  type of a network or type of industry. They can be all and beyond

I am having second thoughts but let me do it anyway :D

Dao categorisation by activity (not MECE)

Service DAO – The people in the DAO are there to provide a service. Examples: Raidguild, IndieDAO

Impact DAO - The objective is to create an impact economically, socially, policy, and environmental. Some examples are All4climate, Commons Stack and Kernel

Product DAO –  DAOs that create products. Some examples are Aragon and IndexCoop.

Investment DAO – This is the one that started first, pooling money and investing into a portfolio of assets. Art, land, startups, crypto, whisky you name it. The LAO, Flamingo DAO, Komorebi collective

Collector DAO. We could argue that it is like an investment DAO, but collecting can also include specialisation and appreciating the item itself. The collectables can be art, pokemon cards, footballer, in-game assets, and NFTs. FlamingoDAO and PLEASRDAO are two examples.

Public good DAOs – DAOs that focus on public goods whether owning, investing or building. We could say it is a subset of Impact DAOs.   Public goods can be things like housing, education, or virtual goods like Ethereum. A few examples of DAOs are Gitcoin, CommonsStack, and Moloch.

Incubator/Accelerator/Venture DAO:  a DAO set to achieve any of these tasks, fostering venture creation FTW.DAO, Magnet DAO, Metacartel and BitDAO are some examples.

Grants DAO – DAOs that are set to give grants. Moloch, Gitcoin, HerDAO, VitaDAO

Membership DAO – DAOs that are set up for a membership plan, a members only club or a community membership. Some examples FWB, ManorDAO, DinnerDAO

Social Club DAO – It is a subset of membership DAO. FWB is a good example.

Location based living – These DAOs are focused on IRL and location. cabinDAO,  cityDAO, Akiya DAO

Content DAO  - Producing content for journalism, media, education,  opinion pieces, research. I know I covered a big ground here. Some examples are MolochDAO research, DirtDAO,  Bankless DAO, mirror.xyz, tally.xyz content guild (TBC DAO)and forefront writers guild.   

Creators DAO – This could be several creators coming together, or clustered around works of one artist. IreneDAO, herstoryDAO,  Moda DAO, Create DAO and RAW DAO are a few examples

Curator DAO – The task is the curation and there might not be an investment element, hence participation is not with funds. FingersDAO is an example

Acquisition DAO – a DAO that comes together to acquire artefacts, assets. ConstitutionDAO was an example of acquisition DAO

Patron DAO – this is similar to Creators DAO, the only difference is that there are patrons that support an artist, project

Social DAO – This space will develop and fork as we are just starting with social protocols. I could call this out social club DAOs, however, I think we need a different category for DAOs that are not social clubs. To be defined.  

Research Dao – DAOs that are set up for research. VitaDAO, Molecule, Lab DAO, MetagovDAO, Research DAO, and Moloch DAO research are some examples.

Education DAO – Bankless DAO, Odyssey, CCS (crypto&culture&society), and Rabbit Hole are some examples.

Upskilling and Reskilling DAOs:   Developer DAO, HerDAO

Gaming DAOs – The objective of the DAO is to team up and advance gameplay, share and own assets. Games can also have economic returns to the DAO. The concept has been native to game ecosystem as gaming guilds before web3. Some examples are Merit Circle, Play it forward DAO.

AMM DAOs -

Protocol DAOS -

Entertainment DAO -

We are going obscure – name a thing that can be done with many people and benefits from governance. ThatcanbeaDAO.

We could also categorise Dao by Industries.

BioScience

Social Science

Fashion

Entertainment

Media

Insert the industry you can think of here

DAO categorisation by treasury – I will go binary here. Yes, I think DAOs do not always need to hold treasury.  

With treasury

Without treasury  

I know this will change almost tomorrow, but I hope it gives a template for you to partition and think about DAOs, while also understanding the in-between and incorporating the emergent ones.