Welcome to No-Code Startup Ideas. This week’s idea: a DAO.
NFTs are still going nuts (lol), and some say DAOs are next. You can create a DAO (decentralized autonomous organization) to coordinate groups to invest in startups, buy NFTs, share revenue from new products and businesses, and much more. And you can do it with zero coding.
In each issue, I send out a deeply researched business plan for a validated, profitable startup that you can start with no coding and very little money. See past issues here.
For each idea, we go through:
The bottom line is this: If you want to galvanize a community for a shared purpose, then a DAO could be a great tool. It’s like crowdfunding, collective treasury management, and a community referral program all rolled into one.
Stepping back from all the crypto mumbo-jumbo, DAOs seem like a fairly good way to raise money and coordinate a community to do things.
What kind of things can I do with a DAO, you ask?
According to DeepDAO, as of February 21, 2021 there were 2,300 total members across all DAOs.
That number today? 1 million.
That’s an annualized growth rate of over 40,000%.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon after going nuts over the fact that the internet was growing at 2,300%. DAOs are growing at almost 20x that rate.
Ready to jump in yet??
For our DAO, we’re going to choose a topic that’s well-suited to someone who doesn’t want to code solidity. We’re going to create a research service for investors who want to jump into web3.
The core value prop will be: Helping investors find the best new projects in Web3 through a research subscription. Kind of like Forrester or Gartner, but on a smaller scale and much more focused.
For investors, what’s the job to be done here?
Check, check, and check.
How will this DAO create a revenue stream? Well, in this DAO we’re going to sell a research subscription to earn revenue, which then we can program to distribute to all members according to how many tokens they have.
How is this different from a company? Token holders vote on all changes to the DAO. If you don’t like the direction things are going, you can always “rage quit” and exit, taking with you your share of the treasury.
NFTs are going nuts right now, but all the people that were talking about NFTs back in Jan-Feb 2021? They’ve been talking more and more about DAOs.
In 2016, a grand DAO experiment took place. A bunch of people got together and put ETH into a DAO called, well… “the DAO”. They wanted to invest in new projects together.
Just 2 months later, hackers stole 3.6 million ETH, which would be worth about $12 billion in today’s prices – making it one of the biggest hacks of all time.
Except in the aftermath, the Ethereum team decided to create a hard fork – and the Ethereum blockchain we know today is the version where that massive DAO hack never even happened.
Needless to say, the idea of DAOs took a huge PR hit. Today, though, most have forgotten this ancient history. And security has improved since then. So too, DAO treasuries have soared. With overall sentiment improving and more and more people looking for what’s next after NFTs, now might be the perfect time to jump in.
Things are far from certain, however, as shown by a recent $160m bug in one of the biggest DAOs, Compound. So be sure to use caution and do your research before picking a platform.
But if those 40,000% growth rates don’t convince you to at least take a look, I’m not sure what will.
In addition to the typical pricing and revenue section, I’m going to talk about how to set up the rules of your DAO so that you can actually make money. How much revenue you generate will depend on what product you build with your DAO teammates.
In this case, we’ll want to set up our DAO to have a core team of people you trust who are the only ones who can buy tokens and vote with them.
Then every month, you can set up transactions to each member in the amount they earned. Everyone votes and the transactions go through.
Let’s take an example. Let’s say you decide to create a DAO to produce original research on the best new web3 projects. Here are the roles you need:
There are actually a bunch of tools you can use to build a DAO without coding, and probably many more in the works as I write this. But the ones I know about are:
xDAO is the best choice for now because of low gas fees.
How would costs break down here? Let’s posit the following:
Otherwise, you’ll need a way for customers to pay you for subscriptions.
So here are the other costs you’ll need to account for:
Let’s talk customers for a sec. In the current climate, everyone and their mom is trying to figure out how to get exposure to crypto, but they often have no idea where to start. This is where you come in.
Check out PrimeDAO, which is starting a ratings service for DeFi projects. You could start a similar service, but for NFTs. Or you could jump into DeFi as well - there’s not a shortage of new protocols to research!
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your reactions and ideas.
And please come say hello on Twitter. I’d love to hear from you!
Looking for a cofounder to build with? @ me and we’ll find someone for you.
And because I came across a ton of great ideas in my research, here are a few more ideas to stimulate your creativity:
Might pick one of these for the next issue. Hmu if you have a preference!
Christian- Loved the article. I have a QQ: I built a DAO on Aragon and I want it to be a community DAO. Aragon is the DAO side which I'm not quite sure how you merge into your actual site. My real question though is besides Webflow, would you recommend the best website for generating a community website built around a DAO? Thank You