MonkeDAO’s Lessons For Building A DAO

Building MonkeDAO – what we’ve learned along the way

Hold elections for a board. We hold board elections every three months and it seems ok for now
We have 16 board members and it feels like a good number
Have varying levels of expertise. We started with 8 areas – Devs, regulations, governance, marketing, strategic investments, project management, community, design
Board members often work across areas of expertise, and that’s a good thing!
Application form for nomination to the board. Done on discord.
- Background:
- Country of Residence:
- Timezone:
- Commitment (hrs/week):
- How can I contribute:
- What makes me an ideal candidate:
Get good project management software, someone to drive it, and USE IT!
Be transparent as possible without getting front run is a challenge, especially in the beginning
Get your voting proposal and quorum structure in place. You can read ours here https://monkedao.gitbook.io/welcome-to-monkedao/governance
Votes on proposals put forward by the community or the board should be anonymized
Work towards setting up onchain voting. On Solana we use https://realms.today/realms
- The contact here is named @Sebastian_Bor

Listen to the community, even the dissenters. We rarely mute people or ban.
Voice chats are a good way to turn heated text chat debates into productive and understanding actions forward. Have a good community moderator ready to go.
Hold town halls: Both internal and twitter spaces. Internal is good for giving more detailed discussions.
Board members should be active in the chat
Be patient
Give every member the benefit of the doubt
Don’t bring your frustrations and anger from one situation into another.
Start with a fresh and clear mind when beginning a new chat with a new member, you have no idea what they are going through
Encourage IRL meetups, nothing creates community bonds like meeting in person.
Empower members to get involved. Many people will come with ideas. Tell them to action it and that it’s okay if it’s not perfect.

Secure revenue streams early. Being cash strapped removes confidence for your ability to execute.
Think outside the box and build. Whether it’s tools for your members to use, to make mints easier, or relationships with suppliers/artists. Having cash on hand makes building these relationships easier.
Be willing to have the core contributors unpaid for a short period of time. There is too much pressure if you try and pay everyone early.
Consider the need for outside investment. Understand how “clean” your books need to be and keep diligent records.
It’s easy to “give away” the treasury. Once that faucet gets turned off, members don’t like the impact it has.
Don’t sweep your projects floors. It has a diminishing rate of effectiveness. Let the market determine your fair value.
Don’t pay for celebrity endorsements, or social media campaigns. The return of typical business marketing does not translate to Web 3.0
Your brand, and ability to not “partner” with everyone, can be worth more to you than money in the bank. Don’t shill shit to your members. They will lose respect quickly.
Find your DAO, with project revenue. Your forever money comes from royalties. Your DAO working to promote you, as a project, ensures this for a long time to come as a stable revenue stream.