With the recent rise of DAOs, there’s a need for solutions that meet the ever-growing list of challenges; that’s where a suite of customized DAO tools comes into play.
Though DAOs have been around for less than a decade the DAO tooling ecosystem has come a long way. From collective treasury management to data science and smart contract development, there are various protocols and tools that make DAOs’ lives easier. Let’s take a look at a few existing Solana tools that enhance the day-to-day operations of DAOs.
Infrastructure
Infrastructure tools are an essential part of any DAO’s workflow. DAO infrastructure tools can be viewed as the centerpiece of all DAO operations as they allow DAOs to recognize members and give them the capability to vote or interact with the community in some way.
Realms
Realms is the ultimate hub for DAOs on Solana, as it allows anyone to spin up a fully-functioning DAO in a matter of minutes and take advantage of its powerful collaborative features. As the front-end for SPL Governance, Realms serves as the point of assembly for DAOs within the Solana ecosystem. Realms allows members to:
- Manage DAO programs, members, and voting
- Allocate treasury funds
- Configure identity, and analytics of DAO
For example, Ratio Finance DAO uses Realms as a central point where their DAO members can vote on proposals using the $RATIO governance token and view all DAO transactions.
Tribeca
Tribeca is an open-source protocol for launching a DAO on Solana with the use of Voter Escrowed (VE) tokenomics. Voter Escrowed (VE) tokens give power to economically aligned long-term users. Users must convert their tokens to VE tokens to gain the right to vote, and in order to convert tokens to VE, you must stake them with their native protocol. This system incentivizes users to lock up their tokens to receive voting capabilities.
The “Tribeca Trinity” code includes smart_wallet, govern, and electorate programs that can be owned and governed by three separate parties to ensure flexibility and security. Tribeca provides a high-quality governance framework that allows tokens to reach the market faster.
Grape Protocol
As a decentralized social networking protocol, Grape Protocol is designed to create, reward, and secure any Solana-based community. Grape features a central dashboard with a suite of features like a wallet interface that gives you access to your tokens and NFTs. Additionally, Grape features integrations with Solana protocols, including on-chain storage provided by Genesys GO, stream history via Streamflow, and a Multi-signature wallet view via Squads (coming soon).
Furthermore, users can link their social identity using their Twitter or Discord ID with Grape to co-mingle their social presence and on-chain identity. Grape offers a better way for DAOs to organize and coordinate their tokenized communities. Though Grape provides tools for DAOs they are also DAO themselves. Users interested in being a part of the Grape community or using Grape-powered products should know they are both powered by $GRAPE. $GRAPE is a utility token that allows you to access community perks like dividends from the Community fund, voting rights in the Grape DAO, participation in gated events, and monthly liquidity mining rewards.
Unique.VC
Unique Venture Clubs is a platform where DAO’s members can collaborate by fundraising or creating investment clubs without the need to know how to code. Their protocol allows users to pool resources, establish custom on-chain governance structures, and collectively own assets. Members can create or join a web3 investment club to purchase and manage on-chain assets, bring together a team of investors, and enjoy the journey.
Upside
Upside is a platform designed to help DAOs securely launch and manage tokens for the building blocks of Web3-native organizations, aiming to clarify the complex nature of large-scale projects. Their users can set up anything from utility and security tokens to Community and Fund DAOs.
Among the UPSIDE features, users can create vesting schedules, transfer tokens, set regulatory categories, manage wallets, and more.
Unique ways to incentivize a DAO community
Incentivizing a DAO community is a critical component of its success and growth. Rewards programs, token airdrops, and grants are just a few examples of ways to encourage members to be more involved. With the right tools, the community can be more engaged and motivated to continue contributing to the organization.
QuestBook
QuestBook serves as a Decentralized University, where users can learn for free through various quests. Here’s what you can do:
- Launch and deploy your own crowdfunding platform on Solana
- Create campaign accounts and send money
- Set up an airdrop campaign
- Set up a calculator, a personal wallet, and a token using Javascript, Rust, or Solana CLI
- Build your own NFT Minting Machine and learn how to create and burnt NFTs on Web3
- Develop a messaging app in Rust
- Learn how to stake on Solana
As a decentralized solution for grant management, QuestBook can be used for grant and bounty programs for DAOs and foundations.
Layer3
Layer3 is a platform designed to help you grow a community by reaching, acquiring, and keeping users. Their solution involves designing a combination of on-chain and off-chain actions that users can take through various quests.
Layer3 is a tool for getting your bounties without the need to know a single line of code. Such web3 bounties serve as rewards for specialized work. When a developer completes a task, they are rewarded with a bounty in the form of tokens. Essentially, you get the chance to learn and earn in crypto. LAYER3 aims to streamline the process of finding motivated devs to contribute to their users’ projects. Their features include multiple reward types, multichain support, instant verification, and co-marketing.
Fund management
Fund management tools are designed to make it easier to set up and manage large sums of tokens on Solana. Such tools help organizations and their managers track fund performance and investor flows in a user-friendly manner.
Streamflow
Streamflow is a token distribution platform that allows Solana teams to vest tokens and manage payroll. This solution is especially useful for bigger teams that make multiple regular payments to their employees or contractors.
Streamflow takes care of:
- Payment Streaming (Payroll management)
- Token vesting
- Multi-sig Wallet
Payment streams allow the progressive release of funds over time, allowing contributors to receive regular payouts throughout the pay period. In turn, token vesting lets you program token vesting and cliff schedules for project tokens. Teams looking for an added layer of security can opt for Streamflows Multi-sig Wallet, a wallet that requires multiple team members’ approval to transact. By spreading the authorization process for transactions among multiple people you effectively decrease your attack vectors —Keeping funds safe.
In essence, Streamflow makes everything payment-related easier and more secure for DAOs, streamlining the process and saving them a lot of time. Streamflow serves as a building block for many forms of remittances that blockchain projects need access to.
Squads
Squads is a Multi-signature Wallet protocol. Multi-signature Wallets require the approval of multiple members which increases the security of funds.
DAOs can use Squads to deposit tokens and NFTs and collectively initiate and approve transactions without creating multiple governance proposals.
Squads also has integrations with some of Solana’s leading protocols including:
- Magic Eden (NFT Marketplace)
- Jupiter (Token Swaps)
- Streamflow— Cross-Compatability (Token Distribution Platform)
- Dialect (Web3 Messaging)
- and more
By using the Squads Protocol, DAOs can have full control over their tokens, treasury, and programs.
Collaboration
Solana-based organizations need to manage and track their projects and procedures, both future and ongoing. As well as that, there’s a need to incentivize members of the communities for their contributions. Simply put, it’s a step closer for any Solana-based organization and team to truly collaborate in a decentralized manner.
DeWork
DeWork is a tool incorporated into DAO communities to help them manage their workflow and tasks, pay contributors, and broadcast bounties. DeWork is similar to LinkedIn and Trello but for Web3, with more functionalities —and a better interface.
The platform has three core features:
- Tasks and bounties management
- Connecting the right labor force and contributors
- Smooth workflow for DAOs
SourceCred
SourceCred is a tokenized protocol that allows communities to create and curate contribution and collaboration networks. SourceCred believes that members’ social status is closely tied to their potential valuable contribution to a healthy community. This social status is fueled by a scoring system using, cred; members earn cred by participating, demonstrating expertise, and making valuable contributions to the community.
A contribution network is a representation of how contributors are connected to each other, to the members of the community and its values. User Data can be imported automatically from GitHub, GoogleDocs, and Medium. Once the contributions have been recorded, SourceCred uses a special PageRank-based algorithm to assign cred.
As an open-source tool for communities to assess and reward value, SourceCred makes it easy to onboard and manage new contributors and get started with various DAOs operations.
Dialect
Dialect is an open-source web3 smart messaging platform on Solana. It serves as an alternative way to communicate with DAO members, including dynamic in-dApp notifications, SMS, e-mail, and wallet-to-wallet chats.
The app offers Smart Messaging, which will allow sending and receiving tokens, as well as interacting with other apps directly from messages and notifications. You’ll also be able to vote on proposals and trade.
At this stage, Dialect allows users to join the waitlist for early access and the chance to mint a Dialect NFT.
Bottom Line
DAO tools are helping to build the infrastructure for the new age of Web3-native organizations. Solana, with its vibrant communities and sheer throughput, provides good opportunities for more DAO tools to emerge. While the DAO tooling space is still very much in development, the value of the current tools can’t be ignored. Over the next years, DAO tools will aim to decrease onboarding difficulty and improve their processes and systems to support mass adoption —and everything that comes with it.
To learn more, visit the Streamflow blog
