Unlocking the Professional Cheat Code | BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup
Catch Up With What Happened This Week in BanklessDAO
Dear Bankless Nation 🏴,
The anticipation is building! It’s time to get excited for the DAO’s Season 4 launch on Twitter Spaces with Bankless HQ next Friday. The Marketing Guild has been doing an impressive job with the hype. Just check our social feeds! This is an extra special launch, one year into the DAO’s history, for what will be our biggest season yet, and as you know, the bear market doesn't stand a chance against us.
MetaFactory's drop for Permissionless is insanely dope. As is the DAO’s official Permissionless t-shirt from UltraSound Merch. Let’s get dressed for success. See you at Permissionless.
A few interesting insights were revealed at the Grant Committee's roundtable discussion regarding project funding. The decision to require KPIs in all project proposals will have a positive effect on project success rates, which in turn will contribute to the DAO's success. Don’t fear KPIs — embrace them.
There is so much to look forward to, frens. Season 4 — Season Roar — here we come!
Contributors: theconfusedcoin, Yofi, Elemental, d0wnlore, Trewkat, siddhearta, hirokennelly.eth, Ornella
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🙏 Sponsored by CitaDAO
🗓 Weekly Recap
🚀 Season 4 Launch
RSVP for the Season 4 launch party next Friday, May 6, 2022 at 3pm UTC in Twitter Spaces with Bankless HQ.
The bDAO community is launching its fourth season, and it's going to be BIGGER and BETTER and LOUDER than anything we've done before! Mark your calendars for this exciting launch — you won't want to miss it!
In the meantime, get ready for the start of Season 4, which officially begins on Monday, May 2, 2022. 🚀
👕 MetaFactory WAGMI Drop
🧑🎨 Artist: Sinjun
💰 Price: 37 - 47 USD
👔 "WAGMI WAVE" TANK TOPS & SHORTS
The weather is heating up and so are the VIBES! This collection of shorts and tank tops was designed by Sinjun to evoke the nostalgia of youth and to remind everyone that through all the wild waves, the radical trends, and the epic ups and downs: We're All Gonna Make It.
🏝 Get Ready for Permissionless!
Don’t forget to purchase and rock the official shirt of BanklessDAO, designed by Cosmic Clancy. Hot Tip: Even if you’re not going to the event, you can still totally rock the shirt!
What’s New
💰 DAOpunks Grant
If you are ready to go full-time DAO, but you are in need of some funding to make it happen, this grant might just be the kick you need to get there.
This is an experimental grant program built and governed by the DAOpunk community. It is intended to provide individuals with the initial resources that are needed to take the leap and go full-time DAO.
The DAOpunks community is looking to help three grantees by awarding each up to 1 ETH. Applications are open until May 4, 2022.
🎙 BanklessDAO Podcasts
Crypto Sapiens Podcast
Making BANK
Bounty Hunter
✍️ Bankless Publishing
⚖️ The Legal Guild’s New Podcast Has Begun!
The BanklessDAO Legal Guild has released a podcast series called Ab Initio (meaning ‘from the beginning’). Each episode will feature a leading legal practitioner addressing current crypto-legal issues. Listen to their first episode with Ben Melnicki, the Chief Compliance Officer at Robinhood.
🏗 Welcome the PM Guild!
This week, a new Guild was born. The Grants Committee approved a proposal to create a Project Management Guild. As a long-standing project, the team has provided numerous projects with retrospectives, which help to reveal things that are working or not within a particular project, all with the goal of helping a project to maximize its potential. Please review the meta analysis of these retrospectives.
The PM Guild is a place that supports the long-term success and sustainability of BanklessDAO projects, through education, access to talent, and guidance. Among other things, the PM Guild will train bDAO Project Managers and create a PM talent pool. The PM Guild is destined to become the mecca of Web3 project management by providing project management education, excellent project management talents, and thought leadership. Join us in our weekly meetings every Friday at 12pm PDT if you would like to learn more!
Get Involved
🔒 Learn How to Keep Your Crypto Safe With Bankless Academy
Web3 scams are getting more sophisticated. However, with a few basic steps, you can significantly reduce your chances of getting scammed. The Bankless Academy is holding a session addressing this very topic in the first week of May. The current session is full, but keep your eye out for more in the future by following Bankless Academy on Twitter.
🦉 AMA With Index Coop on Bankless Indexes
Tuesday 8am PST/ 3pm UTC
Join NFThinker on the BanklessDAO Twitter Spaces with guests Ben Giove from Bankless HQ and theyoungcrews from Index Coop to discuss the BED and GMI Indexes.
🙏 Sponsor: CitaDAO - Marketplace for Tokenized Real Estate
Unlocking the Professional Cheat Code
Author: Elemental
DAOs have the potential to fundamentally change the way people organize and work together to accomplish incredible things. DAOs build in new levels of autonomy and transparency. They empower people from anywhere to come together and collaborate on shared goals. Many predict this new, decentralized paradigm is the future of work, and that DAOs will soon do away with traditional, top-down, corporate business structures once and for all.
To disrupt and replace traditional corporations, DAOs must compete in the real-world marketplace and produce products and services that customers agree are superior to traditional business’ offerings. The incumbent players won’t be defeated easily, and they still hold several competitive advantages. Among these are that they employ talented professionals who know how to play the game very well and they’ve spent decades building up strategies for competing and winning in the economic arena.
DAOs have their own powerful advantages. They are fueled by the passion and enthusiasm of brilliant and curious early adopters. They have an inherent drive to challenge the status quo. They transcend borders and remove barriers and gatekeepers. They attract and empower people from all walks of life, and they’re not held back by outmoded ideas and legacy tech.
Reality Check
The truth is that it’s hard to succeed in business, even as a ‘normal’ enterprise. In DAOs, we crank up the difficulty settings by working asynchronously with decentralized decision making and distributed authority. Our teams are globally dispersed, multicultural, multi-generational, self-selected, and often anonymous. We bootstrap our endeavors, create new processes, reinvent and refine the wheel, and build the plane as we go.
DAOs have another asset that’s greatly underutilized. Our Discord servers are filled with those same talented and experienced professionals that traditional businesses rely on. They’re obscured behind pseudonyms and PFPs. They don’t post their resumes or LinkedIn profiles. But they’re here, with all their talent and knowledge and insight. And they’re eager to contribute.
For DAOs to discover how to effectively unleash the massive potential that’s already here, we’ll first need to break some habits and challenge the assumptions we might hold about the value of work that others do.
Home Improvement
Plumbing looks simple. You connect things together to get liquid from one place to another. Hardware stores have aisles of pipes, connectors, and tools that make it seem easy, even fun, for a do-it-yourselfer to take on any plumbing project. Not to mention, it’s kind of a hassle to find and hire a plumber. I’m relatively handy and very frugal, so I thought: “How hard can it be to replace a toilet?”
According to YouTube, it’s quick and straightforward. I’ll spare you the details, but really, it’s neither. After several trips to the hardware store and a lot of colorful language, I eventually got it done.
Days later, the toilet cracked at its base. When I mentioned this to a plumber, he immediately asked if the floor was tile. Turns out there should be a kind of bushing installed between the porcelain toilet base and a hard tile surface to cushion the commode. Who knew? An experienced professional. That’s who.
You don’t know what you don’t know. Failing to appreciate the knowledge and experience that professionals amass over years of practicing their crafts is a foolish trait, one I’ve exhibited in attempting everything from drafting legal agreements to sandblasting a log home. These are things that seem simple — and they are — to a professional.
Just DAO It
Here’s a DAO scenario you may recognize. A project needs something — a design, a name, UX, tagline, video, legal agreement, POAP, whatever — something that is often crafted by a professional. The ‘tradbiz’ approach would be to seek out people with the skills and experience necessary to produce that thing and hire the best people to do the job. The next steps are to go through the various processes of scoping, agreements, schedules, production, revisions, approvals, deployment, and billing until the job is done and paid. In a DAO, the habitual, go-to approach that I’ve witnessed is to go with one of three options:
A. Do it ourselves
B. Create a bounty
C. Crowdsource it.
The enthusiastic, experimental, can-do, just-DAO-it spirit makes jumping at Choice A obvious. And the simplicity compared to the traditional bureaucratic approach is certainly appealing. The problem is how easily this results in a cracked toilet. You do something that you consider up to professional standards, but due to a lack of experience and context, you’re oblivious to the flaws. Remember, if DAOs mean to outcompete traditional businesses — or even provide credible alternatives — ‘good enough’ really isn’t going to cut it. If you step into the business arena with anything that’s not at least as good as what the other guy is using, you’re in trouble.
What about Choice B, bounties? Bounties have their place, but it’s important to consider their limitations and what types of tasks are appropriate for a bounty. Posting a bounty is akin to putting up a Craigslist ad. It’s a crap shoot on who responds, and when someone does, you’ll still need to be prepared to evaluate whether they’re right for the job.
That leaves Choice C: crowdsourcing the project. This uses an open call for submissions with a poll vote determining which is selected. At a glance, this seems to be an elegant solution that opens opportunities for people to produce things while also keeping decision-making decentralized. Unfortunately, the crowdsource-and-vote model stacks several drawbacks on top of the issues presented above.
Unpaid Work: Ten people put their time and effort into creating a submission. Vote happens. One person gets paid; 90% of the people worked for free. Welcome to Web3.
Random Results: You receive six submissions, but none are good enough. What do you do? Go with the best poor option? Pay out and not use? Hold it open longer? Cancel and pay no one?
The Fallible Will of the People: Just because a majority voted for it, it doesn’t automatically follow that it was the best choice.
Subjective Factors: People get swayed by vote tally, if they like who submitted the work, if someone won in the past, all sorts of factors that aren’t about the quality of the submission. If the vote isn’t set up to be blind, subjectivity and popularity can dominate over quality.
Discouragement of Long-Term Participation: Everyone has a limit to how often they’re willing to try without success.
Discouragement of Professionals: You send a clear signal how highly you value a craft when you indicate that you think anyone can produce acceptable work. Professionals want to be paid for their work, not compete for it.
If you decide to use a competitive model, make it a true contest. Set clear rules and specifications. Know the criteria you’ll use to evaluate, and offer a large and compelling prize. DAO Heat is a good example of a contest with an inspiring theme and rewarding prize that encouraged people to put forth their best effort.
I know, I’ve pointed out many problems, and solutions seem thin on the ground. It would be somewhat ironic for me to propose I have all the answers now, though. If I’m eating my own dog food — as the consultants say — I should leave those recommendations up to people with expertise.
That said, I do have an idea about where to start. It’s an approach so unusual, so out-of-the-box, so crazy, that it just might work. It’s this: talk to your DAO colleagues. Find out who has the professional skills you need. BanklessDAO makes this super easy to do. It’s a mystery to me why it doesn’t happen as often as it should. We’re organized into Guilds identified by different professional disciplines — Design Guild, Legal Guild, Research Guild, Writers Guild, and so on. More often than not, those talented professionals lurking about the DAO hang out in the guilds that correspond to their expertise. You know where I’m going with this. A few clicks in the Discord server, and you’re right up close to the experts.
Here’s the Cheat Code for BanklessDAO:
Hi, [Specialized Guild]! I’m [you] from [your guild or project]. We could use [a thing] for our [whatever]. I’d love to talk to some of your superstars [people who create things] about collaborating with them to help make our [whatever] kick ass. Who should I talk to?
Final Note
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that only ‘professionals’ should be working on DAO business. To the contrary, perhaps the most powerful unlock DAOs possess is how they allow people to try things they might not have ever had opportunities to do before — to inspire people on this new frontier and help them soar.
That doesn’t mean they’ll be ready for prime time. At least not right away. The key to ultimate success is for DAOs to learn how to focus the talents and knowledge of the professionals that join them today, and to develop new models for sharing expertise with the rising talents of tomorrow.
This also means the pros have the responsibility to respond and to share what they know — to be generous mentors and eager collaborators. In guilds of the past, skills and knowledge were passed down from masters to apprentices. In the corporate age, people learned by rising through the ranks or climbing the ladder. Today’s decentralized orgs need tools and systems that allow their talented Padawans to benefit from others’ hard-won experience — but at the speed of Web3.
DAOs have the passion. DAOs have the curiosity. DAOs have the knowledge and insight. We can see the wide-open frontier and boundless opportunity. We’re just not in synch yet. Once we synthesize all of this potential into focused intent, we can say with true confidence: WAGMI.
🎣 Phishing School
Authors: d0wnlore and the InfoSec Team
The BAYC Instagram Phishing Campaign
On April 25, 2022, the Instagram of NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) was compromised. A phishing campaign was launched from the compromised account, linking to a website masquerading as an airdrop for Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse project. Yuga Labs was able to regain control after they were made aware of what was happening to the account, which allegedly had 2FA enabled before the compromise. During this time they also removed direct links to their Instagram from their other channels to mitigate the damage. But by the end of the incident millions of dollars in NFTs and tokens had been transferred to the attacker’s address. No other details about the incident have been made public yet.
Securing your Discord or social media profiles has been covered in Phishing School before. Here we will provide some takeaways for a crypto user that may be directly or indirectly targeted in these phishing campaigns.
Takeaways
Two/Multi Factor Authentication (2FA/MFA) is not a silver bullet. Many online services have methods of logging into an account without having to provide the MFA code; instead you use an existing logged in device to act as the second factor (such as Discord’s QR code login method when using your Discord mobile app to log into the desktop/web app). Although rare, these services can also have vulnerabilities where 2FA can be bypassed by hackers. Believing MFA solves all account takeover worries can lead to complacency and susceptibility to social engineering attacks that take advantage of this.
Develop a pessimistic mindset whenever you notice strange behavior or keywords that can lead you to performing a transaction with your wallet or disclosing private information, even from official sources. Beware of messages mentioning anything resembling a surprise mint, stealth airdrop, or OG pre-mint. Many phishing campaign messages will also invoke a sense of urgency to rev up your FOMO so you are more likely to trigger the phishing trap. In particular watch out while joining high profile Discord servers like BAYC, as scammers hiding in such servers will attempt to DM you as soon as you join.
Verify and get second opinions on websites and smart contracts you’re about to use, even if they are from official sources. As this recent BAYC phishing campaign has taught us, official channels are high-profile targets that will likely succumb to attackers at some point. Don’t FOMO into new opportunities being announced until you are absolutely sure those opportunities are legitimate and that others you know can vouch for them.
Add speed bumps to make it difficult for your future self to make mistakes. Move your valuable assets to a hardware wallet so there’s enough friction in making transactions where you have time to think about what you are about to do. Segregate your crypto activity and your social media usage across different user profiles, web browsers, or even computers. This makes it less likely for phishing campaigns and technical exploits launched through social media to lead you into performing a crypto transaction or disclosing secrets like your seed/recovery phrase.
Understand smart contracts; they can just as easily be used to take your assets as they can to mint or give assets to you. NFT projects in particular rarely have security audits done of their smart contracts, even if they make heavy modifications to the base ERC-721 or ERC-1155 standard. This has led to the misguided expectation that many smart contracts related to NFTs are safe. But this is definitely not the case and malicious NFTs can be used by criminals to drain your assets.
Last but not least: as long as we have self-custody over our assets we should be treating them with much more care than we probably do. We are ultimately the last line of defense between a criminal successfully taking our assets or them failing to do so. If most of the takeaways above are things you have not heard of or considered, it’s time to start developing a plan to take better care of your assets so you don’t end up in the next news article or Twitter thread about a successful phishing campaign.
🏛 Governance
⚖️ GSE Updates
Our GSEs are working in the open and are inviting the community to join their calls on Fridays at 5pm UTC / 1pm EST in the GSE Stage under the Governance channels. They are currently conducting a strategic prioritization survey and are hoping to capture, include, and promote the ideas of the various stakeholders who are impacted by BanklessDAO operations. Please take a few minutes to fill out the Strategic Prioritization Survey.
Please note that the community handbook link is listed on the form submission page. The GSEs would also appreciate if you could offer your thoughts and additions to the handbook.
For additional information to understand strategic planning, read: Strategic planning: Read this before it's that time again.
Proposals in Discussion
💰 Changes to the Grants Committee Process for S4
There have been some large changes to the grants and funding process for S4 based on the desire for increased accountability and sustainability. The changes broadly involve restructuring of the funding process and a renewed focus on KPIs. How this will be done is outlined in detail in the proposal.
📊 cNPS Survey Results - Season 3 Month 3
This analysis pertains to the survey of BanklessDAO members taken during the Coordinape period ending on April 8, 2022. We measured the community’s satisfaction with BanklessDAO and achieved a Community Net Promoter Score (cNPS) of 48, a three point increase since March and a 20 point drop from our all-time high of 68. While bDAO members are excited about the strong community and plethora of learning opportunities and ways to migrate into Web3, many are seriously concerned about BANK prices, compensation, and BANK distribution.
🪙 Proposal: VitaDAO<>BanklessDAO Token Swap
This proposal aims to initiate a token swap with VitaDAO for its governance token VITA. VitaDAO is a community-owned collective, funding early-stage longevity research. Should the proposal succeed, 25,000 USD worth of BANK (~800K) will be swapped for the equivalent amount of VITA. BanklessDAO would benefit from treasury diversification and possible sales of its products and services to VitaDAO. Further, this partnership aligns with BanklessDAO’s mission and values by promoting decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant technology and community.
🤝 Tokenomics: Fulfill Contractual Obligation With Balancer Regarding the BANK/wETH Pool on Ethereum Mainnet
In August of 2021, in order to create opportunities for BANK token holders to incentivize their holding, a 80/20 BANK/wETH liquidity pool was launched in partnership with the Balancer protocol. The proposal passed and the BANK/wETH Balancer Pool on Ethereum Mainnet was established with liquidity mining benefits that allowed Liquidity Provider (LP) token holders to earn both BAL and BANK for participating. Due to miscommunication with the timing for rewards distribution, Balancer ran rewards for five weeks beyond what was agreed upon. Balancer now requires 475K BANK to distribute five weeks worth of liquidity mining rewards.
✅ Action Items
🎙 Join the Season 4 Launch on Twitter Spaces.
🎯 Complete the GSE Strategic Prioritization Survey.
📥 Vote: Season 4 Projects and Guild funding goes live on Snapshot this weekend.
🏃♀️ Catch up: Review this week's Community Call notes or listen to the recording.
🙏 Thanks to Our Sponsor
CitaDAO
CitaDAO is a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, allowing real estate to be tokenized on chain. The ERC-20 tokens will be composable with other DeFi applications and primitives that operate within the Ethereum protocol, creating an ecosystem for real estate in the DeFi ecosystem.
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Elemental, this is a fantastic & sobering love letter for DAOs. Thank you for your perspective!
Can you do something so we don’t have to pay for EXPRESS shipping (49$) for a shipping in europe...