Project Name Bankless DAO (bDAO)
Project Summary bDAO is a decentralized community dedicated to propagating awareness of web3 through media, culture, and education. Since its launch 10 months ago, bDAO has grown to 15,000 Discord members and 4,200 token holders, becoming one of the most active social token DAOs in the space. bDAO supports 13 guilds (organized around domain expertise such as developers, writers, treasury managers, etc.) and has launched newsletters, podcasts, educational webinars, international media nodes (in 15 countries), a consultancy, an apparel collaboration with MetaFactory, two DeFi index products with IndexCoop, and even spun out its own NFT community called DAOpunks.
Key Team Members Bankless HQ (https://twitter.com/TrustlessState; https://twitter.com/RyanSAdams)

Grants Committee members (https://twitter.com/0x_Lucas; https://twitter.com/davidcoleto; https://twitter.com/abv_avg_joe; https://twitter.com/eaglelex_eth?lang=en)

Ex-Core contributor (https://twitter.com/frogmonkee) | | Social Links | https://twitter.com/banklessDAO https://discord.gg/bankless https://www.notion.so/bankless/Bankless-DAO-82ba81e7da1c42adb7c4ab67a4f22e8f | | Investment Thesis | 1. bDAO is one of the most active, recognizable DAOs built on a social token and is a first-mover in the space. 2. bDAO has seen impressive growth and pace of execution despite its short history. The DAO funded or incubated 21 projects / guilds in Season 1 and 33 in Season 2. 3. DeFi is a high-growth category that will continue to see widespread user adoption and displacement of TradFi. TVL grew from $19B to $244B in 2021. 4. DAOs will continue to surge in popularity as an alternative means to coordinate talent. DAO members reached 1.3M in 2021, a 130x YoY increase and DAO tooling continues to improve in sophistication. 5. $BANK trading at an attractive valuation relative to the opportunity. $BANK has a market cap of <$10M - for reference, FWB raised $10M at a $100M valuation last November. | | Key Risks / Concerns | 1. Failure to engage and grow community will stall bDAO’s momentum

  1. Leadership turnover & governance
  1. Exogenous macro and regulatory risk

While bDAO does not have a direct competitor today, it is worth noting DAOs that have overlap in the scope of their activities. bDAO’s focus was initially on furthering Bankless HQ’s DeFi-centric mission, although its guilds and projects have expanded into many areas outside of DeFi. From the point of view of sheer output, bDAO has been the most productive of its peers in terms of quantity and range. Not included are other crypto-native media companies that compete for mindshare against Bankless HQ, as bDAO’s activites are quite distinct from Bankless HQ. Social token comps would include:

Given $BANK’s function as a social token, there are incentives in place for community members to hold the token longer term vs selling for short-term financial gain. Users have to maintain a certain threshold of tokens to remain members of the community, and a status visible to all on the Discord is assigned to those with larger holdings. The membership levels are as follows:

Guests passes are given to those who are completely new to the Discord - however, these expire after 2 weeks unless renewed by a Level 2 member. Prospective members are incentivized to earn their membership either by completing bounties posted on the Bounty Board, receiving allocations through Coordinape rounds, earning a “salary” as a role holder (paid seasonally), or buying $BANK tokens directly. While volatility associated with the crypto market at-large remains, the social / membership benefits associated with $BANK should mitigate speculation as the primary reason for owning the token. | | Deal Dynamics | $10M private sale of treasury at $0.4 per token | | Next Steps | - Speak with as many members of grants committee as possible. Topics to understand include community engagement, status of current initiatives, and future growth opportunities

OVERVIEW OF GUILDS AND PROJECTS

Writers Guild

The Writer’s Guild is responsible for cultivating promising writers in bDAO and publishing three newsletters including Weekly Rollup (what happened the past week in bDAO), Decentralized Arts (weekly NFT and crypto-art content), and State of the DAOs (bi-weekly focusing on the DAO ecosystem and organization tools). Total newsletter subscribers are nearing 10K and continuing to grow.

Treasury Guild

The Treasury Guild is responsible for preserving, enhancing, and supporting the DAO’s financial resources. They provide general financial reporting, planning, and budgeting, and also work on treasury diversification initiatives and liquidity partnerships.

Translators Guild

The Translators Guild ensures that bDAO content is properly translated to reach the broadest possible audience. In past seasons, the guild has worked on a number of projects, the biggest of which was spun out independently as International Media Nodes, which are standalone non-English media channels. Today, there are 17 IMN channels in operation.

Research Guild

The Research Guild is responsible for conducting, guiding, and funding research that aligns with the goals of bDAO. Specifically the guild creates research bounties and requests for remuneration, funds specific-scope projects through a grants program, and writes / publishes research articles in its own newsletter.

Operations Guild

The Operations Guild watches over the daily activities of bDAO to ensure members are aligned with the general mission. Guild members facilitate core operations such as: