Launching the Geo Web DAO

The first iteration of the Geo Web DAO is live!

We launched our DAO on the xDAI network based on the work of the 1Hive community (Thanks, @1HiveOrg!). For now, an ETH-based Aragon DAO is too expensive and impractical for our on-chain governance (although there are great projects like Snapshot that make signal voting easy & cheap for any DAO).

Our DAO has an initial allocation of 2000 xDAI from our last Gitcoin grant round. The DAO will vote to directly allocate those funds mostly via open bounties and SourceCred distributions. The remaining project funds are being held on ETH mainnet (also to pay bounties and other project expenses) and converted to fiat to pay those pesky expenses that aren’t yet crypto denominated. We’ll hold signaling votes in the DAO for these types of expenditures.

We published a brief overview of our DAO operations on Github last week, but I wanted to reinforce the importance of our DAO structure to our vision for the Geo Web here today. 

We believe that blockchains, smart contracts, and cryptography are not only transformative for the products/networks/tools that we build, but should also be transformative for the organizations and collectives that build and control them.

“If you’re not paying, you are the product” is the result of data becoming the most valuable asset in the Information Age combined with Industrial Age corporate structures. Blockchain-based, decentralized organizations can help change this power structure and flow of value for information networks. We believe that DAOs will change our world more than the invention of the joint-stock company.

The Geo Web is designed as a public good. Builders, creatives, citizen users, and even investors will play a role in growing value on the network. Rather than being the product, they will be stakeholders with balanced voices in the governance and permissionless access to opportunity to reap rewards from their contributions. This DAO is the first step in achieving that ideal.

On to the updates...

Technical

• Fixed bugs and added HTTPS support for our hosted Ceramic node connected to the Kovan Cadastre
• Held a design and specification session for our Simple Geo Web Browsing Epic—the top priority on our Roadmap

Community

• Released our initial DAO operations overview 
• Had an awesome chat with the ARK Project team. They’re launching a platform to sell wildlife-themed NFTs to fund conservation efforts.

On Deck

• Finalize Simple Geo Web Browsing specification and get to building
• Publish initial wave of open bounties
• Gitcoin Grant Round 9 starts March 10!