What I want to start a discussion on is adding structure to the DAO in order to improve efficiencies and our chance of success. First, to be abundantly clear, the structure I’m proposing would be entirely voluntary. There would be no change to the protocol or anything of the sort. The MN’s would still be voting to disperse treasury money as they do now. Anyone in the world would still be free to submit their own proposal directly to the network. Also, I’m primarily talking about adoption and outreach programs; there are many potential DFO’s that wouldn’t be well served by this structure.



What I’m proposing specifically is organizing the various outreach and adoption programs into hierarchical teams in a Division -> Region -> Area -> Locale format such as LatAm ->South America -> Venezuela -> Caracas where each team is answerable to the team superior to them. Instead of each individual team putting in their own proposals, the Division team would put in a single proposal and would then distribute those funds to all the sub-teams as required. In order to keep this system accountable, the director or team of directors of the Division would be elected by the masternode network.



The biggest benefit of organizing in such a manner would be better focus and coordination. To date, Dash’s outreach and adoption efforts have been helter skelter, bordering on chaos, and the results so far have been moderately successful at best. Instead of throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks like what’s being done now, a structured organization will be able to develop a comprehensive plan with tangible goals and then execute that plan. Since it will be easier to share resources and knowledge between not only local teams, but also teams on different continents as there will be a better structured flow of information, it will be far easier to execute the plan on a global level.



By structuring in a regional manner, we’ll be able to quickly respond to rapidly changing market conditions all the way down to the local level. If one of our initiatives gets a nibble, resources can easily be shifted to it so the initiative can be developed more aggressively. Conversely, if a market suddenly dries up due to government regulations, change in sentiment, or another solution taking hold, we can more quickly reallocate those funds to a region where they’ll have a greater impact.



An area that I think that Dash struggles with currently is brand cohesion and awareness. With our current organization, or lack thereof, it’s very hard to develop a consistent and recognizable brand. By adding some structure to the DAO, we can more easily create a congruent brand image that we can disseminate down to teams and adjust according to their regional needs. Not only will this improve our image, it will relieve some of the burden of smaller teams having to create their own marketing campaigns allowing them to focus on other needs.



Every team in the Dash DAO submitting their own proposal isn’t scalable. If the price stays low enough where the the proposal fee isn’t an insurmountable burden, the MN network may become overwhelmed with proposals. And if the price rises significantly, only large projects will be able to afford the proposal fee and small projects will fall by the wayside. By distributing the funds in a hierarchical manner, it will be easier for smaller teams to acquire the funding needed for their project.



I think an underappreciated aspect of our lack of structure is how it leads to a lot of time and effort wasted by PO’s (proposal owners) fighting other PO’s for the scarce Dash the treasury doles out, which leads to bitterness and burnout and creates tribalism in the community. This sense of frustration is made doubly worse by the fact that PO’s have to go through the proposal process every month or three with no guarantee of funding even if they perform well. I’m sure most PO’s would rather spend their time working on Dash adoption rather than fighting for funding.



Another benefit of creating a structure such as this is that it will ease the burden on the voting MNO’s. Reviewing all the proposals every month in order to make an informed vote isn’t easy and takes a fair amount of effort which leads to voting fatigue. If an MNO wants to make an informed vote, there is a lot of minutia they have to wade through. I think MNO’s could better serve the DAO by focusing on the big picture; let area managers worry about the details.



Lastly, an advantage of this structured setup would be that bad actors can be removed without causing too much disruption. For example, recently George Donnelly of Dash LatAm let his ego get the better of him and he ragequit. Now his remaining team is scrambling to pick up the pieces and having to submit their own proposal if they want to continue. If we were structured as I’m proposing, George quitting wouldn’t have interrupted the work currently being done any more than a regional manager quitting in a normal business would (I’m not going to discuss the results of Dash LatAm’s efforts in this article, I’m merely using this as a means of illustrating my point). A voluntary hierarchical structure will bring much needed stability to the Dash DAO.



Adding structure to the DAO clearly has some merit, but there’s a lot of questions that need to be answered. Is this centralization? If so, is centralization within a greater decentralized system a detriment? What is the risk of this structure becoming entrenched and entities in the structure losing their sense of accountability? How would we even implement structure if we wanted to? Is structure going to naturally arrive regardless of our efforts? I believe this topic needs to be discussed in more detail; I look forward to your questions and responses.

**********



For twitter updates on this site, follow @dao_dash

For deeper engagement, follow my personal account @kanuuker or find me on Discord



If you found value in this post, please show your support by buying something from the store or donating below.



XpP1VanEhXHP6BYu5phGRLcnm7aeMwqcBn