Credit Ezra Weller, DAOstack

A team of developers, called dOrg, just launched a fresh new version of the DAO Launcher. Now, with the push of a button (well, maybe a few buttons) you can easily create and manage your own DAO. The following are instructions on how to do just that. Protip: make sure you have your Metamask ready.

Incredible! Wait, so why start a DAO?

A DAO enables a group of people- a non-profit, a fund, a business, etc. to operate without an overarching figure of authority, allowing equal members to cooperate and self-govern with full transparency. The process of governance is executed using the Ethereum blockchain as a system for generating incentive for participation and acknowledging reputation based on merit.

(If you would like to learn more about DAOs, feel free to check out this article.)

So here’s where to start: first, visit this link

You will see an interface that lets you configure its name & ticker for its unique token. When this step is completed, hit “Set Description”.

Next, this section will pop up. From here you can choose the amount of time allotted for votes to come to a close when it comes to making decisions. Choose “Slow”, “Medium”, or “Fast” depending on how long you want the voting periods to be. If you’d like to know how long each setting is, simply hover over the buttons to know how many days are given for each type of vote.

Wonder what the “Auto-incentivize proposal curation” is? This is a feature of DAOstack which has a betting market on each proposal. Proposals that have high ratio of bets for / against, have a lower threshold for passing. See “holographic consensus” in the DAOstack whitepaper, p.22.

Here you will be able to add the addresses of whichever members you would like to be a part of the DAO. You will be able to vote to add more members at a later date, but if you have their addresses now, it’s best to get that done now. Each member will be identified by their eth address, so make sure each one is inserted correctly.

When you hit the launch button, you will see your Metamask pop up.

You will see an “EDIT” button, where you can adjust the gas fees. Notice that it’s on the most expensive setting. FYI, on running this the first time through, I had it on the slowest/cheapest setting, and it did not work. I tried again at Average speed, and it managed to work, so just take that into consideration.

After a few minutes, you’ll be asked to confirm again, so watch out for that. Then you will have created your DAO! Click “Install Organization” and make sure you save the necessary URL. Click “Open Alchemy”, where you will see the dashboard of your DAO. This is where all the decentralized magic happens. *Disclaimer* Alchemy is in alpha mode, is still working out kinks & bugs, so use at your own risk.

The first thing you may want to see is how a DAO loads up their ether into a budget pool for the organization to manage democratically. Click “DAO Holdings” and you will see the address to send the ether to. You can also find the address in the URL of the Alchemy page link. Note that from here on, unless a vote was passed, funds cannot leave that wallet. This is not a mandatory thing at all, so let’s explore other things we can do.

The first thing I did was fill out my profile by clicking DAO Members on the dashboard. Then I sorted out my signature as prompted by 3Box on Metamask.

Now, let’s say you want to go back & add a person to the DAO. Simply click Funding and Voting Power in the Home section of the dashboard. Then click “New Funding + Voting Power Proposal”.

Here you can input whatever you’d like for description & how much reputation you would like them to have. Be sure to have the correct eth address that corresponds to the individual you would like to add. After submitting, you can vote yes or no on it after the transaction goes through. There you go, you just passed your first proposal and got +100 Rep for it!

There is a ton of potential and things to explore with this platform. While this blog does not cover 100% of what you can do with your DAO, hopefully this got you started on the right foot to decentralized governance in action.

If you have any questions on starting your first DAO, or if you are a blockchain company in need of a development team to build out your MVP, feel free to reach out to me via email at Ingamar@dorg.tech or DM me on Twitter @Ingalandia.