Moloch Grant Proposal - DAOhaus v3

Moloch Rises
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#1

DAOhaus v3 Grant Proposal

Project Title

DAOhaus v3

Description

community-platform-economy

We envision a future where any human community can achieve its collective purpose while reinforcing the full sovereignty of individual members. We are building the technological and cultural tools that empower communities to do so.

We believe Moloch is the most significant DAO protocol in the ecosystem. Moloch DAOs prioritize the autonomy of the individual to maximize the self-sovereignty of communities through a lineage of features that began with Ragequit in v1, expanded to Ragekick and minions with v2, and have culminated in an incredible cornucopia of composable features in the Moloch v2.5 contracts we are currently using.

The DAOhaus core team has been carrying the Moloch torch since ETHBerlin 2019, building on top of this powerful foundation to create a no-code platform where anyone can summon a Moloch DAO in just a few minutes. In August of 2021, a few DAOhaus die-hards volunteered to help your DAO (thee original MolochDAO) migrate to the v2.5 platform so your community could take advantage of the expanded tooling.

DAOhaus is a public good. The founders decentralized their work to create the DAOhaus community, which has since decentralized further summoning Uberhaus to open up governance to the wider community. DAOhaus members hold shares in MolochDAO and MolochDAO holds shares in Uberhaus DAO, playing a key role in the governance of our platform.

We rely on our community to keep us building and have historically conducted our own fundraising campaigns in the form of Community Contribution Opportunities (CCOs) using our own innovative Yeeter tool. Earlier this year we raised ~$2m from dedicated supporters to secure a runway for shipping the DAOhaus v3 product and Moloch v3 Baal contracts with the Moloch Mystics.

Read our manifesto to learn about our community values.

Review the pitchdeck of our recent CCO3 (completed in February 2022).

Note that your own Moloch Rises DAO is hosted on the DAOhaus platform and the original MolochDAO v1 was accessed through our Pokemol application.

Problem

DAOhaus addresses the tension between flexibility, usability, and decentralization.

Purpose-driven communities demand:

  • Infrastructure and tools that meet their specific coordination and operation needs.
  • A human-friendly way for their members to use that unique combination of tools.
  • Widely distributed power and individual sovereignty (no shortcuts).

Due to recent market depression, our runway has shrunk dramatically to only a few months of reduced operations. Our current goal is shipping DAOhaus v3 built upon the Moloch v3 contracts. At this moment we are making difficult decisions in our organization to prioritize delivering a Beta version of the core product, but this does not account for the months of technical and community support required to ensure things run smoothly. We need to test the Beta version of our apps, make the necessary updates for a public release, and migrate existing DAOs to the new contracts.

Web3 applications require rigorous security auditing to ensure the safety of the user base, yet we no longer have the funds to hire another third party to audit our build.

Solution

Our focus is on DAOs empowering communities of humans to achieve shared purpose.

  • DAOs empowering humans, not humans supporting protocols
  • Tribe-sized communities, not boundless mechanistic affiliation
  • Purpose-driven, not just here for the tokens
  • Communally distributed power, not executive councils
  • Positive-sum, not negative-sum

If we are going to realize our goal while also compensating the incredible team dedicated to executing the build, we need the support of MolochDAO.

We are requesting a grant to serve as an emergency relief fund to support our builders in delivering our product, conducting a professional security audit through Quantstamp, and providing the necessary support that follows. The funds from MolochDAO will support us until the end of the fiscal year (December 2022).

Product Features

daohaus-ships

daohaus-moloch

DAOhaus is a platform for summoning and managing Moloch DAOs. We’ve worked to reimagine our platform into a software development kit and decentralized infrastructure providing tools for developers to build DAO products and services. Our applications are built upon this infrastructure and leverage these libraries, subgraphs, and contracts.

Applications

The interfaces used to interact with DAOs, including:

  • Summoner
  • Hub
  • Admin

Libraries

These libraries are consumed by our apps and structured to be used by external developers. They include:

  • Utility Libraries provide foundations that can be composed and integrated into applications
  • Data Libraries provide functions for interacting with DAO data
  • User Interface Libraries provide a set of components for building DAO interfaces and tools
  • Feature Libraries compose “smart components” that can be integrated into applications

Decentralized Infrastrucutre

We have prioritized building with decentralized tools and are sharing our charts of dependencies and templates to help other teams figure out the tough stuff and ensure posterity.

Validation

community

A Few DAOs Summoned on DAOhaus

Name Members Treasury Value
MetaCartel Ventures 85 $6,300,575
Game Mine Alliance 34 $2,299,385
Moloch Rises 74 $1,805,499
Diamond Bank 20 $536,491
Bufficorn Ventures DAO 16 $500,984
Meta Cartel 100+ $333,499
Raid Guild 100+ $161,434

NOTE: The above values are representative of only the main treasury of each DAO and do not include the token values held in minion vaults.

Social Impact on the DAO Ecosystem

DAOhaus’ social impact extends beyond the core application of Moloch DAO contracts. We are advocates and leaders in the DAO space.

Progress

You can track the DAOhaus v3 Milestones on our Github.

Our current goal is releasing the v3 Beta at MCON2 in September:

  • Contracts
  • Subgraphs
  • Infrastructure
  • Libraries
  • Applications

After MCON2, we strive to deliver:

Public Release of v3

  • Moving out of Beta with a successful security audit
  • Resolving any issuses indentified in testing and adding additional features
  • Marketing to the wider ecosystem

Migrate DAOs from v2

  • Update documentation about v2 > v3
  • Build tool to facillitate communities to upgrade to v3 in a trustless (or less trust-dependent) manner
  • Elaborate a specific migration campaign

Team

This table represents the current team assembled for the Beta release. Personnel changes quickly on our team and can be expected in the coming months. We offer this as a soft guideline for how we are thinking about budget distribution.

Contributor Primary Role Commitment % Level $wxDAI
adrienne Designooor 80% 5 9,600
Avi Designooor 57% 4 5,700
earth2travis Project Managooor 100% 5 12,000
Jord Developooor 100% 5 12,000
JP Project Managooor 69% 4 6,900
Keating Developooor 23% 5 2,760
Santiago Developooor 69% 4 6,900
Sam Kuhlmann Developooor 100% 5 12,000
Brian Developooor 100% 4 10,000
Plor Project Managooor 46% 4 4,600
Dekan Brown Developooor 75% 5 9,000
Jeremy Testooor 23% 4 2,300
Scott Developooor 23% 5 2,760
TW Documentooor 57% 4 5,700
Totals 102,220

Grant Request $

  • $102k per month x4 months for the current DAOhaus builder team
  • $90k Quantstamp security audit
  • Total: $498k

What the Funds Are For

  • Provide 4 months after Beta release to test, support, document, and iterate on major features
  • Pay for security audit to prepare the product for public release
  • Introduce the capabilites of Moloch v3 to the masses
  • Compensate contributors pushing the product and tooling over the finish line by December 2022

Additional Resources

Github Monorepo

2 Likes
#2
#3

@traviswyche I haven’t reviewed everything here yet, but one thing that’s unclear to me is how the December 2022 timeline ties in to specific deliverables? When funds run out in December, are you expecting to have v3 live? If so, what happens if things are delayed/take longer than expected? If not, how do you imagine funding the project after that? thanks!

#4

Hi Tim!
The DH team is shooting for a beta release at MCON2 in September. By December we hope to be iterating on the beta. We are working on a concrete road map, incorporating our medium and long-term goals to a more sustainable future, including seeking funding for specific application builds on top of our SDK from orgs like Gnosis, Protocol Labs, Radicle… although this Moloch grant is our current focus.

DH will be rolling out some experiments with opt-in and donation based opportunities for users to help support the ecosystem. The team is also strategizing creating many plugins / boosts which will eventually have a pay model. Recent re-org efforts are pointing towards a plan to incubate in Haus projects that will have their own monetary systems.

The current goal is to ship v3 and make our SDK build accessible for everyone/anyone looking to iterate on our foundations, including all the documentation and educational materials needed to fork everything and build their own DAOhaus platform. Ongoing stewardship past December could take many forms, from a skeleton team handling v2>v3 migration (if no support is received) to ongoing iterations towards some incredible meta ideas we were scheming before the bear market pains. The team is very close with the alpha product now and I do not anticipate a delay on the beta.

Hope this helps!

#5

I’m a bit confused by this proposal as far as requesting half a million of “emergency relief” from MolochDAO, which based on the Protocol Guild post, I think it’s looking like the direction is to send most of the remaining treasury there, in this wind down phase for the DAO.

I don’t think it makes sense for Moloch to ensure that developers can be paid $120k-140k a year when it seems like it was due to poor treasury management decisions. I’m sure that most can survive by simply reducing the burn rate.

Why don’t the VCs and investors who put money into DAOhaus provide a bridge loan to maintain the salaries? Why not seek funding from investment DAOs, like VentureDAO, so you can actually offer tokens in exchange for such large amounts of money? I don’t think MolochDAO was necessarily created to fund DAO tooling, at least not in this capacity, of providing mega grants to teams that have tokens to sell. I can understand us giving small grants here and there, but I don’t think 33% of our treasury makes sense. I think something that may be more fair as a compromise is a $90k grant to fund the security audit.

I appreciate the work that the DAOhaus team has done in providing us a pretty awesome tool to use for MolochDAO and I’m looking forward to v3, but half a million doesn’t feel like the incentives are fully aligned - plus I would say this post being pinned seems a bit biased (it is unclear why one proposal deserves more attention than others)

2 Likes
#6

Agree with @stellar_magnet

#7

Hi stellar_magnet. My name is Chris aka boilerrat. I am a contributor at DAOhaus. Thank you so much for taking the time to read our proposal and for bringing your concerns to the surface. Hopefully I can address some of them here.

I don’t think it makes sense for Moloch to ensure that developers can be paid $120k-140k a year when it seems like it was due to poor treasury management decisions. I’m sure that most can survive by simply reducing the burn rate.

Your concern is very much appreciated. I would like to point out that high quality Web3 developers are in very high demand. Research shows on https://web3.career/web3-salaries that Web3 developers can make on average of $100,000 to $150,000 per year. So we feel we are very much in line with industry standards. The fact that our team remains dedicated to creating DAOhaus as a public good, is a testament to the quality of the people working on this project. They are worth every penny.

It is also importnant to note that the we have already cut our burn rate substantially. Many of the developers have taken pay cuts in order to see this project through. We are truly lucky that they remain. Finding replacement developers and brining them up to speed would be a great cost and set our development time and costs back a great deal. Many of the non-developers (content providers, product support etc) do not take any pay at all but continue with the project regardless.

We don’t disagree that there has been some treasury mismanagement, especially in the fact that much of our funding was raised in and remained in a volitile asset, Ether. The ETH that has been available to us was raised via the Community Contribution Opportunity Mechanism and it remained in their custody through that mechanism. Here is an article explaining Community Contribution Opportunity - by Spencer Graham

Similar to the Moloch DAO treasury, our ETH holdings value was dramatically reduced, as the market crashed. Our CCO raise was successful in getting us as far as it did, however prior to “transmutation” the funds remained in ETH. It is unfortunate that we did not have more holdings in a stable coin. We are not alone in this, as treasury holders throughout the ecosystem also have had to learn this lesson the hard way.

Why don’t the VCs and investors who put money into DAOhaus provide a bridge loan to maintain the salaries? Why not seek funding from investment DAOs, like VentureDAO, so you can actually offer tokens in exchange for such large amounts of money?

We certainly are applying for funding from other sources and have considered token exchanges in the past. It is not always the best decision though and is decided upon on a case by case basis. We chose Moloch DAO as our first grant application as we feel most closely aligned to Moloch DAO.

I don’t think MolochDAO was necessarily created to fund DAO tooling, at least not in this capacity, of providing mega grants to teams that have tokens to sell. I can understand us giving small grants here and there, but I don’t think 33% of our treasury makes sense. I think something that may be more fair as a compromise is a $90k grant to fund the security audit.

We are indeed creating DAO tooling, but that is only part of it. We are creating an Open Source, Public Good with intentions to support those who use the tools. We see ourselves as doing much more than just creating DAO tooling. As was pointed out in our original post, we are heavily involved with the ecosystem in many ways including publishing content and being active and visible advocates of the Ethereum ecosystem.

We are aware of the potential of Moloch DAO winding down, with the proposal to move most of the treasury onto Protocol Guild. We respect any decision that Moloch chooses. With that said, we believe that we are perfectly aligned to carry the torch of the Moloch DAO contracts into the future. While we understand that we are not the only ones that use the Moloch DAO contracts, and we have deep respect for those that do, we feel we carry the torch culturally as well. Looking at our recent publications on Mirror highlights this very well.

I appreciate the work that the DAOhaus team has done in providing us a pretty awesome tool to use for MolochDAO and I’m looking forward to v3, but half a million doesn’t feel like the incentives are fully aligned

Thank you. You haven’t seen anything yet :slight_smile: The power of v3 and the tools we have created is a huge enabling factor for the Web3 community. Your concern over the amount requested is valid. In order to build these products, in the time we do it and, frankly, the high quality, requires a lot of capital. If we break down the request by the number of people that use DAOhaus, adding in the new DAOs and users we predict will be using DAOhaus in the future, $500,000 is a small amount to build a public good.

plus I would say this post being pinned seems a bit biased (it is unclear why one proposal deserves more attention than others)

We are happy to support your removal of the pin. Thank you for making us aware of it’s potetial bias. Certainly no harm meant and we fully support all of the applicants.

#8

Blockquote I am a contributor at DAOHaus

  • there’s lack of uniformity in the post between DAOHaus and DAOhaus. minor thing, but would be good to choose which one and stick with it throughout the post

Blockquote and for brining your concearns to the surface

  • change to “bringing” and “concerns”; there’s a few uses of “concearn” throughout that just need to be changed to “concern”

Blockquote We had chosen Moloch DAO as our first grant application as we feel most closely aligned to Moloch DAO

  • change to “we chose Moloch…”

Blockquote 1/2 a million

  • change to $500,000
#9

is this proposal going to be updated to reflect the current onchain proposal? or at least timelines specifically related to the audit? would be very interested to support that, but need more details

1 Like
#10

The proposal request has been lowered to cover only the next audit for the Moloch V3 contracts. On the back of an initial positive audit, DAOhaus is looking to do an audit within the next month for a second opinion on the base, as well as get eyes on some more advanced updates such as in this PR:
Feat/erc20 permit upgradeable by brossetti1 · Pull Request #62 · HausDAO/Baal · GitHub

Security is of the upmost importance to DAOhaus before suggesting usability by the ecosystem. Your support would mean a lot to those using Moloch for governance!

1 Like
#11

thanks for the update!