The Digital Economy Canon - Section 4: Notable Web3 tools
There has been a Cambrian explosion of tooling over the last year. There’s dozens of maturing offerings, hundreds of new solutions emerging and it’s not hard to envision the innovation we will see through 2022.
We have selected 10 tools to highlight based on their impact on the DAO community, their team contributions, and the influence they have had in shaping the DAO technology stack.
For each tool, you'll find a brief summary of their purpose and mission, the reason why you should care about these tools, and relevant social links.
Enjoy! 🔥
Mirror
Mirror
Mirror is the next big change in the long history of symbolic communication. Through a decentralized, user-owned, crypto-based network, Mirror’s publishing platform revolutionizes the way we express, share and monetize our thoughts.
Reason why it’s interesting: Mirror.xyz has completely revolutionized the writing style of communication. Providing writers with a decentralized platform in which they can publish and retain ownership over their work is the primary reason they are included in this list. Publishers can write essays, launch projects, share thoughts, and tokenize their work.
Gnosis Safe
Gnosis Safe
Gnosis Safe is a smart contract wallet running on Ethereum that requires a minimum number of people to approve a transaction before it can occur (M-of-N). If for example you have 3 main stakeholders in your business, you are able to set up the wallet to require approval from all 3 people before the transaction is sent. This assures that no single person could compromise the funds. On top of that, Gnosis Safe gives you complete self custody over your funds. There is no risk of a bank giving you a hassle for running a crypto business and the smart contract that is deployed is completely trustless and in your control.
Reason why it’s interesting: Gnosis really acted as a catalyst in the explosion of DAOs over the last two years. It made it really easy to start a decentralized fund controlled by multiple parties. The Safe product is really the gold standard in multsig wallets used for DAOs and even traditional organizations using cryptocurrencies earning itself a spot on this list.
Snapshot
Snapshot
Snapshot is a decentralized voting system. It provides flexibility on how voting power is calculated for vote. Snapshot supports various voting types to cater to the needs of organizations. Creating proposals and voting on Snapshot is user friendly and does not cost any gas as the process is performed off-chain. In short, Snapshot is an off-chain gasless multi-governance client with easy to verify and hard to contest results.
Reason why it’s interesting: It’s almost a no-brainer to include Snapshot on this list. The governance proposal platform is used by virtually every DAO to handle all proposals. Its slick interface makes it easy for beginners to explore different organizations and vote on proposals.
Juicebox
Juicebox
Juicebox is dedicated to developing DAO treasury management software. The protocol is built to support small projects with grand visions as well as large projects that have complex operations. DAOs crowdfunded on Juicebox will be able to calibrate incentives and allocations for their users and contributors over time.
Reason why it’s interesting: Juicebox has made it easy for many organizations to spin off into DAOs in terms of establishing a treasury in an otherwise complicated process. It has been used by many popular DAOs including the recent ConstitutionDAO.
Collab.land
Collab.land
Collab.Land leverages the power of identity through crypto currency to create a social space unique to a specific network of humans. Once you add the bot to your Telegram group or Discord guild, they will manage your people for you. Depending on their token holdings they will be allowed to join the community. If they sell, the bot boots them.
Reason why it’s interesting: Spam accounts have run amok in the crypto space and Collab.land is here to save the day. The Collab.land bot almost acts as an oracle to verify that participants in token-gated channels actually have the tokens to be in that certain channel and role.
ENS Domains
ENS Domains
The Ethereum Name Service(ENS) has been a fundamental building block of the web3 space. An ethereum iteration of DNS, it allows users to shorten their wallet addresses to customizable, digestible names of their choice. So instead of sending funds to a long traditional ethereum address, funds can be sent to yourname.eth.
Reason why it’s interesting: ENS is known for more than just popularizing wallet identity. Their $ENS token airdrop is seen as a pioneering move to reward users and early adopters.
Coordinape
Coordinape
Coordinape facilitates rewards to community members based on the recognition from their peers. Each member has a set amount of allocation points, and can allocate points to the contributors they have worked with based on what they think of their contributions.
Reason why it’s interesting: Coordinape takes participation recognition to the next level. The idea of recognizing and rewarding contributors past giving out a salary is true to the nature of the web3 space. Coordinape is incentivizing participation with its unique tools.
Coinvise
Coinvise
Powerful tools for creators to build & operate a DAO. Creators use Coinvise for minting a token, retroactive airdrops, crowdfunding & creating incentives for their community.
Reason why it’s interesting: Coinvise allows anyone to launch and manage their own personal or community token and came up with an efficient set of tools that allow tokenized communities to do airdrops, vesting schedules, quests, and more. As the blockchain-powered creator economy continues to grow, powerful tools like Coinvise will become much more important in the near future
Dune Analytics
Dune Analytics
Dune Analytics is a powerful tool for blockchain research. Dune gives you all the tools to query, extract, and visualize vast amounts of data from the blockchain. Dune is unlocking the power of public blockchain data by making it accessible to everyone.
Reason why it’s interesting: What good is blockchain data if you can’t read or synthesize it? There is a vast amount of public data generated from on-chain activity that is very difficult to derive insights from. Dune Analytics gives anyone the power to become a data wizard by making it really easy to query, extract, and visualize data from the blockchain. Ever wonder where the charts on various DeFi apps come from -- it's most likely from Dune.
POAP
POAP
POAP enables a new way of keeping long-lasting records of life experiences. A POAP is a digital collectible created as a NFT (non-fungible token) powered by the blockchain.
Reason why it’s interesting: POAP has helped realize the value of participation. By creating one-off NFTs as proof of attendance, POAP has helped DAOs keep track of who is attending what, awarding regular participants, and creating some cool-looking NFTs in the process.