Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs): Voting, governance, and lessons from history :: with Dr. Alexandra Sims

In this episode of Ventures, my guest Dr. Alexandra Sims (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-sims-833a8123/) and I talk about various academic and practical operational nuances of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs). Alex wrote her PhD thesis last year on DAOs (https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3971228), and in this episode we talk about the various types of DAOs, jurisdiction issues, voting and governance mechanisms, and advice for new on-chain organizations forming today to learn lessons from previous DAOs and traditional decentralized organizations that existed long before blockchains.

Visit https://satchel.works/@wclittle/ventures-episode-90 for MUCH more detailed notes and links to resources (videos, articles, etc…) mentioned. 

You can watch this episode via video here.

2:12 - Intro to the episode / general setup and motivation

3:02 - Alex intro / background in law, academia, Crypto/Web3, and DAOs in particular.

9:14 - Differences between a proto-DAO, pseudo-DAO, and actual DAO

12:16 - What are the things to look out for to recognize when DAOs aren’t quite decentralized yet. What is a healthy path to true decentralization for a DAO?

16:30 - How would Alex update her overall recommendation for legal/corporate setup for DAOs - and how they work - since her PhD thesis was published in May 2021.

18:11 - Brief introduction to Prota Ventures; why they are curious about when to recommend founders go the DAO vs. traditional route. Will - as a Managing Director of Prota Ventures - was compelled to practice it himself with BanyanDAO.  (Background, motivation, and operations for BanyanDAO). 

23:55 - How would Alex comment on the formation and incentive structure for BanyanDAO? (Recognition that the process has been indeed different and admirable…the importance of harnessing the power of community).

26:12 - For those interested in the power of DAOs outside of pump-and-dump schemes, “how are we going to get things done”? Is it possible to harness the power of a community to do something great with DAO mechanics? 

31:04 - Importance of having practical experience about how to lead/manage a group of people. 

31:38 - Voting mechanisms - Quadratic voting - explanation of the various types of voting, including conviction voting. 

38:49 - Recap of voting types, plus a conversation about governance tokens. 

40:00 - If Alex were to start a DAO that, say, was trying to build a product - how would she do it? How would she architect it?

43:10 - Who gets to decide who gets to be on teams in DAOs? How would Alex guide new DAOs to setup these teams? (An analysis of existing civil structures)

46:25 - Balance between self-assessment and community approval. Elections. And removals. What are principles to guide people building DAOs?

52:04 - Final words / final thoughts about this space from Alex. It’s not all about the online world; people are using it to coordinate - for example - natural resources.  “Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and modern technology” // Best way to get a hold of Alex. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-sims-833a8123/ // https://twitter.com/alexsims101