Building in the Open

How should a DAO communicate?

One of the questions I see coming up these days at Fingerprints DAO is how open or private our discussions should be.

There are four levels of discussions happening among DAO members and the broader community

1. 1-on-1

2. Closed groups with DAO members for specific subjects

   1. Design+Marketing

   2. Strategic Partnerships

   3. Finance

   4. Communication

   5. Curation + Acquisition

3. Groups to all DAO members

4. Groups to all DAO members + invited non-DAO members

5. Fully open groups

At Fingerprints, we cover the spectrum of 1-4. And even for (4), the invites are very restricted, not even members can invite at will.

So far we made the decision to form the initial vision of the DAO, both in terms of curation and organization, a fully open discussion channel (like Discord) would have too much noise and could bring the wrong kind of people — people who just want to flip a token and not helping build an organization

But is this correct?

Building in the open may be the biggest difference a DAO can have compared to a startup or another form of organization.

As DAO member Emmy said:

Transparency is one of the biggest competitive advantages a DAO can have over an S-Corp

But building in the open can definitely be a setback in the short term. For a DAO acquiring artwork, that could mean the risk of frontrunning for example, particularly when it’s still small.

But we’ll do an experiment to open up the discussions. My suggestions:

1. Letting members invite to the general chat anyone they want

2. Archive our general chat for members (#members-lounge) and make the general, open channel the main one

3. Open the working groups to all members to see, with the exception of the Curation and Acquisition Committee, that still deals with sensitive information on timing and execution to collect

Let’s see how this experiment goes. Will report back.