We have formed and funded Nouncil Pod Pod using Nouncil’s current operating budget. Nouncil Pod Pod’s goal is to decentralize and scale Nouncil by spreading responsibility throughout several separate, autonomous pods.
We are asking for an additional 39.5 ETH to form three pods beyond Nouncil’s current budget.
DAOs interact with the external world in very specific ways, all of them on-chain. They can transfer funds, call other contracts, and provide information about their state. DAO information can be used to guide off-chain activity, for example a DAO can vote to approve and fund a project, but everything further requires a person to actually do the work. Therefore to have an off-chain existence all DAOs require a degree of centralization, trust, and pods.
pod *noun *****An autonomous group of people using shared resources to work towards a common goal.
Pods are the building blocks of DAO ecosystems; centralized atomic units of people that interface with the DAO, complete off-chain tasks, and manage shared resources (both on-chain and off). Pods can host servers, run Discords, operate Gnosis Safes, vote in the DAO, manage web accounts, develop the protocol, set up legal entities, hold bank accounts, run grant programs, run marketing campaigns…
Every person that works with a DAO is doing so as part of a pod. A one person pod is a lonely pod with a high bus factor. An undocumented anon wallet is a phantom pod. A fully decentralized and autonomous pod becomes a DAO. And a pod without autonomy is likely better understood as part of a bigger pod.
If DAOs are floating in a sea of pods we need to develop a long term intuition about them. What does a well structured pod look like? What are red flags to look for? How do pods build a reputation? How do they ruin it? How do we balance the efficiency of centralization with the resilient censorship-resistance of decentralization? How do we prevent governance capture and minimize corruption? How do we create resilient pods that last for decades?