# DAO Tools Research - Idle DAO Modular Stack **URL:** \ **Category:** 🧩 Protocol & DAO\ **Created:** [January 17, 2022, 6:25pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904 "2022-01-17T18:25:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![emixprime](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/gov.pareto.credit/emixprime/32/710_2.png) [@emixprime](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/emixprime)\ **Post date:** [January 17, 2022, 6:25pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/1 "2022-01-17T18:25:01Z")
# Authors Treasury League, DAO Architecture area - @emixprime, reviewed by @Biaf @Teo @Felix @RTP2016 # Summary Lately, we’ve seen many discussions happening in the DeFi space about DAOs regarding how to improve and scale them long-term. Most of the discussions have focused on DAO tooling - infrastructure and applications to help DAOs to be more efficient and effective in various areas of DAO management. That said, some areas of tooling are more developed than others and many tools are still refining their core features. ![dao tools landscape](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/idle/original/1X/e08e102a57f410da752a88526c35c54a1274b7d0.jpeg) \*_added Idle Leagues to this overview made by [@nichanank](https://twitter.com/nichanank)_ In addition, to facilitate the experience of the core contributors of a DAO, these tools also include features to increase democracy within a DAO (with new voting methods) and meritocracy (by rewarding those who contribute). Given the proven usefulness of some of these tools, during the last mandate, **we decided to explore the other more well-known tools to understand which of these tools could be adopted by the Idle DAO** to make day-to-day operations and community building/governance more efficient and effective. # Idle DAO Modular Stack First of all, to understand and better identify which tools to test, we asked ourselves **what the difficulties and problems** that a user in the governance processes could find were. Thus, we have summarized DAO activities that are mainly performed, listing for each activity what were any barriers or problems experienced during the process: - **Voting** (off-chain & on-chain) All votes related to proposals and initiatives discussed in the DAO. - **Proposals** (Discussions) How an idea, novelty, or proposal is born, grows, and is submitted for a vote in the Idle DAO. The discussion aspect is the core of this activity. - **Bounties** (Grants & Rewards) Being rewarded for contribution on something the Idle DAO needs to get. This activity consists of creating specific discussions to pay a reward to the contributor who worked on some task for the Idle DAO, then possibly initiating payment directly from this discussion if there are no votes against it. - **Notifications** (off-chain & on-chain) Receiving notifications for any new event in the DAO: could be a new discussion, a new vote, a reminder, or an important announcement. * * * With this highlighted analysis, we decided to find a model that can include several tools, helping to aggregate what is currently multiple and simplify and make it more interesting what is single. So, we chose to follow a **modular approach**. ![Idle DAO tools (stack model) (1)](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/uploads/idle/original/1X/68fbe3b1e793abe3dd89e39ec8d46fd2c2924838.png) In this context, **a modular approach describes the flexibility and easiness of integration and interaction with these tools and platforms**. Having a modular approach could allow us to use tools and integrate on some platforms and later, or simultaneously, to new ones that might be more complete than others. This approach would also avoid the constraint of being too tied to a single platform. # Tools and Platforms to Adopt As seen from the scheme above, we added a platform where these activities can be carried out (or will be carried out if they are new activities). The idea of having a stack model is also to use, through integration, multiple tools, and platforms, even for a single DAO activity (e.g., Snapshot, which could be integrated into multiple platforms). These are the platforms we tested, listed by type of activity: - **Notifications** (off-chain & on-chain) - **Voting** (off-chain & on-chain) - **Proposals** (Discussions) - **Bounties** (Grants & Rewards) # Conclusion ➡ There is an ongoing integration on some of these platforms as we look to improve the various processes within the IDLE DAO, others are completed, and others are yet to begin. All of them have been tested by us to see if Idle DAO could benefit from them. Having all the tools used by the Idle DAO so far in a single platform is a **great way to improve the ease of engagement** of new users in making governance activities. On the other hand, modularity remains essential **to be flexible** enough to adopt new tools if there are any in the future. 📢 Now there are some points on which **we would like to hear your opinion** : 1. **Forum integration - Commonwealth** The peculiarity of this integration is that, once the forum is imported to the Commonwealth platform, the discussions will continue there, without being synchronized at the same time on the discourse forum as well. 2. **Reputation system - Colony** It is a very interesting concept that makes the members of a DAO actively involved. [Reputation](https://colony.gitbook.io/colony/key-concepts/reputation) can be earned through rewards for work done or if a dispute is resolved (but the reputation is not recognized for being active in discussions or in the DAO channels) and is necessary if you want to create motions, disputes, and votes. If the DAO member is no longer active for a specific period, the reputation incrementally lowers. 3. **One single platform which integrates all the Governance tools** As you’ve seen from the explanation above and the stack scheme, some platforms offer features to cover almost all DAO activities (Messari Governor included, it’s close to this setup but it lacks a real forum integration inside, @jpurd17 do you think would be possible in the future)? We are keen to hear your opinions, especially from @unicorn @Falcone @Coinballers @JonnyReid @8bitporkchop @AllinCrypto @wlamhk @tom @FedeCrypto @idal @idlehusbandry @emilianobonassi who have actively contributed in the forum and for the growth of the ecosystem, some of them since the real beginning of the Idle Governance 🛡 * * * We want to thank @Jaf from **EPNS** , Kevin from **Boardroom** , @jpurd17 from **Messari** , @georgebeall from **Commonwealth** , and Jack from **Colony** for the help and the support provided during our integration tests, helping support and provide all the information needed from us to start the integrations and test their platforms 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![felix](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/gov.pareto.credit/felix/32/129_2.png) [@felix](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/felix)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2022, 9:32pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/2 "2022-01-18T21:32:49Z")
Thanks @emixprime for the great post! I love the emphasis on modularity, which allows the DAO to evolve and switch out individual components as better fitting ones emerge or the needs of the DAO change. I would appreciate ppl reading my article on why I think Colony is great for sustainably decentralized & agile DAOs (the one @emixprime linked in the post). When using Colony for distributing regular or irregular reward payments in IDLE, there is automatically reputation being awarded to the contributors. There will also be a possibility to award reputation per governance decision in regular time intervals to account for other contributions that haven’t been rewarded in IDLE (tbd how this should be implemented exactly - potentially by using sourcecred, which is however less sybil resistant and thus on-chain reputation awards should not be automatic). ---
**Author:** ![unicorn](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/gov.pareto.credit/unicorn/32/48_2.png) [@unicorn](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/unicorn)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2022, 1:26pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/3 "2022-01-19T13:26:44Z")
Congrats to all League members involved in this research. You manage to review all the best options right now for DAO management. [https://atlantis.world/](https://atlantis.world/) shows great potential too but we are early. I agree with the League’s pursuit of a modular stack and both commonwealth and colony are great tools with amazing DAOs supporting growth and functionality. Discord has become the hub for DAO management and coordination: tracking reputation, contributions, conversations, organizing teams, and even payments. Commonwealth and colony are putting a ton of resources building deep integration with discord. After this happens, the door is open to migrating the Idle DAO cafe to discord. This will both make rewarding contributions and coordinating users easier and more efficient. What I also like about commonwealth and colony is that they also OPEN the door for MORE value creation within the existing Idle DAO. From my experience using both of them, it’s very likely to expect the idle DAO to become the LAUNCHPAD for new products, new teams, and even new tokens… in a nutshell: Idle **SUBDAOs** , where Idle can become the “parent” DAO. As always, Idle finance keeps taking big steps in the right direction. ---
**Author:** ![RTP2016](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/gov.pareto.credit/rtp2016/32/371_2.png) [@RTP2016](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/RTP2016)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2022, 9:44pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/4 "2022-01-19T21:44:34Z")
Great piece @emixprime! It’s great to see the DAO tooling landscape building up and how it fits into Idle’s future. I think modularity fits into the composability nature of DeFi and allows the right level of flexibility in case of superior options that may arise in the future. Regarding > [@emixprime](#): > > ❓ Would having all the governance tools integrated into one platform be practical for you? > Do you feel a risk of centralization in some ways? Having one platform could be nice but we would just need to be fully confident of the platforms’ future commitment to delivering the tools we would need (and want) to operate the DAO efficiently and effectively. It’s very rare one platform does everything well. I do think a reputation system like Colony would be great to use to help cultivate the Idle community. Looking forward to implementing some of these new tools soon! 🙌 ---
**Author:** ![georgebeall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c0e974/32.png) [@georgebeall](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/georgebeall)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2022, 11:09pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/5 "2022-02-16T23:09:19Z")
Hey all! I’m George from the Commonwealth team. We are an all-in-one DAO tooling platform and are super excited to work with the Idle community. Currently we support dYdX, Osmosis, Redacted, New Order DAO, Solana, Injective, Near, Celo, and 650 other DAOs. We offer: -DAO creation -crowdfunding (still in alpha) -crypto native discussion -crypto native chat (still in alpha) -off chain polling -full Snapshot integration -onchain voting -and much more You can see more about the platform and these features in action here: [https://www.notion.so/hicommonwealth/Scalable-Governance-a6178aa0eb6544feb7c8ad0e31ac82f8](https://www.notion.so/hicommonwealth/Scalable-Governance-a6178aa0eb6544feb7c8ad0e31ac82f8) ---
**Author:** ![Jaf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Jaf](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/Jaf)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2022, 9:16am UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/6 "2022-02-20T09:16:18Z")
This is a great research-backed insight into DAO management. Really appreciate you pointing out the significance of Push notifications for this process. As you’ve rightly mentioned, not all community members actively participate in the voting process and this is especially true when there are multiple platforms involved. I believe the lack of direct communication between users and the platform is the primary cause of concern here. It is hard for users to keep up with the process if they have to manually check for updates at every stage. EPNS circumvents this problem through push notifications. We send out notifications from protocols to their users for both on-chain and off-chain events. For the Idle DAO that incorporates both on-chain and off-chain voting, these notifications could prove to be very useful. The notifications can be fully customized to suit keep the community members updated at every stage of the governance process, thereby increasing participation rates. We’re excited to be on-board with Idle DAO. Here’s to taking the right steps towards decentralization. ---
**Author:** ![unicorn](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex031/user_avatar/gov.pareto.credit/unicorn/32/48_2.png) [@unicorn](https://gov.pareto.credit/u/unicorn)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2022, 2:10pm UTC](https://gov.pareto.credit/t/dao-tools-research-idle-dao-modular-stack/904/7 "2022-02-25T14:10:50Z")
Hi @georgebeall welcome! The notion link you provided is not working. Only whitelisted email accounts can access it.