DAO Members Interviewed
- Christopher Chase, Founder
- Adam, Core Team Contributor
- Kyla, Core Team Contributor
Interviewer(s): Deepa
What is Human DAO
Human DAO’s mission is to use crypto and web3 to improve lives. Founded by Christopher Chase in 2021, Human DAO evolved out of the play-to-earn surge that peaked in the Philippines in 2021.
A veteran of Web3, Christopher was drawn into the world of Play-to-Earn in 2021 via Axie Infinity. For those who don’t know, Axie Infinity is a crypto-based game that has provided an actual livelihood for many in countries such as the Philippines (where some shops even accept the in-game tokens as a form of payment!).
In time, he found himself being approached for scholarships - a system in the game whereby a would-be player who lacks the means to purchase an NFT gets to borrow one from a player with NFTs to spare. This allows them to earn tokens by carrying out tasks within the game. “Hearing their stories,” he says, “how much a dollar a day could make a difference in their lives…I kept buying more Axies to get more scholars.”
The Axie model uses the blockchain to create cross-border economic opportunities without the need for work visas or official trade agreements. Previously, you had to buy your way into crypto (e.g. exchange USD for BTC). Now you could earn your way in. Almost unintentionally, games such as Axie onboarded millions of “ambition-rich” individuals to the cryptoverse.
It eventually struck Christoper that this model could be parlayed into generating economic value via real-world tasks. Hence the idea of their new product, Pocket Assistant NFT was born. PANFT holders outsource simple web based tasks to people in the emerging markets thus providing them work and an opportunity to earn in crypto. With their new initiative PANFT, Human DAO is expanding to Argentina and Nigeria.
“It’s a cross between Tinder and Uber”, as Christopher puts it, referring to the fact that the platform’s web app allows PAs to view potential tasks and “swipe right” on those they wish to undertake.
The system is therefore predicated on a fair exchange of value: a PANFT holder gets to save time and effort on routine tasks, while the PA can generate a regular income (e.g. $400 per month). In certain countries such as Argentina, an income of this size, paid in stablecoin, is preferable in many ways to a conventional job.
The aim of HumanDAO in the broadest sense is to use the disruptive power of Web3 to solve the problems faced by humanity. In the words of its founder Christopher Chase, it’s like a charity on steroids. To date Human DAO has impacted the lives of 1000 people in the Philippines and are bullish on their new product launch, PANFT providing income opportunities to people in the emerging markets.
How Do They DAO
- Human DAO uses tokenomics to fund their operations and impact. The HDAO token launched with the DAO helped them generate $3.5mil in funding.
- Remote distributed team with contributors and community collaborating on Discord. They have the largest community amongst the Impact DAOs we studied with 60,000 Discord members.
- Their tech stack comprises Ethereum and Polygon blockchain, Discord for community, Facebook, LinkedIn and Indeed for community outreach, Notion for Documentation, Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) and Parcel for fund management, Discourse and Snapshot for governance and voting.
- Beneficiaries are part of the community and so are token holders. All stakeholders collectively govern the DAO. Anyone can raise a proposal which is discussed and voted upon by token holders.
For a deeper understanding on how Human DAO operates refer to the conversation with Human DAO Founder and Builders
Interview with Christopher Chase, Founder Human DAO Interview with Adam, Core Team Contributor Interview with Kyla, Core Team Contributor
2. Impact Market
##DAO Members Interviewed:
- Marco, Co-Founder
- Bernardo, Co-Founder
- Jessica, COO
Interviewer(s): Yvonne, Harsha and Deepa
What is Impact Market
Impact Market is a poverty alleviation protocol governed by a DAO distributing unconditional basic income in cryptocurrency (stablecoin cUSD) directly to people living in extreme poverty. Impact Market uses smart contracts (self-executing computer programs with contract rules written into lines of code) to distribute unconditional basic income (UBI). Funds are deposited directly into the wallets on the phones of people that are hard to access in places like Afghanistan, Venezuela, Congo, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Togo, Mali. Most of the countries on their list are war stricken, hyper-inflated economies where the dollar can make the most difference and have high penetration of smartphones.
“The same code works in any region. It’s beautiful. You don’t need to set up a subsidiary or a local bank account,” says Marco. “People think scalability is about the number of transactions. But a lot of people are constrained by the lack of a bank account and other logistics.” Whereas traditional fund distribution to distressed areas of the globe requires the use of costly intermediaries and on-the-ground auditors, the blockchain clears away such barriers.
Impact Market recently renamed their Poverty Alleviation Protocol to Human Empowerment to reflect their new ambitious vision of going beyond UBI to provide education through learn to earn, micro insurance and micro loans. They are also developing interesting new solutions to verifying identity and reputation of beneficiaries and have developed an inhouse crypto wallet that fits the requirements of their beneficiaries of low tech smartphones Their goal is to reach the poor without intermediaries and be 100% decentralized in their operations.
As a young organization founded in late 2020, Impact Market has had a tremendous impact. They have distributed UBI to over 40,000 people across 269 communities in 35+ countries. The UN WFP is partnering with them in many hard to reach places such as Afghanistan to get the UBI people via the phone
How Do They DAO
- Launched as a DAO in late 2021 (a year after the protocol) with the idea of DAO and protocol controlled by the token holders. The implication is that donors can now participate in DAO governance matters. Anyone that donates to Impact Market earns a $PACT token that entitles them to governance matters of the DAO for instance which communities should Impact Market onboard next for the UBI, donors can now have a say as they are part of the organization.
- Tokenomics to be self-sustainable with $PACT token providing both liquidity and serving as a governance token. ($PACT)
- Collaborative decision making with the two co-founders at the helm for direction setting
- Full time and part time contributors are paid in cUSD (Celo stablecoin) the currency used for UBI for the poor.
- Tech stack comprises Celo blockchain, Valora crypto wallet, slack for collaboration, discord for community engagement, GitBook for documentation, Google Docs and CRM for data insights and relationships management.
- Slow approach to decentralization. Even though Impact Market launched as DAO by introducing the $PACT token they are still on their journey to fully decentralize the organization with the goal to include all token holders in voting and governance matters.
For a deeper understanding on Impact Market and how they operate refer to the conversation with Impact Market builders