Pact DAO

DAO Members Interviewed:

  1. Marisa Rando, Founder
  2. Alfredo Gil, Core Team Contributor

Interviewer(s): Deepa

What is PACT DAO

Pact DAO is a New York City-based DAO building hyper-local mutual aid and neighborhood support programs. They were founded in 2020 as a US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit during the COVID outbreak. Pact, at that time, was a donation subscription service, fundraising for a featured hyper-local grassroots organization each month. In September 2021, they transitioned to a DAO, with the launch of a crowdfunding campaign on the web3-native mirror.xyz.

Pact continues to raise funds in both crypto and fiat to support various mutual aid programs. They see great potential in web3 tools for collaboration and coordination (multi-sig, Snapshot voting, etc.) giving agency to local leaders and making citizen participation easy. They are building a digital resource library to educate and onboard grassroots organizers on web3 tooling. Additionally, they conduct IRL events in NYC to connect with the community and to socialize the idea of using web3 for coordination and coalition building.

Currently, Pact DAO defines its impact in terms of relationships formed with grassroots leaders and organizations and in having healthy, open conversations around web3 and crypto as a tool for coordination. They have distriburted $15,000 is mutual aid to date.

How Do They DAO

  • Pact DAO collaborates on Discord with 70+ members in their Discord community and 5 core team members.
  • The group has completely transitioned to a DAO model and was among the first to amend its nonprofit bylaws to be DAO-compatible. The new, amended bylaws bring community members, broadly equivalent to board members, for collective decision-making.

Right now, I guess we are the classic, a DAO with discord and multi-sig - Marisa Rando, Pact DAO

  • Their tech stack is Discord for community, multisig wallet for fund management, Wonderverse for task management, and Notion for documentation.
  • Fundraising is a crucial function. Pact DAO uses web3 fundraising platforms, mirror.xyz and Gitcoin Grants in addition raising funds in fiat on their website.
  • The DAO does not have a token and they do not intend to launch a financial token
  • Voting and decision-making in Pact DAO are carried out through discussions and emojis on Discord.
  • Pact DAO is deeply inspired by the book “Mutual Aid” by Dean Spade, which strongly emphasizes relationship-building as a primary metric of success (Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis, 2020).

Sometimes web3 tools allow us to bypass relationships because we could all purchase the same NFT and be authenticated into this group but do we have shared values - Marisa Rando, Founder Pact DAO

  • Pact DAO employs a “dual power” operating philosophy that argues for working on two sides. You need to be both counter-power (similar to protesting) and also to simultaneously build solutions for what is being protested.
  • One of their biggest learnings operating as a crypto organization interacting with local communities in New York, is that you have to meet people where they are and become part of their community. You have to be a neighbor, not an outsider, and to slowly help them understand the power of web3 in enabling change.

For a deeper understanding of how Pact DAO operates, please refer to the conversations with the Pact DAO builders.

Interview with Marisa Rando, Founder Interview with Alfredo Gil, Core Team Contributor