Season Three here we come.

2021 at BanklessDAO was an experiment around social coordination and learning how to bootstrap a global community to achieve our mission: help the world #gobankless

Onboarding a billion people into crypto is no easy task. Despite this, we make strides every day. New media outlets, education platforms, collectibles, and indexes for simple investing are causing DAOs to become accessible to everyone—this is what is powering bDAO: a community of 17,000+ members strong, and growing!

There’s a lot to unpack. If you want to stay up to date on the community’s initiatives, catch up on governance, and see the top meme of the week, subscribe to the BanklessDAO Weekly Rollup.

Here’s what we’ve done along with what to expect in Season Three.

Tl;dr BanklessDAO still ships (a lot).

Season 2 Highlights

• $BANK became the most widely held social token, according to Forefront.
• Acquired over $500,000 in revenue-generating liquidity via Olympus Pro.
• Launched the Bankless Mobile App.
• Launched the Bankless DeFi Innovation Index (GMI) with the Index Coop.
• Integrated DEGEN into 80+ Discord servers and communities.
• Released two epic MetaFactory Merch Drops–WGMI and BED Constellations.
• Pioneered three new media publications: State of the DAOs, Decentralized Law, and The Rug.
• Launched the Podcast Incubator Program featuring three up and coming podcasts.
• Sold out DAOpunks, generating 88 ETH in sales and releasing its unique merch drop.
• Announced the Talent Collective to help individuals get hired to work in crypto.
• Published the first two education modules for Bankless Academy.
• Migrated and bootstrapped the BANK ecosystem on Polygon.
• Launched the International Media Nodes Program.

Community Growth

BanklessDAO’s Discord has grown to over 17,000 individuals. This has resulted in an overwhelming amount of full-time members and contributors, while many are passive participants interested in keeping an eye on the progress.

The growth was steady throughout the season, showing a continued interest in new members joining the DAO.

While in Season 1 the DAO saw a significant inflow of members thanks to bDAO contributors spreading the word, in Season 2, we started to see an influx of members finding their own way into the DAO. All the while, our resources on the website, Twitter, Medium, Instagram, and more continued to drive a significant amount of new members into the DAO.

Revenue

BanklessDAO generated a net profit of $130,000 to the DAO treasury in addition to acquiring nearly $600,000 in liquidity via Olympus Pro throughout S2.

A significant portion of the revenue was earned from DAOpunks, which sold out its NFT drop in the pre-sale, generating roughly $72,000 for the treasury. The remainder of the revenue was from a combination of NFT showcases, Bankless Indices, MetaFactory merch drops, and others.

The treasury also earned revenue from media sponsorships including UMA, Balancer, and others.

With the expansion and rapid growth of the newsletters, as well as the launch of revenue-generating initiatives such as the GMI index, podcast hatchery, and Bankless Consultancy, we expect to continue generating a net profit for the DAO while simultaneously sustaining the contributors who work behind the scenes to manage these projects.

BanklessDAO Season 3

Season 3 is officially underway. Guilds, projects, and the Grants Committee have all received their $BANK allocations.

The community has been hard at work since the genesis in May 2021, and as such, we’ve elected to introduce a formal Gap Week between each season to provide a rest period to recharge and prepare for the next sprint. The Gap Week will be held from April 9th to April 15th. In an industry that operates 24/7, burnout is real. Therefore, we’re excited to introduce these formal rest periods for the DAO and provide everyone some time off!

Season Three BANK Distribution

In total, BanklessDAO will distribute 28M BANK in Season 3 to a combination of projects, guilds, and grants. We are growing at an insane rate, and we’re in a period where we need to distribute ownership to sustain this growth.

We expect to start decreasing our budget as these projects come into fruition, become self-sustainable, and capture value for the DAO.

With that said, here’s the breakdown:

Projects: 11.1M BANK

Guilds: 8M BANK

Guilds are the DAO’s talent pools, which are responsible for crowdsourcing smaller projects, organizing and referring talent to new projects, and general operations of the DAO.

These are the back-offices of the DAO and provide foundational support for the community. As such, the 12 guilds will split 8M BANK according to their budget requests as per the Snapshot proposal. These funds will be used to pay core contributors within each guild, pay bounties for one-off tasks, and provide additional support to internal guild projects.

Grants Committee: 7M BANK

The Grants Committee is responsible for seeding new projects that arise within the DAO, following community consensus and support.

In past seasons, the Grants Committee has distributed over 30M BANK to projects, which have blossomed into some of the outcomes listed above in the Season 2 summary and the Season 3 Project funding summary. We look forward to continuing to support new contributors and their ideas in the coming months with an allocation of 7M BANK!

Contributor Coordinape: 4M BANK

BanklessDAO contributors are big proponents of the Web3-native, peer-allocated compensation tool that is Coordinape. We hold multiple rounds every month for contributors, whether they’ve just joined or have been around since Day 1.

These rounds are  peer-based bonuses for their contributions over the course of the period. Season 3 will feature three rounds, one for each level of the DAO, each having its own 500,000 BANK pool each month. **
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Introducing Governance Solution Engineers (GSE)

We’re maturing at a rapid rate. But with maturity come growing pains. We’re working around the clock to fix these issues and establish best practices as we explore the DAO frontier.

This culminated in launching a working group, Governance Solution Engineers, who will be focused on solving issues ranging from optimizing compensation and contributor incentives to identifying better models for strategic prioritization.

This working group is incentivized to brainstorm, propose, and implement solutions surrounding BanklessDAO’s biggest problems–areas where no guilds or projects are incentivized to work on.

We’re hopeful that the Governance Solution Engineers will identify ways to scale social DAOs in a sustainable manner.

If you’re interested, you can read more about the GSE Program here.

Onwards to Season Three

BanklessDAO is exploring the frontier of social coordination.

We want to provide the platform for anyone, anywhere to contribute to the world of crypto–to do their part in helping the world go bankless.

Since the launch, we’ve seen new media outlets, DAO tooling, Web3-native services, educational resources, and more emerge from this avid community.

We’re excited to see what’s in store for the coming months.

Interested in getting involved?

Join the BanklessDAO Discord, complete the First Quest, and get onboarded to the frontier of Web3.

We’re on the frontier. It’s not for everyone, but it is for us.

If that’s you, come join us.

We’ll see you there :)