EU-Compliant DAO Blueprint

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Summary for Community Advisors:

1)   Our Proposal in a Nutshell: As a natural consequence of establishing Smart Contracts and decentralized applications, we will see many decentralized autonomous organisations (DAO) arising. On the one hand this is required for qualifying as overall decentralized solution, on the other hand this is entering into very new regulatory terrain. Based on our DLT360 accessible knowledge, we want to develop a EU-regulation-compliant and inter-disciplinary DAO-Blueprint for doing things right from the very beginning.

2)    Impact: This proposal combines the findings of a number of initiatives from inside and outside the Cardano ecosystem. This makes one of our DLT360 paradigms quite visible: Analyzing and influencing legal regulations is most beneficial when performed in a practical, result-oriented context. This means in our case here: Using multiple findings as input to creating a practical, inter-discipl,inary Implementation BLUEPRINT for DAOs. This BLUEPRINT is then the basis for successful startup oif DAOs and for establishing partnerships with professional consulting companies. For more details please refer to our WEB-Site and/or to our Business Model Canvas section below.

3)    Feasibility: This proposal is part of a bigger picture. Our DLT360 team has started its journey after being funded in fund 6 with one of our major services: The DLT360 Risk and Opportunity Radar. Based on this funding, we have implemented a small operational core-team. We are furthermore growing an extended team of inter-disciplinary domain-experts from the Catalyst community, industry and academia for adding their knowledge on demand. This team is now also utilizing the acquired knowledge for creating practical Implementation Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts (For more details please refer to our WEB-Site and/or to our Business Model Canvas section below).

1. Audibility: Our Business Model Canvas section outlined below contains major activities, milestones, deliverables, roadmap and costs. Due to various projects being interlinked and due to the overall complexity of proper planning and tracking, we do this in our DLT360 - MIRO environment. We offer on-demand visits to these MIRO boards for deeper-going discussions during the assessment phase. Due to already running a fund 6-funded project, we are part of the Catalyst Coordinator Process and acquainted with the relevant reporting processes.

Please note: We are applying a best-practice Business Model Canvas approach. We have added tags to our details below, hoping that the Catalyst-funded 'The Great Filter' application will be able to identifying the required sections in our text.

Business Model Canvas - Section containing further details(Our Canvas is maintained in DLT360 MIRO environment, access upon request)

This proposal is part of a bigger picture. Our DLT360 team has started its journey after being funded in fund 6 for one of our major services: The DLT360 Risk and Opportunity Radar. Fund 6 is about establishing this foundational framework for professional risk (and opportunity) management. With this new fund 7 proposal, we are utilizing the acquired knowledge for creating practical Implementation Blueprints and Consulting Artifacts. Points 1 to 5 of our Business Model Canvas are therefore explaining the bigger picture, while points 6 to 9 and the listed activities, milestones, deliverables, roadmap and costs are kept very specific to this project.

1. Customer Segments / Target Groups

• Primary Clients: CARDANO Community (including Catalyst, Foundation, IOG and others) and existing and newly arising SPO
• Secondary Clients: DLT-relevant public, selected high-quality YouTube channels, universities, regulatory bodies, industry clients

1. Value Proposition

Dependent of the above listed customer-segments, we see our value proposition as following (more details in MIRO):

• Providing very practical and hands-on inputs to creating an inter-disciplinary DAO BLUEPRINT
• Feeding back additionally gained knowledge to our DLT360 Risk and Opportunity Radar

1. Distribution Channels

Depending on customer-segment and corresponding value-proposition, the following delivery channels will be used:

• Becoming part of our DAO Implementation Package and of related hands-on Consulting Artifacts
• Integrated into quarterly reporting based on the DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar

1. Customer Relationship

This project requires a one-time-effort. After this initial effort and the related initial funding, this will become part of our overall DLT360 activities. For these overall activities we are lobbying for stable service and consulting agreements with the Cardano community (see also our related Fund 8 Challenge Setting proposal).

1. Revenue Structure

This project must be seen in the context of our overall DLT360 revenue stream planning. During this early stage of our DLT360 startup, we are fully focusing on servicing the Cardano Community. The fund 6 funding of our basic DLT360 Risk & Opportunity Radar will lead to delivering 2 quarterly reporting events (one planned for March and one for June 2022). This project will provide additional business opportunities in many application areas of DAOs. For the overall startup of DLT360, we are applying a careful 'Lean Startup' approach. This means that we will plan, check and iteratively adjust our Business Model according to our learnings, documented in our MIRO environment. This project will potentially bring us substantial revenue streams also from cooperating with consulting firms, who can apply our BLUEPRINTS in their e.g. industry-oriented customer projects. 

1. Key Activities (now specific to this project)

This project requires the following specific key-activities

• Designing the research and interaction with other Catalyst projects for avoiding redundancies
• Domain-expert validation of the research-design
• Performing the legal and interdisciplinary research
• Analyzing and bringing the findings into an inter-disciplinary blueprint frame
• Quality checking & releasing of results, documents and reporting by senior domain experts
• Targeting for applying the Blueprint in a practical implementation project, e.g. for a SPO of the future setup (not part of this proposal)

1. Key Resources

DLT360 is built by a small core-team and a flexible team of highly renowned domain experts as well as a scalable network of contributors from the Cardano community, from academia and from industry. For this specific project we will need the following key resources

• Overall lead and representation (handled by Heinz Gassner)
• Project Management: Coordination of execution, collaborating within our team and with external teams & network members (covered by Jonas Weinberger and Guilherme Peirera)
• Back-office work, editing of Risk & Opportunity Radar information objects (assistant job, located in Sao Paulo, Brussels or Malta)
• Inter-disciplinary researchers and application team: (Jonas Weinberger, Etienne Marais, alumni and active students)
• Domain Experts: Various, inter-disciplinary renowned domain experts, please see the current status on our website

For an always up-to-date-info about our team, please consult our WEB-Site:

• Heinz Gassner, Malta, with more than 30 years of industry-leadership experience http://linkedin.com/in/heinz-gassner-9540a241
• Jonas Weinberger, Brussels, Student and assistant at the Brussels School of Governance:
• http://linkedin.com/in/jonas-weinberger-0b14801ba
• Guilherme Peirera, Sao Paulo, Student and assistant at SENAI Institute: http://linkedin.com/in/guilherme-pereira-da-silva-977a361a3
• Etienne Marais, student at Versalius College, Brussels: http://linkedin.com/in/etienne-marais-0845a3224
• Backoffice resource to be defined
• Michiel Van Roey, DLT Regulation expert, co-founder of PROFILA: http://linkedin.com/in/michielvanroey
• Dr. Joshua Ellul acting as Senior Academic Advisor, Director of DLT Center at University of Malta: http://linkedin.com/in/joshuaellul
• Additional domain experts (for always latest updates see our WEB-Site)

1. Key Partners

We are partnering with other Catalyst projects and proposers in the related field. Please find them always up-to-date on our WEB-Site.

1. Cost Structure

We make sure to void redundancies by partnering and integrating as many elements form other initiatives as possible. By networking with universities, active students and alumni, we are approaching our projects in a very cost-conscious way. Based on our listed key-activities and key-resources, we plan with the following costs (please note that we are in progress of setting up a formal company body and need to follow the strict European tax regulations):

• Project Management (50 hours for USD 50/h = USD 2.500)
• Backoffice work (125 hours for USD 20/h = USD 2.500)
• Legal research: Major parts handled in form of student-internship arrangement (USD 5.000)
• Analysis and establishing the BLUEPRINT document (200 hours for USD 50/h = USD 10.000)
• Quality checking by domain experts (40 hours for USD 100/h = USD 4.000)
• Final reporting support by senior domain experts, including pre and after-work (5 hours for USD 200/h = USD 1.000)

Roadmap, Milestones and Deliverables

Due to the strong linkage with other activities of the DLT360 and the lacking graphics-integration in IDEAscale, all details are maintained in our MIRO environment. The plan below is just an orientational overview-listing:

• FEB 2022 Getting started, project formation
• FEB -MAR 2022 Design of research, scouting for synergies with other projects, quality check of research design
• 3-Months MILESTONE: Ready for starting with legal research
• MAR - JUN 2022 Basic research
• JUN - AUG 2022. Analysis, establishing blueprint and also integration into Risk & Opportunity Radar, quality check
• 6-Months MILESTONE: First complete (draft) version of Blueprint available, one pilot DAO ready to test
• 12-Months Success: > 25 DAOs having used / planning to use the Blueprint (pipeline status)

KPI Progress and Success Measurement

• KPI 1: Progress of required inter-disciplinary research (0-100 %)
• KPI 2: Progress of establishing the DAO BLUEPRINT (0-100%)
• KPI 3: Quality-check and community-feedback score (0-100%)
• KP! 4: Timely identification of pilot DAO (yes/no)
• KPI 5: Number of candidate-DAOs for applying the BLUEPRINT (number)
• KPI 6: Number of consulting entities planning to apply the BLUEPRINT