ADAO Summon: DAO Incubator

ADAO has assembled a growing team of experts within the Cardano community to incubate, advise, and build tools for decentralized governance.

"SUMMON" is a specialized team from within ADAO consisting of:

• Legal engineers
• Plutus pioneers
• DAO contributors
• Open source software developers
• Sociotechnical Information Systems experts
• PhD researchers studying decentralized governance and systems

[IMPACT]

To make DAO collaboration possible on Cardano we will need project mentors, institutional support, and out-of-the-box governance tooling. Our goal is to make Summoning a DAO on Cardano as easy as filling out a web form for templated applications or highly customizable if the organization should be more nuanced.

ADAO has put together a specialized working group made up of experts in various related fields from within the organization that will lead and further develop Project SUMMON. These experts will offer development support, knowledge experience, access to ADAO resources, and guidance to ensure community and project needs are met as tools and regulations progress.

V1 functionality for SUMMON on-boarded projects will be:

• On-Chain Functionality for blockchain organizations via Native and or Plutus scripts.
• Decentralized Treasury management and Governance Frameworks.
• Security, through open source code, internal and external independent audits.
• Development and organizational support.
• Educational community support, to promote best practices within new formed organizations.

In addition to the on-chain tooling ADAO will create a Stiftung non-profit foundation in the legal jurisdiction of Liechtenstein. This jurisdiction has been chosen because of its progressive recognition of digital assets, favorable regulation of non-profit activities, and high commitment to the rule of law.

By having an organization dedicated to mentoring new groups and developing tools for them to use the Cardano Ecosystem will be greatly benefited. In the past few months since it was formed, ADAO has already become a major contributor to the Cardano DAO community.

ADAO has developed partnerships with Liqwid Labs and Cardano Sounds to co-create open-source code repositories together. ADAO has also partnered with Rats DAO and the Smart Contract Audit Token to build customized governance systems.

All repositories developed by ADAO are open source and available for use and modification by other developers.

Main challenges for success are Cardanos lack of open source DAO tooling. Although there are many projects proposing "DAO tooling" nothing user friendly has yet to be delivered or open sourced, because of this many decentralized projects ignore Cardano and choose to build on other blockchains. Thanks to the open source work of groups like ADAO, Liqwid Labs, and Mlabs we are starting to see open source tools, libraries, and applications come online that can help us overcome these challenges and make Cardano the go to blockchain for DAOs and Decentralized community projects.

[FEASIBILITY]

ADAO has put together an ever growing team of experts from within the Cardano community, with proven expertise in areas not limited to:

• Education with specialty and focus in decentralized governance,
• Research with focus on empirical studies decentralized governance and systems,
• Software engineering Full stack software development,
• Distributed data engineering,
• Sociotechnical Information Systems
• A couple bad ass Plutus pioneers.

ADAO will support this specialized team to work and collaborate closely with ADAO partners and new promising projects whos visions and missions align with ADAO and the Cardano community. ADAO will provide support and resources in order to advise new projects and help to guide development and implementation.

V1 functionality for SUMMON will be:

• Standard Functionality for blockchain organizations via Native and or Plutus scripts.
• Decentralized Treasury management and Governance Options.
• Security, through open source code internal and external independent audits and peer review.
• Development and organizational support for new projects and communities.
• Educational community support.

$20,000 - New Project on-boarding. These funds will be used to develop the on-boarded projects and provide expert level resources internally.

$30,000 - ADAO Foundation Escrow. To be established in Liechtenstein a Stiftung must hold at least $30,000 in accounts in the country. More funds will be added as projects are up and running

$10,000 - ADAO Foundation Legal Setup. The legal engineers of ADAO will hire local counsel in Liechtenstein to properly register the organization and keep it compliant with local rules.

$9,420 - Public Relations and Marketing. The ADAO Summon project with need a website and online presence to connect with other Cardano projects.

The specific team leading the development of "Summon" is made up of Core ADAO Contributors with accommodations in Education with a specialty and focus in decentralized governance, Research, with a focus on empirical studies in decentralized and community governance systems, Software engineering Full stack software development, Distributed data engineering, Sociotechnical Information Systems expert, and Plutus Pioneers.

AdaMinnow (aka TCT) is an entrepreneur and business founder owner/operator. He is a member of multiple DAOs on other blockchains including Ethereum and Harmony and has been one of the foremost community organizers bringing people together to form ₳DAO.

Adam Rusch holds a PhD from the University of Illinois in Education Policy where he works as a Lecturer in Information Sciences and eLearning Specialist. He is a founder of the Immutable Research Institute, organizer of the Champaign Blockchain meetup group, and author of the ADAO Constitution.

dzCodes is a professional problem solver who started as a potential web designer/frontend developer around seven years ago but quickly moved through the frontend to the backend. He recently left his corporate jobs to work full-time on open-source and blockchain projects including ADAO and Cardano Sounds.

Nicolas Cerny (Lovecoach) is currently working as Business Analyst focused on requirements engineering and project management. His aim is to establish proper workflows and organizational structure for ADAO. He is passionate about decentralized governance and all things crypto.

Riley attended the University of Washington for Computer Science and Mathematics with a strong interest in applied mathematics, blockchains, and AI. He left his job writing software used by over 75% of Fortune 500 companies and is now working as a Plutus and Plutarch developer for ADAO, Liqwid Labs, and other Cardano projects.

Sims has over 10 years in entrepreneurship running multiple businesses along with seats on various governance boards. He followed a natural path to DAOs and is passionate about developing the best open-source tools for the Cardano community and beyond. Let's Build!

The DogeFather is a licensed attorney with extensive experience in banking institutions, business applications, technology startups, and blockchain. He is founder of the Black Doge DAO and joined ADAO as a core contributor to share his legal expertise.

[AUDITABILITY]

Quantitative Indicators of success include:

Number of projects from within Cardano on-boarded to Summon

Number of projects from outside Cardano (cross chain) on-boarded to Summon

Number of projects successfully launched using open source tools and software after on-boarding to Summon

Success can be measured by the number of decentralized projects successfully building on Cardano, using open source tools and libraries and furthering documentation and use case.

Many new projects both from within Cardano as well as from other blockchains have already reached out to ADAO with inquires about this very topic. Community and Start up organizations have been in constant contact with ADAO members and are looking for structured, detailed, and user friendly tools, advisement, learning and development resources.

• increase the number and the quality of Cardano Open Source projects
• increase the number of contributors
• increase of open source tools and frameworks from the community for the community (dog-fooding)

With the establishment of the ADAO Foundation, DAOs on Cardano will also gain a legal representative to assist with matters in the physical world. If a DAO is completely on chain it has no standing in traditional jurisdictions to conduct legal business. This foundation will be able to represent ADAO and affiliated DAOs to protect their legal rights.

This is a new proposal but can be considered a continuation of our F7 proposal "Creating Cardano DAO Infrastructure." https://cardano.ideascale.com/c/idea/384513

While we did not receive funding for our F7 proposal it helped us make many valuable connections and focus the organization of our DAO startup.

SDG Rating

We believe that Cardano is inherently aligned with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because it empowers every individual to make a difference in their community and the world. In particular, this project helps encourage Decent Work and Economic Growth by opening up new ways for individuals to collaborate together.