A conversation with @AlphaHouse158 and @fai_ne from MetaGammaDelta DAO.
We're always trying to learn about all the interesting things happening in web3. To satiate our curiosity, we host a weekly-ish Twitter Spaces series called Coffee Conversations. What follows is a summary of the fifteenth episode.
For the fifteenth episode of Coffee Conversations, we hosted QuantumAlpha and Fai from MetaGammaDelta DAO to talk about the challenges faced by the DAO and their approach to problem-solving (tl;dr it involves a lot of patience).
Highlights and Summary
MetaGammaDelta DAO was summoned on Valentine's Day during ETH Denver 2020. Spawned by members of the MetaCartel ecosystem, the DAO was started to onboard women and non-binary folks into web3. Conceptualized as a sorority, the community today consists of 100 pledgees and a bunch of other contributors in the Discord server.
To become a pledgee, a member must put forth 10 $DAI (a membership fee of sorts) and clear interviews with community leads or prominent community members.
What's interesting about MetaGammaDelta is its approach to inclusivity. While the DAO was originally summoned to amplifying women and non-binary voices, the DAO isn't exclusionary at all. For example, several men are a part of the DAO, and anybody who is interested in contributing to it is more than welcome to join. A usual tour of the DAO is supposed to last for three months, but those that join usually end up staying way longer.
In the initial days, the DAO was all about giving grants and encouraging projects led by women and non-binary folks, which they successfully did. But over time as popular interest in web3 waned and market conditions changed, the DAO found itself grappling with fundraising and keeping contributors engaged.
Fundraising is especially tough in today's atmosphere; however, keeping contributors engaged is one of the oldest challenges of running any kind of community. One interesting practice in MetaGammaDelta is to maintain a member directory which is great not only for exposing people to each other but also for understanding everyone's individual strengths.
The member directory has really enabled this discovery and empowered community admins to engage members with the tasks they are skilled at. The DAO also has its own twist on the regular community call, which is best described as a brunch with your closest friends (this is factually true).
Our guests for the conversation, Fai and QuantumAlpha, both come from traditional finance domains, so the sudden structurelessness was what took them aback in the initial days. Such a system always ends up with people working on what they like, leading to an uneven emphasis on the different functions.
However, despite these challenges and a major pivot in direction, active members are really enthusiastic about the DAO's future, and give us all renewed hope in the very idea of DAOs.
If you identify as a woman, a non-binary person, or an ally and are interested in joining a friendly community of crypto enthusiasts, I strongly urge you to drop by the MetaGammaDelta DAO's Discord server. You won't regret it.