Crypto runs on DAOs. Underlying every major trend in the crypto ecosystem - from DeFi to NFTs - are DAOs and decentralized governance.

As crypto continues to bleed into mainstream consciousness and accumulates talent and resources to disrupt existing industries, it is now more important than ever to build with the tools needed for DAOs and decentralized governance to function more efficiently and effectively.

That's why we're excited to announce the Decentralized Governance Hackathon, co-sponsored by Boardroom, UMA Protocol, Gnosis, Snapshot, DAOhaus, Compound, and OpenLaw.

This hackathon will focus on building to scale decentralized governance, DAO treasury operations, and crypto-native organizations. Below are just a few themes that participants will have the opportunity to explore, equipped with resources and incentivized with prices from the above co-sponsors:

🗳️ Participation in DAO Governance

Over the past 12 months, the number of DAOs has increased dramatically. This growth has been powered by grassroots contributors, who have both the privilege and responsibility to participate in the governance and management of these open organizations.

How can we increase voter participation in DAOs? How do we make it easier for DAO members to delegate their votes if their organization allows it?

We're curious to explore how improvements in user experience and information transparency could improve engagement.

💰 DAO Treasury Management

The aggregate value of DAO treasuries reached a peak of $16.5 billion in May 2021, growing from just a few hundred million dollars at the beginning of 2020. As of August 5, 2021, there are $8.5 billion in DAO treasuries.

DAOs have become more active with their treasuries in recent months as well. Many DAOs - such as Compound, AAVE, and Uniswap - have spun up Grants programs to help fund developer activity in their respective ecosystems. Other DAOs have explored treasury diversification initiatives to ensure long-term sustainability or bring on value-add partners. Uniswap funded the DeFi Education Fund, a 501(c)4 dedicated to policy advocacy, with the largest ever non-liquidity mining expenditure by a DAO. The examples go on and on.

What can be done to help DAOs manage their treasuries? How can DAOs find the right balance between community oversight and operational efficiency when it comes to spending treasury funds?

⚙️ DAO Operations

DAOs have begun to develop and experiment with novel operational structures to pay contributors, align incentives of various stakeholders, and pioneer the future of work.

How should DAOs organize themselves? What kinds of workflows work best for certain activities while not for others? How can we make it easy for DAOs to find the right organizational design?

The processes will undoubtedly vary by use case, and we're excited to experiment with a myriad of structures to enhance the operations of open organizations.

📈 DAO-to-DAO Interactions

As DAOs proliferate, so do opportunities for DAO-to-DAO interaction. As exemplified by PleasrDAO's recent loan from Cream Finance's Iron Bank and Index Coop's partnership with Bankless DAO on the Bankless Index, D2D business is here to stay.

How can and should DAOs interact? What tools do they need to do so effectively?

We're curious to explore how we can map and encourage these interactions across governance frameworks and operational structures.

🚀 Expanding DAO Use Cases

Beyond the above examples of themes concerning existing DAOs, there is still much work to be done to bring DAOs to new use cases.

What types of existing "traditional" organizations and communities could be DAOs? How can we make it easy for them to transition to DAOs if they should at all?

Let's Build 🛠️

And that's just the beginning!

The Decentralized Governance Hackathon is all about experimentation in the domain of DAOs. Indeed, many of the above categories share a great deal of overlap. We find ourselves in the early days of DAOs, so it's time to take the lessons of composability and apply them to DAO governance, DAO treasuries, and DAO operations.

Join us from August 17th through September 7th!

Sign up here: https://gitcoin.co/hackathon/dgov/onboard
And join the Discord discussion here: https://discord.gg/BGnjk4r5tT