Spotlight on DAO1’s community-driven ecosystem: An interview with Leo Georgievic

While DeFi (Decentralized Finance) projects have seen a significant amount of growth in the past few years, a true community-led ecosystem is still rare. DAO1 aims to bridge this gap by bringing traditional platforms to everyday users in the crypto-space. Its mission is to be more than just a DeFi project. In fact, DAO1 is looking to blend financial inclusivity for all with state-of-the-art innovation.

In conversation with Leo Georgievic, the Chief Strategy Officer of DAO1, we discuss the DAO1 platform, its self-sustainable ecosystem, Incubator platform, future endeavors, and much more.

1. How is DAO1’s democratic governance style different from its peers? What measures are put in place to ensure its fully community-driven system works?

DAO1 is a truly decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) running on a decentralized protocol but has socio-economic characteristics. We are different in terms of our initial setup and governance as well as the unique range and assortment of features the community members can enjoy and vote on the features that they want to positively influence.

We have a very strict governance policy, that I hope can be the new benchmark for similar projects in the future.

2. Apart from the governance system, what else makes DAO1 stand out from the rest?

I do believe that the DAO1 is way more revolutionary than other DeFi and crypto projects due to the fact that it compiles an impressive number of features that are unique to be put forward in the decentralized space under one roof, and thus the way our platform is run by the community is a big difference today.

Not to mention our Hackathon initiative and Decentralized Fund with Hybrid Advisory. 

3. Could you tell us more about your Charity Collectable NFTs feature?

Our goal is here to enable the community to raise funds for charities by using NFTs instead of solely contributing to the ever-growing speculative nature of NFT trading. What we will do is a mix of inviting creators and then letting the community vet creators showcase their work (of NFTs).

There are many issues related to copywriting, storage, and value storing. Since DAO1 is a living ecosystem this means that the features and initiatives will evolve over time.

Through this feature, DAO1 is assisting artists to donate their works and creations to benefit needed causes with charity by facilitating this mechanism.

Artists can create their NFT and put it into action, and from the funds raised it can be donated wherever they wish to donate. Right at this moment we are in the process of creating these features and we want to direct this activity towards supporting the charities; meaning not necessarily as a revenue stream for the platform (As it will be available and created from within the DAO1 dashboard).

The platform will charge some fee for facilitating the entire process and the revenue generated from Charitable NFT sales within the platform will then be shared with the stakers/farmers and will contribute to the overall platform development and growth.

4. DAO1 has been described as a ‘self-sustainable ecosystem.’ What are the major factors that enable it to function as such?

There are a number of factors that enable DAO1 to function as a self-sustainable ecosystem right now but well into the future. This is our aim, to ensure and position DAO1 as a successful project that future-proofs itself. We are setting ourselves up as a sustainable ecosystem because we carry governance at the heart of our strategy. A fully proportionally-based voting system will be in place for the community to help them drive forward the platform. 

We enable this through community-led voting directly on the platform using $DAO1 native tokens. The voting will need to happen with a certain frequency (yet to be fully defined, but perhaps on a monthly basis), covering a wide range of proposals to the platform, for example changing reward rates, technical proposals, and direction regarding newly added functionality or features.

5. What is the Crypto Venture and Startup Fund and how will it bridge the gap between investors and startups?

The Crypto Venture & Startup Fund will be a fully licensed fund that will provide community access to a series of Funds to invest in certain investment vehicles (optimized to a user’s risk profile/tolerance), as well as the ability to select a number of funds that will be multi-token. A truly unique offering in this space. In terms of the Venture capital side of this feature, you will be able to preferentially select and vote using the DAO1 token to select, vet and approve investment in only the most promising and safe Startup projects that DAO1 will support.

The way things will work is that DAO1 token holders will receive ‘preferential voting rights in each of our features and depending on the feature itself, will be able to help drive forward that feature with select changes they propose, accept, deny or abandon. For example, the Crypto Venture & Startup Fund will grant DAO1 token holders the opportunity to select and access exclusive investment funds, something that will not be accessible by non-DAO1 token holders. 

DAO1 is bridging the gap between investors and startups because we lower the barrier to entry with the $100 minimum requirement. But more interestingly, DAO1 is the bridge between the investors and startup projects that we believe will really solve a real-life problem. We offer the infrastructure and technology to the community.

6. The DAO1 Incubator Platform seems promising as a base for projects that fail due to a lack of investments or vision. What is going to be the criteria for picking projects? Is there any specific industry or sector that would be preferred over others in the process of picking them?

We have conceptualized the incubation program to encourage innovation in the blockchain sector as a whole while giving special attention to the DAO1 ecosystem. As a part of the selection process, we invite applications from entrepreneurs, developers, and enthusiasts from all over the world. Anyone can apply, irrespective of whether they have technical/business skills or not. 

The applications will be shortlisted based on the innovativeness of the proposed solution, the real-world use case for such proposed solution, and of course the team behind it. The selection process will include an evaluation by experts, and discussions with the shortlisted teams to understand their idea and how they would like to make it a reality. 

The ones selected will be provided the necessary resources through training, mentorship, team building, and even access to necessary funding to make their dreams a reality. 

7. How is the International Hackathon going to be beneficial to the DAO1 platform? What are the perks for participants?

The hackathon programs are designed to attract and recognize talent in the crypto industry. It encourages the community members to come forward with their product ideas that could solve real-world problems. 

Right now because of Covid they will be online; However, in the future, we do plan a mix of online and physical, as in order not to exclude people from underprivileged territories facing financial limitations. An example in the post-covid world is that the first two rounds of the hackathon would be online, and the ones to proceed to the third would be fully sponsored to come physically… 

A lot of projects simply lack the needed coverage to prosper and often the scene is dominated by big players..so just as our unique features in relation to the VC fund, where we want to give all community member, regardless of their wallet size, the advantage of VC investment opportunities…we want to give the people who are not often heard, a voice.

Of course when things take their course and the community grows, and I can say for sure it will by the overwhelming interest we have received so far… the community will be there to vote for ideas and projects that they are in favor of and support…again the by the community and for the community are essential punchlines in our approach.

For both teams and individuals we are welcoming their engagement and we really do hope for this to create a positive wave of aspirations and innovative opportunities.

8. What are some of the real-world use cases of DAO1 that the team envisioned while conceptualizing the platform?

All of our features have a relevant real-world use case and they will solve some of the pain points we have observed as an experienced team. To select a few, we have the Crypto Venture & Startup Fund, which allows traditional people to invest in both key projects that are emerging, as well as into a licensed fund where they can create customized funds to invest into in accordance with a user’s risk tolerance.

Then we have the Incubator Platform, where we believe that empowering emerging projects to help them grow is something we can offer to the best projects in the space. Offering them exclusive mentorship, access to funding, and general support will help them thrive, as well as allowing DAO1 community members to engage with high-quality projects. This is not something that is easy to obtain in the cryptocurrency space when you first start out. These are just two in-depth examples of real-world challenges that DAO1 can help solve.

9. How do you see the crypto-space affecting the Forex market?

The total market cap of the cryptocurrency space is still only near the double size of Microsoft Corp. Meaning it’s still much lesser than that of the total stocks and forex market. It still has a lot of growth potential and some say it could have an impact like one of the mortgage-backed securities did in the earlier crisis if given, but I doubt it.

Of course, we see more and more Forex companies offering their clients BTC and ETH trading as well, and major financial institutions that used to bash cryptocurrencies investing and hedging them now. Guess it’s no surprise that they do their part to follow up and secure any potential revenue stream.

10. What can we expect from DAO1 in the coming days?

We have a lot of exciting stuff lined up, some of them getting final touches before announcement and others in different stages of development. For the immediate future, we have three exciting developments that I can share here. Earlier this month, DAO1 was selected by YFDAI Finance for their YFDAI Launchpad program. As a result, we are now planning to launch our DAO1 token on their platform through an Initial Launchpad Offering (ILO). The public sale will go live on May 24th, 2021 and we will be listing DAO1 token on SafeSwap, Uniswap, and Polygon’s DEX QuickSwap.

We are also in the process of finalizing few details regarding the planned hackathon contest. In the next few days, we will be announcing the dates and start accepting applications for the first of many DAO1 Hackathons.

Soon after, we will be listing DAO1 on few leading exchange platforms.

11. Lastly, how do you see the crypto-space evolving in the near future? What role does DAO1 play in this?

I definitely see DAO1 being a part of the future landscape. As food-, animal-themed and shittokens crypto projects have their seasons, I think its a phase but what I do think is here to stay in the future as well, are the solid projects that besides providing a real product are able to engage the community.

Crypto space would probably evolve to have a much bigger say globally (and especially in emerging markets such as Nigeria, Indonesia) and amidst all the theories about further regulations and compliance lacking in the space, I think we can all agree that cryptocurrencies are here to stay.

On the other hand, I think products will be trickier and more complex on some points just like we witnessed the many “possibilities” to structure financial products between 2006 and 2008.

I think generally end users will demand more from projects; more engagements, more democracy and voting power, and finally more opportunities to benefit from the engagement, something that I think we encompassed pretty well so far in the DAO1 concept.

Disclaimer: This is a paid post and should not be treated as news/advice