by Patrick Mayr and Brett Sun
DAOs are a new type of organisation uniquely enabled by blockchains. At Cherry, we’re incredibly excited by their potential to more efficiently coordinate all forms of capital than current organisations. However, the reality today is that DAOs suffer from a lack of structure and low member participation.
Otterspace is building tools to help DAO more effectively tackle these issues. Their first product is a badging mechanism that can be used by DAOs to clarify and demarcate their internal membership structures. Badges take the form of non-transferrable (or soulbound) tokens that, as the name implies, cannot be transferred. The intention is that these badges form the foundation of a DAO member’s identity that is crafted through contribution rather than purchased on the market. Non-transferrable badges that are earned can serve a multitude of use cases within a DAO such as creating structure through meritocracy rather than wealth, gate-keeping access to certain content, or even informing the weighting of voting.
Built over the past few months in close collaboration with numerous DAOs and the wider Ethereum standards communities, the team launched the badging product to a closed group of high-profile users at the beginning of September.
Today we’re excited to announce that we are co-leading Otterspace’s pre-seed round. We believe that Ben, Emily and Rahul are the ideal team to navigate the often chaotic and highly unstructured DAO space. From our first meetings to now, they have consistently demonstrated their commitment to learning from first-hand participation in DAOs. Now that the core badging protocol has been launched, the team will focus on creating additional products that can help DAOs reach their potential.