Social Mining, which was DAO Maker’s first software product, has been a key part of the community creation of some of the most successful token launches in the space. The software was conceptualized in 2018, and has gone through a series of upgrades since then, and many more advancements are to come.
To date, Social Mining has been a part of early stage tokenized startups. We intend to deploy a more scalable version of it, accessible permissionlessly for tokenized startups, alongside a permissioned version for equity-funded startups.
Before diving into the details of the upcoming phases, it’s worthwhile to look into the progress of Social Mining to date.
The First Deployment
Social Mining premiered with LTO Network, in late 2018. It played a key role in the community creation of the project, which later went on to receive a free listing to Binance.
LTO Network’s community strength carried it to a 10x return during the depths of the bear market late 2018 — early 2019 bear market. The project continues to have an enviable community of supporters. The software’s purpose and goals were clear: energize the community to participate in the growth and development of the project.
It did so with great success by aligning incentives with performance. As a consequence of this, the community built supplementary technology for the project and even advanced LTO’s business development.
As great as the premier of the software was, it was incomplete. At this stage, it required a heavy degree of centralized involvement, which was not the key intent with its launch. Social Mining was designed to create communities that eventually self-organize and expand project advancements.
A Year of Advancements
In 2019, Social Mining became an integral part of the community creation process of several projects. A notable one was Elrond Network, which went on to have one of the most successful IEOs on Binance, and an absolute powerhouse community.
2019 saw several technological advancements that pulled Social Mining closer to its end purpose of creating organized yet decentralized labor markets for projects.
One of the most important upgrades was the addition of stake-based voting. This essentially made the community the key decider of the value each token holder contributed to the project. The community’s voting became an effective resource distribution network that was decentralized yet robust, as token holders were the ones in charge.
At this point, the software was able to successfully create pluggable DAOs.
The operation of these DAOs was improved with a series of additional upgrades, which involved greater automation of user efforts. A vast degree of APIs detected and collected user efforts ranging from technical development to something as simple as retweets.
Each token holder’s effort was then used to generate a news feed-like UI for other token holders. This improved the ease with which the community could regulate itself.
While the software was becoming better and better at creating powerful, pluggable DAOs, it also great demand in creating community Hubs. These were not user-operated but provide a trustless staking mechanism and a means to streamline community efforts towards a project-led direction.
The trustless staking mechanism was executed by the creation of inhouse chain analysis tools that synchronized with Social Mining. Rather than forcing smart contract risk on user deposits, chain analysis randomly assessed whether tokens were held in wallets that users had to prove access to.
Permissioned Access & High Demand
Due to the effectiveness of Social Mining, the software witnessed a demand surge. However, it was resource-intensive in terms of both development support and operational support. This forced a limitation on the number of projects that could be integrated.
DAO Maker made the decision on which projects could have it, and many notable projects became subscribers of the software license and users of the support services associated with Social Mining. Some notable implementations of the software include NEM and Avalanche.
While the demand was large, limited resources to scale it led the team to limit the projects that could access it. Still, we explored possible expansions to the early-stage equity market due to the high demand for community advancing SaaS in that market. Per a clause in the regulation that allows retail to participate in equity crowd offerings, we learned from our legal aides that it was viable to implement Social Mining into equity crowd offerings.
The Future of Social Mining
Social Mining is expanding upon two key pathways. One focuses on permissionless support for tokenized startups and the other on permissioned access for equity startups.
Permissionless Limited Version for Small Cap Tokens
At present, Social Mining operates as a white label software, and projects pay a manager’s fee, license subscription fee, and server costs. In its permissionless form, any startup would be able to launch a Social Mining Express Hub or DAO.
The limited version will not be white label and would instead be under a DAO Maker domain. This pathway offers a key value trade for young token launches: free access to a limited version of a software that plays a key role in the communities of some of the biggest projects in the space, in trade for growing the DAO Maker platform among cryptocurrency holders and investors.
Small caps get user retention; DAO Maker gets user acquisition.
Further, for tokenized startups that begin to grow into later stages, it will become viable to upgrade to a white label and full-feature version of the software. This way the express format becomes the gateway to new tokenized startups, but with product tiers that expand with the individualized growth of projects.
Permissioned Full-Feature Access for Equity Ventures
The Social Mining version exposed to equity ventures will be called dTeams. It includes many existing features of Social Mining, but optimizes for the difference in crypto and equity venture communities. Crypto communities are the investors of the project; meanwhile, equity venture communities are the customer bases of the project.
While communities are the epicenter of tokens, they also play an ever-growing importance in the success of early stage ventures. Expansion to equity ventures has been on our roadmap since late 2019. In the second quarter of 2020, we explored means of effectively creating community Hubs for equities, and received approval from our legal aides that equity rewards are possible, within a certain framework.
For tokens, our approach towards the growth of permissioned access has been expansion through word of mouth, as the technology’s demand has far exceeded our handling capacity. We have recently begun scaling up our roster of project managers that oversee Social Mining launches. This is in line with our goal of supporting more tokenized ventures but it is especially tuned for our entry to equity-funded startups.
Our approach to the equity startup marketing is going to take the form of a traditional SaaS expansion, utilizing sales leaders that have a track record of SaaS sales to equity ventures in startup-dense cities. For this market segment, we’ll offer only permissioned, subscription-based Hubs. This is because small cap tokens can offer a value trade: user acquisition for the wider DAO Maker ecosystem, as their investor base will become a part of DAO Maker’s product suite.
Equity-funded startups are primarily going to be onboarding their consumer base, which is likely going to have a low product fit with our offerings, and hence these ventures won’t be able to offer a value trade in the form of user acquisition for us.
That’s why they will be limited to subscription-based premium offerings.
Learn how Social Mining and dTeams play a role in the DAO Token Economy
Important Links
- Whitepaper
- Telegram: https://t.me/daomaker
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/thedaomaker
