Summary

The DAOVOZ Collective aims to build a DAO of DAOs. Our mission is to increase public awareness of DAOs, and the potential impact of decentralised communities globally, while increasing the diversity of the voices present in the ecosystem, and holding space for new voices to lead in the conversations held.

We are seeking Gitcoin grants funding to provide scholarships to individuals to participate in DAOVOZ: The Web3 Forum 2024, in person, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland. Moreover we wish to grow the DAOVOZ collective, and start operating as a formal DAO, opening membership, and selecting speakers and scholars for the forum democratically.

Background

Current globally recognised events heavily prioritise corporate sponsors as ​speakers, leading to a bias towards speakers and thinkers ​who are financially more advantaged, and perpetuating ​biases and opaque ‘in-group’ networks that optimise not for ​merit but for privilege. DAOVOZ proposes to form a ​collective of mission-aligned DAOs to transparently, ​inclusively and democratically curate events and speakers, and advocate for DAOs on the global political stage.

To advocate for and advance this mission, DAOVOZ aims to form a continuous presence of DAO leaders and curate thought-provoking discussion during one of the most important gatherings of political actors, activists and capital allocators: the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland for its annual summit.

In 2023, we hosted the first edition of DAOVOZ, together with FTW DAO, CV Labs, Tokentus Investment, Hyphen Global, Foresight Institute, Greenmining DAO, Bankless DAO, Redhill Media, DAO Suisse, and others. Following this successful launch, the community hosted additional side events, in TelAviv and at ETH Denver, to promote its mission in partnership with Collider VC, Safe, BitDAO, DeepDAO, DoinGud, MarketAcross, PizzaDAO, etc.

About DAOVOZ

The DAOVOZ Collective aims to build a DAO of DAOs. Our mission is to increase public awareness of DAOs, and the potential impact of decentralised communities globally, while increasing the diversity of the voices present in the ecosystem, and holding space for new voices to lead in the conversations held. We are seeking Gitcoin grants funding to provide scholarships to individuals to participate in DAOVOZ: The Web3 Forum 2024, in person, during the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland. Moreover we wish to grow the DAOVOZ collective, and start operating as a formal DAO, opening membership, and selecting speakers and scholars for the forum democratically.

DAOVOZ: The Web3 Forum

DAOVOZ is a series of events, curated by the DAOVOZ community. The DAOVOZ collective is a DAO of DAOs and individuals, whose mission it is to surface DAO voices and to create a new and equitable culture of events and speaker curation, while advocating for web3 and DAOs.

DAOVOZ instigates debates on the present and future of DAOs, looking into aspects related to:

• Work & Education
• Finance & financial systems
• Health, wellness & longevity
• Media, creators, and communities
• Sustainable living & ecosystems

All the agenda, conversations held, activities performed, decisions taken, and supporting documentation will be shared publicly as per the community's ethos. The related action plans and resource allocations will be also tracked openly ensuring accountability and progress are made towards the organisation’s goals and future gatherings.

Milestones completed:

• Build community of 300+ DAO contributors
• Launch event: DAOVOZ 2023
• First side events run by community members (Tel Aviv, Denver)

Next Milestones:

• Establish DAOVOZ Governance v1 as a steward of the -collective
• DAOVOZ 2024 edition (January 2024 during the WEF)
• Offer scholarships to attend and speak at the DAOVOZ 2024 edition
• Select scholars with our 2024 membership community
• Establish and deepen relations with think tanks, policy and industry leaders attending WEF to advocate for DAOs and Web3

About Us

The collective behind DAOVOZ seeks to represent leading DAOs and individuals, each on a mission to bring positive change to society and our environment by surfacing and amplifying the most suitable and impactful voices and ideas in the web3 space, in an effort to actively shape society and world we envision living in. DAOs and our collective minds offer the potential to unlock a multiverse of endeavours that create a dramatic change in the current mise-en-scène.

As of today, DAOVOZ is operating under the legal umbrella of FTW DAO and the FTW Association. On the run up to DAOVOZ 2024 and the World Economic Forum, one of our milestones is to register DAOVOZ as its own legal entity, and give the community full independence.

Track Record

Events:

• Half/day event held in Davos during World Economic Forum 2023 for 100+ attendees that were attending the Forum
• Half/day builder focused event in Tel Aviv during Ethereum Tel Aviv with 70+ attendees
• Sponsored an event in Denver for DAO builders alongside Pizza DAO, Safe and others

Media:

1. https://thedefiant.io/the-future-of-daos-takes-center-stage-in-tel-aviv
2. https://de.beincrypto.com/daovoz-veranstaltung-bringt-die-stimmen-von-web3-und-daos-zum-wef-zusammen/ (in German)
3. Community: telegram group 305 DAO leaders and contributors as members
4. https://www.daovoz.org

Rationale

Benefits supporting DAOVOZ:

• Drive the positive narrative and expose the potential of DAOs and Web3 to a wider audience of change-makers, advocating for DAO-friendly policy and shaping mainstream media, business and public opinions
• Help public-policy makers understand the potential of DAOS and web3
• Drive progress towards web3-based solutions to critical problems like climate change, and onboard additional people who have the ideas, position or capital to support the web3 ecosystem in gaining traction at greater scale
• Identify, surface and support the most important leaders, thinkers and solution-builders in the web3 space in getting seen and heard on a global stage

Concrete OKRs could be formed around such things as:

• the number of projects that we can bring in front of world leaders, policy-makers, philanthropists and investors.
• The number of senior policy-makers present and participating in our sessions alongside DAO leaders
• The diversity of the voices in DAOs that we represent
• The quality and quantity of follow-on conversations and action plans generated with governments, policy-leaders and NGOs
• The quality and reach of positive and thoughtful media and conversations we can generate around web3 and DAOs

Use of Funds

We intend to use the funds of this grant for three things

1. Provide 5 scholarships to DAO contributors to travel to Davos in January: (Cost Estimate 12k)

• Setup of scholarship applications and voting mechanism
• Travel stay and shuttle for scholarship recipients
• PR support and media for the speakers at DAOVOZ

2. Event Location and Operational Expenses: (ca. 50-100k)

• Davos is a small town and event locations are limited and in extremely high demand.
• Securing a location and speaker accommodation is the thing we have struggled the most with in 2023 given the high costs.
• We are in talks with a number of events spaces and have the contacts in place to make an event happen in Switzerland as well as a number of our team based in the area who can coordinate
• We intend to allocate some of the grants fund towards the location rent for the event.
• Quotes for a location per day in Davos range from 50 -100k depending on size, catering and additional AV support

3. Compensation of organising team (optional) (Cost Estimate 8k)

• We intend to discuss with the collective and vote on a financial compensation of the organising team.
• At a bare minimum we intend to cover the travel expenses and cover their stay. Organising team consists of 6-7 people