Pattern Flow

I still remember my first day joining a DAO. I was bubbling with excitement. The idea seemed groundbreaking: an organization born in the digital world, where every step, from making decisions to getting things done, would be smooth, automatic, and transparent. Instead of a regular bank account, everything was in a smart contract. A Discord server took the place of traditional offices. All the processes were digital and secured by the power of blockchain. These new digital groups promised to be places where people could unleash their creativity, free from the usual limits of traditional organizations.

Problem

Well, I thought I was joining something really cool and new, but man, was I wrong. Shortly after I started, I realized these new organizations had way more problems than I anticipated. Here's what I ran into: Super Slow: Instead of a fast, smooth online system, everything moved like molasses. Too much communication back and forth and simple choices that should have taken minutes dragged on for days or even weeks. It was like being stuck in the world's slowest drive-thru. No Real Rules: Trying to set up and stick to standard ways of doing things was nearly impossible. Without clear guidelines, it was chaos - like trying to organize a kid's birthday party with no plan. Doing Everything the Hard Way: I thought bots would handle the boring stuff. Nope! Some contributors should spend hours doing repetitive tasks manually. Jumping from one tool to another which could be easy to mess up - exactly what I thought these new orgs would avoid. Not Better, Often Worse: The biggest letdown to me was the fact that our fancy new org wasn't just failing to defeat regular companies - it was often less effective. It's like we tried to build a better mousetrap and ended up with a cheese dispenser. If digital orgs are not helping us to do things better, what’s the point then? Why are they buried under a ton of challenges despite their revolutionary potential? I felt like I'd bought a ticket to the future but ended up in a time machine stuck in reverse. This experience has led us to believe that we need a radical rethinking of how DAOs operate, which is the origin of this proposal.

Solution

To address these inefficiencies, we designed a new process automation management system. Our Pattern Flow platform allows DAOs to define a journey and create a procedure using both manual and automated steps. This ensures that every business item follows the same steps without forcing the admin into full automation. The semi-automated process enriches the workflow by removing tedious tasks while giving the admin the flexibility to include necessary manual tasks or skip steps as needed.

Transparency is another key component of our dashboard. With Pattern Flow, both users and admins have full visibility. Users can see their current position in the process and the actions required to reach their final destination. Additionally, the DAO can monitor everything happening within the organization and delegate the management of different business items to specific individuals. By unifying these processes, we not only create a transparent and immutable track record of events but also lay the foundation for a reputation mechanism. This mechanism allows individuals to prove their track record and gain more privileges based on their reputation.

Current traditional organizations heavily utilize ERPs and CRMs, creating a unified one-stop shop to streamline their day-to-day interactions and activities. In contrast, DAOs are scattered across Notion, Discord, and various Web3 tools, and numerous contributors manually manage everything. While the idea of Web3-friendly enterprise software might seem futuristic but it is the ultimate CollabTech tool that can unleash the full potential of internet native organizations, Pattern Flow aims to bridge this gap with its semi-automated process builder. This reduces manual work and accelerates processes within DAOs.

Case Studies

Here are some case studies to better outline the idea:

Nonce DAO Post Voting Flow

Currently, after the voting, an admin is required to manually add the winners to a spreadsheet, create an attestation for proof of participation, use Safe to create a transaction and chase down signers to finalize the transaction. This process suffers from a low compilation rate and lack of transparency, and it heavily relies on the admin’s tedious work. With Pattern Flow, we can automatically index the winners from Prop House, create their on-chain reputation using EAS and off-chain records in Google Sheets, and finally fire an optimistic transaction on Safe. This will create the utmost transparency for DAO. The admin can interfere as needed, and winners can track their own profiles through each step of the process.

EthSafari Sponsors Agreement Flow

It starts with potential sponsors submitting a form on the website, which feeds into Notion for tracking. The team then negotiates packages, updates the sponsor’s status in Notion, and creates a tailored contract sent via DocuSign for signatures. Post-signature, an invoice is manually generated from Google Sheets, with payment options in cryptocurrency or fiat, followed by KYC verification using Fractal-ID. Once payment is confirmed, the EthSafari team ensures sponsors receive all benefits, including website logo updates, social media posts, and newsletter features. This process requires extensive manual back-and-forth, in addition to all the pain points mentioned in the previous flow. Although it is obvious that not every step of the process can be automated (e.g., negotiation), it can benefit from automation and transparency. With Pattern Flow, we can automatically index the sponsors. Let the admin add the key details in the manual step defined for negotiation and then automate the rest using attestations, automated invoices, and contract generation while keeping all off-chain records, such as Google sheet and Notion, up to date at all times.

Commercial Viability

Our goal is to cover as much ground with as little components possible, doing so helps us to deploy funding effectively and have enough integrations that can help multiple businesses streamline various procedures and use cases. Doing so, will significantly reduce our need to develop over time without hindering customer experience thus resulting a commercially sustainable project. Moreover, Pattern Flow will significantly reduce cost on the business by eliminating unnecessary work and helping contributors to deliver impact effectively. Businesses can support us by paying for new integrations.

Threshold

Threshold funding needed to bring Pattern Flow to life: 500$ This will help covering the cost for developing remaining automation steps and integration building blocks needed to create a complete flow.

Delivery Timeline

We are looking at launching the first version of our platform by October 2024.