Issue #5: Superdao

👋 Welcome to the fifth issue of The Syllabus from Invisible College – a weekly newsletter that will help you navigate the complex world of web3. To get this newsletter delivered to your inbox, subscribe here:

Before we begin, a disclaimer – nothing here is financial advice. We’re analyzing projects that we find interesting in the hope that you’ll enjoy learning about them as well.

With that, let’s dive in.

The past year has seen an explosion of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) assemble to purchase priceless artifacts, launch social clubs, create media empires, and replace the countless other functions of traditional organizations.

Due to their ability to align the incentives of contributors and customers, many of these web3-native organizations are growing fast. However, running a DAO in 2022 is a lot like launching a company in the early days of the internet. It’s a cumbersome process with plenty of unsettled questions around treasury management, governance, and tooling. These issues create barriers to launching and pull contributor energy away from the missions of these budding organizations.

That’s why Superdao was started.

Superdao wants to do for DAOs the same thing that Shopify did for e-commerce businesses. Rather than forcing DAO founders to stitch together dozens of tools, SuperDAO wants to allow anyone to launch a DAO with an all-in-one, no-code solution. Much like Shopify expanded the number of merchants who could launch an e-commerce storefront, Superdao wants to expand the number of creators who can launch their own DAO.

Superdao wants to enable users to:

• Legally incorporate while launching a DAO on the blockchain

• Crowdfund a secure treasury for transactions and pay contributors

• Build a member directory with varying roles and permissions

• Communicate through internal feeds for organizing tasks

• Vote on governance proposals with vetted templates and smart contracts

• Monitor activity and tokenomics through a dashboard

• Decentralize ownership via tokens, NFTs, and equity options

• Integrate with leading third-party infrastructure apps

• Recruit talent and capital through Superdao’s discovery marketplace

And that’s just in the Alpha launch 🤯

Time will tell whether Superdao’s approach will win out. It is still unclear whether DAOs will prefer assembling their own tool stack or adopting a single operating system. To gain widespread adoption, Superdao will need to nail a few core use cases and prove the value of adopting a single system to DAO operators.

What is clear is that Superdao is well-positioned to execute its vision. Founder, Yury Lifshits holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Caltech and a background teaching cryptography at a leading Russian university. Recently, he helped Superdao raise a $10.5M seed round from a slate of prominent web3 and web2 investors like. With this funding in their treasury, SuperDAO is well-positioned to make a run at becoming the all-purpose operating system for the next generation of impactful organizations.

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Want to get learn more about Superdao?

• Browse their website to learn more about their features and functionality

• Follow the project on Twitter

• Read their playbook on building and launching DAOs

Other projects we’re exploring

• Bridgeworld – A game of strategic commerce, trade, and domination that sits at the center of the Treasure metaverse.

• Debt DAO – a lending marketplace to help growth-stage DAOs

• Superfluid – a protocol that enables programmable streams of ETH-based tokens

Invisible College Recommended Reads

• Proof of Passion | 12-minute read
  A post that explores how NFTs will power the passion economy.

• Business Structure and Operations as a Web3 Contractor | 17-minute read
  Want to pivot your career into web3? This post covers the business structure and operations, tools, and services you’ll need.

• Zero-Knowledge Proofs: An Illustrated Primer | 20-minute read
  Zero-knowledge proofs are one of the most powerful tools cryptographers have devised. Unfortunately, they’re also poorly understood. This post attempts to explain them as simply as possible.

Community Updates

Decentraliens Presale

The Decentraliens presale begins Thursday, February 17th at 12:30 pm. To participate, you’ll need to register your Solana wallet by Monday, 2/14 at noon PT.

What you should know:

• Timeline – the presale will last for three days until Sunday the 20th at 12:30 PT.

• Mint Limit – Each registered wallet will be able to mint up to 10 Decentraliens. For those who want to mint more than 10, you can do so when we open the public sale.

• Public Sale Timing – The public sale will open on Monday, February 21st at 12:30 pm. The sale will either last for one month or until we sell out, whichever comes first.

• Presale Pre-party – At noon on Thursday the 17th we're throwing a pre-party in the Discord before we release the mint link at 12:30 pm.

• Calendar Invite – We're going to try to make sure that all of you who gave us your email get a calendar invite for the mint, so don't be too surprised if that shows up on your calendar.

New Website

Invisible College has a new website! Check it out and help spread the word.

Upcoming Events

⭐️  Headliner Events

• Deep Dive on the Decentraliens – Tues (2/15) @ 12 pm PT (Discord)

🧠  Topic Deep Dives

• Building a real-world burger franchise with a DAO – Wed (2/16) @ 1 pm PT (Discord)

• DeFi Deep Dive on Thor Nodes – Fri (2/18) @ 12 pm PT (Discord)

🙌 Community Gatherings

• Decentraliens Presale Launch Party – Thurs (2/17) @ 12 pm PT (Discord)

Events Calendar

Want to get Invisible College events on your Google calendar? Just click this link to subscribe to our events calendar.

Community Update Video

Get a pulse on what’s happening at Invisible College this week with our latest community update video.

Invisible College, is a learning DAO that helps web3-curious builders and creators explore and launch projects. If you’d like to learn more about our community and get smarter about web3, check out our Discord server.