The gaming decentralized autonomous organization Game7 launched a new tool Wednesday that aims to help mitigate the ultimate problem of cooperation: social loafing.
While it may seem that, because of their futuristic name, DAOs have advanced past some of the basic issues that plague all organizations, this isn’t the case. As explained by Game7 core contributor—and self-proclaimed “lead janitor”—Jonathan Allen, DAOs have a free-rider problem.
Many DAOs—groups of people who gather online to attain a shared goal—offer a cryptocurrency when launching to raise capital and attract participants. But sometimes this attracts people just looking to make a quick buck, not necessarily those who want to stick with the DAO long term, Allen told Fortune.
This can create a problem for these DAOs later. For many, one token is equal to one vote on any proposals, so those who are first to acquire tokens can have an outsized influence over its direction even though they’re largely inactive. Because of this, newer DAO members may feel their votes aren’t having much of an effect and become discouraged from participating in the organization.
Game7’s new product, Summon, is meant to solve this problem by using a soul-bound token—a non-transferable type of NFT that can track a person’s reputation. The Summon protocol will assign each member of the DAO a soul-bound token, which then keeps a record of their participation and evolves based on how much they contribute.
The more a member contributes, the more XP they’ll get, which will increase their rank and voting influence in the DAO, and which could enable them to unlock additional rewards. These stats will all be tracked by the platform automatically, which also takes the weight off of core members to decide who’s actually pitching in.
“We think if we kind of implement this more nuanced system, you can fix a lot of those early balance problems, like hoping that the first 100 people in my Discord that bought the tokens are going to be engaged for five years and are going to contribute,” Allen said.
Summon was built by members of the Game7 DAO, and they will initially test the platform in a closed alpha on their own organization before letting others try it. But Allen said that the goal is to open it up as an open source program with a possible software-as-a-service model for special features.
Allen said that Summon is not meant to replace other tools DAOs use for operations, like Discord or the off-chain voting platform Snapshot, but instead exist alongside these platforms and help DAOs focus on their main tenets of cooperation and decentralization, Allen said.
“Summon really wants to meet your community where they are,” he said.
Learn how to navigate and strengthen trust in your business with The Trust Factor, a weekly newsletter examining what leaders need to succeed. Sign up here.
Read More
The Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Game7 is proud to announce the launch of their new gaming-focused tool, designed to help minimize “freeloaders” in the DAO token holder space.
The tool developed by the experienced team of engineers and blockchain experts at Game7 offers an innovative solution to an age-old problem. Freeloaders, token holders who join a DAO with the intention of earning rewards without actively participating in the lifespan of the organization, is a cause of concern for many in the blockchain space. By relying on the consensus model and strategic distribution of DAO tokens, Game7 has developed a tool to actively encourage participation and dampen the effects of freeloaders.
Game7’s tool is designed to promote “voting token” holders, rewarding those that actively take part in the development and progress of the DAO. Using a consensus mechanism, the platform manages to recognize and reward active voters while simultaneously mitigating the chances of freeloaders or those who simply hold tokens with no intention of actively influencing or contributing to decision making.
In this digital age, DAOs are quickly becoming a viable alternative to traditional business models. However, the security of the DAO depends on the complex mechanisms behind distributed consensus, and this is only possible if the stakeholders are actively engaged in the advancement of the organization. In other words, the success of a DAO lies in the hands of its active member-holders.
With the launch of Game7’s tool, it is clear that the company is committed to advancing the DAO governance model. Their goal with this project is to provide a platform that both rewards activestakeholders and keeps freeloaders in check, thus ensuring the success and progress of the DAO.
The tool promises to reduce the likelihood of token holders taking advantage of a DAO, allowing the organization’s system to be more powerful, efficient and accurate. Game7 believes that their project will be a huge asset to the blockchain community and a giant step forward for the DAO governance process.
We at Game7 are ecstatic to unveil our new tool, and we believe that it is a prime example of our company’s commitment to advancing the blockchain space. Our tool is designed to be the most effective solution to date when it comes to curbing the effects of freeloaders, and we invite all token holders to get involved and experience the benefits of an actively engaged DAO.
