41: Impact DAOs & the Impact DAO Book // Deepa Chaudhary

Deepa Chaudhary is a Builder in Impact DAO Media and they have written the Impact DAO Book. It is a book written by a DAO for those who want to build their own DAOs. An Impact DAO is focused on creating positive externalities. In other words, its purpose is to improve the lives of people and the planet. Impact DAOs offer a radically new way of organizing, fundraising and allocating resources for causes. They are a new operating framework for our digital lives. Also, the goal of this book is to provide a reliable snapshot of the current state of Impact DAOs.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 3:00 Deepa shares some details about the Impact DAO book and how it started.
• 5:57 The Ukraine DAO was started by a Ukrainian woman named Alona.
• 7:32 Studying Ukraine DAO is beneficial because it can be a model for future disaster management. Deepa was intrigued to learn more about Ukraine DAO.
• 8:03 Eric talks about something that happened during a public forum discussion where someone criticized the Constitution DAO.
• 10:52 Deepa thinks that Constitution DAO is a great roadmap for other DAOs to follow.
• 12:00 There was a DAO that bought the book Dune and another DAO called Redemption DAO that wanted to buy land in Congo.
• 14:58 According to Deepa, using Web3 to support the causes that people believe in has not been fully explored yet.
• 17:07 Emphasizing the importance of the rehabilitation process after a disaster or emergency fundraising.
• 18:22 Being a social entrepreneur, Deepa focuses on using businesses to generate money to do something meaningful and good. She works at Salesforce.com, which is a tech company.
• 19:37 When Vitalik donated cryptocurrencies worth billions of dollars to nonprofit organizations, Deepa realized that Web3 can be used for good causes.
• 21:17 Deepa talks about how they were able to write a book as a DAO.
• 23:54 The Impact DAO book was written by three people.
• 25:57 Everyone in the Impact DAO never rejected the idea that only 3 people will write the book.
• 26:25 On Deepa’s podcast, she had a debate with someone on Aragon about what a DAO is.
• 30:34 There are two big lessons that Deepa has learned from studying all the impact DAOs.
• 33:32 Deepa urges everyone to read the book online and it is very much inspired by Balaji.
• 34:24 The Impact DAO book needs more contributors to help with its further development.

Key Points from this Interview:

1. “Find a balance. Do not go to the extreme end of decentralization. Find a balance. What works in terms of getting work done in the best decentralized way possible but do not get obsessed with democracy and decentralization to the extent that nothing gets done.”
2. “If they want to contribute to any of those 12 DAOs, they are some of the best DAOs that exist today in terms of creating positive externalities and helping people on the planet and they are the most mature and experienced DAOs.”

Resources Mentioned: