This article is a brief to the roles of the Venture DAOs in DAOSquare Incubator, if you want to learn more about the detailed functions and permissions of each role in a Venture DAO, please check out the relevant documentation.
In a Venture DAO, there are usually 3 types of participants: DAO managers, investors, and invested project. They are directly or indirectly involved in the transaction and jointly drive the investment transaction. DAO Managers are responsible for the DAO's governance, operational management, and organization of investment activities. Investors are people who invest through a DAO and contribute money. The invested project is the object of seeking investment.
In Venture DAOs of DAOSquare Incubator, the Governor and Investor are the regular roles in the three DAO modes.
- Governor is the administrator of the DAO, maintaining the DAO parameters (such as modifying the voting mechanism), the modification of the Membership eligibility mechanism, and the approval of the Governor's entry and exit. Whether to make an investment decision is determined by DAO mode.
- Investor is the actual contributor to the DAO investment activities. Governor and Investor are NOT mutually exclusive roles and may or may not coincide, depending on DAO modes and eligibility setting.
In addition, specific roles will appear in different situations, such as Summoner, Proposer, Approver, Poll Voter, and Priority Depositor.
- Summoner is the creator of the DAO and the person to deploy the DAO contract. Summoner will automatically become a member of the Governor.
- Approver is a person who authorizes the contract to hold the payback tokens of the investee in an investment with Escrow functionality set up. The Approver is usually the investee itself. If the investment proposal does not use Escrow functionality, there is no Approver for that investment.
- Proposer is the person who initiates the investment proposal. Each investment proposal of the three DAOs will have a separate proposer. The Proposer of the Vintage DAO and the Collective DAO must be one of the Governors, while the Flex DAO can set the eligibility of the Proposer independently (that is, it has no necessary connection with the role of governor/investor).
- Poll Voter is a participant in polls (known as temperature check) on investment proposals. This role only appears in the Venture DAO in Flex mode. Each Flex DAO can set the eligibility of Poll voters differently (not necessarily tied to the governor/investor).
- Priority Depositor is an investor who has priority in investment share allocation. A DAO can set a separate condition for becoming a Priority Depositor in a Fund Establishment proposal in Vintage DAO or a Investment proposal in Flex DAO. If not set, this role does not exist in the investment.
Here's a bit more in-depth.
Summoner
Summoner is a smart contract deployer for the Venture DAO, the creator of the DAO. It can be an EOA (personal wallet address) or a multi-signature wallet address (such as Safe). Summoner is naturally given a Governor role, but its governance power depends on the DAO's Voting mechanism (including Voting Asset and Weight Algorithm). This means that even though Summoner is naturally given the power of the Governor, it may have zero power to govern in some scenarios. DAO can also vote to remove Summoner from his role as Governor. But Summoner as an honor role will be retained throughout.
Governor
The Governor is the administrator of a Venture DAO, and his scope of authority usually includes two aspects: 1) management of the parameters of the DAO contract, such as voting mechanism, and membership eligibility, and 2) Investment and operational decisions, such as initiating an investment proposal or participating in a voting decision on an investment proposal. The Governor's scope of authority varies with different modes of Venture DAO. For example, in the Flex mode of Venture DAO, the Governor's powers are limited to DAO contract parameter management and Governor member management, while initiating investments can be done by another group, and making investment decisions is done by investors themselves.
- In Vintage DAO, which is similar to the GP+LP mode of traditional funds, the manager is usually professional, such as an investment manager.
- In Collective DAO, which is similar to an investment club, all investors are responsible for the management and perform as Governor.
- In Flex DAO, which is similar to Syndicate, the Governor is only responsible for the maintenance operations of the DAO but does not make investment decisions.
Proposer
In Venture DAOs of the DAOSquare Incubator, the Proposer mainly refers to the originator of an investment proposal, so the DAO can define it as a provider of investment opportunities and set rewards for that role. In the Vintage DAOs, the role of the Proposer is limited to the Governors, while in the Flex DAOs, it makes the Proposer role more open and flexible through eligibility settings, for example, DAO can set the Proposer eligibility to hold a certain number of ERC20 tokens, and such a setting is particularly suitable for investment communities with community tokens or NFT.
Investor
Investor is the DAO funder who participates in the DAO by putting money into a fund initiated by the DAO or into a specific investment project. The Investor roles themselves do not have administrative authority over the DAO, unless they become the Governor. The timing of Investors funding their money varies according to the DAO modes. For example, in the Vintage mode of Venture DAO, the opportunity for Investors to participate is during the fundraising period of a new fund established by DAO. Investors can decide whether to participate in the DAO’s fund according to its historical performance, management team lineup, fund theme, terms, and other information. In the Flex mode of Venture DAO, investors can choose and invest in specific investment projects.
Approver
One of the features that DAOSquare Incubator provides to Venture DAOs is Escrow. In short, if the DAO initiates an investment in the Token category (for example, the payback of investment is ERC20 Token), Escrow can help both parties to the transaction write the Token release rules into the smart contract and automatically release the Token to investors according to the rules in smart contract. Approver is the actual operator of the smart contract escrow Token (technically a wallet address). So the Approver is usually a representative of the project who seeks funding from the DAO.
Poll Voter
Poll Voter appears only in the Flex mode DAOs. The purpose of the Poll is to initiate a poll (or call it temperature check) for an investment within the DAO or community to determine whether an investment is necessary to initiate. The DAO can set who can be a Poll Voter, such as holding a certain number of ERC20/721/1155 tokens, or the DAO can set a whitelist directly. This is a useful role feature for the crypto investment community.
Priority Depositor
During fund fundraising in Vintage DAO or project fundraising in Flex DAO, DAO can set Priority Depositors to allow a specific group to enjoy the priority of investment share allocation in the fundraising process, and the person who is given priority is called Priority Depositor. Priority Depositors do not have priority in terms of deposit time, but after the closing of the fundraising, the limited amount of investment will be preferentially allocated to those who have Priority Depositor eligibility.
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That's an introduction to the main roles in the Venture DAOs of DAOSquare Incubator. Under different DAO modes, these roles may have different eligibility and authorities.
If you want to learn more about these roles, please stay tuned for our upcoming documentation.
If you want to understand more about the three Venture DAO modes in DAOSquare Incubator, check out our previous article (link).
If you want to learn more about the voting system of DAOSquare Incubator, please check out this article (link).
