Otterspace is building a flexible and easy-to-use infrastructure for DAOs to use non-transferable membership NFTs, or badges. Badges can enable DAOs to perform non-financialized governance, automate permissions (access, rights etc.), manage community-specific reputation/credentials and create better incentive systems.
Otterspace helps DAOs leverage the power of badges to create better incentive systems, automate permissions, and enable non-financialized governance. Otterspace achieves this via its (1) token standard, (2) protocol and (3) app. (3) The Otterspace app creates an accessible and delightful UX for creating badges and missions, claiming badges and discovering missions in DAOs. (2) The Otterspace protocol enables developers to build custom interfaces based on a reliable and secure set of smart contracts for badge creation, issuance, reassignment and revocation. (1) The token standard addresses key concerns for NTTs and ensures compatibility with all important wallets and dApps.
The current method of distributing influence in DAOs, oftentimes based on fungible token ownership, is problematic because influence disproportionately goes to whales, which runs counter to the philosophy of many DAOs. Contributors earning their ‘salaries’ in tokens end up selling their influence to cover expenses.
Distribution of permissions is also problematic, as it requires manual management. The frequent turnover in DAOs creates overhead for adding and removing permissions from individuals.
DAOs struggle to effectively incentivise participation and engagement from community members with ERC-20 tokens. By incentivising community participation with fungible token rewards, the DAO financializes engagement and reduces participation to labor. Not every community member is or should be a DAO worker/contributor.
Guiding community members into how they can participate is challenging because it is highly manual for community managers and very confusing for DAO joiners. There is a lack of clear paths for deeper engagement with the community.
In the Otterspace app, DAO leaders can set up their DAO, create badges (EIP-4973 non-transferable tokens) and distribute them to addresses. To avoid non-consensual minting, the Otterspace Protocol requires the recipient to claim and mint the badge themselves. Airdrops are not possible. As Otterspace is on the Optimism L2 chain, the transaction costs incurred are marginal.
Badges can be used for a variety of use cases
Some of the common use cases we’ve seen in DAOs:
Badges have utility
Badges are especially powerful because they can have utility attached to them - Otterspace is collaborating with multiple DAO tooling providers to integrate the badges across the DAO tooling landscape.
Badges can be used for governance (e.g., Snapshot), access permissions (e.g., Clarity, Discord), payments (e.g. Radicle drips) and more. Additionally, badges are useful simply as a way of showing off reputation, history and experience.
The Otterspace Protocol is being developed as an open set of smart contracts, so DAOs can compose and integrate pieces into their own tech stack and other app developers can construct custom front-ends.
This review was written by the Otterspace team and will be updated when it’s publicly available. If you’re a DAO tool team and want to be featured on DAO Masters, join our Discord to connect!
DAO profile: DAOs will soon be able to get an overview of their memberbase and badge landscape. This profile will also be visible to anybody viewing the Otterspace app, or Otterverse as we like to call it. Being included in the Otterverse will also increase visibility and discoverability to DAOs.
Contributor profile: DAOs members and contributors also get a space to show off their DAO membership, achievements, badges and discover new DAOs.
Missions: While initially badges will be handed out manually, soon DAOs will be able to define missions to distribute badges, engage their community and onboard new collaborators. Contributors can earn badges by completing missions, which might grant them particular benefits such as e.g., access rights, depending on the DAOs needs and setup.
Integrations: Otterspace badges will be integrated with more partners in the future to enable even more use cases and enable communities to leverage the power of badges.
Reassignment and revocation: We are working on smart contracts that allow communities to reassign badges belonging to an individual to a new wallet, to account for cases of key rotation or loss of keys. A smart contract will also enable DAOs to revoke badges from bad actors.
