DAO History

NFT marketplaces and storefronts have traditionally looked a lot like web2 companies.

These marketplaces were for the most part, closed source, and teams typically built both the front-end and back-ends components of their storefronts to support their efforts. Examples of this include Rarible.com, Opensea, SuperRare.

Over the course of 2020, Rarible.com developed the Rarible Protocol to open source their back-end infrastructure and make it a public good that other projects could use to quickly get to market. The $RARI token became the governance token of this protocol, and a DAO started to form to grow adoption of this protocol.

DAO Thesis

The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a famous book, outlining how in certain situations, decentralized grassroot networks win. Ethereum is a great example of this. If a centralized company launched Ethereum and tried to innovate and capture all the value of DeFi and NFTs, it would have failed miserably.

The role of our DAO, broadly speaking, is to grow adoption of the open internet and return value to $RARI holders. One of the ways in which this will be achieves is through growing adoption of the Rarible Protocol, by promoting and fostering an ecosystem of projects. The community around the DAO will also generate value in many other ways we can't even fathom - that is, after all, the beauty of the DAO.

It is important to note that there are certain things DAOs don't do well. DAOs aren't really good at pushing a single product very well. A traditional company, with rigid hierarchy, is much better at this. It's been perfected over hundreds of years and works really well!

The challenge for our DAO, is how to balance these two efforts, both of which generate a tremendous amount of value.

DAO Structure

Our DAO is currently still using Snapshot + Multisig for governance and is governed by $RARI holders. We call this DAO the "Parent DAO". There is a tremendous amount of innovation that will happen at the governance level, and our plan over the next couple years is to fully decentralize (for the time being though, this structure suffices).

From this base level governance, a number of groups are funded:

• A Foundation, responsible for developing and growing adoption of the Rarible Protocol. This group is structured as a centralized organization, and does not have a big focus on community.
• An Accelerator and Grants group, responsible for funding teams and projects. This group is structured as a semi centralized organization, and has a small focus on community.
• A Builders group, responsible for shipping NFT projects (loosely related to the protocol). The focus is on building a large community of contributors who want to be part of the future of web3 and the open internet.
• A Marketing and Creative group, responsible for being the microphone and mouthpiece for the DAO. This group is structured as a semi centralized organization, and has a small focus on community.

With this sort of setup, it's entirely possible to imagine a future where another protocol that has significant opportunity to be monetized is spun out under another Foundation:

This structure allows us to foster and drive forward very specific projects and initiatives (such as the Rarible Protocol), as well as create an environment that attracts top builders. A web3 aligned narrative as well as a neutral/open brand will play a big part in achieving this vision. Capturing the imagination of people by doing cool stuff will enable us to become an attractive force in the market, and generate value in more ways we can currently imagine.

Community is at the core of how we achieve this vision, and is in many ways, the ultimate moat. If we create the coolest most innovative community that is incentive aligned, we win. That's the goal.