Abstract

Blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies are experiencing exponential growth. Within a decade, the market will transform from singular emerging technologies, such as smart contracts, into a mature ecosystem. Growth on this scale needs management. A new type of cooperative organization has arisen to meet this management challenge, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs use blockchains and its tokens to allow decentralized groups to operate transparently, with less bureaucracy and cost. But, the software that supports these capabilities is limited or does not exist yet. Paideia is a DAO management toolset built for the Ergo and Cardano blockchains. Paideia makes it easy for anyone to create a DAO, manage proposals and voting, and spend from a treasury. Ergo and Cardano provide unique technical capabilities for DAO management software not available on other blockchains due to the eUTXO model. These unique capabilities can be combined with other DAO software features to support many use cases: existing DAOs, startups, investment groups, fundraising organizations, social clubs and others. The more capable DAO software becomes, the more sophisticated the types of social organization it will enable. Paideia aims to push the development of DAO software in new directions: governance and tokenomics pre-sets, member reputation scores, staking and liquidity options, and in other ways. With the right software and blockchain as a service functionality, DAOs will flourish. They will be a key social organization leveraging blockchains to solve real-world problems.