Announcing Karma DAO: First-Ever Token-Permissioned Networking Chat Group on Telegram

Andrew Lee
4 min readJul 20, 2020

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Hi friends,

I’m really excited today to announce the public launch of a professional networking social community called Karma DAO that exists as a chat group on Telegram.

The mission of the DAO is to have as many people in Ethereum and the greater crypto space to adopt a networking group that values karma, which includes the qualities of being mutually helpful to others, mutually value-add, giving to all and being kind.

Problem

With all of the bad actors and scams that happened in the space, I felt there was a need for a place of networking and communication that established certain values around being helpful to others and to contribute value to a greater community. AKA decency and making $ in crypto shouldn’t be mutually exclusive!

How It Works

Update 9/27: To enter in the Karma DAO, one must hold 1 Karma DAO NFT to join the community. They were minted on Communifty.org (https://communifty.org/?daos=karma-dao), but now can be purchased on the secondary market on OpenSea here: https://opensea.io/collection/karma-dao-1 You can verify your MetaMask wallet by clicking here: https://telegram.me/CommuniftyBot?start=d4087ec7f31d4cff8e9685dfafab9cb6 and the bot will give you entry in the group. The group also has a member index pinned in Telegram with all of the names and backgrounds of all DAO members for easy meeting and finding.

Goals of the DAO

The ultimate goal of the DAO is to have a self-sustaining and growing professional network that can share values of mutual help and generosity to others. With all of the noise and lack of community alignment across Twitter and Telegram, Karma DAO aims to be a central place of alignment for value-add relationships and business networking. Potentially, we may implement some form of onchain reputation, but we’re still in the early stages of conceptualizing future use cases and we’re taking a community-centered approach for new features.

Token-Permissioned DAOs

It’s exciting to use pioneering tools that allow people to conduct onchain DAO interactions within Telegram. Also, the $KARMA token was printed with Roll (tryroll.com), which has been the go-to platform for social tokens! Thank you both.

Bonding Curve

If you’re not familiar with the buzzword yet, a bonding curve is just a predetermined relationship between supply and price. In this case for Karma DAO, we are implementing a bonding curve schedule where the price grows slightly exponentially as the group gets bigger in member count.

If one doesn’t want to be in the DAO, they can leave and sell their membership tokens at the current price based on the number of members in the group. For example, if one bought into the DAO and the number of members grew since they joined, they would be able to sell $KARMA membership tokens at a higher price.

The Beginnings of a Community Ownership Economy

Using a bonding curve for $KARMA aligns really well with the mission of the group which is to grow the Karma DAO community to reach as many like minded people in crypto space as possible. For that to happen, the group needs the collective help of all members. I think it’s very fair for community members to have a small stake in the upside of the DAO if it were to be successful in growing. I also think it’s meaningful for members to have tangible ownership in the form of a digital asset that reflects their membership to the DAO community.

If for any reason a DAO member wants to leave, they can sell the token at the current price and exit the group. All proceeds from membership token sales will be used as liquidity for members who do wish to sell their tokens and exit.

Roadmap For The DAO

The DAO will likely soon have a Layer 2 tipping bot inside the group chat that will let members tip others P2P, or earn $KARMA for their good actions for the community. This is still in a conceptual phase, but we are iterating with the great feedback of the early community.

In addition, if the group gets bigger, we’ll roll out “clans” which will be sub-groups which can serve certain cliques of friends within the DAO, or will focus on certain professional background/interest categories such as investing, entrepreneurship and engineering.

Join Us

I hope that with everyone’s participation and help, we can create a thriving networking community that is able to hold itself to higher values and code of participation. My goal is for the group to add as much value to everyone participating and for it to reach as many people as possible within the crypto space.

If you’re interested in joining, please just DM me on telegram at @aswlee, t.me/aswlee or follow the instructions above.

I also hope this community will inspire other groups to create similar token-permissioned DAOs, as it’s a unique way to create commitment within a community, ownership in its upside and success, and potentially offer more robust governance mechanisms via onchain interactions.

Thank you Alex Yamashita, Leo Cheng, and the initial 50 Karma DAO members for all the help with the initial rollout of the group!

Hope to see you in the DAO!

Best,
Andrew

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