How We Set Up our DAOs

A Simple Explainer for Commons Coordination

What Is a DAO?

Imagine a community able to write its own rules, manage shared resources transparently, and coordinate care, labor, and value without central control. That’s the promise of a DAO, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization providing us the ability to build new kinds of collective agreements and commons-based governance using tools like blockchain.

This is a way we write our own ledger. We decide what counts as value, who can participate, and how decisions are made, creating a living memory of commitments and guiding our shared direction together.

Coordination Protocols for the Future We Want to Live In

At Grassroots Economics, we define our DAOs within the Commitment Pooling approach, where collective work in communities is rooted in care, reciprocity, and interdependence. We establish coordination systems that reflect these values, systems inspired by symbiotic ecological networks and ancestral commitment-based economies.

Our DAO functions as a living protocol for regenerative coordination. It is expressed through the Sarafu Network, a digital infrastructure that enables:

• Tokenized commitments (vouchers) and Commitment pools to be issued, exchanged, and redeemed

• Shared memory of promises made and fulfilled

• Transparent governance through multisig decision-making and voting pools

The DAO stewards the Commitment Pool

At the heart of our DAO is a Commitment Pool: a shared, governed registry where members seed tokenized promises, track who holds which commitments, and fulfill them through real-world service and exchange.

Instead of trading products, our DAO routes trust through tokenized promises, where each voucher represents a future commitment, each swap rebalances relationships, and each redemption fulfills care, all governed by shared rules for membership, voting power, proposal access, and responsibility limits, with the Sarafu Network serving as the digital soil where these agreements take root and grow.

For instance, The DAO governs this ecosystem:

• Eligibility criteria for members and how new participants join the pool

• Voting power assignment, based on contributions, seeded value, or trusted roles

• Proposal mechanisms, through which members can suggest and decide on fund allocation, project initiation, or rule updates

• Credit limits and thresholds, ensuring members cannot overextend their commitments beyond agreed capacities.

Commitment pooling offers a protocol for collective abundance, guided by ecosystem intelligence, and powered by trust over speculation. By embedding DAOs into Sarafu-based networks, we create not just organizations, but living systems, where communities define value, shape agreements, and coordinate care in alignment with their values and land.

The utility of the commitment pool anchors the DAO in relational trust and fulfilled promises, rather than speculative accumulation — making each token a record of verified contribution, not market value. By tying access, voting, and token issuance to consensus on real, executed commitments (like curated routes and redeemed vouchers), the system resists capture and reinforces shared stewardship.

How We Set Up Our DAO: Simple Explainer

Step 1: Make a Constitution

We begin by writing a shared agreement, our constitution. It defines:

• Who can be a member

• Who sits on the Stewardship Council (our core coordinators)

• How we make decisions together

This document holds our values and rules.

Step 2: Create the Multisig Wallet & Garden

The Stewardship Council sets up a multisignature wallet (a secure group wallet). This wallet:

• Holds shared power (voting tokens)

• Owns a Garden on gardens.fund, which is our digital home for coordination

The Garden includes:

• A Voting Pool – where proposals are made and voted on

• A Funding Pool – where money can be distributed

• A Sarafu Commitment Pool – where community promises and deposits are tracked

• The $135,000 endowment from Mustardseed

Step 3: Members Join and Create Their Tools

General members now:

• Create their own wallets

• Set up vouchers on the Sarafu Network (promises to give/receive specific goods or services)

Once a voucher is reviewed and approved by the Stewardship Council, that member officially joins the pool.

Step 4: Assign Voting Power

When members deposit value into the pool (e.g. services or products via vouchers),
The Stewardship Council assigns voting power to those members.
Now they can participate in decisions.

Step 5: Propose & Vote

Members can now:

• Make proposals (e.g., how to use funds or organize events)

• Vote on proposals using their voting power

This is how we guide our shared direction.

Step 6: Use Funds Based on Proposals

If a proposal is approved, the pool can then spend or allocate funds in line with it, helping support our projects and each other.

Step 7: Start Swapping

Members can now swap vouchers and use the pool to coordinate exchanges, just like a local economy, but powered by trust and transparency.

Seeding the Future, Together

By combining commons-based governance with the Sarafu Network and the commitment pooling infrastructure, we’ve created a regenerative protocol that reflects who we are and what we value.

This model empowers all of us to define their own terms of exchange, make transparent decisions, and support one another through mutual commitments. Every action, from writing a constitution to redeeming a voucher, strengthens a web of trust and collective capacity.

We don’t need to wait for external systems to validate our worth. With the tools we have now, we can design local economies that serve life, steward our shared resources, and co-create the future we want to live in, one commitment at a time.

If you’re exploring how to begin your own DAO journey, let this be an invitation: start small, stay relational, and build from trust. The protocol is alive. And the soil is ready.

Interested in diving into this? Join us in our weekly Commoning calls: https://grassecon.substack.com/p/call-to-commoning

See you soon!