Conjure up your best memes, because the Ethereum Marketing DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization that comprises over 50 of blockchain’s finest marketing personnel, is now welcoming proposals about how to market Ethereum.
Fill in the form before next Sunday, and you (yes, you!) can submit an idea for a project that you think would help market Ethereum to the masses.
Anything goes, but members of the DAO have already voted on top concerns. Among the top perceptions that the Ethereum Marketing DAO wants to challenge: the idea that Ethereum will deliver too few real-world applications too late, allowing newer blockchains to dominate; that Ethereum is too complex; and that the memes aren’t good enough.
Once the deadline’s passed, members of Marketing DAO will vote on ideas with their wallets, with voting rights equal to their financial contribution. If over half of the voting share say aye, the proposal will pass, and project proposers will be invited to provide more information about their ideas. At that point, members within the DAO will make the final decision to fund the product, as each member can withdraw their funding should they so wish—a sort of “ragequit” function.
Amanda Cassatt, the Secretary of Marketing DAO, who used to head marketing at Consensys, told Decrypt it’s “like a professional organization or guild,” and that “overall, our objective is to help grow the Ethereum brand.”
It’s music to the ears of Hudson Jameson, Ethereum’s community liaison who previously complained about Ethereum’s lack of marketing. “Ethereum Marketing DAO's contributors are top notch,” he told Decrypt. Last week, Jameson expressed his concern that the Ethereum community behaves too much like an “echo chamber,” and that not enough was being done to spread Ethereum's message. The Ethereum Marketing DAO, it appears, exists to plug that gap.
The organization was set up on October 6 at Devcon, Ethereum’s annual conference. Other members include Ethereum Cat Herder Pooja Ranjan, current director at PR firm Wachsman, Emily Coleman, and former Reuters Americas General Manager Saul Hudson.
“In Marketing DAO we have a shared belief that Ethereum, the leading blockchain platform by most relevant metrics, deserves thoughtful, professional, and well-coordinated marketing,” said Cassatt.
For now, only those voted into the DAO by other members can make pledges to fund, but in the future, the DAO will accept donations from anyone (though such donations wouldn’t give donors any voting power).
And though “It’s true that whoever has the most shares has the most voting power,” said Cassatt, “balance of power comes from having a sufficient number of funding contributors as well as shares distributed to those contributing work to the DAO.”
Cassatt said that the ability to withdraw funds from project “also preserves [the] balance of power, because if any member submitted a malicious proposal, all other members could simply withdraw to express their dissent and spin up a new DAO,” she said.
Jameson is impressed. “Getting solid marketing around Ethereum to highlight its accomplishments and how it can help the world is a great challenge and a DAO is a great way to handle it,” he said.
Let the meme war commence!