Plugins extend the functionality of what your DAO can do. Think of them as apps that you install and uninstall on your phone or computer. It adds more actions your DAO can take, such as swapping tokens or adding new decision-making methods.
Plugins are how Aragon OSx DAOs adapt and evolve. Installing and uninstalling them enables decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to change aspects of their management, finances, and membership.
Here are 10 ideas to help you get started building a financial plugin today!
“By leveraging Aragon's flexibility, composability and compatibility, DAO creators can experiment and refine their ideas in a step-by-step development process. This approach not only reduces the risk of failure and costs, but also fosters innovation and creativity within the Web3 ecosystem.”
—identificationa DAO expert specializing in custom DAOs and Aragon plugins
1. Swap codes to get the best price
Example: Matcha
It can be difficult to know if you are getting the best price for your token swaps. You can create a plugin that integrates with a DEX aggregator like Matcha to show you the best swap rates. Or choose your favorite DEXs, get a preview of the swap price for each and choose the best one.
This plugin will make it easier for DAOs to exchange tokens at the best rates and easily manage their treasuries.
For some inspiration, check out Libree (formerly Sassy Finance), which recently built a Uniswap plugin to enable swaps directly in your DAO!
2. Voting power is proportional to the size of the investment
A DAO is an online organization made up of people who pool assets to make a return on their investments together. One way an investment DAO operates is to distribute voting power in proportion to the money a member puts into the DAO. Depending on the size of your investment, you will have equal voting power in governance tokens.
You can create a plugin that automates this process and returns equal voting power to depositors of voting tokens, and requires you to burn those tokens to withdraw your assets. This means that the trust will not be needed until members exit the system, as they can simply burn their governance tokens and take the proportionate portion of the treasury with them.
3. Vesting periods for DAO governance tokens
Rewarding DAO shareholders with governance tokens can help create value alignment among shareholders, because everyone wants to increase the value of the token.
You can create a plugin that awards DAO governance tokens to contributors over a period of time, so that only contributors who stay longer will have access to their entire token pool. This can motivate members to act in a way that benefits the DAO as a whole.
4. Staking directly from your DAO
Staking is a popular way to earn a return on assets. DAOs that own ETH may want to participate in a staking service, such as Lido. You can create a plugin that makes it easy to stake ETH directly from your DAO. Then, the DAO can realize the return, and grow their treasury.
If the DAO wants to expropriate the asset, they can use the plugin again to expropriate the original asset and return it to their treasury.
5. Token flow
Example: Super liquid
Guilds and individuals requesting money from the DAO need a way to receive that money, and paying everything up front can be risky, because they could disappear without completing their project. Especially if they are anonymous, there will be no way to be held accountable.
A token streaming plugin like Superfluid could mean that decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) could stream tokens directly to shareholders without having to create new proposals to send funds every few weeks. You can create a plugin that makes it easy for Aragon OSx DAOs to stream tokens without having to use another application.
6. End anger
Example: Dauhaus / Moloch dao Domain
Rage quitting is when you burn your governance token to take an equivalent portion of the treasury. It is a way to “terminate” the DAO and get back the investment made without having to trust the DAO members to return it to you.
You can create a plugin that enables rage termination for DAOs built on Aragon OSx. DAOs that raise capital from members can install this plugin, while maintaining their right to exit.
7. Automatic airdrop/distribution based on parameters
Example: Coinface
Some DAOs start their community by dropping tokens to wallets that have performed behaviors they want to incentivize, such as interaction with their protocol. This can create an almost instant community because they are united by common interests.
You can create a plugin that makes it easy to automatically distribute governance tokens to wallets that perform the desired behaviors. This additional software can also be used later during the DAO's life, not just at the beginning, to further motivate this behavior. Or the airdrop plugin might work by importing a CSV file of addresses and minting tokens for those addresses if the vote passes.
8. Track assets off-chain and across-chain
Some organizations have a DAO and a traditional bank account. Others have multiple DAOs on different chains, holding different assets. To get a clear view of the organization's overall financial health, members will need to see the status of assets outside the DAO.
The plugin can share real-time asset prices of your DAO assets off-chain to the UI. You can use an oracle, which shares information outside the blockchain, such as the price of gold, with an onchain smart contract.
The cross-chain asset tracking plugin will work similarly, using Oracle to pull data from these other organizations so you can see a full picture of the DAO's finances. These plugins could be the start of a dApp to spin up investment DAOs built on Aragon OSx, like Libree!
9. Automated DeFi Strategies
Example: Weezy
Many decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) want to be able to implement DeFi strategies without having to constantly pass votes and take action as a community. Cryptocurrency vault management is a specific skill that does not usually require the input of an entire community to implement.
You can create a plugin that implements complex strategies like swapping and staking, without the need for a community vote, just approval from a certified staking manager. They then program automatic DeFi strategies that execute as long as they vote “yes.”
10. Asset management permission for subDAOs
Important: free
Another way to approach asset management of DAOs is to use a child DAO. You can create a plugin that gives permission to the subDAO to manage assets in the main DAO treasury. A subDAO can only consist of the treasury managers of the DAO and is governed by approved wallet voting (e.g. multisig).
The master DAO can revoke the permission granted to the child DAO at any time through voting, making it safe.
Start creating your own plugin today
Get any of these links to start creating your own plugin today! We can't wait to see what you create.
📝 How to build a DAO plugin directory
🎥 How to create a DAO extension video
👩🏻💻 Developer documents
🌎 Projects built on Aragon OSx
👾 Join Discord
