How to Build Bridges (and make frens)
A MetaGame Special
This Newsletter™ is dedicated to all bridgebuilders and community cross-pollinators out there that are the glue of our chaotic and disjointed ecosystem. So we present to you the bridgebuilder playbook!! 🌉
…or maybe a first go at it.
This is a re-make of an originaly MetaGame-focused playbook by peth, so as to apply more broadly to DAO bridge-building in general.
So if you think this role described the work that you do, make sure to 👇
.and share your own experience and tricks of the trade! 😉
13 Steps to Build a Bridge
Web3 is fuelled by cross-membrane collaboration. The creation of connections between DAOs is of the utmost importance for ecosystem cohesion.
For this reason, there is rising demand for the role of the bridgebuilder/cross-pollinator, but due to its newness, this role, its duties and what is considered good practice are not well-defined.
So here is an attempt to distill the essence of a good ecosystem player, filled with insights and insider tips for making bridges that stay strong!
TL;DR:
Get an understanding of what makes a DAO aligned to your DAO’s values.
Think & filter through many DAOs before finding the ones you think are a great fit
Make sure you are pursuing connections between DAOs you truly resonate with
Get feedback from your own DAO on whether this bridge is worth building
Get in there, introduce yourself & start meeting people
See what they think about your DAO & kick off your bridgebuilding effort
Set the terms of your collaboration and direct them to your onboarding docs
Follow-up in a tactful and respectful way
Get them on your community call & get on theirs
Plan a good community meetup and be a good facilitator
Utilize the opportunity for proposing collaborations/partnerships
Listen to your community’s impression of the DAO and see if you will...
...keep on going! Continually engage with them in equally beneficial ways.
Now, let’s get a bit deeper...
1. Read & understand 🧠
First of all, make sure you read & understand what makes a DAO a good fit for your own DAO’s mission and values. The ultimate goal is not to onboard & build bridges with as many DAOs as possible but to filter & pick the DAOs that are truly well-aligned with your own organization’s philosophy and worldview.
As an example, here are MetaGame’s criteria for making sure an organization is value-aligned.
Pro Tip: Being overly dismissive won’t help either so make sure you get a lot of exposure from various sources rather than the official docs and whitepaper. Skim through their newsletter and Mirror pubs, check Twitter threads and read especially what people outside of the org have to say. Shower yourself with perspectives. The more diverse the sources, the better your judgment.
2. Think & curate💡
Think about the DAOs you know & the DAOs you’re a part of.
If no DAOs come to mind… sit in a dark candle-lit room, focus hard and evoke the spirit of Moloch…
…or maybe check this list of potential DAOs and scroll through DeepDAO or any of the many DAO aggregator websites. 😉
3. Trust your curiosity ☺️
In web3, most of us are juggling with memberships in a handful of DAOs, but there is one that is usually more dear to our heart. In your polyamorous web3 marriage, it is much more fun to build a bridge between your married-to DAO & your love-affair DAOs and have a full-blown DAOrgy!
But there may be a DAO you are not a member of, but with which you are flirting aggressively. 🤤 In that case, keep in mind; by all means, proceed, but don’t just do it for the sake of bridgebuilding. For successful cross-pollination to happen you must operate at the fullest capacity of your curiosity and interest in another community and their work.
A forced match-making shows, from miles away...
4. Seek feedback 🔎
After picking a DAO you want to build a bridge with, it would be best to check in & consult with your local bridgebuilding department to see whether anyone has any thoughts on it. Alternatively, you can DYOR by conjuring the collective hive-mind of web3 Twitter.
Maybe the DAO is known to be made up of misaligned actors, maybe its a great fit for your organization or maybe you two just ain’t vibin’!
Getting to know this early will save you effort, because when its time to vote, you’ll have lots of explaining to do if you pick a shady match 😬
5. Start building 📐
After choosing a DAO, the first step is to join their Discord & introduce yourself.
You can let them know which DAO you’re coming from & share the link to your org’s landing page. But make sure you do it in a proper place & that you’re not just shilling. A lot of people have an allergic reaction to straight-up marketing propaganda and you don’t want people to get the impression that you are there only out to promote your own DAO.
Being a tryhard shows, from miles away...
Here’s what your message may look like:
🐙 Sup y’all! I’m Octo, coming from country X or industry Y, interested in things like Z & the reason I love your DAO is [insert a sincere reason & refer to a specific thing they are working on - make sure to read their docs in detail]. I’m working on Project M & DAO N, where we are [insert products/ouput and value statement - make it enticing]. Excited to learn more about what you all are doing here & find a way I can plug in to make myself useful 😊
6. Stop & re-evaluate ✋
See if there’s any interest in what you wrote.
Even if you made sure that DAO X is a good fit for your DAO, doesn’t mean that YOUR DAO is also a good fit for them. The relationship is not symmetrical (👈 this is crucial).
Hence, if nobody responds to your message & nobody signals any interest in your org or its accomplishments, maybe it’s not a bridge worth building. 🤷♂️
Might also just be that they struggle with community management/engagement. Try to hang around discord, meet more people, join their calls, become a member, etc; feel the vibe!
Don’t assume things before you try things out first!
7. Maybe continue building 🤔
Like the vibes? Like the folx? Found ways to collaborate?
If you like being a part of this DAO & still think that a bridge is worth building, gather some courage and suggest it to one of the core members.
Ask them whether they’re interested in joining your community and getting involved with your work.
If yes - make sure you have a systematic way of onboarding DAO representatives/delegates. Lead them to a well-written doc, a landing page or a well-curated Discord onboarding procedure.
Bridgebuilding and onboarding are BFFs!
8. Follow-up 🗣️
The thing is, even the people with the best intentions will probably need another poke or two before they actually read your docs & discuss them with their DAO - especially if your DAO’s standards are too high.
Don’t be aggressive or enervating. If someone tells you they will check out the doc, give them 2-3 days before following up to ask whether they have any thoughts about it & whether they want to proceed with joining or not. In the meantime, if they get back to you themselves, great!
But if you’re constantly finding yourself having to poke them, maybe they are just not as interested as they initially seemed - that’s a okay!
You can ask them whether they’ve changed their mind about wanting to join from time to time, but make sure to avoid overdoing it at all costs. There is a thin line between communications and pestering so make sure you play on the safe side.
Pro tip: Practice the art of letting go and leaving be. As a DAO, follow the path of the TAO 🧘
9. Make the communities meet 🤗
The first step to actually building a bridge is not simply fulfilling all the requirements, it’s having the communities actually meet each other.
You should invite them to present their DAO to your community & bring some of their community members in da haus.
Pro tip: have a typeform or airtable to send them, to automate the process, save time and minimize the chance of ignoring important information.
Afterward, don’t forget to ask them whether they want you to visit them.
10. Plan the meetup 👥
See whether there’s interest from your community in hosting the community you invited.
Whether yes or no, make sure to communicate that to the person you contacted!
If the response was positive, reach out to social media folks in your community to spread the word that worlds will collide in your Discord’s voice channel! 💥
Make sure to send them a calendar invite, with all the information about the time, date, themes and participants. Calendly is your friend but if you want the web3 experience go with meetwithwallet.
11. Use the opportunity 💬
If you invite someone to your bridging event - make sure you are there personally.
It’s on you to welcome them, introduce them & keep the conversation or questions going if everyone goes silent. A bridge-builder is also a good facilitator.
Most importantly:
Use the opportunity to discuss different ways that the communities could collaborate, how your DAO could help them & how they could help yours.
Because, other than a good facilitator, a bridge-builder is also a good negotiator.
🗳️ 12. Let the communities decide
After the communities meet at least once, it is time to set up a vote on whether your community wants to collaborate with them or not. They may or may not want to do the same (remember 6.)
If the vote is negative, make sure to let them know.
If the vote is positive...
🏃 13. Keep going!
Keep it up, you can now ride a whole truck on this bridge!
At this point, it is time to go back and make sure that they stick to the terms of your agreement.
It is not a hard requirement to have them buy your token or a membership NFT, but one important showcase of their good nature would be that they donate to a good non-crypto initiative (something ecological or philanthropic, preferably through Giveth)
Once you are sure they are philosophically aligned, put a ring on them and make sure they officially become DAO members/partners 🎉
✅ Done?
Not exactly!
Bridges need to be maintained or they fall…
Make sure you keep the communication channels open by:
Making Twitter threads about common issues and tagging them
Offer to test their products/new updates pre-release and make sure you provide fruitful feedback
Organize events together (such as Twitter spaces or Metaverse gatherings)
Make a platform for the devs/designers/strategists to meet and work together
Make your DAO-2-DAO bridge into a DAO Circle and promote ecosystem collaboration
Thank you & wish you all the best! ❤️
⛓ Chainlog
🤝🏽 Community
Anna and tommy set up the April 29 Community call, which featured:
superpatx_ of Giga R&D, talking about the vital importance of marketing in web3 and how play the market-fit game
st0icescu, jphfritsche, and corinnaschlicht of LifeLiveDAO talked about borderless, decentralized entertainment, showcasing their live streaming platform and letting everybody’s jaw drop to the (dance)floor
cyberWarlock did a Blender workshop with help from b0gie, facilitated by tommy, which ended up in cyberWarlock and b0gie nerding out with each other’s blender wizardry for a good 2 hours 😂
3D Sculpting is like visual AMSR, I swear… Sunday Fundays are back with new and exciting events and workshops that will be going through MetaFest2! Next session by lanmower will be on Ableton Live 🎛
UniPuff has been experimenting with new open-review processes turning the writer’s guild channel into a collective editing space!
🎉MetaFest2, June 9-23
The crew is getting busy and the MetaFest2 landing page is officially up (although some features are still in 🅱️eta)!
Mega props to luxumbra, for the sleepless nights hacking non-stop at one of web3’s most beautiful websites!
If you would like to explore MetaGame in the Metaverse, take a tour of our CryptoVoxels virtual space with tenfinney’s Youtube walkthrough.
Big props to festival maestro tommy and metaverse maven Musashi13, plus luxumbra, tenfinney, prettyscone shans, TYMED, Misanth, cyberWarlock, CrisLeash, Bagholder McFomo III, ohnevie, raw szab0gie, ApeironCreations, Web Three Prophet, and Anna—the amount of work going into the preps means the festival is sure to be spectacular.
Want in? Apply here.
🤵 MetaFest2 Job Fair
Web Three Prophet has been working on one of the most important aspects of MetaFest2, getting people in web3 in contact with available positions and utilizing the talents of the ecosystem!
If you are a DAO hiring and would like to advertise your open positions in the coolest way possible, see the available spaces in this doc and fill out this form 👈
More on the community side,
Misanth reappeared after an Amsterdam excursion and got back to business, onboarding clueless Octos we have confused by our wiki 👋
eowulia has started doing some necromancy rituals.💀 Will you be revived from the ded or will your soul be purged forever?
Props to TYMED for getting active in MetaGame
Web Three Prophet … Golden Fam oh yeah! 🥇🥇🥇
📱 Technology
🧙♂️ luxumbra attempted to dodge praise and props for all the programming magic over the last fortnight—ser, we disallow all such modesty 😁😁
Some MetaGamers were part of a crew that won Challenge #5: Create NFT infrastructure and tools that automatically offset the carbon footprint in the RefiDAOist Planet Positive NFT Hackathon. This way they also brought new life to an abandoned raid; enacting regenerative practices!
If you are interested, check out their work on ReVesture—take a look at the ReVesture website, big up tommy, luxumbra, Musashi13, ApeironCreations, raw szab0gie, arsenijesavic, and tenfinney.
🔗 Quest Chains questing system
vid, dan13ram, Dave, UniPuff and biux continued working on the questing system.
Landing page design work by biux
User story map by Dave
dan13ram set up and deployed a site with its own domain
vid did a presentation of this app to MetaGamers
UniPuff started working on the grant proposal for the app
roadmap defined for next release & prepared for the following 2 releases
More on the tec side,
Polimyl resurrected our poor old Ceramic node.
Alec applied more general tech wizardry – Moving the MyMeta staging and production frontend deployments to Google Cloud Run in order to escape from the damp clutches of Vercel, amongst other things. Do you read Pull Requests for fun? Take a look here
dysbulic and tenfinney kept on with pair programming on Chievmints, SourcCred as well as new and experimental NFT-related projects. Drop in on the next one to get schooled.
🍰 Content
prettyscone shans is killing it as a new Writer/Shiller 🔥🔥🔥 Now with Twitter admin super powers. You’ve seen the tweets, you’ve read the words, now you know. (Powers unlocked by Musashi13, solid recruiting ser)
CrisLeash made posters and artwork for MetaFest2 and Sunday Funday, using bespoke graphics from luxumbra’s hands. 🤚🤚
prettyscone shans and tommy worked on a new Twitter strategy and UniPuff jumped in to add some wits to the tweets.
And on a more meta note, HHH keeps on working with UniPuff on newsletters after peth stepped down.
🌱 Growth
Lots of “IRL shilling” went on at DevConnect Amsterdam. Nice one, peth, Misanth, UniPuff, and eowulia
tommy worked on raising awareness of MetaGame and MetaFest2 during various hackathons and podcasts
DAOQuest (now Quest Chains) funding application with NEAR is changing to Aurora grant proposal
Web Three Prophet continued to work on recruiting and well-being
peth set up a new check-in call to keep us on the roadmap
⚔️ MetaAlliance
Joshua Lapidus, the Executive Steward of Community at Opolis, presented on DAOs for C4
Learn about Regen Economies being Schelling Points in this Giveth mega-thread, and watch a longer talk on the topic on Youtube
1Hive + Arbitrum = Arbritrum Odyssey (More on their Medium blog)
The Commons Stack celebrates their successful Giveth funding proposal
TokenEngineering started a series of TE Fundamentals sessions for the APAC timezone crew
Panvala and Opolis teamed up to make sets of stamp NFTs. Refer new members to join Opolis to collect your stamp; visit Panvala Stamps for more info
Giveth GIVbacks—claim your rewards for contributions to verified Giveth projects
BloomNetwork previews their cooperatively owned social media network, and yep they’re using MyMeta as part of that
MetaFactory teams up with KrauseHouse, a community of NBA fans crazy enough to buy and operate an NBA team as a DAO.
Continue with part 2 of CRE8R DAO’s Infinity Skies fanfic video story
MetaFactory buyers and designers can claim $ROBOT at my.metafactory.ai
🎩 Open Roles 🎩
The above made you want to jump in & do shit? 🙃
Here are some of the open roles 👇
🐙 Normal Roles
Normal roles are entry-level roles that anyone can take on without committing too much time or taking on too much responsibility.
Technical:
🛠️ Builder - Are you a TypeScript wiz, a React.js virtuoso or maybe a data structures nerd? Frontend or backend, devs and coders are the life-blood of this space and the doors are always open if you are one. Come and introduce yourself in 🛠️-builders-guild or get right into the action😇
🐛 Bughunter - Do you get high by obsessing over fixing stuff? Then this role is for you!! Come and introduce yourself in 🐞-bughunters-guild or get right into the action😇
Funding:
💸 Creative Funding Guru - Come up with inventive ways to monetize content and create revenue streams while ensuring public access and avoiding paywalls.
Content Creation:
🔍 Journalist - Research and collect info about happenings in web3 and its relation to “the world at large” for our newsletters, articles and Twitter posts.
📰 Blogster - Are you into technical writing or more into fiery polemic texts? Whatever it is, the only true requirements are quality, nuance and alignement. Join our ever-expanding publications of over 4000 subs! Introduce yourself in 📝-writers-guild, or DM UniPuff 🜐.
🎨 Graphic Designer - We're trying to make MetaGame into "an intersection of technology, philosophy & art". Well, we need more art! There is no lack of art that needs to be made, just ask about it in 🎨-artists-guild
Community Management:
🤗 Innkeeper - Onboard new Octos and organize events. Good facilitation skills are a must!
Marketing and Social Media:
📣 Shiller - Promote MetaGame and its products in any adjacent DAO or the crypto community and keep the social media audience engaged.
💩 Shitposter - Come up with dank memes & witty twits to post on Twitter, drop in 🐤-tweet-arena
🧠 Educator Come up with useful knowledge & tips and construct engaging threads for Twitter, drop in 🐤-tweet-arena
🐙🐙 Deputy roles
Deputy roles are more important, thus come with some responsibility & commitment. You will be working with Champions.
Technical:
🧚 XP Fairy - This one's for those who get frustrated with the injustices in the XP system. Sourcecred is great but it's not a panacea & there are problems that can be fixed, things that can get balanced! Ask 🤗-innkeepers-guild & help!
Community Management:
🤗 Innkeeper’s Guild Deputy - Make sure the community is tight AF!! Plan and organize events, facilitate the onboarding of new octos and ensure that important information gets communicated to all guilds. You will be working closely with the Guild’s Champion with the expectation of becoming one yourself! If that tingles your jingles, introduce yourself to the 🤗-innkeeper’s-guild.
🙌 Meetup Master - To help with organizing community events with the focus on workshops - facilitating knowledge exchange by scheduling workshops based on 🧠-brain-exchange
Content Creation:
✍️ Writers’ Guild Deputy - Words are one “s” away from swords and we need people that can wield them with mastery. There is a lot to write about and there are newly concocted editorial processes to be tested out. If fancy yourself as a mighty wordsmith, introduce yourself in 📝-writers-guild
Marketing and Social Media:
📈 Market Researcher - Do you have an eye for trends? Do you have the ability to peek into the web3 hive-mind and eavesdrop on its thought? MetaGame needs you ASAP! We may have hardworking devs and ambitious content creators but we do lack the wisdom of the streets! If you are up for a challenge, drop a few lines about you in 📣-shillers-guild.
🐙🐙🐙 Champion roles
Champion roles are of the highest importance and highest commitment & responsibility roles. There are requirements that need to be taken seriously.
Technical:
🤖 Bot Army - Bot army champion does what bot army champions do - work on bots. The needs for bots are many & varied, there is much to do. Humorous and witty hxmans are encouraged to apply
🛠️ Builders’ Guild Champion 👀 - Michiel has some real-life shit coming up soon, looking for someone to carry the Builders Guild torch, run meetings & organize sprints.
👩🏼💼 MyMeta PM - If you feel like you are up for a challenge, you are welcome to disentangle the overly-ambitious mess that is MyMeta and help make a user-friendly product that will revolutionize decentralized collaboration.
✊ Les Go!
Don’t let the Bear market eat all your honey, build bridges and let’s make it together!
We Are Gonna Mess Make It
Much love💙
- UniPuff & HHH
Absolutely ready to build some strong bridges! Working on building with Metafest2 this year and learning how to is part the process ! See everyone soon !