I set up a new experimental DAO on Base yesterday – BASED MINGOS – and had a true realization of the power of L2s. And it’s a game changer for me and anyone in higher ed teaching blockchain.
When Nouns Builder launched at the end of October 2022, I deployed one of the first DAOs on mainnet – Just the Flamingo. (sidebar: YES I do have a small obsession with the Nouns Flamingo head but more on that at another time.) It cost .148 eth ($248) to deploy at that time. Although Nouns Builder didn’t charge any fees, and gas was fairly low at the time, there were still some costs to deploy.
Yesterday I launched Based Mingos (yes, more nounish flamingos!) on Base, an L2 chain by Coinbase. The cost difference stunned me! I launched this DAO during the DAO workshop in the Nouns Builder discord. It took about 30 minutes to do while explaining the process and answering questions. So yes, it is also fast if you have your art ready and have determined your set-up parameters ahead of time. The cost to deploy was .008 Base eth ($13.78). WOW! This is an amazing savings for deploying a DAO!
More importantly, the reduced cost for voting and proposing now makes onchain DAOs actually affordable for non-profits and education. When I originally started my blockchain class in January 2022, I had wanted to create a DAO with my students. It would have been clunky so we never did. Even creating an NFT collection was challenging. Manifold was still in beta and I don’t think Zora was live yet. We ended up using Factoria but it did take some student devs to pull it off. Now we have so many easy to use tools, this has opened up more possibilities.
But still the challenge has been getting eth to the students and having enough to really explore onchain. It’s cost prohibitive even with free mints. And would be unworkable for DAO voting, settling auctions, proposing.
But now we are talking pennies! I submitted a proposal with 15 transactions (to airdrop Based Mingos to Just the Flamingo holders) and the cost was .00046 – or about 77 cents. I expect voting to be even less! And I realized that now we can create a DAO for the class, provide a small amount of Base eth to each student, and allow them to actually transact onchain with minimal cost. This helps to bring it all to life!
They will also be able to create their own NFTs via Zora’s Base L2 and mint other students’ work. In previous semesters, I’ve selected one student’s work to deploy as an NFT. Now they ALL can! This is huge!
For BuilderDAO, this also makes it much more affordable and feasible to seed DAOs and help them get off the ground. One of the challenges DAOs that started on mainnet had was keeping auctions going when gas was high. If it costs more to settle than the actual cost of the auction, the economics don’t make sense. And no one wants to spend eth to vote. With minimal transaction fees, a DAO could even do voter refunds and cover settlement.
As I’ve been developing and teaching my Blockchain Applications class and my new NFTs and the Metaverse class, I’ve planned to develop that curriculum to share with other educators. This makes it feasible to do now and to provide guidance on the experiential side. Doing is always better than just talking about it. Learning only solidifies when you practice it. And L2’s will help make that happen.
Happy onchain summer indeed!
Mint this fun Nounish DAO pac-man edition on Base via Zora. Funds will go towards DAO education.
AND join me for another workshop next week in the Nouns Builder discord!
discord link:…
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