What is MoonDAO - Deep Dive

Access to space has for years been only available to select government agencies, corporations, and CEOs. Thanks to blockchain technology, there’s a DAO that is committed to breaking the space barrier. MoonDAO is a DAO seeking to decentralize access to space. MoonDAO’s mission is to create a self-sustaining, self-governing settlement on the Moon by 2030 to act as a launch point for humanity to explore the cosmos.

The mission statement of MoonDAO stems from its core values of believing that space access should be available for everyone and not to a select group of CEOs or private entities. MoonDAO seeks to break this barrier by committing resources to funding individuals to go to space and fund future space research and exploration. Additionally, MoonDAO has been putting together a community of builders, scientists, engineers, artists, philosophers, lawyers, and everyday people committed to the mission of MoonDAO. 

Let’s dive deeper into MoonDAO and explore the structure, projects, and progress in its mission to decentralize space.

Organizational Structure

MoonDAO organizes itself into two major organizational structures, MoonDAO Projects and MoonDAO Guilds.

MoonDAO Projects

MoonDAO Projects are non-perpetual, goal-based teams in that the community votes to act as trusted executors on behalf of the DAO to complete an objective. These projects play an essential role in the overall goal of MoonDAO. These projects must meet certain criteria to be considered and voted on by the MoonDAO community. 

Here are some examples of ongoing projects of MoonDAO: 

  • MoonDAO Legal Entity As A Marshall Island DAO LLC: A project that seeks for MoonDAO to register itself as a legal entity in the Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) as a Nonprofit DAO. The benefits include having the necessary structure for MoonDAO to buy property, hire contractors, and own land and IP. 
  • The spacecapsule.eth Program: This project’s goal calls for using various forms of keypair cryptography, leverage the secure physical storage of private keys on a satellite to demonstrate the continuous accessibility of the associated public keys on their respective blockchains, with the intent to create a multiplanetary trusted setup as the backbone information network for a multiplanetary economy.
  • 101.xyz Course Proposal: The project’s goal is to create an educational program so people will better understand MoonDAO and how to contribute. The program could help members slowly get onboarded to MoonDAO in small steps.

MoonDAO Guilds

Think of MoonDAO guilds as a preparation station before launch. MoonDAO Guilds are talent pools to onboard, orient, and train members to complete bounties for MoonDAO projects. While anyone can apply to join a Guild, they must first be interviewed by the Guild Stewards, who manage the Guilds and are responsible for ensuring that prospective members have the necessary skills relevant to their guild. Guild Stewards also have an important job to ensure that Guild members are properly trained and ready to get started on MoonDAO bounties and projects. 

Listed below are examples of the types of Guilds you can expect to find in the MoonDAO Discord: 

  • Space Engineering Guild - This guild is for both experienced space engineers and promising engineers that want to make a transition into space engineering. They focus on incubating proofs-of-concept for moonshots that can be developed into full MoonDAO projects and, eventually, subDAOs. 
  • Developers Guild - This guild is for MoonDAO web development. It spans web2 and web3. Anything from novel mechanics for governance, incentives, finance, to landing pages, documentation, and dashboards for MoonDAO members. 
  • Community Guild - This guild focuses on internal operations at MoonDAO and the engagement of MoonDAO members. This is a meta MoonDAO guild that focuses on improving MoonDAO processes and reducing bureaucracy. This guild helps organize information to make MoonDAO efficient and reduce bottlenecks for contributors. 
  • Growth Guild - This guild focuses on increasing MoonDAO’s footprint in the world. Everything from marketing, onboarding, and targeted growth of different guilds.

MoonDAO Roles

Members of MoonDAO can take on certain roles depending on their eligibility and experience. Here is a breakdown of the types of roles that the MoonDAO offers.

Astronauts

Astronauts are part of the MoonDAO and Senate and are trusted members of the DAO responsible for externally representing MoonDAO’s mission and values. They are also in charge of providing leadership to the DAO internally, and the DAO will only consist of three astronauts maximum. Astronauts are elected for a 2-year term and are eligible to serve multiple terms as long as they receive ⅔ of the token majority.

Rocketeers 

Rocketeers are stewards of a Project at MoonDAO and are responsible for the execution of critical objectives for the DAO. They are elected after the passing of a project proposal and serve in the Senate until the end of the quarter that their project ends or if the Senate decides to end the project. 

Treasury Signers

Treasury Signers serve the executive branch of the MoonDAO and are responsible for signing off on the MoonDAO treasury. Treasury signers are appointed by the Astronauts, and approved by the Senate and Member House with ⅔ majority vote and 5/7 approval by the treasury signers. There is no limit to the length of time a member can serve as a multi-signature member, and there will only be seven signers, with an execution threshold of five people.

Guild Stewards


Guild Stewards are in charge of leading a guild and are responsible for onboarding, orienting, and training their guild members. They act as the point of contact for the guild and manage guild-related activities. Guild Stewards have a responsibility to provide monthly updates to the DAO in which their work is assessed. 

Guild Stewards are elected by the Senate and initially serve for one quarter. After that, the Senate votes on extending the Guild, and if passed, Guild Stewards will serve on a one-year term. After one year, the DAO must conduct an election to determine the guild steward for the next term. Guild stewards can remain in their position for multiple terms if they win the election.

MoonSettlers

MoonSettlers are members of the MoonDAO that work on projects. They are appointed positions by the Rocketeers. MoonSettlers have certain expectations that need to be met on their work progress, otherwise, they risk being removed from the project. As a MoonSettler, you can take on multiple projects as long as you meet the requirements.

MoonDAO Governance Structure 

MoonDAO operates by a DAO constitution that sets the foundation of a governing structure to help efficiently run the DAO. MoonDAO has a governing structure comparable to how the United States government operates. Listed below consists of the three governing bodies of the MoonDAO.

The MoonDAO Senate: This group of contributors reviews incoming Proposals and performs due diligence before it goes up for vote for the rest of the DAO. The Senate consists of Astronaturs and Rocketeers, elected members of the MoonDAO. Each Senate member has the right to only one vote, even if they lead multiple projects. The Senate first votes on proposals before being presented to the MoonDAO Member House.

Members House: This house is composed of all the DAO members. To be a DAO member, a user needs to hold a wallet-bound $vMOONEY which can be received by staking $MOONEY. Members with $250,000 $VMOONEY can submit proposals directly to the MoonDAO Senate.

Executive Branch: The executive branch consists of the treasury signers who can execute the proposals from the Gnosis Treasury. Signers’ identities must be made public by the DAO and must have at least 250,000 $vMOONEY.

Proposal Flow

To get a proposal approved by the MoonDAO, it must go through the following steps: 

  1. Creation: Any MoonDAO member may create a proposal. To begin, you create a post in the “ideation” forum and get feedback on your initial proposal from community members. Currently, MoonDAO accepts two proposal types: Project Proposals and Guild Proposals. You may find proposal templates in the project system and guild system.
  2. Awareness: Once a proposal is ready to submit, a MoonDAO Delegate (anyone with 250,000 vMOONEY) may submit the proposal to the MoonDAO Senate on your behalf.
  3. Approval: The Senate will do a due-diligence on the proposal, if the proposal receives more than 70% approval, it moves to all the vMOONEY holders. Seats in the senate can not be bought, the Senate is composed of people leading MoonDAO projects.
  4. Voting: The vMOONEY holders vote on the proposal, if more than 70% agree, it goes to the on-chain treasury for signing.
  5. Signed: The Treasury signers execute the proposal’s on-chain components (sending funds, or implementing an on-chain update to the DAO’s functions).

Proposals

MoonDAO has passed numerous proposals since it was first formed. A list of all the proposals can be found on snapshot. It should be noted that just because the proposal has been passed, it still needs to be passed by the MoonDAO members' house and signed by the executive branch. 

Here is a list of some of the notable proposals that have been passed:

  • MoonDAO Token Listing: A proposal that would allow  $MOONEY to be listed on centralized exchanges. The idea behind the proposal is that it would help generate more attention toward MoonDAO.  
  • Agreement of method for payment to Blue Origin: The passed proposal set up a payment procedure with one of the MoonDAOs elected members to serve as an intermediary between MoonDAO and Blue Origin Space.
  • MoonDAO Constitution: Voting on the first irritation of the MoonDAO constitution. 

What is $MOONEY

$MOONEY serves as the governance token for the MoonDAO. Anyone that holds $MOONEY can vote and shape the direction of the MoonDAO. To vote, holders need to stake $MOONEY in exchange for VMOONEY (voting MOONEY). 

$MOONEY can be earned by working for the MoonDAO, or it can be bought on decentralized exchanges. 

$MOONEY Token Distribution Facts  (As Of 12/4/22) 

Approximately 50% of the $MOONEY tokens are held in the treasury. 

Market Cap: Unknown

Fully Diluted Valuation: $14,681,803

Circulating Supply of Coins: Unknown

Total Supply: 2,618,632,244.61

Max Supply: 2,609,583,580

Recent Developments

MoonDAO breaks its roadmap into four main phases. 

  • Moon Phase 1: Deploy Decentralized Governance of MoonDAO.
  • Moon Phase 2: Send a MoonDAO member to space in 2022.
  • Moon Phase 3: Provide funding for space research and exploration.
  • Moon Phase 4: Put a MoonDAO Settlement on the Moon.
  • Moon Phase 5: Have sweet Moon parties (everyone's invited).

Currently, MoonDAO is in its’ third phase of the roadmap after successfully sending one of its MoonDAO members to space with the help of Blue Origin. Additionally, MoonDAO released its Ticket to NFT collection - a free mint - for the chance to win a ticket to space. The MoonDAO ran an on-chain chainlink VRF function to select the winner. The winner was Yan Kejun, Yan is a father of three from mainland China working in e-commerce and will be flying on a future Blue Origin New Shepard flight.

MoonDAO will now be committed to spending most of its time on funding space research and exploration. Some of the proposed ideas include; a MoonDAO community-built satellite, a decentralized bounty force for aerospace companies, and a MoonDAO metaverse.

Project Information

Founder: Pablo Moncada-Larrotiz - https://twitter.com/LarrotizPablo

 

Token Social Media:

Coin Type: Governance Token  

Utilities

  • Ability to vote in the MoonDAO 

Token Blockchain Ethereum blockchain 

Project Details: https://docs.moondao.com/

Treasury: https://dashboard.moondao.com/#/treasury

Projects:  https://dashboard.moondao.com/#/projects

Proposals: https://snapshot.org/#/tomoondao.eth


Q/A With The MoonDAO Community

Q/A With @Lavierup 

1. What made you attracted to MoonDAO?

A: I think I’m attracted to MoonDAO in several steps. Initially, I was attracted by its mission to send everyday people to space. I’ve been an amateur astronomer since childhood, I love outer space. Besides, MoonDAO’s mission is easy to understand, there are no deep concepts or terminology. Instead, it’s simple and exciting. After I joined the community, there were ups and downs. Because the project is empowered by crypto, and it was born in the early stage of a crypto bear market, early investors lost a lot of money in the investment, and their FUD emotions affected the project core team, I think some of the early team members left because of this. During this period, I stayed mostly because of Pablo, the founder of MoonDAO, he stuck to the way of being open, transparent, and democratic. He is a very nice and hard-working guy, he leads the team making everything he promised to come true. And now, I see the community growing rapidly, all the FUDs are gone, and everything is improving.

2. What are some of the amazing things that MoonDAO has done in your opinion?

A: For your second question, there are two important milestones that MoonDAO has achieved. First is that the community has voted and passed the project’s Constitution, which guarantees the decision-making process within the community. It tells all members how to join and make proposals and how to vote on the proposals, and in this way, the project grows. The second is sending people into outer space. This is what MoonDAO committed to doing when it was established. Although I think MoonDAO’s real mission and vision are far beyond this, sending people to space is a good way to make more people know us and join. As a Web3 project, we need to attract more people to join in, so that good ideas can emerge and push the project forward. Several other things are undergoing and will soon be accomplished, and they will be very supportive of MoonDAO in the next stage. Stay tuned.

Closing Remarks

While it’s still early in its development - MoonDAO has achieved significant milestones in its attempt to decentralize space. MoonDAO has created a community of like-minded individuals of all different occupations and skills that believe in the mission. One can argue that MoonDAO has helped bring positive attention to Web 3 and is a perfect example of what a strong mission statement and a passionate and effective community can achieve when structured under a DAO. 

Additionally, while some DAOs have struggled to find an effective method to operate and govern their members - MoonDAO’s constitution provides the foundation necessary to get things done. As MoonDAO continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how MoonDAO will rank with other industry leaders and organizations in space, such as Elon Musk, NASA, and Jeff Bezos.

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