How Oghenekaro Elem found a way to add value to DAOs
DAOs are the future of work, and Karo shares some insight into how new entrants can find a valuable place in the burgeoning industry
The Web3 space is populated by various skilled professionals, but creators and collectors are often highlighted in the industry owing to the growing popularity of the NFT market. But there’s more to the Web3 space than art.
The Faces of Web3 community is providing the platforms and information Africans need for a better life. To achieve this, we’re building a vast storage of information by writing introductory articles, hosting Twitter spaces, and inviting key players to share their experiences in the Web3 space so far.
In our search for key players in the Web3 space, we spoke to Karo, a Governance Analyst who specialises in decentralised governance and digital ethnography at Messari. Messari is the leading provider of market intelligence that drives high-conviction participation in the crypto economy.
With a background in economics and finance, Karo has also made useful contributions to Aragon DAO, an open-source software used to maintain and create decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) on the Ethereum blockchain.
Karo tells his story to Esther of Faces of Web3 about how contributing to Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), members-owned communities that have no centralised leadership, and eventually joining Messari has impacted his life.
Karo’s venture into crypto
My name is Elem Oghenekaro—most people just call me Karo. I’ve been working at Messari for about nine months now.
Messari is a premier location for anything crypto. So, it was really exciting to get the opportunity to work on the first governor product in the crypto space.
I was on the governor’s team when the Messari Governor product launched in December 2021. It’s been an interesting journey so far, and I’m excited to share it with you.
My first venture into crypto was in 2018 after I’d just finished university. I’d been hearing people talk about it since 2017 when I was in university, but I wanted to be in a more stable position before taking the risk.
After school, I was working in Lagos when a blockchain group came up. I joined one or two groups to learn more about cryptocurrency. That was when I first bought Ethereum. I think I was lucky because it doubled my money. So, I started researching to learn more about crypto.
Most people’s perception of cryptocurrency was just around finance. So, when I wrote a 2020 article about how crypto can be used in the agriculture field, it was a hit.
All of a sudden, a lot of people were asking me, “Hey Karo, how does this work?” I got a lot of questions around crypto application to agriculture, and I had to do a lot of explaining. To explain properly, I had to understand the concept better, so that meant I had to do more research.
That was how I discovered governance and DAOs.
Expanding his knowledge to DAOs
As I was doing my research, I found out that many crypto projects involved making decisions. They weren’t just about buying and selling tokens, but people were using these tokens to make decisions.
I wanted to understand how that worked. At the time, I was about to start my master’s programme. I’d applied to study Innovation and Technology Management.
Crypto and DAOs made the perfect place where people made decisions. I became super interested in DAOs, so I joined Aragon Network. It had a platform where anyone could set up a DAO easily, and it provided a framework for DAOs.
It was in the Aragon community that I learned to build my skills and knowledge on crypto before I joined Messari.
Adding value to the DAO community
When I joined the Aragon community, a lot of members were trying to engage the new people hopping into Discord. But no one had the sole responsibility of showing people around and getting them to understand how Discord worked.
The community had between 5,000 and 7,000 members, and newcomers didn’t know who to mention. There were no community managers to organise the Discord and put things in place; we were discovering as we went.
I took it upon myself to engage new members and explain some things to them. I also connected them to the right people on the Discord channel and the threads relating to what they were looking for.
That way, there was no repetition of information, and they could find things easily. That was how I found how to add value to the team.
Finding your way into tech
Tech isn't just about coding; it goes beyond design and coding.
One of the most important skills anyone should learn if they’re getting into governance and crypto is to be self-directing. You have to find a vacuum and try to fill it. It’s almost like entrepreneurship but slightly different because, in this case, you’re in an environment where a lot of people are trying to do different things that are very unstructured.
There are no defined rules, there are no defined regulations, and there’s no clear path on what you should do or how you can do things. It is your number one responsibility as a contributor in any of those governance DAOs to figure out what is required and what needs to be done.
Understanding DAOs
Decentralisation means distributed authority, not a lack of authority. This is because there are key people who can gear decisions—no single person can have a final say.
In centralised organisations, decisions are finalised by the CEO or the board, for instance. But in a decentralised governance organisation, you’ve to finalise decisions from the ground up and not top down.
In DAOs, many decisions can be decentralised.
Some DAOs are trying to create a new, more efficient system by creating sub-DAOs with specific roles that attend to a situation, or by creating work streams with leadership.
Others have a kind of governance where, when there's no objection, a decision is made. They engage just a few people who are very skilled and are specialists. If there’s an objection to a decision, then it is reviewed.
An example is treasury management, which is a very critical part of the DAO structure. Groups could delegate it to those specific people who will create a budget, and another group to execute it and disburse the funds.
Many DAOs are just starting up; many are just a year old, and that means a lot of decisions would still be at the founders’ level. They’re the core contributors, and the people at the heart of it have to make decisions that would allow the organisation to grow. Very important decisions have to be made quickly in crypto.
It is a lot of work. A lot of DAOs are still very young, and there’s no one structure that would work for everybody. There are so many good governance structures if you take your time to learn governance styles. You’ll have to find the perfect structure for yours.
The keys to becoming a DAO contributor
A DAO is not a company where you have your roles written out for you. When you're engaging, you have to put yourself out there and show people you're reliable and have the community’s interests at heart.
For instance, you can read a document and explain it in simpler ways or do a thread about it so that others can understand it better. Or you could draw a graphical representation about how Discord works. People will find it very valuable and value you for that.
DAOs offer a lot of opportunities to people who add value to them.
You can go to a DAO’s bounty board, a centralised repository used to coordinate tasks and required talents with associated price tags, to look for what is interesting to you that you could contribute and make money for yourself. There are also a lot of things that can be done that aren’t on the bounty boards.
But bounty boards are the easy part. The not-so-easy part is you going into the community, participating, engaging people, finding what you can add value to, and carving a niche for yourself.
The Messari advantage
Messari Governor has painstakingly provided every information you need to know about DAOs, from articles to past proposals.
If you check Messari governance products, we’ve taken our time to explain how different structures work and how DAOs work. Anyone who's interested in DAOs could go over the governance product and see how they can contribute to them.
One way to contribute is to write, and you can only write if you read. There is a lot of new information coming in every day, and it's impossible to stay ahead of it. So, you have to set out time to catch up on everything and update your knowledge about the crypto space.
The most challenging part of this process, for me, is keeping up with Discord channels. To stay ahead, you have to keep up with updates on the governance structures. When there’s a change, we want to understand how it impacts the governance process, the quorum requirements for votes, how governance decisions impact the new structure in general, and update that to Messari Governor. Trying to manage all of that is quite challenging, but I think that's something anyone can handle because over time it becomes second nature.
Steps for new entrants to take
The world of crypto subsumes many interests, like politics, finance and NFTs. Anyone who wants to delve into crypto might have a particular interest in mind. For example, I was interested in the organisational structure, and I discovered Aragon provided the framework for that.
Artists who are specifically interested in NFTs can get involved in collector DAOs and NFTs. Those interested in games can join Magic or Treasure DAO.
Mind you, you don’t have to be specifically interested in something; these are just examples of where you could start from.
When you find a DAO you’re interested in or you want to grow in, you want to develop your knowledge of the space. The next easy step is to quickly discover how their governance structure works. You can choose to read their documentation or read our Messari Governance structure to understand how that governance structure works. That will give you a background knowledge of how DAO works.
The next part is trying to be more engaging on Discord. There are so many DAOs, and anyone coming into the space newly should focus on one. Build your knowledge from there.
For instance, declare an interest in a bounty and say you want to contribute to it. When it’s delegated to you, execute it properly. That way, they can consider you the next time there’s a bounty. It becomes very easy for them to rely on you to execute it. From there, you become a contributor, then a voter, and then a governance participant.
The next stage is making proposals. From posting these proposals, you can see if something is not right or if there’s a better way the DAO will make money from its treasury. Don't be afraid; don't take the backseat. Go out there.
Before you go out there, it's good to have supporters or sponsors that promote proposals. Start talking about it in a general channel on Discord or to people who have posted proposals. Delegates are people who are influential enough to make a proposal pass through. Some DAOs have delegates, and you may need to talk to a delegate as well. When you have those people behind you, it's very easy to post a proposal to a recognised forum.
At Messari, we see a lot of good proposals with potential, but they don't go to vote because the proposal creator didn't push for it or didn't involve stakeholders.
There are stakeholders who have been here for the longest period, who have built a good reputation for themselves, and have the interest of the organisation at heart. So, they are people we easily rely on when critical decisions are made.
When you make a proposal, engage the right people and your proposal will be pushed forward. If it passes the vote, that's even better for you; that means you've successfully proposed something.
Sometimes it's not always about making proposals. You can also review other people’s proposals.
If someone makes a proposal, and the DAO doesn't make the process for auditing it or smart contract change, you could take it upon yourself if you have the knowledge to audit those changes. You should also note how these changes would impact the project, how to mitigate the security risk, or just simply give your support.
Five things to know about Karo
He has an eclectic music taste: Kendrick Lamar, Tracy Chapman, Cautious Clay, Omah Lay, Burna Boy are some of the artists he’s listening to now.
He really likes 1980’s music; he finds the lyrics richer.
When he’s working, he doesn’t listen to music.
His busiest period is between early evenings and early mornings.
He has a favourite playlist with songs he’s currently listening to. You can check out song recommendations from some of our Faces HERE.
You can also follow Karo on Twitter, and stay up to date with Messari.
Thank you to:
💛Esther Eze for conducting this interview.
💛Senilore Oremodu for publishing.
💛Success for transcribing.