DPAY - A DAO Platform on Æternity

HomePage
Create DAO
DAO Settings
Create SubDAO
Send Fund
Create Proposal
Executed Proposal
Multi-Recipient Payment
Locked Time Payment
DAO Managment
Proposal Management
Treasury Tracking
Member Management
Remove Member

Inspiration

A DAO platform for managing payments and vesting can provide several benefits for an organization. Firstly, it can automate and streamline the payment process, making it faster, more efficient, and less prone to errors. Additionally, it can provide transparency and accountability, as all stakeholders can view the treasury and see where funds are being allocated. Moreover, it can enable decentralized decision-making, as proposals for payment and vesting can be submitted and voted on by members of the organization. This can lead to a more democratic and fair process, where everyone has a say in how funds are being used. Finally, a DAO platform can provide a secure and trustless environment, as transactions are recorded on a blockchain and cannot be altered or tampered with.

Overall, a DAO platform for managing payments and vesting can provide numerous benefits for an organization, including greater efficiency, transparency, accountability, and decentralization.

AEternity is a blockchain that is highly suitable for DAO development due to its low transaction fees, fast transaction confirmation times, thorough documentation, and supportive core development team.

What it does

DAO Management: DPAY provides users with the ability to create DAOs with various governance and voting options. Currently, DPAY only supports Multisig DAOs.
SubDAO Management: DPAY allows users to create SubDAOs within a DAO, and even SubDAOs within SubDAOs. This flexible feature provides a scalable solution for managing organizations of any size.
DAO/SubDAO Funding: Anyone can send funds to a DAO, and members can create funding proposals for the DAO.
Proposal Management: Members can create proposals for payment or vesting within a DAO
Treasury Tracking: All smart contracts do not have a withdraw function, therefore any expenditure must be approved based on proposals. Members can see how the treasury is being used.
Member Management: A DAO can manage, add, and remove its members, while anyone can join or leave a public DAO.
Instant Payment/ Locked Time Payment: A payment proposal supports two options for payout with multiple recipients.

How we built it

These are the steps we followed to build this application:

1: Read the Hackathon requirements and AEternity documentation
2: Research different DAO platforms on other blockchains.
3: Learn Sophia programming language
4: Write smart contracts for our DAO on AEternity and perform thorough unit tests to ensure their functionality and security.
5: Develop UI using React and Ant Design.
6: Improve UX, features and fix bugs

Challenges we ran into

Most of the challenges we faced were technical challenges.

DAO Architecture: Initially, we aimed to create a DAO platform that could cater to organizations of any size and purpose. However, we realized that building such a platform would be a complex task. Hence, we decided to start with a small and useful requirement. DPAY focuses on features related to payroll and vestings. Fortunately, we were able to complete the development of this application within the hackathon duration.
Learning Curve: Æternity is a blockchain that was completely new to us. Although Sophia is a useful and solid smart contract programming language, we spent more time than usual to understand and start coding on this platform.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Successfully completing the DPAY platform within the hackathon duration
Implementing complex smart contract logic using Sophia programming language
Creating a flexible DAO system that can adapt to different sizes of organizations
Integrating with the Æternity blockchain and testing on the mainnet
Adding features such as payment proposals with multiple recipients and vesting schedules
Solving technical challenges related to smart contract development and blockchain integration
Demonstrating the potential of the DPAY platform to contribute to the growth of the Æternity blockchain ecosystem

What we learned

During the development of this DAO platform, we learned a lot about the AEternity blockchain and the Sophia programming language. We gained a better understanding of smart contract development and learned how to build a functional application on a new blockchain platform.
One of the key things we learned was the importance of starting small and focusing on core features. Building a full-featured DAO platform is a complex undertaking, but by starting with a specific use case (payroll and vesting), we were able to create a useful application within the constraints of the hackathon timeline.

What's next for DPAY - A DAO Platform on Æternity

Although this application is already on the mainnet, there are still many things that we need to do. Therefore, we have a plan to implement the following works: