Welcome to the Soonaverse

You’ve probably been hearing a lot about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) lately. Some members of the IOTA Foundation have added “DAO” to their usernames, there’s a DAO Pioneers group that regularly meets, and we’ll soon have IOTA Community Treasury, Shimmer, and Assembly DAOs.

DAOs and Their Importance

What is a DAO and why are they so important? The best definition we’ve seen comes from Cooper Turley and that’s “an internet community with a shared bank account.” DAOs are a framework on which a new era of internet communities can be built. This framework includes digital tools to manage membership, governance, rewards, reputation, and the treasury for an organization that can run efficiently without legally binding nation-state contracts.

This new coordination mechanism is only possible through the advent of distributed ledger technologies. A layer of trust can now be removed and people from around the globe who have never met in the physical world can work together towards a common goal. This is revolutionary and will give rise to new organizations that reward all contributors with tokens, so everybody shares in the upside as the product/service gains in popularity.

Now the obvious question is, “How are all of these new DAOs we keep hearing about going to get set up and operate on the IOTA protocol?”

That’s where the Soonaverse comes in.

Our Platform

The Soonaverse is a decentralized platform for communities, enabling the seamless creation, management, and interoperability of DAOs, projects, and groups.

We provide all of the tools needed for a DAO to operate to its fullest potential. Here are some key terms:

Spaces:

• A Space is an interactive community hub where members who are interested in working toward a common goal can get together and organize themselves. This can start as a simple project with the option to evolve into a DAO.
• Members can join a space, discuss topics (SOON!), build and vote on proposals, reward fellow members for tasks completed and their contributions to the group. Awards are represented in the form of XP and Badges. Spaces can be public or private.

Members:

• Members are individuals who join a Space. An individual is simply an account on MetaMask (but in the future will be linked to Digital Identity) and can be affiliated with multiple spaces.
• Soon members will be able to receive Soonaverse Experience Tokens (XP) and collect various badges as NTTs (Non-transferable Non-Fungible Tokens).

Proposals:

• Proposals enable members of a space to contribute ideas that will guide the project forward. These proposals are authored by member(s) and then voted on by members of that Space.
• Voting can be configured by the author(s) to limit or control who can participate in a vote based on their badges and reputation. If the vote is passed, the space will implement the change or initiative outlined in the proposal.

Awards:

• An award is simply a combination of Experience Tokens (XP) with a Badge that is tied to the completion of a specific task, bounty, action etc.
• Various smart contract templates will be provided for communities to utilize.

Experience Tokens (XP):

• An ISCP smart contract wrapped token. XP is a smart asset that has the token locked in it to represent a form of tokenized reputation. It can only be earned and never bought.
• Each XP is equivalent to one token of the wrapped cryptocurrency, to ensure the value of the XP is pegged to the value of the underlying cryptocurrency.
• XP is awarded along with the badge through the Soonaverse. As soon as a contributor receives their XP, they have two options: 1) Burn the XP back into the cryptocurrency and spend it right away. 2) Pledge the XP to various members, projects, events to create interest (and in some cases get rewarded)

Badges:

• Badges are NTTs (Non-transferable Non-Fungible Tokens) and are earned through Awards.
• Badges can be bundled with XP. Badges convey a member’s skill, competency and commitment which helps establish reputation within the DAO/Soonaverse.
• Individual DAOs have the autonomy to create their own badges inside their communities as well as accepting badges from other DAOs.

Reputation:

• Reputation is what you’ve accomplished in the communities you chose to belong to. Reputation is a foundational component to any system because it gives your behavior, history and allows other users to quickly connect, trust, and interpret your intentions.
• A Soonaverse reputation is essentially YOU and what you’ve done in any and every DAO, every badge, every award that you’ve ever received, immutable and enshrined in the reputation ledger. Your reputation tells people what you want them to know about you, even if they don’t know who YOU really are.
• An additional component to the Soonaverse is that reputation has an actual “value” through XP and can be converted into tokens and/or used to leverage influence in any DAO on the platform.

The Soonaverse Platform

Today, we are launching the Alpha version of the Soonaverse Platform. We are excited to show you the result of our work and effort in bringing “one-click” DAO creation, management, and reputation to the IOTA community.

Some things to note before you enter the Soonaverse:

All of the data you create in the Soonaverse will be ported over to ISCP (IOTA Smart Contracts Protocol) once ISCP is properly audited and production ready.

You’ll need to have MetaMask installed to use the Soonaverse. If you need help getting that set up then join our Discord for additional help: https://discord.gg/ez7mK9bAyz

The current version of the Soonaverse is DESKTOP ONLY. A mobile version of the app will be available SOON.

We engage in 2-week development sprints, so we make continuous updates and feature additions to the app. Information on how to join our community, and submit suggestions are included at the end of this article.

Some suggested actions when you join the Soonverse:

1. Connect your MetaMask account

2. Create a profile and mint your NFT Avatar after logging in with MetaMask

3. You will need a badge to build a Space. So be sure to request a “Build a space” badge from the Innovators Awards in the SoonLabs Welcome Space.

4. Join a few spaces

5. Participate in some awards and proposals

6. Create a space

7. Create some awards

8. Create some proposals — experiment with different voting types.

Three ways to join the SoonLabs Community

Please join our Discord and help us improve and iterate the Soonaverse. We want your DAO to be the best in the industry, tell us what you need to achieve that. We want to know what you think!

Visit our Github to submit feature suggestions, issues or stay up to speed on our development. You can also access our Soonaverse Litepaper if you are interested in a more detailed technical explanation of the platform.

Also, don’t forget to read our Manifesto to understand our vision for SoonLabs and our DAOs.

The Soonaverse is the result of countless hours of work and collaboration between the SoonLabs team, community partners, and members of the IF, but we have been missing one critical component in that process and that’s YOU!

You can make this platform the operating standard for all DAOs because you understand what it means to leverage the IOTA network, it’s fast, it’s secure and it makes voting free. Together we can build, we just need your voice, your passion, your vision to make it whole.

Welcome to the Soonaverse: https://soonaverse.com/