Carrot DAO

For those not familiar with DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization), they are a new governance mechanism used by Web3 communities to enable token holders to democratically participate in the management and direction of a token’s ecosystem. No single individual, business, institution or central bank should be able to control or manipulate the community or its token economy. The goal is for the network to ultimately be completely community-owned and led, and thus fully decentralized. While still in its infancy, we believe DAOs are the future organizational management system for many applications and offer the opportunity to quickly build large collaborative networks of like-minded people, businesses and organizations that work together to deliver products, services, and important change initiatives. The goal, as eloquently put by the a16z team, is to create “a functional decentralized economy built on shared infrastructure, which will in turn lead to a far more expansive and richer ecosystem than any individual company would be capable of building alone.”[75] However, in order to address some of the growing pains and systemic risk created by fully decentralized governance in early-stage projects, the Carrot Fndn’s founding team is adopting a progressive decentralization process that will lead to successful project startup and also, in time, attain full decentralization, both from a technology perspective as well as with “off-chain activities”[76]

Until the $CARROT network is able to establish product market fit, financial sustainability and robust community governance, the development of the network will be led primarily by the Carrot Fndn with the introduction of democratically voted directives of the Carrot DAO being built in progressively. Carrot DAO directives will be voted upon through a systematic approval process using Carrot Protocol Improvement Proposals (CIP) that will be moderated both by the Carrot Fndn and democratically elected internal bodies at the Carrot DAO that will ensure the directives are aligned with the mission of the foundation and not malicious or detrimental to the ecosystem growth and product development. As Carrot progresses towards becoming decentralized, CIPs will gain more scope in their functions and the Carrot DAO will obtain more control and autonomy. The Carrot DAO will also be tasked with pursuing the foundational mission and aim to grow the $CARROT economy into a global, fully decentralized zero waste solution. Participation will be open to all and governance rights are obtained through ownership of $CARROT tokens, which can be earned through sorting and recycling work, or by purchasing tokens in the open market.

75. A16z - Progressive Decentralization: A playbook for Building Crypto Applications by Jesse Walden, p.17

76. Variant Fund - Sufficient Decentralization: A Playbook for web3 Builders and Lawyers by Marc Boiron, Chief Legal Officer at dYdX Trading