FWB has quickly become one of the most exciting social experiments on the internet.

Friends with Benefits started as a private Discord server populated by our favorite thinkers and has since evolved into a global community bound together by shared values, shared incentives ($FWB) and shared IRL + URL experiences – all at the intersection of culture and crypto.

FWB Today

This is how the FWB DAO has developed to date.

• FWB was created by a core instigator who had a vision and began inviting close friends to a Discord.
• As friends brought more friends in, certain contributors began to step up and play lead roles to support growth.
• Those contributors became the first layer of Staff, incentivized by responsibility, status, and token grants.
• The group gradually transitioned to a DAO to manage a community treasury.
• Opportunities to get involved began to plateau as primary functions became filled and weren’t set up to scale.
• More one-off projects were proposed, but became difficult to manage.

FWB Tomorrow

As we head into Season 3, we’ve taken these learnings and built them into a clear participation framework. It prioritizes leads and active contributors, making it easier for community members to get involved.

This is reflected in four notable teams.

• Governance
• Board
• Team Leads
• Contributors

Governance consists of all $FWB holders who vote to ratify changes to the DAO through Snapshot and engage with our governance channel and forums. Any $FWB holder is eligible to vote on changes.

The Board is a mix of staff, community members, and advisors who focus on strategy as well as community participation and education. Advisors are incentivized by token holdings as well as community nominations with on-chain salaries.

Team Leads are specialized leaders that manage teams of contributors. Leads are selected based on track record of contribution for executing projects over sustained periods of time. Leads are empowered to set key priorities, allocate budgets for bounties or rewards, and ultimately are responsible for that team’s success. Leads are paid a USDC salary as well as a vested token grant to ensure accountability and reward innovation.

Contributors are the members that power each team – specialized token holders that join based on skills and interest. The teams that currently exist within FWB are Product, Editorial, and Membership. Contributors are compensated based on their level of contribution via social graphs and collective allocations.

How do these teams interact with each other?

• Community members have clear calls to action to join a team based on their skill sets and interests.

• Leads meet weekly with one another and relevant board advisors to share priorities, challenges, and KPIs.

• Leads and the Board report to Governance at large through monthly Town Halls providing all members progress updates and community discourse.

• Each team is given a seasonal budget based on Snapshot proposals. More value generated equates to bigger budgets for teams to hire and invest.

• Each team lead is assigned a fixed salary, while contributors share the remaining funds pro-rata based on their relative contributions.

• Contributors are compensated based on their value, using tools such as Coordinape or Sourcecred.

• New teams are proposed through governance by aspiring team leads.

• Success is measured by growth of community members that join and actively contribute to a team.

What improvements will this make?

Onboarding Funnels
Community members will have clearer lanes to participate in and contribute to the organization at large.

Better Proposal Creation Processes
The process and caliber of proposal creation improves due to a better understanding of localized team objectives and specialized contributors who can bring that proposal to life.

More Accountability
Team Leads drive more value over fractionalized contributors because of focus and a feeling of ownership.

Currency vs Equity
Tokens serve as transparent equity while USDC serves as a currency. Contributors can cash out USDC similar to a “real world job”.

What’s Next?

FWB finds itself in a unique position to explore the cutting edge of decentralized community coordination.

By remixing historical Cooperative Organization models with decentralized Web3 needs, we hope this framework provides a good starting point for other communities going through similar hurdles when it comes to empowering and mobilizing members eager to get involved.

In the coming weeks, we’ll share a full blueprint on Season 3, including calls to action for new teams as well as proposals and tokenomics that underpin the FWB ecosystem.

If you’re eager to play a Team Lead role in Season 3, send us a DM.

Until then, we’ll see you in Discord.

Endless appreciation for @coopahtroopah, @hospitaltapes, @mikebodge, @dazuck, @ariellebeau, @josemejia, @fakepixels, @raihan_, @fullyallocated for the inspiring conversations.