ADAO Interview

Can you introduce yourself

I go by Allusian, and I have served as a Core Contributor at ADAO since October of ‘21, after listening into spaces its earliest founder hosted and frequented in the community in the wake of the Goguen era. My main focus has been on the upkeep and design of the Discord server, onboarding new members, writing and editing documents, articles, and outreach via social media, as well as scheduling and organizing guest speakers for ADAO’s educational “Roundtable” Twitter spaces hosted every Saturday.

Thomas DiMatteo is a community organizer, crypto researcher, entrepreneur, and front-end developer, with a keen interest in decentralized finance and governance on Cardano and other blockchain ecosystems. He has six years of experience as a small business owner serving customers throughout the state of Florida, several years as an investor in blockchains, and a participant in decentralized finance and autonomous protocols.

Hey guys, happy to connect today and learn more about ADAO. Can you tell us more about the mission of ADAO and how you are trying to achieve it?

ADAO’s mission is to build open-source tools, educational and supportive resources to empower robust, decentralized systems of collaboration and governance, starting with Cardano. We are achieving this by attracting talent from various disciplines and walks of life who share our passion for building systems that enable, empower and facilitate new ways of organizing. Some of ADAO’s major contributions to the ecosystem include the RoundTable multi-signature Wallet DApp, the ADAO Staking Portal, and the Agora Protocol, which we have partnered with Liqwid Labs to develop.

What are the most important things about ADAO?

Our community is our most important asset. Without their passion and contributions of time, energy, and resources, ADAO would not have gotten far. Everything – our name, logos, Discord server, website, Medium articles, social media presence, and open-source repositories are all possible thanks to the community that rallied around the idea of doing our part to facilitate decentralization.

Why did you choose to build on Cardano?

Cardano’s scientific approach to solving complex issues in the blockchain space lays a strong foundation upon which new, secure, and robust systems can be built with wide-scale adoption in mind. Thanks to this approach, along with the advantage of hindsight, Cardano has been able to inherently solve many of the hurdles blockchain protocols and organizations face today. The community is visionary, astute, welcoming, discerning, and eager to build.

Going forward, how will ADAO make an impact in the crypto space or on the world?

We hope that, through catalyzing the proliferation of DAOs, ADAO will play a leading role in the explosive growth in the adoption of blockchain technologies. People around the globe are disillusioned by antiquated systems prone to corruption and inefficiency. Blockchain technologies enable sensible solutions that stand to markedly improve countless facets of life, from commerce, finance, and government, to running or working within a business.

Now, what are your accomplishments so far, and what are you most proud of?

There are too many accomplishments, large and small, to list, but we are especially proud of the RoundTable DApp, which has seen wide adoption in the community, from advanced protocol DAOs to small groups of friends pooling ada to bid on art. One community group even uses RoundTable to donate to animal shelters!

We’ve also built a Staking Portal DApp that enables organizations to incentivize their tokenholders and saw two proposals approved by Catalyst voters. The first helped us to compensate our RoundTable Developers, and the second funded further open-source development, as well as the establishment of the ADAO Foundation in Liechtenstein (currently underway).

Our proudest accomplishment would have to be the strong and growing community we’ve built at ADAO. Members come from across the globe, from diverse walks of life, all united by a passion for lending a hand to the community and tool-building necessary to enable decentralization on a global scale. Every member brings their unique story, talents and skillset, and breathes life into the DAO.

Why is open source a key principle of ADAO?

Open source software promotes accessibility, security, and a spirit of collaborative innovation. We find these aspects important for growing the ecosystem and fostering a culture of transparency and community necessary for building the infrastructure of a blockchain future. Open source development is critical when it comes to interoperability between protocols. In the early days of a new and growing ecosystem, open source projects and standards allow distributed groups to design their protocols in a synergistic and interoperable way. Without open source resources, we quickly see information and design silos, where protocols and organizations, although operating on the same blockchain, cannot interact with each other.

What is the future of ADAO? For example, what new things are to come, and what will it mean for the overall project?

ADAO has amassed close to 40 open-source repositories, including advanced on-chain governance frameworks, Plutus contracts for non-custodial token distribution, NFT minting, staking systems, and more. Even non-technical resources like the ADAO constitution and other templated documents are open-sourced and being leveraged by other Cardano-based organizations. ADAO plans to continue this mission of providing free open-source resources and making them even more accessible through strategic partnerships and novel contribution incentives.

Which partnerships have you engaged so far, and which ones are the most impactful?

The most notable and strategic partnership to date would be the collaboration with The Summon Platform. Summon, is a multi-entity ecosystem and infrastructure provider. The Summon ecosystem as of now includes the Summon Association, Summon Labs LLC, and the Summon Platform DAO. Together these groups are able to leverage advanced, open-source systems and make them more user-friendly through a no-code interface and suite of APIs. Summon continues to directly contribute to the work of ADAO and other open-source communities, building new and expanding upon existing code repositories while providing the commercial-grade infrastructure that enables easy access and integration into the various tools and modules built by Summon. By leveraging the Summon Platform, projects can deploy or simply “plug in” to all the tools Cardano has to offer with a simple, no-code solution. This includes token minting/generation, non-custodial token sale/distribution, smart contract-based staking systems, on and off-chain token voting, Native and Plutus script treasuries, access to advanced DeFi yield strategies, and much more.

How can someone interested in ADAO find out more about it?

The best way to stay up to date on everything ADAO is doing is to follow the @ADAOcommunity on Twitter. If you would like to get involved or want to get a deeper look at everything going on in ADAO, please join the community Discord server. We hold General Meetings at 1 A.M. UTC every Thursday and 3 P.M. UTC every Saturday. Projects looking to leverage or contribute to ADAO’s open-source repositories can visit the ADAOcommunity GitHub. Projects looking to leverage Summon Platform modules and infrastructure can reach out to us on Twitter, join the Summon DAO Discord server, or reach out directly to the core team at team@summonplatform.io.