Between proposal creation and execution, delegation, permissions changes, voting, and treasury spending, staying on top of DAO governance activities can be a constant struggle. This guide will show you a few ways you can automatically monitor and communicate real-time updates for critical governance-related activity — whether to your team, or your community.Table of Contents
- DAO basics
- Challenges
- How Dispatch can help
- Tutorial: Auto-send DAO activity to Discord
- Use DAO activity to drive decisions
Dispatch is a tool that makes it super easy to monitor and communicate about on-chain DAO activity like proposals and voting. It helps ensure you don't miss critical votes, new proposals, or significant governance actions.
In this guide, we'll show you step-by-step how to quickly set up a Discord bot that sends real-time DAO governance activity. Whether you want to keep your internal project team in sync or your community informed and engaged, you’ll have a new way to do it while saving time and eliminating manual work.
DAO basics
If you’re here, you may already know about DAOs; feel free to skip this section.
DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) are, as the name suggests, decentralized organizations that operate on a blockchain. Rather than a company where decisions are made behind a “board of directors” behind closed doors, DAOs allow collective decision-making by their members. Some popular DAOs you may have heard of include MakerDAO, Treasure, and Compound.
To govern member activity and protocol changes, DAOs may use smart contracts that contain logic for things like
- Proposals to change or update how one of the DAO’s products or features works
- Voting on proposals
- Delegation for voting
- Execution of proposals that change how the organization works
Some DAOs also use multisig wallets to store the organization’s treasury funds, requiring several team members to sign, or authorize spending before any funds are released.
This transparent, democratic approach allows members to participate in shaping the organization's future.
Some key features of DAOs:
- Governance by voting: DAOs expand decision-making power beyond the core team — to token holders and community contributors.
- Open records: Activity and treasury funds may be stored on-chain, which means you can see DAO activity on a block explorer. Think public record for all votes and actions.
- Community owns: DAOs are like clubs run by members, not a single leader. This means everyone works towards shared goals.
While these are the ideals behind DAOs, adherence to these principles among organizations that call themselves “DAOs” can vary widely. Some organizations may limit member voting to a very small subset of possible governance decisions, and some may keep treasury funds off-chain, or in non-public locations.
Challenges
Active participation from members is key to a DAO's success. However, the decentralized nature of DAOs can make it challenging to keep all members informed and engaged, especially when:
- Activities occur on-chain
- Community members are spread across the globe
- Governance events happen frequently
This is where tools like Dispatch can help, not just for bridging the gap between blockchain events and community awareness, but also for keeping DAO team members in sync and updated. By providing automated, real-time alerts about governance activities in your preferred channels, Dispatch can make it easier and faster to make data-driven decisions and improve DAO engagement and performance.
Who this guide is for:
This guide is for anyone involved in or interested in DAOs:
- DAO leaders & contributors: Stay on top of governance activities effortlessly.
- Community managers: Keep everyone engaged and informed with ease.
- Active DAO members: Vote or delegate, this guide keeps you in the loop.
- Delegates: Make informed voting decisions on behalf of others.
- Curious members: Follow DAO happenings without constant manual checks.
How Dispatch can help
Dispatch tackles common DAO challenges, making governance:
- Efficient & in sync: All members can get real-time updates on proposals, votes, and treasury activity in your preferred workflow. No more information overload or missed updates — everyone stays on the same page.
- Informed: Track voting trends and make smarter decisions with the latest insights.
- Engaged: Regular nudges keep members informed and participating.
- Transparent: Clear, automated updates build trust
Creating Discord and Telegram bots that auto-post DAO activity can be done in a few clicks. We also offer webhooks, which open up more possibilities if you want to update interfaces in apps or dApps you’re building, or pipe on-chain activity to other services.
And while our tutorial below focuses on a governance smart contract, you can easily monitor any smart contract or wallet. For DAOs that have multisig wallets for treasury funds, monitoring wallet activity can help ensure the DAO is spending where expected.
As long as you know the address of a smart contract or wallet tied to the DAO you want to monitor, the rest is cake. All you need is a (free) Dispatch account to get started.
Watch our video tutorial for a visual walkthrough:
Tutorial: Auto-send DAO activity to Discord
This tutorial will teach you how to create a Discord bot that posts updates whenever there’s on-chain DAO activity. While we’ll be using the Uniswap Governance Bravo contract, you can use any contract to follow along.
To do this, we’ll be creating a “Patch”: our name for an automated workflow or alert. A Patch consists of a Trigger (specific on-chain activity from a smart contract or wallet) and an Action (the task you want automatically done for you when your Trigger conditions are met).
Here’s the Patch we’ll be creating:
Let’s get started!
What you’ll need
To start sending on-chain DAO activity to Discord, you’ll need:
- Free Dispatch account
- Address of a DAO’s smart contract
DAO and governance smart contract addresses can often be found in the project’s documentation. For example, Uniswap’s Governance Reference has a link to their smart contract on Etherscan.
1: Choose your Trigger and Action
We’ll start from the Dispatch Dashboard:
Choose "Smart contract activity" as your Trigger and "Discord" as your Action.
Click the Complete Patch button.
2: Add your DAO's smart contract
Now we’re in the Patch Builder, where we’ll add our smart contract and select the events and/or functions we want to get notified about. These are your “Trigger conditions”.
Let's add the governance contract:
- Select the network your contract is on.
- Click Add a smart contract at the bottom of the menu.
In the modal, paste in the contract address and give the contract a nickname. You can change the name later.
- Contract address: 0x7573933eB12Fa15D5557b74fDafF845B3BaF0ba2
- Contract nickname: Uniswap - Governance Bravo
3: Select relevant DAO activity
After adding the contract, you'll see a list of events and functions available for monitoring.
For this example, we’ve selected
- ProposalCreated
- VoteCast
- ProposalExecuted
- DelegateChanged
Pick the ones that matter most to your DAO and hit Continue.
4: Choose your Discord server and channel
In “Action type”, since we selected Discord as our Action in the Dashboard, we can press Continue, to move on to step 4: Action details.
In this tutorial, we’re going to select “Post in a Discord server” for the Action event (versus sending a direct message, which you’d choose if you want private alerts).
If you haven’t granted Dispatch posting access to your Discord account or server previously, you’ll need to grant Dispatch permission to send Discord messages when your DAO activity occurs.
Under “Destination”, select "Click here to add a Discord server”, and follow the instructions to grant Dispatch the necessary permissions.
Choose the Discord server where you want DAO activity to be posted.
After you’ve selected the server, select the Discord channel. You might have a private channel just for server mods or core team members, and another for #community-updates, for example. Or maybe you have a dedicated channel for #voting.
Press Continue.
5: Test your Patch
Sending a test message helps you be sure that Dispatch can send messages where you want them to go. With Discord’s multitude of permissions options, we definitely suggest you don’t skip this step before turning your Patch on.
Press the Send a test message button.
Here’s what a successful test should look like in Dispatch:
Check the Discord channel to confirm you see Dispatch’s test message there.
Test not working? Check out our Discord integration guide to troubleshoot.
6: Turn your Patch on
If you want, you can customize your Patch name in the final step before turning it on (don't worry, you can always change the name later).
Press the Turn Patch on button.
All done!
You'll now receive real-time alerts in Discord for the events you selected.
Use DAO activity to drive decisions
Now that you have your first Patch set up, let's explore how else you might strengthen your DAO operations and engagement.
For DAO management
- Gauge community sentiment: Track the voting pace. A rapid influx of votes might indicate a particularly engaging or controversial proposal.
- Monitor delegate activity: See how major delegates are voting to gain insights into potential shifts in DAO direction.
- Track treasury activity: Set up alerts for treasury spending to ensure financial oversight and flag unusual activities.
For community members
- Make smarter votes: Get instant notifications about new proposals so you can jump right into discussions and research.
- Be the first to know: See how voting trends are unfolding in real-time.
- Become a power user: Identify recurring trends in proposal types and outcomes.
- Get treasury insights: Track treasury wallet activity to make sure the DAO isn’t spending where it shouldn’t
Dive deeper
Explore customizable Patch templates for more ideas on how Dispatch can help.
Automate even more with Dispatch and Zapier: with webhooks, you can use any on-chain activity to automate tasks in other off-chain apps like Notion, Slack, and Airtable.
Quick dashboarding without code
Make data-driven decisions based on DAO activity, without code: Learn how to automatically log on-chain activity to a Google Sheet for further analysis.
Check out the Google Sheets tutorial
The key to driving desired results with your DAO isn't just to have more info at your fingertips, but to use that data to drive better decisions and boost participation.
Want to give Dispatch a try?
If you liked this guide and want to try Dispatch out for yourself, sign up for a free account.
