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.
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
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.
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.
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:
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.
This guide is for anyone involved in or interested in DAOs:
Dispatch tackles common DAO challenges, making governance:
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:
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!
To start sending on-chain DAO activity to Discord, you’ll need:
We’ll start from the Dispatch Dashboard:
Choose "Smart contract activity" as your Trigger and "Discord" as your Action.
Click the Complete Patch button.
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:
In the modal, paste in the contract address and give the contract a nickname. You can change the name later.
After adding the contract, you'll see a list of events and functions available for monitoring.
For this example, we’ve selected
Pick the ones that matter most to your DAO and hit Continue.
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.
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.
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.
Now that you have your first Patch set up, let's explore how else you might strengthen your DAO operations and engagement.
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.
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.
If you liked this guide and want to try Dispatch out for yourself, sign up for a free account.