Why Bounty Events Hone Meaningful Participation

Written For DAO Communities by FoundryBee

Before I kick off, I want to share a funny and entirely true story. In my very first week of work, I didn’t really know many terms and best practices specifically relating to DAO community building. But, the concepts where bright and ready in my mind, especially the bounty part. Funnily enough, one of my earliest ideas — before I ever discovered the existence of bounty events — was to set up a bounty board with community tasks and requests. I came up with the idea specifically as a way to engage and incentivize existing community members. I kid you not, I even used the term bounty.

As you’d imagine, I was pretty stoked when I realised bounty events were an actual thing. In fact, such events are a great way of honing in on the top of funnel community building approach.

The Juicy Stuff Comes After This Interjection

If you’re reading this blog and you have no idea what a bounty event is. Here’s a quick summary.

A community bounty event can be described as the love child of a contest and a to-do-list. In essence, you’re involving and rewarding community members on the completion of a list of tasks that, if actioned, will benefit the DAO. An easy example of a bounty task can be the design of a new Twitter poster that highlights the DAO’s core values. Bounty events can vary from micro tasks to huge events that involve hundreds (of not thousands) of participants.

Why a DAO Should Run Bounty Events

A marketing flaw that some projects make is to focus efforts on the surface level. What I mean by that is that they pursue traditional marketing or token rewards instead of involvement incentives. The negative of such an approach is that it doesn’t hone a natural sense of ownership or excitement from community members. Instead, a more superficial level of interest is formed.

The problem here is, the community becomes more interested in what they can effortlessly gain instead of how they can contribute.

A DAO community needs and thrives on community members who are intrinsically involved.

Bounty events are useful for community members who want to contribute but do not necessarily know how to. Such events provide an opportunity for community discovery (via hype / marketing created around the event). Such events also enable new members to easily identify the gaps they can fill. Bounties also often have larger cash or token incentives that are only attainable through meaningful participation.

Meaningful participation demands personal involvement and sacrifice. Personal involvement is only invested by someone who has sufficient understanding and belief in the DAO and what it seeks to accomplish. Sacrifice comes from that which a person has to give up in order to make time for the bounty they want to pursue. No one is willing to sacrifice their time and energy if doing so isn’t worth it.

Before you launch your bounty event, consider the paragraph above very seriously. Make sure that you provide the community with enough incentive to earn their personal involvement and sacrifice.

Micro Bounties

Regardless of level of funding or DAO size, micro bounties might be a great way for you to test the waters before launching anything significant. I’d like to place emphasis on traditional marketing here. Although the crypto — and specifically DAO — space is still very new, traditional marketing methodologies still apply. This is because the formula of promoting to people has been refined over thousands of years and are unlikely to have changed drastically.

What I am getting at is market research. It’s important to ensure that you’re launching and promoting an event that has actual interest. Micro-bounties are also a great way of testing the water. If done right, such tests will aid in attaining the relevant knowledge needed for a smooth and rewarding bounty event.

Micro bounties are also a great way of honing one-on-one relationships as they require more direct communication.

How To Run Micro Bounties

Before launching a micro bounty, you have to determine the actions that required by the DAO. These actions might include, new profile picture designs, coding challenges (like forking a Discord tip bot for a specific purpose) or writing blogs etc. From here, deadlines, budgets and briefings should be written in order to provide the right information and incentives to inspire excitement.

Once the relevant planning has been conducted, a micro bounty can be launched by simply running community updates on Telegram, Twitter, Discord or whichever platform your community is more active on. Sending direct messages to members whom have shown collaborative interest is also a great way of boosting awareness and involvement.

Organic Involvement

At the end of the day, having fun, building friendships and sharing in mutual goals are all aspects that will be greatly boosted through such events. If you apply the right recipe and resources, a bounty event will undoubtedly hone meaningful participation.