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10 Financial Plugins to Build on Aragon OSx

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Plugins extend the functionality of what your DAO can do. Think of them as apps that you install and uninstall on your phone or computer. They add more actions that your DAO can take, like swapping tokens or adding new methods of decision-making.

Plugins are how Aragon OSx DAOs adapt and evolve. Installing and uninstalling them makes it possible for DAOs to change aspects of their governance, finances, and membership.

Here are 10 ideas to help you get started building a financial plugin today!

“By taking advantage of Aragon's flexibility, composability, and compatibility, DAO builders can experiment and refine their ideas in a step-by-step development process. This approach not only reduces the risk of failure and costs, but also fosters innovation and creativity within the Web3 ecosystem.”

—Definme, DAO Expert specializing in custom DAOs and Aragon plugins

1. Swap tokens for the best price

Example: Matcha

It can be hard to know if you’re getting the best price for your token swaps. You could build a plugin that integrates with a DEX aggregator like Matcha to show you the best swap prices. Or, choose your favorite DEXs and get a preview of what the swap price will be for each and choose the best one.

This plugin will make it easy for DAOs to swap tokens at the best price and manage their treasuries with ease.

For some inspiration, check out Libree (formerly Sassy Finance), who recently built a Uniswap plugin enabling swaps directly in your DAO!

2. Voting power proportional to size of investment

An Investment DAO is an onchain organization composed of people who pool assets to make a return on their investment together. One way to run an Investment DAO is to distribute voting power proportional to the funds the member put into the DAO. Based on the size of your investment, you get equal voting power back in governance tokens.

You could build a plugin that automates this process and returns equal voting power back to depositors in voting tokens, and requires you to burn those tokens to withdraw your assets. This would mean that no trust would be required for members to exit the system—they could simply burn their governance tokens and take the proportional part of the treasury with them.

3. Vesting periods for DAO governance tokens

Rewarding DAO contributors with governance tokens can help create value alignment among contributors, because everyone wants the token value to increase.

You could create a plugin that vests DAO governance tokens to contributors over a period of time, so that only contributors who stay longer have access to their entire vesting package of tokens. This can incentivize members to act in a way that’s beneficial to the DAO as a whole.

4. Staking directly from your DAO

Staking is a common way to earn yield on assets. DAOs that hold ETH may want to stake it in a staking service, like Lido. You could build a plugin that makes it easy to stake ETH directly from your DAO. Then, the DAO can earn yield, growing their treasury.

If the DAO wanted to unstake assets, they could use the plugin again to unstake and return the original assets to their treasury.

5. Token streaming

Example: Superfluid

Guilds and individuals who request funds from the DAO need a way to receive those funds, and paying everything up front can be a risk, because they can disappear without completing their project. Especially if they are anonymous, there would be no method of accountability.

A token streaming plugin like Superfluid would mean that DAOs can stream tokens directly to contributors without having to create new proposals to send funds every few weeks. You could build a plugin that makes it easy for Aragon OSx DAOs to stream tokens without needing to use another application.

6. Rage Quit

Example: DAOhaus / Moloch DAO framework

Rage quitting is when you burn your governance token to take an equivalent portion of the treasury. It’s a way to “quit” the DAO and take back the upfront investment without needing to trust the members of the DAO to return it to you.

You could build a plugin that enables rage quitting for DAOs built on Aragon OSx. DAOs that raise capital from members could install this plugin, preserving their right to exit.

7. Airdrops / automatic distribution based on parameters

Example: Coinvise

Some DAOs start their community by airdropping tokens to wallets that have performed behaviors they want to incentivize, like interacting with their protocol. This can create a near-instant community because they are united by a shared interest.

You could create a plugin that makes it easy to automatically distribute governance tokens to wallets that perform the desired behaviors. This plugin could also be used later on through the DAO’s life, rather than just at the beginning, to continue incentivizing this behavior. Or, the airdrop plugin would work by importing a CSV file of addresses and minting tokens to those addresses if the vote is passed.

8. Offchain and cross-chain asset tracking

Some organization have a DAO and a traditional bank account. Others have multiple DAOs on different chains, holding different assets. To have visibility into the organization’s total financial health, members would need to see the status of assets outside of the DAO.

A plugin could share the real-time asset prices of your DAO’s off-chain assets to a UI. You could use an oracle, which shares information outside the blockchain, like the price of gold, with a smart contract onchain.

A cross-chain asset tracking plugin would work similarly, using an oracle to pull data from these other organizations so you could see a complete picture of the DAO’s finances. These plugins could even be the start of a dApp for spinning up investment DAOs built on Aragon OSx, like Libree!

9. Automatic DeFi strategies

Example: Weezi

Many DAOs want to be able to execute DeFi strategies without needing to constantly pass votes and take actions as a community. Managing a crypto treasury is a specific skill that doesn’t typically require the input of a full community to carry out.

You could build a plugin that executes complex strategies like swapping and staking, without needing a community vote, but rather just an approval from a verified treasury manager. They would then program automatic DeFi strategies that execute as long as they vote “yes.”

10. Asset management permission for subDAOs

Inspiration: Libree

Another way to approach asset management for DAOs is with a subDAO. You could build a plugin that gives permission to a subDAO to manage assets in the main DAO’s treasury. The subDAO could consist solely of treasury managers for the DAO and be governed by authorized wallet voting (like a multisig).

The main DAO could revoke permission to the subDAO at any time with a vote, making it secure.