As API3 is a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), there is no central authority that rules over the project. The DAO is governed by API3 token holders around the world who participate by staking and voting. Stakers are able to vote on-chain for proposals written by individuals or teams requesting funds from the DAO. Usually, these are made for planned work efforts, but for community efforts that bring a lot to the DAO, retroactive grants can be issued.
The API3 DAO Tracker was one such contribution that had a proposal passed for funding after it was built due to its successful outcome. Just a month after the API3 DAO went live, a developer that goes by the pseudonym Enormous single-handedly built the first version of this tool. The API3 DAO Tracker provides vital information about the API3 DAO with a clean user interface and has become an invaluable asset. The tool is so useful that it has even garnered attention from other projects.
API3 DAO Tracker (snapshot from 9th November 2022)
To learn more about the story of the API3 DAO Tracker and the motivation behind building it, I spoke with Enormous about how the idea came to him and why he decided to build it on his own.
Marcus:
Good day, Enormous. I appreciate your time to do this interview. Could you give us a short introduction about yourself?
Enormous:
Sure. I am known by the name Enormous, and I own a small company that provides web development services. Within my company, there are a few employees that work on different projects at my disposal, not mainly connected to blockchain development, though.
M:
Thanks for telling us a little bit about yourself and your technical background. Many of us are curious about how you found your way into the project. How did you become aware of API3?
E:
Most likely through a Youtube video back in April 2021, when the project started to get a lot of attention and there was a buzz about it. Back then, the founders gave many interviews but I can’t even remember which one ultimately caught my attention.
M:
It is exciting to see how different paths lead to the same destination. I remember that I first stumbled upon a mention of API3 through a blog article about the Oracle Problem, and shortly after joined the community. What motivated you to become a proactive community member and actually contribute to API3 by building the DAO Tracker? Have you built anything similar before?
E:
No, I didn’t have releases like that previously. The primary motivation was that I was glad to see a promising project with good fundamentals on the market, and I acquired some of its tokens, which are still staked in the staking pool. So the main intention was to check how safe my bet is.
The big benefit of the DAO was total transparency of the governance, and as everything is recorded on-chain, anyone can check what the allocations and the real vesting schedules of the members are and whether it makes sense to participate in it.
M:
Did you expect compensation from the DAO’s treasury when you built the DAO Tracker?
E:
No, there was no expectation initially. I participated in beta testing of the API3 dashboard, researched its code in detail, and did a quick draft of the tool to track all events of the DAO from the Ethereum network, visualizing the structure of the DAO — first of all for myself. It turned out to be the only tool at that moment of the API3 DAO Dashboard release, and the community accepted it. The funding that followed allowed me to engage more developers to improve it and keep it updated.
M:
I think the community accepting it is an understatement. The DAO Tracker actually became the go-to interface that we refer people to if they have questions regarding on-chain analytics. Did you expect that your tool would be so widely adopted by the API3 community?
E:
I absolutely didn’t. At that moment, I wasn’t aware of what exactly the core team was doing and firmly believed till the end that they were developing something similar as well.
M:
That’s very encouraging for people who would like to contribute to the DAO but are uncertain whether or not their efforts will be of any value. With the success of the DAO Tracker, I am also curious about any difficulties that came along with it. What were your biggest hurdles during development?
E:
I can’t say there were any real technical issues that couldn’t be overcome. Of course, there were frustrations and different workarounds, like you can’t read some significant volume of blockchain data quickly, and in general, blockchain is not the database that is optimized for real-time reading, so in order to have a fast website, you need literally keep an additional database that is optimized for your blockchain application. But I can’t say that was a real hurdle.
M:
Do you have any recommendations for people looking to contribute to the DAO on their own, or who want to learn more about how to code for a blockchain project?
E:
Coding from blockchain projects somehow is not different from developing any other software project, where you need a lot of pieces together using different technologies. Specifically, to participate in Ethereum-based projects you need to extend your list of skills by a basic understanding of smart contracts interfaces and dive into JSON+RPC API in order to learn how to interact with smart contracts that are already deployed.
The real benefit of on-chain projects is that they actually provide the transparency that hasn’t been seen before, and this is where the big opportunity for developers comes from, compared to corporate development.
M:
Thank you so much for your time and for sharing your story of building the API3 DAO Tracker with the community.
E:
Thanks for having me.
As Enormous referenced, The DAO Tracker caught the attention of API3 Co-founder and core developer, Burak Benligiray. After he had reviewed the tool, he wanted to provide feedback for possible fixes, which in his own words were surprisingly minimal considering that Enormous built the first version of the DAO Tracker without any feedback from the API3 Core Tech Team. Burak proceeded to ask Enormous about the time he had spent on the tool to request funding from the DAO through the next proposal of the Core Technical Team.
The DAO approved the proposal by vote and compensated Enormous for delivering something of great value, which enabled him to engage more developers to work on the API3 DAO Tracker. With encouragement from Burak, Enormous eventually created his own proposal to build more products with strong use cases, which passed. For technical and product-level guidance, Burak finally absorbed Enormous and his team into the Core Technical Team.
The API3 DAO Tracker is an outstanding example of how valuable community contributions can be, both to the API3 DAO and the contributor, with the potential to open up new career opportunities for those who take the initiative. Anyone can contribute to the DAO without passing a proposal first, and contributors may get compensated retrospectively depending on the success of the outcome by passing a proposal afterward.
Even without a retroactive grant, publicly demonstrating value to the API3 DAO through tangible contributions makes it more likely that a contributor’s subsequent proposal for a grant will be successful. The API3 DAO encourages its community members to be proactive and, as outlined in this guide, there are different ways to contribute and participate in the DAO.
Join the API3 Discord, ask questions, and share ideas to become part of this growing community.
Community Built: The API3 DAO Tracker was originally published in API3 on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.