Today, I have some very exciting news to share with all of you.
DAO Jones is rebranding to DAO Central. Along with our new name, we also have a new vision — to become the Product Hunt for DAOs.
How It All Started
DAO Jones started with a simple question that I asked my roommate ↗ two Fridays ago:
What if there was a way for us to search for a DAO by the emojis that we see in a Twitter bio?
I've always been very intrigued by the Web3 space, and this seemed like the perfect excuse to spend some time learning more about the space...by building a side project.
I set a goal to build this over the weekend (48 hours) – partly to see how fast I can come up with an MVP, but also because I had to work on Monday.
Due to the time constraint, I decided not to waste too much time on naming. In the beginning, I was debating between Just DAO It and DAO It Yourself, but I eventually settled on this quirky, punny name that came to me when I was on a walk – DAO Jones.
Two very intense days of coding later, I launched DAO Jones on Twitter:
DAO Central – Find and learn about DAOs
DAO Central is a database of popular DAOs across different categories (Protocol, Collector, Social, and more). Learn how to join a DAO, buy tokens, contribute, and more.
The reception was incredible – my tweets got over 200K impressions, which resulted in 4.2K unique visitors, 150+ signups, and a ton of new DAOs added to the site.
I couldn't have asked for a better launch.
Why Rebrand
As my tweets started to make the rounds on Twitter, it also caught the eye of a few folks who were quick to point out that the name DAO Jones was already being used by two other organizations in the DAO/Web3 space.
With that in mind, I spent some time during Thanksgiving thinking about branding and realized that while DAO Jones was a very clever name, there were a few clear disadvantages:
- It wasn't a unique name that I could build proper brand equity on top of since I'll have to compete with two other companies with the same name in this space.
- I didn't own the .COM or the Twitter handle.
- I might run into legal issues with the actual Dow Jones down the road.
I also got a clearer picture of the vision for the project – to be the Product Hunt for DAOs. On one hand, DAO organizers can use it as a platform to share their DAOs and get some initial traction on it, and on the other, end-users can go there to discover new DAOs to join.
DAO Jones wouldn't be a very fitting name for this new vision since it's more of an inside joke than an actual company name.
And this is when I came across the name DAO Central (h/t to Bani ↗ for the suggestion).
To my surprise, both daocentral.com and the Twitter handle @DAOCentral ↗ were available (the .COM cost me $700, though).
One fairly expensive domain purchase later, I was the proud owner of the domain daocentral.com.
Conclusion
DAO Jones is now DAO Central.
Our name might've changed, but our mission stays the same – to educate as many people as possible about DAOs and to help DAOs find the best people to join their communities.
On that note, I just wrote a blog post that serves as an ELI5 intro for people who want to learn more about DAOs – feel free to give it a read!
You can also follow us on Twitter ↗ for all our latest updates.
