2022 is supposed to be the year of the DAO. When scrolling through Twitter one doesn't get far before reading something related to how DAOs are going to change the future of work. Or at least a tweet announcing yet another DAO tooling start-up.

This recent momentum begs the question of which DAOs are doing it the best and succeeding in the quest of building headless organizations where every participant is a stakeholder. One tool trying to answer this question is DeepDAO, an amazing analytics tool that tracks DAOs quantitative stats like treasury size, number of governance proposals, and number of governance token holders.

However, DAOs are more than just plain financial and governance stats. DAOs are about true ownership, community, and the vibe that is built within them. According to the urban dictionary, vibe is this feeling that what you are listening to, feeling, or seeing is reaching your soul. In our opinion, this is the centerpiece of every successful community.

Unfortunately, the vibe within the community can not be captured by the size of the treasury. Another measure needs to be introduced which can capture this integral part of a community.

Introducing the gm-index 🌞

When being part of any community what is the most basic interaction that lays the foundation for being part of something great? Exactly it is the basic act of saying gm. This simple action has been ingrained in the crypto community and especially across DAOs. With some even going so far as making a dedicated gm-cereal.

Therefore, what better indicator of a community vibe is there than the foundational gm typed into the DAOs Discord.

We built an AI model that analyzed almost 2 million Discord messages from the last year (1st of April 2021 to 1st of April 2022) from the top 50 Discords based on treasury size according to DeepDAO to assess which community scores the highest on the gm-index. And the results are just incredible! Nearly 62 thousand messages consisted gm.

The biggest winners by far are the Ohmie’s. OlympusDAO is aiming to build a decentralized reserve currency and has the biggest engagement across all DAOs with more than 15 thousand gms within the past year. The runner-up is Aavegotchi, the open-source community-owned NFT gaming protocol with close to 10 thousand yearly gms. In third place, we have Index Coop with the goal to build decentralized crypto ETFs. Figure 1 shows the top 20 Discods in terms total amount of messages received over the last year. Figure 2 shows the top 20 Discords but now specifically in terms of gm’s received over the last year.

1st Place: OlympusDAO

OlympusDAO had steady gm hits from spring to summer 2021. Starting in that autumn their gm-index went to the moon and stayed there until the end of the year. Interestingly, their Google Trend showed similar behavior to their gm-index. In 2022, their gm-index decreased gradually reaching a stable point by spring 2022.

2nd Place: Aavegotchi

Aavegotchi struggled in the spring of 2021 to perform in the gm-index. They turned the table during the summer gaining momentum and reaching a pick in October 2021. They were able to retain this momentum until now positioning them as front-runners of the gm-index.

3rd Place: Index Coop

Despite having an active Discord only since September 2021, the vibe within the community has been incredible, placing Index Coop third on the gm-index. They have peaked at the end of 2021 and have been in a steady decline ever since, but still gained enough traction to catapult them into the top three.

Follow us on Twitter for more analysis and insights

@0xmo11, @danielpartidag in collaboration with @toco_labs