Clubs

Membership gated DAOs to collectively raise funds, govern, and take action. Perfect for investment DAOs, impact DAOs, service DAOs, guilds, social clubs, and more.

Clubs are NFT powered DAOs that manage and gate membership, raise funds exclusively from members, grant voting power to members who have deposited funds, and collectively take action.

Club Passes—non-transferable NFTs—define membership grant access to a specific Club. Club Passes allow members to submit proposals and deposit funds in the Club during fundraising windows. Depositors receive non-transferable governance tokens that provide voting power in line with their deposit's pro-rata share of the Clubs treasury. At any time, a member can "ragequit" or burn their Club Pass and governance tokens in return for their pro-rata share of the Club's liquid STX.

Here we describe when you should form a Club and its structure.

When to Create a Club

Clubs are ideal for DAOs that want their members to fund the DAO. Clubs are also perfect for DAOs that want to gate and manage their membership. While a major feature of Clubs is that members can fund it, a person does not have to in order to become a Club member—the Club just has to issue them a Club Pass (but note that without providing funding, a member will have no voting power).

Clubs are not ideal for open and permissionless DAOs (form a StackerDAO instead) because Clubs need to approve a proposal to add new members. For that same reason, they are also not ideal for very large DAOs with thousands of members as the frequency of adding new members could overwhelm the Club.

Clubs are a great fit for the following types of DAOs:

• Investment DAOs - DAOs that invest in NFTs, tokens, DeFi yield generating strategies, startup equity, and other assets and return profits to members.

• Impact DAOs - DAOs that fund specific causes or provide grants in order to further the public interest.

• Service DAOs - Freelancer agency networks to collectively market themselves, obtain benefits, obtain contracts, and more.

• Guilds - Collectives that share resources in the pursuit of a common goal by working on, building, and contributing to projects together.

• Social Clubs - Exclusive networks that collectively manage membership resources.

This is just a non-exhaustive list what a Club could be used for. The common thread between these types of DAOs is that raising funds from their members and gated membership are key to their use case.

Clubs Structure

Generation

When creating a Club, a founder will first be prompted to enter basic information about the Club, such as its name and description. The Club founder will also determine the Club's minimum deposit threshold, initial fundraising period length, whether to add an allowlist, proposal voting period length, and timelock length.

Investment Clubs

During generation, the Club founder will be asked whether their Club will be an investment club. Investment clubs are a way for groups to pool capital and invest without their activity triggering federal securities, investment company, and investment advisor laws. There is SEC guidance on investment clubs, which must meet certain requirements to not trigger these laws. If you select investment club, your Club will form using our Investment Clubs template which bakes in some of these requirements into its smart contracts, including a mandatory allowlist and a cap of 99 members.

Initial Fundraise

When a Club is first initialized, it will enter its initial fundraise window. During the fundraise window, Club Pass holders can deposit funds (above the deposit threshold) into a Club, minting non-transferable governance tokens that provide them with voting power equal to their deposit's share of the total funds raised when the fundraise period ends. Clubs cannot take any action other than minting governance tokens against deposits during this period.

Depositors can only deposit funds at this moment. Eventually, Club members will be able to deposit native Bitcoin and stablecoins to fund a Club. During the initial fundraise period, a depositor receives 1 governance token for every 1 STX they deposit.

Proposal Submissions & Voting

Any Club Pass holder can submit a proposal. Governance tokens, which can only be obtained by depositing funds into the Club, provide voting power. One governance token equals 1 vote.

New Fundraise Windows & Additional Members

At any time after the initial fundraise, the Club can approve a proposal to open an additional fundraise window. The proposal sets parameters such as deposit minimum and fundraise length. Any Club Pass holder can deposit additional funds during subsequent fundraise windows. The Club can also mint Club Passes to new people in the proposal in order to add new members. The fundraise window will be opened as soon as the proposal is executed.

Unlike the initial fundraise, the Club can set the price of their governance tokens (in terms of STX) that will be minted against deposits. This is because after the initial fundraise, the Club could deployed some of their funds, making the value of its treasury more or less than the value of the total amount of STX raised. Additionally, funds may be held in illiquid assets that are difficult to price like NFTs, startup equity, or real estate. Thus, Clubs can determine the value of their own treasuries themselves and use that value to determine the new price of their governance tokens when opening a new fundraising window.

Ragequitting

Club members can leave the Club at any time by ragequitting. To ragequit, a member initiates the ragequit smart contract call on the Club dashboard. This will burn their Club Pass and governance tokens in return for their pro-rata share of the Club's liquid STX.

Keep in mind that if you ragequit, you will only receive your pro-rata share of liquid STX. You will not receive your pro-rata share of the Club's other assets.