Seasons are about action. Forefront’s Season One was no exception.

Throughout the season, our community was in the weeds of dozens of projects, initiatives, and discoveries. Every day there were new people to meet, new challenges to overcome, and new boundaries to push forward.

In order to keep progressing efficiently towards our mission of becoming the “Port of Entry to Web3”, we need to reflect, recover, and recalibrate.

As Season One comes to a close, we’re calling on our community to take some time to explore what made their Forefront experience great, provide insight about where we can improve, and shape where we go from here.

First, let’s take some time to celebrate what we’ve accomplished.

Season One Highlights

Forefront Season One was titled Enter the Forge. Our goal was to begin to build the teams and structures necessary to grow Forefront into a DAO powerhouse. It is unbelievable to think about all we’ve achieved in the last three months.

DAO Contributors

The Forefront DAO grew from just 5 core contributors in the Pre-Season to now 29 contributors spread across three Guilds. Our Culture Guild took the lead on building out a formal onboarding process, helping new members gain context, meet other contributors, and complete bounties as a pathway to becoming a contributor. In parallel, we build out a contributor rewards structure with base allocations, project rewards, and an end-of-season Coordinape pool.

In part thanks to the treasury diversification round, Forefront was also able to onboard its first official Full- and Part-Time Core Contributors to the DAO who can be paid (partially) in USDC. These Contributors have each made long-term commitments to pushing forward high-level DAO initiatives and helping coordinate Guild activities.

The strides we’ve taken to empower and retain talent to put Forefront in an exciting position moving forward. While there is plenty to improve, we are extremely optimistic for what is to come.

Projects & Initiatives

While the newsletter was one of Forefront’s core “products” heading into Season One, the team managed to ship at an insane rate throughout the last three months, dramatically expanding our reach and workload.

First, Forefront pushed the boundaries of DAO culture with our FF Birthday Celebration. This was a multi-day digital event with games, competitions, DJ sets, and so much more. Be on the lookout for Forefront DAOlloween coming this month.

From a content perspective, Season One saw the launch of some major new media pillars:

• Forefront Learn, a comprehensive resource to go from zero to DAO contributor by learning about social tokens, DAOs, and more.
• Forefront Podcast, which includes high-quality recordings of our weekly FF Hangouts + weekly news wrap-ups of the crypto space at large.
• Forefront Wrapped, our weekly DAO summary for contributors and lurkers alike to be able to stay up-to-date on all things happening in the Forefront DAO.

There are plenty more projects in the works, all with the mission of making Forefront the port of entry for web3.

Finally, Forefront had some in-person fun this Season as well! FF Contributors attended and spoke at MCON, and we’ll be making some moves at LisCon as well.

Treasury Diversification

The beginning of Season One kicked off Forefront’s treasury diversification round. A lot went into this process, including answering questions like who should we include in the round, how much should we raise, what should the terms be, and many more.

Eventually, with tons of community support, we landed on a $2.1M raise from dozens of strategic investors, angels, and community contributors. This addition to Forefront’s treasury will help us scale our effort, onboard full-time contributors, and continue to build at the cutting edge of DAOs.

The initial proposal was hosted on our Forum for community feedback. We then hosted 3 separate Hangouts in our Discord with many of the investors leading the round where community members could ask questions and submit ideas. Many changes were suggested, which we incorporated into the proposal. That final proposal was then voted on Snapshot before the process was kicked off. We’re proud to be able to involve so many community members in the process and in the round itself.

Growth

As our output has increased, so has our impact. During season one our core contributors grew from 5 to 29 people (a 480% increase), who collectively earned 68,971 $FF in return for their efforts.

Across the 13 events and hangouts we ran in Season One we saw thousands of attendees and a truly insane roster of featured guests including Kei Kreutler, Toby Shorin, Ameer “Sirsu”, Patrick Rivera, John Palmer and Jarrod Dicker.

Bigger and bigger ships are bringing people to the shores of web3 and to new projects within it, and we’re thrilled that the leaders who are truly pioneering the space are coming to Forefront’s port to help guide them forward.

Introduction Off-Season

Off-Season Goals

While we’re more excited than ever about the future of Forefront, we can’t move forward blindly. Planning for Season Two and beyond must be an intentional, community-driven effort. As such, we’re kicking off an “Off-Season” period featuring community feedback opportunities, North Star sessions, Values Design, and much more. The goal is to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard in imagining the future of Forefront. Be on the lookout in the Discord, newsletter, and forum for meeting dates!

We’ve been running full speed ahead for the last 3 months – this next period is a time to slow down, reflect, and reimagine. We’ll still be working hard to produce and ship as a DAO, but with a renewed focus on the future.

We are gently building each other up by strengthening our bonds through trust and vulnerability. It is imperative for longevity and community health that we build these Off-Season periods into the fabric of Forefront.

Off-Season Program:

1. Reflection gatherings on Community Feedback;
2. North Star workshop;
3. Governance workshop;
4. Season & Product roadmap workshop;
5. Team Building & Health sessions;
6. Party like it’s 1999;
7. More TBD via community Vibez.

Off-Season will officially starts October 28th and run for a period of about 5 weeks.

Community Feedback

Please take a few minutes to complete our Community Feedback Form.

This form is our first step in aggregating community feedback and insight to continue to grow and improve throughout the Off-Season and beyond. Regardless of whether you were a hardcore Season 1 Contributor or a lurker looking to get involved, definitely take some time to fill out the form!

Season Two - Looking Ahead

While there’s plenty to think through during the Off-Season, the Forefront community has already been thinking hard about what the future might look like.

Some projects are already in the works across various Guilds. For example, we’re completely reimagining what Forefront’s DAO2DAO strategy looks like and how we can promote ecosystem-wide positive-sum games. We’re also working on product development (infrastructure for social token communities), public goods funding, new media experiments, and so much more.

Forefront Foundations

Forefront has come a long way, and we’re extremely excited for the future as we continue to grow and evolve, together.

Now, more than ever, we’re calling on the larger web3 community to come join us in building a vibrant, positive, creative community. We are actively building the port of entry to web3, and we need everyone to do their part in achieving this goal.

If you’re interested in joining Season 2 reflection and planning sessions, have a project you’d like to work on with Forefront, or just want to join for the vibes, definitely stop by our Discord!

Forefront is shipping – we hope you’ll join us :)

Thank you to our evolving community and to all active contributors who made Season One possible: Caroline Nguyen, Jihad Esmail, Joey DeBruin, CPTN Skeletor, Grendel, Makoto Inoue, David Tomu, Rafael, Chase Chapman, Gian Ferrer, Mel Shields, Austin Robey, Marvin Lin, Sat Panesar, Eliot, Richard Patey, Rafathebuilder, Bee Bradley, Alex (Aureus), Kevinc, Snorky, Jacob, Meral, Tolu, Vooka, Milan, Isiah, Qhawe, Natalie, Carlos Gomes, Andy Tom, Jenil Thakker, and Nir Kabessa.