How It Works

Each DAO in Cohort 3 has its own focus, but all of them move through the same process — from joining, to organising into lanes, to creating value, to sharing what happened. This page walks through that process step by step. Several steps have their own detailed pages; this is the map that connects them.

Two things run underneath the whole process and are worth naming up front: the Kambria DAOs Framework, which handles value and payments transparently and is being run in a live cohort for the first time; and the Owned Lanes model, the way each DAO organises its work so that members own outcomes rather than wait for tasks.

1.  Projects and Members Join

Cohort 3 is formed in an order that matters. First, social-impact projects are selected — chosen for having a working innovation, proven regeneration, and a real community behind them — and a participant-proposed DAO is built around each one as a new channel to scale its impact. Alongside them runs Kambria's own model DAO, the Capacity Exchange DAO.

Then members are recruited into the cohort, knowing which DAO they are joining. During the Call for Applications, participants share their background, the DAO and kind of work they're drawn to, and their availability — so they can align with a project's mission and bring relevant experience to it, rather than being placed after the fact.

Returning participants from earlier cohorts are warmly encouraged to take part, bringing their experience with them. Prior experience with Web3 is not required to join.

2.  Onboarding & Workspace Setup

Once DAOs are formed, members are set up with the tools the cohort runs on — Discord for communication, a Google Drive workspace, XDAO for governance and treasury, and the Kambria DAOs Framework for receiving and distributing value. Guides for each are in the Tools & Onboarding section.

Members also receive what they need to begin: an orientation to their DAO, the proposal templates, guidance on how contribution and payment work, and — for each lane — its Launch Kit.

3.  Organise Into Lanes

Each DAO organises its work into owned lanes — each lane a pair, each with clear boundaries, each a continuing stream of work — grouped under a few broad scopes so the pairs stay pointed in shared directions. Kambria forms the initial pairs and lane assignments from members' interests and profiles, and every DAO includes onboarding work — welcoming and activating new members — as one of its lanes.

This is the heart of how a DEP 3 DAO runs day to day. The Owned Lanes Model page explains it in full, and the Member Roles & Contribution page explains how members own, contribute to, or float across lanes.

4.  Write the Master Plan & Lane Proposals

Each DAO writes a master plan: how it will pursue its focus, and — importantly — how it defines its own lanes. Deciding a DAO's lanes is the first real act of ownership in the cohort, the point where the shared model becomes this DAO's concrete shape.

From there, pairs write short proposals for their lanes — what they intend to do, and what they need to do. Members work on these under the guidance and preliminary qualification of the DAO Facilitators, drafting from Kambria's templates. The Proposals & Reporting section has the templates and checklists.

5.  Align, Submit, and Vote

Before execution begins, the cohort comes together in an Onboarding Sync to align all the DAOs and preview their proposals. From there, proposals move through a clear flow:

1.   Proposals are submitted through the Create Proposal feature on XDAO.
2.   DAO participants vote on the qualified proposals.
3.   Approved proposals move into execution; the work goes ahead and is documented.

Once work is underway, the seed funding is released monthly, along two different paths depending on what it's for:

•   Contributor payments. payments to contributors for the work they do are released through the Kambria DAOs Framework, per task — the system computes what's owed and the contributor is paid directly, on the record.
•   Operating costs. costs that aren't tied to one person's task — a venue, a tool, a community micro-grant — are released from the DAO treasury to the DAO Lead or treasurer to spend, with receipts and documentation.

Each DAO receives $3,000 in seed funding from Kambria, released monthly across the cohort rather than all at once — supporting careful planning, iteration, and transparency along the way.

The seed is starting capital for scaling impact, not a loan to be repaid. Unlike earlier cohorts, there is no target to earn it back. Using it well is measured by what it helps the DAO scale — the impact axes on the Measuring What Matters page — not by how much revenue returns.

6.  Create Value

This is the longest stretch of the cohort: each DAO does its actual work — connecting people, amplifying community knowledge, offering care, convening experiences, depending on the DAO. Each DAO's page describes what this looks like for them.

There is no fixed impact quota to hit. The focus is on creating something genuinely valuable and letting what returns be observed, rather than working toward a number. The Concept Note explains the thinking behind this.

7.  Value Flows Through the Framework

When a DAO's work brings in revenue, it flows through the Kambria DAOs Framework rather than being handled by hand:

•   Received. Payments are received in USDT against a request, each recorded with its source, amount, time, and DAO.
•   Categorised. Each payment is tagged by type, so reporting is consistent across DAOs.
•   Split. A predefined, versioned split rule is applied automatically — no spreadsheets, no per-transaction arithmetic.
•   Paid out. Those due are paid directly, with amounts computed by the system, and every step visible in the logs.

Because this is the framework's first live cohort, Kambria runs it hands-on — with close support and manual checks alongside the automation until it has earned trust.

8.  Rhythms and Alignment

The cohort keeps two regular rhythms. Each week each DAO has a short check-in, facilitated by Kambria, where each lane updates on how it's moving and anything stuck is caught early. About once a month, at each phase, all the DAOs gather together in an All-DAOs Sync, where each pair presents what their lane will focus on next and tells the story of the period just gone — so the whole cohort sees each other's work and moves as one. The Kickoff that opens the cohort and the Showcase that closes it are the first and last of these gatherings.

Weekly updates keep each lane visible, but they don't, on their own, make the lanes work together. So alongside them, lanes align around shared activities. When the DAO takes on something that needs several lanes at once — a campaign, a launch, a community push — an activity plan sets the shared goal and shows how each lane contributes to it, so the lanes move together rather than in parallel. This is how cross-lane collaboration becomes concrete rather than hoped-for.

Not every week carries a deliverable — space to absorb and integrate is deliberate — but the DAO stays in weekly contact throughout. The Owned Lanes Model page describes the rhythms and how lanes align.

9.  Payment & Recognition

Contribution is recognised in two ways. People who do work are paid for it, per task through the framework, as described above. Alongside payment, contributions are recognised with KAT — a symbolic, non-financial token that records participation and standing in Kambria, including the many contributions that aren't a paid task, like welcoming a new member or helping another lane. The Member Roles page and the KAT in DEP 3 page cover both.

10.  Updates & Field Notes

Each DAO shares regular updates on how its work is going — progress, stories, experiments, challenges, and what's next — so the cohort stays visible to itself and to the community following along.

Alongside the numbers the framework records, DAOs keep field notes: the things that don't show up as revenue but matter to the story — a referral that arrived unasked, a collaboration that formed on its own, something that returned in a form other than money. Both are part of what the cohort learns.

11.  Reflection & Showcase

Near the end of the cohort, members reflect on their experience — what they made, what surprised them, what they learned about working this way — and each DAO brings its work together for a showcase: outputs, stories, results, and honest learnings, including what didn't work.

The showcase is the final All-DAOs Sync, and it marks the completion of Cohort 3.