How to take part as an individual in DAO Experimentation Program — Cohort 3

The DAO Experimentation Program (DEP) invites students, professionals, creators, technologists, community builders, and mission-driven individuals from around the world to help run a real DAO in Cohort 3.

In DEP 3, the cohort's DAOs are decided before members are recruited — Kambria's model DAO alongside a set of selected social-impact projects. So when you apply, you already know which DAOs exist and can choose the one whose mission fits you. You join as a member of that DAO, take up a place in its lanes, do real work that is paid, and are recognised for the wider ways you contribute.

This page describes how taking part works, so that anyone — including projects considering the Call for Projects — can understand who joins a DAO and how. The specific DAOs open for members are confirmed once the projects are selected; the Call for Participants then opens with those details. See the Program Timeline page for when.

 

1. Who Can Join

Individuals

The Call for Participants welcomes:

• University students, club leaders, early founders
• Creators, volunteers, social innovators
• Designers, developers, writers, facilitators, organisers
• Anyone drawn to social impact, knowledge sharing, creativity, community, or building things together

Returning participants from earlier cohorts are especially encouraged to take part — and anyone new is warmly welcome.

No prior blockchain, DAO, or crypto experience is required. DEP is learning by doing; the tools you need are introduced during onboarding.

 

Two practical conditions

DEP 3 runs online and pays contributors in cryptocurrency, so two conditions must be in place from the start — onboarding cannot fix them later:

• Reliable internet access. The weekly check-ins, the syncs, and the day-to-day work all happen over the internet, so you need to be able to get online reliably enough to take part.
• Cryptocurrency is not banned where you are. The cohort pays contributors in USDT and uses crypto wallets. Crypto does not need to be formally regulated where you are — a place without settled crypto law is fine — but it must not be banned there. You manage your own conversion to local currency in line with local rules — which in some countries means using licensed or authorized channels only (see the Conversion Guideline).

 

If you’re an organization or a project

The Call for Participants is for individuals. If you lead a social-impact project and want a DAO built around it, see the Call for Projects. If your organization would like to collaborate with a DAO, see Partner With Us.

 

2. What You Will Experience

A. Real DAO participation, organised as lanes

You become a member of a functioning DAO. The work is organised into lanes — streams of work each held by a pair. You take part in one of two ways: co-owning a lane in a pair, or floating as a contributor across lanes you don't own. Where you start is not where you're fixed; people move between the two as their capacity and fit become clear.

The Owned Lanes Model and Member Roles & Contribution pages describe this in full.

 

B. Paid for your work, and recognised for your contribution

This is real work, and it is treated as such. Contribution is recognised in two distinct ways:

• Payment for work — real work in a DAO is paid work. Each DAO defines its own pay-per-task scheme in its Master Plan — which tasks are paid, and at what rate — and payments then run through the Kambria DAOs Framework, per task, each one recorded transparently.
• KAT recognition — alongside payment, your contributions are recognised with KAT, a symbolic, non-financial, non-tradable token that records your contribution history and carries long-term standing in Kambria. KAT recognises the many contributions that aren't a paid task — welcoming a new member, helping another lane, shaping a proposal.

Payment and KAT are separate and do different things. The DAO Funding Guide, Contributor Payment, and KAT in DEP 3 pages describe how each works.

 

C. A global community

You collaborate with DAO members from different countries, backgrounds, and cultures, working toward a mission you chose.

 

D. A guided journey

As a participant, your journey runs from Onboarding through to the Summary & Showcase — roughly 7 months of active membership within the wider cohort. The path is structured: orientation, placement into your DAO's lanes, then execution in a steady weekly and monthly rhythm.

The Program Timeline page shows how the whole cohort unfolds.

 

E. Skills across domains

Depending on your lane, you build experience in areas such as creative production, facilitation and peer learning, community building, documentation and storytelling, product thinking, coordination and operations, and DAO governance.

 

3. How to Join (aligned with the Program Timeline)

Joining happens in two stages, following the cohort's phases:

• Call for Participants — opens in Phase 2, after the projects are selected, so you apply knowing which DAOs exist.
• Onboarding — Phase 3, where accepted members are set up and placed into their DAO's lanes.

See the Program Timeline page for exact dates.

 

Stage 1 — Apply and align

Step 1 · Submit the application. You share:

• the DAO you'd like to join (chosen from the cohort's confirmed DAOs)
• the kind of work you're drawn to and the experience you bring
• your availability
• any relevant experience (optional — beginners are welcome)

You don't choose a specific lane when you apply — lanes and pairs are formed at kickoff, using your stated interests together with your profile and interview.

Step 2 · Review and shortlisting. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis.

Step 3 · Alignment conversation (~30 minutes). Each shortlisted applicant has a short online conversation with the DAO Facilitators (Kambria team). It's a two-way fit check: to understand the DAO's structure and what membership involves, to match your interests with where a DAO needs people, and to answer any questions you have.

Step 4 · Acceptance and confirmation. Accepted applicants receive a confirmation, join the DEP Discord, and get the onboarding schedule for Phase 3.

 

Stage 2 — Onboard and begin

Step 5 · Kickoff and orientation. The cohort comes together at the Kickoff — the first All-DAOs Sync. It introduces what the DAOs will do, the Owned Lanes model, how payment and KAT work, the master plan and lane proposals, and the tools (Discord, Drive, XDAO, and the CED platform where relevant).

Step 6 · Placement into your DAO's lanes. Within your DAO, Kambria forms the initial pairs and lane assignments from members' interests, profiles, and interviews — pairing deliberately so each lane has a good chance of always having someone actively moving it. New members are welcomed through the DAO's onboarding lane and can begin as floating contributors.

Step 7 · DAO onboarding. You receive your lane's Launch Kit, review the DAO's master plan draft, meet your DAO Facilitators, your DAO Lead, DAO members and your pair, and get access to the DAO's workspace, trackers, and templates.

Step 8 · Begin contributing. From the start of Execution you take part in the weekly check-in, do your lane's work, help draft and vote on proposals, and are paid per task and recognised through KAT. From here you are a full DAO member for the rest of the cohort.

 

4. Ways to Take Part

At any given time, a DAO member takes part in one of two ways — these are not ranks, and members move between them:

Lane owner (in a pair)	You co-own a lane and run it through the cohort. The central role of the cohort — supported by a Launch Kit, and never held alone.
Floating contributor	You help on lanes you don't own, on specific pieces of work, without being fixed to one. A natural way in for new members, and a genuine home when your capacity is lighter.

Not everyone who contributes is a DAO member: community collaborators — volunteers, partner representatives, ambassadors, platform users, guest contributors — take part in bounded ways and are recognised through KAT — and, where appropriate, a Collaborator Certificate — without joining the DAO's internal running.

The Member Roles & Contribution page describes both ways of taking part, the roles that hold a DAO together, what's expected of a member, and how community collaborators are recognised.

 

5. What You Do NOT Need

• No prior blockchain, DAO, or crypto experience
• No technical background
• No full-time commitment or fixed working hours — you contribute at a level that fits your capacity
• No need to already hold crypto — you'll set up a simple wallet during onboarding to receive task payments and on-chain recognition (which is why the two practical conditions above matter)

DEP is a learning-by-doing program.

 

6. What Membership Gives You

• Hands-on experience owning and running part of a real DAO
• Payment for the work you do, and lasting KAT recognition for how you contribute
• An official DEP certificate recognising your participation as a DAO Member
• Portfolio-building outputs and a global collaboration network
• A real contribution to meaningful social impact

Members who show real commitment across the cohort may also receive features in the final showcase, priority invitations to future Kambria programs, early access to tools and experiments, recommendation letters and portfolio support, and openings into Kambria's longer-term DAO ecosystem. The Member Roles & Contribution page (Recognition Beyond KAT) describes these.

 

7. Join Us

If you feel aligned with community, learning, creativity, decentralized collaboration, social impact, and building things together — you are warmly invited to take part in DEP 3.

The Call for Participants opens later in Phase 2, once the cohort's DAOs are confirmed. Returning participants and newcomers alike are encouraged to watch for it.

Application Form: [link to be updated]

Not sure yet which DAO fits? Start with the DAO Projects Overview and the Capacity Exchange DAO page, and watch for the participant-proposed DAO pages once the projects are selected.