Did you know TED actually has a headless brand element?

TED official conferences are run and maintained by the central organization, but TEDx conferences can be run by local communities. In this way, TED has been able to scale to 3,000+ conferences all over the world with a fairly narrow team of 10 TEDx centralized coordinators.

While there’s been some periods of extreme bumpiness (e.g. loss of quality, outright scammers, “Wow. Such f—ing bullsh-t”) I think you can argue the headless brand experiment here has done more good than harm—and the bumpiness has been mitigated by centralized processes, rules, and yes…gatekeeping. Just the right amount of centralized coordination to allow a mission-driven permissionless brand to flourish and accomplish objectives.

Do you see the parallels with Bankless and BanklessDAO?

The mission of TED is “ideas worth spreading” the mission of bankless is “help the world go bankless” - both are broad missions, but they execute in narrowly defined way with a clear call to action. What does TED do? It hosts conferences. How can you get involved? You can host a local conference.

I think it would greatly benefit BanklessDAO to have a smaller scope of what it does and how to get involved - in my mind, the greatest value to the world is regional local chapters doing meetups, media, and education (e.g. Bankless Brazil, etc), so the narrow call to action could be - host a regional Bankless node.

Here are some patterns I notice.

• Clear filtering criteria for TEDx organizers:
  • Easy overview
  • What TEDx is and what it isn’t
  • Your responsibilities
  • A basic explainer
• Clear rules
  • Clear but detailed rules
  • Content guidelines
• Brand guidelines
  • Branding and naming
  • Licensing details
• Application required
  • Application process
• Marketing TEDx
  • List of all TEDx events

There’s much more here to explore. But the major takeaway is that a headless brand is possible, IF there’s a highly effective centrally coordinated gatekeeper maintaining standards, rules, and approving/disbanding participants in a narrow focus area (e.g. Regional Education).

I think BanklessDAO can narrow itself to “Regional Nodes” mission, absolutely nail this. Establish BanklessDAO as a independent but related brand (e.g. TED vs TEDx), have small staff of central coordinators in the DAO who’s sole job is to establish the process, guidelines, and clarity. Have those coordinators funded and supported by DAO treasury. And have the DAO token holder vote’s primary function to vote in/out the central coordinators.