The History
Serendipity, also ‘happy coincidence’, is how SafariDAO came into being. It started with a ‘Random Ethereum Breakfast Meetup’ in Nairobi, Kenya, on the 26 of January 2022. The ‘Breakfast Brain Cracker’ was: how can we increase the presence of Ethereum in Kenya?
Well, so it seemed during the breakfast that several people had already been playing with the idea to organize a ‘Kenyan ETHDenver’. After the meet a Discord server was spun up, and the rest is history…
The Name
All of us had visited Ethereum conferences before, and although super interesting we also thought they were a tat boring: you all enter one ‘industrial’ conference hall with often little daylight, where you spend around three days chatting with each other, and then go home.
When we spoke to each other about our joint enthusiasm for Ethereum, we started talking about our ‘Ethereum journeys’, and how it would be great to invite others to join us on our Ethereum journeys as well. Then we thought of how people can deeply connect through joint experiences, and how great it would be if people got to see the beautiful Kenyan landscape with all its animals.
Hence the idea was born for use to invite people on a philosophical journey as well as a physical journey with the ‘BlockTrain’.Oh yes, and then the name for the conference was a no-brainer. The Swahili word for ‘journey’ is ‘safari’, so we named the first conference ETHSafari, and the DAO which originated out of it, SafariDAO.
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The Logo
Why a Zebracorn? Next from Unicorns being enticing mythical creatures throughout history, a ‘Unicorn’ is also referred to as a startup company with a value of over 1 billion USD. Although Unicorns being a fun reference to companies it also begs the question: ‘should startups be assessed solely on their market value, or on their social value too?’Enter the ‘Zebra company’. Zebra companies are both black and white, meaning they are assessed both on their market value, and on their social value.
This is how we want people to look at SafariDAO too! Assess us on how well we are organized (also financially), and on the social value we add to others as an organization.And just because we’re a fan of mythical creatures as well, we have introduced the Zebracorn!
You might also see a little Ethereum diamond spinning at top of the ‘corn’. Ethereum is the mythical technology which made us ‘spin up’ SafariDAO in the first place. Oh true, you see many zebras on the African continent while going ‘on safari’. Well that just happened to be a happy coincidence :)
The Governance
Our adage is ‘Governance as we Go’. As a DAO we aim to govern ourselves in a decentralized way with as little hierarchy as possible. But as any organization SafariDAO needs to deliver, in our case world-class events, which means that not every decision will be voted on (as in some DAOs), since it’s very inefficient.
So we are continuously looking for the perfect sweet spot between decentralization and centralization.
At the moment our finances are governed in a decentralized way with Multisig DAO Accounts which consist of 5 people who have provided invaluable contributions to SafariDAO and/ or have proper financial skills (based on merit). The approval thresholds are 3 out of 5 people.
From Ethereum only to Web3?
We started off with people passionate about Ethereum. Along the way we met dozens of interesting people and initiatives who also shared the same ‘Ethereum’ conviction of blockchains being able to promote transparency, decentralization, and accountability but were working on different chains than Ethereum.
Since we shared the same values however we decided that we should be an inclusive Web3 community. So not exclusive to ‘Ethereans’ only, but exclusive to people supporting ‘Web3 values’ in word and deed.
