OQ’s experts are committed to gender equality and have solid knowledge about international legal and policy frameworks on gender equality and social inclusion. They have the skills to build capacities for gender transformation of organisations and institutions. Thera was the central point in this OQ Network, although she preferred a participative open network-organisation shared by equal partners. Several years she searched for software and for a legal identity to create such an open participative enterprise. She asked for advice from a range of legal, business and management experts, until her own son, Jos Carpio van Osch, came with the solution: The Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO).

Jos Carpio van Osch, 2022

The DAO is owned and managed by the people who are part of it. In the DAO there is no hierarchy, no director, or chief in charge of decision making. The DAO is decentralised, which means that decisions are taken by all the members of the network. The DAO enables the creation of a global open democratic enterprise managed by the members of a community, who have equal voice and vote in the organisation.

The DAO is called autonomous because it regulates itself. The regulation mechanism consists of a set of smart contracts and protocols that are defined by the founders of the DAO and integrated in an online system that runs over the Blockchain.

The DAO is a new global organisation model. While there are different kind of DAOs, they have one thing in common: they all represent a group of people with a shared mission or working towards a common goal. People who wish to become a member of a DAO must first acquire one or more governance tokens, mostly Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), which are unique digital assets.

With the creation of the OQ-DAO, OQ Consulting’s governance structure has passed from a centralised network company to a decentralised network company.

On April 7, 2023, the OQ-DAO was launched in a hybrid meeting, that was attended by 16 participants, 8 of which participated online and 8 in person in the World House conference room. The participants were from Bulgaria, Georgia (the Republic), Germany, India, Iran, Italy, Yemen, Morocco, Netherlands, Spain, and Uganda.

The OQ-DAO is a democratic global network company that promotes human-rights, gender equality and environmental justice in the green and digital transformation of society.

World House, Wetten (Germany) – 7 April 2023: Participants in person of the hybrid meeting to launch the OQ-DAO. From left to right: Frans Steijger, Christine Verheijden, Thera van Osch, Jos Carpio van Osch, Griselda Ballester Tataret, Shreya Surana, Danial Zarei, Sara Metz.

How does the OQ-DAO work?

As a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation, the community of partners is at the core of the company. Everyone who supports the mission of the OQ-DAO can join the community of partners by buying one or more Governance Tokens at the website https://www.oq-dao.net/

Advantages for the community of partners of the OQ-DAO:

• The community of partners take the decisions. There are no chief executive officers or directors, who take decisions. Anyone who is committed to the mission and goals of the OQ-DAO can become a partner by obtaining a Governance Token (GT) that gives decision making power.
• Partners can use the forum of the OQ-DAO to join any online meeting and convene meetings themselves. The rules and procedures for these meetings are recorded on the blockchain and can be viewed (and changed) by the community of partners.
• The partners decide how the funds of the OQ-DAO will be used, for example: to attract staff, initiate projects, participate in tenders, carry out assignments, develop new products or services, or distribute profits to the partners. Each holder of one or more Governance Tokens has the right to vote, by linking their wallet to the OQ-DAO voting system.
• The partners can make money by contributing to the OQ-DAO. At the forum of the OQ-DAO they can submit proposals to finance their own project or apply for a particular job in the OQ-DAO. They can use a template to specify how their proposal contributes to the mission of the OQ-DAO and how this contribution will be realized (e.g., the duration of the project or job, investments required, expected revenues).
• The community of partners decides which proposals will be approved and financed with the funds of the OQ-DAO. The voting procedure is explained in advance and each partner has access to the OQ-DAO voting system.
• There is full transparency, and all partners have access to the information about the administration of the community wallet of the OQ-DAO through the blockchain.
• There is an OQ-DAO group on the Telegram channel to share more information about the latest developments and upcoming events related to OQ-DAO.
• Persons interested in partnership can receive technical support for all steps required to become a partner of the OQ-DAO through a helpdesk. At the initial stage they can buy GTs from the website of the OQ-DAO. This is called minting.
• Once all GTs of the OQ-DAO have been sold, people can buy and sell GTs on digital marketplaces.

In the future, holders of Governance Tokens might want to sell their governance token. They can do this by going to an open NFT Marketplace. We recommend using the NFT-marketplace OpenSea:  www.opensea.io. Here you can connect your wallet and establish a price for your NFT. Those who sell GTs from the OQ-DAO, pay a 5% commission to the community wallet of the OQ-DAO.