Architecture

A DAO Ships "ship" is not a single contract. It is a small constellation of contracts that deploy together and play distinct roles: a governance module (DAOShip), two ERC-20 tokens (SharesERC20 and LootERC20), a treasury (a Quai Vault acting as the avatar), and an on-chain metadata bus (Poster). A factory — DAOShipAndVaultLauncher — wires them up in a single transaction. This page explains how the pieces relate.

All addresses and the canonical deployment live on Quai Orchard Testnet (Cyprus-1), chain ID 15000. See Contracts for the address table.

The components

The Zodiac IAvatar pattern

DAOShip follows the Zodiac module pattern. The vault is a Zodiac-compatible avatar: a smart account that can execute transactions on behalf of enabled modules. DAOShip is enabled as a module on its vault, so when a proposal passes, DAOShip spends treasury funds by calling the avatar's execTransactionFromModule:

// 3-param convenience form for plain Call operations
IAvatar(avatar).execTransactionFromModule(to, value, data);
 
// 4-param form for DelegateCall (e.g. MultiSend batching)
IAvatar(avatar).execTransactionFromModule(to, value, data, Enum.Operation.DelegateCall);

This separation is the core safety property: the vault holds the money, DAOShip holds none. DAOShip has no receive() function — the treasury is always the vault. If governance ever misbehaves, vault owners retain the emergency power to disable the module.

EIP-1167 clones and atomic deployment

The tokens and the DAOShip instance are EIP-1167 minimal proxy clones of pre-deployed singletons (logic contracts). Cloning costs roughly 300K gas versus around 4M for deploying a fresh singleton. The vault is an ERC-1967 proxy created by the Quai Vault factory.

Deployment is atomic and avoids a separate enableModule step. The launcher uses a predict-then-create flow:

1. Predict the DAOShip clone address deterministically (CREATE2).
2. Create the vault with initialModules = [predictedDAOShip] and MultiSendCallOnly whitelisted as a DelegateCall target.
3. Launch DAOShip with the freshly created vault address injected as the avatar.
4. Assert the predicted address equals the actual deployed address.

Because CREATE2 addresses are deterministic, callers can mine salts off-chain so every clone lands on the Cyprus-1 0x00 shard prefix. See Launch from TypeScript for the salt-mining workflow.

Execution flow

                         ┌──────────────────────────────┐
                         │  DAOShipAndVaultLauncher       │
                         │  (CREATE2 clones + vault proxy)│
                         └───────────────┬────────────────┘
                                         │ one transaction
                 ┌───────────────────────┼────────────────────────┐
                 ▼                       ▼                        ▼
          ┌────────────┐         ┌────────────────┐        ┌──────────────┐
          │ SharesERC20│◄────────│    DAOShip      │───────►│  LootERC20    │
          │ (voting)   │  mint/  │  (governance    │  mint/ │  (economic)   │
          └────────────┘  burn   │   module)       │  burn  └──────────────┘
                                 └───────┬─────────┘
                  execTransactionFromModule │
                                          ▼
                                 ┌──────────────────┐
                                 │   Quai Vault       │
                                 │  (avatar/treasury) │
                                 └──────────────────┘
 
  Poster (EIP-3722)  ──NewPost(user, content, tag)──►  off-chain indexers / frontends

Navigators

Navigators are trusted, permissioned extension contracts (for example, onboarding flows that mint shares in exchange for QUAI). Governance grants each navigator an additive permission bitmask: ADMIN = 1, MANAGER = 2, GOVERNOR = 4. A MANAGER navigator can mint and burn tokens, so navigators must be immutable and bounded.

Where to go next

• Contracts — real deployed addresses and key functions.
• Launch from TypeScript — deploy a DAO with the quais SDK.
• Indexer — read DAO state from Supabase.
• Build a Navigator — write your own extension.