LexDAO has been working for the last two years to try to move into a stable and long-term solution for managing its membership. Our specifications have been developed in the Readme.md File to determine the base needs for operating a pay-for-membership ecosystem that brings together networks of professionals with non-transferrable "light" credentials. It is easy to take for granted how simple it is to deploy memberships in today's day in age using conventional methods. After all, membership organizations are not a new concept. So one might wonder "how could it take this long to solve something so basic?"
We have taken extraordinary care to try to find solutions that are complete for the basic specifications we deemed critical to effectively deploying a membership protocol for our organization. We operate a web3 native organization and have attempted to apply some of the core concepts around tokens and blockchains to organize and manage a DAO structure in a smart and thoughtful manner. Therefore, we have gone through a painful process of not "settling" for incomplete solutions, possibly to a fault.
In our discovery process, we've found that the concepts around NFTs fits so naturally to the idea of a validated membership card and yet the web3 ecosystem remains incredibly nascent and difficult to configure for such a baseline use case. Most solutions and options are fundamentally incomplete. There are a number of providers and solutions out there that seem to get most of the way there, but somehow manage to fall short of any number of critical needs which might include payment options, metadata configuration, permission structures, chain compatibility, among others.
Blockchain technology is sophisticated and almost endlessly configurable, however it is not easy to use. The learning curve for very basic functions is complicated and incredibly challenging. Because of the state of the ecosystem, every missing feature requires a bespoke solution. This will not always be the case, but the ecosystem is reminiscent of the internet of the late 1990s. The most talented engineers are inaccessible and busy, while the loudest voices are often naive or not collectively exhaustive in their solutions. In many ways, people fail to realize or acknowledge the nascency of the protocols, networks, and applications that are currently on the market.
In all of our investigations to-date, we have discovered one protocol which has taken a thoroughly exhaustive approach to the protocol, network, and application from a user experience perspective. This is not common place. While no solution is perfect, this provider has shown to be an excellent partner and has also comprehensively addressed almost every configurable option for an NFT based membership using a web based application with the added bonus of remaining open source.
The best solution we have found is a provider known as Unlock Protocol which offers ERC-721 tokens that are fully configurable and can be implemented on a variety of common L1 and L2 blockchains. From a pure functional perspective