OTNS: Transitioning ReFi DAO to a Coordi-Nation
In this episode we spoke to Monty Merlin Bryant, a co-founder of ReFi DAO and environmentalist to discuss the movement behind ReFi or Regenerative Finance. ICYMI, ReFi DAO had previously started to declare itself a network state but has since learning more about coordi-nations, have shifted course towards our conceptual framework instead. We discuss what that process has been like and how ReFi DAO hopes to use the affordances of crypto to build a non-state force for aligning people and planet...
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Transcript
Hi, everyone. You are listening once again to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. We are continuing our overthrow of the network state. And for this episode, I think it'd be really interesting because I'm going to be speaking to Monte, Merlin Bryant. Does it are those all the names? Who is one of the cofounders of RefiDAO, which he'll explain to us what RefiDAO is in a moment. But I think what's really interesting, for us right now is that RefiDAO, in case you didn't know, at one point was kind of embracing this meme of the network state and, you know, wanting to become a network state in in some of their, communications and have, recently begun, I think, questioning the network state a bit more and have now I like I guess in the process of moving towards conceptualizing RefiDAO and its vision and future as more like a coordination in the way that, you know, Primavera and I have, and others have spoken about the concept, which is very interesting because I think then we're able to speak to a convert, I guess you could say. Indeed. Yeah. But so maybe to start off, Monty, if you want, could you explain a bit, I mean, who you are, what RefaDAO is, and what was kind of like the the vision of of the project? Yeah. Sure. I mean, first of all, just wanna express gratitude for being on here. I've been huge fan of the podcast, and it's been hugely inspiring
to my thinking and challenging a lot of conceptual models and, the work of BlockchainGov and Primavera, and you bringing, all these amazing guests on the podcast, has been a real inspiration. So, very glad to be here, and to dive in to this, world of RefiDAO, and, kind of emerging ideas and visions and how that's evolved, over time. So, yeah, I guess just starting with a little bit about myself, might be a good place to start. So, yeah, I've, grown up in, the rural Southwest Of The UK in the countryside, come from a family of, environmentalists, two older brothers. One's a designer. One's working in the circular economy space. And my mom's been an environmentalist for forty years, written, multiple many, many books. And so I've always been discussing these big issues from a very young age and debating things around the dinner table and, all of this kind of stuff. And so yeah. I mean, I I was always interested in crypto as well, like, from a economic and technological kind of futurism point of view, but never had this environmentalism side of it. And, of course, I was really passionate about that and looking at all of the giant problems we face and the kind of terrifying future that we seem to be hurtling towards and that nation states and corporations seem to be failing to address, like, not just a little bit, like, a lot. And if not actively subverting it and using money and power, to actively subvert the change that we so clearly and evidently need. And so there's always been that kind of deep dissatisfaction and, I I think growing, actually, increasingly, the more I sort of, see and you see what some of these big companies and, governments seem to seem to be doing even now. So, I guess, that's always been brewing. And then, yeah. So, crypto never really had this environmental side until this refi space was born. And so, back in the day when the whole KlimaDAO, Toucan protocol exploded and the ReFi movement was born, I was, like, this is it. This is where I wanna be. And ReFi is, just for people who don't know, is regenerative finance. Yes. Yeah. So, refi stands for regenerative finance and, my kind of exploration for what it is is it's all about how we reimagine, redesign, and rebuild our financial and economic systems and coordination mechanisms, even social and cultural stuff as well, but to be in harmony with people and planet. And so, yeah, one of the core ideas I've been thinking about is, in some ways, finance and money has is, like, the single most powerful coordination tool that humans have ever invented. It seems to, like, coordinate people all over the globe literally every day. The actions we do seem to be driven by this, you know, financial system. And so what if we could actually redesign it so that instead of every action you do within this current economy is having a negative impact on people and the planet, around you, even if you don't know it directly. Like, if you look at the supply chains and all of the indirect impacts of just living in this modern world has a negative impact. And so how could we actually redesign those systems, take away the focus on individual action? Of course, elements of that are very important and there's the kind of social stuff as well. But, like, fundamentally, we really need to redesign our entire economic systems and coordination structures, because it's not working. And, for me, I think regenerative finance is this, amazing beautiful emergence of different experiments going on. Specifically, the Refi acronym, is, you know, focused on leveraging the tools of Web three and AI and these other advanced technologies, MRV, decentralized science, all of these different, advanced technologies, and then how can we utilize those, in pursuit of building this, regenerative
economy. So The refi is really to me, it is a I mean, it's kind of an embrace of high-tech to a certain degree for,
like, environmental Yeah. Ends. The solarpunk. The solarpunk vision. It's like, okay. We have this cyberpunk vision of high-tech, low life where we see it all in all the sci fi movies, where there's a super advanced technology, but it's very dystopian. But, actually, imagining a future where we can use advanced technologies, but for prosocial, pro environmental outcomes, in a way that's, like, I guess, protopian is is another term of, like, a realistic vision of a positive future. And so I think we can, if we consciously decide to, use these technologies not just for extraction and, these dystopian kind of things, concepts, but actually, yeah, build the future that we actually all wanna see. Nice.
And so where does, kind of, RefiDAO play into this this whole thing?
Yeah. So I guess we can go into a little bit of, like, the history of of RefiDAO, and its initial kind of emergence, and then we can kinda go through the the story of how it's evolved since then. So yeah. It it initially started, John Ellison was working with Toucan protocol. And at the time, there was this craziness going on of, Toucan created a bridge for carbon credits to come on chain, and KlimaDAO created this crazy token economic incentive mechanism, to, create the incentives to put those put that carbon on chain. And within launch, they were maybe expecting, you know, a couple 100 10,000 credits to come on chain. And, within days, millions of credits were coming on chain to the to the tune of five to 10% of the entire global voluntary carbon market in a matter of weeks, which was pretty crazy. We're talking, like, billions of dollars in volume. And, you know, this is bull market kinda stuff. But but at that moment, you know, there had been some refi projects before then, but the acronym refi and the community and the ecosystem hadn't wasn't really formed. But there were some awesome projects before then like Giveth and Regen Network and a few other kind of early pioneers. But at that moment, there was this surge of interest in the refi space and all of these new founders, startups, people coming into the space and uniting around this meme of refi. And so the I think there was a great need for, like, a almost like a container or a or a ecosystem support, like a home of refi to try and bring, these people together. So yeah. Initially, a few John and a few others, kind of started doing this while he was at Toucan. And then it became, clear that it needed some, like, leadership and full time kind of stuff. And so John ended up leaving, Toucan for various reasons and then, and really throwing himself into RefaDAO full time. And, yeah, at the early days, it was, you know, there was a podcast. There was a blog. And one of the key things was these founder circles as well, bringing in all these different startups and founders that were coming in and, actually, creating a community for people to come together and, explore ideas together and find their cofounders and, and kind of, yeah, create a sense of community in these early days when everything was quite, hectic. So yeah. So that was that was, I think, the origins. And then I I kind of joined, around that time towards the end of Founder Circles. I was doing my own startup at the time, People Power Finance, and I'd just done a TED Talk on refi and started doing more and more stuff building for this regenerative finance community and ecosystem. And yeah. So so then we kind of, started having these ideas around. We we were looking at Balaji's network state, book, and I think we're really excited about a couple of the ideas. And I guess one of the key draws was was, I explained earlier, this feeling of a deep dissatisfaction with the way that current institutions, were dealing with the climate crisis, and other network of interconnected crisises, and a feeling that we needed to innovate in terms of new structures to address these challenges on a global level. And this model of having a network of local communities that were kind of, you know, across the globe and dispersed, but actually interconnected with a shared, sense of, culture and alignment and coordination and could actually then grow to a size that would actually have significant influence and scale. So if we founded a network state based on the principles of regeneration, what could that mean in terms of how we engage in the geopolitical processes, globally? Like, we are thinking, okay. Maybe we could, like, join the UN or, you know, and and actually implement change at these institutions whilst at the same time, experimenting with new structures, that are kind of different from the current, nation state paradigm. So I think that was always really interesting to us and that's what drew us, to us. And it was the first, that I was aware of that kind of built the kind of, I guess, memes or or the concepts behind it. I mean, obviously, there was work before it. And this was the kind of only version of that in the crypto space. And so, obviously, I'm grateful for the, for the new versions coming out. But, but yeah. So I guess, part of our initial stuff as well is, like, we also did see some of the problematic sides. And, like, from from the beginning, we we always said, like, we're not here in direct opposition to other nations. Like, we're not, like, trying to buy land and be, like, not pay taxes and be a complete regulatory haven and, like, and be, like, extremely antagonistic and exit based to others to other states. But rather our our aim was always to, like, okay. How can we form this new nation like structure, but actually then work with these different, nations and governments and institutions, to guide them towards this regenerative future by showing that we're doing it on the ground and it's working and we've got this whole, system, going. And Mhmm. Yeah. So that was that was always kinda there, but we didn't really have a a name or, I guess, container for it, that was better than the network state at the time. Sure. Yeah. No. I think
the well, I'm I'm sympathetic to and what I think is, kind of part of the thesis for Pimavera and I was that, yes, a lot of people are dissatisfied with, I mean, institutions like states and corporations, their inability to solve, clearly major global problems, one of the largest one being climate change. And I think people becoming, at this point, you know, after, I don't know, like, at least fifty years of kind of, like, not much change as far as, like, how we think about, you know, the integration of our ecological or environmental systems within, like, the economy that I think a lot of people felt that, okay, nation states aren't working, corporations aren't working. And so then that leaves a space where people are open to new ideas. And I think one of our one of one of my fears at least was, like, okay. A lot of people are going to go towards the network state because that's what he has a lot of, reach and, like, influence, so he's going to reach a lot of people to to propose that alternative. And of course, like, from for for a lot of people who are, dissatisfied with that, like, that that appeals to them, of course. It appears as something different. And I think, I think what we're kind of engaging in with the coordination stuff is almost like a a politics through concept creation, that if we can provide different maps than what are, kind of being proposed that are also different than, I guess, like, because, you know, if people don't like states, people don't like corporations, there is this, like, and there's, like, this power vacuum, I think, this conceptual power vacuum that leads people to network states, which is, like, you know, of course, it requires a certain amount of critical analysis. Like, it just ends up being a recreation of of kind of what already exists and that's Totally. I can talk about how that relates to, the rise of fascism and whatever. But, I think like, yeah. What what makes me excited is, like, that you guys have now are looking into our concept, and I think that only happened because we have presented it. Absolutely.
For sure. Vera, I don't know. What do you think? Yeah. No. I I find it, I find it interesting that, one of the core motivation why you are interested to engage into the network state concept is in order to actually engage into international relations, which I think makes a lot of sense because there is a point in which if if existing nation states are not actually taking sufficient intervention with regard to, climate aspect, then you do need to have some kind of international actor that can that can hack on behalf of this. And and it's interesting because it it is actually one of the good reasons, I will say, why it will make sense to somehow adopt the state infrastructure is because we know that if you are a state, then you are automatically an actor within international relationship. And, and at the same time, I think this is an interesting, element that we're also trying to explore is well, we do also have it's not only states that are part of international relations. We also have international organizations. And to which extent is this new clear tier, that we're proposing, of, like, the coordination type of networks of a entity? To which extent to which extent is it capable to engage into international relations? To which extent does it have to in the sense that I think there is also an alternative approach, which is well, in fact, do you do you need an actual actor that is, an international actor that can dialogueate with, existing nation state? Or can you actually create interventions to coordination of people that, you know, collectively decide to do specific actions and collectively decide to interface with their own nation states. And I, and I think probably the answer is we need a little bit of both. I think there is a lot of value in having an international actor that comes into, being and is actually promoting or defending specific interest. So, so it's, it's nice because I think out of all the people that I've encountered so far that were or are still attracted by the national, the network state idea, these these idea of, like, we need to be a state because we need to engage on an equal footing with other states on international relations is actually a good argument why the state might be necessary more so than a different structure.
Yeah. Because in some ways, it fits within the kind of existing legal and political kind of institutions, institutional structures that are already there and then can provide a new, form of voice within that system.
So yeah. You know that you already have a voice. Whereas as a coordination, if you don't map into the institutional framework of the state, then you have to prove
your work in order to get a voice into the international relations space. Yes. Exactly. So yeah. So I I think one of the ways that we have been looking at it and our kind of, strategy and vision kind of going forward is, at the moment, really focusing on building amazing strong local communities. And the mission, that I see of that is is to really ignite this regenerative economy by actually implementing some of these amazing refi solutions on the ground and show what it looks like to actually build localized regenerative economies at the same time connected up to these to this global network and a kind of global regenerative economy. And so that's quite, like, practice based. It's like, you know, planting trees and engaging with the refi protocols that that create the right economic structures for that. But then the evolution of that I see is that once that reaches, sufficient size and scale and we can do these massive coordination kind of impact and we can really measure, okay, we've as a nation, we've, you know, regenerated this much land. We have this much, like, co living communities. We have this much positive impact. Like, GDP is not a good measure, but, you know, this kind of thing. Then that gets us to the size where, you know, actual more traditional institutions are gonna start to take notice, and be like, oh, you're you've actually built a regenerative economy, and You've using these really advanced technologies and these really cool models. And so that, I think, provides an initial kind of, roots in the door. And then as a compliment to that, I think one of the things we could look into developing in the future, we kind of have been brainstorming around this, like, refi embassy network potentially, where maybe you start to build, like, connections with local municipalities or even the national governments, and just start having bringing them into the conversation, showing them the regenerative solutions, the regenerative models. And then it starts the conversation for, okay, how can we maybe even change the policy environment or some of our national kind of strategies that actually is is more supportive to this emerging regenerative, economy, and even borrowing the best political models from around the world to then share them with other nations. Because at the same time, we can do a lot of bottom up grassroots kind of stuff, and we can use the tools of refi. But there is a a lot of, like, top down change that needs to happen, in order to actually make this stuff really work. And so policy changes, political changes are, like, one of the most powerful lee, levers. Like, if if, the politicians decided, okay, we're actually gonna, like, enforce that companies have to account for and pay for the negative impacts that they're having on the environment, and, like, pay a fair price for them. That would be or, like, value natural capital, for example. Redesign financial systems. We can do that on a bottoms up layer, but it becomes incredibly difficult. Like, if there was that that that real institutional political engagement, we can make, like, massive leap forward very quickly. And so yeah. Really, really, my hope is that we can focus on building a really strong interconnected network of local communities, and then start to then build more bridges in each of those localities to governments, lawmakers, corporations, institutions to start to kind of, bring more energy and and progress.
So Yeah. That's kind of where I think it's at. I think so. If we if we try to, like, use this, it's a very good example, in order to, like, map out the pro and cons, I guess, of, coordinations and network states. To me, it it almost like when I hear you speaking, it almost feels like, you know, good luck doing that with a network state in the sense that if if what you have to do in order to prove that it is possible to be, abiding by some regenerative principle is that you need to obtain your own territory. And, and then you need to, like, deal with all the infrastructure and pretty much all the political aspects around this. Olofsin, I feel like you might be distracted from what is the real core, proposition, which is we have we have particular skills, we have particular knowledge and insights about how regenerativity can be implemented in various localities. And to some extent, there is, like, the fact of except for the international relations stuff, the fact of, like, declaring independence and becoming and using the state infrastructure to do that might almost be, like, well, first of all, perhaps unnecessary. And most importantly, it's like it's a big burden that you have to do. Whereas when I hear you say this, I've I like it's it feels to me that, in fact, the power is into figuring out this interconnection that exists between those local communities and the national states, and between those local community amongst each other. And it feels to me that, like and I think that's where, like, this question of international relationship is, like, perhaps the only way in which a net coordination can actually claim that it has a voice in international relations is also because it has acquired a sufficient large, network of interconnected communities that you cannot ignore it anymore. Right? Like, you actually create a coordination where there is, you know, like, all the all the citizens of this coordination, they choose not to interact with companies that do not abide by specific ethical principle. You know? And, and all of Sudan is kind of like this large network of boycotts, if you like. But also in a positive sense, how it is like all the citizens are engaging in this particular practices and so forth. And all of Sudan, you cannot ignore it because if you ignore it, then it's still gonna affect you. Right? It's like you just have this like large organization of people that are really all coordinating themselves around specific behaviors. And whether whether the way in which you speak is from the perspective of a state or whether the way in which you speak is from the perspective of civil society that is organizing itself in order to actually have an impact on the state. At some point, I guess it's irrelevant. The important thing is that your voice is being heard, and it's likely that a small network state that no one cares about might actually have less voice than a large coordination that has already intertwined itself also with local territories and and existing institution on the territory.
Yeah. Yeah. It's like Totally. I can't imagine, I don't know, one of these, like, Liechtenstein or something like that being able to, just because they have a state doesn't mean that they're really able to exert any real influence into the world about, on regeneration. I think the the power that you guys have, potentially, is just doing the work. Mhmm. And just, like, building the community and people who, are choosing to live in and create, you know, circular economies and whatever else. I think there is, of course, the the state's question comes from, kind of, trying to be realistic, you know, quote unquote, about politics, but, which I can I can sympathize with? But it I think what Primavera said, it would be a distraction just because of the amount of, like, state's creation, the amount of work is such a huge hurdle, that it almost will make everything else that you do irrelevant. Yes.
So Although, in some ways, I guess, one of the interesting parts, I guess, of what what we really envision as well is the importance of actually acquiring land, and Sure. Like, being in physical presence. Yeah. So each of these local communities, acquiring land, regenerating the land, but also even living on the land, starting regenerative, co living, settlements, villages. And
Eco villages have been a thing for a long time. Right. And kibbutzes or whatever, everyone, like, these type of things have existed for a while, and they don't there is no I think there is something to say for, like, what if we combined these types of alternative, communities to create a larger entity? Exactly. That's interesting. Sure. I think thinking of it through the lens of the nation state is just is a distraction. Totally. It's a distraction. It's a distraction. And it's like, it became a it it became a sexy meme of, like, network state, but it's, like,
we're so we're, like, everyone is so far off from it getting anywhere near that that it's, like, yeah. I mean, it's it's, you know, significantly down the road if we are wildly successful and we were still trying to engage with with nation states and corporation and they were still just essentially giving us the middle finger and saying we're gonna complete continue fucking the planet, then maybe we could consider and say, okay. Well, maybe we need to exit or something. I don't know. But, like, it's not something we need to worry about now.
But, yeah, that's definitely one. It's almost like the exit thing is is very dangerous because if you exit, then you actually lose also the the capacity to impact that territory that you have just exited. Yeah. You might end up in this like beautiful small island that are highly regenerative and just like escaping from the, the collapse of the rest of the world. But in fact, it's that ultimately that's the problem. That's my, that's my main criticism with the network state is that by exiting, you're actually giving up on time to voicing yourself in that particular jurisdiction. And especially those countries and those nation states that are not, at all abiding by generative principle. This is where you don't want to exit. And on the contrary, you want to enter and you want to voice yourself as strongly as possible against them.
I think that's where kind of the the contradiction of a lot of the I mean, the network state stuff come it is like a let's exit so that we have a voice to make our kind of tax free special economic zones, really. It's a contradiction in his book that I think then allows for people to kind of project which aspect exactly they're they're more interested in.
Yeah. I guess I guess one of the ways you could look at it though is like okay. Say you're in a, a locality that is being incredibly destructive to the environment. Their political system is corrupt and broken. And so, like, voice maybe isn't even gonna be that effective because they're gonna literally shoot you for for expressing your voice. But I guess this again, it doesn't really if it's that dangerous, it doesn't really solve things because if you start acquiring trying to acquire land and build a utopian regenerative society, they're not gonna like that either. So
yeah. But, But that's the reason that you have little voice in those places is because you are a small community that, is not being really given much credit. Whereas, if all of Sudan is not just you're not just a small little community, you actually are large archipelagos of many communities. And not only that, but also if this archipelago starts sharing resources together, then you might also have resources that you will not have in a single community. And especially if the archipelago starts engaging in collective action, then you're actually very strong because it's a lot of people that are supporting your cause because you know, this this is part of the general agenda of this, of this, coordination. So I think the the problem today is that because there is this, fragmentation and this, like, very high, you know, isolation of those of those communities, even though they all share exactly the same societal vision, then you end up having a lot of weak communities that are struggling. And, and then and then strong states that don't care about those weak communities. The the only way to change the the the condition is not for those weak communities to escape and to create like an autonomous place is for those communities to connect and, and interconnect and actually become stronger in that way and expand their capacities.
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Absolutely. I just feel so aligned exactly with that. Like, for a long time, I've been thinking, you know, the these kind of hippie alternative movements of you know, you mentioned eco villages of, like, living in this very regenerative way, or maybe movements of alternative economics. And, you know, for so long, they've been kind of, like, isolated pockets of people around the globe that are thinking about these ideas or maybe they're actually living them and not having a negative impact. But they're at the same time scaling, struggling to actually have a positive impact really all over the world because they're not, like, a connected force that can actually connect with all over the all over the globe and actually have, like, a tangible, impact because it's not it's not it's not coordinated. And so that's what's really excited me, I guess, about the, you know, awesome technology that we have, now, is it enables us to create these new structures that can connect all of these previously quite isolated and, unconnected communities, connect us all together, and what kind of collective action potential and, power to affect change does that now create. And, yeah, I mean, if we if we look at it over the entire globe and the entire movement of people who are wanting to build this regenerative future with lots of different expressions of that and lots of different, parts of that, but how do we bring all of that together and then, really exert massive change as fast as possible, I think is is hugely exciting. And, yeah, let's see if we could do it.
How is the RefiDAO trying to achieve that?
Yeah. Absolutely. So we started with, essentially, building, like, a framework for starting to form local autonomous refi communities across the globe. We call them local nodes. And, essentially, what they are is, we specifically focused on founders, looking for founders because we wanted these to be self sustainable kind of organizations and communities and people with, experience building these kind of, difficult, you know, startups are hard kind of thing. But Yeah. So the the the vision is that, they bring together a community, start meeting regularly, holding events, forming that those those bonds, and then actually turning it into an organization that can implement these refi solutions and, stuff on the ground. Because in so so often in the Web three and the refi space, we stay in this kind of conceptual discussion, you know, Web three bubble. But, actually, we need these communities on the ground who are actually implementing the solutions with real people, real problems being addressed. And so that that's the kind of, vision. And, yeah, so far, we have about, 27 roughly, local nodes of varying size and capacity. And, yeah, really focusing on how we can build, support those communities essentially, as autonomous entities, but at the same time interconnected with the culture, this the values, the kind of social layer, and ultimately economic, coordination as well, of the entire global network. And so yeah. Really, really interested in how we do create more interweaving and interdependence and, you know, mutualization of resources to make sure it's actually financially sustainable to build the kind of club goods, I guess, or network goods, for the entire network. And yeah. So, you know, my job as part of the RefiDAO global node, is, yeah, to build, well, media, podcasts, blogs, content, toolkits, guides to help support the nodes, as well as software, meetups, you know, fundraising. So we've been, raising, roughly 25 k each quarter, first time from our own treasury and and now in partnership with Celo, to, get funding to these local nodes so they can start their activities. And, yes. We've been running these quarterly quadratic funding rounds. And, so yeah. So that that that's, I guess, some of the stuff we've been doing to build our network of local communities, our our, I guess, regen or refi coordination. But, yeah, curious to hear any thoughts on that, but also then can talk about, this evolved idea that I've been getting excited about recently of a kind of regen coordination, like a coordination of coordinations, I guess, with Refidel, but also the, kind of most the closest, other communities like Greenpill, Regens Unite, that are also doing similar things and have their own local chapters. Like, how could we, become a coordination with each other as well? So, yeah, that that's where I'm at. But, curious to hear any thoughts.
Yeah. So I just just just before we get it, I like I'm I'm a bit, confused maybe. I would like more information about, like so when like, right now, you're like, I'm trying to understand, like, what does the what is the whole of the DAO, as in, like, the blockchain DAO, in this, like so Lucas, I I I love the way in the sky. Like, you know, it's just about, like, creating those different nodes and, like, finding ways to connect them with one another. But, like, what is the what is the blockchain infrastructure, whole in all that?
Yeah. Absolutely. So so far, we haven't launched a token, and we haven't, done, like, an on chain formalized governance system. And I think the reason for that is, one, looking at a lot of the other DAOs and thinking that's not really what we wanna replicate. You know, there's a lot of experiments, you know, one token, one vote systems or I mean, you know, everyone knows the the state of DAOs at the moment in terms of, you know, the conflict that emerges, the difficulties in coordination, in governance. And, and so we have definitely not been in a rush to launch a token and launch on chain voting mechanisms that seem to have kind of self destructed many organizations. At the same time, that is what we want we want to build towards a version of that that is gonna be productive and work. And, and so in terms of the on chain stuff that we'll explore is, we're looking at, okay, could each local community have, or local node have its own in be a its own impact DAO? So, I'm here in Berlin at the moment. Refi Berlin community could have its own token and organizational structure, same as Refi Lisbon, Refi Costa Rica, all across the globe. And then could we also have a global Refi token that was, I guess, part of that global refi token could be like a collection. We could swap that with all of the local communities across the globe. The local communities themselves could swap their tokens with other, local communities that they're or mostly more closely connected with. And suddenly, we're interweaving the economic incentives, of these of these local communities. So that's one angle I'm really interested in. And the other angle is is the actual kind of impact impacts measurement reporting and verification. So if we're saying that, okay, we want to support this decentralized autonomous network of, local communities. Well, how do we actually allocate resources to a community on the other side of the globe that we're not connected you know, we're not physically there saying, you know, how do we mitigate against free riders and bad actors? And so I think that's where some of the awesome mechanisms that are being developed in Web three, such as quadratic funding, hypercerts, these kind of technologies can help us to really coordinate, the network. Of course, there's a hell of a lot of social coordination and cultural connection as well. And we've really started with the social and cultural layer, really focused on building strong foundations there, and now are kind of inviting everyone in to say, okay. How can we co create this, more formalized, kind of scalable, governance and organizational structure, in this way? So, yeah, rather than doing the the typical DAO, which is start instantly with tokens and spending all your time trying to manage and design for that and not actually doing the thing, we've instead said, okay. Well, let's let's focus on the social layer. Let's focus on impact. Let's focus on building the community, experimenting, and this kind of side of things. And now I think we're really ready to, build this next generation structure. And, yeah, I've been having good good conversations with some of the folks at Cello, Luke, from Colectivo, and, various others and, really looking to kind of, yeah, cocreate this this,
next evolution. Okay. Cool. Yeah. So it's, it's, HifaDAO, but it doesn't the DAO is not there yet.
It does not been Yeah. Collided. It's an interesting question. Actually, I I think that there's a lot of this, a lot of people ask this question. But if we think about, like, a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, essentially, being a network of decentralized autonomous communities, to me, feels very much like it being a DAO. Like, the refi Lisbon node, the refi Costa Rica node is a totally autonomous kind of community itself, but we're all interconnected in the shared culture and alignment. And so that feels like a DAO to me. But e e even though we don't have the kind of more typical token, and token voting system, but that feels like, to me, a bit of a narrow conception of what a DAO is. But at the same time, yeah, we do have this global node, right, that is then making this helping to make decisions on behalf of the network. And so, of course, that needs forms of participatory governance and involvement so that it's not like a centralized local node that's kind of yeah. I mean, you know, making just making decisions in a in a in a isolated bubble. And so, actually, what we've been leaning in, for this, like, version 1.5 before we go to this really, more advanced complex, on chain governance structure and organizational structure is leaning into you know, I started the Reef IDO forum, leaning into principles of sociocracy and consent based governance, making sure that we're actually any key decisions, any of the key stakeholders, we're inviting them in to have that conversation. And it's kind of like a, is it safe enough to try, good enough for now, kind of, thing so that we're actually making sure that the voice, and, yeah, is being heard throughout the network, and we're kind of, engaging in that way. But then, yeah, evolving that into a more formalized, structure is is certainly the mission, but, you know, that's a that's a very difficult thing to do right. And so,
really looking to No. No. And I think I think you're starting in the right order. It's just like I I think the name DAO, I guess, has been, either diluted or expanded a lot. But no, in some way, like, if if we if we map it back to the to the various steps, to our little recipes for the coordination, I will say that, like, you know, so one is build or join a community of kinship. I think that's what that's what the values local nodes, are about. It's like finding those kind of people that are interested in a particular vision towards her generativity. Second is like identified author related or resonating communities, which I think is exactly this. It's like, let's let's recognize that all those local communities have some kind of kinship amongst each other. And, let's let's map them out and let's let's start interacting with one another. Number three is encouraging those community to support each other, which I think you're also doing, which is great, and we should maximize this. Number four, I guess, is an interesting way. Like, I'm not sure the extent to which it's there, but it's like, number four is like creating our collective identity by naming it into existence, which maybe Refaida is that name that is just a way of saying we are a collective of collectives, and we want to start acting as one high higher archipelago of things as opposed to as individual actors. And I think I think maybe that's that's that's, that's where you stand. And then I think I think in my view, number five and six and seven, but especially number five, I think is the state change, which is when you need to actually start pulling resources in commons and managing them collectively. That's where that's where governance comes in because until then, it's just bilateral or multilateral interactions. Once you start to pull resources together, first of all, you need a place to pull them together, which might actually require the instantiation of a DAO in the in the technological sense of that, and a governance around that. Right? And and it feels like the the change, the shift from four to five might be the the very important shift in which you're starting to enter the the the more official coordination type of things as opposed to just being a collective or a collective of collectives.
Yes. Totally. I think that's definitely the stage stage that we're at now, in terms of step five. I'm working out what those structures look like, is, yeah, definitely my mission at the moment. And so, yeah, I'm having lots of conversations, with lots of people to to to map out what that structure looks like, and how to make it kind of effective. Because yeah. I guess it's a it's an interesting one of, you always have that tension, I guess, with building a coordination between, it's the free rider stuff that you you you mentioned a lot, I guess, about, you know, someone can come in, benefit from all of the all of the various forms of, resources that that network has built up. And what's their incentive to just go, okay. Well, why do I run my, business through this node that is, like, essentially we don't wanna call it a tax, but, like, you know, you're mutualizing resources. So maybe, 5% of the revenues of that node comes back to the global node that then is collectively governed to then steward the public goods or common goods of that network that help the whole network to thrive. Right? But, at the same time, you have to make sure that that that, one, the the the network itself is providing enough value for the nodes to want to do that, which is, I think, a healthy dynamic. But also at the same time, you you can imagine nodes that might say, okay. Well, I could just do this activity here and not give you not account for those revenues or not, distribute back. So I think yeah. It's an interesting, thought experiment for how, how to create a network that is really thriving in that sense and has those kind of values of wanting to, to do that. And, yeah, that's where I think a lot of the your concepts of, you know, the interconnections and interdependence, come in. So, you know, I've been having having brainstorming around that, for a while. But, yeah.
Yeah. And and I I would say that, like, once you start pulling our associates together, you know that you're somehow entering into the same boat. But at the same time, just pulling our associates together doesn't necessarily prevent you from, actually free hiding quite to the opposite height, because especially if you are like, you're a small community, you don't have many resources, but now you can take from the, from the collective pool. And that's where like, a good governance structure, become really important. Right. And I will be very wary of people just starting to pull resources together before I even thinking about what is the alignment, what is it, and which is what happened mostly with DAOs today is like, let's just put a lot of money in this DAO. We don't really know if we're ever aligned.
We've got a multisig and we'll launch a token. Done.
Exactly. So no. I think it's it's it's really nice to actually go through this kind of, like, step by step approach. But I do think that there is a point in which, if if if all that happens is just creating those nice little interaction, it might not be enough. It might not be enough to really create this impact and to for creating this this entity that then can speak on behalf of, because then you're just a collective of small actors as opposed to becoming an actual single actor that that is a collective actor based on the,
aggregation of all those collectives. Right? And how do you see it becoming more of a kind of collective actor? Yeah. What would that look like?
Well, I think pulling resources to data is the first step so that these collective actor has resources on its own under its own name, and figuring out what is the initial governance to make sure that it works while starting this intertwining. And ideally, the intertwining should start as soon as possible. Oh, yeah. I mean, we're we're definitely
doing that for sure.
In some way, we are already all intertwined because we are all dependent on the same planet. But some people people don't recognize these as interdependence. I was like, no, but I can just go to New Zealand. So I'm not intertwined. So, yeah, I think it's like, to me, like the more it's kind of like they almost have to go in parallel high because the more you start pulling high sources, the more the governance challenge become become challenging. And the far the more interweaving you have. And and maybe it's my hypothesis. I would love for for that I find out to be like the guinea pig on this experiment.
Great.
It really is a guinea pig somewhere. But, it seems to me that the the moment in which you really managed to create proper interdependencies, I will I will argue that all of student, the governance becomes less ma less less less of a challenges. At least because it's more about it's more about if we have family, we we might we might have to argue about what's the best way to operate, but we will never argue about should you get as much as we get. Right? It's like we are a family. We we all we all we all are in the same boat together. There is no argument about that. And I feel like a lot of the challenges that comes with collective governments today is, is, is like a large percentage about how do we distribute rather than what's the best way to maximize the collective benefit of all. And and those are interesting governance challenges because, of course, there's many ways to do it and people might disagree on what's the best part. But at least we get rid of those weird governance question of like, how do we prevent people from defecting? Right? And let's get like this world crazy mechanism so that everyone has to cooperate even if they don't want to, let's actually change the payoff structure so that cooperation is the dominant strategy to begin with. And so we don't have to govern around it. The governance is the cooperation is the default, and then let's let's figure out how do we how do we do the best cooperation, but let's not try to create a governance structure just to ensure cooperation.
Love that. Because that's never worked. There will always be the factor. Love that. I'm curious to hear, like, if you've, like, identified any kind of core mechanisms that you're really excited about to do that. So for a bit of context, I think we're really focusing on the social layer first and just, like, getting making sure we actually know, like, each other and forming social bonds and relationships and visiting the local nodes. And we're doing an annual meeting, or or a refi week at traditional dream factories, the regenerative village, in Portugal, bringing people together so that we're actually forming these relationships and a real sense of community and, interweaving there. There's some other mechanisms that I'm curious if you have any,
No. No. That's right. Yeah. I feel like so I'll especially in the blockchain space has a lot of when when we talk about interweaving, oftentimes, the the usual response is like, yeah, let's just exchange tokens, which sure that's great because a lot of students are economically interdependent. But especially when we're talking about those local communities and actually communities of people and so forth, I think like one of the most fascinating, strategies of interweaving is actually exchange of people. It's like all of Sudan, I cannot tell whether I'm part of this community or the Otter community. I'm I'm actually part of both of those community at the same time, because I've spent half of my time in one place, half in the other. And it doesn't even make sense for me to say I am, I am part of the collective a as opposed to the collective B. And therefore I need to have these higher entity to say I'm part of this collective of collective. And, and I think especially in the blockchain, Dao, environment, because it's all about like digital interaction. Like we don't, we never think about like how in an organization, actually the DNA of the organization more so than the token is actually the people. And, and the best interweaving you can do is by actually, like, exchanging people at home.
Totally agree. Totally agree. And the beautiful thing about community, I guess, is it's like, it's not zero sum. Like, being part of one community doesn't prevent you from being part of another. And so, like, I feel deeply called and aligned with Refidel, but also love all the work that's going on in Greenpill network and Regens Unite. Feel very aligned and a part of those communities and spend a lot of time in Lisbon. So part of the Lisbon node and setting up a London node. And, yeah, I I I I think that's a really exciting, kind of point as well about how we kind of interweave with the social there. And I think that's more like that's where, like, you know, the coordination,
the nation side of coordination is like, how do we actually create this sense of nationhood around? And and, you know, in some ways, like, as long as I'm defining myself as part of one small community, I will be part of this small community. And it's only when I start feeling part of this larger nation that then I become a legend to the nation as such. And therefore, if I have another community that is part of the same nation that is that is, in need, of course, I will support because it is also my community. And that's why I think this collective identity concept is extremely important in order for people to be able to recognize themselves as being part of a larger whole, and they're far off being eager to support and, interweave with people that are from separate local community, but still part of the same nation, of the coordination.
Totally. Totally. Yeah. I think the the real tokens that we want to moon are people.
Love
that. I know Primavera, you said you had to, at 12:15?
Yeah. I think so. In like ten minutes. To go.
So, yeah, maybe we can we can end it there. It was really great chatting with you, Monty. I appreciated, yeah, you being honest and sober about your journey with, RefiDAO and kind of, your conversion. Can I call it a conversion? Yeah. Absolutely. You're converted? Nice. Success. Blockchain gov one, Blagi zero.
Well, yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. I've really enjoyed this conversation. And, yeah, very happy to be the guinea pig, I guess. But, hopefully, we can be the guinea pig that survives and is successful. And and building this regenerative economy is what I'm really passionate about. So, yeah. We'd we'd love to to continue the conversation, with both of yourselves. You've been, yeah, like I said at the beginning, great inspiration. And so, yeah, just really grateful to have be a part of this new exciting coordination, movement. It really feels like something that's gonna become a model that a lot more communities starting to adopt, you know, having a really strong online community, but meeting in person and forming these local communities. And so, yeah, very excited to see that whole space emerge and, and build more bridges with with other aligned, communities so that we can really scale our collective action and collective impact, potential to try and make as much change as we can in the short time frame that we have.
Yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate you engaging with our work and, yeah, taking it taking it seriously. Awesome. Thanks a lot for having me. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you.