And that means, like, fighting power. Yeah. So I exactly. I think there's, like, a degree to which, in my view, coordination is basically just people coming together to do something. And the important question is what are they actually gonna come together to do? What are they trying to accomplish? And I think we often make the mistake of assuming that we can just sort of, like, set up a arbitrary abstract situation and then, you know, just kind of throw these sort of concepts or mechanisms at it. But there's a much broader social context that all this exists within, and I think, to me, that's where we actually need to be more precise about the sort of goals of crypto or of, you know, Web three, quote, unquote, as an ecosystem. So to me, it's, I don't know. Everything is people. People have to do things together. And then what are they doing together? What are we what are we, like, trying to accomplish? And I think to that extent, coordination is like, it's a good thing to, like, outline, especially, like, when you're creating a new technology because usually in, like, the modern age, that technology is going to be somewhat social. It's gonna involve, like, people coordinating, like, working together. But I think that, like, kind of explicit description of what we're trying to do is something that's been missing from the crypto ecosystem for a long time. And in a way, it's been one of the strengths of the movement because by not strictly defining, you know, exactly what we're coordinating towards, people have from all different parts of sort of the political spectrum to the extent that exists. I don't necessarily believe that's right. Mental framework, Like, they can all agree that they at least wanna build some cool stuff, and that cool stuff might eventually be useful. But I do think this is, like, kind of the point we're coming to now where we have this sort of question of, okay. We built all this infrastructure. What are we gonna do with it? And I don't think in that context, we've actually really articulated, you know, what does meaningful adoption of crypto look like? What does meaningful what does a real world use case of crypto look like? And we have some of those that are starting to emerge, which is awesome. By the way, I'm actually very which we can get to, like, pro infrastructure. I think we actually don't have quite enough infrastructure, which is a hot take. But I think that, like, the real world applications have to be grounded in some kind of, like, truth about the world in terms of what we actually wanna achieve, not just as a technology, but as a a movement. And that's where I think we've

you know, global world government. That's, that's actually that's the future. That's that's the worst. PayPal habitat, actually. It's very nice. It's a very it's a very nice habitat. They they provide a lot of, like, PayPal themed foods A lot of billionaires as well. And beverages. I don't even know. A lot of lot of, yeah, a lot of billionaires. The PayPal mafia, you know, owns most of the property, but, like, that's that's fine. I I do think that, like, there's so yeah. Like, this is an interesting question in the context of movement building because I I've been thinking a lot about, like, historical movements, and, actually, this sort of ties back to, like, even, like, open source software as sort of, like, a cultural movement. Like, Fred Turner has a really good book from, counterculture to cyberculture about, like, how essentially, you know, going back to, like, Stewart Brand and, like, the whole earth catalog, this movement was sort of first about, like, ideals and then sort of just tangentially about technology and that sort of, like, shaped its its development. But I think the interesting, like, question with crypto is, like, in in some sense, it is a movement. Like, it certainly is against, like, certain certain outcomes, at least historically if you go back to, like, its roots in, like, the cyberpunk movement. To the extent that it's, like, kept a single consistent thread around, like, what it stands for, I think that's definitely not true. It's it's certainly deviated from that. But I do think there's some value in structuring our, like, thinking around it as a movement, because when you think about movements, they sort of go through life cycles. They, they they start they sort of, like, grow. They, like, start to, you know, slow down and and sort of reach this sort of, you know, top of the s curve, and then they sort of head into, like, some kind of mitosis. They they they fragment and they split. And and I do think crypto is kind of in this phase now of splitting in this way where, ultimately, we need to figure out, like, what is the actual sort of, you know, fork of this movement that we want to, like, really see breach some kind of mass adoption. And I do think that, like, to in my view, that's probably not the one where we just sort of end up being like, well, I guess, you know, the Salesforce coin is doing really well. We're gonna see that, like, the that's the future. But at the same time, I mean, without those sorts of players, like, having some kind of say in the system, it it will be challenging to, like, really make meaningful change. So you have this this constant dichotomy or, like, or, like, tension between movements that are really, really, idealized but really don't get anywhere. It's very hard for them to, like, build momentum, or they or they fragment too much, because of, like, the rigidity of of the movement itself. So, like, Occupy Wall Street is, maybe an example of, on the one hand, like, a movement that just kind of petered out because it had so many different directions. And on the other hand, a movement like, let's say, the purely, like, free software movement is one that kind of ended up being red queened out of existence in a sense by, like, the fact that you had other sort of, like, open source players come in and say, we we sort of wanna, like, take this in a different direction. And I'm not saying either of those those are good outcomes, actually. Like, I think both Occupy as a movement and the free software movement, had a lot of good to them in the sense of, you know, they were both very they had strong, idealistic visions. They had very principal kind of members, but they also didn't have the organization to, like, really reach, like, kind of, the sort of, like, level of scale to be, like, meaningful, quote, unquote, at a, you know, over a one, two decade period. And and crypto is kinda getting to this point where it's, like, now at, like, you know, the end of the first decade, and now it's, like, kind of halfway through the second. We're like, okay. What are we like, what what is the sort of, like, end goal of this? What is the, like, you know, next stage of this? In my view, it's possible to get too far in the other direction where you really just sacrifice everything to, like, make the movement go fast. You know? Like, this is, like, the the constant problem of, you know, every well intentioned, start up, like, you know, the let's say, hypothetically, the I'll I'll say the anthropic problem. I won't even say the open AI problem, but, like, hey. We're gonna, like, solve this, you know, AI safety problem. Actually, just kidding. We're, like, gonna build some more capacity for AI, actually. That seems like more profitable. And it's not a probably fully fair characterization of of that case. But on the one hand, yeah, in movements, you have this problem of, like, these early stage kind of, like, deaths or, like, slowdowns of movements before they can or or mitosis of movements before they can reach adoption. And on the other hand, you have this, like, massive overgrowth of movements. And this is a very narrow corridor, like, which is, like, the problem with this this sort of, like, framing is, like, it's a very and I think this is just, like, the thin line that we have to walk, unfortunately. This, like, this this thin line basically is the only place where we the movement succeeds while retaining some notion of, like, the initial values that it had. And I don't know how you think about that. I mean, that's sort of like what came to mind, but I realized that's, like, a really long, really long rant. I mean, it was it's, for me, it's reminiscent of a book that I really like called Neither Vertical Nor Horizontal

I think. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I feel like, that's probably a good, honestly, starting point for any any discussion on the space because I think that this narrow corridor of, like, which I think is actually what the author you mentioned is is probably also, like, in alignment with. It is, like, probably the most important question that we actually have to answer as a space. And I see, like, not that many people, which, you know, maybe it's just a result of the fact that, like, there's already so many attacks on the space just naturally occurring that we have to defend against. Like, I don't see a lot of people taking, like, an active approach to trying to articulate, like, what is the future, like, decade vision of the space itself. But, yeah, great to be here. Really enjoyed, like, our also unrecorded conversation, and hopefully we can, like, yeah, touch on some of those ideas here too. Yeah. For sure.

I think one of the things, which maybe isn't the right metric to really focus on, I don't want to, like, you know, end up in good heart's law, but, like, we've existed for about five and a half years, which by crypto standards is already a long time. And we've gone through, like, so many changes over that period that it's hard to, like, encapsulate all of them. But the overall, like, original mission, and I'll try and keep this short, it was like, how do we actually fund open source software, as a sort of public good in a way that is equivalent to the way that, you know, other kinds of public goods locally get funded when there's a government, you know, a city or a state or a a a a nation that can actually, like, facilitate and and sort of, maintain it. And historically, this has been a huge problem for open source software because you have all these maintainers who are really not that concerned, based on, as I started saying before, like the historical cultural nature of open source with money, but still need money to actually like exist. It turns out we all sort of need money to like do things in the world. Unfortunately. At least currently, unfortunately. I actually think money can be good in a David Graeber sense. There's lots of like, you know, Ethan Buckman talks a lot about this, so I won't dwell on it, but like read his work on sort of the nature of money in crypto as sort of a means of sort of managing debt, very interesting stuff. But I think that, like, historically, open source has been very, to to that, you know, same view, like anti money. And what this has meant is that, you know, you have all these one security risks that come from that where, like, like, Heartbleed was a great example in 2014. OpenSSL had this, like, heartbeat option, and, essentially, like, there's this, like, overread, where you could just pull in all this, like, ostensibly private data and then get access to everyone's sort of accounts. It caused billions of dollars of economic damage because the, you know, in the x k t d sense, the one guy from Nebraska who was maintaining all these things, I actually don't think he was from Nebraska in that case, but that's the sort of comic. He was just doing this in his spare time. He had a job. He had a family and stuff he had to do in, like, the real world, so so to speak. And he just ended up, you know, forgetting that, you know, there was this security vulnerability, I guess, that he was supposed to fix or maybe didn't see it. And, you know, part of the reason that happens is just because there's not funding for open source software in the same way as we have funding for roads and bridges and electrical grids. And the other problem is sort of, you know, more fundamental, which is because there's not really money in the system, you don't really have a way to sort of account for, like, you know, thinking money as a unit of account, the work that people are doing in that system and giving them sort of a clear sense of ownership over the project as it grows. And so there's there's sort of you know, on the one hand, the problem here that emerges where maintainers don't necessarily want to give up control. Maintainers are, you know, usually one or two people that are just doing this on their own, and you get this problem of there's no one to, like, kind of be in succession of them. But the other problem that emerges is that you don't really have community governance, and instead what happens is other larger corporate players come in and they say, wait a minute. Like, we can just give you, like, tons of money. Like, we can if your community isn't funding you, we can fund you. But we just wanna be able to decide everything that happens in the project for, like, the next ten years. And then, of course, this creates, like, all these, like, larger problems for the broader open source community that they could have solved if they had been more sort of attentive to the money problem in the first place. So we we started with the idea of just how do we fund these sort of, like, maintainers. And I was very lucky that, Vitalik, Zoe, and and Glenn had written this paper on, like, quadratic funding, which was not originally the intention of the grants tooling. It was just let's get these maintainers some, like, funding and magic Internet money. That seems like a good idea. And we just sort of realized this is a much better way to do it. It ends up being actually a great balance between so, like, you know, rank the way quadratic funding works in the short is just if you have, like, rank choice voting, you can decide, you know, here are the top three choices I have of things that should be done or people that should be funded or whatever it might be. In quadratic funding, you're actually able to, like, instead measure the intensity of your preference with respect to each, potential option. So you might say, I actually, like, prefer option two, like, pretty closely to, like, option one, but option three is, like, way down here. So I wanna really, like, showcase in my my vote that I actually really care about option one and option two. And what it essentially, rather than just doing this with, like, you know, a sort of vote or voice credit in Quadratic Funding as the name sort of suggests, you're doing this with with money. So you're having a say in the project, but you're also in in turn by having a say giving them capital. And one of the benefits of this is not only that you get this, like, granular expression of your own preferences, but that you get the ability to fund the project as you see fit. And in turn, if lots of people do this, one of the nice properties of this particular model is just that, like, you're sort of and I think actually a lot of your listeners might be familiar with this, so I'll I'll stop here. But, like, you can actually collapse the preferences in a way that make sure that whales or large funders are not, like, you know, like the corporation in that example, like, getting way too much say in how the project evolves or how the maintainer or set of maintainers or ecosystem is funded. So that's the TLDR of sort of how we ended up where we are with this quadratic funding stuff. It's been a really long road. There's a lot of stuff in between there in terms of models we tried, different approaches we took. But, you know, the open source problem was kind of the the main part of this. It just happened actually that, you know, we've expanded beyond that because there's other kinds of public goods that are in this category, I'd say, of not just digital public goods, but global public goods that are just not really well funded, to tie it altogether because of this coordination failure. You know, I think that's actually accurate in this case, which has to do with the incentives of each nation. They don't care about things that are like beyond their borders. That's

But, yeah, so it's like It's the background. It's the it's it's part of the actual experience of, like, it's I hope it was like an I don't know. Some kind of maybe, solemn classical piece just as you're talking about the

Sure. I'm curious.

like, you always have to be aware of those dynamics, like, with the state example, that's that's a good one because, like, I think it's obvious to people generally speaking, that, like, hey. This big company is funding this thing. They probably really care about it for reasons that have to do with their bottom line. We should probably figure out what those are and, like, try and make sure that those things don't, like, conflict with the overall goals of, like, the project. But, like, with the state, it's I think people have the expectation in a lot of places that those kinds of actors are, you know, in in a it's actually interesting. When when you talk to especially folks from, like, say, Singapore about crypto, like, often, they'll say, you know, well, I don't really understand, like, the the problem because, like, when I try and, you know, send this, you know, money transfer, when I try and use this public service, you know, it it just works. Like, it seems fine. So people don't really get it because the system hasn't, like, broken down to an extent that, like, you can see the cracks and you can, like, start to, like, really feel the difference in in the quality of the system. But, like, I do think that there's, you know, problems with state funding as well. By by the way, I would love it if the state's funded open source software more. Right. I think that, like, that would be great. I'm, like, for this. Alternatively, it would be nice if, like, we had some kind of, let's say, like, more mutualist system where people collectively decided to, like, fund things themselves on sort of a local grassroots basis. And that's sort of what the idea of, like, quadratic funding is in a sense. It's just, like, how do you figure out what that group actually wants to do, and then how do you, like, bubble those opinions up so that you can, like, let other folks kind of view them clearly and then decide whether they wanna support those opinions themselves about, like, what is important in a given local community. And I think that's something that is, like, not really this kinda happens sometimes, although not as much as it should in, like, municipal governments. This is, like, usually something that people kind of make fun of of where, like, you know, the one person goes to town hall and, like, really complains about, like, the stop sign or something. But, like, I do think there's value to, like, that local participation, which which can happen because there's, like, avenues for it in those environments. There's not really as much of an avenue for it in, like, a digital realm. That's kind of the main problem. It's like in or or with any of these global problems because this the scale, the abstraction of the problem is so, like, high that, like, to try and, you know, go like, if you went to, like, your, you know, local council person or whatever, like, the equivalent is and said, hey. Like, there's this library that I use for this, like, piece of software that I'm writing. Can you, like, help fix this problem I have? They'd be like, this has nothing to do with, like, my department. And I think that's where you sort of need to develop, like, more parallel, like, alternative systems, like, mutualist systems ideally, in my view, that can facilitate this sort of work because, otherwise, it's just gonna take forever to get done. You know, you can make arguments about, like, the bureaucracy or problems with the system or whatever you want, but, like, the the main problem is just that, like, there isn't really anything being done. And so, like, I think that's that's the kind of thing that is is something that we don't wanna just feel like, I don't think Bitcoin should be the only organization doing this. That's actually a risk in itself, actually, if Bitcoin is the organ organization that's just, like, the funder of these things. I think it has to be, like, a broad community effort. And and Ethereum's a nice like, there's a I won't go into depth, but, like, I think there's a nice sort of, like, way to view with your aim as its own ecosystem. People talk about it as an ecosystem, and it has its own monetary base, which is, like, perhaps one of the most important features because it means that you actually have control over the, you know, things like the money supply and things like the actual, like, economic model. And I think that's kind of a useful property of, like, the reason that Ethereum has been able to do more of this open source funding, than, like, previous eras of the Internet is that we actually have this sort of, like, natural, like, Internet native way to, like, distribute value. But that's a whole different I I won't go deep on that quite yet.

Yeah. For sure. And, actually, I mean, I I will say, like, I actually am actually in agreement on the need for, obviously, like, grants programs and so forth, but I also think venture capital is, like, not inherently bad, which is probably the hottest take We'll disagree. For the for the audience. Because, like, here here's the thing. Right? Like, the original sort of, like, vision of organizations like Bell Labs or Xerox PARC was very much, like, having this sort of bundled economic model, right, where and this is sort of, like, I think something that maps pretty well to, like, mutualist thinking, solidarity economics and so forth. You have, like, okay. The thing that is, like, the research initiative that's going to, like, make, you know, kind of, like, money eventually, but it's, like, probably going to produce all these other externalities that, like, are not. And you wanna figure out, like, what is the way that you can and this is actually something Vitalik's talked about too in the context of, like, the sort of revenue evil curve, but, like, how can you essentially take the thing, that, like, can be monetized without, like, restricting it or making it, like, you know, less accessible, ideally, you know, as, you know, less accessible as possible? Like basically, how can you reduce the amount that it's going to be like restricted by, the largest amount in order to make sure that, like, this thing is monetized so that you can go and fund other kinds of projects that and subsidized projects that would otherwise, if they were monetized, be very much, like, like, excludable. There's probably a better way to phrase this, which is, like, basically, how can you make sure that something, like, say, in a city, you know, a subway system can make some form of money through transactions, you know, people using the subway system, like fees. This is kind of like analogous to Ethereum. You like the sort of subway system, sort of like transaction fees that are going in, like, funding parts of the ecosystem. You know, in this case, they're, you know, not being taken directly back into a developer treasury, but, I mean, you could do this with, like, contract secured revenue or other, other ideas, which I would actually recommend people look at. But, like, how can you make sure that things like that, which are not really heavily excludable, based on a small fee, are going in subsidizing, let's say, a patent or, like, some other research initiative, which can then be opened up in a way where if it were not to be, it would just be, like, totally restricted, like, closed off in a in a box somewhere and not accessible to the community. And I think that's the sort of piece of the puzzle that the original sort of conception of venture capital in, like, the sort of, like, post Xerox PARC, post Bell Labs era could have facilitated. This is, like, my hot take. But I think that it sort of failed to do that over time through perverse incentives and kind of this, like, need for endless growth. And I think that there's ways to change that model by just flipping essentially the dynamic between the initial funders of a project. This is like what ICOs did try to do. Right? It's like change the dynamic between the initial funders and the, large scale, like, eventual community for the project. And, ideally, you know, you could just eventually have these sorts of projects be, like, funded by the community itself, shares, like, or equivalent sort of, like, tokens be given to, like, each project and each member of each project, and then those people being sort of, like, direct sort of, like, contributors to the project over the long run, through not only their capital contributions, but also through, like, just their direct, sort of labor in the project itself. This is kinda like what happens now when VCs say, like, oh, but we are value add. We're gonna do all this stuff. It's gonna be, like, amazing. I think that, like, often falls short, partly because, you know, they are not really operating on that model anymore, and partly because the size of these funds have grown so large that it's just impossible for them to really contribute to and, like, be sort of, like, providers of real labor in the projects that they're sort of invested in. So, you know, I think there's a sort of active, like, almost, like, activist contributor model, which I know some other folks have have been sort of jamming on, that could work a lot better, but still kind of ends up being somewhat, like, similar to or, like, isomorphic to, like, the overall, like, venture capital, quote, unquote, structure in the sense that it is looking for this this return. It is looking for this, like, eventual surplus, and then this sort of solidarity economics element of this is really fundamentally that you want that to be redistributed back into the community. You wanna have some kind of guarantee that this is not just going off to, like, you know, create a yacht somewhere. It's going to, like, actually do something back in the community. And and so that's, like, one thing I wanna quickly note on on the VC side because I do think that's, like, a misunderstood element of the sort of current maybe not of the current landscape. It is a problem with the current landscape, but a misunderstood element of, like, the original sort of idea of some of these research institutions like Bell Labs. Mhmm. I mean,

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that, like, by the way, like, even one of the one of the things that I'm, like, noting here is is, like, I'm using the term venture capital just because, like, that's the term that people I think are aware of. I don't think that's, like, you know, that term comes with so much baggage that, like, that's why I think it's a spicy thing to say. Actually, it's not it's not always bad. But I think that, like, yeah, there's sort of two components to this. One is I think you want more collective capital pools that are essentially aimed at, trying to essentially like, like give non dilutive, like almost like free capital to a project that's like at an early stage. But you also want to weigh and this is sort of the model that Optimism is doing, I think, a good job of, like, really stewarding to, like, reward people who have gone and created those types of projects that have then gone on to be very successful in the sense that they've been impactful in the ecosystem. You want them to still be able to go and, like, actually return, you know, basically receive some kind of benefit that is commensurate with the value they've created. And you want that to probably be, I would say, be true for the early sort of sponsors essentially of that project as well who kind of in a sense, selflessly, although, you know, you can talk about the dynamics of if this becomes a standard, suddenly does everyone expect they're gonna have all these returns from Right. You know, going giving to grants. This has actually happened in in some of the grants rounds in Bitcoin where where people have started airdrop farming, to try and see if they can, you know, catch sort of the next, the next day optimism, which was in one of the early grants rounds and did a distribution back to the community. Can you, like, you know, in theory, run into this problem with, you know, or sorry, can you in theory, like, you know, solve some of these dynamics by giving an incentive and, sort of like, that return back to people without it being an expectation or like a guarantee. And I think that's an interesting approach. I do think, you know, separately just having even sort of a more cooperative model where people are just funding the project themselves with their community, with the expectation that, yeah, it'll have a business model. Yeah. It'll have, like, some kind of, like, sustainability. I think that's, like, an approach that would be okay in the sense that even with, you know, a an organization like like Desjardins, obviously, like, one of the largest cooperatives. Like, they they are able to sustain themselves because they're they're an insurance company, basically. But they are cooperatively owned, and they're providing essentially a service that is, like, then going back to corporate members. And I would argue that, like, that sort of model is is still relatively mutualist in, you know, this the same sort of way that we would want to see with organizations in Web three. It's just that, like, there's all this other mess of, like, bureaucracy and general sort of, you know, attachment to the existing financial system that something like Desjardins probably, you know, makes it a less compelling representative of, the sort of like cooperative movement. And so that's sort of, you know, I think my take on the the question to me is like, how do we create sustainable models that are iterating on the like notion of venture capital, but still retain this notion of one, sustainability of the project and two, of sort of meaningful returns, surplus essentially. And if you get those two things right, I think you can create a network sort of like more mutualist economy because these projects can start to sustain each other. And in the way that I was mentioning sort of before you can have this sort of, you know, tax, let's say on something congestable like the subway system in order to subsidize the increasing return of, say, what would otherwise be a closed patent that's now producing positive externalities through being sort of left open, you know, to the broader ecosystem. But I also want to make a distinction, between venture capital and early stage funding as a concept. I think projects should be encouraged to pursue community ownership more seriously, and I think investors should be more incentivized to cap the returns that they're taking in order to facilitate that community ownership. And I think this is not something that's possible with the current model, because of mostly winner take all dynamics and sort of, like, the fact that, you know, VCs are essentially passively investing in all these projects and aren't able to continuously gain rewards from actually participating and working with each project they're investing in. And I think this is something that you can sort of fix in the current VC model by sort of taking the premise that you are really part of the team, you are part of the community, and you are working with them hopefully for the next, you know, ten plus years. And if you take that position, you know, you can't take as many investments. You have limits on your time, you have limits on your capacity and you can't expect thousand x, you know, billion dollar returns, but you can expect that you're going to have more sustainable, more long term oriented projects and fundamentally more mutualist projects. And I think that's the piece that

Yeah. And so to answer the because I I know you asked that, like, way back at this point. To answer the question about Allo, like, I I think the interesting part about that system is it kind of goes back to the point earlier, like, you know, Gitcoin shouldn't be the only funder of these things. You know, similarly, I don't think that, you know, if we're even saying venture capital is good, like if I'm making that claim, I don't think that like a 16 z should be like the only funder of these things. I think the fact that we have these like large billion dollar plus funds is actually like net negative. It like creates really weird market dynamics and like all these adverse sort of like selection problems. But like I do think that having sort of all these different local communities that have their own sort of like various mechanisms they can choose from, which like Aloe is sort of like aiming to help facilitate, that allow them to fund their own sort of shared needs, their own ideas and their own sort of community initiatives. That to me is the piece that I think is currently missing from our conception of going to tie this all the way back to, like, the movement piece, like the what Web3 what, like, crypto is trying to accomplish. And what I mean is, you know, if you look at the history of crypto, it's a lot of speculation. It's a lot of like DeFi. It's a lot of like more recently, like, you know, NFT, shilling sometimes disguised as like, you know, artist, sort of, community support it. And I think that's like probably, you know, not net negative, but it's like directionally in terms of the movement, in terms of the technology, it's I think interesting and provides a lot of like new evolutionary sort of like primitives that are eventually gonna do some cool stuff. But I think in terms of the movement, those things are less interesting and perhaps less impactful than just providing primitives for people to actually engage with and like sort of coordinate around their own shared community. And that's where you can start to be more like tangible about, you know, the actual impact that this stuff is having because you're not just talking about like the Web3 ecosystem or the crypto ecosystem. You're talking about a, you know, you know, tech community in Lagos. You're talking about like a community currency in Oakland. You're talking about like, you know, actual sort of people using this in their daily lives. Now, to be sure, we need a lot more actual improvements in like UX and overall sort of usability of crypto. For example, account abstraction is like a great step towards this to me for this to be actually useful. There are people that are probably gonna like, you know, not wanting to store $2,000 on like their phone to walk around with, and try and transact with on a daily basis. But I do think there's like, you know, we're starting to see with things like Allo and others sort of tools, this ecosystem of projects form and this general movement around sort of, I guess, you know, something that, like, folks have now called, like, regenerative or, like, more sort of impact focused, sort of applications starting to form. Yeah.

Oh, man. I mean, I think that there's lots of really interesting parts of what DAOs can accomplish, and then there's a lot of just, you know, the bumps along the way that I think people maybe don't prepare for or don't necessarily maybe don't talk about, or in the bull market, people didn't talk about them. Now that it's a bear market, I think everyone kind of like talks about everything being, you know, worse or or less less impactful than it was. Yeah. It kind of swings in, you know, extremes. People like either, like, everything's gonna be an amazing utopia or everything is immediately going to, like, you know, fall apart. And I think it's yeah. The truth is probably somewhere in between. But I think that what I like about DAOs is that you didn't really have sort of Internet native mechanisms for distributing value to groups of contributors in a way that was like, one relatively, like, seamless and transparent, but two also, like, that, like, allowed for these other, like, less common, more equitable structures, like, say cooperatives that otherwise would be like kind of a pain to instantiate, locally, let alone like across like all these contributors from all over the world. And I think that the ability to do that now in the sort of Ethereum space is actually quite novel and quite useful, even in cases that like, you know, might eventually just be like real world cooperatives. I think the other piece of this that's interesting about DaaS is a lot of these sorts of projects can actually do this with their own sort of currencies. They can do this with currencies that reflect their sort of internal values. They reflect the goals that they're trying to accomplish. They also reflect their internal, sort of economic or like social principles. And those are things that I think were not really very easy to do, you know, at scale in other cases. You had mini currency experiments in the past, like, you know, even back like hundreds and hundreds of years, but like especially in like the seventies and eighties, I think there was a pretty famous experiment in Ireland in the eighties. Those are, you know, I think the prototypes of what I hope DAOs can sort of accomplish and become in like, you know, the next sort of cycle. But the downside of DAOs is that, there's lots of great history on best practices for organizations, you know, tradeoffs between, like, efficiency and, like, resilience of organizations, tradeoffs between scale and, you know, overall alignment, tradeoffs between the, you know, amount of this is sort of the Goodhart's Law part, like the amount of, you know, measurements or KPIs you put in place and the propensity of your organization to like overfit on certain objectives that are or metrics that are hit. The downside of DAOs in those contexts, I think, are only now sort of being resolved. And it probably took, like, the ecosystem on the whole, like, you know, two, three years to sort of realize those things. But I think one of the, one of the downsides is, you know, it's a new term, it's a new concept, it's a new sort of like, like design space. And so people kind of forget that there was other stuff that, like, previously existed that we could, like, draw from in terms of approaches or models. So that's, like, the downside is, like, I think that the the good part of DAOs is we should use them to create new types of organizations that are actually aiming towards like globally distributed common goals. The downside of DAOs is that like, you still have to do a lot of organization. You still have to like actually do all this coordination. And that is the part of coordination that I think is like really the emphasis, actually is like this sort of like, change from, you know, you all hang out in like a small garage, sort of like the meme of like the startup in the Silicon Valley era, to, okay, we have like this like online sort of community that we're all sort of coordinating around, and we're all trying to engage and sort of make sure it's like heard. And how do we make sure we do that in a way that like is, sort of, like, consistent and also leads to, like, long term, sustainability of the project, like maintenance of, like, you know, core tooling, maintenance of, like, the initial values and sort of mission. These are all things that I think, you know, again, like a lot of historical literature on organizational design sort of like has addressed and like solves for, but I think it's something that is, like what I hope that Dows can sort of like, quote unquote, like bring online or I guess as people would say now, like bring on chain. Although we have to define what that term means, I think more clearly. So that's I guess, like, at a high level, I think DAOs are pretty cool. I like DAOs. I think we've, like, you know, sort of seen a lot of the benefits of the DAO through just, like, the fact that we've, like, now, like, shipped this protocol, this, like, community has now sort of, like, grown and I've also been able to sort of, like, step away from the DAO myself, like, with relative confidence in the team and the community that is sort of operating it. And I think that's something that like is pretty interesting because it's a hard thing to do probably in, you know, or even a regular organization. And I think the fact that we've been able to sort of see that in the context of the DAO has been, sort of, like, to me a sign that they can work, but I don't, you know, think that's, a sign that, like, they're perfect. I think there's, like, still a ton of, like, you know, organizational sort of, like, data probably every DAO including ours is still, like, you know, making sure we're we're covering.

I feel like that's actually, like, probably another hot take. I don't know if that's spicy. I feel like there's a lot of people that have written especially in this market, like, a lot of, like, much spicier, spicier pieces on, like, how DAOs are, you know, doomed or, like, DAOs are over. We're so, you know, same with tokens. The people are, like, very bearish on anything to do with the token now. It's like as like as if this hasn't had, like, multiple cycles and iterations of of token models that people have, like, written, you know, books and and tons of, like, literature on. Mhmm. But I I do think it's like it is a good sign. Yeah. Feel free to edit this part out. I'm just kinda I'm rambling here. We'll we'll we'll cut this. Well, I mean, I think what is

mostly fail, I think, in the beginning, but at least experiment so that they can that's, like, the only way they're gonna get to to the point where we can do it more more frequently. The pro of this, like there's, like, these death and rebirth cycles, which I was saying, like, are bad in the sense that, you know, DAOs are this blank canvas that we can, like, kind of work off of and people take that to mean, like, let's just, like, try all the things, you know, again that people have, like, already gotten a, you know, a decent handle on. But I think that the the sort of, like, benefit of that is that you get the ability to run way more experiments in parallel, like, much faster. And if you can collectively, like, learn from those experiments and also, like, collectively share value between those experiments, this kinda goes back to, like, you know, in my view, like, why you need this ability to share value, like, as an ecosystem and, like, return value as an ecosystem. Like, I think that can be something that's useful for the long run. None of the, you know, crypto TM sort of space, but also just, like, of the way we organize generally. The other point I'll mention on that just quickly is, like, I think one of the things that we're unlearning through the process of creating DAOs just as a space is we historically are very, I think, yeah, used to hierarchy. We're used to, like, the notion of, like, to your point, having a manager. And I think it's actually very hard to unlearn that for a lot of people. We sort of have, like, been trained to, like, have less agency, I think, generally. Mhmm. And what that means in practice is that, like, you sort of you know, people will, like, join a a channel or, like, you know, join an initiative, and they'll be like, okay. Like, I'm here. Like, please give me, like, you know, the full rundown on everything that, like, I should be doing. And people are like, wait. Who are you? Like, what what are we what are we doing here? Like and I think that's, the sort of challenge is is to get people to unlearn this sort of, like, sense of needing to be, you know, instructed, needing to be, like, managed. Not that management isn't necessarily always bad. Like, I think it's a there's nuance to these things. Right? And I think that, there's there's one thing here I wanna just, like, make sure people read that is, like, for me, an inspiration on this, which is, Devon Ilic has a few books on this, but, like, D Schooling Society is one in particular that I think is, like, really great in terms of sort of articulating the way we have abstracted sort of, like, what were previously, like, way back, you know, like, personal relationships with each other to more institutional, abstracted sort of bodies that, you know and and what that's done over time is has essentially been like it's created this this sense of, like, learned helplessness, I think, unfortunately, in, like, a way that we can probably you know? And I see people recovering, like, from like, and and kind of, like, improving from. But it's, like, I think still fundamentally, a challenge, especially because, you know, all of us still exist in a, quote, unquote, real world where, these are still the standard modes of operating. We haven't really changed any of that yet. So, I think that's just a super important, like, part of and and, like, maybe, like, you know, in addition to the fact that you have this, like, benefit of experimentation and sort of, like, this iteration on new ideas and and models and this sort of, like, you know, change in the way that we're thinking about, like, organizational structure and your own agency. I think there's also maybe, like, just ideally benefits to just our realization that this is all kind of made up, that, like, all these other pieces of, like, organizational, you know, structure that have existed are just building blocks that you can choose basically to use based on context and based on, like, whether or not they fit what you're trying to accomplish. You should still know what the building blocks are, but, like, you can use them in ways that are much more, like, sort of modular configurable based on your actual your actual needs. And I think even just that, like, psychological social realization that crypto has allowed people to have about, like, oh, yeah. Like, the world is just, like, made by people and I'm a person and I can make things is, like, I think, a useful shift that didn't really happen, you know, in wasn't wasn't really a big part of the conversation, I think, in the past sort of decades.

I think it's from, from Utopia of Rules. It might be from but, yeah, it's like the great secret of the world is that, you know, it's yeah. Let's cut this part out. I'm gonna I'm gonna do that. I think you got it. Yeah. I don't have a better way to phrase it than you. I don't remember either, actually.

Would you talk would you like to talk a bit about that and what are the goals of that project? Yeah. Absolutely. And, I mean, you know, this might be part of the reason that I'm, like, interested in, at least to some extent, defending the notion of of investment. I think that ultimately, the goal of Public Works is to showcase that there are certain types of infrastructure that, one, we're missing in the space, in a world where even, you know, as I was saying, like, we need more surreal world adoption. But, like, one of the ways you do that is by creating tools that make that adoption easier. So, like, an example would be in, like, previous cycle. Like, I think WalletConnect played a critical role in things like Rainbow being widely adopted, which which played a critical role in things like NFT marketplaces being used. And although I don't always agree with, like, the way those NFT marketplaces were used, it was still, like, pretty important that you had this sort of, like, fundamental building block in the case of Wild Connect that led to people wanting to, actually interact with with crypto at all. And so I think in the next sort of cycle, there's other types of infrastructure like that, which have now sort of become, I think, talking points that other people can cover in more depth. They've they've become sort of memes in the space in their own right. But things like account abstraction, things like intent based tooling, things like better even just developer tooling have become parts of, I think, a conversation that is sort of, split between, you know, hey. We, like, have more than enough infrastructure. You know? Why are we building more sort of the same thing? And this is kind of true sometimes with, like, some of the infrastructure. Like, we just probably don't need more block space at this point. I don't know why we keep creating more block space. Again, exceptions to probably Spicy. But there's also a question of, you know, on the other hand, like, what are the sort of missing core pieces of the tech tree, you know, if we sort of think of it that way that, like, we need to actually get to some, you know, sort of mass adoption in the future. And I think of those ones I mentioned, like, account distraction is probably the most tangible where people, I do think, really understand that this is kind of necessary. And so the goal of public works in a way is to be able to actually, like, invest in these sorts of projects, but to sort of encourage them ideally to, like, exit to community in a way that is, you know, as I was mentioning, more in line with the sort of mutualist framing of the way that community ownership and sort of community investment should work. And I think that this is a very tricky thing to do properly, but, like, if done right, this can hopefully reframe the way that we view things like venture capital today. Because, again, like, I don't think venture capital is inherently bad. I know we're gonna disagree on that. I also think there's a lot of nuance to that. But I do think that venture capital as it exists today, is pretty broken and is largely reliant on, like, a handful of, you know, smaller organizations that are basically just trying to, like, get projects to, like, you know, billion dollar plus valuations and are trying to essentially, you know, create, win or take all, like, monopolistic markets rather than trying to create, like, pluralistic sets of infrastructure that are more modular that people can, like, actually kind of work together on and ideally, you know, essentially invest together on. And I think that this is, by the way, like, I guess I should state because I don't know, like, you know, I'm not in The US, but I don't mean invest here necessarily in the sense of a financial or, you know, economic contract. I mean, in the sense of having some kind of governance stake over the project itself, etcetera, etcetera. That's just my disclaimer because who knows how The US regulatory environment will actually end up. But I do think my point is that, like, if you can reframe this model and change some of those functions and, like, features of existing VC, then you can sort of at least start incrementally improving the sort of path to this, like, fully sort of peer to peer ecosystem, which, by the way, like, I would actually argue in some ways that, like, we sort of had closer to in the ICO era. There was way less accountability to projects in the ICO era, but at least we had sort of, like, direct community investment. Probably legally, you couldn't do that today. But, like, I think that this sort of is something that will naturally, I think, need to be facilitated by at least some key players. It's not something that will, like, happen on its own because the existing forces in the market are just so large at this point and, like, so, like, kind of, like, oligopolistic that, like, it's hard to imagine tons of new entrants coming in to, like, basically help pull projects from this sort of, like, venture capital pipeline to a more community oriented pipeline, without, like, some kind of interference or some kind of, like, engagement. And and I think that's, like, probably something that on our own, as a sort of fund, we can't act we we can't accomplish that, like, as me and, like, you know, two other people. I think we can accomplish that if we pluralistically get lots of smaller groups engaged on this idea, and that's where I hope that we can sort of, like, start to spread the message and start to get people engaged. I've actually had a lot of conversations with folks who are interested in sort of, like, this activist contributor model, folks that are interested in, sort of broader approach to, like, early funding. And I do think that there's sort of a movement starting here, but it's a bit of an uphill battle. Right? Because on the one hand, you know, to your point, people hate venture capital or anything that's, like, associated with, like, early stage funding, which has some kind of, like, economic arrangement. On the other hand, you have people that, you know, I think are reluctant to change their sort of ways or like or adjust their models because, you know, the large funds, these large organizations are doing perfectly well. Yeah. They're benefiting from it anyways. Sort of in their current state. Yeah. So it's a question of like, I think, you know, what we're trying to do is really just like very simply, like, invest in ecosystem infrastructure that will be useful for, like, hopefully, like, this next wave of actual adoption. But I think the the the bigger question is, like, how do we actually restructure the way that, like, capital flows in this space, which is, like, going to be for at least the foreseeable future quite heavily financialized. And then how can we slowly shift towards a model where we're actually valuing labor and valuing contribution, especially at an early stage more. And so it's it's tricky. It's like you know? I think it's a it's a probably it's probably too early to tell exactly how that'll actually play out. But to me, this is something that I think is has been sort of on my mind for a while because we actually saw this with, Bitcoin early on where you had projects like Uniswap or projects like Optimism or projects like, XDAI, which did, you know, I think the right thing in the context that they were in. They raised, you know, capital to, like, increasingly grow with the community, grow with the ecosystem that they were building. At the same time, I think that, like, generally, you know, the sort of, like, early supporters of those projects may not have, like, you know, wanted them to go and, you know, raise excessive venture capital rounds only to, like, sort of exit the community three, four years down the road. And that to me is the thing that, like, we're already so, like, my point is, essentially, we're already seeing this happen. Like, we already saw this play out. And now sort of we're in this lull, I think, as people sort of recover from the insanity that just happened in 2021, 2022. How can we make sure that, like, in 2024, 2025, there's not the same dynamic? And again, you know, spicy take. I think it's gonna be, like, controversial. I think it's gonna be interesting, and I'm excited for it because I think I think it's necessary.

Yeah. I mean, I think, like, most people in the sort of same section of crypto that, like, we're in, I think, want that. I think the hard part is, like, you know, kind of follow through on the results. And I think, like, the hardest part is, like, to your point, like, you know, the sort of people in crypto conferences that are like saying that, like, I think the question to me is like, you know, how much are you like saying things versus like living those values, which is like a constant challenge in the space. Like, I think a lot of people like have perspectives on things. Like a lot of people have opinions, which is, you know, including Easy to have opinions. Easy to have opinions, but it's harder to like make sort of actions, take action that like actually furthers those opinions in a meaningful way. I think this is like one of the reasons I've like been a little bit less active on like, you know, Twitter, like any equivalent is just like, I think there's a lot of, you know, a lot of distance between the people that are, like, really actively building and the people that are, like, have opinions. And I think that, like, that's, like, also again nuance to that. Like, I think there's lots of great people on those too. But, like, that to me is, something that like, I think needs to just like take time to play out. And I hope that like this sort of end goal here is that we get to essentially much more of a peer to peer system. To be honest, if we could just, like, recreate, you know, better versions of, like, the sort of, like, initial, like, capital neighbor contributor model like that, like, something like an ICO created, I think that actually could be, like, much more interesting. The problem is mostly, making that happen in a way that doesn't lead to, like, either people in jail or people, like, generally, sort of finding ways to game that system at least right now. And so I think that like that's the path we're on, but I think that it'll take some time to get there. The organization I would mention by the way that I think is like actually interesting to view from a like more mutualist anarchist perspective on this would be like C4SS, right? Like I think they sort of have a much more market based perspective on like more still, like, mutualist, like, market based anarchism. And I think that to me is an interesting sort of, like, model that we could potentially, again, you know, question marks on the implementation details, port over to the sort of, like, crypto ecosystem.

Probably the spiciest take is that we still haven't really, you know, as an ecosystem proven this maybe is a good way to tie back to the very beginning, like, proven why we're here. I think there's still a lot of, like, open questions, a lot of, like, things left undefined, a lot of, like, details that we sort of should be filling in, especially around what the movement of crypto is about. And of course, there's the origins sort of in a sort of cyberpunk movement and so forth. But I would love to see us come together and sort of articulate, you know, pluralistically a vision for what we really want this to be in ten years. And I think that's part of like, for me, the motivation of like, you know, what is a sort of like tech tree look like? But it's also a question of like, I think mapping out, and, and, Vitalik has done actually a really great job of this with like his recent posts. Maybe not that recent now, when this is released, around sort of the real world applications that he would like to see. But I think I would love to see more sort of, of a map on not just the tech sort of tree, but also on the sort of like movement, as to like, you know, where we want to go in the coming years. Maybe that's not as spicy take. It's probably spicier ones scattered throughout this, but that's one that I think is really important for us to just consider, and to take away.

Yeah. Not Scott Moore on Twitter, but, like, I think, increasingly, feel free to just go to, like, publicworks.fm. Send me a note. I'll be sort of, like, available on any of the channels that are in there. And in general, would love to chat to folks just that are interested in these concepts, trying to start to do a little bit more writing on these as well. So if you wanna collaborate on some writing, feel free to hit me up.