The Anarchist Case for DAOs
For this interview I spoke to @againstutopia he's known as on anarchist and crypto Twitter. He has a background in working in tech, platform cooperatives, and is one of the stewards of PrimeDAO. We had followed each other online but finally had the opportunity to meet in person during The DAOist in Lisbon a few months ago. During the interview we discuss why he thinks the anarchist community is split on crypto, the interesting DAO tools being built at PrimeDAO for DAO2DAO interactions,...
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Transcript
Cool. Maybe, like, I think it could be interesting, actually. I'm curious what your thoughts were about Lizcon and, like, the experience in Lisbon because we both saw each other in person there. And it was very fun sort of, like, being the yeah. Kind of, like, being the two leftists a bit,
amongst the crowd and, like, sort of making similar observations about what we were seeing. How How was your experience there? Oh, yeah. Definitely. So I think, like, well, I didn't stay for Liz Con. I was only in there for in and out for Dallas, but I think, like, I think for for that, I kinda share, you know, your your take on it a bit, which is that, like, it's an interesting space to be in because a lot of folks are there, ostensibly because they're into a lot of the horizontal and sort of, you know, other forms of organization that DAOs bring. They're into sort of blazing a trail for a, you know, new world, so to speak. Right? They they they talk about a lot, but they are butting up against the edge of a lot of very radical ideas and not really owning the the terms, which to be clear for me, I don't actually care if you're coming in self identify or not as of some particular radical school of thought. You're coming from anarchism. I really only care about your actions for the most part. Right? It's a it's this is not, as, you know, Graeber used to say, like, you know, don't call me the anarchist anthropologist because I see some as anarchism is something you do, not something you are. Right? Right. Yeah. I think that is a super super important point that people need to, to think about Yeah. In these type of, like,
debates about identity. Exactly.
Particular in intra left identities, I guess. Yeah. Exactly. So for me, I saw it as a place of a lot of promise. I thought it's very interesting on that front because, you know, you have all these people who are sensibly running around going like, I'm quoting a few people here. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say who they are just in case they feel like, you know, they were saying it to be quoted in a podcast later. But, you know, I heard stuff like, we need to guarantee, access to the basic necessities of life for everybody. Like, nice. Right? Like, there's been a lot of a lot of people been saying that for for your 400 years. Right? Like, that's great. We need, you know, the future of public goods, you know, is one where we have a where we manage a a public commons. Right? And I'm like, man, does this person know, about the diggers and the levelers and the thirteenth and fourteenth century enclosure movements? Probably not. But it doesn't matter if they do or don't. It's more that, like, when I trace the lineage of, I am not gonna say we currently live in hell necessarily. I'm lucky as hell. I don't I don't live in hell. But, like, hell definitely exists on earth for the vast majority of people. Right? And so and that origination of that hell in a lot of ways points back to I'm not gonna sorry. We all I only made it, like, five three minutes into this podcast before I before I shit on England. Right? That's funny. Right? Like, I this is this must be a new record for me. Like, three and a half minutes. But, anyway, you know, you can trace that lineage back to, like, the commons, the enclosure of the commons movements. Right? When around the time when people said, yo, we gotta we gotta get these peasants off this land. We gotta create artificial scarcity. We gotta make these people work for a living because people are comfortable as hell for that. Right? It's not like it's not like we've been living in paradise. That's not what I'm saying. Right? It's more that, like, they they didn't have the yoke. They didn't have to you know, what is it? Diggers of earth and, carriers of water is what they is one of the things they said or something like that. I'm butchering it. But, you know, this thing these things didn't exist. So when you're at a thing like Taoist and you're hearing people say this, it's like they have already got past that point of, like, the many headed hydra and, like, you know, maybe at least some of the other things that pop up in our sphere, they're kind of internalized that, you know, this is wrong and we can do better, and that's nice. Right? I don't need you to know your lineage, but I'm if you're gonna be working on these kinds of things, I'm right there with you. Right? Let's let's build that together. Right? So that was my my take. Right? It's kinda strange to see everyone say it, and then when you're like I did this a couple times. I was like, you know, that's you know, that thing you just said is exactly what, you know, what we've been saying for a long time over here in ex camp. Right? You're like, oh, really? Wow. I didn't know that. Oh, I don't know about that. It's pretty funny. The terms Yeah. Which
to me, it felt really like, like, they would say things that would, like, really, really brush up close to quite radical political thoughts, but they clearly did not know that. Like, they they kind of, discovered it on their own, which is why, like, I think it is really interesting to sort of, to provide them with that extra bit of knowledge that they know. Like, someone's already thought about this, like, two hundred years ago. And, you know, there's this whole history of of of thought and people doing actions because of that thought that you can learn from. That's sort of where I think, a lot of, the the huge opportunity that a lot of people on the left are sort of missing out on is that, as much as you may think that the space is filled with, you know, crypto bros, I really hate that that term, but, like, if you were to just if you were to get into conversation, like, a good, you know, nice, like, nonargumentative discussion and, conversation with these people, you could probably teach them a lot, and they would listen to you. Very surprising. Like like, super surprisingly, like, like, for for all their flaws, I think a lot of these same people are also willing to listen, which I cannot say the same for a lot of, like, spaces on the left, unfortunately.
Yeah. And I think and the this is why I also personally shy away from terms like the left personally or leftist. I don't really identify with the term because I think it's such a it makes up such a complex milieu of of various parties who are not even aligned at all on certain things. Like, I mean, example. Right? I'm not at all painting all Marxist in this light, but there's a certain breed of online Marxist who will use shit like, well, you know, kind of like what you said with, like, you know, someone's been talking about this for two hundred years, but they you went to a very positive place with it. They'll use that as a casual to say, therefore, go read these fucking books and educate yourself before you can you know, like, as a way almost to enforce an intellectual hierarchy. You know? And I actually hate that shit because it's like, I don't want to force someone to go read 1,100 pages of Das Kapital if they're already here and they're ready to act on shit. They can do that whenever. But, like, and that's not at all. I'm not finding a broadside at all. Marxist, I've only, you know, there were plenty of, like, I like the the cybernetic Marxists on that one podcast. That's that one. Been listened to in a while. General Yeah. I love those guys. Right? They they they always have interesting takes. There are a lot of there are lots of really good forward facing positive, you know, stuff happening in Marxist thought, especially around, like, the people who are intersecting in public choice theory and all that. But but the there's this along these this is why I tried not to use the left because those people then are being lumped in the left. These people who are like, well, you know, did you read, you know, this and that and the other? You're gonna have to if you wanted, like, you know, what what is the point of view? Right? Like, that's that's that's that's not why we're here. Right? And I think to ducktail on the other point, it's exactly right. Like, I've seen this in my experience. Right? With you'll join a Twitter space, and maybe you'll, like, raise your hand, and you might jump in and be like, is that, you know, is that land stewardship project you were talking about? Like, is that actually run by indigenous people, or do they have a vote or say on it and let people who are on that? I've seen this with my own eyes. It'll be like, no. They're not yet, and that is a huge problem. And can you just come in and propose something in our forums so that we can fix that? Like like, put a proposal up. Right? And we'll show you. It doesn't cost money. Right? It doesn't cost and if and if it does, we'll, like, give you the gas for it or what have you. Right? Like, I've literally seen this happen in in some of the ecosystems I'm in. So I'm like, it's like, people can take these critiques if they're coming from the right place and their heart is in the right place. It's just a matter of, like, you know, you you don't have to sit out there and own people on the Internet all day. You can actually come in and do it yourself. You can do these things yourself.
I I think I think it was Jason Prado I saw say this on on Twitter. We're, like, we're we're over indexed on, like, critique and under indexed in in sort of doing action, and and building things. And that's I think that's yeah. That that's what I wanna say about, like, all like, any other, like, criticisms you wanna bring to me, just remember that.
Absolutely. That's beautiful. Yeah. I love Jay I I I put some money in Jason's company. I I love what they're doing. Right? Like and and that's a great way to put it because, like, Jason is also, like, critical of a lot of the shit that's happening out there, but he's also leading a team of data engineers and, you know, back end and front end engineers who are building a new version of ride sharing that's owned by by by the actual drivers. Right? Like, that's that's actually happening. So I think when you're out there I'm I'm not saying don't hurl your insults at me. I'm I'm a I'm a big boy. I can take it. All I'm saying is that how do you spend your time from there is kind of what matters.
Well, speaking of spending your time, maybe you can give us just, like, a quick introduction on how you spend your time lately because I know you've been you as far as I understand, you, like, very quickly got involved in in the crypto space and are now sort of full time in it, after and before just working for for for a cooperative and working for a lot of other things. Yeah. Definitely.
So I think, like, the stuff that I'm involved in now, I'm definitely happy to talk about. So the I think the things that might be interesting to this audience in particular are, so I'm, I met the Prime DAO folks last summer. Right? And, like, I don't even remember how. I think it was more that I had seen their funding announcement where they had raised, like, $2,000,000 to build a more cooperative ecosystem for DAO. So, obviously, cooperative. I'm like, oh, you got my attention. What are you doing here? What does that mean? Right? And then and then I reached out to them, and I was like, first, can I can I give you money? And second, they were like, no. Sorry. We've already closed around, but you should chat with us and see what we're doing. And so I'm working on Prime, and I'm happy to get into what that means. So, basically, they built four products. They're building four products that basically make it easier for all DAOs to cooperate. So it's not that we think that competition is going to go away nor do I necessarily think it should, but, it's more that if you open up more pathways to cooperation, those might be taken more often. Right? So what does cooperation with DAOs look like? It could be, diversifying their treasury risk by doing a token swap. It could be joint funding, something that both of them want, but that they needed that they that they then will equally use. That's prime pools. Right? And then, prime deals is the first one I talked about, token swaps and among other things. And then, you know, if you're actually new to the space and you just want to launch, we have a platform that lets you do that for free. And so I'm doing that. I'm one of the stewards of that project. And, Prime is connected to, Collectivo, which I don't do anything for right now, but I am very interested in. So it got me it got me prime pills. Colectivo is really interesting because, this is kind of an example of what you're talking about at Dallas, and I met the Colectivo folks. You know, they were telling me, like, well, we want to we want to build regenerative economies from the bottom up for abundance for all. And I'm like, interesting. Have you read Perdome? I didn't say that. Just kidding. But, like, you know, it's stuff like that where you're like, I don't really care where you stand. That's excellent. Let's do it. Right? And and then further where I'm kind of, there's a number of other projects. And one of them I'm gonna not end, so I'm not gonna mention it. But if you follow me on Twitter, you can probably put two two together. And then before that, my background was basically in, I did a short stint in platform cooperatives. Really, over the last four years, I've been advising one of them, and then I joined one for about a year to help grow it, the savvy cooperative. And so, you know, there's a lot of people out in the web three space writing about how DAOs are like cooperatives, but very few who actually have the experience of doing, you know, doing work inside of cooperative and growing it the way that a venture scale company would grow, which is they are. Actually, they're doing very well on that front. And then before that, I was just at a number of tech companies doing product product stuff, marketing stuff. I cofounded one out of, 500 startups a few years ago, which did okay. I'm not rich, but, like, it's fine. And then, like, of course, everyone on this podcast and listening to it is rich if you don't if you're not in the global south. So it's offer it's also relevant. But, but yeah. So that's, like, kind of the experience I bring to it. And that experience of organizing within cooperatives and deciding, you know, how do we hold ourselves accountable? What are the systems we're building for ourselves? How does ownership work? Then gave me kind of a unique lens into this thing that they're now calling the ownership economy in crypto, which, you know, I have a contentious relationship with. But, you know, I actually think it's, you know, at the end of the day, I think it's okay. It just needs to be like, any other thing in the space that's attracting attention, it needs to be bent to our will.
Yeah. Yeah. I I would like like, I I one time, I I was tweeting, like, I I want to invest in the ownership of the means of production economy rather than just, like, the ownership economy. Yeah. Just to, like, be more specific on, like, the type of ownership I want to. Yeah. What what we want to invest in to create in in the long run. Yeah. Definitely. But, yeah. So, like, you're you're openly an an anarchist, and I'm I've mentioned this before. I'm not I'm not really, I wouldn't call myself an anarchist, but I am very open to anarchist thoughts. And there's a lot of, like, anarchist writers that I really, really, like, like David Graeber being one of them. So, like, sometimes I struggle with defining anarchism. So I'm curious to hear from you, especially in the context of the crypto space. Like, what what is anarchism for you?
Yeah. I've always I think I have to give an answer a different answer every time I answer this question, which some people are frowning upon. But I think lately, the one I'm kind of settling on is that it's kind of like those bullshit apocryphal quotes you hear from people like Churchill, right, where they're like, you know, democracy or capitalism is the worst system except for all the others. I actually think that I end up at anarchism not because I think I'm not not some utopian. Right? I actually think that this You are against utopia. Literally. Right? So I was I was talking to someone about this the other day yesterday, actually, and I was like, the reason I picked that is because I think that the state and, and, the, you know, neo various neoliberal and, what is the other neo one I can't think of now? Wow. Brain not working this morning. But, anyway, not, just like neoclassical. Right? Neoclassical economics, all that. I actually think all all of these are extremely utopian. Right? And I think that for a very specific epistemological reason, which is that in order to make certain predictions about the future, the various, you know, scientific instruments and the the philosophy of science they actually have that they're that they carry as their baggage into their into their practice necessitates the reduction of certain complexities that then, at the end of the day, those complexities are stripped away for the benefit of certain parties. Right? And the the way that I got to this position was actually not even through some edgy anarchists. It was James c Scott. Right? I I read seeing, like, a state a little over four years ago, and I was just like, wait a minute. This is who I've been the whole time. Right? Like, this whole, like, the the anti authoritarian thing made a lot more sense to me. Specifically, not from the realms of, like, you know, where people think of and, like, move people throwing bombs with cars or whatever. No. That's not it's more about rejecting the, high modernist authority of based on an an epistemological stance. Right? That there's actually much more information complexity, etcetera, that's being, prevented from blooming and taking us into, like, a a new way of relating, producing, living, etcetera. And that's kind of what anarchism means to me is actually taking the shackles off of that. Right? Actually, letting things complexify as much as possible. And at the core of it, it be this is I finally got to this part later. It wasn't mine. But I actually like William Gillis. He's a writes for c four s s and is a leaves coordinator of some sort there, like, really talks about this a lot is that at the end of the day, it's also an ethical stance and that you are for the maximization of agency for all beings. Right? And so it is on their terms. Right? And so that's really what it means to me at the end of the day. It's because anarchy is because. Like, why do I end up because anarchy? Because of this, idea that if you let, this sort of epistemic, you know, complexity, you know, mix, mingle, grow as much as possible, we will we'll show the way towards new possibilities and from the bottom up, especially. And that should not surprise you why I'm dabbling in some of this web three stuff now. Right? Because because I as I very much see it as technology to build new institutions from the people who are best placed to have the knowledge to, that serves as a base for how to manage some kind of institution. Right? And, you know, a lot of anarchists move this seems to be like, this guy just said manage. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Like, I'm happy to talk about the definition of institutions and all that later too as well. But that's, like, why like, what what it is for me is this, respect for bottom up knowledge, the ability to assemble and disassemble institutions, and doing it while maximizing the agency of people who are subject to systems. Could you explain a bit more actually
how how how you connect that with your dabbling in the crypto space? Like, what got you into it? Like, what was it exactly that convinced you to get into it? Yeah. Absolutely. I think that it's in the tail end of kind of what I said there, which is is institutions. Right? I think that,
years before I got back into this because I my first dabbling was, like, 2017, 2018 when DOWs were very, very, very early, and I liked the idea of them. I read about them. I met the Aragon folks, like, Luis and Jorge. And well, just Luis and John, like, basically. And I was just talking to them a bit about, you know, what what are y'all doing? Where are you going? I'd love to help out, but it didn't really materialize into anything back then. And then I ended up just extremely pushing into it this time because of a lot of the interesting projects that I see that have caught my attention because they are whether they know it or not, they are building new institutions, and they're building new ways to govern them and to spread the the wealth and abundance that comes from them as far as wide as they can given certain constraints. Right? So, like, what convinced me was stuff like Gitcoin. Right? Gitcoin in particular, I find very interesting because it started out, you know, when you if you don't know what Gitcoin is, right, if we zoom out a bit, what what preceded Bitcoin if you're, if you don't if you're not familiar with all the politics and ins and outs of OSS of open source software. Right? Open source software, you know, I'm not, like, the definitive expert on it, but, you know, a lot of the methods of the patterns of organizing within it, of building it, etcetera, were they mirror what some people's ideas are of anarchy. In some ways, that's both bad and good because, you know, it's like complete chaos in some places, which people associate with anarchy more or less. And then in other places, it's, like, more about what you're what kind of stuff that I'm talking about where you're able to cocreate an institution with your friends. Right? But OSS, in particular, back then, you know, when it started out, it was like, hey. You you know, you had a number of, like, Linux. A number of things are coming about, but then quickly in the late nineties and stuff, you began to see and even before this, but you you had the tech giants just hovering over them as a source of IP. Right? Because they could just copy and make one change, patent the make it a part of some new stack, an enterprise stack. And now it's, you know, whatever. And you see this as well, in Amazon. Right? AWS and specific specifically, you have, like, Amazon EC two, Elastic Stack, and all you that's basically just Elastic, the company, and it's open source products in the Amazon version. And so what's interesting about Gitcoin is I need to actually look this up right now, you know, edit this out or whatever you want, but I think it's actually good to have this here. I'll put it in the show notes too. Elastic, made a big change to their licensing. Right? Basically, they made a huge change because AWS and Amazon Elasticsearch, they've been doing things that since 2015 that have basically fucked Elasticsearch's entire business. Right? So they're they wanted to prevent companies like Amazon taking Elasticsearch and Kibana and just providing them directly as a service without collaborating with with Elastic at all. Right? And Elastic's entire stack is open source, maintained by our long tail folks, and they use that open source long tail to say, here's a product. Do you want services with it? Great. And that's how Elastic makes money. Amazon is basically like, sweet. We'll do the same thing. Right? And that's just and so why is Gitcoin interesting? I come the Gitcoin convinced me because I came back and looked at the system and said, Gitcoin is making a market between people who want software for specific things and people who want to actually build that software. And then they go one step further, and they say, let's make everything that comes out as a public good. Right? So that, I think, is an incredibly powerful idea. Right? Now, of course, someone can sit there and still slurp up from the the public good channel, But the bet is basically that at this point, it doesn't necessarily matter because you're actually at least creating an economy that addresses the original sin. Right? So, like, that, I think, is a pretty power for a powerful idea, and I think there's all kinds of innovations downstream that don't have to involve locking of IP or whatever else to even make the it as a public good, you know, transactable and remuneratable for the person who makes it. Right? And that's why, you know, that thing back in, I was like, okay. That's super cool. Making public goods and making a market for those public goods between that's, actually function. Because, you know, one of my positions is a in this sort of left wing, market tradition of anarchism is that what you see right now is not a functioning market. Right? It's a it's a market that's really captured by folks who have enough power to make it exactly the way it is. And I don't really need to point much further than look at the vaccines. Right? Like like, this look at look at pharmaceuticals and the way that they're captured and all that for the interest of might as well be the same folks at the top. Right? There's a revolving door between the state and the highest people who are in pharma. We just go from one job to another and co write co write their own, legislation and everything else in favor of each other. So if we can many many ways removed from that, we have Bitcoin building a new institution, and they're literally saying, we want to make it I've heard Bitcoin people say this. We want to guarantee a necessity the basic necessities of life for everybody, and we're starting with open source software. Yeah. Okay. It's hard to believe, but maybe let's see where they get. Right?
Yeah. I I, like, I think the personally, the like, the efforts around Gitcoin is really, really interesting to to to observe. I think there are some, like, there are some criticisms that I understand about Gitcoin, but then there's also, like, at the same time, they are sort of answering sort of, like, a direct need in which the state is clearly not does not care to, like, to come in and, like, fix a problem. So, like, I understand people who say something, that they're that that Gitcoin is using the word public goods, like, incorrectly, which I I kind of agree with. I I don't think they're using the word particularly, like, the the academically correct definition, and maybe there are some issues with that. And maybe you could say, like, oh, they're this is they're just, like, creating a world in which we don't rely on taxes, and instead we just rely on, like, the goodness in people's heart to give to charity. Like, I I I can get those I get those criticisms, but at the same time, it's also a it's a a reaction to, like, a very serious need in the open source community that hasn't been answered for a very long time and has been an issue for a very long time. That, like I mean, there has been attempts to, like, sort of, to push the state to do something about it, but they just don't. You know, like, they're the it it it it is a pretty big issue, and I think it's easy to be like, oh, oh, we just need to fund, open source software. But, like, it doesn't even like, you don't even begin to scratch the surface of, like, the issue and how you get close to that. So, like, I I I I keep those criticisms in mind when I think about and talk about Bitcoin, but I also admire their, like, pretty big attempts to, to fill this need even if I have some reservations about some aspects of it. Like, I still don't I don't use it as a reason to sort of disengage.
Yeah. And I think, like, to even go further. Right? Like, it's not that Gitcoin is the only reason to fill me. It's it's to be clear, it's the features of things like Gitcoin, right, where it's like we're we're addressing something that clearly results from collusion in the market between the state and capital. And, also, we want to, we want to show you that this can still actually function as a market should, and it can produce public goods, which is another interest that's kind of like the undercurrent to a lot of things that I that really caught my attention. And then going a step further, I I don't actually necessarily you know, I don't necessarily believe in these as, like, some kind of penation or solution for the future, but I'm watching this experience very closely. Right? Gitcoin is doing a lot of very interesting things in quadratic voting. And so, like, if you're if the audience isn't clear with three quadratic voting, the super, super easy it's extremely it's extremely easy. It just sounds fancy. Right? Like, think of it as, like, you're literally, you you I'm not even gonna get into the math of it, though even though the math is simple. All you have to know is that if you have a whale, some a person with a ton of money, and the way the boats are done is through how much money you have in your wallet, what GetPoint has done is actually raise an entire publicly funded pool of cash that then is doled out based on quadratic principles. So let's say they give you it's easier understood through example. Let's say you have one thing that gets a thousand a thousand votes from one whale, and you have another thing that gets a 100 votes from a 100 different people that totals, you know, in their amounts less than a thousand dollars, Gitcoin will look at that, run a simple calculation, and top that up from the public funds pool because they're looking at, revealed preference. Right? So a 100 people want this thing. One person wants this thing really badly. Or, actually, you don't even know if it's really bad. That person could have a billion dollars and a thousand dollars is nothing to them. Right? So they really look at the end of the day and say, how do we top that up? And so you actually have a mechanism to fund social and public goods that more people want, and you have a way to measure them and iterate on that. So I think that's actually fascinating.
Like Yeah. And it's That's true. The experiments are really interesting. That that's where that's where, like, I do find it very interesting and something to to pay attention to, not as like a, see, they're solving our problems. Absolutely not. Exactly. You know?
Yeah. I think that's exactly right. Because I think it has to be reminded too that, like, anyone who's telling you this is a solution is, like, extremely web three pilled and there is a person who has some bags that they're trying to sell you or maybe even has a rug that they're trying to pull. Right? I for me, everything I'm doing in Dallas is an experiment. Right? Full stop. I'm not this is not at all like something where I'm turning to saying, this is a solution. This is a new world we're building, and it may lead to one. Right? But, like, I have no idea. Act accordingly.
So I'm really curious on your thoughts as well because it's clear that you and I find a lot of interest in the in this space because of the experimentation that's happening. But, I mean, especially I mean, the entire group that you would call the left, there is, like, this split, of course, when it comes to crypto and blockchain. It's it's very, very, it becomes very, very heated Yeah. For a lot of people. So I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on, like, why do you think the anarchist community especially seems to be very, very split on this stuff? Like, for some for some people, I see, anarchists who are like, to them, it's very obvious to get involved and that there is something useful for it. And for others, it's like it's a no go.
Yeah. Definitely. I I'm I'm I'm happy to comment on that, especially as being, like, I get probably a weekly or bimonthly boost of this ranker from the c four SS post that I wrote a while ago on, or co wrote with, a few folks. But, yeah, I think in my view, I think that the split really it comes from a number of things, but the big patterns that stand out to me are people who are focused on the, like, hyper financialization of things and not wanting to make everything, you know, a tradable good, which I actually grok. Like, that's totally fine. I think it's a defensible position. And my only problem with it is, well, so what? Right? Because it's actually happening. Right? So, like, I think that I'm not saying you shouldn't post about it. What I'm saying is that you we have to take some action on that front if we think it's bad, and what does that action look like. Right? That that's basically where I net out on it. And then on the folks who are there's some other you know, there are definitely some other factions too that are absolutely against it. Going one step further than the hyper financialization folks are probably the, like, the the the primies, the the the primitivists who are basically essentially anti sieve, anti energy use, anti complexity, like a whole bunch of things. Them, I think, I I'm gonna, we shouldn't I shouldn't say too much more, but I all I will say is that, there are varying types of those folks. Right? Some are extremely antisiv. Some are like, you know, we need to get rid of thought, and the universe should be rocks. Right? And some of that stuff is just like, you know I would think those people wouldn't even be online then. You would think so, but they are. Right? I think so. There are definitely some of them who are, and I'm just like, why are you here? But, anyway, I that's kinda like the broad trends I see, though. There's a bit to to recount them, right, there's folks who are against the hypercapitalism, the capitalized financialization of everything, which I think is definitely fine because I also do not necessarily want to live in a hell world where where every single interaction of mine is, like, legible to some because when you make it legible, the next question is always to who. Right? And so that can be an extremely dystopian world. And but for me, the answer is not I'm against it now. It's let's make sure that we we build the things necessary to have it on our terms. Right? And, like, one of the people I wanna I'll shout out here, which who who is who I who I love, he's awesome, Henry, Henry de Valence. I don't actually know if I'm saying his name right. But, Henry founded Penumbra Labs, and he was previously I also don't know if I remember his pronouns, so apologies, Henry, if I butcher this. But, I founded, I founded Penumbra Labs and was at Zcash before that. And Penumbra Labs, you don't actually need to know much about it. You can probably figure it out from this. One of my favorite things that Henry said, and I think it might be a pin on his Twitter profile is, like, it's not enough to, critique surveillance. You have to build, build privacy. Right? And so, like, if that's your thing where you're like, we must stop the hyper financialization of everything's bad, be like Henry. Right? Like, you you must build something that, makes you know, what does that look like? What is that what does the attack vector of hyper financialization look like? I don't know. You need to build tools where you need to build privacy tools that don't make every single thing you do legible to every blockchain or chain analysis or whatever. Right? What does that look like? Someone gonna fund it? I don't know. Maybe. Right? Like, there's a lot of, things like that. And then I'm like and now it's a good place to switch to the other side. Right? Like, who is who is for this? It's a lot of the folks that I see for it in my communities too are not the usual suspects that, you know, the critics would think. Right? Like, one of the folks is, Tux. Tux is the founder of, entropy.xyz, who's building decentralized custody. Right? So the at a very, very simple way to say it is, like, either if you own crypto on Coinbase, you don't actually own it because crypto's Coinbase has the private keys. Right? Like and so, you don't own your private key. You don't own the crypto. That's kind of the point. Right? And so, with, Tux is is building this, but at the same time, Tux's experience, from what I've seen and talked to with them, is that this is a community where, you know, Texas trans, Texas, like, you know, found built acceptance, cocreated acceptance, and a great great working atmosphere and everything, that they never received in the web two world or anything. Right? Like, it was just pure, like, for just I don't know because I'm not a trans person, but I can imagine because I have quite a few friends. Right? Or at least I don't have to imagine. They tell me. And so folks in this space who, are are hackers, who are building privacy, who have benefited from that, who found a community that have has actually, like, cocreated that and accepted that with them seem to be really into it. Right? And who have found, like, use cases that make a lot of sense for them or for their friends. Like, you know, I think whatever you might think of the future of crypto and the volatile as markets that make make it up. But if you're in, there are a couple of war zones that if you were, unlucky enough to be born into like me decades ago, crypto has saved your ass, you know, a little bit. Alright? It's been it's been one of the assets that if you're able to access it, you were able to at least find a way to get out or get food or something in the last couple years, you know, Venezuela, etcetera. I'm not saying that that should make you pro. It we we should be one step removed in saying, well, why is that fuckery happening? Right? Like, like, why is the fuckery happening that makes this happen where a person in Nigeria or what have you goes, which, you know, Nigeria has very sky sky high crypto adoption rates. That's why I threw that in. I'm not just throwing a random country in. Right? I think it's the highest
Exactly.
At the moment. Exactly. Or at least we see That's kind of how I see the divide. Right? The split comes between people who have who are at a high level kind of in that left or, like, tradition where they're like, we absolutely should not hyper financialize everything, and this is terrible. And then the premies who are like, I was already against this, and now I even did more so. And then the folks who have at least tried it a little bit and gained this little a little peak, the sense of autonomy that you can get from these technologies, and they're just they're building they're building privacy. They're they're building security. They're building, they're building regenerative economies with their friends. Right?
Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I totally get I I I totally understand the this hyper financialization critique. I mean, it's something that's I mean, I think all of us a lot of people are broadly aware of and are sort of, I mean, afraid of or, like, openly, yeah, just openly afraid of and, like, openly want to work against. And I think, you have then you have, like, a couple of choices. You either, you either disengage because you don't want to support it from a moral position or something like that, or you you pressure the states, which, you know, good luck if if you think that's going to be successful and happen in in a quick enough way where you're really that you're really going to be successful with that. I mean, if if that was a possibility, I would totally understand it, but I'm I'm just not convinced that's going to happen anytime soon. And in a way that is sort of, like, left friendly. I just think that it requires such an expansion of state surveillance power to, you know, ban or or put a moratorium on on on crypto or something like that. I mean, I think people really, really underestimate what exactly they're asking for when they say we need to ban it. Yes. I think they really underestimate that. Or you can, like, engage it, in in, like, a meaningful way, you know, which
I I think is sort of what we are trying to do more so. Definitely. There's, like, when you think about it, just to dovetail off your last thing there when you're talking about, like, how would you stop it. I'm not saying it's unstoppable either. I've been misconstrued on this point before. I do think that, you know, it's not inevitable. It's the the world that you and I are talking about, it's not inevitable. It's a possibility within the confluence of these technologies. But I think that, when someone says we need to ban it, do they understand that there are, as of right now, 2,475 nodes, apparently, on the theory of node tracker, right, on Etherscan? And that, you know, these are distributed, you know, not through that many countries, probably, like, I don't know, 40? Mostly The US. Mostly The US and Germany. Exactly. But, like, you're what are you asking for? The the SWAT team to go into every one of these places and destroy and just confiscate the node? Like, is that even feasible? Is someone is since someone else is there's there's fault tolerance. There's all kinds of fault tolerance, things built into it. There's market incentives at play where someone else wants to go do it. It's kind of like wanting to start to, like, stop drugs by starting a drug war. You know? I wonder if that's been done before.
We've had similar things that happened before, and look how they've turned out. Yeah. But but one of the things it's like one of one of the concepts that I think you and I both agree should be very, very interesting for the left, no matter what position you really take, in my opinion, but which has recently like, now, like, in most cases, like, most critiques, I find to be just, like, a a few months behind what is, like, sort of, like, the the cutting edge of the crypto space at that moment. So, like, only, like, right now, critiques have started reaching DAOs all of a sudden. Whereas, like, before it was NFTs and then, like, but they they reached the NFT criticism part, like, you know, five months after the the like, people who are who are in maybe the spaces that you and I are in, like, are already broadly aware of the criticisms, are already broadly aware of the issues with it, and, like, have just, like, a a bigger a a better understanding of what it is. And I think and so, like, when to to get those criticisms, like, five months later, it's sort of like it's always exhausting. It's always just like, ugh. Like, we know. Like, we we hear it over and over again, and, like, we we talk about it with each other. It's not like something that people are ignoring. Like, yes, I think it is like, criticisms are being ignored at, like, you know, probably the the the top levels of, like, the the Web three enthusiasts and, like, crypto boosters because, I mean, that that that's what they're trying to sell. But, like, those are not the spaces that I think that we're that we're that we're saying that, like, you know, other people in the left should be engaging in. We're saying you should come into the space that we are in already and sort of go forth with these criticisms, but, like, in a, in a more constructive way.
And I think constructive is kind of the point too because, like, I'm it's right there in the word. It's construct. Right? I'm not trying to, like, secretly build these people into getting involved. It's more that, like, if you follow my point around this Ethereum node thing, apply that to everything on and it against NFTs. Like, how are you actually going to stop it? Like, put some thought into that. Right? Like, hey. I I I legit mean, like, yeah. If you if you if you legit think that this is a world destroying, climate destroying technology, I would want you to take that seriously.
That's what I'm saying. Right? Like Yeah. I'm I'm waiting for, like, the, you know, the the the eco terrorist cells to start,
That's what I'm saying. Like, I mean Take it seriously. Right? Like, I don't I don't think the the the the critique, of course, that's a thing that needs to happen. I'd say don't do it, but, like, then what comes next? Right? Are you I would like to see you steal a board ape. Right? Like, or whatever. Right? Yeah. Fuck it. Steal those things. Like, I don't know. To give this shit. This is not a justification for theft. I'm just seeing I'm saying there are some sort of potentialities that come from believing a certain thing and then wanting to see that happen in the world. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. But, to get to my question, I'm just curious if you could maybe present a like, the anarchist case for DAOs.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I think that, I think that there are a lot of critiques of them for sure. Right? And I think, like, you know, we William Gillis, in particular, has made some good critiques of them in terms of, like, governance on on contracts and very technical arguments that I don't recall right now, but that we can put in the show notes that I think are very good. And I think other than that, though, here's the thing. Right? One of the things that you can't do very easily right now is manage your money and do things with your friends. Take actions with your friends. Right? Like, if you've been if you've been out there in a mutual aid society or something, you know what I'm talking about. It probably took you eight months if you were at all or even at all successful in, to fail at getting your nonprofit designation if you ever tried it. Right? Took you, like, eight, twelve months and a couple thousand dollars, and then it didn't work because what the hell is a mutual aid society. Right? Like, things like this. Right? And so, if there is an anarchist case for DAOs, it's that they allow you to, with a minimum of legal, entity involvement, have an encapsulation of a thing that lets you co manage money and verify that certain actions that you want to see happen did happen. Right? And so that like, that's the core of it. So if you have those two little things, money and actions, you have a huge space of innovation, a phase space of innovation for anyone who's interested in having, actions without hierarchies, you know, or or controlling this sort of, like, whirlwind of action that comes about from horizontal movements and directing it somewhere. Right? And so, like, that at the it's at the high at the at a high level, I think, is the case for DaaS because you have these tools that you can now jump in if you're ideologically aligned on certain outcomes and just start using. Right? And and that and when I go back to the original thing around managing money with your friends, it's extremely difficult from the state's point of view to do that because they will tell you right now, uh-uh. There's one person. Who's the person that's the whose name is on the paper who does these things? And it's like, that doesn't make sense to us. That's not how we do this. Right? And so, like you know? And and I I will also say just to be throw more DAOs skepticism out there. DAOs are not the only ones doing this. Right? Like, there's a like, I wouldn't I wouldn't call it rich tradition. The company's not that old. But one of my favorite companies out there is Open Collective. Right? And Open Collective already has been doing this for, like, six years six or seven years. Right? Xavier Damant and, Pia Pia Mancini, and there's another founder. I don't remember I don't remember the third founder's name, but, basically, they've made it such that any group anywhere can get a fiscal host in a an illegal entity within a geography where they can accept money transparently and pay invoices transparently for services that any type of organization does, which drastically lowers the cost to activate an organization like this and manage money with your friends. Now that doesn't mean that Open Collective is all anarchists. Absolutely not. It's just, it's just a way for you to organize that's different than an LLC with a board and a CEO or, you know, and all that. Right? So that I think is the case for DAOs. They can be what you want them to be. Right?
Hi, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're enjoying the interview or find the content that I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out and join the newest patrons, Sean, Nathan Schneider, Andre, Rick Lomas, Ben, Justin, Felipe, John, Hacker Mom, Buck, Justin, monolithbra,dot, ETH, Al G, Julien, Nick, and Ryan. As you can tell, there's been quite a few more Patreon subscribers, which is really nice for me to see. Any amount really helps, since making this up isn't free in terms of money or time. As a patron, you'll get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to Patreon exclusive contents like Q and A episodes where you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. In the last Patreon q and a episode, I gave my thoughts on the proof of stake versus proof of work debate from a socialist point of view. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain does not need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. So thanks a lot, and let's get back to the interview. Just just to add, like, with my with the Bread Chain project, we also have an open collective. Like, we but, I mean, I got very lucky that somebody was able to hook me up with, to, like, to be the fiscal fiscal host for us because we don't have, like, like, we're we're so small, and we are, you know, all working sort of, like, volunteering our time to to make this project happen that, we're sort of, like, relying on, you know, our network to sort of help us out in certain ways. And we don't we just don't have the capacity or time to, like, go through the full process of making a legal entity before we do anything. Right? Like, why why do we need to wait until these, like, very boring and stupid administrative processes are done before we do anything? Why do we need to, like, adhere to that if we find what what we're doing is important? So just in our ex in in our experience of, like, building Breadchains where it is at the moment, we were able to spin up a multisignature wallet in a couple of minutes. You know, you just you just the contract is there. It's built. We have now a space where we can hold money together. And then, like, a little bit just took a little bit more time. We got I think we got pretty lucky that, you know, shout out to Leo. He was able to, like, get us an open collective, fiscal house fiscal host very, very quickly. But if we didn't have that, you know, we wouldn't be able to accept money in in the in in fiat. Right? We have to go through this huge process. And, like, I know I know a couple of people from open Open Collective, they're all into DAOs. They're all into crypto. Like, none of them like, I I can I just am imagining the the argument right now with someone saying, like, oh, yeah? But, okay, you don't need DAOs because Open Collective is there. Like, the Open Collective people are also very pro DAO because I and, like, I think they understand the space probably better than than than most of us do. Absolutely. And I'd say, like,
depends on who you talk to. There are a healthy amount of DAO skeptics in OCE too, which is good. Right? Because they're they're they have stewardship of an incredible responsibility based on who is already on OC and how they shepherd that community. Right? So it's important for them to be very skeptical of, like, if you if we convert OC to a DAO for exit to community, what are the implications? Right? Like, it's they're gonna figure out some amazing things along the way that are gonna help that's gonna help all of us, I think. And so shout out to Pia and everyone else there because I'm a big fan. And then what was the other thing you said something around? Oh, yeah. Like, yeah. On the blockchain side of things with OC. Right? Like, Pia's Pia's partner, Santi Siri, is the guy who does proof of humanity. Right? And that's like, that I feel like we could talk about that forever, but I think that's just a fascinating project because it's not something that ever occurs to people. They just accept it as, well, the state has this registry where they determine who's a person by a particular matter, and we don't even think about it that way. We just have our IDs. Right? And that's your your proof of humanity. But if you wanted to have a, you know, self consistent, internally self referential, but non duplicatable, non replicable, nongamable database of who is an actual person so that you can decide how to spend money with that person, whether to spend money on them, whether to, enable certain things for them to do, actions, etcetera. That is a hairy problem. That's a really difficult coordination problem, and that's coming back around to it. Why this space should be interesting for anyone who's anarchist leaning or an anarchist. You can you can cocreate those things right now yourself. Right?
So Yeah. So you have now been working on PrimedDAO, which is a really, really interesting project, but sometimes a little bit hard for people to wrap their heads around it because it's sort of like three levels higher. Like, once you understand what a DAO is, then you gotta go three more levels higher, and then you can kind of understand what PrimeDAO is doing, I feel like. Yeah. Definitely. But what they're doing is really, really interesting. But I'm wondering if you could try to explain that for me. Absolutely. Happy to talk about that. So, cool. Yeah. So what is yeah. Happy to get into the multiple levels of what PrimeDAO does. Right? So
Prime is basically at a high level when you look at our positioning, everything. We make it really easy for DAOs to be more cooperative. Right? For them to basically, take the cooperative route. Right? So what does that mean? It's being able to make deals between each other. It's being able to co fund joint ventures where everyone, not just the two people, not the two entities funding it benefit. And there's, a number of novel mechanisms to do. And, also, you can launch here. There's a number of other things. We have four products. I'm happy to go into them, you know, later. But, basically, one, now you're in a DAO. Right? And we're talking about, you know, you just kinda made the case for, like, why you'd wanna do this, why DAO like things happen on are happening on OC, right, with open source communities and all that kind of stuff. Why what's next? Well, if you just started this thing and you're brand new on the block and there's a lot of hype between what you're doing or there isn't, you kind of need to bootstrap the project. Right? And this comes around even to the cooperatives problem itself. Right? Like, how do you start a cooperative without capital? How do you start it when everyone who has capital is expecting outsized returns? Why would they give you money for this? Right? We're opening up ways for people to bootstrap their their DAOs with each other. Right? So, like, if you if you came in and, like, what does it look like when one DAO loans another DAO money to get something? Right? Like, the and what do the loan terms look like? Right? Why would they do that? Right? That's the question we kinda that's an interesting question for us to sort of figure out for everybody. Right? Because if you're new on the block, we gotta help you get started. Right? And then, of course, everyone is not always an altruistic actor, but we want to make altruism easy to take as an action. So let's open that up. What does that look like? Right? That's one of the things. And then, like, Prime deals is essentially just when two we we kind of are we're we're gonna be launching Prime deals, probably three to three to five weeks from now. It depends. That will be a way for all DAOs, any DAO that wants to come in with no code to basically say, you know, here here is what we want to see, and this is the money that we're putting in. Here are the actions that we want to see, observable actions on on the on the chain. Right? And this is the money that rides along with those actions. If these actions happen, we will swap, we we will we will swap these funds or one one DAO will give funds to another one. Right? And it doesn't have to be money for money. It can be money for actions, actions for money, or what have you. Right? And so that is is, I think, gonna unlock a shit ton of innovation in the in the DAO ecosystem because there's a ton of DAOs right now. We're seeing they're going like, I need a way, I need an easier way to pay people. I need an easier way to have someone do, you know, x, y, and z, and they have bounties, right, which is, like, something that they can do. They can put a bug they can put a bounty out and say, please someone build it from the crowd. Or if there's someone out there who's actually an expert on it and maybe they're the entire point of it, they can just go say, hey. Let's do a deal. Alright? And so like that, that can get both parties going. And then lastly, like, we're we also offer this launchpad for people. Like, why do we exist? It's basically just if you're out there and you wanna launch a token, like, in a in an environment where it's super easy to do, and we have we will provide some resources for you. We are not legal experts. We are not deflating your legal risk, nothing like that, but we are we are some resources that we have gone through ourselves that are out there that you can look through. Right? There's LCAs in Colorado. There's Swiss foundations. There's a number of other legal legally encapsulating entities that can help you do this. We'll give you the launchpad to do a, liquidity offering, basically, right, and and LVP. So that's super easy, with with prime launch. And that's kind of our way of hopefully just pouring some more gas on the on the Dow, on this Dow sort of summer or or this Dow's that summer we just came out of. Right? And that's what these data down interactions sort of concrete look like. Right? And so, like, one of them one of them is coming up or sorry. One that, you know, just happened was this, Vesta Vesta is doing is launching a protocol, is launching an arbitrum. Right? And they're using us because we work with arbitrum. And so this is a protocol that basically lets people come in and make loans, and they're great they're great for protocol and liquidity platforms, especially if they're working with Olympus. And we were able to manage this three this three part relationship, you know, with launch. So that's kinda what we do.
Is that so, like, kind of what I'm hearing is that part of what you guys are doing is sort of making it sort of like interdependent networks of DAOs through sort of, like, each one kind of owning a little bit of the other, which is not it's not unlike you know, if you if you go to, like, the, you know, the upper echelons of of business, like, a lot these companies, they they own each other. And so, like, that's why you have, you know, the the recession or whatever whatever example you wanna you wanna choose. Like, when one falls, like, this whole ripple effect of everything else sort of happens and sort of, like, but it's one way that it it it creates resilience Yes. At the same time. Like, I think that's why capitalism has been so good at at staying resilient, like, crisis after crisis. They have this type of interdependence with one another because they have, like, I mean, they they have, their class interest in mind is just, you know, the wrong class, if you ask me. Yeah. Absolutely. Whereas whereas, like, I think with with DAOs, with the potential that it makes it a lot easier to create, you know, cooperative like structures. Not all of them are and, you know, there's this, of course, this critique of sometimes doubt people say that they're they're cooperatives and they're really not and, you know, whatever. This we we all know those criticisms. But the truth is that it is also it's in it's opened up a a very, very interesting space, and I think you can attest to that being from having worked in a cooperative and not just talking about cooperatives. Like, there is something interesting to that to that functionality for a cooperative in general and being able to I think I can't remember which number principle it is of the ICA, but, like, cooperatives depending on other cooperatives or, like, helping out your fellow cooperative because that's how you build up the cooperative, ecosystem. And then, of course, there's if you if you if you want to be like, another pedantic leftist and say, like, oh, well, cooperatives aren't going to bring about socialism, like, no shit. Duh. Of course. Like, that's not the point. Right? It's there's, like, this is just we're talking about one specific thing, one specific action that sort of, like, can lead up to in conjunction with a lot more actions could build something that's actually resilient. And that's part of and that's and that's part of, like, the puzzle. Like, we can't, I think, to expect that if one person is sort of, like, you know, advocating for one thing as being helpful towards the left doesn't mean that, like, what they're advocating for is, like, the answer. Like, I think we kind of what is annoying to me is sometimes I think we we view we literally do view on the left sort of, like, have this free marketplace of ideas where we're just, like, buying one idea, you know, that that we consume as being, like one idea. This is it, and this is a yeah. And this becomes part of our identity, but it's obviously much more complicated. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think the resilience point is exactly right. You nailed it. Because
sometimes forget to put it this way, but a lot of the biggest DAOs with the biggest treasuries, you know, we're talking, like, billion dollar, 100 hundreds of millions of dollar treasuries. Many of them are sitting, like, you know, 80%, 60%, 90 of their native governance token. Right? So, like, that would just be, like, you know, if you look at somebody's gigantic capital settings you're talking about, there's a treasury manager at Pfizer who makes sure that Pfizer is not denominated only in dollars. Right? Like, that's that's that's literally their job. Right? So there's a treasury manager. You could we're not treasury managers, but, basically, we want to facilitate feed people who want to do that to say, like, hey. And, you know, we we did it ourselves. Right? We set this we set the standard ourselves when we launched the prime token, in December by executing token swaps with Olympus, Gitcoin, and Balancer. So all of all those three, you know, big guns helped us bootstrap our liquidity by doing a 250 k, token swap from our total supply. So that, like, we just want people to then think, you know, what are you doing? How can you do that for yourself and why should you? Right? You want to build resilience and you want to make sure that you also stay you have skin in the game with the mission of other folks that are aligned with your mission. Yeah. Yeah.
So, like, I'm curious if you could talk a bit about how I think the the the term that you guys use is, like, DAO to DAO interactions, I think is is is really interesting. That's really that's really, like, big brain stuff to me. Like, it's it's sort of it's it's starting at, like, the seeds of of what is you know, it's, like, on the verge of either a dystopia if you are, like, very against, I don't know, using smart contracts for interaction, or potentially,
like, something very, very new and novel and that could be potentially beneficial depending on, like, how you go about it. I'm happy to, like, lift the veil on doubt. If you're I'm sorry to cut you off. If you're the rest of your question is gonna be doubt to doubt interactions and what do they concretely look like, I'm happy to tell you. I'm happy to give you an example. One is the Yes. That's right. Is kinda like the one if I if I pick one of those you know, this is all public knowledge. Right? The the the swaps. Let's put it this way. Right? Like, how does that happen? Right? And it's, none of it very, very, very little of it is like we you know, my view might look at it and go like, oh, dystopia, like, programmable contracts and voting. And it's like, actually, that's not how that happened. Right? We we will have existing relationships with folks, or we will have a way to Human based relationships. Exactly.
Right? Like, it's not just all, like,
robots talking to each other's Absolutely not. Right? It's not on chain voting, on chain relationship. It's It's actually us having existing human relationships with folks who understand what we're trying to do, and our values aligned with what we're trying to do. Right? Now, let's take, just any one of those from that token swap. Right? We are in. We have a lot of folks in in prime who are deeply embedded in Gitcoin. I'm not one of them, but there's, there there's a few who are. And they basically said, hey. We're doing this thing. This is what the price is about. You've known you maybe you even invested in it. Right? And now this thing is coming up. Our launch is coming up, and we want to we are very aligned with you. We have always been. Right? We we we you can literally look at our wallets and see, like, we've supported you. Right? We're not bullying you here, but we are aligned with you. Right? And we're launching you a thing that's at least once one level removed from what you're doing, but it's still super aligned. Right? Are you in or out? And, of course, our partners, they look at this and they like where we're going. Right? So they go, great. We should. Now this is where it gets a little more interesting. This next part is really up. This is why I say there's so much innovation happening here, like, in terms of how we relate to each other, how you relate to money, and how we how we how we act together. Right? Depending on the organization, the person getting that message, our message on the other side could say, great. I'm the owner of a seven person multisig wallet. I'll talk with the other folks and see what they think. Or it could be go open a proposal in our in our forum in discourse or what have you, and let's talk it through. And then let's run a vote. And if the vote passes from an with a quorum or whatever it goes, or it could be the same thing. It could be do both of those. Right? Maybe we have a multisig, but it only happens via multisig if it passes through the form. Right? There's a number of ways that this concretely takes shape, but it starts with the human relationship. Right? It literally starts with, like, the Discord DM or the Discord group chat or the Telegram group chat and a video call or meeting in person, and we and we hash through all the various levels of risk and what we're trying to do, and then it's captured in via software. Right?
That that's what we're I think some critiques on the left get wrong where they they are critiquing potentially maybe, like, the ideological part of the technology, but they're not they're not understanding the technology in practice, which is where they're they're missing out on on on where it's interesting and why people who are actually doing it in practice, like, the it it gets really tiring just, like, listening to to to the criticisms all the time whenever they're not speaking to the practice. Yeah. Absolutely. And when the practice can take shape in a lot of ways where it can be very much
it can facilitate input from a lot of different parties. It can it can facilitate consensus and dissensus. Right? Like, there's a lot of things going on like that where you can actually just step out and say like, no. We actually we actually know we included parties in it because we can see their their either their posts or their votes on chain right here. Right? And, like, now, of course, all of these things can still I'm not saying any of it is perfect. Right? You can still hijack these processes. You can still be a whale in some ways if you're if you're sitting there with your with your debt with full democratic governance, one whale can come and tip the scales completely. Right? So you are still doing things like potentially going to, doing the same thing you do in real life, which is like, oh, you know, if we want that to pass, we're gonna have to, you know, we're gonna have to go massage it with that one whale and make sure he puts it on the right side. Right? That's that's gonna happen. Right? That that's an that's a problem we need to address. Maybe quadratic funding addresses that. Maybe it's or quadratic voting. Right? There's a number of things we could do. So there there's still room to get this right.
And so Like, I think Yeah. But it's the that that is, like I mean, that feeds into, like, this, criticism that I think probably both you and I share is, like, the issues with token governance, which even Vitalik himself has has, criticized that. Right? Like, I think if, you know, there are people like, the first the first rendition has been token governance and because it was, like, the easiest one. Yeah. It was it was it was simple. But, like, people clearly are seeing, like, the issues with that and are looking for alternatives, And, like, that's where it's getting interesting. And that's basically I mean, this is if you really dig down into that critique, it's basically like, okay. The power of capital is too much. How do we reduce it? How do you create governance mechanisms to reduce that? How do we change the relationships, the social relationships Yep. That are encoded via this technology to facilitate, like, a better outcome that we would rather see collectively than, like, in the interests of these whales. Like and probably, there is a bit of, like, class struggle where these whales want to keep it how it is. And by whales, I mean, really I mean, it's funny that they say that they say whales. I mean, it's just like a capitalist. Like, you you can just say a capitalist, or would you say, like like like Warren Buffett is a whale of of the economy as well? Yeah. Absolutely.
I kinda like it when you put it in those terms, actually, because it makes you think in the regular meat space economy, we should be thinking of those people as having outsized influence on our lives, but we just accept it. Right? We don't call Bill Gates the whale. The whale Bill Gates making here reshaping philanthropy. Right? We just go like, oh, Bill, the the great and humble Bill Gates who reinforces IP and ensures that many children starve and don't have access to a vaccine. Right? I'm sorry. Letting my politics bleed out a little bit. Sorry, Bill Gates.
But, Yeah. So, like, there there are these all these, like, really interesting things, that, you know, a good left wing critique would probably be listened to a lot because it actually comes in the interest of, like, a lot of these people who are building this stuff and to sort of, like, think that they align with, I don't know, the they align with, like, the the Chris Dixons or, like, you know, the the the really big, capitalists in this world somehow is just
not true. It's like it's just, like, not in practice Mhmm. How it happens. Yeah. Absolutely. And, like, the on chain governance one is a good example because I I am not at all sold on it myself. And and, as you said, Vitalik, years ago, wrote a good piece on that. And I think the more and the Bitcoin maxis will be completely against it. Right? Obviously, sir, no. It's, you know, it's law, code is law, whatever, but it's just like, we are not No. It's not. Yet at a point where human the the complexity of human relations, I think, can really capture that, and we are more likely to build dystopias if we if we think so.
So I know an another project that you have been expressing a lot of interest in is Cosmos, which is a project that I also found fairly pretty interesting. And I spoke to, of course, Ethan Buckman, a while back on the project who's I think believe he's one of the one of the founders. But I'm curious to hear why what do you like about it, about Cosmos? Because it is a very it's different than Ethereum.
I am I am definitely 100% Cosmos build, and we'll get into why as well. But, like, number one is Cosmos is a philosophy more than a blockchain. Right? It's a philosophy built its philosophy is built on, sovereignty, interoperability, providence, a bunch of other things. But, basically, the first two stand out to me as really important because it's not like a blockchain. It is the Internet of blockchains, and they really mean that. They've given you all the tools to build your own blockchain for whatever institution you want to build around build it build on. Right? So, like, that's why you see such a vast, amazing diversity of projects in the cosmos ecosystem. Like, Regen is the one that I talked about. Maybe I mentioned earlier, but Regen Network is one of the most fascinating ones to me and that they're, like, building distributed, distributed ledgers for land stewards to basically be able to make their land productive in certain ways. They can facilitate, you know, selling of eco credits from land to someone who wants to basically say, we need better outcomes. Right? So one of the things they prototyped here was doing this with Microsoft and the Australian government. Right? So they basically facilitated 500 k of carbon credits through Regen Ledger on, Land Steward, folks who you're raising cattle, trapping carbon, all kinds of various regenerative land projects through Regen Ledger. Right? And so I think of stuff like that and how extensible Cosmos is. I I'm they've got my attention, man. And the fact that they they have really thought through in that ecosystem, assumptions around shared security for inter blockchain communication. So that's a lot of, like, jargon. Right? The point is that wherever you're building in this Web three universe, there's a $150,000,000,000 market cap ecosystem that doesn't care if you do it on their stuff. They'll build out to you, and they will help your users funnel value into and out of their ecosystem. And that that $150,000,000,000 market cap chain or Internet of chains because Cosmos is not $150,000,000,000, but the Cosmos Hub certainly is. I don't know. After today, maybe it's a 130. It's like, I'll go and go and check on it. But point being that it's fundamentally built cooperativity and interoperability into the philosophy of what it does, and that's why I think it's awesome.
Yeah. I I think just to to clarify for some people who may not understand the difference, because I think we're talking about Regen. He well, he's not talking about this project as being, like, a dApp built on Ethereum. It's its own sovereign blockchain, which is a part of the Cosmos hub, which is a a different relationship because in in the dApp scenario, you're still dependent on the, the assumptions made in the Ethereum blockchain and that that you need Ether to to use it. Whereas in the Regen blockchain, you can use the Regen token to interact with this. You don't need to have Ether, for example. And it's used and it's used for, like, a specific application at the same time. So it's more like a blockchain application as opposed to maybe you would refer to as a dApp, which would be an application using smart contracts on top of a blockchain. It's a little bit complicated, but, yeah. The what's interesting about the Cosmos hub, about I mean, the Cosmos project in general is you have this IBC protocol, which is essentially a standard to allow for many different Blockchains to be able to, communicate with one another very easily so you can switch, your or swap your assets from one chain to another, but still be a part of this, like, connected hub. So it's it's it's very easy to sort of switch between them, and you can create a full blockchain just for one application still in, like, a decentralized manner. And what I also find interesting that people sort of ignore is that they've been a proof of stake network for a very long time and have been successfully doing it for a very long time, Whereas some people sort of, like, critique proof of stake as, like, not actually existing or never happening, but it, in fact, has been happening for quite a long time. It's just sort of been ignored. Exactly. And, and Ethereum's Ethereum's on the way to doing that. And, of course, they're going a bit slow, and you can critique how long they're taking, blah blah blah. But you cannot deny that proof of stake has already been happening. Exactly. And so, like, that, you know, that was a great summation because I I use a lot of jargon. I think you hit a lot of key points.
IBC, I think, fundamentally opens up a lot of, if you think of all the things I said about Prime and DOTA, I think IBC fundamentally opens up a lot of bottom up individual opportunities for people to funnel value from ecological things to, to, you know, DeFi and degen behavior. So I think that there's really interesting things coming up here where their 2022 is gonna be this year where the DeFi pipes really open up to Cosmos. And then with the amount of people who are building things in DeFi and in just, like, region and other, you know, regenerative climate focused projects is all happening on Cosmos. I think that there is gonna be a really interesting shift in and float throughput of resources through that ecosystem towards, you know, regenerative finance, regenerative ecology, climate, all these things. And then the fact that it's plugged in then I don't actually know about this one. I'll have to check on the status of it, but I know that Chorus One has been working out with Celo and, Cosmos to build an IBC between Cosmos and Celo. Right? So that opens up the climate collective projects to the Cosmos, ecosystem. There's a fundamentally this point of view from Cosmos people that they don't care if they are the rent extractive network for your thing. They want to work with you and make sure that people who are interested in what you're doing have a way to access it on their network.
Right. There there is this, like, inherent property of Ethereum, applications is that you have to pay rent to the Ethereum network to use that network, which is a different relationship than, like, a sovereign, you know, Cosmos IBC blockchain, which to me like, when I think about if I really, like, put my utopian hat on for the for the Cosmos, blockchain and ecosystem, I, like, begin to wonder where is it going to take us in terms of, like, really, really building out separate almost separate economies, although they're still interconnected economies on each blockchain. So, like, how do you think about, like, building, you know I don't know. I mean, I I really hate, like, doing things like this, but, like, you know, AnarchoChain or, like, Mark's chain or whatever. On on the Cosmos hub, which is a different it's it's very different than these past attempts, these very sad past attempts of, like, trying to be, like, overtly political, on, like, a specific like, their own sovereign blockchain, which has, like, no interoperability with anyone, versus being being a sovereign blockchain but also having this IBC compatibility. Absolutely. And I think that, like,
this is why Cosmos is so interesting to me is that you hit on it right there, and you said economies. Right? Like, you I've my entire thing, I hope I'm I hope I'm becoming really annoying on this front. If you're listening to this, you're like, well, this guy shut up about this is that there are new there are ways to build new institutions, and you can set the rules for those institutions with your friends. You wanna make a new bioregional economy that captures, the land restoration in a particular square of land that you some acreage of land that you bought with your friends, and you want to make that land legible from the perspective of, you know, there's maybe there's, air quality, there's soil, soil compactability, there's other factors you're trying to track. The like regen, astro protocol, all these things that can work together. Use them. Use them with your friends. Right? Like, the it can happen right now. Alright. So that kinda and then build this. You you want to build a circular economy around this. It's happening right now. Right? In in in the Colectiva project, they're doing food forest regeneration projects that are three years in at this point that are beginning to be financed by blockchain yield. Right? And so you you can literally find as a DeFi, Degen, you can sit there and say, you know what? I actually wanna see food sovereignty and and non dollar sovereignty for that island that's getting wrecked by, by inflation. I can literally just point some of my yield that way, or I can just point or I can give them access to region ledger or something. Right? There I can build out access to that sell apart of the ecosystem. So all kinds of possibilities, right, where you're building your own economies. Like, there's actual ways for you to track value, share value. To me, I think the the big benefits
to I mean, really, to using blockchain in general, but especially in IBC, is gaining interoperability with the rest of, in a limited sense, the economy or, like, an economy that you can then interact with. Whereas opposed to, like, I don't know, some past very sad attempts at making, like, Marx coin or something like that, where they're their own blockchain and there is sort of no interoperability with anything else, and it it was it was doomed from the start. Yep.
Absolutely. And and it's that thing, right, where we're like, this is why the you jump into a little bit more of what I'm doing here is, I one of the things you and I talked about earlier when you met was the idea of, like, how do we how do we start more cooperatives? How do we fund more cooperatives? How do we fund more shared ownership ventures? Right? That's kinda like how I got into this ownership economy idea, what it meant to me when I started seeing it pop up here. And so, like, that's one of the things that I'm currently working on is to say, how do we fund more things in the cosmos and region ecosystem that are, maybe one or two steps removed from cosmos region itself. Right? Like, are you building a new data source? Are you building a new way to measure water quality and, you know, watershed health and things like that? You can do it on Regen, or you can build it and point the data source at Regen Ledger. Or you can you know, do you need something that can turn DeFi yield built on osmosis, which is the cause one of the DEXs on Cosmos? Do you want to turn the yield that you generate from osmosis and point it to a land restoration project? Well, we don't have the pipes yet. Let's build that. Right? So it's gonna be focused on stuff like that. And that's also why I'm, you know, reaching CosmosBuild because I think that this is a really great place to build that because you can do it in a way where you don't have to necessarily capture rents and build your entire thing on IP. Right? Like, you actually there are other mechanisms to capture the value for people who are worried about that. And that, at the same time, lets you then see what good can you do with this. Right? Like, if you if you put it out there for people who eagerly want to build this and just need money and a little bit of expertise.
Yeah. That and that's where I think people get this, like, financialization critique a lot sometimes is because, I think there is certainly parts where more financialization is happening, but there's also parts where financialization, I think, is really just shifting. Like, it's just it's moving from one space to a different space. And, of course, maybe we can have a debate or discussion about which which space was better to financialize, but,
there is something interesting happening, and it and it's happening anyways. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's a good point because, like, my my argument for it, I'm completely like, this is not even a sophisticated one, which need I'm throwing out there just because it's top of mind for me, and I can open to it being just absolutely destroyed is, one of the ideas that the region folks and other folks in particular are looking at is this idea of ecosystem services and ecological accounting. Right? And so one of the things that I think I feel like this is uncontroversial is that, externalities used to compute certain, you know, variables in neoclassical economics, may I'm not saying they're responsible for our current, you know, ecological destruction and climate change, but it's hard for us to say who has contributed what and how much to the current, you know, bioregional collapse and all these kinds of things. Right? So one argument for it could be that what is it what is a way for us to make these things legible, to make these assets accountable to some party, and then actually say, what is the total cost of doing business? Right? If you're a if you're a Nescafe or if you're a if you're Nestle, if you're, you know, some multinational that puts a shit ton of single use plastics in the ecosystem, what is the cost of that, and can we impose that cost on you? Right? Like, that And I see that as kind of the other side of this ecological accounting and financialization where people go like, well, oh, that's just gonna financialize everything. And I'm like, perhaps one of the problems is the things that we all depend on are not financialized enough. Right? Like, these these common these public goods, these ecosystem services that econ that the economists refer to them as. Right? Like, those things are not captured in that all the same way that a balance sheet is captured or even, like, you know, waste and plastic in which actually has to be reported to a central authority. Right? We haven't built those systems. Right? We haven't really we we understand them. Experts to a certain degree on this on this planet understand them if they're involved in, you know, if they're a premium, if they're into, my mycelium and, you know, they're maybe they're a forest management they're in forest management or what have you. They to some extent, they're single one offs too. But what if we got crowds of expert software where they could actually, have the information processing mechanisms to begin to address the complexity of these ecosystems and see what we can do? I don't know. I'm I'm pretty interested in that outcome.
I think maybe there's there's maybe, maybe a fine line, but, like, an important line in difference between financialization
and just accounting. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Yeah. So it's like, I, like, there is accounting for things in which it may look like financialization. But I think we have to be critical and, like, very careful with how we define that as being financialization
and not I completely agree. And see, I already told you I was gonna make a mistake and threw it out there and I did. Bam. Right? And I think you're exactly right. I actually think that can be a harder line. Right? And then you can decide, how what kind of financial instruments you could even want to use once you have accounted for things. Right? Like, maybe maybe there's some use of some financial instrument that I don't even know of that could actually be fruitful for something. I don't know. Right? But, like, at least knowing what we're accounting for. Right? Like, having ecosystem services in a legible way, it doesn't have to be on regen ledger either. Right? There could be a number of things that don't exist yet that we don't that we that we can put to work in here. Right? So that this is this basically, what we're talking about essentially as well. I don't know if you've mentioned it, but this is regenerative finance or refi,
which is another space that is, I guess a bit a bit ignored because I think it's it's a complicated one. And I'm not saying that, I I I find it interesting, but I'm not saying it's perfect and that I agree with everything that's being done and that, you know, just because, I have one, you know, positive thought about it doesn't mean that I'm, like, you know, fully gung ho. We need to drop drop everything that we do and go into refi, but that I think it is interesting and worth looking into by more people. And this is refi especially a place, I think, where
another place where they would listen to people on the left. Yeah. Definitely. And there are, like and I think, like, to to be clear for the blockchain folks, sorry to if I piss anyone off here, but, like, regenerative finance is also not a thing that's new. Right? Like, this is not a this is an idea that's at least, ten years old. There's, there's a Yeah. At least Yeah. At least at the very least, I know that Gregory Landua, the CEO and founder of, of Regen, wrote a book on the eight forms of capital and regenerative enterprises, like in 2013 when he was running, like, a chocolate cooperative or something. Right? Like, so he's, he's at least seeded this, a long time ago. And just just the idea that, you know, what if regeneration with financialization? Right? Like, what if you put pools of capital in into the hands of people who will be governed by the outcomes of those of that capital and let them actually do that. Right? And then use that stewardship to get people to better racial, social, ecological outcomes. Right? It's as simple as that. Right? And then, like and, and you see some of these ideas bubble up in impact investing and triple bottom line accounting that, but this is really more wholeheartedly trying to swallow a lot more, like we've been saying, the accounting side of things and saying, what is the whole thing that we're impacting? And how can we steer the whole thing towards a better outcome? That's not only denominated in dollars?
And so I've heard that you are starting a new podcast as well. You're becoming a fellow podcaster. Jesus. Yeah. Aren't we? The rumor's true.
Yes. Yes. The rumors are true. You're gonna hate the name, but we're we're but we are married to it for now. This we're calling it the ownership economy podcast, and we're basically gonna be chatting with everyone who is building new futures, broadly expanding governance technologies so that we can broadly distribute wealth. That's the that is the phenomenon that we're interested in and what we are calling the ownership economy. So, that means that we are basically talking to entrepreneurs, investors, people in government, activists who are all, you know, from those kind of four pools of people who are all kind of actively involved in shaping either by building or working on the legal structures or, you know, being impacted by all the innovation that's kind of happening in what in this relative space that we're kind of calling it web three now. We'll see if it stays that way. But, and, yeah, that's kind of what it's all about. So we we'll we'll be announcing that. Or I think this would be a lot better at this part. Yeah. So, again, the first three episodes came out recently. You should check them out. It should be on ownershipeconomy.com. And, you know, you can find it in any in any, in in iTunes and all Anchor and all the broadly distributed podcast platforms.
Nice. That that's really interesting that you're sort of, like, this fairly new word that's been minted that has been used by a plethora of different people, including venture capitalists to talk about ownership economy. And and instead, it seems like you're trying to take it and now actively try to shape what that word should mean and influence where it goes rather than, like I don't I don't know if you've ever read that piece by Austin Robe he had written about, ownership, but, like and and the issues with how people think about ownership, especially in Web three of, like, just because you own a token and have exposure to upside, I mean doesn't mean you have ownership, which is, I think, what a lot of maybe certain VCs will say. But I think likely this podcast will be will go a little bit deeper
into what the issues of that are. Absolutely. And I think you hit on it. Because, basically, I think that what provides along with the ownership is this ability to govern the systems that govern you and the ability to coordinate all of the actors that are in that system. And then lastly, we would be being able to broadly distribute upside that comes out of that system. Right? And and it shouldn't and if you're able to game it in the current needs based system, it means you're able to concentrate your and get outsized returns because of privileged access to ownership. And that is not what we think the ownership economy is, my friends.
Nice. Cool. That well, thanks a lot. This has been a super interesting conversation. That was really awesome. It was good to see you again. But maybe just to finish it off, if you want to let people know where they can they can follow you and keep up with with what you're doing. Oh, yeah. Definitely. You can you can find me on, on Twitter at against utopia. I'm not shit posting that much these days. All of it is very
mostly public goods focused web three stuff. So, come hurl your your critiques at me. I'm always open to them. And, as I said, Ownership Economy Podcasts, check it out. And, yeah, I think that's about it. That's it for me on the Internet. You'll find me in Discord and Telegram groups, but it'll be easy to find after you if you jump on Twitter. Yeah.
And they'll find you at, like, plenty of these, like, crypto conferences as well. I know you jump Oh, that's right.
Attendees actively. Good point. I will be at East Denver, which is coming up, soon. And you should probably you'll probably see me at East Amsterdam as well. If you're going to East Amsterdam, I'll see you. I'll see you there too if you happen to go.
Yeah. So I still need to check my calendar real nice. But, yeah, thanks a lot.