Prefiguring post-capitalist work with DAOs
The Blockchain Socialist | 2021-12-05 | 1:06:42
For this week's episode I spoke to Ori Shimony (@orishim), co-founder of dOrg, a full-stack Web3 development collective. dOrg is incredibly interesting because it is run similarly to a worker-owned cooperative but functions as a DAO while also being at the forefront of building some of the most cutting-edge crypto platforms and products. During the interview we spoke about his experience in starting dOrg with cooperative principles in mind as a DAO, how DAOs should learn from radical ...
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Transcript
Speaker 0
0:14 – 0:42
Alright. Hello again. You're listening to the Blockchain Socials podcast. And for today's interview, I have Ori Shimoni. He works at, Diorg in r and d. Diorg is a full stack Web three development collective, and he also works at Polywrap. So, hey, Ori. How are you? Great. Thanks for having me. Maybe to start off, could you actually just give a introduction to yourself and how you got into the blockchain space? You're working on a a couple of different really interesting projects, and definitely want to hear about your experience at Diorg.
Speaker 1
0:43 – 3:07
Sure. Yeah. So I'm Ori. I'm an operator in the crypto space. I've been involved since discovering Bitcoin in 2014. I do research, I'm a software developer, and then also have gotten interested in the, like, the legal side and kind of political ramifications of crypto. And so I try to help different projects with anything I can, especially with, like, getting started and planning out, road maps and how they'll actually touch real people with what they're building. So a little into how I got into crypto. I was studying anthropology in undergrad, when a friend showed me Bitcoin, and I was instantly kind of fascinated with the mining process in particular and how it kinda solved the double spend problem in this elegant way, sort of like a BitTorrent solving the file sharing problem, but in this way more sophisticated problem space where you're actually dealing with, like, value, not just, files that could be infinitely copied. And so I I basically, shortly after that, decided to take my first CS course and then add a CS major so that I can actually understand how to build some of these systems myself and apply the peer to peer approach to different problems that were more interesting to me than file sharing and money. And then I got super lucky, and a cryptography professor at my university offered a cryptocurrency course, like, the semester after I took intro. So I took the crypto course and then went fully down the rabbit hole. I ended up TA ing the course afterwards and then starting my own research on extensions of Bitcoin to other domains like decentralized fund management and then also bandwidth incentivization in Tor. So, yeah, I I could fast forward a bit to twenty seventeen when I joined a company trying to use crypto for microlending and remittance in West Africa, where I actually did our smart contract development as well as on the ground user research into how this magic Internet money might make local practices like SUSU banking and lending circles more robust and resilient to the external financial arrangements that were kind of being imposed on people there. And so around the same time, I also was helping run an event space in Brooklyn where we ran workshops for a wide range of people in the community on how to leverage tokens, NFTs, DAOs to kind of improve urban life in various ways, which is a lot of fun. But I basically realized that crypto infrastructure was not mature enough for most of these real world use cases. So then I joined up with a couple engineers, and we formed DORG.
Speaker 0
3:08 – 3:15
Yeah. I was about to say, that was pretty early when you were working on the Brooklyn DAO stuff.
Speaker 1
3:16 – 4:11
Yeah. That was, like, mid twenty eighteen, I would say, and into 2019. And we were basically gathering artists and, like, civil society people and working people from mainly Bushwick and Ridgewood, and then, just chatting about, like, our tokenization, decentralized governance. And so it it'd be a lot of talking and, specking out architectures that people had in mind for DAOs that would help the community. And then we would use some of the tools that were available. So DAO stack was was basically online. Aragon was basically online. But they were really hard to use, and you needed to, like, you know, obviously, like, today, have a meta mask and load it up with gas. Gas was cheaper, but you still needed some ETH. And so there were a couple of these, like, barriers that made it unrealistic to just, you know, throw a DAO on the street that, random people could join that would actually, like, affect the community. So, yeah, we we did a lot of, like, pilots, but it was really hard, you know, with the tools to make anything have
Speaker 0
4:12 – 4:59
traction. Yeah. But, yeah, I I thought it was really interesting. I I read the, the medium post about Brooklyn BKDAO that you shared with me, and I thought it was really interesting how, like, the framework that you used around separating, I guess, having three sectors of society rather than, like, sort of the standard approach of thinking of two sectors as in, you know, you have public and private. And, you know, in the private sector is basically where, private interests and and capitalists live. That's the bad one. And then you have, like, the public sector which is, like, I don't know, sometimes can it's, like, sometimes good but flawed. But I like that. Right. I mean, thinking about this third sector, this sort of, like, social autonomous sector, I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1
5:00 – 7:15
Yeah. So, yeah, I would say depending on which side of the political spectrum you're on, either the private is the good good one Right. Or the public is the good one. I would say they're both the bad one. Right. And so, like, the the one that actually kind of gets things done in society is that third pillar, which is, like, civil society, like you said, like, this autonomous sector. You know? And this is, like, labor unions, universities, political parties, you know, very nonprofits, NGOs, just the whole world of, people coming together to manage their affairs. And so this used to be, like, a way more vibrant part of at least, American life. And then, you know, government gets bigger, corporations get bigger, and everyone forgets that you can actually, form coalitions with your neighbors and and get things done yourself, provision your own, you know, services. And so I have always seen crypto really as, like, the reemergence of the civil sector. It's like giving the civil society, you know, muscle again, an actual ability to, like, move economic resources and attract the attention of people. And so that's yeah. That's basically the framing I I was interested in for BKDAO because you had all these people that are very active in, like, the local urban civil society, but they're always going to large corporates and to, large nonprofit foundations for funding. Right? So they're all wasting a lot of their time just grant writing and kind of shifting around their their narrative and their branding to suit the interests of the donors or, shareholders of these organizations. And so the idea with BKDAO was, you know, what if we just, had a DAO that anybody could donate to, and then there was basically reputation for the different civil society actors, and they could use that as a shared source of funding instead of, you know, each one of them replicating the infrastructure to go and get grants from all these different bodies out there. So eventually, you know, maybe the corporates and the nonprofits actually just would put their funding that they would have put to these various organizations into BKDAO, and then BKDAO would be the allocation mechanism for the community. And so it was it was mainly a thought experiment and, like, getting people on board and and specking out how it would work. But, yeah, we we definitely did a lot of, like, MetaMask onboarding and, yeah, figuring out, like,
Speaker 0
7:16 – 7:56
governance dynamics and how the reputation would flow. Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, it's awesome that I feel like you were maybe, like, like, it is cool that you were so early, but maybe you were too early about that. But now it seems like we're sort of getting past that point where, I think at least, like, the, the applications and, like, the the, the user friendliness of stuff is improving a bit to where we can get closer and closer to, that. But I agree. Like, I think that's, yeah. Blockchain is sort of this world where, the this third sector is really really, well, gives tools for this third sector that didn't really have before.
Speaker 1
7:56 – 7:57
Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 0
7:59 – 8:06
But maybe could you explain a bit what Diorg is since that's the the main, sort of endeavor you've been you've been working on?
Speaker 1
8:07 – 10:16
Yeah. Definitely. So Diorg started off and still as a collective of engineers, designers, like, project managers from around the world who basically joined forces to build web three infrastructure. So at the time, you know, we noticed, okay. This this DAO stuff is really interesting. All these, coordination mechanisms are quite interesting. But, you know, we have to just apply our efforts to building the missing pieces and basically just being like this, servant of the ecosystem that that's that does what's needed, almost agnostically, but, you know, with some directionality to just help move the ball forward. And, you know, also at the same time, being an example of how you can actually use these coordination mechanisms to to get stuff done. So we actually ran our started as a DAO, and so the idea was that we're building things to enable DAOs while running ourselves as a DAO, which is kind of radical at the time because, I don't think there was a single, DAO that was actually, like, a business. Right? Like, that was actually providing services or earning revenue. Right? At the time, DAOs were, hobbyist. It was kind of, the the most fringe in crypto. It was like, oh, yeah. DAO is that thing. That'll work one day, maybe. And so we're like, hey. I mean, the the tools are good enough. We could just, like, run a software development collective as a DAO. And we ended up, you know, finding a lot of, like, the problems to doing that along the way, but it was super valuable. And, you know, it got it got the ball rolling, at least for us. And so, yeah, we we generate income by helping projects build things like governance frameworks, DeFi protocols, developer tools. And since we're all software engineers, it's easier for us to deal with the pains of using a DAO. You know, if something's broken, we can come in and fix it. And so a lot of our earliest clients were actually the the DAO frameworks of the time. And so we would build extensions to the DAO protocols that we actually needed, and then we would dog through them. At the same time, we would service entirely unrelated clients, like, building a UI for for a dex. Right? Or building, like, node patch for, like, a caching service.
Speaker 0
10:18 – 10:43
Yeah. When when I go through the org, it, from what I understand, it sort of sounds like, basically a when you say, like, a Web three collective, it's sort of like a, like, a shifting cooperative where, like, things are sort of like a very, very fluid type of cooperative of just, like, roving nomadic kind of, like, developers around the world. Totally.
Speaker 1
10:44 – 13:07
Yeah. No. Exactly. The key principle when we started was we wanna, like, keep the flexibilities and freedoms of freelancing, which, you know, a lot of people really love, but without losing the benefits and the support structure of having a team, you know, that typically comes with employment. So we want to kind of get the best of both worlds and saw DAOs as a way of doing that. Because you even look at the traditional coop model, which was, you know, a big part of the inspiration in the early phases. Like, I had read ours to hack and own by Trevor Schultz and Nathan Schneider, which is about platform coops, and then, Ellermans, the democratic worker owned firm. So I was getting really familiar with, like, the fundamentals of coops, and the underlying kind of, economic theories and then political kind of justifications. And the problem I saw still was this kind of archaic idea of, like, I belong to a particular company, and I am fully on that. And so you have this idea in the coop world of one person, one vote, which, you know, seems great because it's k. Democracy, we're all equal, we're all humans. But if I'm working two hours a week on this one project and then dedicating thirty hours a week to this other project and maybe six hours a week to a different project, I shouldn't necessarily have equal wait, you know, as the person who's full time dedicated to the one I'm dedicating two hours to. So we we had this idea of, basically, weighting the influence of people by their, commitment levels to the project. And so over time, you would have, like, the power and then the economic benefits distributed to the people who contribute to the most to that collective. And it's it's it's quite different, like, as a vision for where, yeah, like, co ops go than traditional co ops, which I think are really, like, still in the industrial mindset of, you know, like, the whole, like, traditional labor union mindset, with, like, a full benefits package and everything like that. So we're trying to make things more adapted to that, like, world of, precarious labor and lots of projects, and then create this, like, safety net and these different, like, overlays of networks that people can opt into to get benefits. And then also, you know, leave if it's not suitable for their purposes or or, you know, fork and create, like, new versions of other people. I've noticed this in a lot of the DAO space where there there are certain similarities
Speaker 0
13:08 – 14:49
to, I guess, not just freelance work, but also kind of gig work, which is usually considered to be, like, quite precarious types of work. But at the same time, when you're working I mean, in this space in particular, the the nice thing is that there is a bit of money at least where people can be paid, decently well, depending on, like, your skills, of course, and usually you're you have to be a little bit educated. But, like, yeah. In in one sense, I would like to think that, you know, five minutes after the revolution, like, you don't have to work forty hours a week at, like, your your the one your co op or union job that you have. You can instead, like, I can't I'm gonna butcher the quotes, but, like, you know, I can I can write poetry without being a poet and I can, like, do all the things that, I've got the the quote? Yeah. The Marx quote. It's like, you know, fishing in the morning and, you know, farming in the afternoon and then read a book in the evening or something like that. Right. So I think, like, I feel like in a certain sense, even though to some people, like, looking at it from the outside, it seems like a, almost like a redo of, like, of gig work, but just in, like, a white collar sense a bit. But on another side of me also likes to think that it's sort of, prefiguring potentially, you know, it may be a stretch, but prefiguring, like, what life is like, in after some sort of, like, transition into hopefully a better economic system. Of course, there are still issues and there are still, like, things to be to be met. Like, I think, especially with The US, I mean, just without universal health care, I imagine that it it makes that, transition a lot more difficult. I don't know if if you've had that experience.
Speaker 1
14:50 – 17:38
Absolutely. I think that prefigurative politics aspect is is spot on. This idea of living the way you want to see the rest of the world live or the kind of, like, prefiguring the revolution, not waiting for that day in the future when the revolution comes, but living revolutionarily today. Right? Like, even though it's gonna there's gonna be, friction points to doing that, that's that's fully the idea. It's okay. We we still live in a world with, like, crappy health care and, you know, precarious, like, labor situations, and if you lose your job, you know, you really might be in a bad situation. But we're just gonna act like that's not the case and build as if this, like, utopia already exists. And through doing so, we can serve as an example, for others who get inspired to maybe attempt the same thing, or maybe we actually figure a couple things out along the way of how to make that work. And so specifically with health care, and benefits, at the at the beginning, we had lots of plans for how we would, like, use the margin that we would be making on all this inflow, to fund shared benefits and negotiate kind of these better rates for those expenses. That became really, confusing and complicated when you're natively international and, right, some fraction of the people are in The US, but we also have people across Europe. We have people in across, Latin America, India, and and some parts of Africa as well. And so, The US situation is is pretty different than, like, a a lot of other countries. And and, you know, between other countries, it varies a lot, like, the level they can be have access to with health care. And so, yeah, we we ended up, like, partnering with Apolis, which was a project started exactly around this problem for Americans. And so today, like, Diorg members as well as lots of other DAOs are using them can basically opt into funneling their, crypto income through the Apollo's payroll system to get this, like, coop of of benefits. And so I think this is just a small example of sort of what I'm talking about where you're not committed to one DAO. You're not committed to one coop, but you overlay these networks of mutual aid that help you achieve whatever mix of things you need. Right? So I use, Diorg for, like, my intellectually stimulating, crypto software development needs, and and it helps me, like, improve in those skills. And then I can, use Apolis to get, like, health care benefits and and workers' comp and, basically, tax, optimization. And and so and so it's still so early, but, you know, you see more and more people, like, okay. I'm gonna also be in, let's say, FWB, friends with benefits for this, like, social club. And and and so people have their own mix of of options.
Speaker 0
17:39 – 18:42
Yeah. One of my, like one of the things I've been thinking is that, like, a lot of a big reason why I've think I've seen a lot of crypto peep I mean, crypto people who are based in The US become really, really interested in Europe maybe is partially because of, like, these this question of, like, of, I mean, labor rights a bit. Like, I would think think that the fact that if you live in a major European country, then you will have, like, pretty decent health care without having to worry about, yeah, the stuff that goes along with it when it comes to to The United States. I don't know. I I have this feeling that, when it comes if we're like, if we go, like, a few years into the future, it's going like, the DAO space will have maybe slightly more people who are based in Europe or, or they're based in The US and they just have, like, the the, I don't wanna say the wealth, but, like, the the ability to take the risk, if that makes sense. Right. Like, some people are explicitly
Speaker 1
18:42 – 19:28
taking the exit option. Like, I I actually know decent amount of people who are, either moving to Europe or entirely renouncing US citizenship. But there's also, like, crypto presents the, you know, digital exit option where in various ways you can opt out of corporate employment or precarious freelance employment and, you know, start a DAO or join a DAO. You can get out of, like, the the money system, you know, and and the monetary policy by by using crypto, to use to to save and and invest in whatever. So it's, like, all these different, like, exit routes that crypto is setting up because, you know, it's too hard to push and voice your difference in a monolithic, really archaic, like, falling apart system.
Speaker 0
19:31 – 19:49
So a part of what Deore does, you guys work on a lot of these different, existing right now today, like, DAO frameworks and DeFi protocols. But one of the things you guys mentioned is that you guys try to have a type of long term alignment. So I'm I'm curious how you guys think about long term alignment and and, like, what that means.
Speaker 1
19:50 – 22:25
Yeah. Totally. So we we have a couple ways of doing that. I think a really simple one is culture and filtering. So we're really careful about who we let in. We're not like a DAO that has a tradable token where anyone can go on Uniswap and buy a Dork token and hop into our Discord and start contributing. We're really careful, and we govern the membership process. And so, you know, someone will apply if they have a a a skill that fits, like, a need that we're missing. You know, they can write up, like, a a a background on themselves that'll get debated in our forum, and then a proposal on Snapshot will be made on whether or not to let this new person in. And there's other there's other ways that we can kind of, like, create long term alignment through through culture. Like, a lot of DAOs have been, going down similar paths of, you know, biweekly community calls and, you know, retreats, like, in person retreats. We did our first one in Barcelona this year with about 25 people, out of, like, the 60 to 70 or so that are active. But in terms of cryptoeconomics, we we came up with, like, a really simple mechanism, that I surprisingly still haven't seen tried out in other, areas. But, basically, we have, like, a lifetime earnings weighted reputation. And so with every dollar that you earn from Diorg, you also earn one nontransferable rep token in Diorg. And so rep is the ultimate unit of account in Diorg. Rep weights voting power, and then it also gives you a proportional share of our quarterly token bonuses. So throughout the year, you know, we're earning stable coins from various crypto projects for, you know, labor that we're providing them, and they also give us, allocations of their native token. Right? And so there's a split that happens where, some percentage of the money coming in stays in the wallet of the sub team that's working for that client, And then another smaller percentage goes to the the DAO, right, as a pool to fund our shared expenses when it's stable coins. But when it's the project's native token, that actually just accrues in our treasury, and then we flush it every quarter to all the members in proportion to how much reputation they have. So this is this way this, like, really simple mechanism that keeps people incentivized to keep working through as opposed to, like, leaving and independently working with clients or going full time with some client that's offering them an allocation of one token when they could be getting this, like, kind of index on all these other tokens. And so even if the project you are you're working on ends up going poorly for whatever reason, you're you're kind of hedged into
Speaker 0
22:25 – 22:31
the different projects that the collective is working on. Nice. So no. It's like a a quarterly bonus type of thing.
Speaker 1
22:32 – 22:35
Absolutely. Yeah. Rep weighted quarterly bonuses. Nice.
Speaker 0
22:36 – 22:49
So what is, like, the average day of someone in such an organization? What what does that look like for someone? If you're if you're talking to someone who is noncrypto native, who doesn't know shit about this, how do you explain Deorg?
Speaker 1
22:50 – 25:45
Alright. So you wake up, get your coffee, you open up Discord. There's 800 messages. No. Usually, not that many. But, it's a mix between, working on client projects and then helping out with, like, the operations of the DAO itself. And so we have this, like, pool of funding that any member of the DAO can tap into for any sort of improvement work to Dior. So that could mean anything from, like, designing new merch that we want our members to have or, like, helping talk to lawyers about, like, tweaking our client services agreement to have stronger payment terms. So so anyone can kind of jump into that. We call it, like, the swarm, and then they can, log their hours, and then everyone can, like, peer approve the hours at the end of each payment cycle. And so then those go out in a single transaction. And then on the client side, yeah, you you basically have these different channels for the particular clients that you're working with. And you can, you know, see the updates of the development needs that they have. You can go into, you know, usually GitHub or GitLab and work with the task boards there on the different, like, either design or development tasks. And then we we mainly do, like, hour based compensation, but we we're also kind of experimenting with other, like, bounty systems and, like, more milestone based payout systems. But our our de facto across the DAO, we have, like, templates for people to log their work and log their hours and then basically sign off on the hours and work logs of others in their subgroup, and then that results in, like, a payout going out. So I don't know if that answered the day in the life question, but it's it's just a lot of, you know, hopefully, not too much jumping around. You know, people have, like, to focus on on a couple things because if you're on too many projects, yeah, you lose focus. So, yeah, I'd say anywhere from two to three projects per person, including internal stuff. What kind of tools do you guys use to, like, manage all this? Largely, Discord, and then we have, like, a discourse forum for the more structured conversations around governance and then, like, approving new builders that wanna come in and approving new client engagements. And then we also yeah. On the crypto side, sorry, we we have, we used to use, DAO stack, but it became unwieldy from a gas perspective. And, like, it had, like, mechanisms kind of that we didn't need at the time. So we migrated to Gnosis Safe snapshot setup. And so it's the kind of typical, signal voting and then, different wallets that have different signers that follow what the snapshot tells them. And then we're also working with Gnosis on their Zodiac extension pack to build app like, basically, apps that will automate a lot of that. So instead of needing the trusted bridge between the signatures and the execution, we could have the, automation so that the funds can only get released
Speaker 0
25:45 – 26:29
if there has been an on chain vote to do so. Then it is this sort of, like, when you start a new project, you spin up a new Gnosis safe, that is sort of like the subgroup. Yeah. And then you have, like, I guess, a a master safe with, like, the the larger group. And so you you kind of in a way, even within the organization, you provide a certain amount of autonomy for, like, the the smaller group that is working on, like, a specific client project. So I think in a way, by maybe reducing that size and that oversize to a certain extent, I would think that improves actually, like, the the democratic input from an actual, like, person who's working on the project.
Speaker 1
26:30 – 27:32
Right. Exactly. So you when you when a decision is being made from the the the treasury, it's with that percent that's been coming out of all the other project safes. And so we can really focalize the attention on important matters like the you know, we just have this one monthly payout, for all of the expenses and and, like, the swarm, like, activities happening. And so there's not just this constant barrage of proposals of, hey. I wanna get paid for, you know, week two and three of project x, and, hey. I wanna get my month's payment for project y. Also, it ends up pushing, like, problem solving and decision making to, like, a really local level. Because if there's a a conflict on, like, a payment issue between a client and Diorg or between Diorg and a builder, that usually happens entirely at the, project safe level and only ripples up to the DAO if it can't be resolved there. And, you know, 90% of the time, it just gets resolved at that level between the people that are involved in that particular instance.
Speaker 0
27:33 – 28:52
Yeah. That is very, very interesting. This is like, yeah, this is like I don't know. Future future modes of production here. These are the seeds of it. I think it's really interesting. Hey, 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 I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/socialist to help me out and join the newest patrons like Gwenll, Red, and Zachary. Any amount really helps since making the stuff isn't free in terms of money or time. And as a patron, you will get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to Patreon exclusive content 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. 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 entrenched capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. So, yeah, thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the interview. Yeah. So what has been the process of building such an organization? You've mentioned some of the, like, issues before, but, like, I imagine there are other issues. Like, how do you deal with people who are living in low cost versus high cost countries and, like, these type of these type of issues, I imagine, pop up?
Speaker 1
28:53 – 32:12
Yeah. Almost from the, like, very beginning. So we started with members from, different parts of The States and Europe, which were comparable cost wise, but very quickly we had, members join from, Spain, which which is lower cost, and also Venezuela. And so we are instantly faced with this question of, okay, like, the the rates that people make and the, cost of living in these places is quite different. And so but super early on, we decided, like, we don't care where anyone lives. Like, you know, we're trying to create, a better system that doesn't, like, pay someone a quarter of of someone else for doing the exact same work. Like, that makes no sense in, like, a group of peers that are all, like, you know, let's say, doing identical work. And so we we ended up always looking at things from the perspective of, percentages of the budget available. And and, like, we had the the luxury almost, although it's more of, like, a difficulty of dealing with, revenue rather than fundraise money. And so it's it's more complicated if you, like, let's say, raise a million dollars and then have to decide on, like, salaries for various people. Although although I think, you know, lots of people have managed to figure that out. But what we were doing is, you know, getting amounts of money from projects that were paying us for work. And it's like, okay. You believe that this, value we're providing is worth this many dollars. And so, you know, if I'm doing 33% of the work and and two other people are, we should just split that, right, minus whatever margin the organization is gonna keep. There's no reason that me being in a lower cost country, should mean that you get, you know, 40% more than me. And so that that's just kinda something that I don't think we sat down and really thought all the way through, but we had, like, kind of convictions, and we just kept going with them. And now it's just completely been normalized, and, like, nobody like, most people don't even know where in the world other people are. But but it's resulted in, like, very cool, things happening. Like, people, all of a sudden, like, getting really seriously, having their life changed. Right? So, being able to afford, like, bringing their family out of, like, a political crisis and and moving countries and stuff like that. Whereas, like, someone living in Seattle or San Francisco is was making, like, an average or below average, salary. And so you have this kind of, like, geo arbitrage that I've literally watched happen where people from lower income countries, were started moving out, and people living in higher income areas started moving to, like, lower income areas. You know, not not completely, but sort of like a leveling where it's like, okay. Let's just, like, nomad or, you know, I'll meet up in this place. And so I I think it's kind of a precursor of what's to come, especially with COVID with, like, the remote work wave, but especially with DAOs where they're basically agnostic to where you are. And it's really looked at as like, okay. What value are you providing to this community relative to other people? And I I haven't seen that always be the case in the way DAOs approach things. Like, earlier on, there was another DAO that basically, took took, like, another approach. And I saw them, like, really asking people where do you live and then, like, discounting things. And I think that's just way, harder from a logistical administrative perspective in a DAO where things are globally native and just doesn't make sense. Interesting.
Speaker 0
32:13 – 32:46
Yeah. Because I would think that if you try to do this exact same setup, except you have, I mean, just like a a traditional corporate, like, type of hierarchy, then you would have, like, what the second DAO is doing, I guess. Like, what I'm hearing is that because the the organization is set up very cooperative like and because, like, you know, there is not so much you're not alienated so much from your peers, then, like, it you you don't you don't really your decision around pay is not based solely on the market.
Speaker 1
32:46 – 35:37
Exactly. We're we're constantly negotiating the tension between the market and our collective. And so but we have both of those factors at play. And we actually have, like, designs within the DAO to to further balance those. For example, we have this idea of, like, basically, a sales commission. Right? So whoever, like, sets up a project, gets the team together, talks to the client, drafts the statement of work, has a guaranteed percentage of the income that comes from that, which is actually, like, equivalent at the moment to the percentage that the organization would keep. And then there's a a larger percentage that goes to the actual builders working on it. And, this makes it so that, you know, the the sourcing person, the salesperson, and and the builders on the team are aligned. Right? They they wanna get a higher, value for their time, But they also don't wanna make it so high as to be a burden, you know, higher than the value actually being provided where, you know, the client will either say no or they'll, you know, be with us for a bit and then try to leave to find something more reasonably priced. So there there's kind of these, like, self equilibrium dynamics at play, both within and and between, you know, the parties that are working together. Yeah. And and and I think, it's also interesting for everything to be transparent by default. Right? In a corporation, maybe you have a really benevolent dictator in the corporation who does publish the salaries of everyone, but that would be very against the norm. Right? And, usually, you have nobody has any idea who else who who other people are making except for those at the very top or those administering the payroll. And that leads to just all the problems that, like, you hear about with discrimination and, even just, yeah, the the surplus labor exploitation argument of the giant percentage that is kept by the coordinator, by the operator, by the, you know, the financer. And so with us, it's it's incredibly clear what the percentage is, and it's collectively decided what the percentage should be. And if it seems too high, we can lower. If it seems too low, we can raise it. And then we all have shared, control over what's done with that margin. And so, you know, if we just want give give me the cash now, George should say really, lean, then we can keep that percentage super low and really not invest anything into our operations and our growth and our benefits, and and everyone could get the highest pay possible. But maybe we're like, okay. I'll I'll take it. Let's take a pay cut. We can we can raise it by 5% or something. But that means so much more investment into our, operations. But, you know, that can, you know, go too far. And so I I've heard horror stories of people working for years at similar, like, dev agencies, quote, unquote, with complete, you know, opaqueness, and then finding out once they leave or, you know, talk to their colleague or talk to a superior one day a couple years later, like, the crazy, differential that the company was making on their labor versus what they were providing.
Speaker 0
35:38 – 36:17
Yeah. No. No. I I've I've worked in consultancy before, and when I learned the actual rates that they charge versus the amount of money I received per hour, it was, I mean, it was disgusting. It was like how even in this very white collar work, you are severely exploited. And just part of the reason it's not that like, oh, I want a 100% of everything that was made to go to me. It's that you don't even have a choice. You don't have any democratic input, which I think it's, very very, yeah, just a very, very different experience if you do have input versus is just purely dictated by whoever's above you in the in the ladder.
Speaker 1
36:18 – 37:37
Right. And and with crypto, we we can get a lot more sophisticated over time with how we make that, trade off happen in in terms of democratic input and then also, like, individual preference. So, you know, we've experimented with, like, a slider bar kind of thing where if you have, you know, this concept of, like, time preference of money. So if you have, like, a high need for liquidity, maybe your cost of living is high or you have, like, a lot of debt, you can you can lean really into getting more of the cash and maybe getting less reputation. But if you don't have as much, liquidity needs, if, you know, your cost of living is basically handled and you wanna kind of finance the collective, like, in a, like, micro lending kind of way continuously, you can pull the slider, away from cash and get more rep, less cash, and basically invest more in the organization. And so we've done a lot of that kind of stuff over time of, like, debt IOUs and then, like, rep sliders to kind of not only have democratic decision making of, oh, 52% of the people think the margin should be 12%, and so so be it. But also that micro level of each individual can choose what they want, and then that folds into, like, a higher order, you know, emergent property of what the savings rate is. Oh, nice. That's that's really interesting. So you also have
Speaker 0
37:37 – 37:48
you still have a choice if you want, like, if you have, like, a more long term or short term view, or I guess depending on your, like, specific conditions at that moment.
Speaker 1
37:48 – 38:25
Exactly. And that's another way I think we basically deal with that high cost, low cost issue of people working from around the world. And and also it could be a matter of trust. Right? Like, you you first join an organization, You just heard about it on the Internet or a friend told you. You're like, I I want the money. I don't care about the, you know, equity in this in this experiment. And then over time, you're like, oh, these people are really cool. This is quite interesting. I think, like, this rep is gonna, like, be worth more over time from these bonuses, or maybe I just wanna be more staked into this community and have more influence. And so over time, you might lean heavier into rep and away from cash. Oh, that's interesting. It it seems like a mechanism to provide for, like, a type of fluidity,
Speaker 0
38:26 – 38:57
in work where it is answering that what that natural problem that I think that would occur where if we live in this type of, like, new world where you can, you know, be in one DAO and then another DAO and switch between the two and you have four different projects or whatever, it there's, like, this natural problem. Okay. Well, how do you retain people? How do you, like, how do people stay within your orbits to work for the collective? And just, like, providing them more democratic input like this seems like something that, probably helps with that.
Speaker 1
38:57 – 39:16
Exactly. And and the design space is so wide open for figuring these things out. I mean, when you're actually, like, doing it day to day, you just see the possibility space before you and you're like, oh my god. Like, nobody is thinking about this. There's, like, so much room for creativity to, like, figure out new mechanisms. You know? Like, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 0
39:19 – 39:34
So what I also understand is that, Diorg is also it was one of the or I think it was the first legally recognized DAO in The US. Could you explain what what what that was like? How do you how did you explain, legally you were a DAO?
Speaker 1
39:36 – 45:11
Yeah. So it was this, confusing process we were starting out of, okay, let's run as a DAO. That should be simple. We all understand how to use, smart contracts and wallets. But, oh, okay. Wait wait a second. Our first, first client wants us to sign this legal agreement, and they need, you know, legal counterparty, and we're just a bunch of people. Like, we don't wanna, like, put, like, seven signatures on there. And we also don't wanna just have one of us, have have to put our name on there. And so, you know, it just basically led to this, learning experience of deep diving into, like, the theory of the firm and, legal personality and limited liability and why all that's important. And so we basically found out that there was no DAO that had, like, figured out how to have a legal wrapper and, like, you know, why would you need a legal wrapper? So for for us, it was basically two main reasons. One is limited liability. So, you know, if if you're just a DAO and, you know, something goes wrong, client's unhappy with the work, or you accidentally infringe on trademark, then they would sue. And if there was no legal person, the law lets them just sue one this is concept of, joint and several liability where if you don't have, like, a legal shield, of limited liability, then, any one person could get sued for the actions of any other person if the law deems you to be this, like, partnership. And so that that's something that would be an instant deterrent to anyone, participating and would be, you know, a big risk for all of us getting involved. And so, yeah, get getting, a legal entity, basically, the law says, okay. Your your personal assets are not at risk. You're not joint and severally liable. You know, there there's the shield around you where only the only the entities at risk, you know, if there's a lawsuit, if there's a claim. The other the other, more immediate problem for us, like like I was mentioning, is this concept of legal capacity, of legal personality, where it's the ability to act as a single, person in the eyes of the law. So, you know, when you're doing business with a corporation, they wanna be doing business with another corporation. And so we have to, like, you know, look like a corporation even though we're a DAO under the hood. And so, yeah, we're we're basically okay. We're a DAO. Everything operates as a DAO, but we have this wrapper around us that, makes us walk and talk just like a normal company. It makes us, like, fit into the legacy system well enough to be able to, like, you know, provide services, get paid, pay our taxes, you know, report and make everything compliant and not just this like shady Internet shadow organization. And so yeah, we want it to be legit. And and but work as a DAO. And so out of necessity, we figured this out. And so we worked with basically a law professor in Vermont, Oliver Goodenough, who had helped with writing a law, a new law in Vermont called the BB LLC, the blockchain based LLC, which explicitly, allowed LLCs in Vermont to opt into having their governance happen on a blockchain. And so I think this law was originally written to protect full nodes in l ones, But I when I read the the wording, I was like, okay. This could this could work for a DAO. And so, yeah, I got into contact with, like, the the legal minds behind the law, worked with them for months, and basically crafted, like, our operating agreement, our services agreement, and everything to be to to comport basically with the framework that this law had set up. And and so, yeah, we we basically met a ton of interesting, legal thinkers in the space through that whole process. And, you know, it worked for us. It still works for us, but a lot has happened since then. And so, like, the legal DAO space has has really blown up in the last couple of years as an area of academic inquiry, but also in practice. You know, there's been, the Wyoming law, about a year ago that was passed, which is basically quite similar, to the to the Vermont law. It's it's basically just saying, hey, you can register an LLC. And just like mention that it's a DAO, and you'll you'll have the benefits, but you won't have as much reporting requirements. There's also been experiments in other jurisdictions that don't have an explicit law on the books, like, for example, Delaware, which is really popular for incorporating. People have just gone out and and created LLCs in or c corps in Delaware and written into the bylaws. Okay. This is a DAO without the lock specifically granting them the ability to do so. And, you know, we'll just have to see how that holds up in courts if it ever gets challenged. And then there's been other approaches kind of, like, using offshore entities that are kind of like these foundations that are directed by the DAO. So you could have, like, a, let's say, a director or, a nominee that has bylaws that, back bind them to only act in accordance with what the DAO tells them to do. So this is kind of a different approach than the the legal wrapper. It's more like this legal proxy where the DAO is this unincorporated Internet entity, but it's directing this proxy that it controls in the physical world or in the legacy world. There's other person we get into, like, the Koala DAO model law, which is, I think, a third way. But, yeah, the the journey with New York has been a lot of theory, but then, like, a lot of the nitty gritty practice of, okay, we're a DAO now. We have to, like, make a snapshot proposal to enter in this into into this agreement with this client or with this new builder. And then there's not actually, like, a document that's getting signed, but there's, like, an on chain proof that we had, you know, the intent to enter in this agreement. And so we got to talk to lawyers to make sure that all checks out and, like, putting hashes into, like, legal agreements and all this, like, funky stuff.
Speaker 0
45:12 – 45:28
So legally, it's, it's alright to use sort of, like, digital signatures as, like, a proof, as opposed to, you know, signing your signature on, like, a piece of paper? Yeah. So I found. So there's there's a couple laws out there about,
Speaker 1
45:29 – 48:05
digital signatures that were, you know, from from decades ago just with, like, Internet, esigning. And, you know, there's no new laws for cryptographic signing, but you can just kind of extend those principles to make the to have the legitimacy for the hashes. Could you go into a bit more detail on what Koala is and this DAO model law? Sure. Yeah. Koala is a group of lawyers that was started up, I think, 2014, 2015 that were focused on kind of extending legal principles into the crypto space, with, like, autonomous entities on the horizon. And so I I helped them out, starting about a year and a half ago with this new project called the DAO model law. And so through from my experiences in Dior, kind of, like, applying some of that to a new approach to getting, like, legal recognition or legitimacy and protection for people involved in DAOs. And so the the approach taken there, is is pretty different than both the proxy approach and the legal wrapper approach because it doesn't actually require a DAO to register with the law. It's basically a set of requirements that if a DAO out there follows those requirements, whether knowingly or not, the the law covers it as, a legal person with limited liability, with yeah. Without basically needing them to to sign up to be a legal person in a particular jurisdiction, which, you know, is just not realistic, and it creates central points of failure in basically existing models where you would go with, like, a offshore proxy or, like, a, a legal wrapper. And, yeah, I I really was interested in how they're thinking about it. And so, yeah, just helped out with with the drafting process over the course of the year. And then we published it a couple months ago, and now it's being kind of debated or potentially gonna be adopted in in a couple jurisdictions. But but it's basically this concept, if you're not familiar, a model law of writing out, like, a law that then can be pulled into any jurisdiction and modified to work with their local laws. So there, for example, there's, like, a pretty famous, like, LLC model law and lots of, you know, jurisdictions in The US just kind of import it wholesale or tweak a couple parts. And so the idea was if we publish this and have, like, a lot of, like, thoughtful people around the room for for drafting it and get a lot of feedback, then it could it could be something out there that states could adopt to have this, forward thinking, like, approach to how to integrate DAOs into the legal system.
Speaker 0
48:05 – 48:12
Yeah. That I I wanna ask you some questions. Maybe you can help me out with some legal stuff with bread chain that I'm trying to figure out as well.
Speaker 1
48:12 – 49:39
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I would I would say that, like, there's different solutions for every different problem. So, you know, in highly regulated areas like financial services, like these DeFi DAOs, it's probably best for them not to set up, like, entities in particular jurisdictions because, you know, it's it should be more of this, like, open source BitTorrent, Bitcoin esque thing that's just kind of being managed by people synonymously around the world. But then you have projects like, Diorg or, let's say, Friends of Benefits that have to deal with legacy systems, more intimately in their day to day operations. So for example, friends with benefits is, like, the social club events now, and they have to book venues. They have to buy insurance because people are meeting physically in person. You know, in Dior's case, like I was saying, we have to, like, sign a contract with a corporation that wants to pay us to provision software development services for them. So, you know, we need a legal entity for those reasons. But even within the sphere of those that need some sort of legal proxy or legal entity, yeah, there there's just so many trade offs, and and and every lawyer you talk to has a different opinion. And there's barely any any lawyers who even have an opinion because most are just waking up to DAOs this year. And it's been really, like, fun to watch the kind of, big law firms that are popular in crypto. You know, a year ago say, oh, no. We don't deal with DAOs. That's, you know, that's weird. And now, they're being pressured by the VCs or whatever to to figure out how to deal with DAOs.
Speaker 0
49:40 – 49:47
I mean, what do you have any thoughts for, like, I don't know, more let's say, more radical DAOs who want to go the the non states route?
Speaker 1
49:48 – 52:33
Yeah. I think it's all about, like, you know, risk mitigation and minimization of, like, admin overhead or problems that might short circuit the DAO ness of a DAO. So, yeah, I I think all approaches should be tried. And and then there's other, like, mechanisms that over time, I think, will make the legal side of things less necessary. So for example, today, there's really no great arbitration systems live. And so the legal system is this fallback for disputes, with, you know, between DAOs or with a member and a DAO, which hasn't really happened to my knowledge yet to a couple of cases, but, it it hasn't blown up yet. But, you know, over time, we're gonna have, like, Lexed out, created this escrow utility where you can, you know, put funds that are supposed to pay a contractor in there and have a third party that has to sign off the funds to move. And then you have more, like, sophisticated network systems like Clarus' jury system where you could, like, take a a debate and then take it to a a random selection of jurors who will weigh in on the case based on the facts presented by both sides. And then there's also new primitives for basically, like, doubt a doubt deal making that really haven't come to market yet, but that are in the works that I think will prevent a lot of, like, the legal problems that can arise in b to b transactions, like Gnosis's conditional tokens framework, where you can kind of set these, like, oracle based conditions for when a token will be redeemable. And so you can do the joint ventures between projects with that sort of thing. Or, Ooma has the KPI, framework KPI options where, like, a token is only has value based on the way they've set it up if, like, these off chain metrics are hit. Like, oh, we need to get to, like, 800,000 daily active wallets or something, and this token will be worth this much, and, we'll set aside those funds for that. And if we hit that much, the token will be the worth that much. And so I think, like, if you can take this approach, this crypto native approach of crypto economically incentivizing particular outcomes, then you can avoid the the penal approach of, like, punishing people for not, you know, achieving the outcomes they promise they would. Interesting. Yeah. So I really see the legal the legal stuff is temporary, to be to be honest. Like, maybe there's a place for it permanently as as, like, a part of, the ecosystem and and how it integrates. But, you know, if people are clever enough and if the tools work as, promised or as we hope they will, then I would hope that we have these, like, really robust, games, right, all over the place, these optional games that people can opt into instead of, like, a coercive legal system that people are, like, forced into.
Speaker 0
52:34 – 52:35
Nice. Very optimistic.
Speaker 1
52:36 – 52:37
Have to be.
Speaker 0
52:37 – 53:12
Yeah. Yeah. So, we were we talked about this very briefly before, but, like, I know you have some thoughts about different radical projects or, I guess, radical movements that have existed in the past and, mass movements. And then I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on, what crypto can learn from these previous radical movements and thoughts so that, crypto doesn't become, I guess, co opted by, you know, by capital and and by the state and, you know, is actually as decentralized as, you know, it wants to be and proclaims to be.
Speaker 1
53:14 – 55:24
Yeah. So I definitely have a an internal debate about this. I I'm not sure I I think that crypto needs to, like, figure out a framing for the for the whole, like, broader movement or project that is a bit more political and explicitly about, you know, liberation, not just fixing broken systems, but, like, create creating systems that, like, achieve goals that, like, many movements in history have have tried to achieve and lots of, you know, different, projects today are working on, like, outside of the tech sphere. And so I I think there's this risk that crypto just gets kinda gets, like, boxed in and, kind of gets legs chopped from under it as, oh, it's it's just the latest wave of tech innovation. Like, it's just mobile. Right? We had mobile. Now we have, like, you know, IoT. We have crypto, AI. And so I think, like, for example, Bitcoiners have done a good job, at least on the on the right side of the political spectrum, of of keeping the the politics, at the forefront. And I think the leftist circles that are more interested maybe in in DAOs, Web three, haven't quite stepped up to the challenge. There's sort of this vague, do gooderism of, hey, you know, public goods. Apolitical do gooderism type of thing. Yeah. Apolitical do gooders. Exactly. And and they're they're not, like, either aware or or, like, they're turned off by, like, the experiments that have been going on for hundreds of years, you know, in radical spaces. And so I think part of that's because, the narrative is largely controlled by VCs who have very particular set of interests. But, also, it's just a lack of awareness. And and I think, you know, people are technical. They focus on the technical problems, and they walk into, like, the naive social traps that past, you know, revolutionaries or radicals have walked into. So I think looking at past movements, their successes and failures, like, on the, you know, Russian revolution, Spanish revolution, sixties counterculture, even, like, the American French revolution. You know, learning from what happened there, is important because history repeats itself if you don't study it.
Speaker 0
55:24 – 55:50
One of the things that does still, like, it it still bothers me is just the amount of, venture capital that's that's in this space. Even though it's meant to be a type of, like, autonomous space, there's, like, it's undeniable. Like, Anderson Horowitz is, like, right over everyone's shoulder. Like, you need money? You need money? Right. Tossing money like crazy for any single crypto project that comes to their door, it seems.
Speaker 1
55:51 – 59:37
Yeah. I I think there's a really particular reason for that. And it's it's okay in the interim if it continues, but it's really a huge risk, like you're saying. And and the big reason to me is is one is that, you know, wealth is already concentrated. And so if you need, capital, you have to go to the capitalists today. Right? So you don't have the distribution of of means that can, like, facilitate these kind of, like, intense projects that take lots of time and lots of people's efforts who have high costs of living to, pull off. But, you know, another barrier there that that's keeping that wealth concentrated is a lot of the regulations that we already have today. You know? So accredited investor laws, for example, which basically say, you have to be rich to finance high risk projects. So I can't go to the world and say, hey. I'm looking to get make this protocol that's gonna help, like, farmers share information better and manage risk. And so I wanna get a $100 from a million farmers or something. Right? Or a $100 from a 100,000 farmers. And we're gonna create this token that then you're gonna have shared governance over. That's, like, straight up illegal. Right? Like, that's, like, not possible today. Right? And and, of course, there's this paternalistic, regulatory, reason for that of, oh, we have to protect the, you know, the ignorant peasants from scammers, and they they they they can only do the approved investments. Right? They can only buy the Vanguard ETF and the Fortune 500 stock companies. Like, no. No. No. You you can't you can't play in these, you know, big boys, sophisticated, financial games. And so I think crypto is largely, like, blowing a lid off of that by making it so easy to do it anyways, which is quite interesting. And and, you know, it's kind of like this, geopolitical game theory where if The US wants to be really strict on that, you know, others won't because they'll see opportunity there, and so the opportunity will go there. You see a lot of projects excluding US participants, and so it's just shooting yourself in the foot. So, again, I'm optimistic that the game theory will play itself out, but I think there's, like, distinct reasons why, it's happening the way it is. One more point there is that I'm also optimistic by, like, crypto itself being a mechanism for reducing the cost of capital and democratizing the ability to basically create new forms of, like, value representing value and credit creation. So today, we have, like, monopolistic control over, like, all forms of value. Right? So you have, like, a couple large governments and central banks that basically control, like, the units of supply of currency and authorize basically deputize, certain financial institutions to issue credit from those, units. And in crypto, like, that all goes away. Like, you have, I can create a token tomorrow that represents this weird IOU or this, like, future KPI option or anything you can imagine. Anybody, you know, given the right tools could build. And so I think what you see over time is just this, democratization of capital formation. Instead of always having to, like, you know, go and kiss the ring of of the big mob bosses who run the show today, you can go to the, you know, 100,000 farmers, or you can go to the little niche subreddit that's really into some esoteric topic to get the financing that you need. And they don't just have to give you USD or even ether. They can give you know, you can create new forms of value on the spot and then have these kind of, like, value flows between them and even coalitions between different currencies or community currencies to bootstrap value through mutual credit.
Speaker 0
59:37 – 61:34
Yeah. I think one of the indeed, what you're saying, like, I think that the trap that some people on the left fall with, like I I think it's part of this issue of framing everything in, like, this two sector, idea. You have you have the private sector and you have the public sector. And at least in the public sector, you know, there is some democratic control. It's very limited and, you know, I think it sort of goes against the principle of, like, or the the concept of of of a lot of different socialists called this I mean, under capitalism, the state is like a bourgeois state. It's a dictatorship of of the bourgeoisie. So it's not really like a I don't know. It shouldn't be in my opinion, because of that, it shouldn't be seen as, like, the savior of, like, the working class or something like that. But I think be because of this, sort of miss out on the what may seem as, like, the more, like, detailed type of criticism you have to make once you're, like, looking deeply inside of the financial system, especially when it intertwined with with law. Like, you know, as a as a leftist, you probably are just like sick of it. You don't you don't want to get near it because it's like it's, and to a certain degree, it's kind of true. It's it's like a bit sickening and like, there are obvious like, ways in which different racist laws or like, you know, laws that like clearly, hurt the working class, to a large degree. This like the the investor one, it's like a very awkward one because, you know, when you think of an investor you're thinking of like, oh, this is someone who's making money off of their capital. This is a a capitalist. So like, you know, if if if you believe that, like, you know, money should be abolished and, like, capitalism is, like, you know, should be removed, then, like, it's something that you want to look past and not look through, if that makes sense.
Speaker 1
61:34 – 62:17
Yeah. It's like you have to consider the conditions that are leading to the arrangements we have today instead of saying, okay. I I disagree with the, symptom, and so I'm just gonna, like, ignore, and look past that. You have to, like, look at the cause and be like, okay. I see this is, like, this interim necessary evil, and it gets us from b to c. And then that can help us to get get to d where, you know, x is no longer required. And so, yeah, I really like thinking of this, like, long game, strategic mindset instead of letting kinda like, ideology, lead the way. Right? Like, ideology is important, but it's it's a factor.
Speaker 0
62:18 – 62:22
Right. It's it's not just ideology. I think it's more like idealism.
Speaker 1
62:23 – 62:33
Right. That's the better word for it. Yeah. Because it it it's it's mistaking, like, you know, the feelings and aesthetics of something with, you know, what is actually,
Speaker 0
62:33 – 62:41
achievable and what what the cause of something is and how to solve it. Are there any other, like, specific movements that you wanted to to speak about?
Speaker 1
62:43 – 64:22
Yeah. I mentioned some historical ones just, like, kind of generically, but there's definitely a lot of modern movements that I think would be aligned with crypto, but have been turned off from, like, the dominant discourse, which is, like, get rich quick centric, but or tech centric. Right? Or or just, like, you know, high finance Wall Street or Silicon Valley centric. So I think I think that, you know, if we can speak more, like like you do, to the to the language of of the left, then we would find more allies. Right? And and so I think this is already happening, like, in some interesting ways this year. I've seen more positivity from the world of, you know, let's say let's say activists, artists, co op people towards crypto than in past years where I tried to have those conversations and kind of been shunned away right away. It's like, oh, you're you're a crypto bro. You're just looking to tokenize us and make a 100 x. So I I think, finally, people are seeing, like, beyond the corporate rhetoric. Like, remember in 2017, it was all, like, Blockchain, not Bitcoin. We're gonna make these, like, corporate intra blockchains, and, you know, a lot of that has gone away. And the community has really stayed strong and gotten stronger, I think, through COVID. Crypto really got, like, yeah, like, a powerful boost of of, like, culture and confidence. And so now you're seeing that emerge with, like, the NFT boom, which also got pretty disgusting. But it did also bring in, like, some really thoughtful, you know, people in the arts and in the sciences that are that are looking at NFTs as a mechanism, not just as, like, a financial asset.
Speaker 0
64:22 – 64:36
Yeah. I didn't know shit about art beforehand, and now I've learned so much about art because so many artists are now have gone into crypto. Like, I've learned so much from that. It's crazy. Yeah. It's amazing to see. I think the,
Speaker 1
64:37 – 66:03
it'll take a while, but, you know, the experiments or or the movements that people are really passionate about, let's say, permaculture or, you know, different approaches to climate change or radical politics or, like, anti racist politics, immigration, You know, they're not looking at crypto yet to my knowledge. And so I but I or even, like, indigenous movements, who, you know, are getting constantly, exploited by, like, the the governments where they live. Like, I see I see crypto as really just, like, tool, this weapon of liberation for any group, right, because it's programmable. You know, obviously, it has its biases. It comes from a particular, world and canon. But, you know, just like the web, you know, ultimately, it's really beneficial for for these, like, groups around the world, that are focused on different projects, to have a Facebook page or to have an Instagram page. They benefit immensely from that. And so, you know, when I travel, I always, you know, if I go to a place where, you know, they're they're looking for donations or investment and that they're kind of doing it in this, like, traditional way, grassroots way, I try to tell them, like, hey. You you should throw, like, an ETH address on your page and set up a multisig for your community to manage the money that comes into there. You know, these these little things that can make the kind of practical affordances of crypto clearer to people rather than just, like, the
Speaker 0
66:03 – 66:19
the hype and the the discourse around it. Thanks a lot for taking the time to come on. Maybe just to finish off, you can let people know where they can keep up with you and your work. Sure. I think Twitter is probably best. Ori Shim is my handle. Cool. Thanks a lot, Ori. Yeah. Thanks.