Coordinating Ideas into Reality with Updraft

Transcript

GM Jimm welcome to once another fantastic episode of Devontel. This one a feature of the builder series powered by Arbitum Dial. Uh so today I'm ecstatic to welcome Adam and Passar who are the co-founders of Updraft. So if you didn't know, Updraft is a decentralized coordination platform where ideas come first and everything else follows. Uh, if you stick around for today's episode, you'll see Adam and Pasar show us how Updraft works, how you can use it to fund your idea without a business model, investors, or time-consuming grant applications. All right, let's get into it. But first, a word from our sponsor. Today's episode of Devantel is brought to you by our friends at Arbitum. Arbitum is a

technology suite designed to scale Ethereum. You can use Arbitum chains to do all the things you do on Ethereum, but your transactions will be cheaper and faster. With over 3.8 million ETH saved, 1.69 million active wallets, and over 1.7 billion total transactions, why would you want to settle for any less? Get started today by exploring Arbitum's comprehensive docs and tutorials linked in the description below to help you get started launching your next DAP today. Now, on to today's show. [Music] GM GM, welcome to the show. Pass Lauren, Adam. Ecstatic to have you both on.

Great. Thanks. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Uh yeah. Uh actually, you guys are the first uh guests of many who are going to join us for our builder series. Um highlighting particular uh amazing founders who are building in a given ecosystem. uh and in this series of mini or of builder series uh focusing on arbitrum and uh yeah I I guess before we get into all the fantastic content you have around uh updraft uh would you both like to give a brief introduction about yourselves?

Sure. Um I guess I can go first. Yeah. So um I discovered I guess what I would call the decentralized space um about seven eight years ago. Um, I uh I was looking for a way to pitch my ideas about universal basic income and I had been heavily researching um how to make a community currency, an online community currency. And I had just barely realized that, hey, this Bitcoin thing that I initially dismissed, you could actually build a coin on top of that. And then from there I discovered Ethereum which was a better

way to launch your own token. So I got really excited about that. Um Griff Green from Gith is the one that kind of brought me in and held my hand and said, "Yeah, you have a you have a good idea. Let's work on that." And um we started um through GTH working on Bright ID which is a decentralized um unique identity platform that uh that needs to underpin you you need that to underpin something like universal basic income. So with with some grants from Aragon and Givith and others, we got started on I got started on that um seven or eight years ago. And uh I think

we we officially launched it um January 2019, I want to say, um at at a conference in Germany for Aracon and uh for so that was that was that was really cool. Um, and from there, yeah, I've just been building, working on all this stuff and uh and and trying to solve these problems. Uh, as as I went, I didn't realize that there was also this problem about funding public goods and how hard it can be if you don't have you don't you you want to build something that's for everybody. You don't want to exclude people and you don't really want to charge fees. Um, and that that's the

case with Updraft. We didn't really want to charge fees. We just wanted to build something that everybody could use. And that makes it really tricky because everyone's saying, "Well, what's your business model?" And and uh, you know, how how is this going to make money? And, you know, we we pitched to to even to VCs who invite us invited us in. And I remember going to to Tim Draper and just basically having to admit that yeah, we don't we don't have a business model like we don't know how we would even pay for this. So anyways, uh all those frustrations and also frustrations of uh Dows and getting grants and led to what is now Updraft, which is what we're

going to present today. Awesome. Yeah, I guess uh every every um product has a interesting uh origin story and uh updraft is is no different. Uh I guess before we get into more some more details around Pasler, did you want to give a brief introduction about yourself? No, I I'll try to be as brief as uh my hair. So uh yeah I I I started uh the my journey in web 3 uh I think with Bright ID in in 2018 or maybe a bit later with Adam and Philip and uh as Adam said we started with through uh the GIS and the

the Aragon funds and I've been in the space uh consistently since then. Uh more recently I worked with uh giveth and general magic with Griff green and uh yeah I've been uh the following Adam and his experience and his the journey with the Dows with public fund platforms how he is dealing with foundations and everything and it just uh makes sense that Adam through this journey has come up with the idea of the updraft platform which puts all these different aspects of his experience together through this platform that solves a lot of these problems that we've been facing uh the

working with different aspects of it. So uh yeah, I'm excited about UPDraft because uh yeah, it has to do a lot with a lot of different uh the dimensions of the public goods of identity of Dows and how to you deal with them, how you want to work with VCs or you don't want to work with VCs, how you get funding, how you want to present your ideas. So it it just add a very minimal but very comprehensive platform and that I can't wait for people to learn more about it.

Awesome. Amazing. I love that. And yeah, I guess uh let's get right into it then. I'm very curious to learn more about Updraft as well. So I guess starting uh very high level. Um what is Updraft? Go for it, Pos. You're better than me at at explaining. Oh, you know I'm not. But I I'll try I'll try. So the the what I think Updraft is is a platform for everyone to uh to to jot in their ideas uh and earn money through posting their ideas, earn money by supporting ideas that are going to be uh supported by others later on. Earn money by providing solutions by uh for the ideas that you

like. So, it's basically a new way of creating products that you have the ideas for without having to turn into VCs and getting to all the troubles with business models and convincing VCs that this is a good idea and it's going to be a good product. So, that you you're motivated to post your ideas on Updraft rather than uh going through all the hassles of learning about business models and talking to VCs. And then on the other side, it's a very good way of generating revenue and earning money by finding uh ideas that no other that other people might have missed and

supporting those ideas by by your upd by by your the two cents and then having those ideas being on top of other ideas so more people see them and then the more people come in and see that idea and recognize it and support it more you earn money. So, uh if if you previously worked on a VC and you were excited about working on a VC, Updraft is there for you without working for for a VC because you're a good identifier of uh that exciting ideas. And then on the other side, if you're looking for work and you're looking for earning money by uh development by doing some work, there's this huge list of uh ideas on

updraft that you can go and look for and say, "Okay, this is a good idea. I want to make it happen." So uh you provide a solution, you detail your the way you want to uh solve a problem or do the work and then others can come in and uh the the the fund your solution and then you can start working and be compensated for that. So uh the the yeah it's good for people who have exciting ideas but are not going to be able to uh the the find the ways to be in touch with VCs and go through all kinds of hassles.

It's a good way for earning money if you want to identify ideas early on and it's a good way of earning money if you want to find work without having to apply with your CVs and resumes to all these large corporations. you go right into your tasks and find the ideas that you like without having to be employed uh in corporate. So, it's just a new way of thinking about uh building other products and it's a new way of uh the working for products and ideas that you find interesting and exciting for yourself.

Interesting. So, it kind of sounds like it's a mishmash of um product hunt uh crowd crowdsourcing uh funding for a project and um kind of like a bounty board of things to do for for each project. Correct. Yes, that's a really good way to put it. Oh, okay. There you go. Amazing. Uh um it's also a new way of uh for for foundations like Orbitum itself. Yes. uh the because before they had to have these grant missions and then uh they have these uh people who were the gatekeeping the grants and the finding the proper uh the solutions for the things that they wanted to to happen.

But now in opraph they can create campaigns and say okay uh these are the problems that we have these are the kind of ideas that we want to support and then just support the ideas that they see on updraft and then the community itself uh with their two cents come in and support the ideas that they like support the solutions that they like and then the community itself is building the products without having to employ other gatekeepers and go going through all those hassles. Yeah, that's what that's what really convinced me that Updraft was worth building was talking to Dows and grant makers and just learning their process and and and applying for grants from

them and and learning the process from that side too. working with Gitcoin, working with Octant, working with the Ethereum Foundation um led me to understand that these organizations and Arbitrum DAO as well um they would love to have feedback and input from from a wide community. They would love to get lots of people looking at proposals, lots of people voting on proposals, lots of people participating in choosing what gets funded. And they've tried various ways to to do that. And it's it's really hard. It's really hard to wrangle people and beg them to vote on things and and um and uh and so we want to alleviate that struggle. We want to we want to

say, "Okay, here's people that have already they they realize that that you as as a grant maker have these goals and they've already identified for you. You didn't have to beg them or ask them because they've been earning little bits of money by doing this already." um identifying for you what good what are good ideas, what are good proposals and highlighting them for you. So all you have to do is come in and see what the community has already done and put your funding there and that's what that's what we've created with Uptrap.

Awesome. Uh yeah, I have some more questions but I think they might be answered uh once you start doing your walk through. So um without further ado, I will bring your screen on stage. Yeah, sounds good. And yeah, the floor is yours. Go for it. Thank you. This is the Updraft app. Um, this is what it looks like when you've been using it for a while. You'll have a bunch of updates from things that you've been following and funding and supporting. Um, but uh, skipping over that real quick. Um, this is what this is more what it'll look like if you're brand new. You'll have these tasks that help you along the way. And building off of what I said about um grant makers coming in here on the homepage you'll

see these campaigns and right now we have three active campaigns and this is the opportunity for grant makers um like arbitrum dao to come in and say um we have a campaign we want someone to build um an improved sequencer for our blockchain. Um and so they make a campaign around it and then people have ideas of of what they would like um what sorts of um uh approaches that they might have like they might have specific insights like well it should be done this way or it should be done that way. Um and that's that's where ideas come in. And um so right now we've got a lot of ideas

around um this this campaign which is which is kind of a fun campaign. This is this is uh not about building things. This is actually more of a scavenger hunt. Um so I'll just talk about this since this happens to be up and like fairly popular right now. But um this is this is for song a day. So Jonathan Man has been writing a song a day since 2009. Uh uh the same month that Bitcoin was launched, he's been writing a song. So he's like this is the real proof of work. Like he's been working every day writing songs. Um anyway, so he has over 6,000 songs and we've been doing these fun campaigns um where we highlight songs with certain tags. Like right

right now the tags are food jingles. So over the years, what um Jingles has he been paid to write about food items? And so people have actually you notice a lot of these are for me because I'm his biggest fan. But uh anyways, we've been discovering these um these hidden gems in his songs and posting them here and then other people come in and add their support to these to these songs. So, uh, you can it, um, if there's an idea that you like, um, so this one's pretty easy to verify. I I, you know, I can come in, click the YouTube link, and listen. Yep.

This is a this is a a jingle about food that that Jonathan Man wrote. So, uh, then if I like it, I can add my support to it. And what's cool about this is even though this just started a day ago, so it doesn't have support yet. Um, but anyone who's listening, if they agree with this and they're like, "Yep, that's, you know, that's this this fits the the campaign, this is this is what we're looking for," and they and they like it because it's also kind of a popularity contest, they can add their small amounts of UPD tokens and um and add their support. And then as more people come on later the there's this 10% funer reward. So at the beginning it

starts it starts off as a fee that you pay. So you pay 10%. But then you quickly get that back as more people support this idea. Um they'll be they're also paying in 10%. So, you try to pick ideas that haven't been saturated yet, that still have more supporters to come and uh and then be early enough that you're collecting the fun rewards from those funders. And then you may you may ask, well, like, okay, what's what's the what's the endgame of this? Like, how how does this like how how do people near the end get rewarded? And the answer to that is with campaigns, they have the option to do something called an airdrop where uh it's like

um they're they're not in it to collect these rewards that everyone else is collecting it. They're in it because they want to they they wanted this attention to happen like they wanted people to do this kind of treasure hunt for ideas for them. So what happens is they come in at the end and they airdrop tokens to their favorite ideas and favorite solutions. And we'll talk about solutions in a minute, but this is just about ideas. So let's say that arbitrum DAO was doing a campaign. They could they could they could make a commitment up front that once once the community has identified um the the best ideas and they could set a time limit if they

want. They don't have to. we are committing to putting in $100,000 or a million dollars that we're going to airdrop to the ones that we feel fit what we were looking for. Um, and then it's up to the community to signal those and and they rise to the top. You'll get um at the home on on home you'll see like the hottest ideas rise to the top. Um, so it's uh it's a way for um grant makers to run campaigns, get all the work done by a community. They don't have to even know that who their community is ahead of time. The the community gets built um a as it goes. So it's not like you have to say, well, who

who are the people that that that I already have? Like how do I get people in to vote and who are the token holders or something like that? this is just open to everybody. So you may find out that you ha that through a campaign like this, you have a much larger community than you thought. Um and you you build your community this way. Um so that that's kind of how ideas work. Maybe we should pause there. There there's a there's a lot of components of Updraft, but that's the basic of ideas. Any any questions so far on that? Uh yeah, I I guess um it looks like the only way to support a idea is through the U UDP token.

Yeah, the UPD tokens. Um how how would one obtain uh tokens? That's a great that's a great question. So um let's see. So uh let me get to a screen where Okay, so here we go. Um, so UPD, uh, we wanted to make sure that anyone can get UPD to get started. So, if you come to our Discord, there's a UPD faucet. We give away tokens. And those fees that you saw, um, there's the 10% fee that goes to, um, supporters of ideas that come after you, but, there's also a 1% fee. And that 1% fee, all of that goes into this faucet.

So, anyone every every week you can come to our Discord and collect more UPD tokens. It's a small amount. It's like 18 cents worth right now, but um I don't know. I can't I can't exactly predict what it's going to be in the future, but it's enough to at least get you started and you can you can build more from there. You can you you can earn multiples of of UPD if you put them on the right ideas. So, it we wanted to lower the barrier. anyone can anyone can at least get some to get going. Um, you can also buy it on Uniswap. We put all of the UPD tokens into a liquidity pool.

So, 100% of them are on arbitrum paired with USDC. So, right now you can buy them with USDC or you can use something like Jumper to swap any tokens from any chain on uh and get UPD tokens and get started. Um, why did we why did we choose our own token? why not just use something else? Um, when you're comparing ideas and you want to figure out what the best idea is, we need a way to compare and that's it's based on support, how much support they have. Um, and uh so we need a common denominator to to compare. If we if we allowed um the the initial support for ideas to be in a thousand different tokens, we'd

have to figure out how to compare a thousand different tokens. And yes, you can do things like um uh like price in instant price quotes and and things like that to try to compare. But it's easier for our algorithm that is um indexing all of these and then comparing them and sorting them by which ones have the most interest if we just have a common token. And so we thought well we could we use something like glow dollar like a stable coin that's aligned with us. Um but for ideas themselves we decided it doesn't need to be stable. um you know we don't need to pick ETH uh the gas token. That was another option because it it's like okay we could do

that or we could pick our own token because if we pick our own token what we can do is we can take 1% of the fees which serve we call them anti-PAM fees because they they help keep by having a small fee you keep spam off the platform. Um so we take our anti-PAM fees and we just recycle them into a faucet. Um, so we have full control over that. Um, so that's why we use UPD, but we don't want it to be a barrier for anyone. We want to make it easy to get UPD. So I hope that answers that. Sorry, very long answer, but it does indeed. You basically can the the just open updraft fund and then uh connect your wallet or any wallet and

then uh it it's you can start experimenting with it for free. Just jump in our discord and put in your wallet. You can find the instructions pretty intuitive and easy to find. And then you can get your free UPD and then your mission is to either uh the start creating an exciting idea that others find exciting and start supporting it or be on a witch hunt for finding the the exciting ideas that haven't taken off yet so that others might come along after you and find it more interesting and earn money so you grow your UPD or uh that because you can find ideas there that uh are aren't having solutions or

you don't find the solutions that are already provided as exciting as the solution that you have in mind. Post a solution for those ideas and say okay I can do this for that I I'm going to need this this amount of funding and then earn money through there. So it's free to use basically completely free and then uh I always say in our conversations that we have with others introducing updraft that it's very hard to lose money on updraft. It's just like a percentage for like fees that are keeping the spams out. But uh you have nothing to lose but you have a lot to gain potentially if you're a good hunter of the great ideas or or you're a good

developer or someone who can provide solutions to exciting ideas. So giving it a try is easy and free. Losing money is very difficult. You you have to be find really interesting ways to lose like meaningful amounts of money on updraft. Yeah. Like I said, the main way you lose money is by being um a grant maker like arbita where you're happy to lose the money. It's like you're trying to lose the money. You're you're you're the one that comes in at the end and rewards everyone for surfacing all these great ideas and solutions. So, um Gotcha. And I guess um so we have uh we went over like one side of it, the

people who are making ideas, the people who are supporting ideas. Um what what are what are these solutions? I I imagine it's the people who are actually doing the work to make the idea a thing. You got it exactly right. So yeah, every solution um has an idea that it originated from. So once these ideas bubble up and rise to the top and you have um some very highly visible ideas that the the community has surfaced that encourages people to build solutions because they say okay well there's a lot of interest here and so this solves a problem that a lot of founders have it because founders want to have um early feedback they want

to know is my idea worth building and it takes a lot of leg work to figure that out and you really should be doing that before you start building. Um, you don't want to waste your time building something that nobody cares about. So, you you start with an idea, put on an updraft. You don't have to have it mapped out how you're even going to solve it. You just have to have a a fairly clear um problem statement of of of what you want to do and a vision. And it doesn't have to be uh like this is one that I'm showing for Updraft itself. It doesn't have to be this um structured even. It can be really free form. Um, you know what? So, here's one that's like more free form. Um, it's just like someone says like, "Hey, up when you

come to Updraft, you're you you're dumped straight into the Updraft platform and uh it would be better if we had a landing page." And so, people have started working on landing pages based on this idea. Um, which I think is great. Um, so you you come up with your idea. It could be for an existing product that is missing something and so you make an idea saying what you would like to have. Works really well with open- source products. But even with closed source products, you could you could um get some community rally some community support behind it and then go to the the people who built it and say, "Look, obviously people want this." um once once an idea has kind of proven

itself then you get people building solutions for it. So um a a solution with a solution you uh here let me create a new solution for this so you can see what it looks like. Okay. So there's existing solutions but I'm going to draft a new solution. Um so I I put in a name, I put in a description and then I pick some funding details. I pick a deadline. I pick the token. Um, one of the campaigns that we're actually doing is we want to figure out what tokens we want to use for funding. So, for ideas, because we want apples to apples comparison, we're using the UPD token for that. But for solutions, it's

much more likely that you'll want because this is where you're actually getting paid to do the work. um it's much more likely you'll want something like a stable coin or maybe um if if let's say Arbiter's running a campaign, maybe they'll want to pay people in ARB tokens. So maybe they'll have a a pot of ARB tokens that they're giving out. Um so you can you can pick any token you want. And one of the things that we want to do for our campaign that you see on the the home screen, oops, I should have let me just not open a new tab. So, um, we want people to help us figure out what networks, um, to support and what stable coins to support. So, when you when you're, um, so you can you can give us ideas. So,

those can be ideas that you that you create. Um, you can tell us uh, what what network do you want? Um, so like if you want us to be on Status L2 when it launches next year, you can you can support this idea or if there's some other network that we that's that nobody's thought of yet that you think arbitum or sorry that um Updraft should be on. Yeah. Yeah. And this is like another aspect of updraft that Adam is now unveiling like uh ideas uh can be uh about uh the voting and how you can in ask others to to show you which which kind of idea to support. So uh we we wanted to ask the

community which which network is the best to uh to have UPD on and then you can have them uh you can have them as ideas there. So someone comes and say okay uh we think that arbitum is the optimal network for that UPD to be hosted on or stat 2 is is the other one and then uh if if you have a good uh the the good trait of finding uh the community and their will and support the idea of for example the arbitum to be the main network because you think the others in the community are going to support that idea and be early in supporting that idea. You can earn money by voting because one of the the the one of the concerns that we have in Dows is

participation and that you have to go around and beg people to please come in and there's this vote and show that which one you support. But here uh you're incentivized like monetarily just I I want to be early in supporting this network because I'm going to earn money if others come in and support my ideas. So it's it's another aspect of the the updraft that has to do with Dows and the incentivizing the community to come participate in in voting. So uh yeah it it's just a better way and that you earn money by voting. So this is like the better way to go for it.

Right. So the reason I went off on that tangent is because um this list right now just has UPD in it for the funding token. But I would love to see USD Glow in here. I would love to see I mean what's your favorite stable coin? What do you want to see in this list? What also what liquidity pairs do you want to have with UPD? Right now it's just UPDUSDC on arbitum. Do you want to see um UPDUSD glow on Cello network? What do you want? Um you tell us. So, so yeah, like Posar said, voting there can be voting campaigns where it's not like um so we're not going to, you know, we maybe there might be some money to airdrop on those, but mostly it's just

we want the community feedback and if other community members say that you're right and you were early and you're the one that found this really cool network that we should definitely be on, then great, you earned some money. Um, so then you so you pick your funding token and I imagine there'll be lots of stable coins that people will be using or uh Dowo tokens and stuff like that. You pick how the goal that's pretty obvious, the deadline. And then staking um is an interesting way um to reward people that are willing to take a bet on your on funding your solution. You're what you're saying here is you're saying if if I don't make if we don't make the

funding goal by the deadline, this is how much we're giving out as a reward to people who took a risk with us. If the if the go if the solution fails then uh to reach its goal, then this stake gets split. So everyone gets their funds back plus they get this stake. And you may say, well, I'm just a poor person that like that's why I'm raising this money. I don't have money to put a stake. But if you can find someone to help you stake, like anyone can add a stake, but if you can find a way to put up that stake yourself or get someone else to put up stake, it really does help because then you're in a situation where um funders are looking at your at your solution and they're

seeing um like, okay, uh if this goal fails, I'm going to I I'm going to collect this stake. And so it's like it's getting near the deadline and it looks like it's not going to quite make it. So they add some money in because they want to get part of the stake. And so they want, you know, and then someone else sees it and sees that it's close. So they put theirs and now you now suddenly you're getting close to the goal. And then somebody else comes in is like, well, this is I actually want to see this get built and it's almost to its goal now. I'll just finish it. And so it's it's kind of like that that sort of uh this this honeypot or whatever of of the stake can actually

get you um get you funded more quickly. So So it it's a you don't it's optional, but I think it's it's just another way to get people interested in in um fund taking a risk and funding your idea. Then you can also set the fun reward. So we saw how for ideas it's a 10%. So you could just say I'm keeping all the funds for myself or you could say I want some of any every time every anyone funds my solution I want some of that to go to earlier funders. So if you're a funer you've got like if you're early you've got the the fun reward. If you're kind of late you've got the stake. Um this puts funders in a situation where it like how do you h how do you not fund

public goods? you're in a position where you just it just always makes sense to fund the public good, especially if it's something that you like anyway. So, um after you set all these parameters, you create your solution and um I'm not going to do that because this is not a real solution, but uh and then after that, you you share it. Obviously, anytime you create an idea or fund an idea or fund a solution because of the way that that that the incentives work, you're going to want to share that with anyone that you think might also be willing to fund so that you can earn from them. Um, and that's the way it works.

Awesome. It seems like um you both built quite a feature-packed uh uh product here. Um I guess uh as we're coming to time uh like what's the uh how can people get started with updraft? Yeah. So the best way is to come to our discord. We will hold your hand. We'll give you free UBD tokens. Um, I think I think people here know uh are pretty familiar with using wallets, but we're hoping to attract new users that have never used a wallet before and show them how to do it. Um, so we'll explain everything and help you do everything on Discord. One of the things that I've

been doing recently, um, Updraft has only been around for uh, a month, but so it's brand new. But I I wrote a couple of blog posts um, to help people because I saw that people were struggling with um, taking their ideas and turning them into something that they could put on Updraft. So, what I did was I put some steps that I use myself um, to get my ideas onto Updraft. And these are just some brainstorming ideas. Um how you can first make a list of your ideas and then rank them and then figure out how to write descriptions. And the descriptions don't have to be perfect, but um and then decide how much to deposit, how to

get the UPD. It's got all the all the steps in here that you would need to do. So come come to our Discord, read our blog, try this out, spread the word because the more people you have supporting your ideas, the better. And yeah, just get your ideas up on Updraft and see what happens. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Yeah, definitely gang. Uh you got nothing to lose. Uh so check out you can just open updraft.fund and all links and everything is right there. It's very intuitive. You can find where to chat. You can find where to get the UPD. You can find the guide.

Everything is right there. Just updraft.find and you're good to go. Yep. And and that is linked in the description below. So definitely uh have a have a play around with updraft. Um and as well as the discord link we will and the link to the uh mirror um blog post as well. We will link in the description below. So you have all that content uh ready at your disposal. And uh yeah, with that, I just want to thank you both, Pastor Laura and Adam, for coming on the show today. Um that's pretty amazing. Uh you you mentioned it was only one month old. It looks like it's been around a little bit longer. So you you guys have been building like crazy. Uh so keep up the great work and

uh yeah, excited to see where uh Updraft uh goes next. Thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure. My pleasure. And uh with that, just want to wish everybody a very happy Friday, happy weekend wherever you may be. And we'll catch you back here for another great episode of Devontail next week. Till then, have a good one. Cheers. You too. Bye-bye.