Making Governance Easy: UX Lessons from DAOs on Bitcoin - Sascha Goetz

Transcript

Perfect. Now we're there. Thanks a lot for your help. Appreciate it. All right, guys. Uh, sorry for the delay. We all know technical difficulties can happen. Uh, my name is Sasha. I'm the founder and executive director of the Rootstock Collective, which is the first real DAO built on Bitcoin. I know I come from the other side. I'm at an Ethereum conference, but I typically really appreciate hanging out with you guys talking a lot about like different opportunities. And today we are going to talk about UX and how we as a whole industry are still sorry more technical issues. Yeah. Are still not 100% where we probably should be. So when we look at crypto and blockchain, the one thing we did for

sure is like we made stuff way more complex than it is, right? like we introduced thousands of blockchains. We introduced tens of millions of different tokens, hundreds of thousands of different D apps and we just made it so much more complex for people, especially people that join the space freshly to understand what we are actually doing. And that makes Michael said, but it might also make more people than Michael said. So if one of you felt similar in the last 6 months please raise your hand like when you had encountered a situation like Michael where you just were frustrated with the user experience something didn't work out as expected only one two hands okay that's I see three four now five um typically I get

like 60 70% of hands raised on that question um the thing here is like we introduced all that complexity as an industry but we left the users out there and tell told them like figure it out like we wanted to revolutionize finance and technology around finance and we made it like more complex than online banking in 2005 and some of you still might remember when you had like your pin codes on paper sent by your bank etc. So one very concrete example because the presentation is about UX lessons um that we can share from our side around early to mid last year we started to explore new markets for us. So we

were going for the Mina region to onboard more whale profiles from family offices, high netw worth individuals and such. During one of the very first onboardings because Mina is a bit different like there's no Binance. Binance typically makes it quite easy to access the rootstock ecosystem. Um there is no Binance. So we had to figure out different ways for that person for the very first one to get on board. That lesson took us four freaking hours. like ridiculous like we were really like during the process we were at the state where we thought like okay we're going to lose that person 100% for sure even I would not have the patience to stick with it like um so we really saw it's not only about like having the right

wallet making sure to bridge uh the right ways get the right assets etc. It was so much more stuff that you could technically screw up during that whole process which really did not make it fun at all. So we were sitting together and thinking about how would good look like like what do you need to do as a product offering no matter if you're a DAO if you're any kind of like gambling app if you're a cool VR thing that we just saw on stage um we came up with the following like we believe a product no matter what it is it should either make the life easier or it makes it exciting ideally does both right so this is like the purpose of any product how it should be like there should be something for

your final end user in it that does one of those things. Before I get more into detail like how we actually approach that whole thing, I would like to zoom out for a quick sec and talk a bit about rootstock for those of you who do not know us yet. Rootstock was the very first Bitcoin L2 side chain. So what it means is it brings together the best of both world. the store of value and the security from Bitcoin plus the programmability and flexibility from you the Ethereum guys and it merges it. So our goal here is to become the home of Bitcoin DeFi and we are around for more than 10 years I think live on mainet for more than eight years now with 100% uptime. So we we

have seen some stuff happening in that industry. Um at one point we said like we need to create a dow to help our ecosystem grow more independently and to give it the right support and this is what I did with my small team. I created the foundation as a spin-off from rootstock labs into the rootstock collective foundation and we are around for 20 20 months now. So this is not test net. This is not something what would happen at one point. This is reality and it's happening every day for 20 months now. We have achieved a lot of cool stuff in that time frame. We have managed to keep an ABI which is an annual backer incentive. So a return that people get that stake in the DAO of more than 20% average. We have more than 1,800 people

supporting more than 20 sorry 30 builders in our ecosystem actively with their voting. And we have more than 35.5 million of state rift which is like more than 3.55% of the total supply and equals um at today's price roughly around 2.1 million in staked assets in the DAO and we've distributed more than 700k in rewards and the cool thing here is and that makes us quite unique our rewards do not only get distributed in our governance token and ecosystem token which is RIFF it also gets distributed in Bitcoin. So we split in a certain ratio between Bitcoin, RIFF and a stable coin to pay out those rewards to the

backers. So the stakers and also to the builders. But of course all of that is only possible like if you have a strong network and ecosystem. So this is just a little snapshot of like who we are playing with. If you're a user that should not interest you at all coming back to that complexity theme. So if you're a developer this should interest you probably a bit more. Um so depending on your own role um you should look at that slide in more in detail or less. But the thing here is like we need those guys to really make it happen right like we need like good tech stack but we also need cool interesting products for both sides to make rootstock and rootstock

collective a good growing reality. So looking back at the exciting or making life easier part ideally both when we look at us we thought there's a huge opportunity for us to make it exciting. I think everyone who ever participated in any DAO sees more or less the same interfaces sees more or less like the same governance logics behind it. I mean, there's a bunch of fantastic, genius folks that are working on all that stuff, but it's never super appealing nor exciting. Like, um, reading through, I don't know, five, six page long forum proposals, reading through all the comments that happen after that can be quite a tedious, um, endeavor and is not for many folks. So,

we thought we made it a bit more playful. We put out the opportunity for people to earn proper good rewards but also help us define the future of Bitcoin DeFi. So we created something like a Shark Tank format. And of course that Shark Tank format needs also to be fair. By fair I mean there needs to be something for the builders, but there also needs to be something for the backers. So if you're only one-sided, it will not work. If you're too heavy on one side and forget about the other one, it might also not work. So we from the very get-go had both parties in mind.

If you're a builder, so coming to the what what can you actually get? You can get grants and funding opportunities through us. It's all performance-based. So if you deliver, you get good stuff. If you deliver even better, you get more stuff. We have also something that's called the collective rewards. This is a very interesting thing because it almost works like an additional revenue stream for you. There's bi-weekly payouts from our Dow treasury based on the waiting ratio that you as a builder achieve within those twoe periods and distributed it across all the builders then based on their waiting ratio and you also predefine a kickback to the people that actually voted for you. So both sides again benefit from it. you as a builder, if you manage to engage with

the community, if you make it interesting and fun for them so that people truly believe in your project and give you their voting power, then you can get very good rewards with that. Of course, this is just an additional revenue stream like it will not pay you your full P&L, but maybe it sends you to two more conferences a year. Maybe it gets you another part-time person um or even full-time person um depending on how successful you are. But it's definitely a very cool thing and it's coming every two weeks. Another thing is like the community and the mentorship.

So one of the things that we see especially with smaller scale projects or projects that are still like in a two, four, five people setup is that you don't have all the capabilities at hand, right? like maybe you don't have a legal department or external lawyer, maybe you don't have a marketing person yet, maybe you don't have a community person yet, etc. So this is where we also very actively help and also what we see more and more happening is that the builders help each other. So we really have like a very cool builder club very active as well nowadays so that people start realizing oh you do that cool thing I do that let's maybe collaborate on certain activities. Um, so this is one of the cool things that we offer there. And we also give our builders like visibility

and recognition. Well, that means like we do a lot of different social formats. We do builder AMAs, we do builder spotlights. So we produce highquality content for our builders that might again not have the capabilities of doing it themselves and help to support them. We also give them typically like whenever we have the opportunity getting someone with us on stage, we get them with us on stage um to give them the right exposure. If you're a backer, so someone staking, voting for the guys, getting your rewards again on a bi-weekly base, you earn those real rewards in Bitcoin and RIFF, which is really amazing. Then you can help shape the projects that get

built. For instance, with the crowns, we also see a lot of educational content, etc. happening there. But it's your voice, it's your vote, and actually your power like to help us build that. You can adjust your allocations on those bi-weekly rhythms anytime. Like you can say, okay, this two week cycle or this month, I think that builder has the more interesting proposal. I think it's better to support them or they make it more attractive or they chip in something from themselves on top to the rewards. So you can very dynamically adjust all the things that you do there and you can be part of Bitcoin's D5 future and help us grow the whole thing in in total.

Coming to the how. So what does that user journey look like remembering like that 4hour dude that way on boarding super painful experience never want to do it again. So, we ever since then said like we want to get to something that's like more easy in most countries. There's always exceptions because sometimes it's really hard to access anything in crypto and blockchain depending on your region, country, uh tech setup, whatever. So, but we said for the 80 to 90% we should work within 3 minutes and within those 3 minutes you need to be able to create a wallet or use your existing wallet. you need to buy the tokens that you need to play around in Rootstock and the Rootstock

collective and you would be able to put down your first vote and immediately uh earn the rewards um that come with those votes. So we are I think in a very good direction there. I'm not entirely sure if in any region we're already at the three minutes, but we've tested and we see that definitely in some regions it's really playing out super super smooth. So that you can have that whole onboarding journey within those 3 minutes actually. The why it also works in the long run is quite interesting. I think um one thing we already discussed the onboarding which became our core focus after that rail debacle. Um we played together with

reown and wallet connect. So that really helped us a lot to onboard people way easier because almost every wallet is available there. We also support hardware wallets. So no matter of like what your individual setup looks like we are there to accommodate and facilitate. We also and this is really interesting simple and mobile first. Like this was one of the things that really got more and more clear throughout last year when we saw like a lot of interaction happening on the forums, on the discourses, on the discords, in the telegram groups and it was just a lot of content. It was a lot of content that almost nobody ever read through even the delegates and they get paid for it.

Probably at one point started to get some more AI summaries and stuff together to make it quicker for them as well. Right. So the one thing there we said like it needs to be simple. It needs to be mobile first. So we released our full mobile friendly version last year October. So you can really use the whole DAO with everything in the palm of your hand on your mobile device on any tablet or whatever you want to use. You can check out the proposals there. And we also encouraged our builders to do more video elevator pitch style proposals versus writing those long forum proposals. I mean they still do that but like for most of the folks it's more engaging if you can watch like a

one or two minute video and the folks explain you, hey this is what we are actually doing and this is why it would be so cool if you could vote for us and get us those extra rewards. So it's easy, it's simple, it's something that you can really enjoy no matter where you are. It's almost like a social media approach, if you will, because you just scroll. You don't doom scroll with 7-second snippets of videos, but like you you can um check out really meaningful content, those builder stories. You can put down your vote, everything with your mobile device. And then again, you get really good rewards more than 20% still. We are still early.

It's just 20 months in. That number will decrease over time. it will still be attractive, but like 20% is really like um just like because we're still kind of small there. So don't miss out. Um be one of the adopters, one of the early ones. Um and yeah, it turned out that people really like money. So this is also something that helps us there, especially when we look at those Beco growth and staker growth numbers. So if you are now convinced and think, hey, maybe it's quite interesting to look in the Bitcoin world as well and check out Rootstock and Rootstock collective. You want to become a shark back builders and earn rewards, please find us on rootscollective.xyc.

Scan the QR code for our link tree or find me around. I'm going to be here till Sunday and always happy to talk about what we are doing and how we can support you. So I see I already still have 10 minutes left but maybe some some Q&A if >> Yeah, exactly. >> Thank you Sasha. Any questions? Okay, it's already five. Like I can understand it like most people are tired. >> All right, big bloss. Thank you very much for the presentation.