Metagovernance and scaling DAOs with Index Coop

Transcript

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and i hope you enjoy this next episode gmgm welcome to web3 academy it is the weekly doer spotlight i'm jay bird coming at you from burns switzerland today as always joined by my co-host kyle read head what's up kai hey guys how's it going today happy to be here excited for this conversation yeah we're mega pump today on the show we have mel dot east with us uh mel's i mean got one of the most interesting backgrounds uh uh before web 3 and then web3 wow you're you're just crushing it i feel like we could talk about anything with you let me give a little bit of

mel's bio here so mel's a former engineer and architect who worked at banks and was a consultant and did big corporate work for many years he also played poker for a while and was even a private private investigator for a few years as well we might have to touch on that yeah uh and then in around his 40th birthday he decided to retire from the corporate life and dive into dow full time so that was april of 2021 and over the last year he built out one of the most robust governance mechanisms in d5 at index coupe uh which is mainly what we're going to talk about today uh but i just got to also give a shout out to mel's d gen score so mel was ranked in the top 5 percent of d-gens by a d-gen score which includes a top 10 unit

swap v3 user a top 10 open c user and in his bag are crypto punks moon birds mfers me bits and many many more and he's also an original member i think of the constitution dao so uh og in the space and very active what's up mel welcome to the show i'm i'm blown away just uh just listening to that that intro i i almost didn't know all that about myself blow that in my head at one time but uh yeah how how we arrive where wherever we get to um good morning yeah um i'm super super amped to be here um i'm double caffeinated this morning so uh excuse me any extra hype um but yeah gmgm it sounds like you need that whole

reputation on chain like you need sold out nfts or or whatever disco is calling them dids i think it is uh for all of your different reputations in web3 that's that's the next step for you it's it's interesting i i think reputation and and on-chain credentialing and um you know is really going to be one of the more interesting kind of uh things to develop in the in the coming years um you know it's a whole new space and we all kind of come to it but we're all new you know in a way and um you know so yeah getting out there exploring and um really kind of developing that identity in a space where you can otherwise be anonymous um it's really really pretty cool yeah and it's so exciting that

it's amazing how everybody that we have on the pod and on the show talks about that interest in that part and we're not probably and we'll see maybe we get into that today in today's show but it's not the main purpose today today is more around governance and doubts uh but before we get into that uh mel just tell us a little bit about your web 3 rabbit hole story how did you first fall down the rabbit hole uh was there a moment was there a somebody who you know sort of pushed you in uh and why why did you decide to dedicate your time in your life to web3 it was all fomo [Laughter] i so i'm i'm probably i'm a bit boomer um i uh i was around you know messing

around with like commodore 64s and you know i was i was uh i think i was about 10 years old when i got my hands on my first computer and just very very sort of long journey short um you know i kind of came up through uh you know with a little bit of coding a little bit of uh you know hardware you know i'd rip apart computers and um try and put them back together things like that when i was was a kid um but what you know the web kind of developed the internet was you know take 20 minutes to download a picture when i was you know first got got there but there was really no way to really get my arms around that um especially at that age and and really capitalize on that in any way um it was kind of a bevy

of knowledge with with really nowhere to go other than for my own you know purposes um i then kind of abandoned that you know i went and got degrees engineering architecture um you know worked in that space i i used to joke at my old uh you know kind of a consulting gig for most of the time that i was not in web 3. and um i used to joke that you know i majored in excel you know that was about the extent of uh of my kind of the requirements of my technical expertise um and then you know i get over you know find ethereum which is basically a giant excel spreadsheet so um but yeah from there um it was probably around i think it was 2017 uh when i first heard about crypto kitties and it was nothing more than it's like a

cash grab um you know it was like there are people buying pictures for thousands of dollars um i need to get my hands on some of these and sell them to some people for for thousands of dollars and uh it was that i uh i got on i got on ethereum it was completely d gen and um i started you know uh buying selling and uh for lack of a better procreating with cats and um yeah uh and then i i made a few bucks and i walked away um you know it was it was interesting during that time though i remember thinking um i i used my my excel skills to try and um predict uh what you know what the dna of the the next you know cat to be sort of like hatched or born or whatever this thing

was um and then it was early i think it was early pandemic-ish um you know the merge the merge is kind of what caught my caught my attention um and for some reason i always looked at mining as as kind of hard you know to build miners it was almost like a captured game in a sense you needed a lot of capital to to really get involved um but i validating for some reason you know really struck my struck my fancy so i uh i basically was like i'm going to validate i'm going to get my 32 weeks and i'm going to i'm going to set up a validator and i'm gonna run it um so i did that i uh i got everything set up i uh i went through dapnode which is a really great kind of learning tool if uh if you're looking to get involved um in

any of the sort of hardware side of of uh you know ethereum um and then from there uh i got bored i had my 32 weeks i had my validator set up i was on a test net and uh i was like what do i do from here and that's that's really where things kind of exploded i um i built a couple miners i kind of dipped back into that because i was like we might be years out from the merge um and uh so yeah i built some miners i actually had a little mining farm for a while um got bored again um and really dove into d5 um and that's that's really where it the the curve just went straight up um i bought some dpi which is uh kind of like an etf uh for defy um that product was created by uh

the index cooperative um i had some questions i dipped into the discord and uh the rest is history i that started um a 15-month um career at index coupe which which just recently um you know came to it came to an end um but uh yeah from there uh i started out just hanging out um going to meetings because there's a big open organization um i kind of found that uh as a bit of a technical generalist i was picking up a lot of information um but uh and i was i was kind of doling it back out because i was going almost every meeting um and uh and then i was like why not write this stuff down so i started a newsletter

started circulating it in the forum um and then i found people were kind of coming to me um you know and and using that as kind of it became for a while the the primary sort of uh touch point um for people within the dow was a very quick way to get up to speed um and then that really was kind of a natural progression into um coordination and governance um sort of basically did a handoff of the newsletter which was a really cool experience to it was kind of the first time i'd really started something just organically um got to grow it and then grow it to a point where i could kind of hand it off and say yeah you know please make sure this this goes well sorry like this is my baby here you know and went off to do something else but

uh started the governance operations working group um all of this with a lot of a lot of help um and then the governance operations working group became the governance nest um so it was one of five major uh divisions within the coop um and our our mandate was sort of uh you know keep keep governance operational um grow the the meta governance capabilities um and make sure that communication remains high um you know on these topics and uh yeah that's that's kind of the maybe the last sort of eight months of of the index coupe uh journey um subsequent to that a lot of self-reflection um kind of what comes next and and what do i build from here um but uh yeah i'm sure i missed a ton in there but um

that's that's the story i'm going to stick to it it's a great story i'm going to give a bit of an explanation of what index cooperative is and then maybe um no you can like take it to another level but i'll give the basic one and and maybe there's more to it that i'm not aware of but i also bought dpi way back in the day when it first launched um that eth2x fly or whatever it was called which was really good for a little bit and then obviously got wrecked um but uh so index coupe essentially is is i guess you could say is making like etfs of crypto so it finds like a category within crypto um for example dpi is the d5 pulse index it gets it has like parameters and certain like things that projects have to meet that are in

the d5 space and then they can go in this bucket of um it's kind of like etf i guess and then you can just buy the dpi token and essentially you have ownership over all of the i don't know how many is in there maybe 12 tokens or something within that and i think every month or every two weeks it um rebalances the portfolio depending on what has gone up and where it's gone down and it has this for d5 it has this for like the metaverse index um what else does it have i think it maybe has a gaming index there's i don't know there's a bunch of them across the index uh um index co-op would that be the best way to explain what these are or is there more to it that i'm missing that was a great explanation um yeah so

it's just basically on-chain um you know products i would say that uh help you achieve you know um whatever your sort of allocation goals might be um i think it buckles up to sort of uh sectoral indices which are you know a basket of tokens um is probably the best way to a weighted basket of tokens and then leverage which is um basically using uh i think for the most part ave or compound as the back end um and you can achieve one token leverage positions like you mentioned with uh with heath 2x um which can can be blistering right on the way up or down um and uh yeah but that's it really as a making sort of one token products um

that uh that can you know you can achieve uh you know your sort of you're investing goals i know investing is a word that coup doesn't like to to use for you know regulatory reasons really that's it yeah and so one of the interesting things i thought about index index coupe index co-op i don't know what to call it i'm going to call index coupe uh but maybe you can tell us that's the biggest question so what do we call it what do we call it you tell me i'm i'm a coop guy i slipped i slipped once and called a co-op and uh yeah just the self-flagellation ensued but um rather publicly but uh yeah i'd say it's a fairly uh a fairly even split even even within the organization coupe co-op but uh okay yeah that'll definitely get the

conversation started with just about any owl right and so for context i think i saw on the website that you guys have about a hundred million or you used to have but index coupe has a hundred million worth of value within index coupe i believe uh worth of tokens i i believe is what the numbers are right now um and what i thought was interesting is that so i can buy dpi but at any point i can claim all of the tokens within that i i hold i believe i never did this i'm wondering if this is actually true but i'm pretty sure like let's say i own hundred dpi of that dpi like let's say 20 is unit swap 10 is ave whatever percent is whatever and i can just like claim it and it'll give me all my tokens and get rid of the dpi is that true

that is true yeah it's one of the the really kind of cool features of of d5 relative to the traditional space you know you can't really take your your sp why that you know issued by i forget that's blackrock or vanguard or whoever right and say i want all 500 stocks in that basket you know in my portfolio um but you know 12 seconds later on ethereum you can do that with dpi which is yeah uh d5 mvi the metaverse like you said uh jpg which is like a it's basically a jpeg index you know nfts things like of course um yeah now one of the most interesting things when we talk so mel and i actually met at um was it the permissionless conference i believe in um in florida and what you were saying and

this was just i did not realize that this was a thing but so index coup technically is holding and i guess this is on chain maybe it's a smart contract i'm not exactly sure where but it's holding a lot of tokens of let's say uniswap and ave and a bunch of these other sort of defy d5 projects which those tokens hold voting rights within the devs and within these projects and so basically um index holds a lot of voting rights to a lot of the it's not even just d5 ecosystem but a lot of the entire web 3 ecosystem and i think you referred to this maybe as meta governance and maybe this isn't what meta governance is because i don't actually know um so i'm i'm just i'm wondering if you can kind of explain

this dynamic because this to me was just very interesting i did not realize that this was the thing going on in the web 3 space but it seems to be a big deal i just don't know many people talking about it can you sort of walk us through what i'm talking about and what this all means yeah absolutely um so meta metagovernance is uh to use a a sort of traditional corollary again to go back to sort of blackrock vanguard um there there is a ton of voting power um in you know whether it be a stock uh etf uh index fund um and and then yeah same thing in the the web3 uh governance token space these these these you know quote unquote valueless governance tokens that that get

aggregated in a in an index um sort of at scale uh become quite powerful voting blocks um you know most protocols take the view that it's sort of a pass-through so you know you don't necessarily see uniswap going out and saying oh you know these tokens are on our exchange we're gonna go vote with them um however index group took the position and i think again it was sort of that traditional space corollary um that we should be using that voting power and and passing it on somehow um now the sort of obvious kind of um you know uh jump there is like okay if i hold some dpi i should get to vote with whatever tokens are in in dpi uh what the coupe did is they they kind of

levered this up so they basically ported that that voting power um within dpi and um that's the only one that's the only index that's unlocked for for voting right now um okay yeah uh it could it could go on you know mvi things like there are definitely votable tokens in other indices uh ens is one that really comes to mind sort of in the the data economy index but um and and passed that through to index index uh token holders which is the governance token of the index cooperative itself um so if you hold some index and a vote comes up on uniswap um you can go into the index coupe snapshot space uh and express your your will as a you know token holder an index token

holder and then based on that threshold that goes and triggers um you know the vote on the the uniswap side um this is not automated at present it's it's basically multi-sigs and things like that that you know execute sort of that that will of the will of the dow um but that's that's really the uh the implementation that the coop took is that you know with that that voting power within the governance tokens in the indices gets ported to index token holders who can then then uh use it to vote um and then sort of one extension kind of beyond that um is proposal power um there are enough tokens in in um i think it's ave um and i'd have to check because these

things do fluctuate through time but uh you know to propose and that's that's also incredibly powerful um because that's a sort of a gated threshold um for most dows you know they don't want just anybody coming along and saying hey i've got an idea um and that you guys should go execute on um so they'll put say you know you need 60 000 or 100 000 tokens to even put a proposal out there um and uh the coupe had that power uh you know has that power to to go out there and push those proposals out on other protocols which is powerful it sounds very powerful and i'm i'm curious i guess this is what we'll dive into but is that a good thing or is that a bad thing because i guess maybe for context and i don't know if you know this but what

sort of power then does index have like is it a large percent of tokens that it's holding versus like other tokens that are available to vote on let's say in uniswap or in ave or in whatever else or is it not like it's is it not that big of a deal i'm just curious it's good or bad that we could definitely get into that um in terms of of uh relative power um i i think it is i i think it it is powerful to the extent that um people pay attention um you know when you can when you can put a proposal forth in somebody else's really dow is what we're talking protocol dow um to kind of go out there and say hey you know we've taken the view that sort of what you should be

doing is this um you know it it raises some eyebrows and people start you know it gets the conversation going at a minimum because it is it is the hard power um that sort of sits underneath um kind of that that social layer if that makes sense um and it forces it might even force a dow to consider how they want to spend their time you know um which is a really interesting concept in web 3 relative to like a a business you know where it's like this is what we're doing um you all catch a paycheck let's you know let's go versus a dow where it's like we you know are gonna do these things um but yeah i think it is it is appreciable um relative to other other uh protocols so for example like the amount

of tokens in on the uni-swap you know amm is just massive um i think they almost have no choice but to to make that sort of a pass-through of governance or it almost breaks it um i think that like if you look at sort of the blackrock corollary to index coupe it could get you know wildly uh you know um massive i think uh blackrock has somewhere in the order of like 10 trillion dollars worth of um assets they have they view this as like a stewardship function but um really you know they take an esg view i think that's mainly kind of how blackrock handles is they say oh we're going to be responsible you know almost like that that green

initiative um yeah esg but uh it's it how do i put this um you know blackrock can be king makers you know they can install ceos they can you know deprecate a company if they really want to mergers you know things like they do not if they want to they do do these things like they're playing chess basically with the like economies uh and corporations and that's that's kind of part of what they do right and it's how they win their bets and that's that's kind of the bet that the coupe has too is you know it's it's a lot easier to buy some dpi than it is to go out there and develop an opinion about 12 or 16 different and so as these etfs hoover up tokens um you know that that power only grows um

and so the the leverage really because if that's really what meta governance kind of becomes in this this implementation is is leveraged governance you need significantly less capital to go buy some index tokens to go then shove around you know dozens potentially right of other other um you know protocols um and i i think in that way um it is again it kind of comes down to this the potential of the thing is is just quite massive and so there's some demonstrated use cases and it's only kind of moving in one direction as it seems i'm curious who is like who are the people owning and holding these index tokens that are doing these kind of community votes because like you see on the blackrock side things okay it's a

centralized company um are they really doing what's the best interest of everyone like probably not but who knows maybe maybe they're good people there um i can see it being a little bit better over the web three side because it's it's a community of people it's not one person or like one family that runs it it's a bunch of people and what i assume is a dow i don't know if the index is a token that's built around a dead hour how people are voting on this but is it just like mainly people from the index scoop or is it just like a ton of people across the web 3 ecosystem or do you know what that makeup is like who are the people in there um i think there's there's probably and again this is a bit of a hot take but i think there are probably about four

classes of voters um utilizing the index token it is in my opinion a strictly dow token there's not much that's automated about the the governance process um such that it's like a protocol token um everything kind of is consensus based and and uh yeah again multi-cigs go and execute these these meta governance endeavors um but i think that uh i said four classes and now i'm gonna have to remember all those um the founder uh you know the founder has a good a good amount of tokens they've they've taken the um sort of view that delegation is the way um so they delegated a massive amount of their voting power to uh a core team within the dow um the dow itself um which does not have

a ton of voting power um i think at last brush it was maybe like two percent of supply um however again that delegation from the founder uh really does kind of bolster them up i'm gonna throw methodologists in there which methodologists are the ones that come up with the basically these index funds right um you know to say oh okay you know the data economy index is a good one that i i really don't think i ever would have thought of um but it's all the infrastructure that kind of supports you know defy and and those types of things um and then that that third class um and i'd say this one this is in my opinion one of the more interesting ones is like investors and vcs um that uh i'm gonna throw a fifth in there after

this but investors and vcs um specifically ones that do have a view to get involved in governance um which really i saw that kind of develop in my time at the coupe but at first it was kind of the number go up crowd um and it really kind of became you know we would like to kind of exert influence within the ecosystem and kind of sit on top of it in that way um and then yeah that well yeah i'll leave it there i'll leave it there there's there's there's tons of um there's there's tons of people interested in in this thing oh douse other dows that was going to be the the fifth one um i think other once dao started to realize um what we were up to um for lack of a better way to put it um in

terms of this growing um you know growing uh influence in the ecosystem um they almost realized that they could they could play too so we saw that develop as well through time um you know other dow's acquiring index tokens to influence their own position within the ecosystem okay i want to get into like i i know you're a genius when it comes to governance in dallas so i want to talk about that um it's funny to say a genius in this and like dallas have only been around for like how long you've only been in the space for like a year but it's all it takes eh but i want to keep playing this because this is so interesting and i'm just curious you said there's potential that this continues to grow right and people keep you know buying up dpi tokens uh or keep buying up index tokens and it takes

control of a lot of share of let's say the entire ecosystem tell me why this is a good thing like give me the give me the one side of the story of like why we want this like what if just it gets so big and just everyone buys this one index okay now like that's the one token that makes all decisions across the ecosystem you know like give me give me the good side first and then we can maybe see what potentially could happen on the bad side yeah it's a really interesting question um i i think there are a ton of of mechanisms in in d5 and even even externally for for exerting influence kind of full stop um and

i think that the the pass-through of governance kind of from from one token to it to another based on you know sort of aggregated holdings is is kind of just one i personally don't think we we get to that place where it's like index coup captures the ecosystem um however like if we do right how is that a good thing i'm not quite sure um i think that uh [Music] i think that the native holders of their token there will always kind of i think be that distribution and um and those types of things um but yeah that's a really interesting question i i think there's two very kind of balanced sides to it and um i think that

having having influence um over say another another dow or another protocol um is is interesting and fine as long as it's handled well um but it it also kind of breaks very easily um most of these governance mechanisms every dow has a unique governance mechanism i don't care how you slice it like no no two dowels are really the same um and to go over and say hey we're gonna we're gonna get involved um we're still so early that a lot of dows you know could just say no thanks you know um it's great that you guys feel this way

it's cool that you went and executed these votes now some of them don't have a choice you know they're on chain um so it just you know if it could just break the thing if uh you know if you push through a payload you know to say ave that's just not not something that they want to do or um you know it could end up in a weird place but uh i think i'm i'm kind of proving the case that might not be a great thing i think based on my rambling here um but i i think it's the interesting thing is i find it how is it a good thing it sort of creates uh sort of a focal point for the conversation um i do think by pressing on kind of the forefront of of kind of what can be done in terms of uh

of governance we've really found um that the the coop and even those that have kind of developed around the coop and um you know again because the dow space is very you know almost nobody's at just one dow you know um people have been building sort of mechanisms to to go and um get more direct mechanisms to to exert you know sort of governance influence uh more automated and that's that's something i would love to talk about is kind of governance automation i think is is really kind of the one of the bigger unlocks of web3 um but uh but yeah so i think good things are happening um in terms of like one dow to rule them all um you know hopefully not i guess we'll see i mean this is the

thing it's an open market place right so whatever whatever is gonna happen is is gonna happen and i think if we decide like if this thing goes and gets bigger and you guys start just controlling everything and people don't like that because maybe you guys are taking advantage of it i bet you just other dows of dao start to spin up that have a similar idea to indexes and they start to compete and then you know there'll be a way to kind of figure that out through competition that's the beautiful thing of an open marketplace in the traditional world if this happened which it does all the time with you know companies like google and facebook the government has to come in and go oh you have to split apart your company you can't own facebook and instagram and whatsapp because that's too big you know

and it's like what why like if that's what i did and we made those moves like let me make those moves and you know there's there's the crew of people like that's good we need that sort of regulation of people to step in uh and then there's the crew of people who are like no let's just leave it open and let's see what competition does and i think um i mean i assume that's what's gonna happen here because i feel like we don't have regulators this type of regulator the space that can come in and just say no there is the the ability to uh kind of push back i think in code you know for i i brought this up kind of in the beginning but um the the implementation that the index coupe shows is kind of a pass through to index token holders whereas like uniswap

for example it's a pass through through and through um you know if you if you hold uh you know tokens in the unit swap amm for the most protocols you can still vote with those tokens um whereas i there could we could see a you know in the future and this is kind of the i would imagine almost like a worst case scenario for the coop um where let's say uniswap says you know we just don't want you guys involved in in our governance it could become almost a blacklist type of event where it's like hey you know everybody else passes this power through directly um you guys kind of channel it you know and we just don't enjoy that um and so you know or maybe there's a bad outcome that you know there's a knock-on effect or things like

that so i think it only works as long as it's handled well is is kind of the you know kind of where i see it going is there anyone else practicing meta governance or is everyone else pretty much passing through so there are others um practicing i think it's a bit different implementation so um yeah in terms of like a an etf a fund you know those types of things um i think the coupe is is pretty much the the biggest game in town i'm not sure about the only um but other dows have um really been exercising their their kind of meta governance influence um based on tokens they have mostly in their treasury i i would say so i know uh one example of this was um uh fay that the the tribe um acquired a

massive chunk of of index tokens to get uh get faye listed on um an ave and uh and so really that's it's kind of cool because that is medigap vernon's you know they they used you know tokens in there you know they're that they're dow owned to go and and do something you know more broadly um and uh yeah so i think we are kind of seeing meta governance in the system um but it's it's kind of different everywhere you look i know um like rabbit hole for example more of like an education uh kind of endeavor um you know was was going out and you know doing some some meta-governance voting and and putting out really good content in terms of why and you know sort of their principle-based approach to that

and um but it didn't have a ton of power to you know a ton of voting power you know so it's almost like uh you know you see different sort of it does matter right like how much how much um how long is that lever you know i guess it's kind of a question um but uh yeah i um i'm struggling a little bit to come up with with more examples but i can i can definitely drop you some for the show notes if you want cool this sort of brings up the topic that vitalik writes about and talks about which is one token one vote right um and we're seeing kind of indexes going okay one two one vote like let's just be the let's have the most votes let's have the most tokens kind of thing and that's really the idea of medical

governance but that begins to change when you start to do things like what optimism did which is we're gonna have sort of this two-pronged approach to governance where we're gonna have these like i think they're sold-out nfts on one side uh and then they have the tokens on the other side for like sort of the the community as well to vote and like they just hold different powers to actually vote for the optimism um dao i'm just curious on your take of like what are you seeing as the best forms or what do you think this goes in terms of governance is it going to continue with this one token one vote or do you like the idea of what optimism did and i think vitalik was one of the people who has been writing about that and like pushed for that sort of thing

um curious what your opinion is on this whole sort of space that's such a such a massive question um i'll try and pick it apart uh a little bit you're double caffeinated right you should be okay you know right um i think that uh i think that one token one vote is a pretty good corollary for what we what we've experienced for the last couple hundred years um you know if you if you buy some shares of yeah i think the first stock i ever owned was pepsico and um there's like 10 shares of pepsico and i would get you know something in the mail every so often that was like you know it's usually a board election you know who do you want the board member to be and i was like i don't even know who these

people are i don't care you know i think one time i mailed it back and i was like yeah vote you know it was like a proxy vote for whatever they recommended and um and that that was kind of my you know that's that's kind of where we're at with with token moding if you think about it um the difference you know we have automated execution of some things which is really pretty cool um but to then kind of skip to where where is it going right um i think the ultimate goal of of these these headless organizations right is is pushing out good decisions um kind of moving through the ecosystem in a way that's sustainable that is gonna um you know kind of just improve improve their

position through time things like that and how do you how do you get a bunch of you know just a ton of individual perspectives to kind of aggregate and then and then move you know move a whole body of of contributors forward or to continue to perform and uh sort of enrich the participants you know if it's more automated things like that and i think there's a lot of answers in there but um i think one of the one of the big ones is that the early design of a system and this kind of gets into mechanism design tokenomics things like that you know a lot of questions that come up are do you need a token you know and um a lot of times the answer is no

um you know you need something you know but but it oftentimes is in isn't a big group of people saying yes or no to everything um i think that that makes a pretty good sort of base layer fallback mechanism you know if you think about um you know a democratic state as a cro as opposed to kind of a democratic organization um you know we in the united states you know we we elect a president every four years you know um we elect our other representatives and that's again it's kind of a representative based system um you know and that's a that's a one a one person one vote thing and that's another really tricky topic with with in crypto and web

three is you know personhood and things like that but um it is kind of that that one to one almost as like the the base layer of legitimacy if if that makes any sense um however the day-to-day you know we don't want to know um you know and and uh you know we want things to go well in general as the as the population that kind of legitimizes these things and wants to push it forward um but we don't necessarily want to be involved in the things that we feel should be automated or the the things that we feel should be delegated um to others and uh so really the question in my mind is how do we push for those automations that we we think makes sense once we hit that critical mass of yeah yeah go ahead and automate this you know um

make the speed limit 55 on highways make the you know so it is kind of that type of conversation within a dow right um are we at a point where we can all agree enough times that this should be automated um and then once that happens do it you know we don't have to come together to decide this every time um you set up standards principles things like that and you start sort of start to move to this this situation where um [Music] you're not you're not asking people for decisions on a regular basis you're leaning on the code you're leaning on precedent but i do think it is important to kind of have that that fallback where you get to say this isn't serving us well you know and then and then you hit that critical

massive scale where enough people are saying this isn't serving us well let's let's go out there and change it you know and to kind of have that ability to put a proposal forward um it's hard because there are again like two token systems there are you know nfts plus you know erc 20s straight nft systems um optimistic governance you know basically you have to put your hand up to say no you know there's whereas right now you know they default to most dow's default to no action action if nobody kind of puts their hand up um so there's there's a ton of a ton of uh i guess again i'll use the word mechanisms to kind of get from a to b that are out there um but what crypto really kind of allows is is the the expression of that um in

really sort of way more robust ways than you know traveling a few days to another city to vote you know 2000 years ago or mailing in a ballot or you know it's it's instant you know you can get consensus you know in in 12 seconds um whereas that just wasn't available to us before um and i'll close with this on on that topic uh i hear there's a lot of i guess push back on you know token based voting given that we we just got it you know this is this showed up a couple years ago and um you know already it's it's you know oh this isn't this isn't the way or it's this isn't going to be the way in the future um i don't think we've even really touched the tip of the iceberg in

terms of what what we can do with with token-based voting um so yeah i do think it's really interesting um it's definitely where my brain lives like i i think about this stuff all the time um but uh i also do think it is it is kind of tricky and you do kind of have to go back to you know kind of go one level down one level down like what what are we trying to achieve um and i think it is good decisions at scale and um you know not everybody's always gonna gonna love the the outcome um but i think when you do kind of zoom out and you look at maybe you look at a dow almost as like an organism moving through the ecosystem um maybe it does get us to really good places because we do get that aggregation of inputs um of

you know that diversity of views that um you know it quickly that you really wouldn't be able to get um you know otherwise if you say hey person you know that we've elected go you know figure this out for us for the next you know x amount of years or whatever well i want to talk about your views on sort of dowse and your idea of i think you i read a thing of you explaining that it's um you look at them not like a business but more like an organism which i think is super interesting and i want to dive into that just one more question on this token voting though uh and the json i think you had a question as well it looked like um one of the things that i noticed in dao's is you don't need everyone well so you

don't need everyone voting on everything right there are some people that are more experienced and more knowledgeable in certain areas and just like in a normal company if it was to do with finance or something you would probably go to the finance department to answer and decide on what the best move is for x if it's a marketing decision you'd probably go to the marketing department yeah in daos what i often see is like let's go to everyone and it's like to me i don't understand why that makes any sense um and i don't know if all dow's do that's just kind of what i've seen and if it's token one token versus one vote like i don't really know how you would even exclude that or change that because it's just if you have the token you can vote regardless of who you are or what your

experience is what are your what have maybe you've seen something different there but like do you think that that's an issue and that's the way that dao should be is just like let everyone in the dow vote or like should dao is be trying to find more ways to get the right people to be voting on the right things if you understand what i'm saying yeah absolutely um yeah there's a ton in that in there but um i think that uh this i'm stealing this term from um from chase chapman but uh really it's the unbundling of the ceo um you know it's it's not necessarily a headless organization it's just you know um as you put it like everybody can get their say if if that's the implementation that's out there you know if uh if uh 60 000 people hold tokens you you

might get 60 000 individual you know views you know thumbs up thumbs down views coming into into a decision um how to make sure that governance is being pushed to the right places as opposed to making sure that capital um is is kind of being moved around in efficient ways man that is like that is the most interesting question of of our time i think because everybody looks at tokens and you know says oh they're worth something you know they have value um i think very few people look at tokens and say man look at all that governance power um i think uh i think that sort of that one token one vote you know type of type of um one of the problems that arises um is i

i think we look at these systems and and uh equate them to kind of the old systems you know like where it's like 51 gets you there um and that's interesting you know for from a whole organization organization perspective um you know where you have to take the whole organization with you with a decision you know is is 51 the right amount you know you sort of get into these parameterization questions um but it's tricky i i think the the best answer i can give at this time is it's something that i really do think whoever is designing the um whoever's designing the the tokenomic system the the governance mechanism for a dow or for a protocol

really needs to consider is are if they're votable tokens are they ending up you know based on natural incentives what people are going to do based on the value conversation are will there be a critical mass of voter votable tokens kind of in the hands of those that are inclined to make good decisions long term for that organization um i think a lot of daos have have tried to solve this problem i know um you know like steak dave versus just vanilla ave you know things like that um it kind of gets you to a place where um you identify uh those that are are sort of intrinsically motivated to or at least have a longer time preference you

know uh you know vote locking things like that um to kind of incentivize those that are that that have that longer term view that are a little are willing to put their their capital and tokens at risk um and and even the other side of that conversation incentivizing those that um that are making those decisions this this question comes up a lot in in uh governance circles but um you know should should delegates uh you know be be paid you know um for voting you know um so yeah it is a bit tricky i know most organizations ceos are the highest paid you know person um i think you'd struggle to find a dow that's that's

pushing out most of their revenue to voters um but you know why not you know and uh but i think we might get there because at the end of the day you know if you're making good decisions you're probably going to succeed um right i think right now a lot of dows are saying hey let's let's delegate this out or let's uh you know move towards a more it's a cringy term but like more centralized model because we can be a little more agile we can you know and we end up you know a little bit more of a republic than a democracy in terms of these kind of web 3 organizations and maybe that's fine for now but i think that the size of the opportunity is so much larger than that to kind of get your individual view automatically kind of passed into uh

actionable you know actionable uh action can you just unpack uh ave steak versus ave vanilla for our listeners for a second there because i think that's an interesting example yeah so basically um you have to uh if you want to vote on ave i might be misrepresenting this so um i'll i'll give my kind of best understanding and um and just couch it as that but um steak dave to my understanding is kind of votable ave and um so if you if you stake your ave um you you get a vote whereas if you just want to participate in the value uh side of of holding the ave uh token um at

that point it's not really uh a governance token um you know you're you're a value participant a value participant and i was i came up with this term uh value lawyer uh a while ago and i know it's a little like i i'm almost making a judgment right i come from the governing side i became a governance maxi over uh over the course of you know my time um but uh there are those that participate for the value and there are those that because they want to you know push in some direction exert influence and uh so yeah it's that and it's it just it's one hop right you're locking up your tokens i don't think ave has like a a time lock type of mechanism so you can you can unstake them and go go sell them but it

it's a signaling kind of mechanism where it's like i'm more interested in hanging on to these tokens and voting than i am in day trading or you know whatever the case may be i think you need to i think there was like a time period for you to unstake like i think it takes like 20 days or something i mean it used to when if they first started staking because i remember i was playing around with it i don't know if it still does that so don't quote me on that yeah i feel terrible i'm like i'm showing my ignorance there's so many systems out there so many different uh full vote mechanisms out there and they do they change fairly uh fairly regularly don't worry i just learned what meta governance was 20 minutes ago so it's all good man we're all learning on the fly here

okay so you gave some great examples there of of of what dao governance needs to think about and i i think i just want to sort of ask you this general question you can take it whichever way you want um of if you were starting a dao or early on in a dao and you were recommending or consulting them from the governance side what would be your your recommendations what would you tell them are sort of key considerations for them to think about i feel like i'm i'm about to give away all the secret sauce of the uh the mel dot eat consulting uh you know tokenomics and governance consulting agency but uh no this is how you get clients

we'll we'll pay while this part of the podcast is that possible can we do that now it just stops yeah if you want to hear this you need to buy this nft to unlock the rest of the podcast why why does it need to be an nft [Laughter] yes it doesn't no i think just some some real kind of high level uh you know future founders please take heed um no i think it's uh i think you really have to think through um kind of a lot of things uh but not not the least of which is whatever the early governance mechanism is um you're gonna have to live with that you're probably gonna live or die on that in the first couple months as a dow maybe you know maybe within the

first year um and and then from there um i think life cycle planning really is one of the most kind of important things that needs to come into come into play when you're um when you're thinking about spinning up a dow and then um and then perhaps even spinning down a dow at those early stages i know uh kyle you kind of hit on this but i do kind of think of dowse as as more more more correlated with an organism than a business and um so explain it for us okay yeah i can go on that little tangent but um i i think that if you think about you know uh two people or a hundred people or maybe even hundreds of

thousands of people uh coming together to coordinate towards a you know a common goal um you know my my brain kind of goes more towards like bees and um you know animals that coordinate but even if i think about the fact that you know um you know the human body is is really it's trillions of cells um you know that it'd be nice to think that all of my cells are so uh you know altruistic that they just want to see you know the the whole of me move forward but somehow um you know these these systems come together they coordinate they specialize um and then uh you know these words come out you know and um i can i can go about my day

um i think of of dows and protocols and um sort of this uh kind of this new new mechanism of uh you know trustware and um you know kind of moving us through through time um as a bit more of an organism corollary than than a company one in that um you know if you look at the blockchain as sort of the just the ultimate in um kind of true data availability um kind of maybe the mempool right as a you know holding state um and then if you think about ai analytics that ability to really kind of look out into the future which you know as humans this is kind of what we do we

we are just uh you know non-stop you know future casters really um you kind of have this uh you kind of have this this new way of of moving um big groups potentially of of humans through time in in really cooperative ways and um in ways that i think we've tried through time right like i mean i i think democracy as a as an institution is just incredible over the last couple hundred years you know um the the fact that you do look at like a democratic country i mean they it is as long as everybody keeps agreeing you know headless you know you elect somebody to represent but their their

legitimacy is derived from from the parts you know and i think it's it's very much the same way like with a human you know like if if some part of your body decides to go rogue which again this this is kind of a disease cancer those types of things um the whole thing can derail um but i think as long as it's clicking you know and working and you can get everything coordinated um you know then you really do have this way to kind of push really uh maybe individually motivated participants um individually specialized participants and again this gets into like um you know sub sort of subgroups within the larger group and kind of how they all coordinate um but uh i'm i i feel like i'm starting to ramble a little bit

but i think that the um i think that that's kind of it is like in a in an organization sense i think we could come together more uh more with that what they call biomimicry you know more more like bees coordinate maybe than like uh than like you see um you know like a ceo with that sort of top-down implementation of this is what we're going to do you know um so at least it helps me to think through it i don't know if it's the most sort of metaphor but it at least helps me get the picture a little clearer sometimes i've seen david hoffman from bankless he wrote an article about ethereum and how he he compares it to sort of like a plant ecosystem and and everything built

on top of it or just plants that are growing and i i love these sort of just mental models for for crypto and web three i think it's super super helpful um but i do want you to go back to jay's question because i think it was an amazing question which is let me bring it back here actually sure because i think you you nailed it one of the lines you just said is and i totally agree dows do have the potential to move humans into a form of coordination like never before right that is i think the big unlock that we all see and we're all so excited about is this oh wow i can work with thousands possibly and i i don't know i i have yet to see um

necessarily like first-hand examples of this i'm only in a few very small dows so i haven't been in dallas with thousands of people but i i think we can all see it right thousands of people working together a common goal amazing okay how do you achieve that though what is what are the considerations what are the frameworks necessary to get there because i think that's where the big there's this huge gap right now right other than other than some protocols where it's such a a clear mission of what they're building so it makes it almost easier to coordinate around something and devs also tend to have more experience i

think with working together in decentralized ways you know github being a great example of that so but what about all these other dowels that we're trying to spin up and how do they create this what frameworks do they use to create this human coordination yeah it's it's fairly it's almost infinite you bring up an excellent example with um kind of devs and github and i i think of the academic world right where there is sort of this this free sharing of of information and knowledge really unlike the business space where it's incredibly siloed and um you know where you almost your your secrets are your advantage uh you know in a in a business sense um whereas that that interoperability and and uh

cooperative sort of ethos is the advantage of most dows you know um but yeah different mechanisms for um kind of coordinating and and moving forward um that's a great question i think what you really hit on there is scale scale matters a lot um you know i think as as an individual you know um it can be hard to get through a day as an individual right when you then partner up right we see uh you know whether that be uh you know small family units uh relationships things like that all of a sudden you have to start communicating um you have to start uh you know um expressing kind of intention

right i'm going to do this thing and then you develop trust um and then from there based on you know common experience and performance you can get to a place where you can scale where you can say okay you know he's done this thing x amount of times like he said he would you know how do we get to a place where we can all kind of say we're going to do these things and you know develop that trust and you know maybe then you have you know a uh a small club or um or small business you know things like that um and then from there you know you get to uh large organizations to nation states things like that um i think that uh blockchain just really powers the ability to

scale those things um without developing the the social layer of trust um you know where without that uh i might not have the same um i might not have gone through the same thing you went through however you know if we're just doing a token vote that that's probably fine um you know so i think it allows us to uh to really kind of um put a layer of trustware underneath almost any endeavor you know that requires human coordination especially if it's distributed um you know outside of uh like geography um you know where we can sit across the globe and maybe talk about something maybe come to

some agreement and then maybe demonstrate that we agree in some way um using using this trustware again whether it's tokens or whether it's you know um and again whether they're they're fungible or non-fungible or kind of whatever that implementation is um i think it's going to get a lot more frictionless as we go um i think that the issue right now a lot of a lot of it in my opinion is these things are really heavy like to go on snapshot to vote to get out your ledger to you know um i think that we're gonna find that there there are probably varying degrees of of kind of transparency and and uh um i don't think everything's gonna need to be uh you know you go and you execute a a vote

that costs gas on chain to kind of prove your point right it might be a toggle on your your cell for for most you know dows let's say right could you imagine if um you know every contributor gets an app and it's just hey guys we're thinking about you know hosting our our uh you know our annual conference you know in these three locations where do you want it to be you know you just it takes two seconds of your day and you know as opposed to you have three meetings about it you all have to go vote you know those types of things so um but i do think it just helps you know it all just kind of helps us move towards these places where we can kind of trust the decisions that are are being made by by a large group outside of governance what are the

things that you think make a successful dao is it communication and being able to communicate especially if it's getting large as you said the whole purpose of these dao is not the purpose but like the big unlock is that you can scale right and you can scale into large numbers and um and be able to work together and coordinate together and so like obviously governance is important and whether that's tokens or nfts whatever we'll we'll figure that out and we'll keep experimenting but i'm just curious when you see hundreds or thousands of people working together is it communication that really matters um is it the tech stack which you kind of said like once you start to like make it easier for everyone to do it just automatically becomes better is it just the community the culture aspect is it just that they have a good mission

um and they're all working towards something specific like is there anything you're seeing that is or you think maybe you hypothesize that that really truly matters here or is it just a combination of everything yeah i just want to say like yes to all of that um in terms of the uh what if i had to give maybe some some order of importance though um i think that having a really solid uh mission you know is is kind of critical um i would say that kind of part and parcel of that is like very principle-based um rules for working together um really the the the thing there is kind of

how do we act absent direction as an organization um you know if i as an individual claim to be a participant in this endeavor you know um how am i representing that endeavor broadly how am i you know how am i communicating with the people inside of that organization um i think that uh you know empathy is one of the greatest qualities that a dow worker can really have is you know trying to understand what's what's happening on the other side of the on the other side of the you know the aisle um and uh and yeah but that all kind of goes down to uh like you said communication um you know and really as i see it you kind of build that stack

through time you know you communicate about what it is you know you'd like to be doing and then you kind of you make a decision and you move on and it's that the ability to trust that decision that you're kind of executing on that allows you to go make the next decision and then kind of move on right um so i think i think that there are a lot of things that kind of come into play in terms of uh you know how how these organizations move forward effectively um but maybe maybe it's like a blockchain corollary right if if you can build that block of hey this is this is what we understand um and this is these are our marching orders um and then you have this iterative sort of okay we go out for a season this is how

we refer to it as a coop and we execute right and then we come back we self-reflect we you know decide how we're gonna move forward for the next six months and we execute right you sort of build that you build that uh that that foundational um kind of trust that data availability um and uh and not only does it give people within the organization confidence that you can do that thing right um that you can move a leaderless organization through time uh but it gives external parties that confidence as well um and then that sort of as an extension of that you really get into external communication you know not just the quote-unquote like inside thoughts of the dow um but how is that dao communicating externally when um when

any participant could be uh could be the person communicating you know or um if somebody comes to you know any dow contributor that maybe just even self-identifies as you know hey i'm i'm you know i'm part of the coop now you know um because i mean that early on in dallas you really do get a lot of that um you know how is the dow presenting right um and i think you get this it can feel a bit kind of frenetic or maybe even schizophrenic to most external parties um but uh yeah communication and communication standards um probably are one of the more important sort of second order things once you get the hey what are we all doing here you know that's

usually that founder level you know design type of consideration um how do you keep the whole thing humming um that is the question it's so interesting because most guests that we've had and and many leaders in the space uh say say very similar things the importance of mission and vision the importance of a strong brand or communication or that internal knowledge of who you are and what you stand for and the ability to go and speak it to the world but yet it's hard to do that it seems to be it's so

uh it's easier to focus on you know i think about simon sinek right it's easier to focus on what you do than it is to focus on why you do it right uh and i think that it's it's that holds very true so it's great advice um but i just hope i hope people actually go do it right because i i think what we see so much is just that focus on all product product products ship ship ship build build build uh and and i'd be interested to hear your take on this the thing i find because a lot of the things that you've talked about throughout this episode have been um almost i've gotten a sense that you would recommend sometimes that there's a pace that needs to be carefully thought of and i think what

happens and i sort of get your take on two sides to pace um what happens within an organization particularly at dao is as you bring in more people pace ex increases exponentially because you just have more people active and people just want to push and it actually it gets hard to maintain pace right so it'd be interesting your take on that and then the other side of that i think is what about the pace of us as individuals working in daos and how do we take care of ourselves well being in this ecosystem and not lead to burnout which i think is a problem that we're seeing a lot

yeah no that's such a really good call out um you know even from a personal experience perspective you know we when when there's really nobody there to slow you down you know as you know there's no standard work day for a dow worker um if anything it's it's quite the opposite i know um you know my discord availability was holistic you know while i was while i was at the coop um and i did try to make a great i my my sort of ascension was through uh starting the newsletter for the the dow and um you know we had a pretty robust uh apac region um you know uh meetup uh and i would stay up you know and stay up you know midnight one o'clock in the morning

to just make sure i was catching that because being in those meetings was just a heck of a lot different than reading a two paragraph summary about those meetings um so kind of staying staying keep keeping oneself healthy like saying okay that i can only help this network if i'm a healthy node in this network really i think is is important um and kind of communicating um kind of communicating out you know uh that is important so the ability of the the whole to kind of make sure that the constituents are staying you know um well well uh fertilized i don't know what the word is i'm looking for there but um you know just making sure that that everybody is

kind of staying healthy i think that that also goes a little bit to kind of what you were touching on before where you know as these organizations scale um there is sort of that constant look and again like the the developer coding away might not be thinking about this um but what what gives these things legitimacy you know is kind of the question you know when you build that sort of like foundational stack that's going to move move these these organizations uh forward um you know on one side you have sustain right you need to sustain the thing um how do you not get wrecked how do you not make the one bad decision that's going to take down the whole dow you know how do you make sure that one person isn't even capable of making one bad decision that can take down the

holdout you know um you see it sometimes you know like if the ceo has a meltdown you know it really affects the company um and uh and again because dows are a little bit permit more permissionless you have to have those considerations um and then on the other side growth you know how do you make sure this thing is pushing forward and i kind of think of that as uh it's like two sides of really the same coin you know um because i i think you end up with that specialization pretty early on in an organization where um the terms kind of suck for lack of a better term like i think if you look at um you know the quote-unquote community manager right of of a dao versus the quote unquote like lead dev of adele

well it's like i know which one i'd rather be you know um but which one's more important i don't know you could you could probably switch out the lead dev and lose a week you know you could you can't switch out the community manager they know everything about how all of it works you know those types of things um so that that question of of sustenance versus growth um one really allows the other but we don't think about it that way too often because like oh we've got the superstar we're good you know we've got we've got banted we're fine you know or we've got you know so you end up in these places where you end up with these incredible um uh i put it like a mismatch almost it can

develop um in terms of the importance of of the various functional areas within a dao but ultimately it all kind of comes together it all it all kind of needs to rise together you know you kind of need to come up through um as a develop as an organization in that way um and really give sort of that proper waiting and importance to the pieces i'm not sure what question i'm still answering at this point i kind of went off there no i think you bring up really like a really valuable lesson around the i'm trying to get the word like the philosophy of growth right yeah uh you know gross for growth's sake isn't always a

good thing and we as humans need to be reminded of that uh and particularly in the space of tech that we operate in growth for growth sake can often you can get carried away in that and so uh yeah i think it's a good reminder to founders and to everybody involved in the dow to just write to write some of these things down and to make and to remind each other of them because man you can get you can get completely completely carried away and then like you said then you're an unhealthy node uh not properly fertilized or not bringing honey back to the nest or the hive i'm not sure what the analogy is but uh but if you can't do if you can't do that then

you know then that then you're not you're not you're not assisting so yeah it's a it's a great reminder yeah no it is it's like i said uh you know it's it's it helps me think about these things in a way that that promotes sustainability um and that helps promote growth and um you know i think that man we're in a space where um there's there's tons of mental models out there but i don't think that there's any that's you know the dow mental model right what's the idea now mental model and um i don't even think we have half the vocabulary we need to really even talk about these things and it feels like we're having a an adult conversation about about dowse and you

know um and again it's like we're having an adult conversation right now i don't know by far the most adult conversation i've had about uh about that so are you are you are you currently writing at all are you trying to create a mental model around this hive concept or do you have have you put anything down to paper i have uh i've written down a lot um in terms of of pulling that together um i'd say i'm at various stages i think one of the i'm gonna admit what i feel is a perhaps a mistake um to this point um most of my writing has been fairly constrained to this point um because it exists within the the index coupe forum so i kept everything fairly targeted i

tried to keep it you know keep it clean if that makes sense right and focused on one organization um i was uh a one dow contributor um you know i we had a lot of uh we had a lot of external relationships so i really got to um you know sample the space i would say but from the perspective of being within um one of the largest thousand in d5 um now you know where to go from there uh you know um who knows but uh i i do think when i kind of look out into the future um [Music] writing is one of the more interesting interesting things um i think that the

communication touch points kind of moving forward are are going to be kind of what to find like i said the vocabulary of the space and um i i told you guys to stop me if i got too laser-eyed about about governor but but here we go um you know when i think about you know early on um when when democratic states were developing um you know there were really sort of uh like influential writers and and players in that space uh when i think about the types of organizations that informed you know what the what the most robust you know democratic states of today are um you know there there were people that kind of you have to write these things down you have to have those

conversations um and i think one of the hardest realizations for me as well like kind of coming into it was it you don't get from a to z you know in a day right you don't you don't walk into the woods for five years and come out in a week and i think that all of this stuff does need to be built on a foundation right and i think it has to be the foundation of understanding and agreement um in terms of how we want to move these things forward um but building building for-profit endeavors that mimic uh sort of the social constructs that we have around you know legitimizing uh group uh rule for for lack of a better would it um is so new uh you know just so so very new

um that clumping together concepts to say okay here i think i understand this in a way that you know um that the world at large needs to see and understand better um so that we can all kind of move forward in a in a better way um i think a lot of us are trying to do that um you know i'm i'm in a ton of telegram chats that have the word governance you know in the title um and a lot of it right now i i'll be completely straight forward is frustration um you know these things are heart you know governance is hard how we organize ourselves is is really hard um and how we how you take just unbound self-interest you know on the scale of billions of people and focus that up in a way that

gets us to a place where we can all you know not just live together but maybe get to the moon or whatever we're trying to do right and uh it's it's a it's a challenge and it's you know it's probably where i'll spend the second half of my life you know digging around but that's a very long-winded answer to i do hope to um to write more in the coming in the coming months well i tell you what once once you have written it and gotten down on paper we'd love to be part of sharing it uh and we'll definitely share it with with our community we'll either get you back on the podcast or we'll promote uh your writing uh because i think that you're really on to on to something that needs to be shared more but for today let's uh let's wrap up

here i've got a couple speed round questions for you and then i want to give you a chance to just uh tell people where they can find you where they can connect with you uh there's always uh there's always going to be people that are very interested in diving deeper into many of these topics which i know we could have today uh so uh but first speed round unless kai are you good do you have any more questions awesome okay uh what is one token fungible or non-fungible that you will never sell ooh ooh that's such a good question hang on let me take a look at my tokens real quick i don't think i don't think i'll ever sell all of her

everything else i think is on the table actually this is going to be such an off off book answer here but um i am a big fan of crypto swag and um along with everything i i managed to buy which is extensive more so than i'd like to admit from the meta factory um that you do get tokens with with that and i almost view it as like it's a it points in a video game more than more than uh who knows if they go to the moon everything's on the table but uh for some reason as i watch those meta factory tokens accumulate it just makes me makes me smile i don't know if i'll ever sell them okay uh awesome sorry so wait i don't even know if i know what crypto swag is what's cryptos like oh it's just it's it's uh uh basically

uh hoodies and all the okay okay that's what you mean okay i wasn't sure if you meant like a token to call it the crypto swag okay i got it i got it but man talk about an idea there you go yeah there you go there you go okay awesome um favorite person to follow on twitter or to follow their newsletter or favorite person to to that you're learning from right now oh that's a really good one um can i i'm gonna i'm gonna immediately say a few but if i had to take just just one um i really like uh kevin owaki um in terms of just bitcoin and um you know governance and just really kind of uh nails it in terms of even the hot

takes seem to be pretty well you know thought out um the other um person um this is a bit nuanced but uh i don't know if you're familiar frog monkey who came at a bank list really it's pretty deeply about governance and um you know and and just in terms of a person i i could talk to him for hours um and then a guy i worked with at the coop uh sean uh sean grubb um is in my opinion like one of the best sort of operators in the space um in terms of uh i i can be a bit scattered i don't know if you've noticed um sean has the ability to like really focus up and um and but also maintain sort of that broad view of uh you know

kind of the importance of of all of these things and what gives them legitimacy and he's put out a ton of good writing um on meta governance and and all of it so i would recommend checking that out if you get a chance awesome uh we'll include links in the show notes to all three of those a final speed run question if you had a billboard which a billion people were going to see what would you put on that billboard wow i'll just i'll note i had no time there was no prepping for these questions um i did have a billboard at one point um earlier uh justin aversano was putting up billboards in miami with crypto plots on them that's right yeah

like my crypto punk at the time was was uh was in miami um so i guess that answers that but um wow if i had if i had a billboard um man that's so hard uh i would say um maybe initiative is everything i i think or you know intentionality is kind of the the gift really that we have i think as as humans right um and just kind of maintaining an awareness around how we're how we're spending our our attention right how what because it is paying attention right um so really i think what i put on that board

billboard is maybe like you know live intentionally you know um you know if you're if you're coasting you're probably going downhill you know so uh yeah just keep keep moving i love it it's a bit of a long billboard but uh we'll make sure it's so big it's a qr code that gets you too [Laughter] amazing okay awesome uh bell this has been such such a delight such a pleasure uh want to just give you a sec to tell people where they can find you uh if there's anything you're working on that you want to let people know about that we haven't talked about already go ahead um yeah so i'm i'm currently in a bit of a uh you know a uh a self-exploration

phase of where i want to where i want to go with all this stuff but uh twitter um e-m-j-i-c-y uh mgc is my my twitter handle that's probably the the best most consistent place to find me uh mel dot e will get you to some of the writing um especially like the index coupe forum things like that some of my thoughts on uh some of the more nuanced thoughts on meta governance things like that um but yeah i'd say twitter for right now is is the best uh the best place to get in touch dms are dms are open fantastic mel thank you so much for coming on the show can't wait to have you back or to share more of your writing as you get get that down on paper uh you're clearly thinking about this the right way and we

really appreciate your contribution to space no likewise i i really do appreciate it any any you know uh any any institution person that really kind of drives the conversation forward and and uh you know provides education in the web three space i think is is really kind of tops and uh and the the way eugens do it is uh in my opinion one of the better ways so thank you and uh i really do appreciate the time and the opportunity and um and uh giving me a home to express these wild and crazy thoughts so thank you awesome thanks everybody have a good thanksgiving thank you listeners take care thank you for listening to web3 academy we hope this helps you along your web3

journey if it does please share this episode and subscribe so you don't miss the next one by the way if you have yet to join the discord community you are missing out this is where all the magic happens this is where we learn where we ask questions where we network uh you want to be in there the link to join is in the description below and finally a quick disclaimer nothing in this podcast was financial advice crypto and web 3 can be risky you can literally lose it all in fact if you invest on account of what we say you probably will lose it all so don't do that in all honesty the point of this podcast is to remove the noise of markets and price and focus on utility and implementation anyway so you should not take any of this as financial advice

thank you friends and see you in the next one