Tag: DAO

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Internet Culture Startups

237 and Crypto-Optimism

As much as Silicon Valley and startup culture claim a kind of techno-optimism, in the wake of the social media partisanship, science skepticism and climate concerns, it feels hard to really dream big. People say catch phrases like “it’s time to build” but we all understand there are limits to the problems we solve in capitalism’s current markets. And no one believes the government can solve anything.

Any possibility or big dream can be clouded by its politics or cultural baggage if you let it. We yell about cancel culture but it’s really a lack of imagination. A kind of giving in to the boundaries of what is acceptable has captured the moment.

But I’m noticing a genuine mood of possibilities in crypto. A levity that believes in wide open horizons. Instead of the long horizon, crypto sees a bright one.

Maybe it’s because crypto’s proponents genuinely believe it will be possible to toss out legacy systems. Crypto is still so new the disillusionment of compromise to human nature, design dependencies or aggregate power seem far away. The problems that plague ant endeavor haven’t become inevitable. No wonder the mood is ebullient. We are genuinely happy in crypto.

You can imagine a world in which the DAO destroys the corporation. You can imagine a world in which artists are paid directly by patrons in effectively priced markets which respect their ownership. You can imagine expensive and exclusive financial products being automated away so even a small independent entity can access the best without bleeding out through a dozen service fees. Everything could still be a utopia.

And while I know it won’t it feels really great to be optimistic about something.

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Internet Culture Politics Startups

Day 232 and Human Being & Citizen

There is a famous line from Plato’s Apology that sums up the central dilemma of human organization. It’s also the title of my favorite college course at UChicago.

Who is a knower of such excellence, that of human being and citizen

Socrates asks us to consider how an individual’s highest calling conflicts with the group. We actually haven’t made a ton of progress on resolving the issue since antiquity.

I’ve been watching crypto struggling with the Human Being and Citizen Problem as governance in decentralized systems because a pressing issue. Much of crypto doesn’t really have philosopher kings, despite startup land’s affection for the willpower driven CEO, because a lot still happens in the commons. Open source and all.

I’ll be curious how we proceed and resolve these issues of individual versus group intensives as DAOs get explored. The corporation with its board and executive structure is being pushed back. But we haven’t figured out how to coordinate yet.

Vitalik has been exploring moving beyond coin voting for decentralized projects in recent posts. The incentives for public goods has generally been economic in the crypto space. We coordinate on commons by being driven by selfish incentives.

Gitcoin is working through shared governance structures beyond itself with a DAO of DAO concept emerging out of Kevin Owoki’s Egregore metaphor. Though I’d personally avoid using occult old Enochian terminology (egregore is a shared manifestation come from the minds of multiple people) as no one wants to accidentally manifest an elder god

Speaking of elder gods, we are all fighting Moloch the god of coordination failure. In popular imagination Moloch is usually defeated by a world historical great man. We love the great man theory of history. One visionary dude leader slays Moloch. Humanity gets coordinated! Hooray! Historians generally agree that great man theory is too simplistic. So however these problems get solved it’s probably not going to be one great savior.

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Finance

Day 225 & Explaining DAOs to Moms

My mother is a sharp woman. She’s interested in economics but if you asked her to explain securities law she’d probably shrug. Not her expertise. She did survive our family bankruptcy during the tech IPO implosion she’s got a slight intuition of securities law in the context of consumer protection but that’s about it.

So I was impressed that she was able to sum up the recent infrastructure bill’s attempt to make crypto foot the bill very neatly.

“So they are trying to convince us that people who program computers to run math problems are actually bankers?”

That’s…actually not too far off. She seemed to grok that this was a misunderstanding of the basic technology, who builds it and it’s purpose. She was glad the amendment didn’t pass. Clearly people who build computer applications are not the same as the guy at Charles Schwab who looks after her retirement account.

We were discussing it, as I was trying to explaining PR DAO and why I wanted to help organize an activist group of folks whose purpose was execute public relations campaigns to tell stories about crypto. I explained to her that rather than having a bunch of executives who make decisions we would write a set of rules that automatically determine how we make decisions. Those rules would let all members of the organization vote on how we wanted to deploy our assets and pursue our agenda. She liked the tag line “rules not rulers” a lot. She’s pretty into freedom. A smart contract was pretty intuitive to my mom.

Where she got confused was the governance tokens. Not how they worked. Again it was intuitive to her that depending on what you contributed and how invested you were in the organization that you would a different say in what got done. Maybe each token represents one vote. Maybe some people have more votes because they are more invested. Presumably we figure that out in our smart contract. What she didn’t get was why the government thinks a voting mechanism is a security.

“So the government treats the way your group organizes decision making as if those little voting symbols were stock in IBM? That’s fucking stupid”

Now granted my mother probably can’t explain what a security is (she’s got the basic idea that they are like a type of money and Boomers like to own stocks). She gets why they are regulated the way they are in a general sense. She’s lost money on badly governed companies. So sure it’s fine that the government has some rules for that sort of thing.

But even to a lay person like my mom it seems pretty clear that something meant to represent ownership in a money making enterprise and something meant to help organize voting and decision making are separate ideas. She seemed to think maybe they ought to distinguish between the two ideas. Because you know the last time we came up with clever ideas like the corporation the whole world changed. Evolving them again to be autonomous could make for the same level of change. If my mom got that in a half an hour phone call seems like maybe the professionals at the SEC could work it out too.

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Finance Internet Culture

Day 220 and Crypto’s Publicist Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about my proposal to create an activist DAO to engage in public relations for crypto. The goal of the organization would be to create a groundswell of support for the space, it’s values, and opportunities as well as engaging in support for a more positive regulatory environment.

If you would like to hear more about why I think it is time for the wider decentralized crypto community to engage in a public relations and media campaign please see my post yesterday. Today I am putting down further notes on what I think our values and priorities might be. As always, this blog is a work in progress so consider this my thoughts as of now that are open to being edited and changed.

What kind of values are crucial in a PR or communication DAO or interest group?

  • Open
  • Participatory
  • Trustless

It’s important that whatever we do on behalf of crypt it must be done in the spirit of the space and why so many disparate types of people believe in its values. While there may be structures like executive teams, core teams, board members and studios and contractors to execute on our mission we want to use the tools and transparency of crypto.

But to what purpose are we organizing? We will create content and engage in conversations to shape media narratives and public sentiment aimed at promoting the positive elements, potential, and impact of crypto.

How will we do this? We will hire publicists to promote our stories in mainstream media along with commissioning content meme-ers and creators to share opinions. We will engage with spokespersons to share talking points created from the priorities of the community. We will place our content, from memes to editorials, on our own properties as well as in supporting communities and member publications.

I expect I’ll be doing quite a bit more note taking and research. If you want to be a part of this effort I’ve started a shared Google doc for collaboration. Email me Julie @ chaotic dot capital or DM me @ AlmostMedia. This won’t be built in a day but together we can push it forward.

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Finance Internet Culture Media Politics

Day 219 and Crypto’s Publicist

Most industries have interest groups. Publicists, lobbyists, and spokespeople weave together stories, talking points and preferred legislative agendas. Anyone or any group is free to discuss why their preferred business or issue is worthwhile and convince others of their view. We have a marketplace of ideas. Sure, not all interests are good but anyone is free to promote what they believe in. So why aren’t we doing anything for our cause in the crypto community? I say it’s time crypto had a publicist.

Not every country allows for this. The crypto community has an obligation to recognize that when we fight for our own interests it isn’t just we who benefit. The entire world benefits from open, decentralized and permission-less systems. What we do benefits everyone who wants to live in a freer world. It’s time crypto had our own activist DAO to protect and promote our values.

I am proposing the formation of an activist DAO promoting the use of crypto. Our goal is to advocate for positive popular culture narratives about crypto. We vote on our issues, stories and key initiatives through the DAO’s native governance tokens. The DAO will hire publicists and communication professionals to promote our stories in mainstream media along with commissioning content meme-ers and creators to share opinions. Policy is crucial but public perception is faster and pushes the right policy down the right.

As place holder I’ve purchased CryptoCommsCoalition.org. The Crypto Communication Coalition. I am working on a shared collaboration doc in Google Sheets to collect input, feedback, and priorities. Anyone who is interested can participate in our effort. Email me Julie @ crypto comms coalition dot org or DM me on Twitter.

We need DAO creation specialists, legal experts, memers, streamers, Reddidters, governance folks, publicists, lobbyists, fundraisers and a thousand other specialists I haven’t thought of yet. This won’t be easy but it’s an eating our own dog food moment for crypto. We can use our own tools to advocate in a participatory, transparent and open way for our own interests. If banking and big oil can can afford publicists then so can we. gmi.