Speaker 1: Most things don't need to live on the blockchain, most
Speaker 1: things don't need to be crypto based. But in a
Speaker 1: world where that technology provides real value to that organizing
Speaker 1: structure that I think adao is a really great thing
Speaker 1: to explore in terms of how you can create fundamental
Speaker 1: transparency and sort of value cruel to people who participate
Speaker 1: in that network. Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day,
Speaker 1: a podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a
Speaker 1: legal status. This season is all about how we practice democracy,
Speaker 1: what can we get rid of, what can we invent,
Speaker 1: and how do we change the culture of democracy itself.
Speaker 1: We're leaving the theoretical clouds and hitting the ground with
Speaker 1: inspiring examples of people and institutions that are showing us
Speaker 1: new ways to govern ourselves. Way back in the year
Speaker 1: two twenty one, I tried to buy an original copy
Speaker 1: of the United States Constitution. Okay, me and thousands of
Speaker 1: other people tried to buy the Constitution. I was part
Speaker 1: of this group called Constitution Doo. DOO stands for a
Speaker 1: decentralized Autonomous Organization, and it was formed by a few
Speaker 1: dozen people who wanted to bid on the nation's founding document.
Speaker 1: It was essentially a crowdfunding campaign where anyone who was
Speaker 1: interested could pledge cryptocurrency to the bid and by doing so,
Speaker 1: have a say in what would happen with the document
Speaker 1: if we won. So very nerdy, but people got into it.
Speaker 1: Constitution Dow raised nearly fifty million dollars in a week.
Speaker 1: We did get beat at the auction, and in hindsight
Speaker 1: it was pretty obvious. You don't enter an auction with
Speaker 1: everybody knowing how much money you're willing to pledge. But
Speaker 1: the energy around it was amazing and it was cool
Speaker 1: to be a part of this flash mobby group purchase
Speaker 1: of a piece of US history. And it's not just
Speaker 1: Constitution loving freaks who are into DAOs. They vary in use,
Speaker 1: in membership, and in purpose, and to me, they give
Speaker 1: us a way to use digital tools to structure an
Speaker 1: essentially online cooperative model of self governance. The thing that
Speaker 1: makes DAOs different from your typical company or nonprofit or
Speaker 1: coop is that they're built on blockchain technology. Yes, blockchain.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to have to say this word to you.
Speaker 1: I know you've heard of it and it probably makes
Speaker 1: you think of people coming to take your money. I'm
Speaker 1: not here to steal your money. There's no tokens, there's
Speaker 1: no FTX schemes, there's nothing like that. Okay, I don't
Speaker 1: believe we need to financialize all human activity or speculate
Speaker 1: on fake Internet money to feel like we're making progress.
Speaker 1: But underneath the flashy headlines of fraud, there is a
Speaker 1: technology worth understanding. Blockchain is a form of relatively secure
Speaker 1: and radically transparent storage. You can think of it as
Speaker 1: a database that can be used to store financial transactions,
Speaker 1: but also transactions like votes or even moves in a
Speaker 1: video game. There's almost no limit to what you could
Speaker 1: store in it, and when we think about citizening and
Speaker 1: self governance, a DOW is an attempt to create this
Speaker 1: kind of human organizational layer on top of that blockchain
Speaker 1: with some of the same principles. The blockchain creates transactional transparency,
Speaker 1: and the participation of people through a DOW helps secure
Speaker 1: and increased trust in the overall operation. The code itself
Speaker 1: doesn't make those things happen, but it can help ensure
Speaker 1: Collective self governing groups like neighborhood cooperatives aren't new, but
Speaker 1: given how much time we're collect actively spending in technological spaces.
Speaker 1: It's worth asking, can we design systems in the digital
Speaker 1: world where we can truly practice collective decision making and
Speaker 1: resource sharing better than what we've seen done in the
Speaker 1: physical world. Alex Jang has been asking this question for
Speaker 1: a while. Alex is the mayor of Friends with Benefits now.
Speaker 1: Friends with Benefits, or FWB for short, is a doubt
Speaker 1: that's essentially an online club with thousands of members. Those
Speaker 1: members decide what those benefits are and how to manage
Speaker 1: their collective financial resources. Basically, FWB is a chat room
Speaker 1: with a bank account. Think about a subreddit you're really
Speaker 1: invested in, or an old Aowell chat room. Think of
Speaker 1: those structures, but this time they've got a treasury and
Speaker 1: some voting mechanisms attached. And with those new features, you
Speaker 1: can do so many more things than just chat activities,
Speaker 1: like funding projects, supporting artistic innovation, and organizing events and meetups.
Speaker 1: The list goes on. Dows like FWB are a fascinating
Speaker 1: place for us to learn some of the ways we
Speaker 1: might citizen in the future, and they can give us.
Speaker 1: They give me a little hope that when it comes
Speaker 1: to our digital spaces, we can still define community for ourselves.
Speaker 1: We don't have to subject ourselves to these manipulative attention
Speaker 1: extraction platforms. Investing in online spaces doesn't have to mean
Speaker 1: divesting from our communities and our democracy. In fact, it
Speaker 1: could mean the opposite. So I met up with Alex
Speaker 1: over Zoom along with our virtual audience to learn how
Speaker 1: we can upgrade our virtual citizening after the break, Alex
Speaker 1: Jang on the benefits of doos and the potential of
Speaker 1: creating digital spaces instead of being consumed by them. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about web three and dows today, and
Speaker 1: just very briefly, web threes, like the allegedly new version
Speaker 1: of the Internet which has users not just being users
Speaker 1: but also owners, are the platforms that we are a
Speaker 1: part of. Alex Jang is an advocate for how Web
Speaker 1: three technology can help propel culture and large scale human
Speaker 1: coordination forward. He's the de facto mayor at Friends with Benefits,
Speaker 1: a crypto enabled cultural membership and community cited by The
Speaker 1: New York Times as one of the most interesting uses
Speaker 1: of doos right now. I don't know if the time's
Speaker 1: meant to rhyme like that. Formerly, he was the creative
Speaker 1: director and president of Summit Series a global community and
Speaker 1: evinced company, which is where Alex and I met. Alex,
Speaker 1: Welcome to how the citizen. What's up? Super happy to
Speaker 1: be here and good to see you. It's good to
Speaker 1: see you too, it's been a while. I want to
Speaker 1: get your perspective on the big picture before we dive
Speaker 1: into the world of FWB and possible to democracy enhancing
Speaker 1: skills that we might gain through DOO activities. But by
Speaker 1: some estimates there are about ten thousand dows. I want
Speaker 1: to know how you think this structure of ADAO compares
Speaker 1: to a traditional hierarchical company or to a representative democracy
Speaker 1: whereas citizens slash members, we elect decision makers to determine
Speaker 1: our laws and our spending and even what's allowed in
Speaker 1: terms of our actions. What's the DAO structure offer that's
Speaker 1: different from what these other structures were more familiar with offer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. First off, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Love to talk everything democracy and in between. And incredible
Speaker 1: to see this community that you've built here. It's really
Speaker 1: really fun. Yeah. I think to sort of first take
Speaker 1: a step back and like demist defy dows decentralized autonomous organizations,
Speaker 1: because I think there can be a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of baggage and different things attached to it, which really
Speaker 1: is an organization that has assets that live on the blockchain.
Speaker 1: So that is my first sort of clarification point, as
Speaker 1: you cannot be a DOO don't interact with crypto or
Speaker 1: the blockchain. It is fundamentally attached to how an organization
Speaker 1: holds in custodies its assets, which are primarily crypto based assets.
Speaker 1: And then from there a DAW can be structured as
Speaker 1: centrally or decentrally as possible. I call it sort of
Speaker 1: a spectrum of decentralization, or other writers call it, you know,
Speaker 1: being progressively decentralized, no different than you can choose to
Speaker 1: run your LLC or your c corp any way you want.
Speaker 1: I've advised and supported many different DAOs that are completely
Speaker 1: flat decentralized and bottoms up governed all the way to
Speaker 1: ones that look a little bit more in the middle.
Speaker 1: I would say, how f TOBB is where we operate
Speaker 1: as a representative democracy as opposed to a direct democracy.
Speaker 1: And then you have those that are very tightly knit,
Speaker 1: tightly coordinated, centralized leaders, which are DAWs of four people
Speaker 1: and they decide which art to buy and collect and sell,
Speaker 1: and that isn't, as say, flatly governed by its users.
Speaker 1: So I would offer that there is not one fits
Speaker 1: all DOW and dows are can contain a spectrum of
Speaker 1: centralization or decentralization. But fundamentally, why DOW is a question
Speaker 1: many people should be asking because even hearing that there's
Speaker 1: ten thousand of them is kind of frightening because I
Speaker 1: believe many of them shouldn't be a DOO. But a
Speaker 1: DOO should only exist, in my opinion, if one you
Speaker 1: have a cryptocurrency based sort of organization or reason for
Speaker 1: existence and to the need to decide how to allocate
Speaker 1: those resources should be governed via on chain decision making,
Speaker 1: voting and governance. And so, really, where doos become exciting
Speaker 1: to me as I look across five years, ten years
Speaker 1: as the cryptocurrency industry continues to evolve and mature, Is
Speaker 1: that doos feel like a really interesting organizational structure framework
Speaker 1: for Internet based communities that leverage cryptocurrency as ways to trade,
Speaker 1: exchange and create value for its users trade exchange, change
Speaker 1: and create value. So one, thank you for not telling
Speaker 1: everyone to go start a doubt. I just appreciate the
Speaker 1: non boosterism of that maybe right for you, maybe not
Speaker 1: right for others. This common denominator that is blockchain based
Speaker 1: on chain, crypto held assets. I don't want to get
Speaker 1: too much into the rabbit hole, but since we're on
Speaker 1: the subject, now, can you, for those who are not
Speaker 1: deeply enmeshed, give your ambassador translation of the value of
Speaker 1: putting an organization of people like this on a blockchain? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Happy too. So similar to why I was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: not everything should be a doubt, Not everything should be
Speaker 1: on chain or even a crypto based organization. What is
Speaker 1: fundamentally interesting about cryptocurrency? And just for even the room here,
Speaker 1: Like I got involved with crypto two years ago, like
Speaker 1: fairly recently, I met Bartunda when I still thought crypto
Speaker 1: was a total scam, and I was like, this makes
Speaker 1: no sense. To centralize finance component made no sense or
Speaker 1: interest to me. I was formerly worked in sort of
Speaker 1: art and culture and events and community building, and it
Speaker 1: was only until I started to really peak a little
Speaker 1: bit behind the curtain when I started to see the
Speaker 1: fundamental technology of cryptocurrency being interesting. The idea of a
Speaker 1: decentralized monetary system that was sort of borderless was really
Speaker 1: interesting to me. It still boggles my mind that on
Speaker 1: a national holiday you can't wire money to somebody when
Speaker 1: they need to receive money. So things like that started
Speaker 1: to became really really interesting. And then as I started
Speaker 1: to apply that thinking of the principles and values and
Speaker 1: tenants of cryptocurrency and how they would relate to other
Speaker 1: industries like culture, civics, community, I became really interested with
Speaker 1: sort of two components. One transparency. I think currently in
Speaker 1: society we're all struggling with a lack of transparency, from
Speaker 1: corporate lack of transparency to governmental lack of transparency. And
Speaker 1: the fact that the blockchain is literally transparent. No one
Speaker 1: can obfuse skate it because it is all hoarded on
Speaker 1: chain and anyone who can go look for the data
Speaker 1: can go find that data and query that data became
Speaker 1: really really interesting to me. And perhaps a world in
Speaker 1: which different organizations imagine if you could see how Facebook
Speaker 1: is spending their money or a private companies were spending
Speaker 1: their money in real time and where they were allocating
Speaker 1: that sort of capital. So that became really interesting to
Speaker 1: me as someone who had been in community based organizing
Speaker 1: movements organizations and saying, oh, how as a community based organization,
Speaker 1: it would be cool to see how that community is
Speaker 1: actually deploying its capital, is it spending its money, who
Speaker 1: is it paying, how much are they paying those people?
Speaker 1: What are they actually doing to One was transparency, and
Speaker 1: then two is what I call value accruel. And so
Speaker 1: previously I'd worked a lot in various different art and
Speaker 1: culture entertainment spaces, and I was always really upset by
Speaker 1: how artists seem to be creating a lot of value
Speaker 1: but not capturing a lot of that value. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I just I want to interject all that point. So
Speaker 1: many of us have heard, felt and lived with the
Speaker 1: consequences of being the product in a digital perspective on
Speaker 1: a Twitter, Facebook, corporate owned thing, and we're just kind
Speaker 1: of feeding some economic machine that values not being returned
Speaker 1: to us in any tangible way we can connect with
Speaker 1: our own friends. Yeah, but they're monetizing that and making
Speaker 1: money off of that. And certainly art has been rife
Speaker 1: with that kind of exploitation of value, and so did
Speaker 1: the concentration of it. So continue with the point I
Speaker 1: would just so enthusiastic I had to jump in there
Speaker 1: on the value point. Yeah, No, I totally agree I mean,
Speaker 1: we know that whole narrative of the platform sort of
Speaker 1: monetizing it via advertising models, and I just became really
Speaker 1: interested in how creators, unlet's just use that big bucket,
Speaker 1: whether it's someone writing on social media and creating content,
Speaker 1: to a visual artist or a musician, that value that
Speaker 1: they're bringing to an organization or to a platform, how
Speaker 1: that value could actually accrue to the edges of that
Speaker 1: network versus just the central owners of that specific platform.
Speaker 1: And I saw that in both massive social media platforms
Speaker 1: but also community projects that had really great intentions, but
Speaker 1: seeing how as a community began to grow, ultimately the
Speaker 1: organization the owners were capturing a majority of that value
Speaker 1: as opposed to the actual contributors of that specific community
Speaker 1: or movement. And so it became an interesting thought experiment
Speaker 1: in the beginning of me and my sort of partners
Speaker 1: where we were all exploring and cloudbrators of if cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: could store financial value, could it store cultural value right,
Speaker 1: and could that cultural value be translated financially to actually
Speaker 1: reward people who are bringing them full selves and their
Speaker 1: and bringing value to the table as it relates to
Speaker 1: a social media network or as it relates to a
Speaker 1: club scene in Bushwick. It was both similarly interesting to me.
Speaker 1: And that's how Friends with Benefits essentially it was created,
Speaker 1: was a social network that was community owned and where
Speaker 1: value could accrue to the people who brought their ideas,
Speaker 1: their artistic expression, their connections, their full selves into a
Speaker 1: membership club or network, and could that value be captured
Speaker 1: equally across the board. Bravo, I am signing up for
Speaker 1: no longer paying cover charges at a club, but making
Speaker 1: the club pay me because I'm bringing cool there, he goes,
Speaker 1: and now who's in charge? Let me see your ID bouncer.
Speaker 1: Friends with Benefits. It's a great transition, and FWB has
Speaker 1: been called this group chat will a shared bank account,
Speaker 1: decentralized SOHO house, this global VIP private club with a
Speaker 1: lot of cultural influencers amongst its membership. Can you give
Speaker 1: me more about the history of it and why you've
Speaker 1: described it in these ways, especially on this point around
Speaker 1: cultural compensation, you know, as a premise for this particular gathering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so the origin stories are actually you know, quite experimental
Speaker 1: and accidental, as I find with most fun scenes or
Speaker 1: things that weren't too serious in the beginning. I mean,
Speaker 1: even the name of our organization, FWB, you know, is
Speaker 1: all sorted as a joke. Trevor mcfederis the founder who
Speaker 1: I've been friends with for quite some time. Has been
Speaker 1: sort of a really interesting sort of creator and entrepreneur,
Speaker 1: and he's always sat at the interesting intersections of sort
Speaker 1: of culture and new media technology, and so he was
Speaker 1: particularly interested in this concept of cultural capture in terms
Speaker 1: of value, and over the course of a weekend, he
Speaker 1: created the FBB token as a joke and sent it
Speaker 1: out to a bunch of his friends. I was one
Speaker 1: of those friends, and there was like twenty or thirty
Speaker 1: of us hanging out in this group chat that at
Speaker 1: the time it was tiny or minuscule. And this was
Speaker 1: all during COVID, and so all of us were locked
Speaker 1: in at home, all of us were bored, and all
Speaker 1: of us were asking questions about what is crypto? What
Speaker 1: is Web three? What are NFTs? This was right when
Speaker 1: the boom of crypto started to sort of occur and evolve,
Speaker 1: and we were all in this room together essentially making
Speaker 1: sense of what was happening together. And when we started
Speaker 1: to see was a couple interesting things. One we saw
Speaker 1: that people then began to feel a stronger sense of
Speaker 1: ownership by holding the FTBB token and feeling a real
Speaker 1: sense of pride over the network, that they began to
Speaker 1: propose ways to evolve and change the network. You know,
Speaker 1: I had this early saying of like when you see
Speaker 1: trash on the ground, pick it up. We started to
Speaker 1: see that happened really organically. You know, Hey, let's add
Speaker 1: this channel, Hey, let's remove that channel. Hey, let's put
Speaker 1: in a code of conduct early so we can avoid
Speaker 1: issues of X y Z ahead of time. And as
Speaker 1: someone who's been involved in lots of different community projects
Speaker 1: and also social networking projects, I was like, this kind
Speaker 1: of behavior feels different the early adopters of an online network.
Speaker 1: That felt very similar, a sense of pride, a sense
Speaker 1: of identity attached to sort of an online cohort. But
Speaker 1: what felt different here was an actual sense of ownership
Speaker 1: in terms of, Okay, this actual token, this asset that's mine,
Speaker 1: is custodied by me, is actually both my entrance into
Speaker 1: this experience and also a thing that gets to grow
Speaker 1: over time as more value is sort of being created.
Speaker 1: And that sort of collectivism was the thing we wanted
Speaker 1: to experiment with in a digital space. And so then
Speaker 1: the story is quite you know, twenty people, thirty people,
Speaker 1: one hundred people, five hundred people. And then by then
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, this is really interesting. I sort
Speaker 1: of want to step into more of a leadership role
Speaker 1: here because it was me and seven other people sort
Speaker 1: of contributing. And that was when I sort of stepped
Speaker 1: into my role as the mayor sort of you know,
Speaker 1: elected myself and a core team into this role. And
Speaker 1: the first thing I'll say, which I think is a
Speaker 1: fun conversation for this group here in terms of its
Speaker 1: adjacency to sort of urbanism and civics, is you know,
Speaker 1: wanting to be really clear that my role was not
Speaker 1: as a CEO, but was as a mayor, and then
Speaker 1: I'm here to sort of represent the people. And I
Speaker 1: thought that fundamental shift in that leadership role would plant
Speaker 1: the seeds for an online community or social network platform
Speaker 1: to be actually built people first as opposed to platform first.
Speaker 1: And so that sort of kicked off. How FTERBB has
Speaker 1: been sort of governed today and now it's a six
Speaker 1: thousand person, you know, membership community organization. It's a community
Speaker 1: owned social network where funding projects across the network within
Speaker 1: the community. We've thrown hundreds of events all over the
Speaker 1: world organized by community members who received tokens as compensation
Speaker 1: for organizing those events, from gallery tours to coffee tasting
Speaker 1: to club nights in Paris, to building our own social software,
Speaker 1: our own products, and in our own physical goods like
Speaker 1: apparel and merchandise and CpG, with all of that value
Speaker 1: accruing back into that shared bank account sort of no
Speaker 1: different than like almost like an ip or like a franchise,
Speaker 1: where where value sort of flows back that shared treasury,
Speaker 1: and that shared treasury you know, is a reflected This
Speaker 1: is a question and a kind of checking my own understanding.
Speaker 1: I join, I pay to join, and I pay in
Speaker 1: the form of these tokens that I hold. So as
Speaker 1: I bring value to the community, the value of my holdings,
Speaker 1: my ownership stake also goes up. Is that the kind
Speaker 1: of mutually beneficial economic theory behind this? Yeah, why do
Speaker 1: you care so much about the culture part, mister mayor,
Speaker 1: And I want to come back to the mayor in
Speaker 1: the election point in just a second, But how are
Speaker 1: you defining it and what does that mean for you
Speaker 1: in terms of the currency here culture like capital c
Speaker 1: like at large, the community's culture. The idea that FWB
Speaker 1: itself is built around music, around arts, around these cultural
Speaker 1: things where there are many dows which are built just
Speaker 1: around the idea of the token itself totally totally right,
Speaker 1: or they're organized to purchase something like that constitution dow,
Speaker 1: which I was also a part of because I thought
Speaker 1: it was weird and fun. So culture is the focus here?
Speaker 1: What yeah? I mean? I think first off, community that
Speaker 1: comes together organically and experimentally often has like threads that
Speaker 1: connect it without it even being like an explicit manifesto
Speaker 1: or mission statement. Right. I think we all came together
Speaker 1: because all of us worked in cultural spaces, and I
Speaker 1: think to date the crypto narrative has been heavily dominated
Speaker 1: via financialization speculation and this you know ico boom and
Speaker 1: by this token and number goes out initial coins offerings,
Speaker 1: and we were all, like, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: us also our technologist were interested in technology, not cold
Speaker 1: hard technology, but how technology can perhaps enhance human connection
Speaker 1: and human experiences. And while this crypto boom was happening,
Speaker 1: we all just became interested like can this actually accentuate
Speaker 1: these cultural spaces that we all sort of came from.
Speaker 1: And so that's sort of like one track that we're interested. Okay, fundamentally,
Speaker 1: how does this technology impact our industries was where this started.
Speaker 1: And the second, I think the more sort of like
Speaker 1: meta angle of it is a lot of us have
Speaker 1: been frustrated because we've participated in many different cultural spaces,
Speaker 1: from those early nightclubs or bar scenes in certain neighborhoods
Speaker 1: that then became overly gentrified once high rise commercial development
Speaker 1: and real estate agents came in and q the Williamsburg narrative.
Speaker 1: And we've all been a part of those various different
Speaker 1: stories and those fifteen year movements and were interested in
Speaker 1: perhaps new mechanics or ways where those early artists could
Speaker 1: actually capture some of that value on that gentrification curve,
Speaker 1: and interested in does that same curve apply in digital spaces.
Speaker 1: And so we were really interested in, like, clearly, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a role for culture in crypto. At
Speaker 1: that moment, there wasn't quite one yet. Everyone participating in
Speaker 1: crypto was heavily financially oriented, and NFTs really became the
Speaker 1: first framework where culture could enter crypto. Artists could actually
Speaker 1: create digital artwork and have that be stored on chain,
Speaker 1: and we were just the community layer on top of that.
Speaker 1: Movement that saw a need to connect creators, technologists, developer
Speaker 1: subject knowledge experts, people who were first timers, and to
Speaker 1: create a fun space of camaraderie where folks could learn,
Speaker 1: share and exchange knowledge together while also playing with the
Speaker 1: fundamental technology itself. So yeah, so you've got a culturally
Speaker 1: oriented membership club where the value of that collective is
Speaker 1: more formally recognized than others and maybe more fairly distributed
Speaker 1: than the historical analogies were often familiar with. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'll add the last point, which I think it helps
Speaker 1: click it for a lot of people, is those tokens
Speaker 1: beyond value cruel are also the fundamental way you vote
Speaker 1: in the network. So it's how you're able to put
Speaker 1: up a proposal to fund an artist in residency program.
Speaker 1: It's how you're able to vote on how we want
Speaker 1: to change the network. Recently, community members proposed actually merging
Speaker 1: two membership tiers because they were unsatisfied with one of
Speaker 1: the membership tiers and they said, this is actually a
Speaker 1: lackluster experience, and we want to propose merging these two
Speaker 1: experiences together. And that was brought up by a community
Speaker 1: member that went to a very contentious debate and it
Speaker 1: passed and it's been implemented, and so it's one of
Speaker 1: those is where how I think about it is, imagine
Speaker 1: if the first thousand users or Facebook could actually weigh
Speaker 1: in on the advertising model. That's how I approach and
Speaker 1: think about this is would that have changed the outcomes?
Speaker 1: And that vote not just being like a pole system
Speaker 1: that actually doesn't care any weight, like Elon running on
Speaker 1: Twitter doing polls all day. That vote is actually the
Speaker 1: fundamental stock or equity or value cruel of that organization
Speaker 1: and that entity itself, Like that became really really interesting
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah, and that part fascinates me as well,
Speaker 1: because merely having money in the system, you know, charging
Speaker 1: for use of the service can give you us a
Speaker 1: greater sense of one to pick up trash. But being
Speaker 1: an owner is a whole other thing. So being a
Speaker 1: subscriber is very different from being an owner and then
Speaker 1: having say in the decision even the structure of the
Speaker 1: thing itself. That's just it's distributing power in this form
Speaker 1: of the practice. Then, as you said, there's a big spectrum.
Speaker 1: What are the other ways that someone experiences that value
Speaker 1: or cruel. I'm a member of this thing, I get
Speaker 1: to propose, I get to vote, I get to launch
Speaker 1: external experiments, and overall the value of my tokens might rise.
Speaker 1: How else there's value accumulation experience by these participants. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think without being corny, corny, it's okay'll be corny. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, an inside joke or a meme inside of
Speaker 1: our community is maybe the benefits were the friends we
Speaker 1: made along the way. You know that I didn't write
Speaker 1: that try to warn me and I against my judgment.
Speaker 1: I gave you the benefit of the j but you know,
Speaker 1: without being corny, I read and I was like, that's
Speaker 1: actually true. Like I think what transcends all of this
Speaker 1: is it's not really about the money. The money, you know, currency, financials,
Speaker 1: money is a is a weird thing, and it makes
Speaker 1: things interesting. It makes things dark, it makes things exciting.
Speaker 1: It places value on things that might not need to
Speaker 1: even have value placed onto them. But we can all
Speaker 1: agree money is interesting and ultimately the community currency is
Speaker 1: a vehicle for the conversation that ultimately drives the connection.
Speaker 1: And that's what's interesting to me full stop, is just
Speaker 1: the people who have met and connected through friends with benefits,
Speaker 1: who have become co founders, who have become business partners,
Speaker 1: who have received funding for their nonprofits, to you know,
Speaker 1: met their life partners. It's it's been incredible to see
Speaker 1: and those are I think anyone who who's in movement
Speaker 1: building or community building, the ultimate like aha moment is
Speaker 1: always when that compounds over. You know, we've been doing
Speaker 1: now for two and a half years, not a long time,
Speaker 1: but to see now full companies that have gone on
Speaker 1: and built incredible things in the ecosystem because they met
Speaker 1: in a chat room is always really really exciting. It's
Speaker 1: not an open community. There's an application process, there's a cost.
Speaker 1: How does one become a friend with benefits? So right now,
Speaker 1: essentially we think about it as a citizenship and tourism. Okay,
Speaker 1: so there's citizenship as in, if you want to become
Speaker 1: a member, you apply, and the community read your application
Speaker 1: and votes on it and welcomes you in. And essentially
Speaker 1: all we're looking for is that you're here and you
Speaker 1: want to contribute. So step one application application, then the
Speaker 1: community votes, and then if that application is accepted, you're
Speaker 1: then sent instructions and a welcome email, college admission vibes,
Speaker 1: and you're onboarded and there's all these new member, welcome
Speaker 1: hangs and all this sort of stuff, and what's the tuition.
Speaker 1: The tuition is seventy five tokens, which I fluctuates from
Speaker 1: five hundred bucks to seven hundred field bucks. And once
Speaker 1: you're in, you're able to go float around our digital city.
Speaker 1: There's hundreds of channels in the discord. We've actually built
Speaker 1: our own mobile app and it has its own social
Speaker 1: feed and so there's all these digital connections. But that
Speaker 1: is a portal into the hundreds of events that are
Speaker 1: organized by the community around the world in your city
Speaker 1: to be able to interact and connect with people in
Speaker 1: real life, as well as getting access to various different
Speaker 1: digital and physical goods, products and sort of services from merchandise, apparel, cold,
Speaker 1: you know whatever, the community sort of making and creating.
Speaker 1: That's what membership looks like. That's what citizenship looks like.
Speaker 1: And that citizenship allows you to fundamentally vote. Let's you vote,
Speaker 1: have a say, put proposals up, and contribute to and
Speaker 1: of all the network itself. Tourism is how you participate
Speaker 1: in FWB. If you don't want to be a member,
Speaker 1: you can actually participate in various different physical events, digital
Speaker 1: events just by holding f TOBB tokens much lower threshold
Speaker 1: one to five FWB, from ten bucks to fifty bucks,
Speaker 1: and you're able to go to various different things that
Speaker 1: are all organized by the community. And our hope is
Speaker 1: that you know, if you like visiting our city, you'll
Speaker 1: eventually want to move here. Who are these members or
Speaker 1: the tourists where what kind of people are signing up
Speaker 1: at this point or have signed up at this point? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there are people who come from a whole
Speaker 1: swath of different backgrounds, but mostly cultural backgrounds are music, entertainment, technology, etc.
Speaker 1: Who are interested in how crypto might affect their industry
Speaker 1: or their space. It's folks who are asking these kinds
Speaker 1: of questions who are interested in the role that this
Speaker 1: might play in it and are looking to connect with
Speaker 1: other people in this space who are here for bigger
Speaker 1: reasons beyond just you know, making a lot of money
Speaker 1: or flipping NFTs or buying tokens. Like it's really people
Speaker 1: who are fundamentally interested in the technology itself and it's
Speaker 1: implications for culture. That sounds very familiar, That sounds actually
Speaker 1: pretty attractive. How much money all got in the bank,
Speaker 1: You got these tokens, You've raised money. Part of the
Speaker 1: whole thing is a group chat with the bank account.
Speaker 1: So what's the treasury like? Yeah, what's cool is the
Speaker 1: treasury is all in chain, so everyone can see and
Speaker 1: view all in real time. The assets that this community holds.
Speaker 1: I think it's about eighteen nineteen million US dollars worth
Speaker 1: of sort of various different assets. And you know, at
Speaker 1: its peak was like fifty million dollars and you know
Speaker 1: about six eight months ago. Okase on the fluctuations of
Speaker 1: the tokens and other tokens that we hold from ethereum
Speaker 1: to other community tokens that we hold for subcommunities that
Speaker 1: have spawned out of FWB. But yeah, the treasury probably
Speaker 1: holds right about in eighteen twenty million dollars right now.
Speaker 1: A value in there, and what in your view are
Speaker 1: a couple of the coolest things to emerge from this
Speaker 1: community from this environment, whether it's a product and app,
Speaker 1: a relationship, a tool, What my dad look like? What
Speaker 1: has that look like? Yeah, let's see. I mean earlier
Speaker 1: this summer, we threw our first community produced festival, which
Speaker 1: was really rad. We rented out a Liberal arts campus
Speaker 1: outside of Los Angeles. Seven hundred community members came down
Speaker 1: for that and we threw a three day sort of
Speaker 1: symposium that featured music from James Blake, Jpeg Mafia, and
Speaker 1: one o Tricks Point Never to talks and discussions and
Speaker 1: discourse from leading sort of experts in the community and
Speaker 1: outside of the community, with a full culinary program and
Speaker 1: wellness program, And it was absolutely incredible and all the
Speaker 1: community members, you know, half the lineup was community members
Speaker 1: who offered up their talents or their skills and were
Speaker 1: compensated in tokens for their sort of contribution. So that
Speaker 1: was just a really incredible highlight of the year for
Speaker 1: me to see this digital city, which can kind of
Speaker 1: feel kind of alien like or foreign or sterile, to
Speaker 1: then see everyone in real life and it totally felt
Speaker 1: surprising and refreshing to meet someone that I had shared
Speaker 1: a digital experience with for the last two years to
Speaker 1: spend time in person. You know, a lot of us
Speaker 1: grew up on internet forums. I think that's also another
Speaker 1: common threat of FWB community members is a lot of
Speaker 1: us were early early you know, music forums, punk forums,
Speaker 1: aol aim chat rooms. You know. Our average age breakdown
Speaker 1: is I would say, like mid twenties to like late
Speaker 1: thirties and so a lot of folks being very familiar
Speaker 1: with forum culture and sort of that now spelling into
Speaker 1: sort of IRL world is an interesting thing that's been explored.
Speaker 1: So I would say that's been an amazing highlight. And
Speaker 1: the one I'm most excited about is just us actually
Speaker 1: building our own social network. So we're in sort of
Speaker 1: like beta mode right now. We've got about one hundred
Speaker 1: community members on there who are like battle testing it
Speaker 1: right now. We're planning on releasing it Q one of
Speaker 1: next year. And the idea as essentially, you know, everything
Speaker 1: to date has been run on top of a discord.
Speaker 1: Discord is essentially run platform comes with its fair share
Speaker 1: of challenges. It's very hard to hit that learning curve
Speaker 1: of how do you filter through hundreds of channel yeah,
Speaker 1: completely synchronous messages with no seemingly order to the chaos,
Speaker 1: and it's like slack on cocaine. It's like slack on coke, Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: exactly with thousand and you can imagine that with thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of people chatting every single day, you get
Speaker 1: tagged in something and you can't find it. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: so after serving the landscape and trying out a couple
Speaker 1: different solutions, our community decided to build our own, so
Speaker 1: we've been building sort of our own mobile app experience
Speaker 1: that is actually primarily sort of image base for now
Speaker 1: and allows for the community to share almost like an
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok, share content within this community. That also
Speaker 1: aggregates all the events happening in our community as well
Speaker 1: as all the profiles so everyone can connect and add friends,
Speaker 1: as well as the governance so inside of the app
Speaker 1: itself you can put proposals up to change and evolve
Speaker 1: the network itself, which is also such an for me.
Speaker 1: It's an easy lead to go from what if that
Speaker 1: were the experience in my other social networks and it's
Speaker 1: the missing piece. Those decisions are being made but by
Speaker 1: invisible committees that I have really no sway over, more
Speaker 1: of a bid, every choice to join or not to join. Okay, Alex,
Speaker 1: you're the mayor. You've used the word city like thirty times.
Speaker 1: You said you elected yourself, which sounds like a dictator.
Speaker 1: Just frame this for me about what does it mean
Speaker 1: for you to be the mayor and do this facilitation
Speaker 1: that you've described, and how does the city metaphor apply
Speaker 1: In a little bit more detailed to f TOVV. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it all started when this was sort of being
Speaker 1: built and we were all in real time like asking
Speaker 1: ourselves like what is this. Every day new people were joining,
Speaker 1: you know, Press loves to kind of put their stamp
Speaker 1: of approval or disapproval on things, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: the narrative was to centralized soho house, which you can
Speaker 1: clearly see why a lot of us were eye rolling
Speaker 1: to that and being like, that doesn't totally feel like
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do here. Instead, we were interested in,
Speaker 1: really like, what does an online community on steroids look like?
Speaker 1: Like this felt more like a subreddit that had its
Speaker 1: own economy than like a member's club that was like
Speaker 1: about eating forty dollars salmons and you know, schmoozing. We
Speaker 1: were more interested in, just like, what is an online
Speaker 1: community that actually builds its own economies look like? And
Speaker 1: someone in the community actually said, FWB isn't actually a
Speaker 1: company or a Deessentiliz solo house. FWB is a city
Speaker 1: that isn't physically distributed yet, and that for some reason clicked.
Speaker 1: We were on a town hall with hundreds of us.
Speaker 1: We do town halls every month. Where we talk about
Speaker 1: issues in the community, and we all ask ourselves, wait,
Speaker 1: this totally is like a city, just abstract away the
Speaker 1: physicality of it. Yeah, like we are a city in
Speaker 1: that if you were to ask what type of person
Speaker 1: does New York City attract? We could all clearly, you know,
Speaker 1: break down stereotypes or types of people that thrive in
Speaker 1: New York But you cannot pinpoint one user of New
Speaker 1: York City and so people who like pain, people who
Speaker 1: love pain exactly, massacists and so and so. For us,
Speaker 1: we were like, wait, that is totally how we want
Speaker 1: to steward and build FWB. We want to FVB to
Speaker 1: be open to everybody. Yes, New York City issive. Yes,
Speaker 1: New York City is known for its culture and for
Speaker 1: its food and for its art, similar to f TOVV
Speaker 1: being known for its culture and its art and its
Speaker 1: cultural sort of proximity. But ultimately, New York City is
Speaker 1: what you make of it, as is FTVV is what
Speaker 1: you sort of make of it. And so once we
Speaker 1: started to run through that analogy and we began to
Speaker 1: really explore various different urban theory and urban planning frameworks
Speaker 1: to how we should grow AFTERVB, things started to make
Speaker 1: a lot more sense. So for example, not running AFTERBB
Speaker 1: like a startup or a company that seeks that's everybody else?
Speaker 1: Does that? Everybody? We want? Interesting? The premise is that
Speaker 1: your social network, your digital gathering space, your online community
Speaker 1: needs to be a business totally. And you said no
Speaker 1: one needs to be a city. To continue on what
Speaker 1: that difference feels like. Yeah, and so when you call
Speaker 1: something a business, a business exists to drudge profit and
Speaker 1: profit comes from hopefully your revenue is more than your expenses,
Speaker 1: and then that extra amount gets distributed to owners. Cooperatives
Speaker 1: are interesting because that surplus gets distributed to the entire pie.
Speaker 1: But we were really interested in a city framework because
Speaker 1: we thought, instead of thinking about pure profit, how do
Speaker 1: we actually think about GDP, How do we actually think
Speaker 1: about expanding economic activity of the network. How do we
Speaker 1: actually think about income per individual? How can we think
Speaker 1: about generating opportunities for people inside an FTVV? How do
Speaker 1: we think about our import and our export strategy where
Speaker 1: we can actually import goods and export goods and capture
Speaker 1: fee on those goods that go back to the treasury
Speaker 1: and utilize the community as a cooperative to essentially promote
Speaker 1: and distribute those various different goods or products or services.
Speaker 1: And so we began experimenting with a couple of things
Speaker 1: to test that thesis out. Early on, we began to
Speaker 1: create artwork in the form of NFTs. We had so
Speaker 1: many artists, visual artists, graphic artists inside the community who
Speaker 1: we're experimenting with NFT technology. And Eric, who an amazing designer,
Speaker 1: created a project called Monarchs, which were these beautiful digitally
Speaker 1: generative butterflies. And you know, he had a long back.
Speaker 1: He was the creative director at Essence and Nike, and
Speaker 1: he created this amazing butterfly project that generated three million
Speaker 1: dollars in terms of primary sales, and he chose to
Speaker 1: give f TOWB you know, ten percent of that revenue
Speaker 1: back to the treasury in exchange for the community itself
Speaker 1: supporting and uplifting that artist. That generated you know, close
Speaker 1: to half a million, seven hundred thousand dollars within the
Speaker 1: course of that sale, which then we used to begin
Speaker 1: to fund various different art programs and other experiences inside
Speaker 1: of F TOWB. So, you know, thinking about the idea that, okay,
Speaker 1: how do we actually expand economic activity of a cohort
Speaker 1: of individuals as opposed to primary business models of communities
Speaker 1: to date, which are like recurring subscriptions, were charging an
Speaker 1: entry fee and monetizing explicitly on how many users come
Speaker 1: in to your individual network. So let me pause you there.
Speaker 1: The example that you gave. My first question was like,
Speaker 1: why would an artist run it through FWB when they
Speaker 1: can just launch their thing? But there was a value
Speaker 1: exchange of the kind right promotion distribution marketing, which could
Speaker 1: cost money. Your GDP analogy is really interesting to me,
Speaker 1: and I saw a comment from Tanya Fox and the
Speaker 1: chat Hello Tanya, So I want to plug this one
Speaker 1: in right now. There's limits to the value of GDP,
Speaker 1: right Like GDP doesn't capture all sorts of things. GDP
Speaker 1: is a measure of planetary destruction in some ways as well.
Speaker 1: So how much does your city metaphor adhere to methods
Speaker 1: of city management that we're trying to get away from
Speaker 1: versus more sustainable, regenerative ways of managing city collectively that
Speaker 1: we want to approach and be more like? Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I mean obviously our city analogy is is quite theoretical.
Speaker 1: We're very much not leaning exclusively on running urban infrastructure
Speaker 1: play here. I think it's really just looking at really
Speaker 1: alternatives to running profit in businesses in terms of community
Speaker 1: organized platforms. So it's really less about like, oh, everything
Speaker 1: we do has to follow the city analogy. It's more
Speaker 1: borrowing and remixing components that feel more organic to community
Speaker 1: driven projects. And so I at least believe that if
Speaker 1: your primary product are users and people, there should be
Speaker 1: a way to attribute value and grow value for those individuals,
Speaker 1: as opposed to just purely extracting value from those individuals.
Speaker 1: After the break, what elections and voting on the blockchain
Speaker 1: look like and what we can learn about economics from
Speaker 1: the club. Yes, we talk in nightclubs. It's such a
Speaker 1: great episode. I'm curious about the decision making structure of FWB.
Speaker 1: You don't as mayor impose your will in the community.
Speaker 1: You've talked about people floating proposals and their tokens allow
Speaker 1: them to vote, but high level of view how our
Speaker 1: decisions made and how our proposals floated and voted a
Speaker 1: pun So right now, I would I always say the
Speaker 1: FWB runs much more like a representative democracy as opposed
Speaker 1: to a direct democracy. So we've had a lot of
Speaker 1: roles that have been sort of put up for a vote,
Speaker 1: an election, and then the community votes that person in
Speaker 1: because I believe, you know, tragedy of the comments. You know,
Speaker 1: the whole notion that if you have just like thousands
Speaker 1: of people making thousands of decisions, you know, you kind
Speaker 1: of get a pretty chaotic mess. But if you have
Speaker 1: a thousand people sort of electing a group of decision
Speaker 1: makers with the right sort of checks and balances put
Speaker 1: in place of sort of say impeachment in an extreme scenario,
Speaker 1: to just various different checkpoints along the way, you can
Speaker 1: actually run a somewhat symbiotic, flat sort of leadership structure.
Speaker 1: Because the truth is also a majority of people don't
Speaker 1: want to lead. A lot of people just want to
Speaker 1: be along for the ride. Not everyone wants to like
Speaker 1: necessarily work inside of a cooperative. And so in our instance,
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, a third and a half
Speaker 1: of our roles have been elected in terms of like
Speaker 1: the community as some role where it's you know, whether
Speaker 1: there's the city representatives or they're in specific roles, and
Speaker 1: then other roles are a little bit more evergreen, as
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of like just keeping you know,
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, like a lot of
Speaker 1: this is theoretical and where we are like a two
Speaker 1: year old experiment that a lot of it requires just
Speaker 1: keeping the lights on, you know, our legal team, our
Speaker 1: operational team, myself, like various different folks. Where if I
Speaker 1: was just going up for election every single year, I
Speaker 1: think it would get quite exhausting quite soon. But the
Speaker 1: goal very much is as FTBB continues to decentralize. It
Speaker 1: was started centrally by one person with a founder. It's
Speaker 1: now past leadership hands multiple times. I anticipate my involvement
Speaker 1: in a sort of a mayoral capacity for another year
Speaker 1: or so before another person is able to step in.
Speaker 1: Once we've hit a couple of key sort of legal
Speaker 1: milestones and operational milestones of how it can function, that
Speaker 1: f TOBB can continue to decentralize and be governed by
Speaker 1: its token holders or its community. What does the town
Speaker 1: hall feel like? How do those operate? How many people
Speaker 1: show they're electric? It's I mean literally because they're on
Speaker 1: like a server. Yeah exactly that man figuratively. But they're fun.
Speaker 1: You know, they're there are a chance for us to
Speaker 1: check in, me, to check in with the community. You know,
Speaker 1: we'll throw them on zoom no different like this. People
Speaker 1: are chatting all day and asking questions. You know, we
Speaker 1: usually have some sort of a presentation. It's almost like
Speaker 1: our board meeting where we'll present to the community of
Speaker 1: like metrics, projects, accomplishments, areas of improvement, and then we
Speaker 1: open it up for questions. And so it's a mix
Speaker 1: between a town hall to an Apple keynote presentation of
Speaker 1: exciting shiny products and events and things that have emerged
Speaker 1: from the community. And it's very much round robin where
Speaker 1: we pass the mic around and allow different folks in
Speaker 1: different sort of team leads who've worked on really great
Speaker 1: projects to share what they're working on. You know, from
Speaker 1: our editor of an editorial platform that sort of covers
Speaker 1: news and essays across culture and Web three, and that
Speaker 1: has a really interesting perspective. In POV, it's definitely more
Speaker 1: on the more critical side of Web three, which we
Speaker 1: love in terms of ways it can improve. And it's
Speaker 1: not just crypto crypto crypto, but talking about the downsides
Speaker 1: of constitution dow and how it lost its way, or
Speaker 1: you know, diversity issues of diversity and inclusion in Web
Speaker 1: three and how that can be improved, all the way
Speaker 1: to our product team providing updates. But yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: much like a fun way where we're able to check
Speaker 1: in and communicate information as well as create a space
Speaker 1: where people can just share how their experiences. So you've
Speaker 1: used this representative democracy analogy. You even have town halls
Speaker 1: like physical cities. Do I'm wondering if you also see
Speaker 1: FWB as this sandbox for experiments for ways to practice
Speaker 1: new methods of communal self governance. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
Speaker 1: the whole thing is a massive experiment every day and
Speaker 1: we tell ourselves that, and within that experiment is a
Speaker 1: myriad of micro experiments from like quorum based voting to
Speaker 1: quadratic voting systems. Like we're really much on the forefront
Speaker 1: of exploring new forms of voting mechanics that are beyond
Speaker 1: one person, one vote or one token one vote. But
Speaker 1: instead let me Yeah, I do want to get wonky
Speaker 1: about that, because I think part of the spirit of
Speaker 1: my question is I think so many of us feel
Speaker 1: collectively uninspired by democratic small D democratic practice actually means.
Speaker 1: And so we have our ritual voting experience, and we
Speaker 1: have our built in lack of faith and trust in
Speaker 1: our representatives in our representative democracy, and we are fatigued
Speaker 1: by the influence of outside money and all these things. Cool. Cool,
Speaker 1: So yes, double tap on that one. In terms of
Speaker 1: the decision making tools you are playing with, can you
Speaker 1: define the quadratic voting, define the quorum based thing as
Speaker 1: opposed to just one token, one vote, one person, one
Speaker 1: vote as we know in the outside world. Yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: So trout voting frameworks one person, one vote, Right, you're
Speaker 1: a citizen's sort of registered to your identification, you can
Speaker 1: cost one vote. In crypto, that's a little bit more
Speaker 1: hard because of what it's called civilly resistant, meaning it's
Speaker 1: actually very difficult to verify that one person is actually
Speaker 1: one person, right, because it's one wallet, one vote, and
Speaker 1: so someone can create hundreds of ghost wallets and be
Speaker 1: able to vote because there's no real identification system in cryptocurrency. Honestly,
Speaker 1: no different than being able to spin up dozens of
Speaker 1: fake Facebook accounts to be able to go right, because
Speaker 1: you just create infinite email addresses, create up new Facebook accounts,
Speaker 1: and then imagine that tied to a voting heroistory. So
Speaker 1: that's one person, one vote, one wallet, one vote. Then
Speaker 1: there's one token, one vote, which obviously the red flags
Speaker 1: go off of like, well, if you just have more tokens,
Speaker 1: you get more voting. So then they begin just how
Speaker 1: your current system feels like it works exactly. So then
Speaker 1: que quadratic voting, which is a way to sort of
Speaker 1: de emphasize one token, one vote while still giving power
Speaker 1: to people who have accumulated tokens, because ultimately accumulating tokens
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have to be singularly a bad thing. Many
Speaker 1: people enough to bebe earned their tokens for contributing and
Speaker 1: working and showing up to events, and so one might
Speaker 1: posit you deserve more say in the network because you
Speaker 1: actively have shown up and you've actively been to town halls,
Speaker 1: and you are a valued member of this network. So
Speaker 1: quadratic is essentially a way to create an add weight
Speaker 1: in voting of those tokens, and it allows for you
Speaker 1: to place a level of confidence quadratically into quadrants to
Speaker 1: say this is how much I actually care about this decision,
Speaker 1: And it condenses the level of voting so that let's
Speaker 1: say you have one token and I have one hundred
Speaker 1: tokens on a one token, one vote, that would be
Speaker 1: very stark, and a more quadratic format that might be
Speaker 1: trunk because the weight that you're applying to yours. You
Speaker 1: might your total sum exactly. You might be like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I actually don't care about this that much,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to put on a one to ten.
Speaker 1: I'm going to allocate ten percent to this. But you know,
Speaker 1: it'd be cool if it passes, but my life doesn't
Speaker 1: change if it doesn't. Versus a major proposal, and like
Speaker 1: everything is on the line, like you know, an election.
Speaker 1: We explored quadratic polling with Audrey Tangue from Taiwan, and
Speaker 1: exactly this infrastructure, which just reveals a different level I
Speaker 1: would say, a lower level of seeming polarization. Yes, because
Speaker 1: when you ask by any request and did you get
Speaker 1: binary answers exactly weighted questions and you get weighted and
Speaker 1: nucunced answers, and so counting votes in that way is
Speaker 1: also very interesting. Why, Alex, other than the sort of
Speaker 1: potential scamming of like multiple wallets coordinating to vote attacks,
Speaker 1: what is your incentive to experiment with these methods of
Speaker 1: digital civic participation? Why are you messing around? I just
Speaker 1: think it's fun, you know, I think like I think
Speaker 1: like so much of civics is boring right now and unengaged,
Speaker 1: and like you said, we're all bored and looking for
Speaker 1: new outcomes and new ways to engage with those outcomes.
Speaker 1: And I think for us, like where overall, civic participation
Speaker 1: is probably waning, and the younger kids get, the less
Speaker 1: they even care, it seems, and ultimately we're interested in
Speaker 1: shifting that narrative and that perception of civic participation to
Speaker 1: not just equating to voting in a presidential election or
Speaker 1: voting in a local, you know, district election, but insteady
Speaker 1: voting in spaces you care about being one of them,
Speaker 1: digital being one that our kids are probably spending eighty
Speaker 1: percent of their days and lives in. And so I
Speaker 1: think creating more interesting ways for people to have a
Speaker 1: say in their digital spaces that doesn't need to feel
Speaker 1: so complicated but can feel fun is something that we
Speaker 1: really really care about. So a fun example for that
Speaker 1: would be we started organizing these events through the community
Speaker 1: all over the world, and we thought, wouldn't it be
Speaker 1: fun if we could actually elect city leads to top
Speaker 1: in a little bit more budget to throw bigger and
Speaker 1: more fun events and almost have a little bit more
Speaker 1: sort of jurisdiction over a specific city and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: a little bit more autonomy. And so what we ended
Speaker 1: up seeing was dozens of people apply, submit campaign videos,
Speaker 1: create campaign strategies to become the LA lead in the
Speaker 1: New York lead, in a London lead, in San Francisco lead.
Speaker 1: And then all that was running in a massive election
Speaker 1: where we had people like postering and going on podcasts.
Speaker 1: It was so fun to see and all of that
Speaker 1: to me was just like, I hope this encourages people
Speaker 1: just to even go out and vote in their towns
Speaker 1: and their cities, because clearly you can see how fun
Speaker 1: this is to just give people power and to pick
Speaker 1: your favor in a root for someone on a micro level,
Speaker 1: which I think local is important, and that local, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of just drives more engagement because it feels closer
Speaker 1: to home. Yo, you were singing my tune. I don't
Speaker 1: know that I've ever shared with you that I was
Speaker 1: mayor a four square Like I won an award for
Speaker 1: being the best mayor in the four Square universe and
Speaker 1: I competed with someone for the mayorship of one Venue
Speaker 1: in New York City and Nolita, and we had campaign
Speaker 1: rallies and we both signs and we did. We picketed
Speaker 1: each other's moments, and it just it made civics fun,
Speaker 1: even though that was a sandbox we were playing and
Speaker 1: we had no ownership over the platform plan the main
Speaker 1: technology fun. I mean, that sounds so fun four square
Speaker 1: back then, and like now we're left with these massive,
Speaker 1: behemoth social networks that don't feel fun anymore. So I
Speaker 1: want to build on that, and I'm seeing a bridge
Speaker 1: and I hope that this is where it can go.
Speaker 1: If more people participate in social taws like this with
Speaker 1: the city metaphor rather than the business growth metaphor, it's
Speaker 1: a chance to play around with democratic culture. It's a
Speaker 1: chance to kind of use those muscles of not just voting,
Speaker 1: even quadratically, but contributing. What you described about sort of
Speaker 1: having your civic contributions recognized by attending events, by showing
Speaker 1: up for town hall meetings, by bringing your offerings to
Speaker 1: the community, to participate even economically, and that rather than
Speaker 1: just keeping it to yourself, so resource distribution. I want
Speaker 1: to see that practice replicated beyond the discord server right,
Speaker 1: and beyond the FWB app. Do you see that bridge happening.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this online civic innovation practice can
Speaker 1: affect our offline civic innovation practice. Yeah. Absolutely. I think
Speaker 1: it's all modeled behavior, right. I think if people can
Speaker 1: begin to see that these annas are fun and they
Speaker 1: work and they can improve something, it might restore faith
Speaker 1: in the overall system and structure itself, which then might
Speaker 1: encourage more sort of ripple out effects for people to
Speaker 1: get involved in their own local organizations or their own
Speaker 1: local cooperatives or groups. So our focus at least is
Speaker 1: to really think about, you know, the role that crypto
Speaker 1: can plain culture. You know, we want to be advocates
Speaker 1: of crypto. We know crypto has been cursed with a
Speaker 1: case of really really bad pr and rightfully so, tons
Speaker 1: of scammers, tons of charlatans. It's a very muddled space,
Speaker 1: but for us, we care about being advocates for it.
Speaker 1: We threw an event in New York at Good Room,
Speaker 1: a legendary club in green Point that was really struggling
Speaker 1: during COVID, a bar venue that has been a sort
Speaker 1: of a bedrock of Brooklyn for ten years. And we
Speaker 1: threw a party, and we did an auction with all
Speaker 1: the proceeds to go to that venue and raised sixty
Speaker 1: seventy k in crypto and taught that venue how to
Speaker 1: set up a wallet, had to custody that those assets,
Speaker 1: how to earn you more of those assets that ultimately
Speaker 1: they said helped them achieve fifty cent of their fundraising goal,
Speaker 1: be a kickscharter. Things like that. We just want to
Speaker 1: show people that crypto doesn't all have to be bad.
Speaker 1: It doesn't all have to be about gatekeeping. Isn't all
Speaker 1: have to be about scams. There's people building interesting things
Speaker 1: in this space. It's coming whether we like it or not.
Speaker 1: And we hope to be one of those corners of
Speaker 1: the Internet that uses crypto in an interesting way to
Speaker 1: show folks that it can accrue different forms of value
Speaker 1: beyond just financial and it can lead to stronger human coordination,
Speaker 1: can lead to better incentive design, and can hopefully create
Speaker 1: new digital spaces that are more closely and sort of
Speaker 1: self or community governed than our existing options. I want
Speaker 1: to spend three more hours with you. I can't do that.
Speaker 1: What I can do, though, is reflect briefly on the
Speaker 1: crypto comment as a bridge to the role of economics
Speaker 1: in general. You've cited Wendell Berry, this poet, novelist, environmentalist,
Speaker 1: saying a community to be whole must also be an economy.
Speaker 1: My cards are open, I hold some crypto assets. I'm
Speaker 1: a member of some dolls. I'm also deeply critical of
Speaker 1: the idea that we need to financialize things in order
Speaker 1: to innovate them, while I'm also excited by new models
Speaker 1: of ownership. So I'm conflicted, but informedly optimistically skeptical, and
Speaker 1: hearing that quote about community to be real must also
Speaker 1: be an economy that rubs me a little odd. It
Speaker 1: sounds a little controversial, and I'm like, does it though,
Speaker 1: at least the way we have recognized economy with infinite
Speaker 1: growth and all the harm that comes along with it.
Speaker 1: So can you just explore that a little bit with me?
Speaker 1: What do you mean by that? Why do you cite
Speaker 1: that statement, and how do you think it means we
Speaker 1: should practice community truly? Yeah, I love that question. I
Speaker 1: think we need to decouple the definition of economy from
Speaker 1: like late stage capitalistic American economy. I think economy as
Speaker 1: a definition is just an exchange. And so when I
Speaker 1: say that a community to be whole must also be
Speaker 1: an economy, I do not mean a community to be
Speaker 1: a whole must be a late stage capitalist profit driven
Speaker 1: to tea. An economy doesn't even need necessarily be money.
Speaker 1: It can be an economy of non financial goods. You know,
Speaker 1: if you study sort of like who the author but
Speaker 1: debt the first thousand years, the first quarter of the book,
Speaker 1: like it's the history of debt and how debt was created,
Speaker 1: and they study how most of these sort of groups
Speaker 1: and tribes and organizations of people existed and scaled by trading,
Speaker 1: you know, leila cloths and seashells and various different goods,
Speaker 1: and currency was just the most effective way to actually
Speaker 1: create a ledger of one goat equaling you know, six
Speaker 1: cows or whatever. And I can only speak to the experience,
Speaker 1: I know, as I'm not an economist, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a club kid. Clubs have economies. You're trading and
Speaker 1: bartering backstage tickets, drugs, drink tickets, experiences, sex, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. There's an economy there, there's an exchange of energy,
Speaker 1: there's an exchange of experiences. Because I think any community
Speaker 1: that has actually begun to grow an identity, there is
Speaker 1: always an inherent urge I believe to create, to create memes,
Speaker 1: and I use memes. Is the broad conceptual thing, to
Speaker 1: create shared language, to create culture, and an economy. An
Speaker 1: exchange of those components, whether the financial assets or non
Speaker 1: financial assets, feel incredibly native and organic, an emergent. And
Speaker 1: so yeah, when I quote Barry, I don't mean that
Speaker 1: every community needs to have a token, or every community
Speaker 1: needs to be financialized or should exist to drive profit.
Speaker 1: Any community that has meaning, there are probably ways in
Speaker 1: which that community exchanges things between each other. Whether it's
Speaker 1: a potlock and they all bring you food to a house,
Speaker 1: that's a form of an exchange of value being exchanged
Speaker 1: across one another. Thank you for that update. The book
Speaker 1: is Debt The First five Thousand Years by anthropologist David Graber.
Speaker 1: Y'all did a census, Mayor you did an FWB census,
Speaker 1: and we touched on this. You know. One of the
Speaker 1: pieces of feedback was that the discord was overwhelming, said
Speaker 1: it was a fire hose, And so you're trying to
Speaker 1: solve that, right, you already announced this app and that's
Speaker 1: going to help that out. But do you think in
Speaker 1: terms of the scale that a DOO could get how big? Right?
Speaker 1: Do you think a DOO could work at the scale
Speaker 1: of a nation or a major city or something in
Speaker 1: between a state. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean I'm not a
Speaker 1: huge subscriber of bology network state. I think he can
Speaker 1: be a little bit too techno utopian. But like BLOGI
Speaker 1: Strinivasian who wrote a book called Network State, which is
Speaker 1: digital cities and digital nation states. Look, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: dows could reach that scale, right. I think you're seeing
Speaker 1: dials that have now accrued sixty seventy eighty million dollars
Speaker 1: worth of assets, which could probably become comparable to super
Speaker 1: super small towns. I think it's only amount of time,
Speaker 1: our cities the only amoutter of time before some of
Speaker 1: those dows begin to actually connect and trade with each other,
Speaker 1: forming super dows. I think that's totally in the world
Speaker 1: for But I think maybe the question under your question
Speaker 1: is like, what does that actually look like? What does
Speaker 1: it take to get there? You know? I think ultimately
Speaker 1: anything that reaches the scale of a nation state will
Speaker 1: ultimately become a network of dows. There will be subdows
Speaker 1: as we call them in sort of our space, where
Speaker 1: you have micro committees or organizations that custody their own assets,
Speaker 1: that trade and interoperate with the parent dow organization in
Speaker 1: interesting ways. That ultimately that network itself, you can call it,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, federalist, you know, states versus
Speaker 1: the nation. However, people would want to structure it. Right now,
Speaker 1: it's still super early, and it's still super reflective based
Speaker 1: on a larger crypto economy. But I totally see a
Speaker 1: world of wunch. DOWS can reach very large sets of
Speaker 1: scale that end up becoming sort of networks or nests
Speaker 1: of smaller organizations. One thing that I'm intrigued by is
Speaker 1: I'm concerned about a divestment from the IRL universe in
Speaker 1: favor of online universes. I think that's what freaks me
Speaker 1: out so much about Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse, that
Speaker 1: we're just going to live with goggle strapped to our
Speaker 1: faces and as it eventually, just have like catheters and
Speaker 1: feeding tubes and never leave our shelves. You know, well
Speaker 1: we kind of stored inside, but we'll have all this
Speaker 1: rich life through the screens. I want to see the combination, right,
Speaker 1: I want to see us use digital tools to enhance
Speaker 1: not just our digital lives, but our whole lives. And
Speaker 1: so thinking about DOWS, what if we flipped it a
Speaker 1: little bit and said Okay, you're already a member of
Speaker 1: an apartment complex or a county or a city, and
Speaker 1: as a part of that residential relationship or that physical relationship,
Speaker 1: you get a DOW membership too, to enhance your ability
Speaker 1: to self govern with others. And so you're not kind
Speaker 1: of trading one for the other, you're hopefully using one
Speaker 1: to inform the other. Have you seen anything like that?
Speaker 1: What do you think about that idea of kind of
Speaker 1: a complementary DOW or online governance community rather than a
Speaker 1: substitution for physical community. I mean, that's by far what's
Speaker 1: most exciting to us, right. I think we all don't
Speaker 1: subscribe to zucks Daddy Zucks, you know, metaverse link up,
Speaker 1: you know, goggle Verse is not interesting to us either.
Speaker 1: We've we've always said technologies to accentuate reality and highlight
Speaker 1: physicality and be a lot more high fidelity, you know.
Speaker 1: I always say we live in the metaverse now, right,
Speaker 1: Like our phones are so connected to our lives and
Speaker 1: I can open it at this exact moment and find
Speaker 1: fifteen things to do in New York City and friends
Speaker 1: to connect with immediately and jump into it. And that
Speaker 1: to me feels like some liminal space between physical and digital,
Speaker 1: which is I think the actual definition of the metaverse
Speaker 1: in terms of Dows's applications to real world structures. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that. I think I saw someone in the
Speaker 1: comment mentioned city doos. You know a way that DAWs
Speaker 1: can steward land conservation and preservation. You know, I think
Speaker 1: for us we're very much coming at it from physical
Speaker 1: We're thinking about CANADAO actually govern a decentralized events network?
Speaker 1: You know, is there a way where daals can actually
Speaker 1: reward an allocate capital to people who want to throw
Speaker 1: events all over the world. That's something that I'm super
Speaker 1: interested and passionate about, you know, full loop to the
Speaker 1: beginning of like most things shouldn't be taos, I totally
Speaker 1: still stand by that most things don't need to live
Speaker 1: on the blockchain, most things don't need to be crypto based.
Speaker 1: But in a world where that technology provides real value
Speaker 1: to that organizing structure, that I think a DOO is
Speaker 1: a really great thing to explore in terms of how
Speaker 1: you can create fundamental transparency and sort of value cruel
Speaker 1: to people who participate in that network. You've mentioned many
Speaker 1: times that doos are not required and that crypto is
Speaker 1: not required. I kind of want to emphasize that point.
Speaker 1: In season three of this series, we head on Pia
Speaker 1: Mancini of Open Collective, which has created this framework for
Speaker 1: organizations to collaborate around fundraising, legal, administrative, and offer full
Speaker 1: transparency around all those numbers so they can save money,
Speaker 1: but also show how they're using money, especially if they
Speaker 1: are kind of decentralized organizations like mutual aid societies, etc.
Speaker 1: And don't have the budgets to hire their own lower,
Speaker 1: their own accountant, etc. You know, to what degree is
Speaker 1: the token of requirement versus money of some kind? Can
Speaker 1: it be credit cards? Can it be US dollars? To
Speaker 1: still achieve so many of the goals that you want,
Speaker 1: which is value, a cruel, transparency, and a sense of
Speaker 1: participation beyond some concentrated group. I mean for transparency and value, cruel,
Speaker 1: those are the tenets of cryptocurrency, right, So I think, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you would enforce credit card transparency
Speaker 1: or you know, because those are all managed on centralized servers,
Speaker 1: you can't really look into that unless the company published
Speaker 1: publishes that data, and then there's no way to even
Speaker 1: verify that what they publishes. A hunters and occurate versus
Speaker 1: on the blockchain. No one can manipulate that. That's all
Speaker 1: run through smart contracts. So that's me baritune day here
Speaker 1: with an explainer Tune Day. Smart contracts were conceptualized by
Speaker 1: computer scientist and legal scholar Nick Zabo way back in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, and they've since been incorporated into blockchain
Speaker 1: networks that cryptocurrencies like ethereum and Bitcoin run on. To
Speaker 1: try to be as simple as possible. A smart contract
Speaker 1: is a computer program written into a blockchain, and it
Speaker 1: automatically executes the term of an agreement or contract when
Speaker 1: certain conditions are met. In theory, this eliminates the need
Speaker 1: for intermediaries like my very trustworthy accountant or lawyers or notaries,
Speaker 1: and help ensure that all kinds of contract terms are
Speaker 1: followed transparently and accurately. Now, smart contracts do have limitations.
Speaker 1: You've got to be able to express your contract terms
Speaker 1: in computer code. In the first place. That code is
Speaker 1: tamper proof, which is good for security, but bad if
Speaker 1: you make a mistake in the code or need to
Speaker 1: change the contract because you can't. And there's a lack
Speaker 1: of legal and regulatory clarity on how these contracts are
Speaker 1: treated by existing authorities. So overall, smart contracts are a
Speaker 1: great safeguard in theory, but they're still being worked out
Speaker 1: in practice. Sound familiar, kind of like democracy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: here we go. Anyway back to Alex's I'm having too
Speaker 1: much fun on the blockchain. No one can manipu like that.
Speaker 1: That's all run through smart contracts, So that to me
Speaker 1: addresses transparency value cruel. You know, sure value cruel can
Speaker 1: can be reflected in equity, which has been done in cooperatives.
Speaker 1: That's you know, yeah, that totally solves that, but it's
Speaker 1: very hard to you know, I've invested in support a
Speaker 1: lot of different fractionalized equity companies. You know, we've seen
Speaker 1: so many of our friends raised companies on like micro
Speaker 1: equity fundraises. I think those are great and those are
Speaker 1: super effective. I just think they're very non favorable to
Speaker 1: non US clients, people who don't have bank accounts, people
Speaker 1: who want to engage in it. It is a little
Speaker 1: bit limiting in that capacity as well. So there's a
Speaker 1: large animal in the room that I want us to address,
Speaker 1: which you've hinted at in terms of the scandals and
Speaker 1: controversies plaguing this whole crypto space, and we've had many,
Speaker 1: many collapses. The value of overall coins and tokens is
Speaker 1: down sbf ftx FWTF. Right, there's it's wild with the
Speaker 1: promises that were made in the mismanagement in something that
Speaker 1: was supposed to be transparent and help people without traditional banking,
Speaker 1: you know, a crew value, and the opposite has happened
Speaker 1: in that case, but not just that case, many others.
Speaker 1: You're in this world. FWB is a part of this world.
Speaker 1: What's been the impact of the loss of trust in
Speaker 1: a system that was supposed to be a solution to
Speaker 1: the loss of trust in the system? I mean it's
Speaker 1: a real shame, right. I think crypto really has been
Speaker 1: the subject of really really bad pr for rightful reasons.
Speaker 1: And I think in any space that's so hyper financialized,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of people who flight it in
Speaker 1: to make a quick buck. That's the issue with these
Speaker 1: hyper capitalist environments. It's effect on us, luckily, hasn't been massive,
Speaker 1: mostly because we've always operated in more of like sort
Speaker 1: of a social cultural space as opposed to like a
Speaker 1: purely defy financialized space. Sure, it's made people a little
Speaker 1: bit more hesitant to be like, okay, am I about
Speaker 1: to buy this token right now? Is that actually real thing?
Speaker 1: You know? I've had a lot of people come up
Speaker 1: between the last month and a half. Not FBB people,
Speaker 1: but more just like your aunt at Thanksgiving, who is
Speaker 1: like his crypto going to fully viscrate. Is it even
Speaker 1: going to be a thing anymore? Yes, it'll still be
Speaker 1: a thing, you know. It is going to continue to exist,
Speaker 1: just as a space for the industry to continue to
Speaker 1: evolve and step up and improve transparency. It's communication because frankly,
Speaker 1: what SPF showed and FTX has showed that FTX is
Speaker 1: actually a case where if it were actually decentralized, that
Speaker 1: would not have been possible. It would have all been transparent,
Speaker 1: it would have all been clear. You would have been
Speaker 1: able to see the movement of funds from various different
Speaker 1: on chain you know accounts to different on chain accounts.
Speaker 1: The issue was he ran a decentralized company incredibly centralized
Speaker 1: all around him, and so ultimately, while the whole thing
Speaker 1: is completely disastrous, he was an example of why more
Speaker 1: decentralized exchanges like UNISWAP are literally and technically impervious to
Speaker 1: what happened. It is impossible for that to occur because
Speaker 1: it is decentralized. Not if the entire UNISWAP team died,
Speaker 1: it would continue to run and exist and the exchange
Speaker 1: would continue to fulfill exchanges of currency. Like, that's really
Speaker 1: exciting to me. And what do you think will keep
Speaker 1: FWB on that side of things? Keep it from being
Speaker 1: phased out for the next shiny thing. We say, we're
Speaker 1: not a crypto community or a community that uses crypto,
Speaker 1: So I think as long as we keep community at
Speaker 1: the center of it, and we continue to play with
Speaker 1: the tools in an interesting way that enhances the community
Speaker 1: and we remain culture first, then we'll be fine. Culture
Speaker 1: waxes and WANs. Look at a fashion house. You'll have
Speaker 1: a great season and the next season it will be irrelevant,
Speaker 1: and then it'll come back. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: of scenes and communities as similar. You can't be the
Speaker 1: hot community forever. And ultimately, as long as you're creating
Speaker 1: real value, people are really connecting with each other, it's
Speaker 1: coming from a place of genuineness, I think will continue
Speaker 1: to evolve. We actually kind of love bear markets because
Speaker 1: you actually attract people who are here for the right reasons.
Speaker 1: After we started in a bear market. We're now seeing
Speaker 1: more artists join, being like, all right, it's cheaper now,
Speaker 1: and I can actually experiment and the stakes feel less high,
Speaker 1: and I don't need to launch an art project that
Speaker 1: gets me global press like all my peers, and instead
Speaker 1: I can make a stupid little project and share it
Speaker 1: and have fun with it and not be stressed out.
Speaker 1: That's what we love versus in the bull market, it
Speaker 1: was everyone joining to jump onto the train, which is fine,
Speaker 1: but those people aren't the ones defining and creating the culture. Well,
Speaker 1: and my motivation and our strong motivation for having you
Speaker 1: here is to talk about the value of the self governance, experimentation.
Speaker 1: And if the price of experimentation is so high because
Speaker 1: the markets flooded with people who don't care at all
Speaker 1: about that, they just care about the financial speculation, then
Speaker 1: they're actually crowding out our ability to learn from things
Speaker 1: like this to improve things. Well, beyond this, how has
Speaker 1: being part of a DOO affected the way you show
Speaker 1: up as a citizen, as a colleague, as a collaborator,
Speaker 1: as a member of community. My leadership style and all
Speaker 1: the organizations I've been fortunate to lead has always been
Speaker 1: much more of a facilitator. I've never been like a
Speaker 1: dictatorial do this because I say I'm the boss. Even
Speaker 1: in scenarios where I have been, you know, the CEO
Speaker 1: or whatnot, I've always enjoyed being sort of one that
Speaker 1: distributes power, one that uplifts and creates structures for qualify
Speaker 1: people to emerge into lead. Nothing makes me happier as
Speaker 1: a manager than when someone you're managing excels and exceeds
Speaker 1: and now is really owning a specific department or category.
Speaker 1: Dows is that with your users, which is so fun
Speaker 1: to me. Dows is that with your community members where
Speaker 1: anyone who's done community work, let's call a social nonprofit
Speaker 1: civil rights work knows it's about uplifting those people who
Speaker 1: are showing up to all the various different rallies and
Speaker 1: events and empowering them and to create sort of that
Speaker 1: network effect where ultimately, because of all volunteers, you're not
Speaker 1: even actually paying them. And so I think of that
Speaker 1: as like something that's always just been fundamental to my
Speaker 1: leadership style, and DAWs have just now supercharged that because
Speaker 1: now it's like a lot more literal. Now I can
Speaker 1: actually compensate them in sort of this native currency. Now
Speaker 1: their work can be recognized on chain through the format
Speaker 1: of proposals, and that's created this really interesting loop where
Speaker 1: now I show up in spaces that aren't even cryptospaces
Speaker 1: from you know, various different communities or nonprofits that I
Speaker 1: support or advise on, and try to bring some of
Speaker 1: that similar sort of consensus making between directions as opposed
Speaker 1: to like, I'm the boss, let's do this, because I
Speaker 1: just don't think that that's just not how I that's
Speaker 1: not a high lead. So it's giving you a place
Speaker 1: to practice more of what you been preaching. Us are Alex.
Speaker 1: We title this show how to Citizen because we believe
Speaker 1: citizen is a verb, not simply a noun and a
Speaker 1: legal status. It's something a lot more and it involves action.
Speaker 1: If you are to interpret citizen as a verb, how
Speaker 1: would you define it? What does it mean to citizen?
Speaker 1: To you? I think to citizen is to have an
Speaker 1: opinion and then to feel the sovereignty to be able
Speaker 1: to put that opinion into action and to collaborate. Citizen
Speaker 1: is that translation from opinion into action and that sort
Speaker 1: of forward energy momentum of feeling like you can actually
Speaker 1: make a difference in a structure. I think many of
Speaker 1: us have opinions about things, but we keep them to ourselves,
Speaker 1: or we mumble them or whisper them to a friend.
Speaker 1: But I think in so many different social structures, digital, physical,
Speaker 1: the ability to have an opinion on how something could
Speaker 1: improve or change and then be able to put that
Speaker 1: into action in a constructive and collaborative way. It feels
Speaker 1: like how I would citizen constructive and collaborative, because yeah,
Speaker 1: there's definitely no shortage of opinions, but that's for sure.
Speaker 1: Moving them to action is another one. Alex, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me for this conversation. Thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. This was fun. Okay, we are shifting gears
Speaker 1: into the community. Speaking of community and an audience questions.
Speaker 1: First up, Tanya Fox, you got Alex Alex today. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm Tanya Fox in Montreal, Canada. With taking venture capital,
Speaker 1: how does that affect the weight of other people's voting
Speaker 1: and how is that distributed in terms of the profitability
Speaker 1: of the other two kens. So we raised venture capital
Speaker 1: back in November. It was about ten percent of the supply.
Speaker 1: That was a proposal actually, so the community agreed to
Speaker 1: accept venture funding. So we put together a proposal that
Speaker 1: outlined all of the terms, and then the community actually
Speaker 1: had like counter points, which was really interesting, and then
Speaker 1: we actually negotiated and I was almost like a proxy
Speaker 1: with the investors, and one of those counterpoints is actually
Speaker 1: decreasing their voting power. So they wanted obviously the venture
Speaker 1: conpitalists wanted more ownership in the network, but the community said,
Speaker 1: we don't actually want you to have the equivalent amount
Speaker 1: of ownership to voting power, and so we actually agreed
Speaker 1: on a fifty percent decrease in their actual voting stake.
Speaker 1: So while they own ten percent of the network, their
Speaker 1: voting powers equivalently like five percent of the network. So
Speaker 1: that was an example of diminishing sort of their governance
Speaker 1: participation in terms of profitability. This is an early stage projects,
Speaker 1: so they're just betting on like, hey, this is the
Speaker 1: most interesting project we've seen of like Dow token usage,
Speaker 1: and if this is the next New York's Digital New
Speaker 1: York City. We just want to own a lot of
Speaker 1: real estate. So they bought about ten percent of that
Speaker 1: real estate. That allowed for the capital to go into
Speaker 1: the treasury to then fund all these various different community
Speaker 1: projects and endeavors and so I think their perspective of
Speaker 1: profitability is as FBB continues to expand, more people join,
Speaker 1: more people participate, more goods and services are being created.
Speaker 1: The Dow holds dozens of various different equities and various
Speaker 1: different companies that have emerged. It's them sort of owning
Speaker 1: a percentage in sort of that conglomerate or that holding
Speaker 1: of all these various different community owned assets. Thank you
Speaker 1: for that, Alex. We're moving on to ned hit. Your
Speaker 1: question did all right? I'm ned calling him from outside Madison, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: ho Chup Nation territory. So I'd like to hear more
Speaker 1: about the mechanisms you have for ensuring I mean, kind
Speaker 1: of like what you were seeing with the venture capital thing,
Speaker 1: but more also to ensure that tokens do not equal
Speaker 1: gatekeeping into terms of who gets the sort of demographics
Speaker 1: that get to be full participants. You know, that question
Speaker 1: of we give tokens out to people who do earn
Speaker 1: them can very subtly and quickly shift to we give
Speaker 1: tokens out the people we believe deserve them and that
Speaker 1: we believe in becomes a really tricky thing. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to know how that's worked so far. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: got kind of maybe like a hot take in general
Speaker 1: that I you know, sort of in praise of exclusivity,
Speaker 1: and then I think like exclusivity actually plays a really
Speaker 1: important role in society. I don't believe in like explicitly.
Speaker 1: I just don't think all gatekeeping is necessarily bad. I
Speaker 1: think if everything were inclusive, I don't think there will
Speaker 1: be anything sort of at all. I obviously believe in
Speaker 1: inclusivity inside of a community, but I believe if you
Speaker 1: can create an organization that has vision, values and mission
Speaker 1: and principles, it should turn certain people on and turn
Speaker 1: certain people off. That's how you actually create a culture.
Speaker 1: And so I think in terms of the token equaling gatekeeping,
Speaker 1: we've done as best as we cant of making that
Speaker 1: accessible to the people that we want to attract, which
Speaker 1: the people want to attract our creatives, artists, technologists. Because
Speaker 1: FTVB isn't for everybody, just like New York City isn't
Speaker 1: for everybody, or you know, various different towns that you
Speaker 1: choose to live in, and so our perspective has been, like,
Speaker 1: you know, ensure that price has various different entry points,
Speaker 1: ensure that there's always grant programs and scholarship programs where
Speaker 1: folks who are qualified and are a good fit but
Speaker 1: don't have the financial means can join and ensure you
Speaker 1: have transparency and where those token they're going to in
Speaker 1: terms of who's earned them and who hasn't, and sort
Speaker 1: of carry oneself with humility and knowing that like will
Speaker 1: continue to evolve it based on real time feedback of
Speaker 1: how things are going. So that's sort of been our
Speaker 1: approach to date. Like I said, we've modeled a lot
Speaker 1: of it after like club culture, and club culture definitely
Speaker 1: isn't perfect, but that's sort of been was a studio
Speaker 1: fifty four quota dictatorship at the door, democracy on the
Speaker 1: dance floor is the other thing that you know, we've
Speaker 1: always kind of resonated where thanks for that, Alex, I
Speaker 1: mean in praise of exclusivity. Definitely a hot take. I
Speaker 1: don't think you're advocating for illegal discrimination, of course, but
Speaker 1: what resonates with me is the idea that you yata
Speaker 1: culture by having a vision, values, mission, and principles real quick.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what we're trying to do here with
Speaker 1: how to citizen to create a culture of democracy. Now
Speaker 1: ned in terms of your question about who gets rewarded
Speaker 1: for contributions and the fairness of that. It sounds like
Speaker 1: the ability to abuse that system is going to be
Speaker 1: limited by how transparent the system is. So thanks for
Speaker 1: your question. Ned. Okay, now we have Sarah Hughes. Hello,
Speaker 1: Sarah Hughes here in Rochester, New York, part of the
Speaker 1: unseated Adona shown a territory. I am curious just because
Speaker 1: there's been a lot of information coming out recently about
Speaker 1: the environmental impacts of data mining, of crypto mining, of
Speaker 1: data farms, just all of the infrastructure required to maintain
Speaker 1: blockchain and all of these other technologies online. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of an oldie. I'm trying to keep up with
Speaker 1: the tech. But I would like to ask you if
Speaker 1: you are others in the DOW world that you are
Speaker 1: aware of are taking that in to account in terms
Speaker 1: of scaling and also what the potential environmental impacts are
Speaker 1: of this kind of community. Yeah, so I can't speak
Speaker 1: to like bitcoin, there's tons of environmental issues with Bitcoin
Speaker 1: or the dozens of other chains, but in terms of Ethereum,
Speaker 1: the main currency that ours is built on top of,
Speaker 1: has made it a top priority to address the environmental issues,
Speaker 1: and the Ethereum community actually put up it's called the
Speaker 1: merge and it was actually the biggest system upgrade that
Speaker 1: was run by decentralized group of developers that is now
Speaker 1: reduced by like ninety four percent the environmental efficiency of Ethereum,
Speaker 1: which is really exciting for that community. Yeah, Ethereum's system upgrade,
Speaker 1: it's changed the way they validate transactions in the merch.
Speaker 1: Back in September twenty twenty two, actually reports said that
Speaker 1: the switch reduced its energy usage by over ninety nine
Speaker 1: which is amazing. So thank you for the questions. Sarah,
Speaker 1: all right, We've got one last question, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to ask on behalf of this person who's in a
Speaker 1: very loudspace. Janine didn't a vice repeat contributor here, University
Speaker 1: of Delaware professor, and it was circling back to the
Speaker 1: questions about inclusivity. Janine wrote specifically, what does the mayor
Speaker 1: think about issues of inclusion and diversity? What are the
Speaker 1: demographics do you worry about that? Why or why not?
Speaker 1: I just want to tag on. I know the way
Speaker 1: FWB grew initially was through networks, right, friends of friends,
Speaker 1: it was friends with benefits and those can be exclusive
Speaker 1: in a way that is biased against people who've been
Speaker 1: excluded already, Like if you're not in the network, you
Speaker 1: can never be in the network because no one in
Speaker 1: the networks knows you, and vice versa. And so I'm
Speaker 1: very curious in terms of that access point, how you're
Speaker 1: trying to get beyond the inherent bias of that kind
Speaker 1: of seed community. In addition to just tacking onto a
Speaker 1: Janine's question about demographics overall and your own thoughts on
Speaker 1: the diversity level and inclusion and diversity from a conceptual level,
Speaker 1: we care deeply about inclusion and diversity. It's one of
Speaker 1: our core values. I agree that network growth tends to
Speaker 1: be relatively homogeneous. However, we started in an artistic community,
Speaker 1: which tends to be much more heterogeneous. Trevor's a black founder.
Speaker 1: I'm an Asian American co founder. Like our team from
Speaker 1: the outset was very focused on creating a network that
Speaker 1: started with diversity built into the fundamental core of it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: crypto and technology skew heavily mail. So I would say
Speaker 1: the crypto industry at large, I would say, is like
Speaker 1: eighty percent mail FWB sits probably close to like sixty
Speaker 1: forty seventy thirty, and we're constantly putting out initiatives to
Speaker 1: attract and create safety and onboarding for more diverse backgrounds
Speaker 1: that aren't our traditional sort of main mix. But I
Speaker 1: would say, like just at its core, we just started
Speaker 1: from a really diverse community, just from the onset. So
Speaker 1: many people who join FWB it was their first ever
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency asset. In terms of diversity inclusion, you know, you
Speaker 1: can make a ton of arguments. Diversity spans obviously beyond
Speaker 1: just race, from gender, to age, to socioeconomic background. We
Speaker 1: probably haven't been great at age. We're all relatively young,
Speaker 1: and we're learning really quickly, and we mostly skewed towards
Speaker 1: late twenties, early thirties, mid thirties. Geographic regions pretty global,
Speaker 1: huge on sen in Asia and Europe. But obviously being
Speaker 1: a LA New York scene in community, fifty percent of
Speaker 1: our network, forty percent of our network are in those
Speaker 1: key cities. We believe deeply in diversity. We're constantly improving it.
Speaker 1: But I would say it's about sort of putting in
Speaker 1: those mechanisms in place and making sure that your core
Speaker 1: leadership team is diverse, which I'm really proud that ours is.
Speaker 1: Thank you, mister Mayor, Thank you Janine, thank you Sarah,
Speaker 1: thank you Med and thank you Tanya for your contributions.
Speaker 1: I don't have any tokens for you, but I got
Speaker 1: a lot of love for you. Alex. Thanks for taking
Speaker 1: the time with us. It was really really what I
Speaker 1: was hoping for. Appreciate you, bro. Thanks everybody. As promised,
Speaker 1: I didn't pitch you on any crypto tokens in this episode,
Speaker 1: and honestly, I really appreciate what Alex shared about the
Speaker 1: possibilities in this space. But I want to be clear,
Speaker 1: I'm not selling you anything. This is not a call
Speaker 1: to DOW or to blockchain or to crypto. This is
Speaker 1: a call to innovate and update our practice of citizening.
Speaker 1: In the case of Alex and participation dows like friends
Speaker 1: with Benefits, The questions they're asking apply well beyond blockchain
Speaker 1: based communities. They're the same questions we should be asking,
Speaker 1: whether we're talking about online communities or those offline. Are
Speaker 1: we valuing people's contributions, are we fostering a collective economy?
Speaker 1: And are we making decisions about the spaces we care about.
Speaker 1: We spend so much of our lives existing through online platforms,
Speaker 1: and just like we care about how we show up
Speaker 1: in physical communities and the systems that run them, our
Speaker 1: digital common spaces demand our citizen in two and now
Speaker 1: it's time for some actions. Starting with an internal reflection,
Speaker 1: Take a moment and think about your relationship to the
Speaker 1: digital spaces you spend time in. This could be social media,
Speaker 1: gaming or a group chat. Where do you feel like
Speaker 1: an active participant, where you set the terms and the
Speaker 1: tone of the environment. Where do you feel passive like
Speaker 1: someone else is in charge? How might you change that relationship?
Speaker 1: Our next action is in the category of becoming more informed.
Speaker 1: We can create a healthier culture of democracy through Web
Speaker 1: three beyond starting and joining doubt. If you're new to
Speaker 1: this world, the New York Times has a great primer
Speaker 1: on what Web three even is, and we've linked to
Speaker 1: it in the show notes. You read that take a
Speaker 1: deep dive into the history of squads, a form of
Speaker 1: social and economic organizing that shifting power and social dynamics
Speaker 1: away from an individualistic society. And if our conversation with
Speaker 1: Alex made you curious, check out our season three conversation
Speaker 1: with Eli Pariser from New Public. We go deep on
Speaker 1: how to better design digital public spaces, and, last, but
Speaker 1: not least, here's what I want us to try. In
Speaker 1: terms of public participation. You're likely part of a decision
Speaker 1: making group, a tenants or homeowners association, a parents group,
Speaker 1: a committee at work. I'm so sorry, I'm a committee
Speaker 1: at work. By the way. Now, the next time you're
Speaker 1: at one of your meetings, take note of how the
Speaker 1: group makes decisions, who speaks, who's silent, what areas are
Speaker 1: open to input, and what's considered off the table? Is
Speaker 1: there even an agenda? See if you can identify the
Speaker 1: kind of culture the group has chaotic, deferential, something else.
Speaker 1: Can you find any opportunities for the group to make
Speaker 1: that culture more small d democratic by rotating speaking or
Speaker 1: leadership roles, or even just openly acknowledging how decisions are
Speaker 1: made and how that might shift. We don't always need
Speaker 1: to find or start new groups and spaces to practice
Speaker 1: this democracy thing, so let's start where we are. If
Speaker 1: you take any of these actions, please brag about it
Speaker 1: online and use the hashtag how to citizen. Also tag
Speaker 1: our Instagram how to citizen. I am always online and
Speaker 1: I really do see your messages, so send them finally.
Speaker 1: See this episode show notes for more on these actions
Speaker 1: and a link to our bookshop dot org account where
Speaker 1: you can find all the books Alex mentioned and any
Speaker 1: others you've heard about while listening to the show. How
Speaker 1: to Citizen with baritun Day as a production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: Podcasts and Row Home Productions. Our executive producers are me
Speaker 1: barrettun Day, Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart. Our lead producer is
Speaker 1: Ali Graham. Our associate producer is Donia abdel Hamid. Alex
Speaker 1: Lewis is our managing producer, and John Myers is our
Speaker 1: executive editor. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Original music
Speaker 1: by Andrew Eapen with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 1: and our audience engagement fellows are Jasmine Lewis and Gabbie Rodriguez.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Joel Smith from iHeartRadio and Lay Labina.
Speaker 1: Next time on How the Citizen, Alex believes that a
Speaker 1: community to be whole must also be an economy, but
Speaker 1: he doesn't mean they need to increase wealth, inequality or
Speaker 1: drive profits at the expense of our humanity. A community
Speaker 1: economy is just a system that acknowledges the exchange of
Speaker 1: value and it can work for all of us. No
Speaker 1: one believes that more than economist Kate Rayworth. What do
Speaker 1: you think is the shape of economic progress? Because if
Speaker 1: you listen to an economist, if you listen to a politician,
Speaker 1: the shape apparently is growth, endlessly, right, always, always more.
Speaker 1: Because no amotter how rich nation already is. I'm in
Speaker 1: the UK or in the US. We live in two
Speaker 1: of the richest countries in the history of humanity, and
Speaker 1: yet our economists are politicians think that the solution to
Speaker 1: all of our problems lie in yet more growth, endlessly.
Speaker 1: There's no end in sight. Now, there's something utterly absurd
Speaker 1: about that, and I think we really need to take
Speaker 1: seriously what is the shape of progress? Kate Rayworth, author
Speaker 1: of Donut Economics, Seven Ways to Think like a twenty
Speaker 1: first century economist, shares how we can create an economy
Speaker 1: that works for all of us, including our planet. Yay Earth,
Speaker 1: grow home productions,