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DAO civil wars: Aave Labs vs DAO👀 + gnosis on Coffee w/ Captain #1,058
Recorded: Dec. 23, 2025 Duration: 2:29:21Space Recording
Short Summary
In a lively discussion on Coffee with Captain, participants explored the evolving landscape of DAOs, the significance of partnerships in the crypto space, and the potential for growth amidst challenges. Key topics included the importance of education, the impact of trends like AI integration, and the need for innovative governance structures to ensure the sustainability of decentralized projects.
Full Transcription
Það er hann. Thank you. Okay. We'll be right back. I was living the dream, now I'm on web 3 And it is with the seams, topping the pyramid schemes
I'm telling ya, I sell you a percentage on Nebula
Shout out to Vince, yo set it up
Breaking the mood to choose one
But it got knowledge to move, son
I'm shocking in shades with my brother in suits
Yeah, them blues is coming
Even though it's hard to pick, any mighty mo
So on the mix, no biting lips, it's time to go
Index number one, no thumbs up, you gotta scroll Looking at the ghost in studio, it's time to go Welcome to Coffee with Captain, powered by 8coin, where we dive into all things crypto,
NFTs, Web3, and cutting-edge technology. Remember,
nothing here is financial advice. Early-stage tech can be exceptionally volatile
and risky. So grab your coffee and join Cap and Steve for today's
conversation. Welcome to the future.
Welcome to Coffee with Captain, GM, GM. Thanks so much for joining us.
If anybody done so, do us a favor. Drop us a GM in the the chat down below then hit up top smash that like repost and bookmark on
today's space greatly appreciate it warms up the algo and does us a real solid we're also live over
on abstract and youtube you can find those links pinned up top as well and as always i'm cap joined
by co-host this morning thanks so much for joining us if you ever need to do so again give us a love
on the space help us get things warmed up here and as always never do financial advice in the show crypto is
risky and a tease risky mean coins exception risky it can all go to zero moment zones please don't
put any money you can't afford to lose and don't join us for financial advice just join us for
some fun some information a little bit of education along the way especially today we got a big brain
on the show so uh definitely buckle up we'll be some education for sure. But, uh, I actually hope you did follow the financial advice and, um, uh, open up your, your, uh, 40 X long yesterday during the show. I should have left it
open. Apparently I did book a nice little, almost 50% short there, closed it. I'm just going to do
that every Monday morning. We'll see how long it continues to play out like that. And yes,
Von Fronten, we will, will, we're gonna have a little
pirate talk this morning. I, if I had a pirate hat, I would be wearing one. I know it's
unexcusable for me to live in, you know, that this, this area of the country and not own a
pirate hat, but that's, we will fix that. We'll fix that soon, especially if I get nominated to lead the Pirate DAO, which I am, I'm here for.
So, but before we jump into all that nonsense, but I, Outer Asks, she goes,
appreciate, she's like, I have no idea what the Pirate DAO is about.
I'm like, it's kind of nonsense, but actually I think it will lead to an interesting conversation
regarding DAOs and product market fit and what can they do?
What are they for other than governance voting, which I think is a meme meme so we will get into that before we do without further ado join me welcoming
outer to the stage gm always a pleasure how you doing this morning gm i'm awake which is great
um i'm i'm really excited about this new tuesday morning waking up early habit um i uh i brought out my gm mug appropriate um i think this is the penelope's
remember that project oh wow i think it was carl carlini was that the guy's name it was i was
gonna say carlito but i think you're correct carlini sounds more accurate is he still around
i have no idea i know that he's like pretty pretty innovative with some of the stuff that he was
doing but i remember that merch speaking of merch from our with some of the stuff that he was doing but i
remember that merch speaking of merch from our last show and i'm like man i gotta grab a mug for
some water and uh i brought out the gm mug but this is from from that project so i know i've
said no more merch we don't want to buy cheap merch or cheap goodies unless like same thing
with like the merch last time like unless you're making it unique and
making it special and tying in making it nostalgic like tying into the traits you know a GM like a
GM mug is simple but it's like and there's no there's no mention of the project like at all
I just I just know it from just remembering getting this and like a sticker pack and some
other things so like I think there's more cat stuff on some of the other merch but that mug
is just like you can just you can be a gamer or whatever.
If you know GM, you know.
Yeah, it's well done.
Even a lot of my, I still, you know, consume outsider, this stuff, my most consumed genre would be, as far as like podcasts and stuff goes, would be sports, fantasy sports stuff.
And they say GM over there as well.
It's like, it's cross. Do we take credit for that is it was gm a crypto twitter thing did we that started here
right started in the mania in 21 or no i think it's gaming i was gonna like guess i feel like
it's it's a gaming thing but i don't know maybe somebody like maybe some gm historian knows and
can put it into the comments i was gonna say you know, you know, I have a lot of wizard hats, but I don't have a pirate hat. Now I feel like I need to get one just to
have one. I have like a M2 captain hat, right? From like- Kind of can count. I mean, I guess
we can- From the mutant. It's, you know, it's seaworthy. I'm kind of, now that we have this,
like, this is a cold, this is perfect cold opens as cold open material, but yet also relevant actionable advice for
these brands. How did how like, should we was this a miss that
they did not include a pirate hat in the board API club
collection?
You know, I mean, maybe at least the mutant collection, if not
going to put one in the in the the OG collection, like I feel
like this is a,
it's a trade. It a trade it's not it's
not an you know like definitely other collections have pirate hats it's definitely like a it's not
it's not a most you know prominent trade because i think a lot of that stuff kind of just proliferated
once one project had something they just copied it into their project but if punks had a pirate hat
there would definitely be more pirate hats in the space for sure. Oh, 100%.
That's mainly the origin.
You know, I looked up Pirate DAO, just like a brief Google this morning, and I found a
Medium article.
Get this date.
So the Medium article is called Pirate DAOs, an AI DAO thought experiment, but it was published
on September 6th of 2016.
What?
Yeah. Published on September 6th of 2016. What?
Yeah.
I didn't even, like, if you would have asked me when was the first DAO created, I would have guessed... Probably 2017 would be my guess.
Yeah, I shared the article with you.
Like, look, I haven't, like, fully read the article.
I just stumbled upon it because I was kind of like, oh, what's the latest news on whatever this is?
Because I'm not, you know, like like on top of whatever you're talking about and that
came up and it kind of blew my mind that like this random article um came out uh by a guy named paul
and it's literally a thought experiment on things we're seeing today from just like me briefly
skimming it but the fact that it was penned like almost six years
or 10 years ago is, Cap, it's kind of blowing my mind.
My mind's blowing.
Because not only is it Pirate DAO from 2016,
it also references AI, which yes,
I know AI has existed well before the last couple of years
of LLMs blowing up.
But AI DAOs that autonomously amass resources
and continuously improve themselves
could be one of the most powerful developments in recent history this is i'm quoting from this
article in 2016 to almost 10 years ago i know i i had to bring this to the show as soon as you
mentioned that i'm like wait a minute this is this is like i mean this guy's gonna wake up to like a
bunch of you know claps and comments probably on his media. Like, why are these people revisiting it?
But,
but kudos,
like what an OG thing to do.
I don't know.
There's something like,
you know,
he was so early that we had to find him 10 years later.
This is why he talks and he talks about Ethereum in there,
right?
Like an Ethereum would have been like a year old at that point.
Like it's just,
yeah,
this is wild.
So, I mean, even makes me me more, kind of makes me sad, actually.
That, like, just zooming out, high level.
And I'm sure there's an example of successful DAOs, right?
One thing we probably should.
Are there?
Which one would you say has been the most successful?
I don't know now that I said that.
I don't know either.
I was going to say Aave, and that's probably not a great example right now.
No, no.
That's also something we should probably hit on today is the.
So maybe like art DAOs, like squiggle DAO, nouns DAO.
But even though.
Flamingo.
Yeah, they fizzle.
Pizza DAO.
I don't know.
You know, I did bring this book to the table too.
This is a book called Radical Friends.
And I've not read this book.
It's on my list of things to read.
I acquired it a while back.
It's just one I haven't sat down to read.
But it's called Centralized Autonomous Organizations in the Arts.
So for any nerdy art folks out there, this was published in July of 2022.
So it's not as og
as our article um but i mean look it has some pictures but mostly it's text so if you know i i
if you've seen my book article at some point like a while back i definitely uh judge it by whether
or not it's uh it's pictures um based or not uh but this is mostly reading but it does give a timeline of daos at least in the
arts and this part is pretty cool it has like a it has kind of like the history and apparently like
goes all the way to the sixth century bce taoist leaders in asia attuned to the flow of nature
exert large cultural influence on the margins of society dow puns memes and references to the weight um man if christopher nolan's odyssey references dows uh i i might
lose my mind if we're around in the era of homer apparently like 1860 a u.s youth movement called
wide awakes mobilizes against slavery and is responsible for bringing abraham lincoln to power there's like a whole there's like a whole historical take on like the history of daos curated so you know if
you if you if you do i mean maybe i'll post some like maybe i'll take some pictures of just the
timeline and post it because it's like and then we get to 2015 with ethereum coming on board
and yeah so so like this is kind of wild this whole like so i don't you know highly recommend
if you're in deep dive dows i have not done it yet but i've seen the timeline in here
but uh yeah i'll uh this is the this is the book but i guess i'll say it for the twitter folks
that are listening radical friends decentralized autonomous organization the arts by ruth catlow
and penny rafferty um if you go to my twitter profile uh the pinned
post that i have on books it this is a book that's in that post so if you want like a direct
link you can get it from there um but yeah that's you know this is more like nerdy dow type stuff
but i think the philosophy behind the idea of a dow is probably you know covered here extensively
because that part doesn't change, that idea of
an autonomous organization, which
I don't know. How do you feel about this notion
of things get
done when there's a leader, like a clear leader,
a clear vision and a clear mission
and a clear way forward
versus this?
I'm trying to even think of a good analog.
What's a good analog of a DAO? It's like a good analog, like what's a good analog of a DAO.
And it's not a good analog,
but I think of like matrix organizations in corporate America.
And I know they can work.
Personally, I've been in one, I'm not a fan.
It could have been the corporate bureaucracy.
It could have been the culture there.
It could have been, you know,
but what I experienced in a matrix organization in corporate America,
we get fortune 200 company and they acquired us.
So I was,
I was like the outdoor cat that worked there for a few years.
And I went from my mornings would start.
I have a five to 15 minute call with our,
you know,
the principal,
my mentor, the, the principal, my, my mentor, the,
the basically the primary owner of the family office,
we talked for five or 15 minutes.
He'd give me basically the directive of the day or we'd have a chat.
And then I would do my, I'd get stuff done and we would check in on his,
you know, evening walk.
And that was really it.
Unless it was a meeting that I scheduled
or something that I actually needed someone's assistant on.
I went from that to getting in this matrix organization.
And no exaggeration,
I think probably every single day
was loaded with not one, not two,
usually three or four one-hour long Zoom meetings,
sometimes as many as eight.
Like an entire day would be one hour long zoom meetings, sometimes as many as eight, like an entire day
would be one hour zoom meeting stacked on the next. And almost all of them could have been an email.
But even worse is it wasn't just like me and an attorney or me and a CFO or someone from finance.
It was me and anywhere from 12 to 17 other stakeholders all across the organization.
And nothing got done.
It was because no one had like a real boss.
Like no one reported to the other organization.
It was just talking in circles.
And it's like, I think it was Keith Rabot or Bowie's,
I don't know how to say his last name, Silicon Valley guy.
He said like, I'll butcher this quote, but something like
less is more, you know, you know, talk about bringing in like designers and engineers together
and you get, you know, two and you can get stuff done. You get a dozen in a room and
you don't get anything done. They're just going to keep talking about different ideas. And
that's how I felt there is like, we'd have a meeting to talk about, to plan the agenda for
next week's meeting. And everyone would have their say, and then we'd have a meeting to talk about, to plan the agenda for next week's meeting.
And everyone would have their say. And then we'd have the meeting and like three people would talk.
Other people wouldn't get their, get a chance that they just sit in the call for an hour,
wasting their time. And then we'd have a debrief meeting with the seven, 17 stakeholders.
It hit me like a, like the one time I was like, Oh my God, this is so broken. We're on a call with
Apple. And it's like a senior leadership person, Apple, one
assistant in 17 people from my organization. It was embarrassing. I literally was embarrassed
because it was just, it was in my head as an entrepreneur, small business owner, most of my
life, I'm thinking like this call just an hour long call just cost us, I don't know how many
thousands of dollars just in payroll that was entirely unnecessary.
And I share that because that's, I think the closest comparison I can have to a DAO is an organization that's like that where there's no real leader.
Even there, there was a CEO at the end of the day, I guess the buck stopped at them, but they didn't get involved in most of the day to day, if any.
And I was so excited when I jumped into this space and the concept of DAOs came up.
NFT mints, DAOs.
I really saw this vision in my head like, wow, this is the next path. This is like a better way for small business startups, better way for crowdfunding.
It's much better than Kickstarter from raising seed rounds,
much better than Kickstarter from raising, you know, C Browns, friends and family rounds
to then actually scaling an organization without having to have hundreds of people on payroll.
You know, like you, a lot of small businesses, a lot of startups, you get this inflection
point where the CEO, the founder is wearing 17 hats because you're showing some traction,
you're having some success, but yet you can't,
you know, you want to make sure that it's sustainable before you start going and hiring
a bunch of people. So you just start doing all the jobs. And in my head, I was naive thinking,
well, Dow's fixed this. You know, Dow's not only outsourced fundraising and crowdsourced fundraising,
it crowdsources labor and help and invested stakeholders. Theoretically, it was so exciting to me.
And when I say it's kind of sad to think that this wasn't even like a 2021 thing.
People have been talking about this conceptually for a decade, essentially.
And I don't know if we're any farther along today with DAOs than they were when that guy
wrote that article in 2016.
Why is that? Why? And is it,
it is in,
is there an alternate model where you still have the same Dow structure,
but there is a leader.
There is a figurehead.
I become Chris,
the cat,
the pirate captain.
And I'm,
I'm leading the thing.
I'm calling the day-to-day shots,
but we've got this independent team of essentially freelancers who are all
vested.
Like why hasn't this stuff? Why is it? I know it's easier said than done, independent team of essentially freelancers who are all vested, like,
why hasn't this stuck? Why is it? I know it's easier said than done, but I went from super bullish on DAOs and from a concept to very bearish. And I don't, I still struggle to
determine why. And I don't think I come back to to is yeah you you need a leader you need the buck to stop at someone is that simple it might be i mean i think like i'm interested in the idea of
an ai dow right like because that's and i like look i'm going to read the guy's article because
i'm curious now about what he wrote about the idea of including ai in there but like
that seems very interesting to me where it doesn't necessarily require a leader, but at the end of the day, is the AI a leader at that point?
I want to talk about the Founders DAO. Do you remember the Founders DAO, which was Pixel Vault's DAO?
I reference that. It's one of my favorite game theory decisions I ever had to make in this space.
Mainly, partially because of the value of the, the was a meta hero we had to burn
for founders outpass, right? Or what was the Yeah, was that?
I don't remember. I don't remember what was burned.
Oh, it was a punk comics one. You had to make your choices.
I think it was. Yeah, do you want to burn your punks comic
one, your original punks comic first edition for founders out
pass or keep your punks coming one yes and at the time
they were like i don't know like three to five eth i think so it was like a big decision and i had
two so i burnt one kept one and like that's a core memory of my nft journey like the game like
the gamification there the forcing the tough decision and then the founders now i mean fast forward became a a way for g funk to apparently grift
i don't know 800 grand or whatever did at the end to wind it down but maybe like rewinding before
that happened i think like well no i know like let's fast forward sorry yeah i mean the tldr
a little bit of sour taste in my mouth on that one. Yeah, yeah. Well, and Divide too, right? Like, I mean, he was like super pixel vault max.
He's my partner who like was just so excited.
And I think like the burning tech was really interesting
and that decision making was cool.
But for the founder of DAW specifically,
like I remember he had so much alpha
because he was in that like private channel
and everyone was pretty excited about having access to that.
But one thing I wanted to touch on that I found interesting
because I was part of the Hashmask DAW because like that but one thing i wanted to touch on that i found interesting uh because i
was part of the the hash mask dao because like like that was a thing at the very beginning before
it turned into more like just team-based roles um was the fact that there there was like this
disparity between how many tokens you owned and voting and i and i thought maybe we could touch
on that notion of like,
I remember with the Hashmask DAO,
we tried to figure out like,
what does like a one person, one vote look like?
And is that better in that system
versus something like FoundersDAO,
where, correct me if I'm wrong,
but anytime there was a proposal that came up,
somebody with the most tokens
had the most power to sway it.
And I think that's the same for like a lot of those setups
where like, you know, most tokens had the most power to sway it. And I think that's the same for a lot of those setups where you needed somebody to come in
that controlled the most
based on the fact that they were a whale
and they would sway the voting.
And then is that decentralized?
Yeah, because, well, I guess it is in that sense
of like, you know, no one's,
there's no like top down necessarily,
it's a voting system.
But there's something to be said about it's a voting system but there's
something to be said about like each individual member of said dow having equal like power in
decision making versus how much of this is now a dow when you have somebody who has like you know
you know if you have 60 percent of the ability to vote things yes or no then you are the person
controlling the entire thing right so yeah i don't know there's something to be said about like not only just the need to have a clear
leader in general for it to work as a concept but also like if it's going to be a voting system
then what does that voting system setup look like what does quorum look like and like i had a lot
of experience in the non-profit sector with you know, been on working boards where you actually like, you know, do some of the work, been on boards where it's more of a governing board for nonprofit.
And time and time again, like I think something struck me when you were talking about this idea of like showing up to a call with like 17 people that don't need to be there.
It really became a meeting about the meetings.
the meetings like that's what i used to call these things like a meeting about the meetings
Like that's what I used to call these things.
was the way to not get anything done but feel like you've put effort in because you are exhausted
after and like when you close your laptop and you leave you don't feel like doing the work anymore
yeah you do that once a week i volunteered 52 hours last year yeah 52 hours on this non-profit
volunteered my time and you didn't accomplish jack because all you did was talk about meetings. And this is not a hyperbole, by the way, I'm not going to name the name. I probably said it before.
It was awful. It was so inefficient. And they lost me. And I think I'm a high-performing,
high-functioning leader. I chose to leave there because I couldn't stand the culture and the
environment. And there was changes and restructure. We knew going into it, we went from small family
office to owned by a Fortune 200 publicly traded company, inevitably,
they're going to, they're going to change things. Ultimately my role roles, they, when I left,
it became three different distinct jobs. And so now instead of 17 people, there'd be 19 people
on those same calls. Like, it's just, it is, it was, you know, they say like, I'll end that rant,
you know, they say like, oh, in that rant, but yeah, it really.
So I guess maybe the question is like, how do groups get work done? You know, like almost
it's like, it's a tale as old as time. You're like, let's take everybody back to high school.
You get paired with some group. You may know the people you may not group you may know the people you may not you
may like them you may not and like does it ever work like like is anybody ever in like some because
this is this is this is random right like you didn't choose your collaborators when you choose
your collaborators it's different when you show up and there's like five people that you're paired
with whether it's on your job or whatever like the the vibe check has to be
really good or like how do you know how do you actually get the work done because it becomes
about like the bureaucracy of it or the drama of it or the politics of it or whatever and like
i myself like can't i cannot like my my my my deal breaker or red flag is any kind of like
drama stuff like i just like hard no so you know the
the collaborative environment has to be about the thing that we're creating not so much about like
how we're creating it if that makes sense and i don't mean the tools i just mean like the
structure um but that's not to say that it should be like, you know, super unorganized.
But yeah, I don't know.
There's something to be said about like actually getting like productive. But the DAO system in itself is like, it's not so much about the day to day.
It's just more about this idea of like the organization part, I think, is almost an oxymoron in the DAO.
Because like how, like theory, it should work.
But in practice, organization of random individuals that self-organize?
I mean, you talk about groups, group projects group tests group whatever the most successful
groups I was ever in thinking back to like college it was usually where one or two people
did 80 to 90 percent of the work they just took the bull by the horns they got stuff done and
everyone else showed up on presentation day sometimes that was me and those other times
I just being keeping it real.
I didn't contribute my part because someone else took the lead and I would have just been slowing them down, stepping on them.
Yeah, you'd be in the way.
I remember that as well.
And I think here's the key, though, in even something like that example.
Sometimes you need to get out of the way.
Like you being there is now the 17 person thing
where it's just when you get in the way,
I don't mean like specifically you,
but just like, you know what I mean?
Like where if you're in like a group
and one person's clearly like, I got this,
you gotta let them cook.
Like, you know what I mean?
Like as long, if they feel like
they just want to do the thing,
sometimes it's like, okay,
well, is it my own guilt of not helping?
Or am I actually like going to stifle this more?
If I try to somehow be involved when someone clearly has that,
like,
I'm going to take the reins and I got this.
I'll check in with you guys.
You know,
like,
and I think that's powerful too,
when that's something that they're,
maybe it's something they're passionate about.
I don't know.
But like to your point of where you're like,
sometimes I didn't do anything.
Yeah. But, but not, I don't know if you've seen this article. I feel like I need to know maybe this is out but it was about people and lego and they were given lego
and asked to improve something and every single time so the the actual improvement was to take
away from the thing like was to remove
some pieces that led to the improvement of the thing every single person like most of them added
to it which actually made it worse but there was a psychological need to add and a huge barrier to
actually like remove previous work or to delete it or to get rid of it or to
like, and there's something, I don't know, somehow this relates to me a little bit. And I was like
mentioning this idea of like productivity in a group or like, you know, these organizations,
like where can you come in and just be like, you know what I propose, we get rid of the last two
things we voted on. Can you imagine? Like I think that article really revealed, I think,
something about this human nature of additive behavior when you're innovating, when you're
working together, when there's just no permission to come in and fully disrupt the thing. I'm going
to have to find this now because I'm sure people are like, show us the receipts. Where's this
article? It can be very demotivating to the doers, right?
I'm naturally a contributor.
Like I want to participate.
I want to be involved.
I want to help.
I mentioned, you know, when I'm on a call with 17 other people and I'm embarrassed because
there's 17 of us to compare to two on the other side, like I didn't, I didn't have anything
because at that point it's like, I'm just extending the call.
I'm just wasting more time.
And it was, yeah, I do think there's not only does it lead to inefficiencies it can also be a demotivator
for people who are wired that just get stuff done um why you look that up i saw oxy flew up here
with a hand we also have revolt token let's go and get oxy in here oxy gm what's your thoughts
what what why are dowels broken and how do we fix them, Oxy? Yeah, GM. I think you guys are spot on with their needing to be a leader to make snap decisions or
make those decisions for people. The best leaders that I've worked with over the years have been
the ones who can make decisions. They obtain obtain the information they hear they listen to everyone they hear all the different aspects of it and make a decision
and stick to it um i think that's like a huge and then and then having the ability to learn more
information and then make a change when necessary and like i mean i truly that was what makes a good
leader in my eyes and that's just not present in the DAO structure.
As it relates to crypto, though, like, I mean, and maybe this is like a challenge to you guys, because I just am not super familiar with the DAOs. a good product and a good good project with product market fit and you know it's actually
like at its core a good company that could be successful even even if it had a leader that
could make a good decision and you know do do these types of things has there been one that
had outside of ave i guess that has had it yeah i mean that's where i was going to go ave is is a is a very real
product very real player and they've they've made it thus far but there's now like this essentially
the attempt for like a hostile takeover so it's like while yes there's at least odd and i think
the other quote-unquote successful daos probably fall in the realm of like investing or collecting, right?
Whether it's Squiggle DAO or Spirit DAO or Flamingo DAO, something where it was very, they weren't building an organization.
It was crowd pulling.
It was pulling funds to go make, to go collect things, to go buy art, to go invest in things.
I think those, but that's also like you're not having to make snap decisions.
We'll go right back to here because what you said, it really did resonate.
One of my earliest mentors said, and I don't know where he got the quote from,
but it was successful people make decisions quickly and change their minds slowly.
They're open to changing their mind when presented with new information,
but they make decisions quickly and they change their mind slowly.
Whereas unsuccessful people often take forever.
They go back and forth.
They deliberate.
They talk to all their friends and family and take forever to make a decision.
And then as soon as they get presented with critique or FUD or,
you know, conflicting view, they, they're very quick to change their minds to very quick to
change that decision. And yeah, that's very difficult to do if you have hundreds or thousands
of people attempting to, you know, get rowing in the same direction. I did pull up, I'm not going to read this.
This is from the block.
This, the, there's an article on Aave Labs.
The TLDR is basically Aave Labs made a proposal to control, basically the Aave Labs, which is an entity, the for-profit entity, is in dispute with the actual DAO in terms of stewardship, revenue alignment.
And I don't know how this thing shakes out.
I'm not deeply involved.
But to answer your question on what's a successful DAO that's shipped a good product, this would be one.
And I guess you could probably also say like Uniswap, right?
Like Uniswap and Uniswap Labs,
there is a DAO component to Uniswap.
Am I correct in that?
That's a good question.
I don't know if it's a DAO or if it's like a foundation,
like Hyperliquid Foundation.
I'd have to look into that i'm not entirely sure
go ahead take it whichever no no yeah i yeah i i hear you and i think like i guess speaking to
like pooling funds to invest in in product or real estate or you know any kind of investment, it just doesn't feel like a Dow is the right vehicle for that.
Like we've looked at, I mean, there's RWA vaults,
there's vaults on Hyperliquid where you can throw your money in.
And then there's someone who is actually a good trader
making these decisions on what to invest in, what moves to make.
A Dow in that kind of vehicle just doesn't
feel like the right move because you have people who have no idea what they're doing when it comes
to investing and they're making decisions on this. It just doesn't make sense to me.
But I mean, I don't know what fixes Dow, to be honest with you, I kind of came in on the second half of the conversation, but you guys talking about one voter or one person who has a huge portion of the share
is likely going to be making that decision.
And if that's not the right person for whatever product or whatever company you're trying to build,
then it's going to fail.
There's just no way around it.
So a project makes a DAO. they hold the majority of the thing. They're going to be making all
decisions because of their voting rights being outweighing everyone else's for the most part.
If they're not the right people to be at the helm, then it's going to fail. That's just how
bad companies or poorly ran companies work. So I don't really know how to fix it, to be honest, but I don't know.
I'd like to see it work.
Yeah, imagine when the whale – it's one thing when you have someone in the group that's voting or contributing and commenting, and they're not only unqualified, but they're just objectively wrong.
Now imagine that same person, and it's a whale or whales that control the vote.
Like the Dow is DOA.
Like it's not, it's dead on arrival.
It's not going to survive if you have someone.
And I'm sure that's happened.
I'm sure there's been Dow's where the controlling stake
or someone that had 30, 40% controlling interest in votes
just was the wrong person to be calling the shots.
Now, sometimes, usually, those people are influenced by the real organizers, the real leaders of the DAO because they know the whale controls the vote.
And so they reach out to them and they spend more time talking to them and they get them on board.
But it just doesn't always play out that way.
Revolve,
you've been,
you've been patient GM going,
get in here.
What's I saw you had an interesting take.
Are the, you know,
DAOs have been conceptually around for,
for hundreds,
if not thousands of years.
Yes.
Maybe I'm go ahead and expand on that and take it whichever direction you'd
like. Good morning, everyone. GM captain going to go ahead and expand on that and take it whichever direction you'd like.
Good morning, everyone. GM Captain, thanks for having me on. For you guys don't know,
I'm Zach, CEO, co-founder here at Revolve. Yeah. One of the things that, and again,
I'm speaking on behalf of real estate and a couple other things, and I've got some ideas
on the business side of it. But when we talk about thousands of years, we kind of dialed it
down to what we call
a collective property ownership model or collective ownership. And if you look at back in history,
tribes and various other things have collectively owned property and stuff and made the decisions on
what do we do with this land, right? But you still have a leader in a way. The seventh largest
company in Brazil is actually a collective ownership model. So very
much that the people in so many ways, like a credit union or other things where people kind
of own it, but also get to make the decisions. We kind of have this funky place with the Dow
and Oxy nailed it as well as, you know, you talk about the decision making factor. One of the
things we're incorporating with us is that each property is held under a Dow,
right? So there's a thousand pieces and you get to vote. Do we sell it? Do we re-rent it? Do we
raise rents? But the big thing becomes, and I talked to, oh, who was a dissent Dow platform,
and they talked about fatigue, right? How many decisions does somebody have to make over the
year and what decisions
are they making? You know, the big conversation kind of falls into the SEC and you start getting
into is it security or not? But more importantly, collective ownership and decision making to me
are kind of two different things. And if we overload, like, for instance, if you had a
restaurant, right, and the decision is, you know, do we increase the menu?
Do we not?
Versus, hey, I need to order shrimp now.
Do we vote on do we order 10 pounds or 50 pounds?
I would rather leave a lot of like the game time decisions to somebody who knows what they're doing, but maybe have some larger decisions on, you know, is it a capybara cafe or is it going to be a cat cafe?
I mean, those are kind of, in my opinion, the things that we vote on more so than the
operational, the day-to-day operations of the organization itself, because then people
fall into, like we talked about, the fatigue and a few other things.
But DAOs, in my opinion, are kind of the future of group and collective knowledge,
because you can limit who's in the
group. You know, if you have one property and they own it, you own a piece of it, then you can be in
the conversation. But if you don't, you're out. And part of it is exactly like we said, what
decisions are they making? It's been around for a really long time, but I think that a lot of
organizations right now, and again, my IMO is like you guys have just been nailing it left and right.
There needs to be some leader, some spearheader, somebody who's willing to take it on, but let the
Dow still be involved in some of the decisions, but obviously let the driver pick which direction
we're going. We're just going to pick the wheels and tires to make it look cool. Right. So anyway, that's my two cents on it. It's a good take. I agree. I think they need a leader.
That's the one, my one takeaway of all this is I think DAOs will be a lot more effective with a
figurehead, a spokesperson, a real leader that then relies on the group for simple decisions,
relies on the group for simple decisions, but not day to day. And then all that's not decentralized.
Maybe this is where we got it wrong. Maybe decentralized autonomous organization is just
not it. I actually thought, again, I was very bullish AI agents coming into this year, still am,
but they obviously did not have the impact. They weren't like NFTs of 21. They didn't have the mania impact.
And I also thought AI agents could fix DAOs primarily in some of like the back and forth, the administration.
A lot of like I had some experience with the ApeCoin DAO before it sunset.
And the admin review, the administration was quite frankly really bad.
admin review, the administration was quite frankly, really bad. It was extremely slow,
archaic, I might say. And this was like, I believe a team of like five people that were
supposed to get something done. And it was stuff that could have got back to the applicants in
hours or days at most would take weeks because you had, again, five people scattered across the globe and getting on those meetings to talk about the next meeting.
They just I don't know. I wasn't there. I can only guess or speculate what was so challenging.
But the I did think that. AI agents could help move some DAOs along, but maybe.
DAOs along, but maybe that's part of the challenge is we, our DAOs attempted to decentralize too much of the decision-making process and the building process and attempted to automate too much of the process when the reality is, if you have a thousand stakeholders, you're just, you're really, you're rarely going to get anything done.
Everyone's going to have a difference of opinions or what you do get done is not what a thousand people want to see.
It's what the one, two or three largest holders want to get done.
I want to jump in here for a sec before Von Fronten takes us out
because he's like, discuss pirate value carrot.
That's really funny.
So I put this into Chad GPT real quick because I had like a,
I wanted to synthesize kind of the differences for me.
And I think it actually for once did a decent job of this.
And this is an interesting take.
I'm kind of here for this take.
So one of the things that it says is that a true DAO, of course, would be decentralized, autonomous and organized.
And so the decentralization part is that it's actually genuinely hard to like capture the power in a decentralized organization.
Being autonomous is that the rules are executed without permission and organized decisions
reliably turn into action. But here's what I like and how this got framed. It breaks and says that
when you have a D plus O, but you have a weak autonomy, then that's like a DAO with a multi-sig
or you have an A plus O, but a weak D. So that's like an on multi-sig or you have an a plus o but a weak d
so that it's an on-chain company or you have a d plus a with a weak o where it's like a chaotic
voting machine and so like the sentiment from chadgpt today is that like it's a hard thing to
nail all three of those things in one and that's i think like the thing that people miss in trying
to accomplish a successful dow is, it's almost as if once
you have one or two nailed, one falls apart, which I think is interesting. It also provides,
it's like hilarious. I'm not sure if this is hallucinating or not, but this is an interesting
take. It says that coiners care the most about A, governance nerds care the most about O, and
crypto idealists care the most about D, And most conflicts come from pretending you can maximize all three at once.
And I don't know, man, like that is that is an interesting, like succinct way to like, you know, just detail the like the root of the Dow problem.
When you think about like the D, the A and the O and how you like actually combine all three.
Yeah, I don't know i
it's interesting because i think like the decentralization part is really just about
the way that i think the voting is ultimately conducted like i still i still think like
the organization part of it is is still about leadership for it to be successful like i don't
know i i'm i i i just haven't seen it yet where it just isn't like i just be successful. Like, I don't know. I, I'm, I, I, I just haven't
seen it yet where it just isn't like, I just, I just, I've like, I don't like, why can't we come
up with like the, from the trenches, this is the most successful DAO. Like you, you know, like we've
been around in the space long enough and I can't point a finger to like the thing that like survived
the test of time and is still successful and like paved the way for like the DAO.
the test of time and is still successful and like paved the way for like the DAO.
What if, I don't know the answer. I'm not going to claim to know the answer. If I did, we'd
probably be running a successful DAO. What if we are, what if we think about it in first principles?
What if we don't think about DAOs as what we know them to be? Because even in the chat, I'm not
going to out him, but it's funny because there was someone who wanted to talk about pirate DAOs and I somehow turned it into an ApeCoin DAO conversation.
It's not where we're going.
And he says, giving the DAO too much credit, it wasn't administrative issues, it was a manipulation issue.
It was both.
I think it was both.
I think that the administration was poor.
Probably all, I'm not saying all, but I believe some of them probably were extracting, grifting, just cashing checks and not there for the greater good.
I also do believe there was manipulation on some boats.
There was a lot of extracting, a lot of grifting, and that's not unique to the ApeCoin DAO as we've seen.
Oftentimes it will be self-serving.
You'll see whales come in, accumulate enough tokens to get boats passed.
They'll get what they want, and then they dump their tokens and they move on and do the next thing
um to one one point his he asked what about nouns dow uh nouns out still a thing but they had a kind
of an inflection point where the dow voted to essentially uh wipe out the treasury or i mean
it's not the exact verbiage, but basically everyone
who had a downed out could cash it in for a pro rata share of the treasury and most did.
And so it still exists, albeit with a fraction of the resources and, and, uh, you know, treasure
chest that it had at, uh, at one point, um, we will get into the pirate DAO conversation briefly. Because it's really like, this is, while I wasn't being,
like, I am kind of serious.
I know it's kind of more of a funny thing,
but I do think brings up a good discussion of,
DAOs have been a part of crypto since at least 2016,
we found out this morning.
A lot of groundswell around them, a lot of excitement around them, and led to a lot of disappointment, a lot of failures.
Is it just dead? Do we just move on? Can we rethink what a Dow is and could and should be? Is there a way to even, like I said, forget the name?
And is there a better way to do this from first principles?
I'd like to get Husker in here,
and then we'll go back to Zach Husker, GM.
Always a pleasure.
Hey, GM, Captain.
Thank you so, or sorry, man.
Thank you very much for having me up here.
Just one, I have two things.
First thing, you guys were talking about pirate hats.
Just a reminder, the Pudgy Penguins do have a pirate hat
as part of our collection.
Quick interjection.
Outer E.
Passing earlier.
Can we get an update on your coffee table book?
A lot of people here, I'm guessing,
aren't even aware of this.
Yeah, yeah.
I mentioned it last time when we were talking about writing things.
It's the hardest thing to write for myself
versus it's just in general hard to write stuff.
So yeah, that's like,
I need to just get myself in
gear and finish the thing um but yes at some point i will i guess the background is that yes
i have been working on a traits book and it's been like forever and some of it's done some of
it's not done so safe to say you probably have the most comprehensive database for nft traits of
anyone on the planet for proof of work ethereum yeah because i i had
like a very clear like set of of data that i chose so that would be like pretty much every project on
ethereum that's a pfp project from for like from the beginning of ethereum when they started all
the way up until proof of work um i did not do proof of stake but penguins are on proof of work
and yes they have they have a they they have indeed a pirate hat trait.
I was going to say, great call at Husker, and had I asked Outer which collections had a pirate trait, she could probably pull up her database, do a control F, and tell us everyone that has a pirate hat in it.
Go ahead.
Sorry for the interjection.
I just had to get that in there.
Hey, no worries.
It was a good interjection, honestly. The other thing I was just going to say is,
I think one of the reasons this cycle has sucked so much is previous cycles, we had something that made us think in crypto that there was something we were doing
that was going to be a greater benefit to humanity, or at least like that aspiration.
But in reality, I'm now starting to see that essentially crypto is just basically
not front running, but basically we were just doing what everyone else has done beforehand,
just like a lot faster, but we're ending up in that same result. Like the DAOs have been done
by other people before, but generally failed. I kind of think what Revolve was kind of talking
about as I was listening to it is just like, well, this kind of sounds like just, you know, we go to stocks where the stockholders, you know, vote for board
of directors, the board of directors vote for a CEO, and a CEO is one that makes the decisions.
Those are kind of those like high level decisions that like happen in real life. And are we just
ending going towards that same place? And maybe that's why the cycle sucks is like we're realizing that and we're just like, well, we're not really building anything from first principles better than what already exists in the real world.
Other than the fact that maybe if it's on chain, a little bit more transparent, but maybe it's to the gambling casino as we go.
Sorry if that's a downer, but.
I mean, shareholders and public companies is probably the best analog
of it done right where you have a ceo you have a board that makes all the decisions and then they
bring their shareholders in to vote on things um yeah i mean that's probably the answer and so i
guess then the question becomes what why does it need to be on chain what do we do differently here
that's not just going public?
And I mean, I have the answers in my own head,
but I'll kick it back to you if you have any response on that,
and we'll get Zach back in here.
I will just go ahead and leave it for the big brains like Oxy
and the other people on here to do that.
I'm not an on-chain expert, so.
Fair.
Zach with Revolve, go ahead.
Yeah, so I'm looking at it going, you know,
this technology that we're utilizing is phenomenal, right? Just a, just a real quick,
two years ago, I didn't know, I didn't know web three. I was just, I knew the technology was available. Next thing you know, I'm at East Denver and I just indulged myself and learned it.
And the DAOs, I think the technology and the way and the concept of the
general layman, the everyday person to have a voice and an opinion on this product that, you
know, is online or something. It's not just a board that's making those decisions on behalf
of my stocks, but I actually get to make a decision. That's huge. It's just, where do we
use them? Like, you know, HOAs, they're inherently terrible with voting and trying to get
everybody to show up, where if you had it in a digital form on their hand, could people make
those decisions? Basically, you know, they have an NFT in their wallets. Now they get a vote,
they just make the vote from their phone, as opposed to showing up to a town hall meeting.
So there's a perfect use case for DAOs. Like you mentioned, boards and CEOs and things like that, what if
they don't even have to show up? They can just, again, make a decision from their phone. So now
they could be on 15 companies because you're only making 30 decisions a year, right? This or that,
or that or this, but you can do it all remotely. So the technology is phenomenal and definitely
don't want to dock it. I just want to make sure that, you know, when we talk about the real world use cases, is it split time, game time decisions, right? Like, are we voting on the
next play that the Chargers are about to run? Hopefully not. But do we vote on, hey, are we
going to build the new stadium and make it this color, that color, whatever it is, and get the
input? So there's a lot, a lot of use cases. But the big thing I
noticed, too, was voter fatigue. We've really got to watch out for, you know, too many decisions,
Dow fatigue. And then the other thing you mentioned is whales. You know, one of the things we put was
a cap. You can only own 9.9% of any property, which means you only get to make 9.9% of the
decision-making power on any given thing.
So do you cap people on their decision-making abilities?
Kind of another thing we thought about.
But yeah, the future's there.
NFTs, and our idea is going to be the future.
But yeah, DAOs, they're great.
They just need to be, in my opinion, a little tuned in, a little dialed in.
And again, don't make it the split-time decisions, but these bigger, heavier,
and allow people to be a part of something, you know.
So back to you guys.
Yeah, no, good take.
I do think voting has been broken from a lot of these.
I don't know the best solution.
I don't know quadratic voting or I do go for it.
I totally.
Yeah.
I'm like, OK, hold on.
I wasn't paying attention to speak.
I think it was revolve. Yeah, it was revolve. So I have to who was speaking. I think it was Revolve.
Yeah, it was Revolve. So I have a couple of things that I thought about when you were speaking. I think like there is technology that's not like on-chain decentralized technology that allows
for, you know, like remote voting. I think there's something like important to this notion of it
being like, you know, an actual like on-chain system. But I think the problem I have with the DAOs,
I've been thinking about it,
is that it's missing a letter.
And maybe this would solve all the problems.
I don't think it's a DAO.
I think it has to be like a DAIO
and the I is incentivized.
So it's, I wrote it down in my little notes here,
decentralized autonomous incentivized organization.
Because then you very clearly
understand what the incentive of the dao is and maybe there's actual like some kind of rewards
built into why you vote at all and then you don't get burnout because you're incentivized to do it
i don't know i've just been exploring like maybe dao's like maybe we need to reinvent the dao
and maybe we need to take away a letter maybe add a a letter, I don't know. But there's got to be like a,
like what's the North Star of the DAO?
And I think maybe like that is ingrained in the culture of what the DAO is.
And everybody has a very clear understanding
every time they vote why they're doing it
and what they get if they do it.
Maybe it's rewards, maybe it's something like,
I don't know, but there's got to be like,
and not just in the minute,
but like as the whole entity is created,
that's deeply like embedded just as like the way that it's organized, the way that the voting is done on chain, whether it's one person, one vote or whether it's, you know, like Revolve said, maybe it's like, you know, 10 percent or whatever that number was of, you know, max ownership for decision making.
But there's got to be like some kind of very clearly defined incentive for everybody involved.
Otherwise, like, why?
You know, like otherwise, otherwise divides like, yo, Founders, that was having a vote.
You should have a look.
Here's the link.
And I'm like, I don't even know who proposed what.
I don't know if I care.
Same. Why do I care? Like there does need to be some sort of incentives and beyond like, hey, if this thing works in the next decade, the underlying token could go up and your time here is going to, there's just, it's so hard to keep attention in this space.
Same.
Why do I care?
Like there does need to be some sort of incentives.
In this space, governance voting is arguably one of the most boring things to do.
And to your point, if there's 500,000 holders of ApeCoin, there might have been, I don't know, someone could correct me.
There might have been 100 people to 500 people that would vote on an average proposal.
It's probably maybe understating a little bit, but it was less than 1% of the token holders would actually be participating and active in the DAO.
And I would say probably more than half of them
weren't active, weren't participating,
didn't even read the proposal.
They would just go in and vote when voting time came.
It's just, and again, I don't know the answer.
It goes back to like shareholders though.
I'm curious, what's the average percentage
of shareholders that actually vote
when they have the opportunity to do so i'm guessing low outside of like the large shareholders
i'm guessing you know someone's holding 100 shares of tesla i've never voted on any any
tesla proposals never i've held their stock for years i've just never done i don't feel like
divide has to come up here and talk about it
because he also gets these summons to vote
and all the Tesla things.
And I actually don't know if he does or not,
but I see that they come in.
And I'm now curious,
see if I text him and summon him.
I want to know the answer to this.
He has the answer.
He reads all the things
and I don't know if he's ever voted or
not but i feel like if he did it'd be a good like why'd you do it like why does it matter
he's my damn it cap you first you got me up at you know lay press my morning rise time uh now
now you're gonna make me talk um no obligation yeah we'd love to hear you if uh hear your
thoughts on this if you are able and willing to join us um i thought i saw hands but i i lost
them uh i don't know if it's x or hands went down by the way quick reset if you haven't yet done so
give us some love on the space heading in the nine o'clock hour here we we talking dowels i know this
may seem like a wild uh conversation for the you know december 2025 but very much is in the news, not just Aave. What kind of brought
this conversation on was this bill that's been proposed by Mike Lee, U.S. Senator for Utah.
The TLDR is his bill would authorize American privateers to seize cartel assets with the
president's approval.
Patriots of the Caribbean, it's called. This is linked up top if you want to read into it further. But essentially, I found this in my in real life friend group there in crowds. It's like
our pickers group. So we talk stocks, equities, Tesla, and other TradFi stocks. I'm the crypto
guy in there. And so yeah,
I took that from the friend group chat to the war room. We already got about a dozen people
that are in on the pirate dial to raise a pirate armada and go get our gold and oil from the
Caribbean. And I'm half serious about this. I don't necessarily want to be the pirate myself,
at least not at this point in my life, but I would like to say I'm leading a pirate ship and a bunch of pirates and we're actually
out there real life treasure hunting. It would be fun. It feels very crypto-esque and I mean,
forget buying the constitution. Let's go find even better collectible artifacts.
I see the Ant Academy.
I'm not sure first-time speaker or not, but welcome to the stage, GM.
What brought you up?
For a second, I thought we might have had a pirate hat, but quite the opposite of the graduation hat.
Yeah, it's not a pirate hat.
I think I'm a first-time speaker on your space, so thanks for letting me up. And yeah, I'm good. How are you?
Doing great. Thanks. Appreciate you joining us.
Yeah, no, absolutely. I just saw the DAO and I'm interested in that kind of stuff. Just heard about the kind of offering incentives just triggered my little mind as an opinion.
kind of offering incentives just triggered my little mind as an opinion. I've always thought
about DAOs, you see some really work well, see some really not work well, and I think incentivising
them would be, most occasions, be a poor choice unless you incentivise the right thing. But yeah,
I just thought I'd come up, say and um if you i'm happy to go
into very quickly why i think incentivizing would be poor choice yeah but i don't want to hog the
space really i appreciate the i appreciate the pushback and i understand where you're coming
from the wrong incentives are probably worse than no incentives and maybe the answer is we just were overthinking this and you can use a, this somewhat of a familiar structure to raise funds and give them a somehow a vested interest.
That's not a security, but yet the decision-making process, the decision-making comes down to a leader or a few leaders.
But I, you feel free to take whichever direction you like.
I am genuinely curious to hear your thoughts. I'm going to mute my my camera but i'll be able to hear you as i step away for a
second yeah i mean i won't go into massive depth at all probably because i just can't i'm not that
bright um but i've always thought if you're going to incentivize it or or offer rewards
for voting then the structure has got to be better.
I've seen it work really well where the community is divided into like sub-communities
and the leaders or the kind of chairs of those sub-communities,
they're voted in, I guess, based on reputation.
I don't know in depth.
I've not really been too in depth involved with them,
but I'm guessing their reputation got them into those positions of chair.
And then the voters are incentivised and they're awarded,
not for voting, but for the outcome.
So if it was a really positive outcome and it worked,
whatever they were voting for,
then they were awarded for a positive outcome rather than just for voting.
I thought if you just start offering whatever for voters to vote,
you're just going to get people mindlessly voting,
and it actually goes against the whole thing,
and then you're going to get pure bias,
and the whole thing will crumble very quickly.
So I've seen it work really well when you divide
and think about subcommittees into different parts
of whatever that project is or brand company or whatever.
That works really strongly.
And then you incentivise the voters through, you get rewarded from the outcomes based on what you voted for and
if they've worked or they're positive i thought that that was quite a nice thing i've seen in
terms of daos daos yeah i think that's an interesting point i mean when i said to add
the i to the dao i didn't mean like you, some kind of fickle way of incentivizing each vote.
I think it's just that in the DAOs that I have been a part of in the last however many years, there is a clear missing North Star.
Like so that the greater incentive of why the DAO exists, if that makes sense.
I just want to clarify like where like what why would I want to show up?
like where like what why would i want to show up like what is the point like i don't know like
Like what is the point?
cap do you know like what was ultimately the point of the founders down like like proposals came in
people put out random things but there was really no like like i i'm sure there was something written
somewhere on some website but but it was nothing that was palatable that i like took in and like
held on to as like a the main like point the main tagline the main mission vision nothing that was palatable that I like took in and like held on to as like a, the main like point, the main tagline, the main mission vision, like that was missing. And I think
like that's, that's different than giving some like, you know, one shot rewards or some kind
of pool or some random thing for, because that to me is just like what's already kind of been,
been been done and is missing i think the thing that that is important is like kind of like you
been done and is missing. And I think the thing that, that is important is like,
know when you throw like a blockchain solution at a problem even though it doesn't need that solution
when you throw a dow onto something that doesn't need a dow and then that begs the question of
what does a dow solve yeah and and without a clear state of vision, a mission, a true north, it probably doesn't solve much, probably overcomplicates whatever many – because without a defined purpose, well, then now you're going to have a DAO that's got a thousand people, give or take, that all think they know what it should be and what it should be doing.
And that itself in lies the problem.
And, and now that you say that, I don't know,
like the founders down was, you got access into an alpha group chat.
They bought some crypto punk. So you had indirect exposure in theory,
we thought, and then come to find out,
G-Funk had the keys and he just sold them all and took it for personal gain.
My audio is all over the place.
Appreciate the heads up.
I shouldn't be, but I apologize.
I wonder if that's...
I have you just fine, Cap.
Yeah, you sound great.
Okay, we'll ride through it.
But I wonder if it is over on the YouTube streets where the audio that came from Kevin.
If anyone else on YouTube is having audio issues, let me know.
But yeah, thanks for the heads up.
I do appreciate the pains that are in the studio.
So I'm guessing I am having some YouTube audio challenges.
I'm guessing I am having some YouTube audio challenges.
I didn't change anything on the Roodcaster,
but I have been playing around attempting to improve the audio setup.
There is a chance I've broken something.
Oxy, go ahead and save me.
Oh, says good.
Absolute Zero says he's good over there on YouTube.
So Oxy, GM.
GM, yeah.
So I guess what we're all talking about, like how to fix DAOs and then, you know, incentivizing voting or like, you know, being active.
At the end of the day, the reason why people, I think the reason why people aren't active in DAOs or why DAOs really aren't working is because holding the token doesn't mean you own
the company. And it gets back to the same thing I've been talking about for the last
long time is tokens do not equal equity. When you get asked to vote on Tesla because you own
100 shares of Tesla, your actions actually attribute to what the company is going to do, right?
And it actually impacts the price of the equity and the value of equity.
You go in, you hold some APE token or whatever token, you make a vote.
Now, you can make a decision based on that vote,
and it might improve the value of the company,
but that doesn't actually, it doesn't always directly correlate back to your token value.
And the only way that it does actually relate to the token value is if it's a token vote, like token buybacks or token burn vote or something like that.
Anything outside of that, it's a company vote for a company you don't own or don't have any stake in. So why would I care what Yuga does? If it's not going to come back and directly improve the value of my Ape token, it doesn't really mean anything to me because I don't own equity in Yuga.
So I think, I mean, I think it all circles back to this, this same issue at hand where token doesn't equal equity. So the value accrual is not the same between the two vehicles. And that's why people just don't seem to care about those because it's all token related. that actually holds equity in the company that you're making decisions for.
And that's why stock voting versus DAO voting in the crypto sense isn't one for one, in my opinion.
Yeah, very fair.
Is that just it? So I guess my pushback would be, though, shareholders own equity in the equities that they invest in. Most don't vote there. Like there is a, I still think there's a way, I guess what I'm saying.
I still think there's a way DAOs could be, or a reinvention of DAOs could be successful without equity being tied to the token.
Would be greater, sure, if you could, at least under current regulation.
I don't know there's a way to do that without it becoming an actual security.
I don't know.'s a way to do that without it becoming an actual security. I don't know.
Thoughts on that?
Yeah.
Am I cutting out?
You cut out there for a few seconds.
But yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, I guess I don't know.
It's, I don't know, to be honest, like I haven't found I haven't seen like tokenomics or a token structure that actually.
I mean, obviously, there are tokens out there where you're using the token and there's utility for the token that, you know, that provides inherent value back to the, to the actual value of
said token. But those are very few and far between, in my opinion, and a governance token
in the current state, like there hasn't been a single one that hasn't depreciated dramatically in value that i can think of
right now and that what all that tells me is like okay governance of over
because at the end of the day okay so maybe i don't know if i'm out of line with this but
if i have a governance token and i say okay protocol or protocol says we're voting on xyz decision
and I say, okay, protocol says we're voting on XYZ decision.
Does that actually, does that really impact what they end up doing
or the direction of the company long-term?
Like, are those always followed or adhered to?
And then also at a second point is like,
are you voting on decisions that actually matter in the long term?
Or is it just like, okay, let's give them something to, okay, you know what, we're going to improve or we're going to change the rate of return on Jupiter token that's being staked from 5% to 6%.
We're going to do it anyway, but we're going to let them vote on whether or not we should do this.
but we're going to let them vote on whether or not we should do this.
And then at the same time, we're just going to keep doing exactly what we're going to do anyway
and keep building out this product the way that we're going to do to accrue value back to the underlying company,
which is the equity.
And then, I don't know, maybe I'm being too presumptuous here,
but I don't think there's a single governance token that's actually
done anything.
I guess
that just means that, I don't know,
it's just a failed
experiment there.
I'll give a few examples
here with the help of my
co-producer here,
not to take a
whoever. Governance tokens with strong my AI co-producer here, not to take a,
whoever.
Governance tokens with strong historic or relative performance.
Aave,
as we've mentioned a few times,
Uniswap,
MakerDAO,
Curve,
DYDX,
Compound,
PancakeSwap,
SushiSwap.
So mostly DEXs,
LidoDAO, DEXs or staking seem to be like the, which
I'm not saying they're not real organizations, but after they're up and running, not a lot of
moving parts, right? Like not, you're not, I don't think you're probably talking about more
upgrades and making decisions like a quarterly or even an annual basis, as opposed to
running a organization that every day there's decisions that need to be made.
I'm open to being wrong here, but those are a few that they are essentially DAOs. They do have
governance amongst their token holders,
and these have been very successful in the space.
One thing I don't fully understand,
and this is going to sound really ignorant coming from me at this point,
especially being an ETH bull.
How exactly does the Ethereum foundation, it as my understanding it's off chain it's
forum talk it's more of like a social consensus and then the core developers decide based on
social consensus what upgrades are going to move forward with is it are you well versed on this
outer or anyone else on stage can speak to Ethereum
and how they're decentralized,
but yet their voting and their decisions
is not done via DAO governance voting?
Correct?
I lost audio.
I'm not super familiar with on on that front from what i understand that
sounds that sounds accurate but what you're describing um and maybe maybe like to kind of
piggyback on that same thing is like uniswap like i think it was probably 2024 there was a vote out
there for them to turn the fee switch on it would have been probably the first fee switch vote or fee switch protocol to go into effect.
And essentially what they were going to do is what they're voting on now, ironically enough, is they're going to turn on a they're going to pull a small percentage of swaps and I think liquidity pools.
It might be dynamic. I don't I didn't read through the whole thing, but essentially back in 2024, they voted on, they said, okay, you know what?
We're going to turn the fee switch on, or this is the vote.
Should we go forward with it?
I'm pretty sure it was relatively unanimous that they were going to turn the fee switch on, but then they decided to back out of it because of legal issues associated with the fee switch.
So it's like, okay, what's the consensus? Oh, everyone wants to turn the fee switch on.
You know what? We're going to make the executive decision. We can't do that. Obviously, I understand
the legalities behind it. You're not going to just screw yourself by getting into a huge
lawsuit with the United States government or whatever. But then down
the line, they're like, oh, you know what? Remember everyone wanted to do this? Let's do it.
And it's just more of a consensus or or more like a what's the general situation in the market? Oh, everyone's turning the fee switch on. Everyone's doing buybacks. Everyone's moving towards this meta. Let's make the unanimous or the executive decision to do that.
So it's more like you're exactly right, where it's like, okay, what does generally everyone think about the direction we should go and then follow that?
Yeah, Outer, can we get a quick – you're good on YouTube.
I think it was – I flipped the switch on my end.
Let's do a quick check.
One sec.
It's probably just me, and I think YouTube, you're just fine.
Check one, check two.
I'm going to do the unplug and plug back in.
That usually works.
All right.
We are Thank you. oxy talkie yeah um gotcha go for it yep do you want to finish that your your last thought i think
we probably spoke over your i cut you off there interrupted you a little bit but um can we rewind rewind the tape me yeah go ahead no no no nothing nothing really else more so i guess just related to that uniswap
discussion i don't know if you heard the whole thing or not but um that was pretty much it it's
like ultimately it's a it's a consensus it's like, okay, what does everyone want?
Or what does the general public feel like the direction we should go?
Okay, it's this way.
Let's put a vote out for it.
So it's more so like a, it's not even like a, I don't know.
It doesn't feel like they're real business decisions because it's already kind of known
this is the direction we're going to end up going.
Here's a vote for it to kind of make it feel like, you know, decisions are being made. Um, I don't know, in my opinion,
I hear you almost more of a, let's satisfy the people. Let's make them feel like they're, um,
like they're involved, they're vested, they have a decision in the process or a state in the decision-making process, but do they really? I did see, well, we have a wild divide on stage, so we might have to
let divide go next. I do want to share this. It came in from Phillip. Phillip, you were up on stage
I saw for a second and then we lost you for having issues connected. Maybe take a quick lap, leave
the space, come back, maybe force close the app. And then I would love to get your take on this.
If it's something you seemingly based on your, your feed,
something you're passionate about, because it's not just Ave right now.
I did not see this one out or Phillip who was just, yeah,
he's coming back up. So we'll let him speak to it.
speak to it, but he says this
But he says this may start to become a trend. Gnosis L LTD,
may start to become a trend. Gnosis,
LTD, the entity,
also lost
against the Gnosis DAO. Gnosis
is one of the leading, if not the leading
multi-sig, one of the leading
multi-sigs in space.
Very fast. Yeah, not exactly the
Gnosis Limited, but the
DAO pulled. Check out the
forum for the details. There's a
lot of lore into that but it's
interesting like an interesting thing now with ave too like it seems like to be a trend
so what what do you think is the outcome of this what is the trend like you because you say here
community most likely wins the whole dow slush fund thing everyone is rolling with just a matter
of time until easy money collapses so in in this was, you quote tweeted the,
this post here where Aave having a full blown civil war might be the biggest
governance fight DeFi has ever seen. Here's a clean breakdown.
Aave has two sides, Aave Labs,
which is a centralized entity founded by Stani, Aave DAO,
the token orders who govern the protocol.
Here's what's happening on December 4th.
Aave Labs announced partnership with CalSwap to improve swap pricing and
MEV protection on the Aave interface on December 11th, Aave Labs announced a partnership with CowSwap to improve swap pricing and MEV protection on the Aave interface.
On December 11th, a week later, a popular delegate, DeFi, Rezl, drops on-chain analysis stating that swap fees from the new CowSwap contract are being routed to a private wallet controlled by Aave Labs, not the DAO.
Translation, DAO revenue quietly got cut off. Then a day later, Mark Zeller, largest delegate, Aave Chain Initiative,
calls it stealth privatization, claims $10 million per year that should go to the DAO is gone.
Four days later, things go nuclear. Proposal called Poison Pill by Tulip King. The demands
seize all Aave IP code and brand, force Aave Labs to become a DAO-owned subsidiary.
Clawback all past revenue earned using the Aave brand.
Then proposal two comes.
Brand seizure by former CTO of Aave Labs.
Move trademarks, domain, and socials to the DAO immediately.
Logic, if the DAO pays for dev plus marketing,
the DAO should own the brand, domains, and social.
Aave Labs slash Stanny's defense.
The cow swap thing was never a fee switch.
Frontend revenues was a surplus.
Labs donated voluntarily.
Aave Labs is a private company.
DAO owns the contract, not the website.
Labs pays for hosting security and frontend engineers.
Now the plot twist amid all this chaos.
Aave Labs opens a snapshot vote on December 23rd.
That's today.
Proposal give Aave token, Aave DAO holders explicit control over the brand, assets, domain, social, naming rights, GitHub, NPM, everything.
Except the author of the proposal says he never approved it.
He claims it got rushed to vote with his name on it while discussion was still active.
Calls it disgraceful.
Urges people to abstain.
Mark Zeller then says the proposal was rushed during the holidays with fresh delegations
gaining voting power. Zoom out. This isn't about CalSwap. This isn't about
OneWallet. This is the unresolved question of DeFi. Who
actually owns a protocol, the code, the front end, or the brand? Aave is
about to set precedent and everyone is watching. Phillip, appreciate you sharing that. Go ahead
and anything you'd like to add to that conversation
or I guess DAOs in general.
Yeah, so the Gnosis story is not as well documented
and there's also a lot of stuff.
I mean, I guess there's, generally speaking,
for a lot of these companies,
a lot of stuff going on behind the doors, right?
And there's a lack of transparency in a lot of cases.
And it's fascinating because the Gnosis story is literally what you just described previously,
that people are coming together off chain and coming together and find some kind of agreement
and then make a proposal and just push it through, right?
That was the case with KPK in the past
with the 30 million they just approved.
They just pushed it through against the community.
The community didn't want to speak up
because they felt like it's the founder
and we should give him some trust, et cetera, right?
So which is valid, which is a valid thing too.
But it's 10% of the market cap of Gnosis,
which is quite a lot at the time.
Now it's probably less.
So what the DAO did then was there are a couple of people
that not only in Germany, but that came together and just did the same thing
that the founder and the limited Tepity and KPK, et cetera, do.
And did this move themselves, made a proposal, pushed KPK out within a week.
That was crazy.
That was fun to observe.
But I don't know, maybe it's fascinating to observe
because we started to see this dynamic
where people are envy of each other
and starting to try to hide things
and to do things off chain.
And I'm thinking while I'm observing it,
asking people questions,
being annoying at times, the common theme I'm asking myself is, did we lost track of the vision
here? Like this was supposed to be extreme transparency, fixing the financial system,
et cetera. And now we're kind of moving backwards to all the problems that traditional finance system
also has instead of trying to address them with the vision in mind. But I guess it's once money
comes into play and you get very attached to this number on the screen, all of these values fall apart, don't they?
It certainly feels that way.
I agree.
It feels like we've lost the plot on many of these.
Like what, not just the true north of a specific DAO and what their mission or mission is,
but why did we go this route to begin with?
I don't think the initial thesis behind dals was let's just
copy paste public companies and shareholder voting um and i see we we finally convinced
honestly that would be an improvement like honestly like no joke if we would have shareholder
like the same standards as we have in the stock market that would already be
an improvement that's how bad it is yeah again i repeat my earlier statement it makes me sad because
i i feel like i guess something i got really excited about and now i not only do i not know
the answer like it's like, depending on how these, this
Aave thing plays out, like, I don't know, might this, might, might this be the beginning
of the end of the Owls Outer?
I mean, like, is the end now or did the end already happen?
Like, I don't, I don't, I'm sorry to be such a pessimist about it, but I just, I don't know.
I don't know.
And I'm not even sure it's like, I think that for me, when I think about it, it's like,
why like societal systems don't often work, but like look great on paper, you know, like
whatever utopia you can come up with, it's probably not going to be executed by us in
a way that makes sense. And we've seen that time and time again with various like, you know, organizational government pessimistic about it but I like I don't know
this is why I'm interested in what that are like friend Paul from a decade ago wrote that I want
to read about this idea of integrating AI into it like there's something there's something there
that's very interesting to me because it may take away this like you know human nature element where
even like the previous speaker mentioned you know people being envious or whatever like like there's i've definitely seen time and time again on any
dow where the system and the model is that like you get more voting rights if you hold more of
said token that people are like well what's the point of me voting if person a is going to have that much power me having a few
doesn't matter and i think that's an easy self-reflection when they don't where those
folks don't realize that if like you know x amount of them show up with their one or two votes that
actually does make a difference perhaps depending on the allocation but but that part is like you
know why bother you know you get into this thing you're excited
but then when you see the way that it actually plays out that i think that's one of the biggest
demotivators yeah um me like i stopped participating because i didn't think it
like i i actually didn't stop participating I would participate more than I would vote. I felt I could get more done by speaking, amplifying my feelings, my thoughts, than going and voting with knowing it was – like there was maybe a handful of votes that would ever come within even a small, you know, a close percentage of, you know, the mattering.
percentage of, of, you know, the mattering most were well decided by the coordination of the whales
or the funds, or, you know, if we're going to be use specifics, Mochaverse and, and others,
I do want to quote, um, I'm going to quote Von Fronten here, added this in the war room. Also
divide, if you're still out there, apologies, we didn't get to you faster. If you're able to join
us, I know you got, you're hard to pin down, but would love to get the two
of you on the stage today, if at all possible, but no obligations. And we will get Husker in here
next. But Von Fronten says, equity holder, talking about publicly traded companies,
shareholders versus DAOs, equity holders don't vote on every aspect of the company.
They don't vote on who to hire for most positions, what products to launch, what markets to enter, et cetera. Because shareholders can vote board members in or out,
and the board members can hire and fire the CEO. This string of accountability aligns the CEO to
increase shareholder value, which benefits those who hold equity in the company. Also, given the
size of publicly held companies, it's very hard for whales, including literal billionaires,
to gain controlling interest in the company in the same way they can in DAOs and crypto, at least many of the models we've
seen to date. Corporations are also regulated on how they must listen to shareholders. DAOs aren't.
DAOs can unilaterally decide what goes to vote, when it goes to vote, which gives them a different
power and accountability structure than most corporations.
accountability structure than most corporations.
And be regulated and, you know, to protect the members of the DAO.
Well said, I'm not surprised, but appreciate you way better than I could have explained it myself.
Huskies, hope we know good to you next, but I saw we got Divide back with us.
If you don't mind, you're on deck. Divide. GM, sir, always a pleasure. It's been way too long. What are we missing and can DAOs be saved?
um so first of all uh just taking it back a bit i also have a fellow tiny shareholder in tesla
um and i believe i also have 100 shares which i worked very hard on uh making sure that i could
have so i'm a little fish just like you um when elon was saying oh you have to vote to like vote
for this this is really important and he's like all over the Twitter timeline telling everybody how it's so important to vote.
And I got I got the notification to vote and it came by mail and it said that there was some kind of proxy thing and there was a phone number I could call and I think I could like mail it back.
And it also came at least four weeks after all of this went down on the timeline.
I think I had like maybe three days to decide.
And honestly, it was just like my life moves at a certain speed.
I got this thing and I'm just looking at it and I'm just like, there's this for how many shares I own and for how much effort this is.
This is just absolutely ridiculous.
And then I'm like,
this is so interesting that like, I'm interested in the blockchain world. And there's DAOs and you can literally just like click and vote. And I've done it many times. And it's like smooth, and
it's clear and transparent. And it's wonderful. And yet here we are in the financial world and it's just like i got mailed something like a month later anyway so that's my rant um that said tesla shares are an interesting hold
if you believe in the autonomous future but i'm sure we'll see how that plays out
um i don't know any comments yeah i think that yeah i'll go right back to outer but
talking about from first principles maybe you you nailed it. Maybe we've just overcomplicated things. And the best thing to come out of DAOs is on chain voting. Because you're right. That's partially why I've never voted. Because I actually have a stack somewhere. I have a stack of class action lawsuit. They send you the postcard like hey you're you're eligible for your your share of this 72 million
dollars each person gets like 100 bucks and i filled them out i kid you not i've not even taken
to the to the post office like i don't have stamps i don't like and i know even some of these are
prepaid postage i just that is archaic like the fact that we gotta mail something yet or get
something in the mail you gotta get that mail and then mail it back like it's better on chain sorry go ahead outer i was gonna say okay first of all i know at least
some of the show for next week next tuesday i would love to talk about like actual practical
application of like an immutable database on chain because i feel like i'm facing that in
the health care system where they they mail me an appointment.
Like, I literally get my appointment notification
because I get a letter in the mail telling me when my appointment is.
And there's, like, how am I supposed to do?
Send a letter back for passenger agents.
I just don't even know how to communicate.
It's wild.
And, yeah, so I don't know.
I'm excited about that.
I wanted to ask.
Because I feel like.
You put a question for me.
Yeah.
From your own perspective.
Like to you.
As somebody who was a big pixel vault maxi.
I know this. I'm privy to the.
Collectors comics.
And all the things we have
in our household um and and look i like i joined that that doubt at some point and i was excited
about it but i feel like it aside from what ultimately happened in it losing its plot
entirely in those like earlier like beginnings of it like what what was the point? Oh, man, I don't know.
Okay, let's go back.
I loved being part of it.
It was so much fun.
It was all, like, broken down into different factions,
like different planets, got you different channels on the Discord,
and you can, like, talk and decide things potentially by getting together and discussing.
There was some pretty heated discussions. I remember one about like people minted off contract to try to get the moon,
I think. And they basically just burned their tokens. And then there's like a whole conversation
about whether or not they should get their like, you know, moon tokens or not and it was just like absolute
gold like all of it like you could even write a short story that parallels what went down
that like you know you've got these like lost holders and like lots of conversations one side
is like well they've minted off contracts so they deserve to get burned and the other side is like
well actually they were the ones that just
followed like, like sheep with, they didn't really know better. So they're not like that,
like they're minting off contract because other people told them to. So what, who do you think
these people are? It was great. Um, this, the whole thing, uh, going forward, I think like
really weird stuff happened. Uh, but I don't know if I want to get into that right now.
It's just basically I was kind of like vibing with that DAO and the whole thing.
And then it was just like, oh, we're just going to randomly like sell off all of our assets and like buy some weird thing on Hyperliquid and like sell off this Lost Ravi, which is like literally the foundation of the first comic like everything
just started to be like whoa whoa whoa what's happening like this is not like i thought we
were going one way and then it was just another way so everything was strange and then at the end
it just like turned into a massive explosion of terribleness and i guess that all makes sense in
hindsight but at the beginning it was really cool and um one thing was just like it's fun to participate it's fun to
drop into some conversations on discord and stuff but i mean a lot of stuff didn't happen very quick
also so i you know like if there was like market movements like nobody could do anything right like
it was just like oh like we should
like sell into this price movement and it's like oh well we'll have to make a dial vote and we'll
have to like do this and do that and it just took forever which is actually really ironic because at
the end everything felt like it just went through quickly right but anyway um so so yeah that's i
don't know it was it was really it was a great thing to be part of at the
time in hindsight now it's just like very disconnected i think i'd like to like just
touch back with what ader said about dows being dead um and that is that like everything
all these societal constructs look really a lot of them look really good on paper and they turn out to be not so great in implementation, largely to do with human nature and power and what you do when you get centralized power and what you can get away with. historical leaders of various societal structures making decisions.
I don't know, a few names come to mind.
So I think with these technologies, the reason why I'm even on this space is because I find
blockchain interesting.
I find AI interesting. I find AI interesting. A lot of people don't, but the technologies are
a powerful mix that you can add into pre-existing ideas. And now this is going to sound hopelessly
naive, and I'm just going to say it anyway, but maybe these powerful technologies can be
integrated into new societal ideas that could keep us on the rails, so to speak.
And I don't know if that's going to happen or not.
But imagine if a DAO was set up where there were rules that you just couldn't break them.
there were rules that you just couldn't break them. Like you just, oh, I've got all this power,
but I just can't quite seem to figure out how to wiggle out of this one in order to like take this
power and sell all these punks off and disappear to some faraway country. Oh God, I can't do that.
Okay, fine. And then maybe AI can help with that, but I don't have a solution. I just,
the techno optimist in me is just like, wow, this, this could be it. This could
be like, if the DAOs are actually tuned properly, maybe our humanity can like have autonomy inside
a properly tuned DAO so that we can like all have our voices heard, but nobody's going to end up
getting all this power and, and taking off with, with all the assets so i don't know these are these are my thoughts
like just thinking about it i can circle back on that but huskar is like holding head holding up
his or her hands for like half an hour maybe we should let them speak yeah let's let's do this if
you don't mind philip if you can hang out for a bit we'll get look get husker in here then we'll
uh i saw zach through his hand up and then we'll get right back to Phillip.
But before we do that, Outer.
Well, I guess, Divide, I have one question for you and then Outer if you have any other comments
or questions for Divide as well.
I'm going to say it again.
Is it simple?
We just need to rethink this.
Go back to first principles.
Why are we forming these DAOs?
I share the same feelings and sentiments.
Well, we're forming them because it's possible so you got to experiment you got to bring it out and see what happens so there you go now you know we just and now let's form for the form some more
and keep going we just over complicate it is it as simple as like let's we don't need to reinvent
everything that exists today like like go back to Von Fronten's comments, like, what if the Dow voters, all they voted on was the board? And then the board put in the CEO? Like, I'm not trying to oversimplify things, but maybe that.
Yeah, man, it sounds like a great step. It's like the pendulum swings the other way. And then we'll learn from that. And then eventually, eventually, we'll be in this middle ground where it works, right?
Make them a security to just vote in the, basically the leadership team, the board, which then votes in the CEO.
And now you're vested. Now you, and that CEO wants to keep their job, presumably the board wants to keep their job.
So they're going to do everything they can to drive value accrual back to the underlying token in theory.
to drive value accrual back to the underlying token in theory.
Whereas I think we went from one extreme that we know in,
in publicly traded companies today to the other where, Oh,
every shareholder is equal.
Every shareholder gets a vote.
And that as we we've witnessed, just hasn't quite played out.
Husker, appreciate your patience.
Go ahead.
Or outer, sorry.
Yeah.
Outer and then just to respond to divide.
And then I'm good.
I wanted to like hearing you talk about the DAOs,
I feel like you came up with, like, another, you know,
acronym where you introduced the T, which I've been thinking about,
which would, like, make it DADO,
which is a decentralized autonomous tuned organization.
Because you mentioned this word tuning of it.
And I think, like, maybe that is, like, the sweet spot
of what the dow needs is that like kind of like micro macro management within it i don't know i've just been
thinking about like what it means to like come up with the dow thesis but then really tune and hone
it in a way where then you like set it free okay go function now that we've put these like constraints
in where it can't be
rugged it can't do this there's some like fine-tuning done so that the rules are pretty
clear but i mean to everyone's point i think at this point like pendulum swings we'll see what
happens um maybe maybe maybe it's not that the dows have failed maybe they just haven't been
like maybe we just haven't experimented enough with them. Maybe like, maybe it is just too soon. I don't know. I feel like I'm used to things moving
fast. And maybe, maybe this idea of like human nature meets technology just needs more time to
develop. I agree. I also think that experimenting means new experiments. Like if you're starting
to doubt today and you're doing so with the same DAO structure and governance and same voting that has come prior, that's not a great experiment.
We already know how that experiment plays out.
That hypothesis has been proven to work or to not work.
And do something different.
I don't know the exact answer, but the more we talk through this, I kind of like this idea of mimic these public
traded companies to some degree right like have you need a leader you know vote in the leader
vote in the board that manages the leader like there's there's ways to do this without
making every token holder feel the need or try to think that they're going to vote on every decision
that's just not efficient.
Husker, appreciate your patience.
I mean, I'm sure your arm is tired.
It's very tired.
But no, honestly, always a pleasure to be up here.
But I was just going to say,
and really interested in some of the takes from some of the panelists here is,
does this make anyone bullish on Uni?
I don't know if anyone's following the news on Uni,
but they're literally going through this
same thing right now but i think instead of the fud they're actually trying to be proactive about
and they're actually trying to do the thing called unification right now trying to bring the uh uni
labs into i guess basically making the token represent both uni like dow and uni labs is the
way that i understand it and with it all they're trying to do the fee switch.
So I just wondered, does this make you guys bullish on Uni?
I haven't thought about it much, but...
So I guess, like, does it make me bullish on the token?
I don't know.
I need to look more into comics and...
I guess not all their tokens in supply
Looks like 630 million out of 1 billion
So TVL is 4 point
I'm sorry, FDV is 5.7
Market cap 3.59
I am bullish on the approach
I am bullish on
Attempting at least to meet this head-on
as opposed to like ignoring it and just continuing the way things have been
i think it's very clear especially what we're seeing with ave and gnosis to philip's quote tweet
we're probably going to see more of these like on both parties. There's probably labs or the centralized entities that are,
you know,
a sister or brother to the DAO that are thinking,
Oh crap,
we need to make our move now so we can secure these funds that we think are
ours.
And there's probably on the other side of that token holders that are active
participants in these DAOs thinking,
Oh crap,
we better secure our DAO now and our IP and everything we're building
before the centralized entity tries to pull an Aave
and take it from us.
Aave is no joke, by the way.
I know DAOs aren't the most exciting topic to talk about.
I know there's probably very little chance
to make money on a DAO governance token today.
This is, we're talking, likeave is a like a incredible product they have
53 billion dollars in tvl like they've been successful this could this could i don't think
it will but there's a world where fast forward a few years and they don't exist anymore because
of this major issue.
Like it's hard to see it while it's happening, but there's a, there's an outcome where this
Dow civil war ends up imploding, you know, one of the most successful products to come
out of crypto.
Like that could happen.
And I think it's very much newsworthy, very much noteworthy in something that if you're participating in a DAO, if you work for a centralized entity that has secured funding from a DAO or is connected to a DAO, like this is not going.
I really seriously doubt that Aave, Gnosis, and Uni are the last time this conflict or civil war is probably not the right word.
It's just what I keep coming back to.
This is not going to be the last time this happens.
And because of this, it's probably going to accelerate.
Like this Aave vote is today.
The fact that our timeline isn't talking about this because, oh, it's over and tokens are down and the timeline sucks and it's just AI slop and InfoFi.
tokens are down and the timeline sucks and it's just AI slop and InfoFi.
I know it's not as exciting as like, well,
this might be the next hundred X or I can go win.
I can go buy a raffle token and win, you know,
something worth several thousand dollars. Cool. Teach their own.
You still can do that. I just, I think it's these sorts of topics.
We talk about pushing the space forward and making a real impact,
creating value in this space.
This isn't hyperbole.
On-chain voting, for as messed up as the DAOs are
and the challenges we're talking about today,
it's better than how most publicly traded companies have shareholder votes.
It just is. It works. It's less friction.
There's something that could be taken out of this. And I think this, we could look back in this
December, 2025. To Outer's point, maybe the end already began a while ago. I just, I don't think
it's not over. Like I really don't think Aave is going to zero. I don't think everyone's going to pull their funds out of Aave.
But how the DAO and Aave Labs navigates this and gets through this, it's hard to think it won't have a tremendous impact on the protocol, on probably the token value. And yeah, to the question of, does it make me bullish Uniswap? It makes me bullish
then meeting it head on and knowing that not waiting until there's a coup or some sort of
attempt at a hostile takeover, but rather, hey, we know there's alignment here that could be
better defined. Let's work on that. Zach, go ahead and get back in here. And I'm excited to hear what Funky has to say on this.
Yeah, no, great conversation. Just kind of, you know, recapping, I think having a direction like you mentioned, Cap and everybody else.
But it's, you know, we got to have a reason to have the Dow because we have people voting or saying, hey, let's, you know, try this brand new idea.
It can be hard. Shareholders, stakeholders, right. Is it a voting protocol or is it a security and you own a piece of the company like a stock or something? So that's a big question to ask. But I really liked earlier, I don't know if it was Divide that jumped in, but the idea of these like civil guardrails that won't allow people to rug, right? Because we think in the past, like the Bernie Madoffs of the world or, you know, these corporate greed guys that have, you know, sold all the underlying assets and,
you know, moved to wherever and ran off with all the money. One of the things like we instill
is, for instance, with real estate is the titling company. If there's a property that's in an LLC,
the titling company needs the operating agreement, which outlines everything and they won't move
forward without it. So that operating agreement can say, hey, unless the Dow voted, you can't
sell this property. So it looks like the future of going, how do we use current regulation to help
keep the customer happy by keeping the, you know, the kind of the asset manager honest.
So with RWAs, it's a little easier to define, but I really am curious moving forward when you talk about DAOs around businesses and concepts and ideas, what that looks like.
And yeah, voting in CEOs versus the main decisions of the company, that'll be kind of the future to hold.
But yeah, with RWAs, if we can build around regulation that already exists, then it'll help people go, yeah, you know what? I know the asset exists. The guy can't take
off with the money without the Dow voting. All the funds get sent to this wallet address and
dispersed because that's what the operating agreement says. But it'll take somebody to
build that out and really define those guardrails kind of moving forward, at least in my opinion.
But great convo. I got to run.
I'll be listening in the background. Thanks captain.
Thanks for appreciate you adding to the conversation today.
Phillip didn't forget about you. I do want to get funky in here.
He just joined us and then we'll go, we'll go right back to Phillip funky.
I'm not sure if you caught how much of the conversation you caught,
but always speaking to big brains and well-versed on this sort of stuff,
GM and what, what brought you up?
GM, yes. I admittedly didn't catch all the conversation. I'm sure there was some great nuance takes.
But just as a DAO participant and as a lover of sociological experiments, I've been, of course, the first thing I want to talk about is Polkadot, right know, I've been involved with the ecosystem for five years, since 2020.
They were the first ecosystem to have a full-blown on-chain governance.
Everything is enacted via runtime code.
There's like really no human beings involved.
And a couple things that were interesting was that it's never a democracy.
People think that DAOs are a democracy.
You know, very
often, especially when you're talking about token-based voting systems, it's very much a
plutocracy. If you have a ton of tokens, you're going to have an outsized influence on the
direction and impact on the ecosystem. We saw this with a whale who kind of cheated the ICO system
when it was happening by having a bunch of his family members all
apply for the ICO way back in the day in like 2017 or whatever. And he had a large Italian family.
And so he had an undue influence on the ecosystem. And for the better part of a year,
effectively just drove all the decisions, all the spending out of the treasury,
because he could just vote with such heavy conviction in bags. And so that's one challenge of DAOs.
I think the other thing that we saw to try and combat this was the Web3 Foundation, which
was the educational research side arm of Parity Technologies.
They instituted a program called Decentralized Voices, which allowed people to delegate to
other holders so that they could try and combat this influence.
And the Webby Foundation even delegated tokens to those voters themselves.
Our company served as one of these DVs for two of these cohorts.
And so it helped combat that situation.
But it wasn't a perfect system.
And now what's interesting is here we are five years later.
This system has been live for about three years.
They just swept it all up and centralized everything where they're canceling the DV program. Interesting is here we are five years later. This system has been live for about three years.
They just swept it all up and centralized everything where they're canceling the DV program.
They realize that decentralization can be very messy.
It doesn't necessarily serve the best interests of an ecosystem. You get these combative type situations like we're seeing right now with the labs versus the actual DAO, which I'm with UCAP. I think that ultimately,
Aave will be able to correct course and find a way forward. Or another good example, because
we were just talking about RWAs, I'm very involved with Centrifuge, which used to be a
polka dot pair chain, started off on Ethereum, sort of the OG RWA that launched on ETH Mainnet,
first one to ever tokenize stuff back in 2020 and literally the dow voted to suspend the
dow because they wanted the labs team said we need the ability to move fast and make decisions
with our trad fi partners because now they have billions of dollars in tvl and governance processes
like these slow things down so i think ultimately dowOs are very interesting sociological experiment. I don't
know how well it works with tokens. It'd probably be easier with like Bordet Biak Club, for instance,
or a collection that's much smaller where you wouldn't have such a centralizing influence or
whales. You know, you might have some whales, but I mean, realistically, it's not like you're going
to have an NFT holder have 10% or more of the collection.
You know, maybe the team does is they have a wallet that they keep stuff,
but they're probably not going to be voting with that.
So I just find this whole topic very fascinating.
And I'm hopeful because I'm also an Alve holder that this will work out in due time.
But yeah, DAOs are just a fascinating topic overall. Yeah, two things.
One, real quick, as it relates to, I mean, ApeCoin DAO did that. They voted to sunset the DAO and give the remaining funds back to ApeCo, which is effectively a centralized organization ran by not Yuga employees, but former Yuga employees.
And then being an AVE holder, do you have any thoughts on how this plays out?
Will you be voting today, I guess, is one question.
And then what is – is it a week-long vote?
Do you know those specifics?
When will the next – when will we know what's the result of this proposal that's up today?
I honestly haven't gotten in the weeds myself.
And I can't vote because technically right now my Aave is all in hydration the polka dot
decks because they're paying such a good yield so I was just earning on it by putting it in a
liquidity pool so I can't vote I mean I could move the tokens out put them back onto the main net
and whatever and vote um but I've been looking forward to the holidays just because I've seen
this kind of thing erupt over the last several days, but I haven't had a chance to really dig
into the details. But I am look as a holder, I am kind of curious because I believe in Aave.
I think that to your point, you know, with the app coming and all those other things,
it is the dominant DeFi protocol. I mean, for those who are in the space listening that have
been around a long time, probably remember when it was ETHLEND way back in the day when it first
started. And then they changed to
the new token, I think in 2020. So it's just, it's interesting. I really hope that it all works
out for everybody involved. I don't have a substantial or meaningful amount of Aave to be
fair. So, you know, it's not like my vote would have any kind of sway to my previous point about
plutocracy. But also another real challenge with governance tokens is a lot of those holders like their assets to be productive and we'll put them in other DeFi protocols that often will eliminate or make it, you know, add friction back to the process should they choose to participate in both.
Philip?
Or people are just lazy and delegated to.
And then you get centralization through that.
Yeah, there were interesting topics. So the underlying issue here, you identified it correctly,
and I see it similar that at the end of the day, it's fascinating to see and to
it's fascinating
to see and to
try to understand where
these labs are coming from
and I kind of get it
I kind of understand it right
you worked so hard on it
there was a time
when no one cared about this stuff
you had to write your paper
you had to write your software
you had to find the people
you had to find the funding for it
etc.
So I get it.
But at some point, people indulge too much in this whole greed, ego, and envy environment
and lose track of reality.
And then it becomes this whole, what you also said before, this whole fight between labs and then they try to hide
stuff from the other labs without thinking about the consequences. But when we come back to the
topic of the token distribution, basically, so that's what I'm thinking about. Like it really
comes down a lot to token distribution at the end of the day. And I'm currently thinking a lot about how to combine that with merit,
because right now we are a lot focused on attention.
And, well, if I'm an e-girl, a hot e-girl for Astra, I think it's called Astra, right?
Like, that's just what gets attention.
But maybe that's not the metrics we should aim for
and combining everything this way,
like having a proper distribution by merit
and having a more transparent service.
Or someone said that before with the whole, what was it,
properties and selling properties. And you have this, basically the service provider and without
the doubt, they cannot move the property or the funds or whatever. I think that's an interesting
way to think about it and to structure it that these labs at the end of the day yeah they
founded it and they're cool and they're still contributing a lot and there are important people
in it and you should listen to them and whatever but at the end of the day at some point the DAO
and this technology this protocol became detached from them I I mean, that's the whole point, right?
We want to democratize it.
And at some point you don't own it anymore.
And it's this free floating thing everyone works on.
And maybe people vote you as a CEO or board member or whatever.
But at some point it's not your company anymore, more or less.
But people still feel this way.
And I think a lot of these issues come from this place that people have this feeling, it's still my baby, but it's not. It's over. You lost it.
Yeah, I think you're probably right. I think some of it, I'm sure some are financially motivated
and they don't want to lose their, they presume what they think is their wealth. But I think it's
probably more pride and ego often where I spent the last decade building this thing. It's my baby.
And now you're telling me I got to bend the knee to thousands of token holders who haven't put other than holding the token.
Yeah, it's fucking annoying.
It's horrible.
Right?
I mean, I guess my pushback would be, well, you probably shouldn't have formed it as a DAO then.
But hindsight's it's 2020.
It's a really tough spot for those people to be in.
I think from the limited knowledge I have
and talking through today,
I think Uniswap probably taking the best approach
in trying to get ahead of it
and meet their vested token holders
in the middle somewhere
before there's a full-blown civil war.
Yeah.
That will be interesting.
That will be really interesting to observe
if there is even a chance for protocols
from a very fucked up distribution
to move in a direction that is more healthy
because you always, like Bitcoin, for example,
I think Bitcoin, like, oh, hot take here,
but people don't like, I think it's very obvious,
but a lot of people don't agree with me.
Bitcoin failed as a vision and protocol.
When I look at the number of active addresses right now
and transactions and draw, I did the post the other day and draw a correlation
between the valuation of Bitcoin. There was a huge correlation in the past and now it kind of
broke apart because of perps, et cetera. And now we're going down at the correlation lines more again. So it
failed. People are not using it.
Lightning Network
is also centralized.
I am not sure if you can save
these protocols at the
end of the day once you have
these wells because it's not their
interest. I mean,
technically it is in their interest, right,
that the protocol sustains and goes into the future, be part of this vision. But in the short
term, they don't care. In the short term, they see this huge number. They are able to...
Nowadays, didn't even JP Morgan offer now loans with Bitcoin as collateral?
So, like, why do I care?
Like, at that point, when this whole thing falls apart, I'm already dead, right?
A lot of these people are, like, 40, 50, whatever.
And at the point, this whole shit show falls apart.
They're already cashed out.
Just easy on us 40-year-olds, okay?
That's all I ask no in all seriousness
are you funny
not 50 so
I do appreciate you joining us
it's been great to connect and I'm glad you pointed
out the Gnosis
issue I missed that one was not aware
and it's just it is going to be
maybe not for all
but I find this really interesting to see how this plays
out and I know I believe maybe not for all, but I find this really interesting to see how this plays out. And
I know, I believe, I fully believe some are going to survive the obvious in the world.
They're going to make it through this. It's just, it's, I think the precedent that is set here is
probably very real. Now, is it legal precedent? No, but I think because of their clout, their,
their time in the space, the success they've had.
I do think however it plays out, we'll see others probably go a similar route, or at least attempt to, both sides probably.
Just really interesting.
So go ahead, get back in here, Philip.
And then outer, I had no idea.
Yeah, I just want to ask the question
into the room, basically. When you're in this situation, you have this fucked up distribution,
and there are these wells, and they most likely are not going to vote against their own short-term
interests. How do you motivate them to do it regardless in order to build a more sustainable long-term community
yeah and i think i you know try to end it or put a positive twist on i think that is also part of the
benefit of dows over and and their token holders over shareholders is, I'm sure there's exception since we've been talking
Tesla. That's probably one is there's a lot of Tesla raving fans that feel really vested in that
company. I think most shareholders though, it's just, it's just numbers on a screen and they're,
they're not a, they probably don't consider them like they, they hold, you know, the mag seven,
they probably don't consider themselves at the Microsoft community or the Facebook community.
Like they're just, it's just an investment.
Whereas here, there's very, for a lot of people, there is emotions involved.
There's a much deeper, I feel, sense of pride and ownership, even though they don't hold equity in the, in the company.
It feels like there's just more alignment, even when there's not.
And I think that's powerful.
Outer, I know we've went really long on DAOs this morning,
not expecting that.
Looks like I might have even lost your audio.
Is that right?
Yeah, let me check.
I'm probably gonna have to unplug, plug back in.
I don't know what is going on.
Give me. You're routing her audio over yours
we've been oh yeah a short thing you you mentioned with uh that dows or the the distribution of people who have check who are voting or who are not voting.
Oh, hello.
Yeah, so, yeah, you're back.
Go ahead and finish your thought, Philip.
Outer, your audio is back, but it's-
You can hear me now? Okay, great.
Apparently, your space to speaker's audio is not coming through.
No idea what's going on.
Apparently, StreamYard or X or the Rodecaster
did not like a two-hour DAO conversation either.
But Philip, go ahead, finish your thought, and then Outer can take us home.
Yeah, I tend to disagree with your point, Cap, on that people are more involved in it.
I don't see that.
I see most people in crypto are also just normies on Coinbase, not even getting their tokens off chain,
off exchange.
and then you get all these issues with delegation and centralization.
So I tend to disagree,
but yeah.
Outer,
we got your back and apologies for the technical challenges.
Appreciate you powering through it with us.
Appreciate you bringing,
bring a divide into the conversation.
They really enjoyed that.
I have truly enjoyed the conversation on Dallas,
but we had a few other nuggets.
I know you probably have a heart out here.
Maybe we someday we will talk about art blocks games because I saw,
I saw,
I saw Dort had some,
he'd played around and some fun stuff in there.
Maybe do we want to wrap with I
mean first of all any other anything else you want to tie off this conversation but then the question
you asked I thought was a good question maybe we could send people off with that if you want or we
can put that till next week as well you're no I like the question but I don't know if you can hear
me you got to hear me now okay um so first of all I did want to mention that like I think it's
interesting to meet someone who thinks um that Bitcoin is like a failed DAO.
I think that that's funny.
Also, Divide, if you're still listening, you should stop being an introvert and come out more.
Second that.
And then I think for next Tuesday, if you all haven't gathered yet, I'll be back with Cap every Tuesday.
Then we can talk about the Artblocks game things but I have them prepared and I'll just come back with that next week and like what I want
to say about them is that there's these two drops that happened recently that were just like free to claim
but they're like they're artworks
but they're highly participatory one is a game where you like literally go across
and dig for stones that you put on a shelf and it's actually really kind of like addictive and fun
and the other one is like by actual snowfro who made art blocks and squiggle um and it's like
send and receive so it's almost like just kind of memeing on chain and so i wanted to just like
modify the two that i have like live just so people at least on spaces could
could see how fun it is and like it's it's it's cute is there is there a cutoff on that on the
send receive is there like are we still good if next Tuesday do you know when yeah no cutoffs at
all anytime yeah this is great like you can just you know yeah so I can do that next week but I did
have a question that I popped into um the notes that Cap and I have.
And I've been thinking about this.
And maybe this is also something like, I don't know if we could address it, like maybe in the war room we can talk about it or maybe later we can come back with our answers because I don't have the answer.
I just have the question of,
you know, please tell us, you know, what advice you would give to your younger self.
Like, that is like such a quintessential question that became a part of like all the things.
And I wrote this in the notes. And I thought, okay, but what advice would you as like an eight year old, give yourself now yourself now like if you can go back and remember yourself
like you know sub 10 years old and you were like talking as like that kid to yourself like what
would you say like what would the chicken be from the other way around because i and the reason
the inspiration behind this is well because i'm a weirdo and i love social experiments too and
these kind of thought patterns and processes but But mainly it came from the fact that, like, I cannot change the outcome of that question, like the original one.
Me giving advice to my younger self is completely irrelevant because, like, who cares?
I can't go back and be my younger self and change the outcome of today.
However, I am still in control of what's happening to my life now
and this is almost like a calling to touch in with your like touch base with your younger self and
just be like hey am I honoring whatever like free-spirited human that was in there doing
whatever they were doing or am I like doing them dirty right now like is this like a really like
off the mark you know so anyway I don't I don't know if I even have an answer.
I haven't talked to eight year old Lumen in a minute.
Like, I don't, I have no idea, but, but I feel like maybe we can even start with that
opener or something next Tuesday.
I'm going to reflect on it.
I'm going to think of my, how would my proper answer for next Tuesday?
Like, first of all, when she put it in the notes, I tweeted out the wrong way because
I misread what it was.
My brain saw it and read it as the same question that we've you've heard 100 times on the timeline.
I like this much better and thinking through it.
And maybe this was driven by my brother randomly text me this morning.
I have no idea if he had a dream or what. Okay. So it was actually last night. I
saw it this morning. No, I did see it last night. Anyways, long story short. Anyways, he says,
do you have the video of you in Mr. Fearful Union when you won? I said, ha, on VHS somewhere in storage, wish I'd got it digitized years ago,
VHS might be cooked. He says, no, they were just talking about it. His brother-in-law's
favorite movie was Grease. So the TLDR there is I, as a sophomore, competed in our school's
variety show talent competition, using talent very loosely loosely and we had just done in drama class
that year me and one of my classmates did a skit from greece you know to the song you're the one
that i want and long story short if i can find the video i will share it if i can get it digitized
if it's if the vhs isn't cooked, but I was, I played the role of Olivia Newton-John in a blonde
wig, a tight black short mini dress and, um, slayed it, finished runner up as a sophomore.
Usually the only people that win these awards were seniors in our high school junior year.
We ran it back and did a twist on it, did a derivative of the same skit and ended up winning
it. I think maybe the, to the state, maybe the only underclassman to ever win Mr. Fairfield
union. And I did so in a tight black mini dress, making a fool of myself, having
fun. So tying that to the answer, the best answer I'd come up with what my eight year old self would
tell me today would be something cheesy, like dance, like nobody's watching because I did have
like no inhibitions as, as an eight year old and 18 year old. Not not because I was drinking at eight or 18. It was just I just didn't like I was and I still am extroverted. But when it comes to settings like that, like just yesterday on the timeline, I'm talking to the need for I need I need salsa dancing lessons because I still dance like a gringo. I enjoy my arepas every morning,
but I'm dancing like a gringo that has no rhythm. And why does it matter? I shouldn't care. I should
just go have fun. And I actually do want to learn proper ballroom dancing slash salsa dancing and
more. But the only reason I, in my mid forties, don't know that is because of, even though I can
say as much as I want,
I don't care what other people think about me. I obviously do my actions say otherwise.
And so I think that would be, I don't know if that resonates, but I think it would be the advice I
would give myself is not just in certain aspects of life, don't care about what other people think
about you, but in probably all aspects of life, including dancing or fill in the blank, like
all aspects of life, including dancing or fill in the blank, like no one else cares. And if they,
if they do like you having fun and, and, you know, looking like a fool who doesn't have rhythm,
like you're, they're going to, most people I think are going to look at that positively,
not in a negative light. Am I, is this, is this checking out at all with you or no?
So, yeah, I think, I think there's two things I want to say to that.
One is, yeah, I agree with you.
But I also think it's different, like, for instance, from my son's generation.
Because that thing could end up a meme that destroys his life and cancels him just with one person taking the video out of context at the wrong time.
And not living on the internet for, like, ever and replicated.
That's something that, like, growing up I did not have.
And you didn't either because you have to like go find the VHS of this thing versus you pulling up someone's Insta account or TikTok.
Yeah.
And I think like, and I see him navigate that like, like put yourself out there has a whole new meaning with that like longevity and that kind of culture of like, wait, but there might be repercussions to me putting myself out there. And so that, so like, I agree with you
because we both embody, I think that like safe childhood where, and I'm, I'm quite extroverted,
like, I don't know, whatever tests I do in personality, I'm always like 85% plus extroversion
and that's fine. And, and I also want to maybe define the difference between the
two in case people are interested like i know people most people know the difference between
an introvert and extrovert and i know there's people that are like in between those but this
is how you actually define what a true introvert versus a true extrovert is so a true introvert
will actually re-energize by being alone and a true extrovert gets re-energized by having communication and talking
and being in a group setting. Like right now, having this, I'm quite energized by this.
So when I do take time for solitude as a pure extrovert, that actually is depleting my energy
until I then go and talk to someone again. And I'm re-energized because I have communication
because I'm an extrovert. For an introvert, it's the opposite. They actually spend energy talking to people
and then they re-energize going back into solitude. And yes, there's like, you know,
divides actually almost like 50-50. You know, there's lots of people that are on this like
spectrum of this stuff. But if you go into like the outlier ends of it, those are kind of the
definitions. And so, and I was a very extroverted kid. And I think,
I think I'm still honoring her by being like, quite extroverted. I also was like a public
speaker. And like, I still maintain that. But there were definitely some things I had to like,
check in with and make sure like, I used to love singing that I stopped because someone told me I
sucked. And then I just like started singing again, because I didn't care. And like, there's
things you kind of unpack. And I in if I had to answer like now and
what I'm thinking about today I think it's more like what did I do when nobody asked me to do
anything like what were those things like what did I work out like what did I work on on my own
where it wasn't like you have to do this assignment or you have to do this thing like what did I
gravitate toward like was I dancing in my room was I like drawing was I like reading like what what were the things that I just naturally
did and and one thing that came to mind as you were talking is I used to collect stuff and I
still do which to me I feel like I've I think I've honored the eight-year-old outer lumen because I
collected like stamps and I collected stones and i collected
things all the time and i'm like how funny that i ended up in like web 3 and now i digitally
collect and you know still collect physical things too but yeah it's i feel like that part
is a nice like full circle in that like i didn't go into something that was so like remote and far
away from from that kid who loved, you know, the,
the ability to collect sets and collect like,
like I spent hours collecting beach class and I would categorize them into
colors. So of course I'd be interested in like trade things or like,
it just manifested itself in a different way. But yeah, I don't know.
I'd love to hear, and maybe we can open with it next week. Like what,
like if people are like, like touching base with their kids selves and and what you know what that like fast forward means to to now.
I love it. That's that's your homework chat is let us know.
You can drop in the chat today if you want, but also remember your answer and bring it back next Tuesday.
what would your eight-year-old version of yourself tell you today? What advice would the child like
What would your eight year old version of yourself tell you today?
you give your adult self today? And I think this might be one I stick with and ask. I always like
my kind of my routine last couple of weeks of the year, every year for long as I can remember,
it's kind of just, I'm not into new year's resolutions. I'm not like I, if you want to do
something, get started now, don't wait until January 1st.
And specifically, please don't go to the gym.
At least no crunch gyms in the Tampa area.
It just makes this hard, much harder on all of us that actually go to the gym without having to wait for New Year's resolution.
Anyways, I digress.
I mean, just this might be a new question.
I just incorporate into my reflection and look forward process every year because we change. Right. And I, I'm going to put some more thought into this this week. And I think it was a real good to your point to like, and sometimes maybe, maybe it's a, you're, you're doing the thing. Great job. Like I, you know, your April version might be proud of you today. Like you talk about, you know, I said, I wish I, you know, the thing. Great job. Your eight-year-old version might be proud of you today. I said, I wish I danced like nobody's watching. My eight-year-old version or my eighth
grade version, seventh and eighth grade version of me was doing science fairs on Tecmo Super Bowl
and predicting the outcomes of simulated seasons. Fast forward today, I'm deep in prediction markets
and DFS. And like, I grew up and did the thing that I was doing for fun as a, you know,
seventh and eighth grader. And like, you don't often, like, I guess it's easy to connect the
dots looking back, but sometimes we don't really think about, you know, and maybe
you're not doing something you enjoy. Maybe you're not following a passion. And for those individuals,
I think this question probably even more impactful, more important, but as someone who's been very
fortunate in my life where outside of those zoom meetings with 17 people, I haven't really felt
like I've worked for, I don't know, like 23rd, like, like most of my entire adult life, I've worked for, I don't know, like 20, 30, like most of my entire adult life, I've done things I've loved to do.
And it didn't really feel like, even when I was like selling phones as an entry-level sales associate, unless it was like a Saturday shift and I hadn't slept after Saturday night out on campus and hung over or out of my mind, like that felt like work.
But other than like most things I've done, it's been things I was passionate about,
things I enjoyed and very grateful for that.
I realized not everyone has had, you know, is able to be that fortunate, but it's not
too late.
Whether you're, you know, the 20 year old Zoomer listening in or you're 40 approaching
50, some of you, I'm not going to name names, anyone on stage, Some of you over 50, like it's not too late to, uh, to pursue those passions. So I think a great, great thought,
a great question to ask yourself, let us know what you would advise you give yourself,
your kid would, your eight year old would give your current self in the chat,
bring those answers back with you next Tuesday, two other fly over things and then outer,
I'll get, let you out of here. Appreciate you once again, hanging out longer than expected.
This is more of a next week news item.
It's pinned up top,
but for all those that were on lighter TGE is coming next week.
There's a good article on the TGE and how,
how you might think about playing that.
I know phonics and several others are,
are,
we're very active in that ecosystem and looking forward to that one. And then last but not least, I thought we'd actually spend a little
more time on this today. It's not like, again, it's not one of these things that's going to
drive a hundred X. I just happen to be a big Banksy fan. I've seen a few of them in person
too in park city, Utah. I think I've seen another. Oh, uh, yeah, it would have been,
would have been Paris. I believe now I got to think what, uh, yeah, it would have been, would have been Paris, I believe.
Now I got to think what, what pranks I saw in Paris, but anyways, I'm a big pranks fan. He just
dropped a new one in time for Christmas. Uh, this, this is the J bond post. I pinned it up top. If
you want to see it. And, um, I think very fitting to wrap with this, this, think of this as your
eight year old version of yourself pointing to your your adult version of yourself today and giving
you some advice um i don't know if you'd saw the pranks the outer but any other closing thoughts
any any whether down conversation or advice from eight-year-olds or anything in general to to take
us home today i don't know i think the banksy artwork like perfectly encapsulates that i was
reading this morning how so you did two of them and right there's like yeah there's they're the same there's one near a station in london and then there's one like where
this garage is but they're the same so once he claimed ownership of one they assumed that he did
both but all the commentary so far is that how it's like not political it's like not you know
and so i'm excited to like look at where it is and just try to like add my own meaning
to whatever this is but the idea of these two kids just like lying there and like all to me this is
like anything's possible right I mean we've all looked up at the stars at some point but the way
a kid looks up at the stars is not the way that we look at the stars now and if it is then good for you but this is like this is very much i think that like the definition of of exploring your kid self versus your current self and how like you know
i don't know i i like chasing that i like the the i don't know if people read the book the
little prince if you haven't i think that's probably my highest recommendation you can
finish it in half an hour uh it was written by a pilot from the war.
And he's on the French side.
And it's about, it's a very definition of like, you know,
what happens when you grow up in a way that you become a grown up
and you lose like all the fun out of living.
So it's, but it's like a kid's book but yet like it's so deep that if you're reading it as an adult it's like not a kid's book at all
it's i kind of like those double meaning works so yeah the little prince le petit prince if you
speak french and get the privilege of reading it in its original language but it's uh or if you're
like into cartoons there is the whole um little
prince movie that they made it's it's all right but you know just read the book that's what i'll
end with my recommendation is like not you know yes you can go in and read radical friends and
learn all about daos but i think if i had one thing to say if you haven't heard of the little
prince or read it go read that i love it um what a show again not a direction i thought we would do like
10 minutes on ave civil war and move on it's it's meaningful it's impactful for those asking where
this prank is that's at bayswater i'm not familiar with that neighborhood but um it's in bayswater
and is that you said two is that new like he normally just does one right like it's not a no he he did both i don't know the time frame between the two but they are similar
if not identical but but that's new for him right like he typically doesn't yeah he typically just
does one but this time there's two of them and i think from my understanding of my brief like
for into reading it this morning he did one by some kind of like tube station somewhere and people,
and he didn't claim that one,
but then he did this one near a garage.
And then on his official Insta,
he posted that he did this one.
So I think people,
people are extrapolating that since they're the same,
but maybe they're not.
Imagine some other artists did the other one.
He legitimized it somehow by copying it.
I don't know.
Like this is where,
yeah,
the Laura Banksy is,
is wild.
It's really cool.
I maybe my,
definitely one of my,
maybe my favorite living artist.
Definitely,
definitely on a short list of artists of with works.
I will likely never own and not will many people do to do the nature of them
unless you're talking to print but um his new york like experiment was so incredible you know
the one where he just painted stuff and just sold it i think for 40 i don't remember the how much
but he was on the street like as a vendor i think like selling stuff and then people bought it and
later found out that they bought an actual bank see like piece wild yeah that was that was running pure so wild here are i'll show you i don't i don't
have my camera but real quick i'll just show you the uh the uh ones i've seen in uh these are ones
in park city this one here oh sweet um and then this one this one here are the two in.
And when I was there, there is, they like,
they protected it with like a, this frame.
And there's a glass cover.
When I was there, the, someone had broken the glass,
but it actually made it even more.
Like you can see here, there's a reflection.
Both of them have the same frame in glass,
but someone had broken the glass on this one.
It even made it more like, I don't know, artistic. it made it more part of like the street art that it is it's you know
almost like shared um experiential arts auction his auction like this truck like i mean what a
what a what a way to like provide commentary on on something that is like such a pinnacle of the art world.
You probably know the details better than me,
but basically sold a piece at auction for a couple million dollars,
I think.
And as soon as it sold it,
the artwork opened up and went down into a shredder and it shredded the
art.
Yeah.
And it became even more valuable after that.
It's amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We will talk art box next week. We'll maybe revisit what your eight-year-old version of you is giving your current day self. And it can't be something like buy Bitcoin. Your eight-year-old version wasn't aware of that yet. So something that can can can can make a difference in your 2026 let's
say that well and and it's giving advice to you now so if it's telling you to now buy bitcoin sure
go for it but that's not the same as like you know yeah that's the beauty of all of the of the
question um yeah and like look who knows what will happen between now and seven days from now
like this isn't you know interstellar type world here.
For all we know, there could be like, you know,
a ton of things that we'll have to talk about.
So I'm, I'm, I'm excited for whatever next Tuesday brings.
But yeah, thanks for having me.
I I'm, I'm, I'm really like, yeah,
this has been really nice to get into a weekly cadence and come hang out.
So thanks for having me.
I enjoy all of our
conversations. We could probably have this, we probably could have had the same conversation,
but just the two of us on the phone this morning. I don't know. Every time I've had a conversation
with the outer, it's usually like about one thing and like specific thing. And it evolves into a
much more enjoyable conversation that ends up covering a lot of topics, but truly, truly
appreciate your time wishing you and divide
the happiest of holidays. I know it's been a, a, uh, eventful year for your, you or yourself and
your family. And I hope you're able to enjoy some family time, reflect on the year and, um,
you know, look forward to a new 26. But if, if I don't talk to you in the next couple of days,
have a, have a happy Christmas, Merry Christmas. And Christmas. And can't wait for next Tuesday, what it brings.
As I said, I'm sure it'll be similar today where we may think we're going to go into it talking about eight-year-old self-advice and art blocks games and probably add a topic or two to the agenda between now and then.
Who knows?
I'm excited.
I can't wait to make zero New Year's resolutions with you.
Perfect.
That's maybe the title of the space is zero New Year's resolutions.
If you want to make a change
and you're like, do it now.
Don't wait.
Don't be, don't go with the flow.
Zig when others are zagging.
Everyone else is going to be
making a New Year's resolution.
Most of them will forget about it
by not even February 1st.
Usually it's like the next Thursday.
They've already broken the resolution.
So don't do what most people do and fail.
Start today.
Start the best change I ever made in terms of like an actual, what a lot of people would
consider resolutions is I started focusing on my health and fitness in December of 2017.
And by December of 2018, I look like an entirely different person.
I felt entirely different.
I was in much better shape.
I was much healthier.
I was sleeping much better, much better emotional, like every state of my life. Now, why did that happen? And I said, oh, I'm going to do this January 1st. Maybe,
but I didn't wait. I made a conscious decision to make some changes and I just did it. And I did it
mid-December, not waiting until some arbitrary date on the calendar, but-
Hail today, not tomorrow. I like that.
There you go.
Philip, again, appreciate you joining us today.
Great to connect and shot you a follow.
We'll hopefully see you more on the timeline.
And we do run this back every Monday through Friday
at 8 a.m. Eastern time, usually get about 10 o'clock.
But the DAOs got the people going today.
We don't know why, but it's provocative.
And really appreciate all of our first-time speakers, all of our regular speakers.
Really, truly did enjoy the conversation.
And I feel like there's another nugget or two we didn't even hit on, but we'll save that for tomorrow or next Tuesday.
And, again, thanks so much.
I appreciate your time today, and happy holidays to you and yours.
And as Steve would say, I hope you all have a wonderful, wonderful day, everyone.
Thanks for tuning into Coffee with Captain, powered by 8Point.
We hope you enjoyed the show.
And remember, nothing we discussed today is financial advice.
Until next time, keep exploring, stay curious, and we'll see you soon.
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