Public goods Africa in the house.
The show will begin in a few minutes while we warm up the spaces.
Sending you co host invites.
Check the ends from let's grow live.
Got the last son Krypton in the house.
Just followed you back Britta.
Everybody head to the bottom right section of the live stream and type let's grow.
Type let's grow in the comments while you're there.
And let's grow the movement baby.
Let's grow the regen movement.
We officially have think decade Montala is on the video stream now.
It's like a let's grow live reunion.
Type let's grow in the comments right now and the show will begin momentarily.
Yeah I'm getting a little bit right here.
So just make sure the volume is off on your computer.
So I have muted the computer.
The real value of the idea.
There is totally a different reality.
And they've designed the time when they're planning to go into effect.
And each of you know in the deepest portions of your being that you have come.
You are beginning to feel what may be coming.
Hello and welcome everybody.
This is the live podcast that is all about empowering you, the change makers, to maximize
your positive impact in the world by leveraging the latest and the greatest technology.
With me today is Muntala of Public Goods Africa, a real region, a public great, if you will.
He is literally empowering people all across the African continent to really onboard people
into leveraging these crypto, web3, public goods funding mechanisms to really make a positive impact
and fuel a lot of really great initiatives that are happening on the ground.
Thank you for joining us. We have a tradition here on the show, Muntala, and that's to always,
always start with why. So when I ask you what's your why, I'm talking about your personal why,
your inner drivers, your motivators, what gets you specifically out of bed in the morning and
fuels you to burn the midnight oil. If you could encapsulate it into one description,
how would you describe the why of Muntala? Oh, man. GM everyone was growing. Thank you,
Jimmy, for having me. By the way, I have some grappuccino here. That is cappuccino,
but for the grow nation, so cappuccino. You are the greatest contributor to the grow
vocabulary. Definitely up there and just rattling off these amazing grow capillary terms from the
Let's Grow Live days. There's another one, grow cappuccino, we got to add to the list.
Okay, grow right ahead. Continue. Yeah, so my personal why is
the we have found ourselves in a very interesting time where we've been blessed with a technology
that can literally change lives. And the technology requires people to be deliberate.
And so when I wake up every day, the question I ask myself is that if it's not me, then who?
Right. So that is my personal why.
Beautiful. And was it always this way? Or when did you really start to become a public great and
contribute in a contribute in an even more meaningful way? And really also use technology
and lay it on us. What's your story? How did you get here?
Yeah, so I like to say that my journey into the web space was a by a necessity. So a quick one,
right? Fast forward 2019 2020. I think I was with a friend and I was trying to do an international
event. And I was trying to use PayPal. And I was told that I couldn't because my country,
which is kind of great. I'm so sorry. There is still a volume on your computer, I'm pretty sure.
Can you just make sure that the volume is off on your computer? Okay, cool.
Give me 100%. Because yeah, I was getting a little feedback. It happens. It happens,
guys. No worries at all. But let's just make absolute sure of that. And then continue. Sorry,
interrupt. You got this. Okay. Okay.
I'm still getting the feedback. No.
But you think of the let's go live. We've done this so many times, you know,
but we were live 24 seven throughout the entire GG 19. And still we're having issues. This could
be a requirement maybe some just go extremely low volume. And don't go for the most meaningless.
You have headphones of the sort. I'm not sure we'll get this. We'll get this sorted soon,
friends. Thank you for waiting. Thank you for your patience. And, and let's grow. Let's grow
everybody. All right. All right. What's going, Jamie? What's going? Oh, it's perfect. The sound
is perfect. I'm glad that we corrected that. Thank you. Good, sir. You nailed it. What did you do?
I'm just curious. Yeah. So I was live when I'm at our phone. So I basically threw it.
The other phone. Yes. Yes. The different source of feedback. Okay. I got it. Yes. I've been there.
I've been there. It's happened to me too. Yeah. You got the dual wielding public. It's
Africa and Mattala. All right. No worries. From the top. From the top. Lay it on us.
Yes. So I was just about to give a quick story or a quick situation that got me into it today. And
I was saying that I was trying to use a PayPal for international payment, but I couldn't because
my country in court was blacklisted. And so I was a bit frustrated and a friend recommended
Bitcoin. And the funny thing is that actually that friend actually visited me today. It's been
a while. He was literally here with me today. So he recommended Bitcoin. This is way back somewhere
2019, 2020. And then I used Bitcoin and it went through and that changed my perception about the
technology. Now, prior to that, I had, you know, heard about Bitcoin and crypto, but a lot of the
information that I was hearing was the fact that it was camp. So I had never really come or
experienced the technology before until, you know, that point. So, yeah, they're frustrating
tend into curiosity and I delve into the proverbial rabbit hole. And so I, you know, I test for
knowledge. I decided to, you know, learn as much as I can about the technology. Unfortunately,
during those times, the information source or the education sources available then
were not that good. A lot of them were just focusing on trading and Bitcoin. So, I mean,
you act on the information that you have available to you, right? So I thought, you know, that was,
you know, all the technology was used for. So, yeah, I tried a couple of those stuff,
got arrived so many times at that point, I was running a business. He said my business when he
deliberated. Got been so hard. It was a terrible time. I nearly quit the entire crypto. And I came
across a book, the Bitcoin standard. Very, very interesting how I came across that book.
I read the book and again, my perception about the technology changed. And I decided to find out,
you know, the actual use case that dropped the impact of this technology. So, you know,
started reading a lot of books, started listening to a lot of podcasts. Two of the one of the key
or one of the major podcasts I was I used to listen to a lot and still listen to is the
bankless forecast, which, you know, a lot of people also listen to. So, yeah, you know,
the podcast is a great one. As I started listening, started educating myself, started really
understanding the potential impact of this technology, especially for people that are at
the same place as I am. Right. So, the Bankless Dow launched. And now I joined the Dow. Yeah,
since the since the zero, the mission of the Bankless that spoke to me a lot, which was
basically to onboard, to educate and onboard everyday people to the web space in the right way.
Right. And as somebody who had been a victim to incorrect information and education,
it resonated with me a lot. So when the Bankless Dow launched one month, right after the Bankless
Dow launched, I I I I talked to a proposal to launch Bankless Africa, which was basically,
you know, because of the way the Dow mission aligned with me, I thought that this was needed
so much in Africa. So, yeah, I launched Bankless Africa. And then the mission was to provide
legit crypto education and information and help guide people who are on the same journey as
me and others, and also to create a community where everybody can come together
and get access to legit education and web data information. So, yeah, so Bankless Africa launched.
Fast forward, it's like two years later, it's now one of the most legit
web trade education and information hub for everyday Africans.
That has a lot of podcasts, newsletters, community, etc. And the funny thing is that
just before I came on this show, Bankless Africa has rebranded to sovereign frontier.
So it's it's yeah, it's an evolution. It's an evolution. And in response to how we have
pioneered, there were three spaces in terms of how it's growing in Africa and how we are
constantly evolving to make sure that we stay on top of things and also help guide everyday
Africans in the space. Right. So that is like the work I did in the in the education and
onboarding arena. And I'm saying this because a lot of the times when I have like personal
challenges or personal issues, I try to find solutions to them. Right. And sometimes those
solutions can scale and impact lives in society and all of that. So when Bankless Africa launched,
it basically was an education as a public good. Right. We were providing so much education to
their masses. One of the things that we constantly faced was access to funding.
The Bankless that was supporting us with funding, but it was not enough. We were
scaling. Africa is a continent of over 1.4 billion people. That is basically the US
and a lot of these major continents combined. Right. So we were doing so much on the continent.
Our impact was immense. And yet we struggled a lot to have to secure funding. And I remember
we applied to get going several times and we got denied. Then there was a rule that
one project from one ecosystem. Right. But so when they saw the name Bankless,
they are called. They associated that with Bankless now. And so they couldn't let us in.
And interestingly, it took about two years for us to finally get for Bankless Africa to finally get
into get going, get going around. So we realized that, you know, as we continued this year,
we realized that we were not the only people facing this particular challenge.
A lot of builders in Africa were also facing funding challenges. And also, you know,
basically even having access or education about the ways some of these funding
mechanisms work, they liked it. Right. So how do we how do we solve this? How do we solve this
this problem? So and that public with Africa. So public with Africa is basically a deliberate effort of
with Jimmy. Am I in the right direction? Because I think I'm just moving on and on,
just to make sure we're getting the full journey here. And I had no idea about Bankless
completely changing their name. That's that's a big deal. That's a big brand in the space.
So yeah, but yeah, so all right. Well, continue. No, please. All right. So yeah,
so OK, so yeah, so, you know, facing as a builder, right,
persistently facing funding challenges in the space and and also hearing or seeing fellow,
you know, builders from Africa also having the same challenge. The question was then how do we
address this? One of the things about Web 3 or blockchain technology basically is that
it's a technology that solves a lot of problems, but those problems require deliberate coordination.
So one of the things that I identify was that although a lot of Africans struggle to
get access to a lot of the funding opportunities in the space, the public goods Africa, sorry,
the public good funding also included one of the things that that was lacking was proper education
and a proper coordination mechanism. Right. So how do we solve this? So we introduced by
public good Africa. And so public good Africa is a deliberate effort to connect builders,
educators, impactors, everyone who is leveraging the technology for positive impact in Africa
to funding sources so that they can continuously make this impact.
So that is like the basic underlying principle of public good Africa.
Phenomenal, thank you for sharing, man. And yeah, so that's quite the journey that you've been on.
And it's it's cool that you're you're helping these public goods, funny ecosystems.
So what do you let's let's talk about onboarding for a moment and someone who is not aware of all
the public goods funding mechanisms that are out there, this whole ecosystem that supports public
goods in web three, how would you explain to them what this what these opportunities are,
you know, what is out there for them? And how would you go about onboarding someone
who is not familiar with all these wonderful things?
Yeah, thank you for their question. That's a very interesting question to me.
So for someone who has basically been at the frontier of onboarding, since, you know,
my days in in Bankless now and also found in Bankless Africa, I think the onboarding could be
or can be a very interesting thing. So you have we have different people who are joining the
space, right? You have normal users or people who, you know, want to use the technology.
You also have builders, you know, people who want to use the technology to solve specific
problems and challenges. So the users could be like you have like a normal flu, where they
basically understand the the impact of the technology, letting them understand that,
okay, this is not a get rich quick scheme space, right? It's a space that is here to stay.
It's a space that have become part of everyday life. And there are a lot of opportunities over
there for for you. So you could be looking at building a career in this space, right?
And in building those career, one of the places that you can consider is basically
being in the public good space. So you have public good communities that that are looking
for contributors, right, in various capacities. So you could join in all these communities,
and as you are on your journey, you are also contributing to, you know, to public good or
to something that impact the masses, right? And then you have the builders. For the builders,
we are looking at how do they sustain themselves, how they try to build on this technology.
And this is very, very, very important, right? There is there is this concept
that applies in a lot of places. But in Africa, it is very, very persistent. And that is
we have we have to put trapped in a sort of a cycle. And the cycle is that the living
conditions in Africa can be really, really difficult, right? It can really, really be
difficult. So people get up every day, and then they they are met with the need to survive.
Right? So usually, when you find yourself in such a society, or such a place,
it's difficult to think beyond surviving, right? So thinking beyond surviving also involves basically
helping to build solutions for problems that you are facing. Now, if if you cannot survive,
how do you even like think beyond that, right? So you have is you have an underdeveloped
society or place where if you look at even the developer activities coming
coming out of Africa, it's it's lower, it's low compared to other places.
Right? So how do we how do we onboard these developers? How do we convince these developers
to say that, okay, we recognize the situation in which you are. But then we have this opportunity
where you don't, you know, you can you can have access to funding to take care of your basic needs
whilst you innovate or build in this space. Right? It's one of the biggest challenges that
that is facing the African web trade and general ecosystem currently, you know,
there are people who want to build, right? There are people who want to want to do stuff. But then
they get up and then it's like they have other responsibilities. They have people to take to
take care of. So so how do they balance it, right? So letting builders understand that, okay, now we
have an opportunity where you can deploy something at the very basic level, you can start
working on something at the very basic level and present it for a public good funding.
And then you you are likely to get funding for it, then you come, you know, to and this funding can
be used to help help you survive or get up for your basic needs whilst you scale from there.
Right? So this is one of the ways I think there are several ways that you can onboard like
builders, users and all of that into this space. But this is one of the ways. So with public good
Africa right now, what we are saying is that, okay, if we can get these builders or we can
get access to these builder communities or these communities that are training these builders,
then we would we'll be raising funds to find the initiative that they are building.
And hopefully, this will catalyze a builder renaissance in Africa who are going to be
using the technology to, you know, to build more solutions and then scale from there.
We begin to see bigger things coming out of the African work through ecosystem.
A regenisance, a builder renaissance. I love it. I love that because, you know, I've been talking
a lot about this lately with with the regenisance festival that we're planning in November,
which is going to be the biggest regen festival. And we're talking about how,
very soon in the future, you're going to be able to speak a technology into existence.
You know, with the onset of AI, we can already prompt code and deploy and market with a few
prompts. And it's, you know, it's changing very rapidly. And we are going to see another
creative renaissance and building is a huge part of that, right? You know, these technologies is
going to have many creative aspects, the next renaissance. And the big question is,
are all of these myriad of businesses that we pumped out into existence all of a sudden
be businesses that are extractive, that are destroying the world as so many are today?
Or will the next wave of businesses in this creative, this builder's renaissance, as you say,
be ones that are actually, you know, making the world a better place and trying to uplift
their communities, try to support and help humanity, the planet, all of the, you know,
all the living things in this world. So, so, yeah, so how do you think that we can build,
you know, make this next renaissance really happen in the best way possible in the African context?
Yeah, so I think the first one is the, the funding, right?
The funding is very, very important. It is the basic, it's the basic,
it's the basic foundation. Once you have the basic foundation, then you can do it off of day,
right? So we, we are currently, in fact, we are currently seeking funding to run a QF,
an independent QF round during GG20 to empower, you know, builders in Africa. So I think that is
the first point. So we are happy to collaborate with, or to receive funding from anyone who is
interested in Web 3 group in Africa or empowering builders in Africa. Two is coordination.
Coordination is an interesting concept and the, sometimes I like to refer to Africa as the
seventh, the seventh, the seventh level of Moloch, right? You can think of Moloch, Moloch is a
coordination field, right? You can think of the world as Moloch's domain, right? So Moloch causes
troubles, causes suffering all over the world, but these sufferings are in stages or they are
in levels. And the deeper you go, the more the suffering becomes. In places like Africa,
sometimes the suffering is more, which, you know, the socioeconomic problems and all of that.
So we need to figure out, there's a need for us to figure out coordination at the African frontier
and figure out how, you know, together we can, we can catalyze some of these changes.
Changes do not happen in a vacuum, right? The blockchain technology itself is built on
coordination, right? The nodes need to be running for the blockchain to work. People need to be
coordinating and building at the protocol level and at the social level. So any ecosystem that
has to develop or that needs to develop or that would be developed would need a way to figure out
efficient ways to coordinate and easier ways to interact with each other,
you know, to build or to become better. So the first one, if we get the funding,
then we move to figuring out ways to coordinate. And then the next one is, you know,
just basically encouraging ourselves to experiment, right? The world moves on experimentation.
Everything we are doing is experiments. So sometimes people can be timid,
you know, depending on cultural differences and all of that. So I think one of the biggest
encouragement that in Africa we can give ourselves is that the entire space is an experimentation.
And you shouldn't worry about, or you shouldn't care about messing up, just put it out there.
The collective efforts, the success or major successes in this space and in the world
generally has been built on the collective effort of people, you know, who have taken the initiative
to experiment, right? So when you build your experiment, it's not a failure.
Somebody is going to get something good out of it and build on top of it. So yeah,
so we get the funding going or flowing persistently. We move to the next level of figuring out
coordination mechanisms and embedding it into the system that we are building in the communities that
we are building. Then three, we move to prolific experimentation. Basically encourage people to
deploy, deploy, deploy if you have an idea, build it, deploy it on a smart contract,
put it on change, get people to test it out and let's keep building. And then the last one
I would say is to be very, very conscious environmentally and socially and culturally,
right? Some of the reasons why we are in the situation that we are as humans
is that people have, in experimenting or in building, people took it to the detriment
without regarding the negative consequences that it will have on society at large, right? So I think
that one of the things I like so much about the blockchain space is that we are becoming very,
very conscious about our society and then the environment in expressing or expressing
it in the technologies that we built, right? So I think that these four pathways could really,
really help catalyze or help the African continent to grow in terms of leveraging
web3 technology for max impact. We grow in, baby. We grow in. I love it. Absolutely maximum
impact. So this will be your second QF round that you're running, right? Second quadratic funding
round. So can you just break it down for people on what it means to run your own quadratic funding
round, what the process is like and why other communities should potentially look into doing
a citizen round or a quadratic funding round for a certain aspect of what they do.
Why is running an independent round a key thing in your view?
I think it's a very interesting experiment to try out and involve your community.
One of the things about the QF round is that it involves everyone, right? From the
funders or the sponsors to the people who administrate or facilitate their round
and then to the donors, right? To the donors who make their round x-axis. So I think that
if I were to say that why should you run an independent round, I would say that
it's a way to engage your community more. It's a way to develop close ties with your community.
It's a way to also get a lot of feedback in terms of the impact that the project within your
community or within your ecosystem is making or are making, right? So the basic principle is that
the people who benefit from their projects get to determine how capital is allocated to those
projects, right? So it's a very grassroots driven way of people appreciating the value that they get
from different projects within this. So it's like, hey, we have 10,000, 5,000, 20,000, 25,000
to allocate to projects within the African ecosystem who are making, who we think are
making impacts. So come, we don't want to do that. We don't want to determine who gets what
because you benefit from the project, because you receive direct impact from the project,
come determine how that capital should be allocated. It's one of the most powerful
things that have come up of this public good experimentation space. And so yeah,
that's one of the key reasons why you should engage them. And then when you run these rounds
for a couple of times, I believe that you would begin to see certain metrics, key metrics that
tell you how people are allocating capital and where they are getting a lot more value from.
And so based on those metrics, you can go ahead to create more stuff or to make certain decisions.
So that is like why you should probably test QF rounds or run independent rounds,
on-ground rounds, leveraging the QF mechanism. So the process or how the round works is,
or how we run the round was that. So the first one is that we identified the need of
the build-out ecosystem in Africa. So we said that, okay, what are some of the things that
we want to see? What are the objectives of the rounds? Very, very important to establish
the objectives of the round. And like I mentioned, we want to use the grant process or the QF rounds
as a deliberate coordination mechanism of catalyzing a lot of builder activities in Africa,
right? That was one of our primary objectives for our first round. So the objective informed us
the type of projects to analyze. So the funding was limited or the margin was limited.
So we targeted 10 projects for the first experiment. And these projects,
we picked them from different categories, right? So these are like highly impact projects.
So majority of which came from builder initiatives. So we connected with a lot of
communities that are training builders that are also having hackathon initiatives.
So example included Butterless. If you are on Earth or you are on public good Earth,
chances are you have seen Butterless. I could bet my last way on that.
Right, so we also had Eat Africa. Sorry, Eat Accra. In there we had Defy Africa.
So the builder initiatives took a majority part of the, like formed a majority part of the
round. Then we also looked at education initiatives. So which
Banclas Africa was in there, Banclas Africa now sovereign frontier was in there. We had Admianu.
Very interesting platform for education was also in there. And then of course,
of course, Jimu will kick me down if I don't mention that there was a refi,
you know, refi communities in there. So we also had a path that refi project building
for the environment could also join. So we had one, I forgot the name, also in there, right?
Then we had Greenfield, Nigeria also in there. So it was a very, very interesting round.
So yeah, you get your objectives right. Then you use the objectives to identify the type
of project that you want to participate, we want them to participate in the round.
And we had a closed application process. So there is, I think that the application,
but you can do it two types, or probably three types. So you have one closed application
to open application and probably hybrid, right? I don't know how the hybrid would work, but
okay, hybrid could be like you specifically and list certain projects. And then you open
up the application period for a while for others to join in. That could be a hybrid.
But the closed one is that maybe your matching pool is not much, no pun intended. And then
you self-select the project based on the impacts, right? So that's what we did. And then we
connected with them, say that, hey, this is what is happening. We know the impact that you are
making on the continent. Would you like to participate, right? So then if they are
agreed to participate, then yeah. So then they get into the round, they follow the application
process and then apply. But in bigger rounds, where you have a much bigger matching fund,
you can make the process opened after you identify the categories. So you open up
and say, okay, everyone is free to come and apply. And then based on the criteria,
you can get the right ones or probably even get all of them in there. So that is the open one.
And like I mentioned, the hybrid one could be you specifically and list or allow list
setting project directly from the onset, whilst also opening the application period for some
time for others to get in. So that is like the application process. Then we did the
during the round itself. So this is pre-round process. During the round, we did so much
publicity and education. And by the way, during the application process, we have a community where
we have basically have a project support. So this is another core thing that Public
Good Africa does is that we help projects navigate the intricacies of the various
grant application processes. So a lot of people, a lot of builders sometimes don't know how these
grant processes work. So we literally have a project support web group that once they identify
a project having an issue or a project could literally reach out and say that, hey,
we want help with this process. Could you help us? So they get in contact with them or
they coordinate with them and help them prepare the applications and walk them through the entire
process. So yeah, so we also did that during the round, a lot and a lot of publicity.
We did a lot of education too around various public good stuff. So that was that. And then
after the round, we sent out applications and also when finally the merchant was released,
we sent it out to the participants or to the grantees. So basically, that's how the whole thing
Love it, man. Thank you for shining light on all the details there. And yeah,
the way that I look at, I mean, this is maybe a different way to look at running a QF round.
I think it's like a way better airdrop in a sense, like a lot of communities might have
some successful thing happen and then they want to airdrop their community. Well, first of all,
you're multiplying what goes out, right? Because there'll be contributions plus what you end up
distributing. Plus, each of the recipients will be actively promoting your organization,
the round that you're running as they try to get contributions, grow nations. So it's win-win-win
there. Plus, you get to support, I think, allocate the funds in a really meaningful way. And like
you said, to the people on the ground that really know what the impact is and everyone being able
to participate in that and how they allocate the funds based on how they grown it, how they
make a contribution via cryptocurrency. So love it. By the way, friends, we're in the last quarter
of the spaces here. If anyone wants to come up and if you have a question, if you have a query,
if you have a comment, please do feel free. This is an open stage, all right? So Shimon up here.
And if you type, let's grow in the comments, there is a 100% chance if it shows up on my phone,
that it will be pinned to the top as well. I'll give you a little shout out. Right now,
we're looking at Jerry who type, let's grow. Of course, TreeGens did, but also
proper award foundation type, let's grow in the comments. Cryptocactus type, let's grow
in the comments. Everybody type, let's grow. It is up to all of us to grow this movement.
There cannot be one individual, even an organization that can grow the movement
to where it needs to be. It really takes everyone coming together. So let's grow.
That's what it's all about. We're growing the movement, uniting all these public goods,
funding, regen, making amazing human beings. So what's your vision, Montala? Where do you see
public goods, Africa, growing? Where do you see it evolving into? And what is the impact
that you would like to make in the future, if ultimately successful?
An ecosystem where there is forever funding for innovators, builders in Africa. And then
we have like, Africa runs on decentralized technologies. As a result of innovation and
innovators getting funding from public goods funding, probably other sorts of funding. So
that is the first one. The second one is to have like a well-informed community
as far as public goods is concerned. So public goods, right? It's fundamental to
a well-functioning society. A society that understands how public goods work
is a guaranteed society that now have a high quality of life, right? So
it's a shared ownership thing. Public goods is a shared ownership thing.
And the way we find it, if you understand that...
Oh, he cut out for me. If you want to give a thumbs up, you can still hear Montala.
Oh, there you go, you're back, you're back. Sorry, cut off for a few seconds there.
Rewind, three seconds. Say that again.
Yeah, so yeah, the vision is in three parts. So number one, we have created an ecosystem where
there is constant funding for builders in Africa, who are leveraging Web 3 for a lot of impacts of
an African ecosystem, the points where Africa basically runs on decentralized technology.
Number two is a well-informed society on all matters, public goods and public goods funding.
And the third one is we would have connected with institutions, whether governments and all of that,
who would leverage Web 3 technology and the new funding mechanisms that we are building
to power some of the things that they do. Imagine a government running like an EQF round
for some of its initiatives. So that is a vision, that's something that we would like to see.
There's so much inefficiencies in the public space in Africa, and there's so much lack of
accountability and transparency in the way funds move and the way funds are distributed.
So we would really, really love to see a future or to get to a point where government institutions
can leverage Web 3 technology and public good funding mechanisms to efficiently and effectively
and transparently distribute funding to various government initiatives and also various
society initiatives. So these are the three major things we are looking at.
Boom! Drops the mic. All right, love it, man. Super pumped for that. All right, well,
we got some legends joining us up here on the stage. We got none other than Drew of crypto
altruism. Here we go. And we also got Jerry, a co-founder of Let's Grow DAO, an on-chain
one-molec DAO dedicated towards uniting and growing the movement. And here we go. Okay,
so let's start it off with Drew. I believe you came up here first. Do you have any questions,
queries or comments, my friend? I do. Thank you so much for inviting me up, Jimmy.
Mutala, thank you so much for sharing everything you've shared today. I'm a huge fan of what
you're building with public goods Africa. I supported a couple of times through the last
GG19 round. One question I had, because I'm focusing a lot on onboarding non-profits to
the space, to Web3, and a big barrier is just around the terminology, the buzzwords,
the technology, excuse me. A lot of folks can find that, that aren't from the space, can find
that kind of intimidating. So I'm curious as to like, in your experience in onboarding projects
to the quadratic funding rounds, for example, I mean, quadratic funding on its own sounds like
a big scary, complicated terminology, right? How do you effectively onboard and help people
feel comfortable and break through that barrier of the technology and the buzzwords when bringing
people into Web3, and specifically into like a quadratic funding round?
Yeah, that's an interesting question. And I think it's something that the general problem
like you indicate in this space. I think I do my best or we do our best to break down
to break down the concepts in ways that, you know, people can relate to, right? So for example,
a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to devs at the workshop, and you know, I was basically
onboarding them to the space. And one of the examples I was using was like,
if you had a friend, right, who had a project, and there is funding to be allocated to that project,
and the way to allocate the funding is to have people within the community to come determine who
and who gets the funding, right? So it was a room filled with developers. So I picked like five people
and gave an example like each of these five people have a project, and we have like a certain amount
to allocate to each of these projects, right? And the way we want to do this is that instead of me
sitting somewhere and determine how much each of these projects will get,
what is the beneficial if everybody in the room determines how much each of these projects will
get. So without mentioning quadratic funding or QF, they began to appreciate the way the mechanism
works, right? So yeah, I proceeded with that. And then I was like, okay, so once everybody
distributes or determines how much each of these projects receives, we are going to determine that
more somebody receives donations, the more it means that people are watching for the project,
right? So the more it's logical that they get a reasonable portion of the pie, right? I remember
even using like a pie, right? And so, you know, they really appreciated or really understood the
concepts in that way. And then after everything, I said, okay, okay, so now, you know, this
concept is what we call the quadratic funding mechanism. So then I said, okay, so now if you want
to learn more, you can go to the WTF QF and then, you know, learn more. But then, you know,
before they even got there, they had understood that, okay, this is the kind of innovation,
this is the kind of space that we are now in, where it's a collective thing, and we are
collectively helping to allocate funding to key projects who are participating in a grant
round. And the more human or the more people donate or donate to a project which doubles as voting,
the more that project is, you know, is going to get a bigger part of the fund.
And then, you know, I put passport, given passport in there, because, of course, I have to explain
real quick what happens when somebody creates 100 accounts, because you use over three wallets,
right? So I dropped, at that point, it made so much sense. And then the natural question
that somebody, you know, hit me with was, okay, so what happens when a group of us call you?
Or what happens when one person creates this wallet since we are using our three wallets?
Then I said, aha, this is where get going passport comes in, right? So, yeah, so I think
as we progress, and also as we localize the content and education and make it more
relatable, I do think that people begin to appreciate and then understand it.
There's no way around it. There's no magic. The only way is to continuously educate
and make more relevant and highly related examples.
Yeah, I love that. That's great. Thank you so much for sharing that. I love everything
you're building. That was super helpful. You're awesome. Let's definitely connect to
collaborate after this as well. We'd love to support your work. So, thank you,
and thanks, Jimmy, for inviting me up.
Let's grow! Love it. Love when collabs happen. This is an amazing container for collabos.
Make sure that you are following everyone in the space. Make sure you're DMing your friend,
left, right, up, down, everybody who's in here. Make sure you're connecting,
because there's a lot of impact that can be made when we join hands and realize
that everyone's got their own piece in the jigsaw puzzle of the regenaissance
that we're all going to birth together. All right, grow right ahead, Jerry.
Hello, hello, Jimmy. Thank you for having me. I'm Montala. So nice to see you. I was just
thinking about you and speaking about you the other day, and I was like, I have to connect with
them because I've recently started working with a new orphanage in Kenya through the We Try
Better program and what we're doing, and I try to onboard people and get them to find ways
to start maybe producing something, get inside the crypto community in some way,
but it is obviously not the easiest thing for me to do from here, where I am and where I was
when I started this collaboration when I was in Texas and now back here in Europe.
Also, there are certain cultural differences and language barriers and things that you run into
that maybe I'm not as qualified a person as somebody that is on the ground in the country,
closer to their community or what they understand, because it's very difficult for me to be able to
do that with normal people in, I mean, seriously, in my hometown to try to onboard them this hard, so
it's a little challenging, but if there's any way that I could connect with you after and try to
share with you about these guys, he's got 52 kids that he takes care of, and they need simple
things, but I think that there is an amazing opportunity here for REFI and public goods to
come together to help things that have been traditionally only dependent on donations
to start their own sort of business opportunities or REFI opportunities in the public good sector,
even if it's getting grants in the public good sector, because they're doing something really
good. I think it's the rest of us, the altruism part of us comes out, and we want to help
everybody in this space, so if there's anything that you, I don't know how close you might be to
these guys, how far away, or if you know, I'm sure you have a whole network of people all over
Africa, maybe there's somebody in their area that could help them out a little bit, you know,
better than what I could, I'd love to connect with you on that, or if you just have any advice
in lieu of that, if you just have advice for me on it, I would appreciate it.
Yeah, I mean, like Jimmy said, coordination makes dreams possible. I definitely have a lot of folks
in Kenya. I'm currently based in Ghana, so, but I'm well coordinated, I'm well connected, so
I could literally connect you with somebody in Kenya who, if you want underground activities,
could help you with that, maybe even go meet the person. So, yeah, definitely would connect
after here, and let's see what's possible. Thank you so much. Thank you, thank you,
thank you. I will definitely do so. You see guys, that's what I'm freaking talking about,
connections happening right here on the spaces, and impact being made, tangible next steps
to make an impact together. I love it, this is what gives me energy. What some of you guys are like,
how the hell do you have so much energy? You're doing these streams, it's about being around
people who see how technology can make a scalable positive impact, being around regions that
genuinely give a shit, you know, and also, you know, want to work together to really make a
difference, so it's really such an honor to host these containers for all of you, and
thank you so much for coming through here with the just great attitudes and an open mind of how
y'all can collabo and make an impact, so thank you so much. I want to conclude with a
round of words of wisdom, okay, so we're going to end on Montala. Let's start with Drew,
then we'll get to Jerry. So, Drew, if you could have something written on a billboard for
millions of people to see or have something taught in schools, what key nuggets of knowledge
would you love to transcend across all those different boundaries? What do you think people
need to know? Oh, wow, okay, let me think here. Okay, so speaking with a lot of folks in the
podcast, I don't know if this would be a billboard one per se, but I think, you know,
when looking at Web3, I've really learned that, you know, the community, the people,
is the most important asset in Web3. It's more important than the technology, and I think it's
like that really in any community where you work, and if you're in some sort of tech space or some
arts community, like it's always the people that are really the true asset, not the
technology or the thing they're building, so I think go out and find your people,
you know, invest in the community. Yeah, that's what I would say.
Find your people. I love it. Yes, absolutely. We were just talking about how, you know,
it takes all of us, and yeah, there's so much merit to the being average of the five people
we spend the most time with as well, and just like finding amazing people is super,
super crucial. So yeah, great reminder, great words of wisdom. Jerry,
what are some words of wisdom you can depart us with today?
I'm going to go with, if you ever look at something and you see a problem and you think,
gosh, that's just terrible. Somebody should do something about it.
Go look in the mirror and remember that you're a somebody,
and you can do something about it, and go out and do it.
Hell yeah, man. Hell yeah, you are somebody. Absolutely. I love that. Great reminder.
Thank you so much for reminding people of that. Everyone does have the potential to make an
impact, and that's what I love about We Try Better as well. It's about everyone's
like doing a thing, submitting photos of it, and you know, making something out of this,
and really trying better, trying to do more in your everyday life. I love seeing
your photos for monthly Earth Day as well. Super cool concept. Every 22nd friends,
that is when we make an impact. And by the way, low key, we'll get out for you.
We use that term so broadly, but on the next monthly Earth Day at 22nd of February,
I am hopefully going to have everything together to attempt the Guinness world record for most
of these plans today. This time I'm doing it again with Guinness. For those of you who don't
know, I've done this twice already. The first time I wasn't trying to involve Guinness. The
second time, we had to film 24-7, and it was bucketing down rain. Even though we had a
plastic container around the camera to protect it from the rain, still some water got in there,
fried the inverter. We had a backup camera, so we continued filming full 24-7, but since
it fried the inverter, we lost several gigabytes of content, and we tried to revive the content,
and it didn't work. But anyway, there's so many silver linings to this, because
doing it a third time, I've been training a lot more. My goal this time is 30,000 trees.
And also, by the way, the green sheikh, the guy from the royal family in the UAE, is actually flying
to Thailand to be there for this Guinness world record. And by the way, if anyone of y'all
knows sponsors, who might want to sponsor this, I'm currently going ham trying to get a few sponsors
because their logo will be on the shirt, whatever, got a whole nice beautiful package
that was written by Centrobiq Regen. But if you were first sponsors, 50%, you would be able
to keep. But we're just trying to get Guinness world, you know, we can certify just by filming again,
but ideally, we get people from Guinness world records to fly over to certify, then they can
certify it on the spot. And but believe if they want to, if it's more than seven hour flight,
they're actually trying to get me to cover their business class tickets. And I'm like, goodness,
but they are trying to find people closer by if it's less than seven hours,
then fortunately, I won't have to pay further business class tickets. But anyway,
that's it. That's a side note and a bit of alpha for you and a huge tangent. So
Montala, my brother from another mother, what is some words of wisdom
that you can leave us with today? Before we conclude the space?
The world is a collective human experiment. Your experiment might impact people's life.
Don't keep it in you. Go ahead and experiment.
I love that curiosity is the mother of an invention. And going out there experimenting,
putting word I love what you're saying about that earlier as well and on experimentation,
how that that will lead to the builders renaissance in the African continent. I love it. I love it.
Friends, Montala, do you have a song request by chance? Is there is there a certain song
that you would like us to do an emoji dance to as we conclude the space?
I'm going to start with you. And then if anyone else has,
otherwise, I got one in the bank. Grow ahead. You got a suggestion can be anything.
All right. All right. All right. Let me let me find this up. Let me find this. All right. By
the way, I mentioned something earlier emoji dance. You guys don't know what this is.
First of all, it is. It's how we get down on spaces. All right. It is. It is basically a emoji
dance move as it sounds. There's a little heart icon in the bottom right. If you tap that,
you will see some emojis. And basically, if you tap one of those to the beat repeatedly,
then is that that qualifies as getting down into other spaces. So I see water, no get enemy.
Is that good? We go for that. All right. Let's grow. It is coming up, friends. All right. So
allow me to just boot out tree gens and let's grow in my other tabs before we broadcast the sin.
Okay. Let's get into the feedback there for some reason. Hold on just one moment.
Our mics are off. The music should not be coming through. I have in fact quit those.
I'm quite sure I quit the tabs. So this is interesting. Maybe if this goes like this,
perhaps. No. This is bizarre. I have quit both tabs, but still the music continues to come through
from the spaces. So don't know what to tell you. There's even other music playing now. Okay.
This is all right. Okay. Sorry, guys. We might have to do that. In the next space,
by the way, we are live five days a week. All right. We're live five days a week at the
same place at the same time. And you were all cordially invited back. And at this time,
I promise we will have Fela Kuti lined up. And I hope that y'all be ready to get down
with your emoji dance moves when that time comes. All right. So I hope you're ready.
Uh, hold on. Hold on. Hold the phone. Let me just one last. No. All right. Nothing's changed. All right.
Well, anyway, friends, thank you so much for coming through. I love you all very,
very much from the bottom of my heart. It means a lot that you did come through.
And, uh, until next time, keep doing what you love. Keep spreading love. All right.
And making impact. Peace.