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Xtalks: Can Community-Driven Projects Replace Corporations?
Recorded: July 2, 2024 Duration: 1:04:33Space Recording
Full Transcription
So, yeah, just give me just a second.
For those of you that are still in the audience, I'm trying to send you guys invites.
If you're having a hard time accepting it, bail out and come back in, and we'll get you
up on stage, and we'll get started here in just a moment.
All right.
All right.
I think for the most part, we have just about everybody here.
So we'll have a few stragglers.
I'll try to get them up on stage as quickly as possible.
So without further ado, welcome everybody to the Xtalks AMA series sponsored by Layer 1X,
a Layer 1 blockchain protocol.
In this Xspace AMA, we dive deep into the cutting edge of crypto, blockchain tech, and decentralized
future of what-ifs.
Likewise, we always try to make sure that we invite some of the leading crypto experts,
projects, and other Layer 1s to join us in the conversation.
Our goal here at Layer 1X is to unite all chains, projects, and users in Web3, not compete against
them.
So we felt there's no better way to do this than to come to the table and have great discussions
about various hot topics in Web3.
I am your host, Cody.
I am the CXO at Layer 1X.
If you haven't done so already, please share the link to this episode of Xtalks.
It helps us out as well as our panelists, gives them an opportunity to reach a broader
audience.
Plus, I would love you guys forever if you did.
So yeah, so if you haven't done that, also just make sure that you give each of our panelists
a follow.
They definitely deserve it because they are taking time out of their busy schedule to make
time to come to this topic discussion today.
So without further ado, let me just kind of kick this off here real quick.
What if your favorite social media platform or your bank was not controlled by a board of
directors and shareholders, but the users themselves?
What if the decisions that impacted you were made collectively by a community who shared the
same interests and goals?
Well, that's the promise of decentralized autonomous organizations, aka DAOs, and it's the vision
that's gaining serious momentum in this last cycle.
But can it really work?
Can DAOs truly compete against the giants of Web2 and real-life corporations?
That's what we're diving in today, is to figure out the pros, the cons, including the challenges
and opportunities that come with this new model.
Joining us today are a panelist of experts eager to share and dissecting all of this discussion
and more.
So in this episode, we're going to be talking about the psychology behind community-driven
projects, the tech hurdles they face, and the mind-blowing possibilities for the future.
So without further ado, let's find out who our panelists are who are joining us today.
And we'll start with Crystal.
If you want to go for it, just tell us who's behind the handle and a little bit about your
project.
Thank you for the opportunity.
I'm a chief of growth at Crystal.
So Crystal's mission is to revolutionize liquidity provisioning by making it more profitable,
convenient, and accessible to everyone.
So for the new crypto users who are joining this call, liquidity provisioning is one of
the first DeFi innovations for crypto users to earn passive income.
So you should definitely check it out.
So at Crystal, we're building two streams of products.
The first one is Crystal ILO, which is short for Initial Liquidity Offering.
So our goal is to revolutionize the blockchain fundraising by offering liquidity instead of only project
token to investors.
So we will have a high float and less self-pressure for both projects and the investors.
So we hope that Crystal ILO will help us to onboard the masses to liquidity provisioning.
And then it comes to our second product, which is Crystal ALM, which is an automated liquidity
management platform, which simplifies liquidity provisioning and make it profitable to all
liquidity providers.
So in the past six months, we have seen over $420 million US dollars in terms of transaction
and 12,000 monthly active users on Crystal.
So I'm very happy to be here today and discuss with you guys about the topic of this space.
Yeah, thanks.
That sounds amazing.
Can't wait to learn a little bit more about it.
Beast League, my friend, thanks for coming back and joining us again on this episode.
Go for it.
Yeah, super happy to be here, guys.
Marcello, I had a community here at Beast League.
Quick intro, we're a mobile sports universe sports game on mobile iOS and Android Play Store.
Currently available in select regions, but we'll be expanding to other locations very soon.
A bit about the game, it's basketball, but with a twist, you get some fun superpowers on
the court to use against other opponents.
Lots of fun.
And we're also launching our second game, Boinkers, very soon.
Really excited about that.
It's going to be our browser-based game.
And we're also launching Telegram mini game very soon.
So we're cooking, we're busy, we're out here.
But super happy to be here, guys.
Thanks for having us.
And excited for today's topic.
Yeah, perfect.
Thanks for joining us again.
Together crew, go for it.
So from my side, I'm an organization designer.
So I've been researching and building a couple of companies for related to the future of work
and how we can collaborate better over the last 10 years.
Then about two years ago, or a little bit less under that, we started Together Crew as one of the ventures in Arendelle,
which is a consortium of projects building for the future of work, human collaboration sort of space.
And what we're doing in Together Crew is unlocking community power growth, meaning that we help you empower your community to keep on growing the project
so you don't have to keep on spending money on ads or sponsorships every month.
But actually, your community is self-generating, self-perpetuating, is running the project, growing the project for you.
And we do that through behavioral analytics, personalized nudges, using AI, et cetera, to create self-updating documentation
so the community can dialogue with itself and answer its own questions through AI without the need of even feeding it standardized documentation
or updating documentation or anything like that.
And we're now as well expanding into the area of reputation through dynamic NFTs that are tracking and showcasing
how much you are part of a community and your membership, et cetera, so you can receive rewards, more governance power,
and generally showcase that you're part of a community that you're proud of.
I love it.
I think we could definitely go down some rabbit holes, that's for sure.
So thanks for being here.
Chain Sanity?
I'm not wearing my glasses.
Sorry if I slaughtered that.
Go for it.
Hey, everyone.
Thanks for bringing me on.
GM, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are.
Yeah, thanks for having me on again.
Hope everyone's doing well.
Having a good Tuesday.
A little bit about myself.
I'm a founder of Chin Sanity Media, and what we do is we help Web3 brands do exactly what
we're doing here, do Twitter spaces.
And so I love speaking on spaces, and thanks for bringing me on.
It's an interesting topic.
Definitely would love to dive deep into it.
And I might have a spicy take, but we'll see.
We'll see.
But yeah, again, thanks for bringing me on, and hope everyone's doing well.
We definitely love spicy takes, so thanks for being here.
Topic.
Tropic, go for it.
Yeah.
Sorry there.
The mic button is just locked, so I'm tapping it.
Almost broke my screen, but good morning.
Good morning.
Yeah.
I am a podcaster, community manager, also for Nineverse.
We just had a crazy launch this week for Kitty Kart Racing.
Right now, actually, is like the second round of the main thing.
So a week and a half of no sleep.
Absolutely crazy and chaos.
I'm sure you guys can relate to that when launch week is.
It's absolutely nuts.
So I'm not even supposed to be on the microphone right now because we were supposed to have
all of this done and started out.
We're supposed to be relaxing.
But you know how that goes.
Pushed back a couple days, and now what should have been my back to work and grind week.
We're here and speaking about these fun things.
But yeah, after this, I can't wait to go to sleep.
Plus, a hurricane is coming to Jamaica.
So I'm located on the island of Jamaica, and as we know, this massive hurricane right now
is building up steam.
So yeah, happy to be here.
Well, God bless you, my friend.
We'll understand if you got to bow out for cover.
So but hopefully it blows over and no harm, no foul.
Adam, go for it.
Yeah, hi, everybody.
GM, or I'll say goodnight in Australia at the moment.
But just a little bit about me.
I'm the CEO and founder of Quora, and we provide insurance protection over RWA tokenized assets
through our platform.
And yeah, I've just been involved in a lot of companies, obviously, as the CEO and founder.
So I've got a lot to contribute to this panel and other sort of things.
So I'm excited to see where it leads and what we get.
But love being on Spaces, love talking about, you know, just connecting, genuine human connection,
I think is really important in this space that we miss.
So yeah, love sharing and hearing what we're going to land on this.
100% Adam, I agree with you.
Connection is where it's all about.
So thanks for being here.
Thanks, everybody, for joining us on the panel today.
And thanks to all of our listeners tuning into episode, I think this is like 60 or 61, of Xtalk.
So yes, definitely, we've had some great discussions.
And as you can see, we've got a great lineup for our discussion today.
So again, if you haven't already done so, please be sure to share out the link to this episode.
So that we can get the masses going and also keep those emojis flying.
Everybody loves to see the little heart emojis and thumbs up as they give talks.
So the house rules are pretty simple.
I'll just ask a couple of questions.
Feel free to just jump in.
I'm not a school teacher, so I don't expect people to raise their hands.
Just be mindful to those who are speaking and just play nice or else I'm going to have to jump in.
But without further ado, if you guys have questions and you're listening and have questions for our panelists, please be sure to drop those in the threads below.
And I will bring those up a little bit later in the episode for our panelists to answer.
So with that being said, the first question is, can community-driven crypto projects like those built on DAOs actually replace the traditional corporations we're all familiar with?
Who wants to take the first swing?
Let me go for it since, oh, sorry, Bistel, but they just said no hand waving.
So anyway, I'll pass it on to you soon after.
But my strong belief is in the way we're designing DAOs right now, absolutely not.
Like there is no chance.
And the reason for that is that we mostly have a big group of people who are mostly busy doing other things.
So they have very little time to dedicate to deeply, deeply understand the decision they need to be made to make, who are not very well incentivized.
Like the decision is going to happen, whether they research deeply and vote or not, the decision is going to happen anyway, and they might win or lose the same.
And very often they're not very involved even.
So that sort of like very large crowd trying to make one decision at a time is not very effective.
But there is a pattern emerging in that we actually have small teams that can deeply focus on one area, and then many of these small teams can collaborate, can aggregate to some sort of consortium that can make a few decisions for the collective.
But the majority of the decisions are made by the small teams independently exploring one area.
And if you don't need to get everyone's agreement to decide how much funding one team gets or the other, but these teams can coordinate through some sort of internal market.
So let's say you have a marketing team and they need to hire more people, well, they can go and pay the HR team and say, hey, here is some budget that we have, we'll pay you for that.
And the way the marketing team got some budget is they got it from the product team that needed some marketing, and they hired them.
And there could be multiple product teams, et cetera.
So this pattern, we're already seeing it succeed in Web 2, where we have hired the number one IoT company in the world that is operating more or less with this pattern, and they're absolutely killing it.
They're killing the other big corporates.
They just acquired the consumer electronics arm of General Electrics in the U.S., and they increased profitability by 16% and employee engagement as well and so on.
And we have it emerging in Web 3 in a way that I hope will democratize it in the sense of you will enable all kinds of people to start building with this model with a lot less friction really, really quickly, thanks to a lot of automations and a lot of the technology we're building.
And that's a future I'm super excited about, where people can own their work, they can work with a small group cohesively, but we can also aggregate and accomplish really big things together.
Yeah, I'll jump in here on my point.
Love what you had to say together, together crew.
So in my take, I think something that really makes me think a lot, you know, obviously driving a project just with the community, you know, there's definitely a lot of things that have to be taken into account.
But something that really comes to mind is, you know, I really think many times communities have the best intention in mind for the actual community or for what's in line for what a project is building, sometimes better than corporations, just because corporations, their interest is only about making money, which I think, obviously, if you're running a business, I think that's important too.
We all need to make money. But I think that when that's the overarching theme that is driving the whole narrative, I think that sometimes, you know, it doesn't always have the best intention in mind for the actual community.
So something that I do get excited about, whether we have the right system today or we're moving towards that, I'm very excited about it.
And I want to see more of that. I want to see projects be driven by their communities more and more, whether that's, you know, with a DAO, discuss, you know, debating the relationship of how much decision making they actually have or not is a whole other debate.
But I think just the theme behind communities having a say more and more over the decision making and the suggestibility of where a project should go, I think is incredible and something that we see in Web3 already.
And something that has attracted me so much to Web3 and just seeing the empowerment of communities and, you know, let's talk about games here, Web3 games, for instance, just seeing the players taking back the power back from the developers, the publishers and these big box corporations, I think is is is is incredible.
Right. And I think that's what we all love about. Right. And I think that's what we all love about Web3 definitely need to find the best system to do that.
But I'm definitely no DAO expert, so I can't speak too much on that.
But I think just the overarching theme that communities have over the previous narrative where corporations had all the power, I think is really cool because now it's finally empowering the people, the community.
And I'm sure many of us would agree. But communities definitely have in many cases better intentions than a lot of corporations that only look at numbers, only look at metrics, KPIs.
How much money are we making this month over last month? Yada, yada. All the fun stuff. Right.
But I think, again, I get it, you know, got to run a business. But I think that sometimes a lot of things get lost in communication, get lost in in, you know, the love and the spirit of of what of what really might have started a business gets lost as it gets bigger.
So I think the community is able to really keep that in line. And I find it really cool that nowadays, especially with technology, that now we have DAOs, there's a system in place that, you know, we could do that now.
And I'm curious to see how it develops over the next following years. So can community driven projects replace corporations?
I think it's something we could definitely work towards. And I'm excited and I'm all for it. So, yeah.
I'm going to just chime in there. I think everything you said is really good.
And together, what you said, it's true, like the whole structural thing of each department's having their own entity, but also to having the community driven sort of feedback is important.
So there's a push, there's a push and rub here because, you know, if we have all community base and I've been in multiple areas where this, where I've sat on the board of a, you know, of a church.
So using that as a community concept, there's no one sort of direct sort of leader and not saying you want that top down thing, but you need that sort of overarching governance sort of where are we studying to?
Because as individuals, we all have our own opinions and our own directional space.
So I think, you know, the isolation into the corporation set up where individual entities like the marketing, the product team, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is quite relevant and quite good.
And I think a company that does this really well in the web too is Virgin.
And this is Richard Branson's, you know, ethos is if a company's, well, department's more than 60 people, what he does is he goes to the head person and say, congratulations, you're now the director of this company and sets it up.
Because it's too big, it doesn't work.
And the other thing that's also important, what he does is he takes that customer feedback, you know.
So the famous TV headsets on the back of on planes.
So back in, I think it was the 80s or 90s around there where it was really hard.
It was hard to refinance an old plane, but it was easy to get a new plane.
So he was able to convince the airlines to give them planes with headsets in it.
And how did he find that out?
He just walked around on his plane and he started asking his customers what they wanted.
And someone said, oh, you know, headsets on the back of the planes would be amazing.
And I think that is where the community contribution to the project and how it's evolving is really, really important.
I mean, there is this, and I guess the way we've structured this, even for ourselves at Cora, where we are this corporate entity, we're insurance, we need to be regulated, we need to have everything covered there.
But at the same time, you need to be able to have the opportunity of allowing what customers are going to say.
Because without your customer, you don't have any operation or any business, right?
So it's like if you're purely relying on your customers, I think it's important to give that feedback.
And it's fundamental in the product development space.
In any spaces, user validation testing is a fundamental thing that's missing.
And I think having as a DAO, a community as a DAO to sort of govern, to say, hey, this is actually what we want, right?
And this is what we've general consensus, what we voted on, I think is key metrics that no matter how big an organization or entity you are, small or big, you still need to know that.
And even as a DAO, you might have multiple entities in the DAO that are then part of a bigger DAO.
It's still, you know, it's still fundamental.
So I think there's this balance.
We still need to learn from one side and the other.
Yeah.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, go for it.
Same mic issues here with the tapping on the screen.
But, yeah, what I want to say is, yeah, it's kind of an interesting question because assuming that the community actually wants the same thing that's best for business,
is where things can get kind of sticky.
And I know this is kind of like an overlap, but a real life example, sort of what we went through is there is the DAO that runs a token in all these different things.
And like the community, the tokenomics and they vote, there's proposals and all this stuff is very democratic.
However, the IP is actually owned by the company.
And the reason for that, somebody might jump in and say, oh, that's not very good if the company owns the IP and then DAO is running a token separately and doing all these different things.
It's because the IP is, it takes a little bit more protection per se, because without the IP being valuable, then everything else in the ecosystem is not going to be valuable.
So, whereas you might have the DAO wanting to go off and make some not family-friendly crude brand that's just not in line with what's being built, and it muddies the waters and devalues the brand.
Now, if you're having a crude brand like, say, Barstool Sports or something, cool, that's what the whole thing is built on.
But if it's supposed to be a family brand, yet then it's being built up in that direction, and then the group decides to do all sorts of wild memes in the branding, because that's the popular moment.
The crowd might go with that, and then it just devalues the whole brand.
So, overall, I think when it comes to running a business, there really has to be a decision maker, someone who sees the long-term vision, and unfortunately, it's so easy to come in and out of DAOs that if you're trying to run a business and you are hoping to be here for 10, 20 years or beyond that,
someone who might make a couple cents purchase comes into a DAO and starts to have a say, it could be very short-term because they're not there for the long-term necessarily as, let's say, the core person.
Or someone who might just be able to have a lot of finances that thinks they can hop in, throw a little money around, and then change the direction of a company.
So, it could be very problematic.
So, I don't think that going the topic at hand, the DAO will ever replace a corporation, I think.
The corporation is a structure that's needed legally and so forth, but at the end of the day, a leader with a vision and is committed for the long haul is always going to make a better decision than someone who is looking at the short term.
So, that's why I think sometimes it's good to separate certain entities of it because it could get pretty chaotic very quickly, and I like both.
So, I'm not against either one.
I happen to think both structures have their place.
It's kind of like the argument about centralization and decentralization.
Not everything has to be decentralized.
Not everything has to be a DAO.
So, yeah.
Yeah, I really like that take, Tropic, because I have a similar viewpoint.
I don't think DAOs can replace corporations, but if anything, it could probably evolve the way we lead teams and stuff like that.
Because, Tropic, when you were saying your take, we want to have a leader driving the ship.
If you guys see my PFP, I'm part of the Pudgy Penguins community.
And our community, we're not a DAO or anything, but we still have some say into how our project moves and we have incentives with royalties and all that.
But we still believe in the leader, right, Luca, and the team, right, to drive what's going on.
And so, but I don't feel like, oh, I need total control of this brand in order for me to feel good, right?
I know there needs to be some structure.
There needs to be someone who's smarter than me, who knows who's built businesses, who could drive the ship.
Because if it goes well, then it benefits me.
So that's why I feel like DAOs won't replace corporations, but it could evolve how we structure corporations and how brands, or even talking about brands, right, have a say in things.
And that's where I think technology like NFTs, right, for example, could be something that where it allows people to interact or be part of something, but more than it has before, right?
And so I really don't think, like, yeah, because there are issues, I mean, there's issues for both, right, corporations and DAOs, but I really feel like there has to be some, in a way, some centralized entity or some leader, some team to drive the ship, right?
And I think it really depends on, like, how leadership is, right?
Like, for example, again, using Pledge of Penguins, for example, like, I really feel like the team and Luca really has, loves to hear community feedback, right?
And adjusts accordingly to that because we have, like, a bi-weekly meeting with the community.
And so he listens to us and then, yeah, and does that.
And so, yeah, I really feel like DAOs could be a good thing in the sense of, like, it could, you know, change the way we think about how do we run a company, how do brands perform and stuff like that.
And so, but I don't think it would necessarily replace the corporation.
Yeah, I would like to add in, like, some, my point of view here.
So community-driven is actually a spectrum.
It's not, like, zero or one, like, definition, right?
So in terms of community-driven, I think, like, there are three important steps that we want the community to involve.
The first one is in terms of inputs for the project, right?
They may, like, suggest us, like, to implement this feature or integrate with this chain because it's the actual need that they have.
Then the second step is actually decision-making, which is much more complicated, right?
So how, what chain to prioritize or what feature, like, we should add first?
Like, those now, like, come with a problem, right?
Who have the right to make the decision?
And, like, who can decide which decision is the best for the community?
I think it's hard, like, to have democracy here where everyone votes for the right decision, right?
And the last step is actually implementation, right?
For community-driven projects, like, there is some time that, like, the community is the one who's building the project itself, right?
But then in order to build a project, they need to have some incentive, right?
They're investing their time, their effort, their expertise.
But if, like, the incentive is not there, right, it's very hard for them to fully dedicate it and build a high-quality product.
So for me, like, we need to overcome, like, for each of the steps, like, the barrier.
The first one in terms of inputs, I think the first barrier is who are the real community, right?
Right now, we see a lot of reward hunters and a lot of people, like, using the project just, like, to get some incentive out of it, right?
So those people, are they the community?
Are they, like, giving the right input for the projects, like, to improve?
I don't think so.
So, like, I think, like, defining the community is the first barrier when we talk about inputs.
For decision-making, as I said, like, the community may not have the necessary skill set to prioritize and help us, like, decide, like, which decision is the best for the company or, like, for the projects.
So, like, leadership and decision-making is, like, the barrier.
And at the end, when we talk about implementation, like, how we can crowdfund or have, like, the right incentive for people who are spending their effort in terms of implementing what the community decides, that's also an issue, right?
So, I don't think, like, community-driven project is going to replace cooperation, like, 100%.
But there may be some middle point that, like, we can meet so that, like, we can build the projects which can run in the long term, but also bring the benefit to the community.
Yeah.
I really like what Christo is saying, because there is this really important distinction, at least for me, in between what is operational governance and metagovernance.
Like, in one side, you are deciding the rules of the game, and on the other side, you are making the day-to-day decisions.
And the day-to-day decisions, you mostly want a person who has a lot of context, who's there, really focused, who's properly incentivized,
essentially very much an employee or someone who's deeply aligned with the project.
If they are also invested in the long term, like, in early-stage startups, you have some vesting, and essentially, that means that if the project does well over the next few years, you're going to do really well.
So, you're focused there and trying your best to make the small decisions of whether the button goes to the left or the right, or you prioritize feature A or feature B, et cetera.
But then, at the more macro level, like these metagovernance, when you have big decisions, like, an organization exists fundamentally at the crossroad of different stakeholder groups.
You have people who want to use a product or who want some sort of service or offering.
On the other side, you have people who are providing capital.
So, these can work.
They're the investors or the token holders.
And what they want is some return on that capital.
They want the thing to grow and become more financially wealthy, and then you have contributors, people who are willing to sell their labor and, in exchange of that, be rewarded.
And so, the interests of these different people are fundamentally different, and an organization succeeds if it can find win-win-win answers, like, that actually make everyone happy.
And the more you can find those answers, the better.
So, at that meta level, where you have these different stakeholder groups who are, in a way, clashing or negotiating and trying to find a solution that is not going to be splitting the pie, but rather growing the pie, is where it's really, really important that we have them all represented.
So, DAOs, up until now, have mostly been just about the token holders.
And that is really only one group.
But unless we find ways to give a voice and a vote to also those who are contributing and also those who are using the product, we're going to end up in the same place as corporations, where one group kind of takes over the others, and then you are super happy with the product.
But now, the company has become big, and then they try to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze, and they no longer care about users, and eventually the whole thing is terrible, and then you move on somewhere else because you don't like the product anymore, right?
Or, on the other hand, they start to squeeze, squeeze, squeeze employees to increase profit.
So, we kind of need to find the mechanism to have the balance in between these groups.
And in this sense, we started, like what Christal was saying, of thinking, how do we know who the community is?
And from the data, we actually can see these really interestingly because it's super important to have high context to make good decisions.
And you can actually map these across platforms.
You can see who's engaging across all the community and map the social network.
And when you have this map of the social network, you can see who are the people who have a good overview about everything that's happening and who've been around for some time.
So, they're not just there to make a quick buck.
They're actually, like, central part of the social tissue of the community.
And if we give these people some voting power, this is a really good and relatively easy to make first step towards empowering what I was saying, the balance in between stakeholders.
And that's not for every single decision, but at least for big decisions where we're defining the rules of the game, allocating budgets, and then we can have focused teams who do a good work.
More like we have known and evolving corporations, but the overall is accountable to the different stakeholder groups, not just to one of them.
No, I love that.
Love that.
That's a really good point.
Adam, did you want to add something really quick?
Oh, I just wanted to top into together what he's saying.
I think it's really clever, it's really smart, and it's very organically growing because, you know, rather than just giving it to the community to say, hey, direct the direction, you know, and exactly ending up in the predicament that we would end up in, that, you know, corporations are like, yeah, all part of the community, and then all of a sudden it goes to another direction.
You know, there's plenty of examples in this over history, you know, in corporations and stuff.
So I think this is really good because you're also rewarding the people that have been championing your project and your products and your brand from the beginning and also rewarding them with the opportunity to have a say in that.
And I think that's fundamental to the future of, you know, any entity or any organization or any corporation is championing those people because, again, without your customers, you have nothing.
So allowing them to be a part of it, but not the person that's just, like I said, jumped in for the, you know, quick buck and want to earn a seat at the table.
I think they need to sort of say, hey, you know what, been here for a while, I'm in this pool and I would like the opportunity to share.
And they don't need to, but I think it's good.
And I think even Chainnell said too that, you know, part of that Pudgy Penguins, that group, you know, like that, it's like you don't need to have a say, but if the opportunity to come up to have a say because you've been a loyal supporter too, yeah, that'd be nice.
It's a nice sort of feeling.
It's like, would you like to have an opportunity to speak?
I think it's really special and I think that's something that I, even me personally, just for our whole ethos and stuff, is something you learn as a founder, you're constantly evolving.
And I think this is a really important conversation.
So thank you for sharing, everybody.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
So I do have a follow-up to that one, but to this kind of topic that we're on right now.
But before we dive into that, thanks, everybody, for tuning in.
If you're just joining us, my name is Cody.
I'm the CXO of Layer 1X.
And today we've got a great discussion going on, can community-driven projects replace corporations?
And so if you missed the first part, highly recommend you go back and listen to it from the beginning.
Likewise, please be sure to share this if you haven't already shared it, as well as give our panelists a like and a follow on their profile.
They will definitely love it.
So anyways, back to my follow-up question.
I love what you guys are all saying, you know, how, you know, community members become shareholders, voting rights, community equals focus groups,
and also the corporate structure.
And that's something that I want to dive in a little bit more.
So if we can kind of put on our thinking caps here for just a minute and kind of expand our mind a little bit.
My question is, with the evolution or the expansion of DAOs, could this lead to a fundamental shift in our existing business economy and infrastructure as we know it,
such as HR, hiring processes, company culture, or even how employees work within the crypto project workspace?
Again, I think it's, everything is, I don't know, I guess you'd say we tend to just swing from one extreme to the other.
So I think at the end of the day, you can see this with just about anything.
You go from hot to cold, there's seasons, there's all these different things.
So right now, everyone wants to speak about the DAOs and so forth.
But when it comes to, I guess, implementing it and then seeing how it works, then you're going to see a season where it goes to the other extreme.
And everyone wants to say that all DAOs are failures.
We're not going to do that.
I think we're in an experimental phase right now where people are still trying to figure out what the rules are of this space.
The laws haven't even caught up and so forth.
But as far as like the culture of workplaces and so forth, again, it really, it comes down to every company and structure and situation being different.
I think in the case of a DAO, it's a lot easier, smaller, the number of people that are in it, to be honest, to make it very efficient because people can come in and out and it could slow down the processes of things.
So a small business, but in that case, it really wouldn't necessarily mean to go on chain.
It's just a democratic process, right?
So it's trying to balance, all right, where is the tech necessary?
Where does it just overcomplicate things?
And what exactly is a DAO?
I think by definition, the DAO requires the blockchain element.
So if you're not using the blockchain element, everyone's casting their vote.
I think it's the most fair, practical democracy.
And to be honest, I think one of the best use cases for a DAO would be like a local government, like a town board, school board, things of that nature.
But when it comes to a major corporation now, I think it gets really complicated.
We like to dabble with it, experiment with it and see what happens.
But I just think it kind of makes things difficult when there's so many voices.
And earlier, what was being said about the Pudgies and Luca and everything, I mean, everyone knows that is the voice of the community, the face of it, the decision maker, the business person that invested the most money of it.
Yes, there are people that bought their Pudgies and so forth and came in individually.
But as far as the direction of the brand, he put up the most initially to come into it to try to do something.
So he might do something that rubs certain people in the wrong way.
And you can say this with any CEO.
You could go look at Apple, Elon with what he's doing with his 15 million companies and so forth.
But at the end of the day, to make it a success, somebody's going to have to make a decision.
And I think that's where DAOs could be used in certain areas of it, you know, but not necessarily everything.
That's kind of a long-winded way of just saying, I don't think it's going to overall drastically change the way we fundamentally do business.
I think blockchain will, but I don't necessarily think the structure of a DAO will.
This is a thing we've been researching for a while with the R&D collective.
And a thing we came to is that whether we include this in the concept of DAOs or not, because DAOs has become a bit of this buzzword, means very different things for different people.
For some, it just means direct token voting with a whole bunch of people in a Discord chat or Telegram and a lot of noise.
For others, it means something else.
But there is one property, whether we include it or not, one property that's really, really important.
And that is the idea of being able to contribute fairly permissionlessly.
So if we think, for example, about WordPress, if you want to build a plugin for WordPress, it is relatively easy to do so.
Like, you don't need to go and ask for approval from a lot of people and convince the WordPress corporation to sign a partnership with you
and agree all the branding details of how you're going to call the plugin and who's that plugin going to serve and ultimately, you know, enter into this long negotiation.
You just kind of create the plugin and you can add it to the WordPress marketplace.
It's more or less this idea of marketplaces and permissionless integration and permissionless contribution, where you can still benefit from having that contribution,
that I think can be really, really transformational for the future of organizations, because it can change the logic.
When you see a product or a thing and you don't really like it, or there is something you would want to change,
right now, the only thing you can do is go and start a competing company.
So the only option is to compete against them and create something in the way you think it should be.
But if you're able to contribute permissionlessly, and then you're able in a fairly effective way,
and that doesn't exist yet, like we need the communication tools that can aggregate data and opinions from people more effectively,
but if you're able to put forward an idea on how it could evolve and have an effective governance system that can change it,
then that changes that equation where the most efficient thing to do is not for you to go and start a competing company,
but to actually contribute or build on top of what already exists.
And that's not going to be true in every single case, like of course, it's a gradient.
But if we can make the whole economy more collaborative, that is tremendously more resource efficient than the economy we have right now.
It can unlock people sharing ideas more freely.
It can unlock people just finding better ways to engage with each other that is less aggressive,
less about trying to keep insights hidden and so on, and more about figuring out, hey, together,
what's the coolest thing we can build?
And that is a gigantic culture shift and a gigantic economic shift that we're only at the very, very beginning of.
Okay.
No, I love that thought.
Those are some great points.
I mean, for myself being, you know, I've owned two different companies or three different companies,
and I've exited out of two of them and from startups.
And, you know, it's really interesting in my mind as I kind of think about this question personally on those other three companies.
I could totally see, not necessarily a DAO, but I could definitely see the permissionless components of being able to, you know,
especially like in crypto, if they were crypto projects where three projects where everything's kind of remote,
you have a list of items, you have a list of tasks that need to be done.
You can allocate a smart contract to an escrow kind of thing that once those things are met, both parties agree that they're done.
It automatically releases the pay structure on that.
So it can hold people a lot more accountable, especially around freelance, remote jobs kind of thing where there isn't much way of monitoring unless you are monitoring every keystroke and every time they log on to their computer type of thing,
which I don't think really needs to be that it's a little over excessive in my mind.
But I think that if we could even have it where, you know, the permissions to to perform certain things on the project are also bound to having specific NFTs or something like that,
that are in your wallet that give you permission to go into WordPress and change things, right, or or things like that.
And when you leave, the NFT gets burnt and another one is provided based upon the community voting on who they think the next candidate out of the candidates.
Maybe you have them vote on who's next to take over that role.
Um, I'm a firm believer in community, uh, promoting within the community as well.
Uh, I mean, it's a great way to find mods and, and kind of grow those into community managers as well.
So I am a strong believer in community is, um, on that passion as well.
So, um, you know, if we, if we kind of take that and kind of go into the next question that I have line of questioning, um, you know,
it really, it really, it really does kind of raise a, a good question of like, what are the psychological kind of traits and motivations that get most people to jump into a doubt environment?
I can take a stab real quick on it.
Um, I'm just thinking even for myself, like here where I am located, there's like a city down, right?
And if you join it, you can have different benefits, whatnot, you know, networking and all that.
And so for me, just, again, just initially thinking about this right now or thinking out loud, it's like, you know, some people just want to say or be a part of a community, right?
And so that's why they join a doubt, right?
Like I'm thinking, I'm just thinking of that city doubt right now.
And it's like, what are the perks?
Why would I want to join it?
You know?
And it's like, yeah, I just want to have that community, right?
People have like-minded people there, um, and be part of.
And so, yeah, that's kind of my initial thoughts, but yeah, I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts as well.
The initial question kind of broke up for me.
I didn't catch this, the second half.
So, I mean, uh, I'll take a stab at it, but I just didn't hear the second half.
Could you just repeat the second half?
Or I guess you say repeat the question.
Yeah.
Uh, what are the psychological traits, um, and motivations, uh, that convince people
to jump into a DAO community or environment?
All right.
I think, uh, okay, fundamentally, I think this is just like a human thing, right?
We, we want to be a part of something bigger than us.
We want to be a part of something, some sort of group that has an identity, whether that
is a Boy Scout club, neighborhood, uh, watch, uh, a church, uh, you name it.
Political party, like we associate, we want to join with various groups, right?
Um, it's like it wired into us, I mean, from the family structure up that we want to be
a part of it.
So I think deep down that is the main reason people want to go into any kind of DAO.
I know on the surface, most people will probably say they just want to make money, but I don't
think that's fundamentally true.
I think, yes, there are DAO hoppers, but I think there are people, the ones that are
gung ho, the ones that are voting on every proposal and everything, even if it's the
most ridiculous meme DAO, um, it's because they want to be a part of something.
So I think ultimately the driving force behind a DAO is an identity and people want to be a
part of it and associated with it because of this, they're willing to dedicate their time,
energy, and resources, their skills, if they're great memers or whatever it is.
Right.
So I think that's what it really is more than anything.
And going back to the whole thing, like why even a DAO, like it's a group of people, a
community, they have something in common, right?
And they're in unity, common unity, community.
That's where the word comes from.
And they're marching towards that and trying to like build something and actually go into
a direction.
And this doesn't necessarily have to be money.
This could be something as simple as cleaning up the beach in Jamaica.
Right.
So, um, yeah, so that's, what's the driving force behind it.
And they, they, they align with that and they want to be a part of it.
Yeah.
I'll jump in here too.
Uh, love what you had to say, Tropic and love what everybody else has to say.
Um, there was a piece at the very beginning, somebody had said about, uh, connection.
I forget what it was exactly, but, uh, I'm going to use that point.
I think that, you know, people definitely look for connection and, uh, you know, as
that Tropic had said, community, people are looking for community.
So I think being a part of a community that you have a say, uh, is really important.
And people really want to be able to express themselves and feel like they're part of something
where their feedback is, is valued and they feel heard.
So I think that those are definitely certain things that people look for.
And another one that comes to mind is autonomy.
You know, I think people want to have more autonomy around decision-making and more control
and just feel more empowered where, um, your thoughts, uh, are actually appreciated, you
know?
And, uh, I think having a community and a connection with people that you're able to
do that in a safe space, um, is really powerful.
And I definitely think, um, you know, looking for a community that you have a connection with
and you have autonomy, I think are definitely some driving forces that, uh, attract a lot
of people to DAOs.
I know that's what would attract me.
And, um, I think that for sure, those are a lot of things that, um, people are looking for.
Yeah.
I just, I just want to say in there, I think, um, you know, people want to be, you're right,
Tropic, people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, right?
That's just a human nature.
That's why we're innately built.
And now I'm calling on my sort of behavioral psychology background, but it is, it is fundamental,
but also too, I think there needs to be the motivation behind.
So we talk about the psychology, but it's also the motivation behind why I want to join a DAO.
And I think maybe it's detaching the notion of, oh, I'm a DAO member and blah, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, I'm invested in this brand and this product or this organization or whatever
it is.
And I want to help them grow.
I want to contribute towards them.
I don't want to just sit on the sideline anymore.
I want to actually get actively involved in this and I want to be able to have a voice.
And it's like why we vote and why we, you know, have a decision and stuff like that.
But then the rub becomes, okay, do we have it set up where you pay to be a DAO member?
Okay, cool.
So now you have a financially vested interest into that, but is your financially vested interest
the same as your, you know, emotional connection to helping succeed this?
So then it's like, okay, we can have it based on a tiered scale system.
So then it becomes an economic advantage or disadvantage.
This is the current structure of how sort of things are operating.
But I think we want to be able to join something that we feel closely connected to.
And that comes back to the entity, wherever it is, organization doing a great job of making
everybody, their community feel inclusive and a part of that space.
And they want to be able to be a part of that.
Like, you know, I drive the ethos that we're a family.
Like whoever joins, you know, the core thing, it's core, it's be part of the family from
the board all the way down to the token holder.
You're a part of the family.
And I think, and that's just something, Italian background.
So for me, family is everything.
You know, we sit around the table, we eat lots of food and just family.
And I think a lot of cultures do appreciate that.
And that's the fundamental thing.
And I think if organizations take that track or associations take that track, you want
to be a part of that.
You want to be, you know, you want to be in there.
You want to enjoy that.
You want to say, hey, I want to help you grow, not because of financial means or anything
else like that.
And it's the same thing.
Why do people volunteer their time in community halls or things like that?
It's because they want to be something part of themselves.
They want to help another person.
They want to help that organization grow.
And I think that's a key motivator that if we take that as a top end driving thing, I
think we could really see some magic in globally, you know, like a lot of initiatives and really
pushing the narrative.
So it's exciting to see where it goes.
But at the same time, we can't have it that you paid for your seat at the table, because
it's the same thing we say communism in form of government, in theory, it's the best form
of government.
But in practice, it's the worst.
And my concern is that the way we're moving with DAOs, and I know Together's raised this
as well, and a few other panelists have raised this as well, it could potentially lead towards
this, you know, top-heavy situation.
And I think that's a deterrent for people wanting to join a DAO.
And it's like, well, wait a minute, a DAO, that means I need to be an association.
I need to be a business.
Not really my thing.
I just want to contribute and help and give a say, and I want to sit on the sidelines.
So it's that rubbing point.
And I think these are the things that go through people's minds to say, hey, I want to be a
part of this, but I don't want to have too much involvement, and I don't want to be on
the hook for something as well.
No, great point.
Great point.
Oh, go together, crew.
Yeah.
No, it was more to say, I'm going to have to make a move.
Maybe I'll leave with a small point that is, we're at the very early stage of this whole
new breed of organizations, whether they're DAOs or some hybrid or otherwise.
And so a lot of the people that join these days, they are novelty seekers, either because
they don't have a lot of opportunities where they are, and so it makes sense for them to
take the risk and explore new spaces, or simply because they're comfortable and have time and
they like new stuff and they want to check out what's happening.
So we have very particular personalities, a lot of like neurodivergence and so on that
usually comes with this territory.
And that's likely to change a lot over time.
So I don't know exactly how it's going to look five years from now, but I would be really,
really shocked if it was very similar.
So anyway, that to say, I have loved the conversation.
Thanks a lot for having us.
And thanks everyone for the super cool insights.
I hope everyone has a great rest of the day.
And if you want to catch up, just DM us.
We're very happy to keep on jamming on these topics.
Thanks all.
Yeah.
Thanks for joining us.
Sounds like we're going to definitely have to have a part two of this coming up in a few
weeks so that we can finish it.
Uh, since I was only able to get through like three questions, so, uh, but, uh, yeah, great
topic, great feedback, everybody.
Uh, if you want, uh, let's start with crystal and if you want to take 30 seconds and just
basically give a quick outro of how people can get in touch with you or any alpha that
you want to drop.
Uh, but, uh, please just keep it to 30 seconds since we're on the top of the hour.
Awesome.
I thank you for the discussion.
I really do learn a lot from you guys.
Um, so if you guys want to learn more about crystal, um, you just like click into my profile
here and follow us.
Um, one thing that we are going to launch, uh, this week is going to be our initial liquidity
offering platform.
And, um, the first project that we are going to launch will be a meme token, right?
And after that, we are going to launch more legit tokens.
Like following the test of the meme token.
So, um, yeah, like follow me and, and, um, there's going to be a lot of great opportunity
await, um, at crystal.
Beastly go for it.
Amazing.
Thanks guys.
Uh, sorry.
I was just looking for the mute unmute button.
Uh, yeah, no, we're just, uh, really excited for some of the stuff we're bringing.
I guess I'll keep it short.
We do have a telegram mini game coming very soon.
Hopefully within the next week or two, we'll be launching that.
Uh, lots of cool stuff happening on the ton ecosystem.
So excited to be a part of that.
Uh, we'll leave it at that.
It's going to be under our, our second game Boinkers.
Uh, so if anybody wants to check it out, it's Boinkers IO, but yeah, really excited.
Um, and, uh, super happy to be here guys.
Uh, looking forward to future panels.
Chen, go for it.
Yeah.
Thanks for bringing me on and yeah, really love the discussion.
Uh, and really great to connect with everyone.
Uh, yeah.
If you guys are just looking for, if anyone is looking to speak on spaces,
I host a lot of spaces as well.
So feel free to DM me or even if for your project, you're looking for a space host
or creating a space show.
Uh, yeah.
You can apply on my website, but yeah, really appreciate this conversation.
And yeah, hope to see you guys in the next space.
Awesome.
Tropic go for it, my friend.
Yeah.
Right now would be, I'll be buried down in the discord.
Uh, kitty car racing.
The, the, the game is coming out today.
So, um, best way to get in touch with me for the next week.
We'll be, and hopefully not, not too much, but support tickets in the discord.
But yeah, we're going to be playing the game.
We're playing the game and having fun.
And, uh, yeah.
So glad to be here with all you guys.
Hopefully you have a great week.
And then the, uh, the storm doesn't derail all the gameplay.
So have a good one.
Good luck with your launch.
I'll have to check it out for sure.
Adam, go for it.
Yeah.
Uh, you can find out more about us.
Um, check in my profile there, visit Cora.io.
A little bit about us where we're going and got our token launch going at the moment.
Uh, outside of that, just some big alphas coming up with some big partnerships that we're in the space moving into.
But other than that, I'd love to talk to anybody.
If you want to DM me personally, follow me.
I'm always open up for a chat and rest of the panelists as well.
Love connecting with like-minded people.
And I think it's really, really important to have great intelligent conversations in this space.
Genuine human connection.
Genuine connection.
So thank you very much.
Perfect.
Uh, just wanted to say another big thank you to all of our panelists.
Uh, if you're listening into the episode, please be sure to give each of these panelists a follow.
They definitely deserved it.
They, they, uh, dropped some good information and, uh, we had a great discussion today.
So they definitely earned your follow.
So, uh, please be sure to do that.
And, uh, check us out next week, uh, for our next upcoming episode of X talks.
Um, same time as this one, uh, every week on, uh, Tuesday.
So, yeah, we will catch you later and, uh, have a good rest of your week and keep uniting all of crypto.
Have a good one guys.
We'll talk to you later.
Goodbye.
Have a good day.
Bye.
Bye.
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