Coordination Summit | Collective Funding in web3

foreign [Applause] [Music] we're going to talk about collect collective funding in web3 and as uh for our three music panelists when I welcome Simona James and Steph on to the the stage so I'll ask all of you to turn your videos on and uh we'll talk about some interesting ways to do funding so welcome everybody excited to have you on board thanks looks like we're oh yeah yeah awesome um so we have 30 minutes for this which means we'll be able to go into too many questions so we'll try to go uh into some direct topics as early as possible but I want to kind of zoom out first and just maybe start off with a couple of intros I'd love to kind of start with with Simona here um tell us about where you are what you work on and what is kind of the most common thing you end up doing as part of your role and now we'll kind of then go to Stefan and James cool um hi everybody um great to be here um I tend to um spend very many plates in the ethereum ecosystem um I am a steward of get going down uh medical government Steward for ens I also work with element um Finance Dao as well as organized shelling point and liscon so um there's a plethora of things that I get involved in all aimed at potentially creating or making sure that web free is our new reality and creating space for a lot of people to um you know come into that reality in a nice beautifully beautiful initiation and then a nice kind of path forward um that everybody can benefit from oh thanks uh James if you want to go next yeah sure um so hello everyone I'm James um I'm from fire eyes I'm from New Zealand I'm really focused on sort of like how we can open up the governing space and make it more approachable and eventually the way that we do that is by working with a series of token launchers and data launchers we're at the moment at mcon if anyone's listening to emcon um Come and catch us to hang out the sort of really like focusing on how these towers can expand so how can how bringing more people and give out more money how can ANS launch you know sort of and launch your token in a meaningful way um and get other people involved awesome and uh Steph here next hey all I'm Steph uh I'm over at Sea Club I am the steward of the media team and yeah I spend my days thinking about and executing and facilitating uh media as a dow strategy and yeah I think I think uh just our instigator and co-creator described me as uh someone who thinks about coordination more than most same people and I feel like that that feels pretty accurate it's amazing um this whole day is about coordination and sort of anywhere from our learnings to our complaints so I want to focus on both of those for for the next few minutes um my kind of at first I feel like the first topic we should all dive into is maybe uh talking about what is essentially the the level of coordination we have to do so uh James you talked about working with specific launches uh somebody talked about doing grants for multiple communities stuff you're talking about just kind of a lot of companies that you get to look at and the media aspects of all those opportunities uh there's these are different scales these are different kind of timelines uh you have a lot different set of people that are affected by these decisions uh maybe starting with you staff like on average like what is the level of complexity that you're dealing with in terms of the number of people you have to talk to or coordinate and what are some of these timelines they usually end up working out on I love this question you know we yeah we we're increasingly our coordination is becoming more uh more interwoven and complex over at Sea Club as our as as our both as our teams grow in the number of of people that that we're coordinating with and also the depth at which we're coordinating and I think also as we mature as a as a Dao as a community as an organization so yeah you know on any given day or sorry in any given week um I'm in something like 14 plus hours of of meetings that are that are scaled from like either one to ones or like sinks across um multi like multiple working groups or uh within within our specific working groups and yeah and you know we're working we're working on timelines so if I think about with the media team specifically we're working on timelines that are both like 24 hours long right because you're you're engaging in a in a you know the the ever ever on cycle of Twitter of um of of yeah just just social media but but we also work on much longer timelines right so when we're talking about any media that we're putting out from our podcast to any of our editorials that can be um timelines that are like you know two months three months six months out um and and yeah and one of the things that we're that we're also uh in in the midst of on the on the media team but then again also at C Club at large is yeah the way in which as we as we grow as we grow our teams as we grow and and and add new new verticals to our work that yeah our coordination and and our need for for clarity and legibility and constantly surfacing all assumptions just becomes so critical oh I can imagine and I feel like uh I want to go to Simona next because uh you seem to be in the the eye of the storm of every Grand data coordination year so uh what's what's the chaos that you get to deal with well so I think just in general um and and how this is potentially evolved we're still dealing with incredibly incredibly um there is a centralized and gigantic kind of decision-making processes right and we're definitely at that stage where it's very important to become much more agile and to make sure that it is we set ourselves up for collective decision making right and it's very very important to decentralize that decision-making process and it's very important to prioritize um enabling funding beyond what is you know a project that maybe has somebody who is good at marketing that project right so this from the perspective of just an evolution of what it takes every single round for Bitcoin grants the ones that go ahead are the ones that are just very good constantly on Twitter and and doing the usual kind of um pre-juring uh and post Grant uh engagement let's say so I think there's work to be done particularly on that decentralization piece and particularly on that you know Merit base like really really surfacing things in a in a much much more natural way versus again a little bit of that centralization and flavor that we're trying to get away from naturally this actually is a good segue until what I was going to ask next but I also want to give James a quick opportunity to talk about this because uh that is effectively where what we're going to touch on um and how do we actually make that scalable so uh James I'll let you quickly chime in yeah I mean I think like plus one to um what both Seth and Simona said I think like you know what's interesting at the moment in terms of like how that coordination has leveled up is that we're no longer sort of like coordinating 10 people in a room I mean even with the Dow right like five years ago there wasn't that many people you know that I mean there was a shitload of ethereum right like 10 15 Cinema ethereum but in terms of humans sitting around the table there wasn't that many and then you know sort of PT your staff for a couple years now we have sort of you know the media cartel Mark spin up a few more people come and then now it's like the hot word right it's the buzzword that like literally everyone you know anyone trying to get into seed Club was like oh I'm a dab an amazing Dad it's awesome you know like I think like we're now at a space where it's a buzzword right which is really good in a lot of ways because it means we have more humans um but it also means we have these coordination challenges and I guess like we're talking about right now so and absolutely so so it seems like there's like one interesting thing here is like we we often end up um you know we're not establishing like which side we're kind of talking about because uh oftentimes like we have to switch context from hey we're on the other side of the people we're actually helping and then sometimes like let's talk about uh the work we have to do to get to those uh outcomes and uh each of you are in that position where you're doing something on the internal side and then you have external facing sort of outcomes um when you kind of look at that what are some of the common challenges that you feel like you've seen or you think are still largely unsolved on on the Eternal side um I'll maybe kind of start with you James like you have to kind of work with people on the launch side of things as they kind of think about new tokens how often are those uh uh not how often like what are usually kind of that common things you run into that repeat every time you talk to a new uh set of kind of clients um and then we'll kind of go to Simon about some of the the grants and the dials you're involved with yeah I mean I think it's interesting I think like one of the most common things is probably like you know not knowing when they should turn into a doubt you know it's like and I think like you know I mean the the coordination of there now being 10 000 people 100 000 people that really care about Dows I think sort of like adds to that complexity you know because like at the beginning it's like oh well we'll just turn into a doubt and no one might you know worry about it for too long but eventually we can sort of build on something more meaningful versus now it's like okay well we we can fit into a doubt right now and there might be 10 000 people you know banging our drum but do we need that you know like should we do that right now and so I think like a common thing we you know end up talking to a lot of a lot of different companies and a lot of them are like okay let's turn into a doubt tomorrow and either they're trying to rush it too much and they need to chill the out sorry I don't know if I swear chill out and you know sort of take it a little bit easier or they're so scared right there's actually a lot of companies that will spend a lot of time working with that you know we all use on a daily basis that we're planning to launch a token years ago you know and did it and you know went through months or years of work around launching there and then when okay this is scary you know there's too much going on and so I think that's you know sort of one of the most common things that we end up finding Sarah go for it so I think that's really really interesting and actually my kind of take on things was around timing as well so I think that is such an important piece that we either and it seems like there's that speed of like rushing in or pulling back and that in between that really nice middle is still something that we're all trying to figure out right it's either super quick let's get all of the Dow tubing immediately even if we don't need it right now and let's figure things out later or let's wait let's see maybe we don't turn into it now maybe we don't launch that token maybe we do this that or like think about it a little more and I think the timing piece is really really important both in the workings because you mentioned the internal workings of a Dao establishing those patterns like I've been chatting about like patterns and Cadence and all of these like rhythms of how things evolve of how information flows of how processes get implemented to make sense for that organism if you look at it all it's all each Dao or each structure is an organism within itself everything has to flow in a healthy way everything has to touch the different components and the different parts through the arteries that link everything together and making sure that that functions that's a very very important piece internally on the other side when you're looking at funding when you're looking at how people are coming in and how they're accessing resource being able to do it in a Grassroots way being able to do it in a way that is that has such a better degree of visibility versus the big institutional funders the monolithic institutional funders that dare I say they also follow patterns but that's because they kind of go you know on a surface level sometimes that a Grassroots approach just completely completely um not necessarily goes against but gives you that granularity and gives you that feel for true value for an ecosystem that you may not have insights into and so again micro to macro macro to micro it's not that different from the natural world and plants and all of these beautiful natural things if we just approach it from that perspective a lot of things become a lot clearer uh in timing as well as structure let's just have like uh your day-to-day is a little bit different than than Jameson and Simone as in kind of the role um what are kind of some of the parallels you've seen on on the process side of things for for C Club yeah I mean I love I love how you're you're just getting to the heart of the matter right that like what is what is what is the tension between how we're how we're integrating process internally and then how we how that then bleeds out into into external and then also when we're interfacing with um with with projects or with like applicants uh for for the accelerator or alumni and yeah I mean I think I think that there's like a lot of a lot of things that feel resonant in in what both um James and Simona said and you know when we when we're when we're thinking about um yeah about about coordination like I think I think there's a a real um a way that we as a space talk about how we how we coordinate a community or how we how we make decisions as a community around a shared Treasury and one of the things I've noticed and I feel like we're we're bringing more attention to at Sea Club as well is like oh actually there's already a really core Community here and and that's your those are your core contributors and so how are we how are we as a contributing team um both both within our specific working groups and also across our working groups how are we coordinating and how are we making decisions and then also how are we memorializing those processes and then how are we you know to someone's point about Cadence like how are we how are we integrating a sense of cadence and evaluation in retro to all of those processes and and yeah and so I think and you know that's just that stuff's just like not super sexy like you know when I said earlier like yeah we I'm I'm in like 13 hours of meetings a week it's like yeah that that's not that's not a super exciting stat but what happens in those meetings is actually really powerful um like the power of a 30-minute one-to-one and what can be accomplished in in terms of like connection and coordination in this off-chain way is actually really critical to to then bringing that coordination to to on chain and then also how we um how we accelerate that coordination for the dials that come through C Club is it so does this mean that you're essentially focused on decentralized decision making but from a process standpoint like what matters is still kind of behaving like uh any coordinated Community would which largely resembles a centralized sort of controlled uh kind of party is that a fair question to either of you yeah I mean I guess I guess I'll I'll you know take the take the first pass at that yeah you know I think I think that there is this this you know we think about decentralization I think it's it's very easy for us to say decentralization on the other side of that is centralization and I think that that's actually not a super useful way to think about decentralization right that it's like it can be this like circular Spectrum um with like with like hello gradients and and there's certain things within your within your Dow within your community that are that might be fully decentralized whatever that actually means and there's certain components that that have like higher touch or more sort of like um like quality control or curation or quality assurance or curation that that those processes go through and I don't necessarily see that as like centralization you know so to say but I do see it as a really actually critical part of having a a fully aligned decentralized community I'm down to I'll go somewhere I was gonna say for sure gradients approach this whole thing because otherwise we're all going to lose our minds and go like why are we not there yet what the hell so being like jumping straight from a way of doing things that works to a decentralized way right like look at Grants right there's the decentralizing the grants protocol right and making that a tool for any Community to use to fund whatever it is that they care about that's the level of like Independence and decentralization that you aim for but there's no way that you're going to be able to do it unless you would have gone through these like whatever 15 grants rounds that Bitcoin has put up to see how it evolves and to see how it grows and to see how people are using it and what gets funded right so it's like that Progressive Way and path that you build it's almost like you know those movies where like the track isn't built yet you're like building it as the train is going is basically what we're doing and that's totally fine and we should be comfortable with that and it's going to take a minute sometimes but it is a progressive effort yeah yeah I agree and I think that like you know in current times with like the whatever the number going down and like Dow's not executing as well as some people you know would like them to I think like there's this massive wave of the moment of people being like oh you know we should just go back these corporate structures are actually really important you know they're being emulated and these committees that are being spun up you know and like some of that stuff is true and it certainly is learning from the corporate world and you know the idea of making a grants committee right and that being a centralizing force you know makes sense but actually that doesn't mean we're taking a step away from the Dow stuff you know and I think like everyone's roasting tokens and roasting cows right now I think should like take a step back and you know have a guess where we're going to be in five years and it's going to be that actually a lot of those corporate structure is being consumed by these towers whether anyone likes it or not and so the current Dow wave yes you know we are centralizing in some ways however you know we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater it's amazing there I would point out is adopting these things or making sure that we evolve this in a mindful way like don't just go oh it's not working yet let's just bring whatever it was from the corporate world and just like jam it into the Dao ecosystem do it in a mindful way take what makes sense do not just move it as if you're like navigating I don't know Europe with a map of the states and then you're getting frustrated that you can't find where you're going like it's just don't do that uh no of course I mean it's also one of those things where when you are changing kind of the the recipe but rather actually you have different ingredients but a different recipe that you're trying to get or same recipe trying to get to um you're in a lot of those scenarios where I feel like we yeah the good thing here before I finish something is like it seems like all all four of us are aligned on what each of us are saying I don't understand anything that's been said so far even though I would like to uh but there are also some benefits of uh of kind of being able to actually cherry pick things that are working and Implement them in any new process and there are a lot of advantages to that there's nothing wrong with having a meeting um there's still a range that you get to sort of realize that there's like a diminishing returns that you kind of get to but um I mean kind of asking Point Blank like are you do you think the Dows are at Visions right now to to kind of actually support a fast-paced um development of any kind of outcome like uh obviously you can't generalize that but like for the ones you represent the ones you've seen do a good job or not a great job what do you kind of think uh that generally Trends us and uh and what do you think there's room for improvements I mean I'm happy to start I I think they're like you know compared to what I guess it would be my thought you know that like yes you know they are doing really well and certainly you know all the ones that are average how I'm involved in is perfectly efficient you know but like I mean I think compared to what you know I think compared to you know what we what we were doing on the previous cycle which was Raising tokens and having no Community voice and then the founders just spending the money and then piecing out you know compared to that yes you know much more efficient the Dow treasuries are locked up you know the founder can't run away with the money well there's some of the situations that the community are actually coordinating you know the thing is working and I think like yes there's still a lot to be learned and yes you know coordinating whether it be working groups or whether it be the way we distribute grants or the way that we you know coordinate decision making all those things can be improved but compared to any version you know of reality that's existed in crypto for the past couple of years I think we're like winning massively a hundred percent and I that for me the proof is genuinely in the proverbial pudding because you mentioned ingredients in making recipes but what for instance in Grants like season 14 of get going down there was after because of the market and because of the different kind of um circumstances there was such scrutiny on how much money was coming out of the treasury to fund what work that it went into this like such valuable conversation and at times even disagreements within that Community for the benefit of that doubt and the work that it is doing right and having those conversations like James says in an open Forum in a transparent way in a very very animated way which for me was a pleasure to to be able to be a part of and witness where you genuinely have people for in a community caring about the future of something that can continue funding public goods and can continue its Mission and that opportunity I don't know I have not witnessed it before and just being able to be part of that and then create the processes that come out of that and making sure that you strengthen that and create the space for those conversations to exist and for that pattern of decision making collective decision making to happen is huge like it's it's a milestone as far as I'm concerned in how we're moving them how we're evolving them and how we're getting better and making sure that these things are clear they are very accessible they are very uh you know uh transparent in terms of the flows in terms of Who's involved in terms of what we're doing with with resource I mean yeah I think so yes from me um I wanna maybe ask an adjacent question to uh to Steph kind of compared to what I would say uh a lot of what Simone is in James Taylor day looks like you are investing in companies um or Dows and generally kind of you have a different way of thinking about how do you measure anywhere from success to to uh to track outcomes uh what are kind of some of the perils you've seen from how you work at C Club versus uh what anywhere from like Adventure Capital firm would do or other Dao initiatives you you've seen around yeah totally I think I think a I think a critical point there to just to clarify is that you know as a c club we don't we don't invest in any in any um any Tower Community I think the thing that we do offer though through the accelerator is isn't you know is an investment of of like social value and then also like you know knowledge acceleration and yeah and so you know I think there's um you know how I think this question of of efficient you know are Dows efficient at outputs I think it's a it's such a fascinating it's such a fascinating question it feels like it's almost a holdover a little bit from from web 2 and from this idea of escape velocity and just like constantly up and to the right that it's true that we do need we do need to um we do need to be able to allocate this this Capital that we have that we're able to to uh pool really quickly because of because of this new technology and I think that the real Innovation actually does lie in in how we uh allocate that Capital right and so at Sea Club um the the value or sort of the investment that we're able to offer is is around that piece of Innovation is like how how are you actually thinking about allocating allocating that Capital to your community and bringing value back to your community and then also how are you what are what are like the most innovative ways to um to to build with your community and to and to create meaningful work together so and you know I think I think there's you know you know that that's that's like a it's a it's a more like quality level type of investment and it is it is very high touch right um and and it's like a little bit along the lines of like do things that don't scale and do things that are actually gonna to be really aligned and produce something that's that's really of quality and also align with the the ultimate value proposition of web three right which is the Democratic um opportunity for ownership of these of these networks that we're building no amazing um yeah and I guess in that goal everybody is aligned because it kind of compared to the alternative which you kind of talked about something like there are no other avenues where you get the same opportunity and uh not even just the binary notion of having the opportunity or not but also at the scale um which you don't get to sort of pursue and that is definitely unique here and we're kind of figuring out how do we actually behave uh as individuals whether it's representing the values to uh to representing kind of uh the outcomes so um sounds like we need a second second talk sometime in the future to figure out how do we actually actually track if we've been actually progressing or not um I do have a couple of smaller questions um uh I'll kind of kind of start off by uh maybe asking each of you there's about 1500 hackers actually 1700 hackers for this event um they're building a lot of incredible tools um for usually things that they're they're excited about but as you kind of go about your kind of day to days here like what are some of the the missing things you've seen that would really benefit whether it's on the tooling side or processes side or just things that developers can do to help make your lives easier uh what kind of comes to mind I think well maybe some like Alpha from imcon this week um is that like everyone is talking about verified credentials um you know like I think the idea of like and to me that's been a very clear end of governance you know from the beginning as you have this liquid token that anyone can buy and then you have these credentials that are slapped on top based on you know your expertise or how long you've been involved and that gives you more governance weight right as far as I'm concerned that's the end state of all tokens you know across the ecosystem and I think you know like what it's been insane the level of buzzword that verified credentials or whatever else we're going to call them um you know has been this week and I think that any Builder listening or you know hanging out building around that topic I think is a very very interesting space which is basically sold about nfts right they're all the same thing doubt non-transferable doubt shares it doesn't matter you know which way you spin it the idea that you're addressed can sort of have some uh reference which can be used inside of governance or other coordination efforts very sick and going to become very important yeah something that we that I I think about all the time especially especially from the media and at Sea Club but it also it infiltrates I think everything we do in in Dao work is how do we actually how can we actually communicate directly with our with our token holders whether that's an ERC uh erc20 or ESU 721 like what is how how can you actually get that direct connection to those token holders and it just seems like it seems like a very sticky and also slippery area of work right because there's you know you have you then get into this whole Rabbit Hole of yeah of just like you know data how you capture data how are you storing it and um what are you doing with it uh but but I think that that there is a real Rich opportunity there to figure out how we can directly communicate and add value to the folks who are who hold tokens I actually think that was a project at East New York um cardigan who was one of them it's a recurring theme that I would say largely remains unsolved so um that's a really really good point um and I think both of those it's really really interesting to you know reflect on how much we've been playing with these things throughout the years and now it's finally we're getting two stages where potentially the tech is ready and the people are already and the ideas are there to actually make them something that does provide value right we've done this so many times like I remember there's so many different experiments that we were doing with like reputation and that gives you this and you can do this with if you have this token that's minted for this project and so on I mean God I was doing this stuff in like 2018 and people are like one but it's very very important um to look at actually what I'm going to do is I'm going to give a a kind of bit of advice or a prompt for everybody building I would say elevate your intentions about what you're building don't just build something that is I don't know done before or something that is Buzzy or something that is um on Trend build something that you genuinely care about that your community the community that you come out of cares about look at something that can be uh that can generally make things better for whatever it is that you're interested in and Elevate that intention so that it does become something that we like moves us that step further into what we're trying to do here which is dare I say enable access to resource for everybody and redesign the little lines in the sand or in the cement that we have just been forced to live with for so long that would be my kind of prompt for everybody in the very very timely and uh wise um all right last question and we'll uh kick this off to the to the next talk but uh how can people get involved in in your community um well I'll start with Steph with C Club what's the best way for people to find out and we could plug anything you'd like yeah I mean you know definitely of course like you know follows in all the socials right Twitter get an attorney's letter um find us on Discord get us get in there introduce yourself um and also if you if you're a dow Builder if you're a community Builder apply to the accelerator you know we we just we're just in the process of finalizing um our our next cohort for seo5 but there will be an SEO six there will be an SEO seven and and onward and we just we really want to see um excited new Innovative Builders come through so we're at C Club HQ on Twitter uh and you can you can find us all the places from there James yeah um I'd say the best way to get involved is to participate in Wildfire um which the best way to do that is go to my Twitter and it's a pin tweet uh blockchain James and that's sort of a governance Collective you know so that's there's a thousand dollar people on the Discord um but sort of four key working groups focused on 12 odd 13 odd different projects um the likes of ens that were speaking earlier optimism seed Club is sort of lightly tied in you know but there's actually a lot of opportunity here and if you're Keen to join you know any of these Dows in any of these communities you know whatever your skill sets are going to the Discord and just Spam them and start adding value and like you will be onboarded um or you know heading up on Twitter and say hey I'm doing something cool and I'm not getting free tokens and I'll abuse them thanks guys um and kind of same pattern um Twitter has all of the handles of all of the different things I'm just at Sim underscore pop one of the main things that I would say um check out Colonel they have very good cohorts of onboarding into web 3 for individuals and teams it's a great great program it's that initiation that kind of leads you through um learning about web3 but also from a from a very um principles aligned way which because I mentioned Elevate intentions that ensures that you'll learn about things like in a in a very good way um obviously Bitcoin um there's a link there get into the Discord there's so many different working uh work streams there's so many interesting things that those guys are doing um and then yeah everything's in there so yeah good luck thank you for uh thank you Simona James and Steph and I really appreciate you coming over and uh having this amazing conversation with us thanks Karthik Thanks James bye