DAOs Past, Present and Future

all right next up we have an awesome panel with a bunch of really awesome people on it i'm not going to go through every name they'll introduce themselves i'm sure but this is the dow's past present and future panel uh oh wow there's a lot of people in this panel all right i'll uh let you all just go ahead with your great take it away hey everyone hey yeah thanks thanks everyone for joining um so we have a great panel on dao's um obviously we've come a really long way from the uh infamous dao in 2016 and and you know we've had a pretty exciting couple years in the dow space and i mean the future of dallas seems quite bright um so you know before we dive in maybe we could just do some brief intros a lot of people from the dao ecosystem here today so maybe uh because you're right here aaron you want to briefly introduce yourself um we can kind of do that and then kick off with some interesting questions all right thanks so much uh pre and great to be on the panel with everybody else i'm aaron wright i'm the co-founder of open law uh we've been super deep in the dow space and i've helped put together two daos uh one's called the lao second one's called flamingo dao and there's uh new ones that are coming down the pipeline which i'm sure we'll talk a little bit about today awesome um uh nishinon do you want to kind of briefly give an intro sure um hi everyone i'm mitch and i'm a summoner of madaga delta which is a um what started off as a sorority meme dao that's focused on supporting and funding women-led projects in the web3 space glad to be here today awesome uh sam do you want to go next sure uh thank you it's a pleasure to to be here in a different capacity than previous f denver's um so my name's sam cassette uh probably most notably i was chief strategy officer of consensus from the beginning of it and basically built the venture studio there and led investments into stuff like truffle and fura metamask etc um i am now working on a project called aligned capital and a general umbrella of things uh called aligned i believe that alignment uh and incentive alignment is the fundamental structure that allows much of the technology we build to work and one of those things is a dow that i'm building in partnership uh with the open law uh aaron perot community so excited to talk about that as well really excited to hear about that um spencer do you wanna also uh give an intro love love the uh swag in your home too yeah yeah um so i'm spencer graham and uh this it's exciting to to be here as part of this awesome panel um uh as i'm sure we'll talk about i've um uh dows are have been a really important part of my experience in uh in the ethereum ecosystem i'm a member of raid guild and then i've also been helping uh dao house to create a platform for more daos to be created by by communities great and chris yeah last but not least yeah sure so um my name is chris furlong i am the co-founder of mint mobile and ultramobile but in this world i'm a taoist and uh i am one of the founding members of both the lao and flamingo awesome and chris has really uh kind of been in charge of like the nft group of the uh of the wow so it's been kind of really fun learning from you too um so awesome maybe we can kind of kick things off so i want to go a little bit deeper i think everyone in the audience fingers across is um is pretty familiar with dolls at this point i don't want to go too into the weeds there and they're different types of dowels um but does someone kind of want to just at least like level set and talk about like this difference between like permissioned and permissionless dowels um like what do daos what do we really mean by a dao and and how do they like kind of exist in d5 nfps and in all different realms so i mean i know that's a pretty um open-ended you know question but i'm kind of curious uh where people stand there and maybe uh you know spencer i can kick off that question to you and if someone else has anything to add like feel free um sure yeah i i the dows are pretty big there's a pretty wide space there's lots of different lots of room for different types of dows um i i guess uh so in a sense i almost don't know where to start maybe i can start with the types of dows that i've been focused on more and that's been more in the permissioned dow space so and i almost think that there's a distinction there might be a distinction in what the letter a in dao actually stands for uh between like um permissionless dowels and permissioned dowels permission permission list daos might be more closer to actually more autonomous where it's really incentives that are that are driving the whole thing whereas in permissioned dows maybe i don't know what the right the right word for a is here but it's more of a more of a community and bringing people together and creating a space for that community to to thrive together um that can look like a lot of different things raid guild is a web 3 development co-op dao house is building a product and a platform formed as as a dao um and there's uh as nich already described metagamma delta is a uh is kind of a a club or almost a sorority and doing lots of different interesting things um so i guess i have a ton else i could say but i'll stop there and give other people a chance to weigh in yeah definitely aaron i mean i know you've kind of thought a lot about that's from a legal structuring sense like where do you uh kind of see permission versus permission styles here and and where do they fit in and what situations and how do you think about dials in that context yeah i mean i think spencer is absolutely right that dows are really broad mantle just like other forms of organizations right you can set up today you know a company to sell t-shirts you could set up a company to manage a technology project um you could set up a co-op like we just heard um nathan talk about which are super interesting and have lots of use cases dows are under that same umbrella uh you know i think the the reason why people are interested in daos is that the nature and structure of the internet is different than what we've seen before um and we need a new organizational forum to capture that activity um you know at this point last year um you know i think folks forgot about dao's right there was the dow itself which was pretty awesome uh you know vitalik wrote about taos and the white paper you know folks in the eos community and we're also excited about daos because dan larimer would talk about decks and other things way back in the day but we didn't have the technical tooling to really uh start experimenting with things more and now we do um you know with great platforms like aragon and a lot of innovation around the uh molok dao and the molex smart contracts we've been able to start to experiment with a whole bunch of different uh formats whether or not they're managed by algorithms and are autonomous is always going to be a vexing question that you know eths are going to be debating forever but at least at this point we're able to have more participatory structures that are flatter and increasingly i think they just feel like swarms um so i think the native structure on the internet is a swarm and a dow is a really nice way to capture that no manager people that are chipping in together and trying to achieve some sort of purpose the other area that i think is notable around dao's and this is where there's been lots of innovation is you're able to pull assets and actually deploy that those assets now um whether that's deploying it to to workers so that they could work on really cool things or deploying that for investment purposes we can now experiment with that and that i think is why you've seen this explosion in growth endows over the past uh year you know we thought last year if there was about a hundred million dollars in dows i think that was the number we put in uh when we did a dow panel we thought that would be a success and there's nearly a billion dollars now being managed by various different dows with tens of thousands of folks that are that are participating in them and these open-ended structures i think are really the future of not only the ethereum ecosystem and other blockchain ecosystems but really the endpoint for all organizations over the long run i just think they're going to work better faster and be able to kind of capture the energy of the internet yeah absolutely i mean and like to your point there are different use cases different uh verticals if you will for example the lao is uh primarily in like is like this hive mind uh venture-like uh living organism that's supporting different projects in the ethereum ecosystem flamingo similarly is is in the nft space um say i'm like i'd love to hear a little bit i know you know neptune's not live but i'd love to hear about this particular use case um from you uh as and why a dow is is a kind of an interesting method because you know for the most part that that function of providing liquidity is centralized so it's interesting to take a hive mind approach there yeah so um you know obviously liquidity provision is basically the thing that market makers are doing right when they go on exchanges and they ask you for 50 million bucks of your token in order to market make it for you when you launch it etc and i think over the summer as i imagine many people around here did i spent a lot of time sitting on the internet all night looking at liquidity moving on chain into into different protocols and that was really inspired by uh andre and and urine finance and and you know that's essentially you can think of that as a big dow that's a big liquidity pool on chain um and not only that but what we saw was you know it as aaron pointed out you know there are sort of there's this sort of emerging cyberspace right that we've been talking about for decades but you know if you think about really abstractly there are liquidity pools there are actors there are market makers etc that are that now exist in this sort of like cross-border um you know abstract space of the internet and they interact with each other and sometimes they even sort of get into wars with each other even as we saw where like urine you know sucked little liquidity out of other platforms or sushi stuck the liquidity of uniswap etc so i saw this sort of like space opera of um of liquidity wars happening in cyberspace um and i think uh there are a lot of people who wanted to experiment with that and a lot of people who wanted to to interact with that um in a number of different ways and i saw an opportunity to almost sort of collect individuals from the um the ethereum ecosystem and the blockchain ecosystem generally together and be sort of ambassadorial in that and be sort of forward-looking and and think tank like in that um i think it's on the little spinning chiron thing down there uh for the the um the twitter handle actually uh but so what i wanted to create was basically a liquidity pool on chain that can do those kind of things help founders bootstrap their liquidity um help you know maybe negotiate deals in the governance of these liquidity protocols that are um that are maybe having like political uh contentious uh relationships with each other um whatever it is you know i sort of wanted to build a community-centric ambassadorial entity that is a liquidity pool that is in the form of a dao where we can kind of you know if you're a founder and you want to fair launch something or you want to you know provide liquidity to your protocol we can help you do that um if you're an investor and you've invested in something you want to make sure that that project is successful we can help you do that and we can also you know basically do anything on chain that requires a giant liquidity pool um which we're building right now so that's kind of the motivation for it and i think that's sort of you know maybe a little bit more private and nimble than a giant billion dollar liquidity pool it's a little bit smaller than that um and i think it you know it occupies a market niche that is needed and i think we'll see lots of stuff like that um of dowels of all sizes and shapes and uh and intentions um as some people pointed out yeah and it's been pretty uh you know interesting to see that success with wire too um it's it this is almost like a that approach but a little kind of more community driven in some regards although that's pretty community driven i mean member driven if you will um and i guess on that note um nisha i'm kind of curious to like hear about so i mean i i've been following metagama delta for a bit i'm curious to know like you know as a dao how have you guys thought about um you know participation how evolution i know it kind of happened if i'm not mistaken like through maybe even east denver i feel like it may have kicked off at some point um so i wonder i'm just curious to know like how it evolved and you know where um where you guys are thinking about going to yeah um they yeah so medical delta did start at denver at around this time last year um it started off where where three three women met at east denver and they were about to join meta cartel and they had noticed that um they were pretty much like the only one who were in the room pretty much and they just had this idea about like why don't we just spin our own doubt that's focused on you know getting more women in the space getting more women involved in thousand in particular and with the mission of you know supporting uh women founded co-founded projects and and funding them so um it it went from those three kind of initial members to now we have uh 56 i believe um on malik um yeah so it's we we've concluded our first round of grants um last year at the end of last year where we gave over twenty thousand dollars in uh die to three women co-founded projects um which span which um spans from the media space with the defiant uh nfts and artists uh with uh data art as well as defy with a project called good ghosting and all of those projects um are led by members who are in our dow so i think that was like kind of the first um big milestone that that we reached as a doll just like um having only been around uh for one year so it's grown pretty quickly and we've been lucky in that we've gotten a lot of uh support from existing members in the dow ecosystem like people from metacartel and you know projects who are looking who are also looking to make this space more diverse um yeah so now we have um weekly meetings where we we've intentionally made the barrier to entry very low so our pledging amount is 10 die um because our our intention is to um include people who have uh have had so far limited exposure to the blockchain space so we want to get them you know introduced into like a friendly atmosphere where you know you don't need to spend a lot of money to be a part of the community and you can start off by attending our meetings and getting to know the women and the projects that they're a part of um because we we have leaders from projects in the blockchain space as well as people who are from the traditional finance space who have um expertise in other areas um so we have like a repository of um information and and member expertise that people can kind of look to to find resources and that's beyond funding that's kind of the value that we want to give to to our members so it's certainly evolved a lot um and i'm happy to to have been a part of the to that um that mgd was able to give our first round of grants uh last year but um in terms of uh evolving um there's been some like operational growing pains in in terms of gas price um you know for people who are pledging for the first time to spend 10 die um they like sometimes the gas fees do submit a proposal to join us like over like it's like hundreds of dollars right so um i think operationally uh player two is gonna be is gonna play a big role in dao's moving forward um not all dolls would be like suitable for layer two but i think for things like social clubs um uh like we are right now um that's a a pretty viable um option um yeah yeah that's awesome i mean yeah no i the growth of what you guys are doing so far is pretty incredible and um i love the mission and and it seems like a lot of project founders are actually kind of spinning out of this in in many ways i think good go seeing is a great example um so i guess on that note i mean like you know the growth of doubts over the last year has been tremendous both just with community and members but also financially um you know if i'm not mistaken there was like 10 million dollars locked up in dallas maybe like a year a year and a half ago and now we're almost uh close to a billion dollars locked up in dallas um i mean that growth has been just tremendous and i'm kind of interested i mean chris you've been you know a member of the lao and flamingo since day one um i what is it like actually being in a down where do you see the future of this really going i know both dials are pretty you know different in mission but i'd love to hear a little bit about your experience there sure um i'd start by saying it's been absolutely wild you know the both the experiences of the lao and flamingo have been well beyond i think what the expectation was going in um in terms of the group of people that are that are involved there the the opportunities um you know that that are presented um in both those groups but then you know the fact that the lao and flamingo have kind of taken a leadership um role within the space and you know within a short amount of time have generated um you know goodwill and respect um and been able to pay that back you know i think that the the networks that we have and the members that we have and what we're willing to do you know both for each other internally but for projects out in the space founders in the space um you know artists creators it has been phenomenal like for someone who really enjoys tinkering with the product side of the universe and and getting you know into the formational aspects of hey how could you do this um being a part of both of these groups just it gives you a huge amount of opportunity both to learn uh to absorb and then you know take all these things and try to spin them around and push them back out there and you know help the whole space advance and so you know i when i got involved with the lao i was like hey this is a good way to you know meet people within the ethereum community and and get connected with some projects um i didn't really think that it would be like uh an end destination um in some respects for me you know i i thought i'll do this you know it'll be something i do on the side and then you know i'll find a project and i'll join that or or you know i'll do another startup in the space and you know i'm having so much fun participating in the lao and in flamingo and you know it's really somewhere between like a very serious hobby and a part-time job and there is no real distinction between them because you're having so much fun and you're finding fulfillment there so it's been great [Music] yeah that's that's pretty awesome i'm kind of curious actually on on that note like where do you you know you've been a part of the lao flamingo um there's going to be more dials in the future where do you really see this going um like what's really the future of all of this um i mean like are we going to be seeing like down nation states i mean that's kind of meta but i'm kind of just as a member like where do you project the future of these type of living beings to exist on the internet wow um i think you know the what aaron talked about with the power of the hive mind um i i do believe that that is the real advantage of of dao structures is that you know you you are acting as one entity where everyone is contributing into like the synthesis of what a dao is doing and then pushing that out in the world and a strength of that is not only you know can you call on a bunch of really bright minds but you know you can also hide your own weaknesses and you don't really have to feel like oh i have to overcompensate or you know i have to be out there in a in a place that i'm not quite comfortable because the dow has your back and so this hive mind you know it really forms these uh a very powerful network and i i think that's really what's going to propel you know there's there's a ton of stuff on the structural and the operational side that you know someone like spencer or aaron can talk more about but just i i think as a way of thinking you know that's where the real advantage is and then once the tooling is out there to act upon that um you know who knows where it can go but i think we've shown you know an ability to scale and to take on really big ideas and projects but we also get into the nitty-gritty you know some of our conversations deepest conversations in flamingo or most lengthy conversations involve um minting you know art blocks at you know point one eighth a block a piece and and so you know it's all over the place um but sky's the limit yeah yeah i i was going to say yeah i think that's right it's this highmind approach i mean it's like the internet there's so much information particularly in the blockchain ecosystem it's so hard to synthesize it's so hard to know you know what whether there's an opportunity whether there's um you're getting the right information and we can't do it alone so these legacy structures that are presumed that there's going to be one or two venture capitalist partners that are going to be able to sift through the wash of information on the internet and make superior decisions i just think that's falling away um and what we're building is just a broader um concept around how to make decision making democratic um you know quick it runs a little bit like the internet rough consensus not you know formal processes and structures and i think that's going to continue to grow and grow and grow and i don't think it's limited to investments right like what spencer is doing around sourcing work is super fascinating and i think as the token economy continues to grow it's only going to become more more important sourcing liquidity like what sam was saying i think is really going to be also a really important thing because how the heck do you know if a project's legit most people can't even process the smart contracts even if you're pretty technical you know you may miss something you're not an auditor you may you may not be able to identify that but a hive mind may be able to do that um so i think at this point next year and it's going to be completely vertical um if we were thinking 100 million dollars at this point this year and it's nearly at a billion the closest analogy i think is defy right we saw it we saw it ramp up in 2020 and i think that taos are going to be a huge story when we come back here at denver 2022. i i just want to throw in there that like you know in the really abstract dolls are part of the digital commons right in the abstract cyberspace of reality so like you know right now we're more on the like non-a as an autonomous side of the spectrum and human beings are doing a lot of work but as this evolves over time i can see these things getting larger and you know tesla cars owning themselves and paying for their their existence et cetera and those things may be plugging together and i think you know these these are the the money legos of coordination um that will um probably get more complex and more diverse over time chris you should mention alien down what your thoughts are there wow uh yeah so alien dao is really kind of pushing pushing the limits or the theoretical i don't know um so flamingo bought a uh or acquired an alien a crypto punk alien there's only nine of them um one of them hadn't changed hands in two and a half years and you know our group we were able to come together and and get it and you know the idea is not to treat the alien as a an nfp as a possession but to give the alien agency to you know provide him with a wallet so that he can become an active citizen out in ethereum and that you know the alien's ultimate goal is to achieve you know his own sovereignty but in the meantime you know there's going to be a high mind of people behind him you know helping him on that journey as he you know explores all the the the opportunities that are out there in the in the world of ethereum you know not just in art but in governance uh civics you know politics and and then you know the whole the whole defy world um you know it's almost like if you took a blank slate and just through through that slate into an emerging world but with you know 50 60 incredibly intelligent people powering that um it's it's really an experiment and you know i think we're all looking forward to see what happens there all right thank you all so much uh did you have any final words uh priyanka um i i i guess just some last words here the future of dials are bright i think you know everyone talks about progressive decentralization and that's all what we're all here for here at east denver and i think dials are going to be the coordination mechanism in order to achieve that so really you know happy to talk to everyone here about you know dowse and past future present and so um yeah let's go 2020 all right well thanks everybody uh on on the panel for joining us and uh uh yeah uh great job everyone don't even know what to say dows are just like just so such a big deal i can't even grasp it all but anyways thank you all so much thank you thank you