Samudai 🛠 The new DAO OS - Kushagra Agarwal

foreign [Applause] [Music] thank you so much for taking the time today and uh coming to this presentation today uh I'm gonna be talking about samudai and what we're doing the current landscape and what we value the most when we talk about these problems so uh yeah with that uh are you not able to hear me oh sorry so yeah uh we're gonna be talking about a bit of the problem so in the Dao landscape and what we're doing to solve them and with that let's get into it so first of all a quick intro about myself I'm kushagra I have been building in the blockchain uh space since like 2019 started with the with a decentralized media sharing platform and built on top of ipfs built for contributor economy and that is how basically I got into space met a lot of interesting interesting folks along the way uh one of them being James from collablan who uh guided me and recommended that I joined Bitcoin kernel and that is actually where I got introduced to Dao's so samudai actually is a Hindi word it means a community and daos are essentially communities and that is what we're building so it kind of lines up over there and the main question I want to pose over here is uh are we even looking to solve the right problems in Dallas so this is not going to be like a very developer focused presentation but uh we're just going to be talking about the landscape and some solution that we're building so uh yeah going through the agenda uh how it started what's going to be happening and was the problem landscape what are we willing to solve this and what is the collective goal look like in order to drive Dallas to mainstream adoption and so that they become the preferred organization organizational structure of the future so uh yeah let's get into it how it started where did where did those come from the term Dows or decentralized autonomous organization was first coined by Warner dilger back in 1997. 97 right so we didn't have public blockchains back then but he referred to it as a intelligent home system where he compared it with a human immune system as a system which identifies defines its responsibilities and coordinates with other regions to fulfill the system that it was designed for and as I mentioned the concept of public blockchains didn't exist back then but this still matches with the fundamental definition of what Dows are today speaking of a few modern definitions institutional economics defines Dao's as digital organizations which have supplemented in order to uh which have which have risen to supplement the digital organ digital economies which are developing now ethnographic practices recognized as a cultural phenomena which are trans which are basically revolutionizing the way people think about organization and how work is done and emerging research looks at how Dows are organized looks at the network and then talks about comparing them with the political economic entities like cities and countries so uh what are those actually we're still evolving with the true definition of Dao's but based on our learnings that's some of the uh we can we basically come to a conclusion that Dao's are multi-agent self-organized networks with predefined rules on the blockchain which are used to limit interaction and govern the direction of the network through participation of the agents so uh let's talk a bit about more let's talk a bit about more about the current landscape and what's happening what are the problems what are the main overarching problems that I've been facing and are we solving the right problems so according to us the patterns that we have analyzed by speaking with a lot of people is that most Dows have a participation problem which is very ironic because the nature of doubts that that are being formed today are participatory that means they require some kind of human interaction in order to define the direction of the network and and synthesize on the next steps but it's just ironic that we still have a participation problem we're still struggling to meet the Quorum we're still struggling to get active contributors who stick to that house secondly awareness awareness is a big issue because less than 18 of people in the U.S U.S adults have heard of those I'm not even talking about understanding but just hearing about it and it becomes even more difficult when we're kind of trying to build these organizational structures which will which will rally people around them when people have not heard of it and thirdly a lot of the Dao members are being treated as Dao Freelancers which is not the case which should not be the case because now members have a very specific use case where they're where they have to create where they have to create a yeah so down members are not Freelancers because they have very specific use case they are basically supposed to create active participation in the Community Drive the Network's growth and look at the next steps whereas Freelancers are someone that does just engage with in order to suffice a particular very precise scope for a short period of time so this this brings us to thinking that is this because Dows are like non-hierarchical this is because they are leaderless but in the recent in the recent years in the recent times we have seen that we have seen the working pods structure coming up highly autonomous working balls which give everyone the opportunity to step up and execute things in their own way so that means it makes a great team because now you have multiple people who can step up and execute things in their own way so and when you look at this when you try to draw these parallels between the Venture Capital industry and the management consulting industry these are things that they value the most because they are looking for people who are coming with differentiated backgrounds and have varied opinions and different way of executing things and these are some of the most sought out Global jobs so when those already have this by Design because of the distributed nature why is it that Dows are not able to you know be attractive enough for bring this influx of web to Terror into web 3. and in order to understand more about this let's dive deeper into the problems that are existing let's try to break these down and uh talk about them in more detail so most of the problems now can be broken down into main three main uh brackets which are members projects and down level problems now all of these problems are all of these problems are very uh specific in nature they have very specific requirements but still most of them are very important for example the problems that members are facing are very individualistic in nature but are very important because as we have previously defined Dows are essentially multi-aging networks so till the time these agents are not satisfied of course you will be facing a retention problem similarly Project Specific problems are something that are very uh you know aligned with the project scope projects Mission goals and vision whereas Taos problems are more macroeconomical in nature and they try to govern the direction of the resource allocation and how people are organized so uh but from this particular diagram this particular graphic we can conclude we can draw some you know interesting insights so for example solving Dao white problems will also solve a few project related problems for example the quality of contributors onboarding and Mission alignment if you're able to get this right by solving by solving them or down level we'll also be able to solve them at a project level which will just enable speed and uh transparency contributor and member related problems are being overlooked at the moment which result in lower attention and essentially because you're a Dao you are trying to build a multi-agent network these are the most important people who you should be catering to but at the moment they are being overlooked I mean there are a lot of people in the space who are doing a lot of great work in order to solve this uh for example for example opolis who's working on providing Healthcare benefits and kind of stability to uh that our members but still we have a long way to go over there uh moving on this is something that a lot of people might differ with but we as someone I feel that we should be focusing more on solving some foundational problems around ours which are as simple as starting a Dao how do I start out why should I start out what are the advantages of starting out if for a particular use case I have to do something what is the best organization organizational structure for me what are the what are the legal implications of that and how do I get it done how does it benefit me so till the time these barriers to entry are not removed we won't be able to get more brains in the game and it's very important because a lot of the innovation in the Dow ecosystem is currently been uh is currently been done by a few handful of peoples and this is something that we need to change this is something we need to work on because till the time we do not have more brains the game the this is something that was cycle innovation so uh yeah secondly building a resilient structure for Community becomes very very very important because this is kind of like a first interaction of a contributor with a Dao and till the time you don't know what the background of the person is they want to have a lot of provisions so like what to do on the first day how do I contribute who do I speak with who do I what do I work on so having a resilient structure which helps people get settled in and get stuff done is very important which is being overlooked in a lot of uh the organizations that we're building today and thirdly building a roadmap for contributors to grow which is very important now you cannot expect highly motivated individuals to come in and work in a doubt till the time they don't know how they're going to grow personally with the organization so having a roadmap laid out for contributed growth is something that is we need to focus on and yeah I mean every Dao is different so the contributor has the right to know how they're going to step up in their personal field as well if they're working with you guys and uh and we need to be very mindful while solving these problems because uh if let's say we decentralize the talent hiring process we kind of Overlook the fact where Mission alignment comes into play so this is something that we need to be mindful about we can solve multiple problems at once but we should be focused more focused on the bigger umbrella problems which you know affect multiple people talking about a few people who have been doing great work in the space uh of course this is not extensive but uh like a few people who just came to my mind so uh these are a few people who have been doing a lot of good work uh for example solving one of these solves a lot of problems super fluid solving of compensation solves also for the trust problem in the Taos so if let's say I'm a contributor and I'm able to get payments streamed as I'm making progress it just makes a lot of sense for me because now I don't have to wait four weeks for a multi-sect to get signed in order to get paid but now I'm able to establish that stability part of it where I'm able to just pay my bills as I go so uh yeah moving on uh what have other people been saying about this and I mean coordination problems are not new right they have been discussed at length much before us they have been uh you know our web 2 counterparts have been facing these coordination problems before us and they have been able to solve this in a much more uh much more efficient manner so uh why don't we take a page from their book and try to you know do this in how much efficient manner so what we realize is that there's a lot of time spent in being man there's a lot of time being spent in managing dependencies instead of eliminating them and when you eliminate these dependencies that is what in turn reduces the coordination problems and that is something that we should be focusing on and according to the web to counterparts building trust and what is the you know will uh give way to speed so yeah and I mean pods and highly autonomous working groups have been a great addition to this because they have enabled people to work in smaller groups in a much more Speedy manner without any external you know influence or effect so uh now coming down to what are we building at samuda and how are we looking to solve these problems at samudai we are building this foundational layer which acts like an operating system for dowels and enables visibility participation and builds transparency which in turn helps you in building Trust so now we are building this fully customizable web3 dashboard where you can come and fill out all the applications you want to use you're already using and get stuff done in the way you want to so it is it is important that we understand that in order to optimize for participation we need to bring the information to the community we cannot we cannot expect a contributor to go for go to five different places and you know look at all the information and then contribute only highly motivated individuals who do that and that is not how you would be able to you know enable much more participation next uh we're building for investment house so investment house are some of the most serious doubts out there they have been you know constantly innovating for example Kaufman fellows the globally renowned Kaufman fellows recently built vc3 Dao and they're all and we have already seen Orange dial working and who with the YC alumni so they are some of the Cs Dows and they are doing most of the Innovation out there so they kind of look like an overlooked use case for us and we built out the infrastructure to reduce boilerplate and make sure they get done work publicly so now if let's say I'm a I'm a Community member in a investment now I know exactly what is going on what is exact what is what exactly everyone is speaking on and this is the power of discussions this is the power that we enable when we basically bring down bring this discussion on organize them in a way where people can find them it becomes very difficult when it's happening behind the wall Gardens of Discord so uh yeah moving on we have a web 3 contributor profile which Aggregates information from everywhere you do but I mean a lot of people are building web c profiles so like what's different about it it's important to realize that people update profile only on one place they might hone a profile everywhere but they're only uh but they're only active on one particular place and we are some of them make sure that wherever that place is your some other profile stays up to date so now all you have to do is claim yourself with that subdomain and share away so all your contributions all your work all your work that you have been doing will now be able to you know share in one click we have also been speaking with uh you know some industry leaders like Karma and disco in order to make this more robust and resilient so that people can people can get work done more compulsively even if they choose not to go with some of the all their data stays safe and stays with them next we're building the networking and communication layer which is very big problem I mean networking is such a big problem that that when LinkedIn came up with these features they kind of revolutionized the way networking worked they were able to bring this kind of Revolution where you know you can now have a look at everything that a person is doing and also reach out to them at the same point we haven't been able to solve this in web 3 yet and we guys are building towards it so now this will now enable people to look up people for help ask for collaboration and also give rise to new business model for people who are you know uh building on this for example mentoring as a business model mentoring as a service if let's say someone likes you and uh wants to get in touch with you for some help you can basically monetize that and get stuff done uh and yeah we're basically enabling a lot of functionalities we don't want to reinvent the wheel we're trying to work with a lot of Industry Partners in order to get stuff done in the easiest way possible and we're also incorporating a lot of infrastructure plays inside us so that we won't be a start time uh and we can just provide the best functionality possible so that people can get work done in the easiest way possible and last but not the least we are working on a project aggregator so this is something this becomes powerful because right now Dows are managing their workflows in three to five different places and if I'm a contributor in order to start in order to stay up to date with what's happening with me in order to get an idea of what happened while I was offline I have to keep up with everything and this becomes powerful because now everything a contributor is doing anywhere is getting directly mapped through decentralized identifiers and verify your credentials so this becomes a building block to a customizable reputation Network which in turn enables better better governance delegation because now if I'm a if I'm a person who's trying to Source Talent I'm able to query People based on the metrics that I find most value in and yeah this is what and the best part is that because dids and VCS are such a powerful technological innovation they enable us to do is do it in a privacy privacy preserving manner moving on we're still early uh we still have a long way to go where Dao's become a viable career option so this is what we kind of describe as the path to doing something you like where kind of in a phase where where we're just trying to create more awareness where but we need to take these steps so that we can kind of get to a place where your parents uh identify Dao's as a viable career option for you and in order to get there it's important that we get more brains in the game it's important to understand that we need more Innovation so that we can have varied use cases which in turn attract multiple people who are not already in the space and this becomes even more important because Dao's as a as an organizational structure are very very user focused and this won't happen till the time we have more participation more awareness and creating awareness and getting more people on board is the first step to do this only then will we be able to achieve ecosystem growth and build Dao's as a robust organizational structure and then of course a viable career option for anyone who's trying to join the field uh yeah lastly the collective goals of the ecosystem in order to enable this would be of course as I mentioned to fall solve for some foundational problems which enable people to join in and get work done which enable people to join in and just contribute or learn about the space without feeling dumb and yeah it's important that we learn experiment break things and repeat it in a fast Manner and the more people we get added it's the better and it's important to realize that we can't innovate alone we need more heads in the game we need more brain in the game and I personally look I personally believe in that Vision where I am able to design my entire work day in the future I'm able to contribute to the organizations I feel most aligned with I'm able to contribute with the with the organization that I feel most inclined with without having to do anything else on the side so uh yeah with that I would like to ask you all for uh ask your I would like to ask you all for your help if you want to work with us build with us if you are aligned towards the same vision let's work together and let's build this together and uh yeah thank you so much guys uh this is my telegram if you guys uh want to reach out or talk to me or anything uh let's just okay I all right so thank you so much for your time guys thank you so much for uh taking your time uh yeah guys