The problems with DAOs, Impact Communities and purpose driven projects with Manu Alzuru

talk about the problems that I'm seeing within Dao's and impact communities so first what are those so you know those has decentralized autonomous organization within the name so first I'm going to talk uh what this installation decentralized even mean so this centralized means the distribution of power uh autonomous it doesn't mean that we don't use let's say human beings but rather that we make decisions and we take actions on our own meaning that we're Sovereign an organizations is just a group of individuals so yeah what are those those are magic internet organizations or as Cooper said that is a commitment to Share value within a community so many people you say those are multisig multisig multisek other people say that the house is just a way for communities to Share value um and when I say Share value I don't mean necessary Financial capital I mean any sort of value Kevin owaki says that that always uh interest in the intersection between individualism and collectivism um and yeah basically it's like a way for human beings to express themselves and at the same time do something for the community there are many different type of dials there's a dow operating systems which is basically just templates for the house there's investment dials which essentially are investing into different protocols and in different organizations Grand style which are essentially helping out the ecosystem of uh on a specific let's say protocol uh collector's house focus on uh collecting obviously different um different Works um and then we have service dials are providing services to different organizations within the the ecosystem uh social dials which I which I think are going to be huge are basically just group of people coming together for a specific reason and then media dials which I also think are going to be huge um in that space a lot of people think that Dallas is used like let's vote for something um and we forget that in the traditional governance let's say in the nation states we also have media media plays a huge role within the house why because that like that people get to know a little bit more about what the organization is about um so yeah I think that Medias are going to be media dials are going to be huge um also Kevin talks about like how these dials can be stuck on top of each other um and yeah now let's talk about what are the problems within the house the first problem is that when you're starting a dial it's very hard to find Define the purpose of your Dao um you know people people within your community might think that your doubt should be doing X why other people might think that you should do why so it's really really hard to bring everyone together on the same boat um and that's like one of the major the major issues um why is because when people are not really aligned with the purpose everyone is going in very different directions and not and not really making uh making sure to follow the purpose um the lack of resources is also a huge problem within the house and when I talk to resources I'm not talking only about financial resource there are like different type of capital um that are needed within the organization like Social Capital which is uh human capital um and many other forms of capitals that that are needed um and yeah the the main problem that I see currently within Dallas today is that it's very difficult to align incentives uh you have you have investors you have the founders of adao and then you have the contributors that are joining the dial who might think that there's not enough incentive for them um so yes like that's I believe it's like one of the most difficult things that we're experiencing right now in the space is how we can not only align incentives for the financial contributors but also to the to the people that are generating value why is because that value is actually very very hard to measure uh it's very hard to say okay this person contributed this amount of hours other people think well it shouldn't be based on hours it should be based on actually the output uh and other people they also think yeah it should it shouldn't be based on the output necessarily but it should be output plus time plus whatever so it gets really really complex um and yeah I think that if we don't come together and we don't Define how we want to reward each other it's just going to be very very difficult to align incentives um also another thing is that we have very complex language within the ecosystem a lot of um a lot of acronyms that you know people people don't understand and it's just hard to involve new people to the space when what their reading is just it's just super hard to to get right away um also we in the space we call stuff wrong in there with the wrong words for example we say uh stable coins stable coins are not really stable and we call them as stable coins a stable coins uh they're in reality what I think are pet currencies um and the pack and these pack currencies um they've been losing it losing their value since they've been let's say introduced to society um so yeah I think that we need to start calling things what they are um also we are using Dao as a as a very broad term and everything is down now um but it's really hard actually we need to Define where what makes adao really Adele um because the centralization is not like a zero or one thing it's not binary it's actually a spectrum so the centralization the more you zoom out the more you realize that something is actually centralized another one that is very difficult is actually to onboard contributors so let's say you are a leader of a Down you're putting a lot of time to onboarding someone helping them understand what's going on helping them understand where the um where the let's say where the different tasks and Tackle could be but there is an issue with that um and the issue is that a lot of times you put you know so much effort into onboarding someone but maybe that someone is there only for one week or two weeks and then that person just go goes away so you know for people that are leading the house it's really hard to first let's say um you know put a lot of time and a lot of effort into bringing someone and be someone just leaves afterwards um so so one thing that I believe uh that we need to do in order to create let's say more sustainable onboarding uh is actually to create games where people are able to learn what's going on around around the dial and make it fun so hopefully they stick around and and they just not leave whenever whenever they don't find something another thing that happens within those is that and now within that it's actually in the whole space we're used which humans were used to be told what to do uh when we go to school uh the professor comes and give us an assignment and tell us you gotta do this assignment um and because of that we're kind of like programmed used to follow and not really to take initiative and take ownership of things so if we see that something is broken it's not that we just go and try to try to fix it but rather it's like okay is someone gonna tell me when to do it or how to do it um and that's also another big issue that we have within the house and I personally believe is because we lack culture we lack culture of let's say contributing and taking ownership of of things another uh problem is the contributors expertise some people they they call themselves experts and I personally believe that there's no experts in the space because we are all learning we are all let's say working towards let's say these ideas of decentralization but we are learning in the process um also another issue is that um there's people that don't have enough confidence because they haven't done it in the past so they think that they they lack the expertise and sure they might do like the expertise but that doesn't mean that you cannot tackle things um so it's like a double-edged sword so for some things you might want some people that do have they say experience that do and have had the opportunity to see how these systems work and then in the other side you also want people to try things out so it's actually hard to find that that balance one of the big big issues is the lack of accountability so we're seeing that there's like a lot of delegates across uh across let's say different dials and so on um okay but this delegates again let's say the their position and then there's not really accountability on what they do and how they do it um so I think that one one one way of let's say improving this is by having something that we do in the traditional World which is that we have terms uh for let's say elective uh individuals so I believe that we need to have terms we need to create some sort of culture of voting as well um why is because yeah basically if you if you think about the way that the traditional words does it is uh okay every four years so every three three years you have these rituals of voting or doing stuff and people are going to be held accountable if they don't do if they don't do what they promised in the previous year let's say in the previous term um so yeah I believe um I believe that accountability is actually going to play a key role in the space uh the lack of diversity uh is very I don't know I'd say sometimes for me it's hard to talk about this um most of the space let's say is a very privileged space um you know most of the people that are working in the space they having experience they having experience living in an authoritarian government they haven't experienced um what it is to be a minority um they have an experience what it is to go to let's say a different part of the world and and be judged juice based on your color based on your sex or back so based on whatever uh that doesn't really matter um or your age or whatever so I think in the space is really really important that we bring people that are uh that are not let's say having the best conditions why because those people they're gonna give you they're gonna give you let's say feedback they're gonna give you their point of points of view when it comes to why this technology is going is going to be used in the in their let's say in their countries or in their places and how this technology could actually impact their life and and make it better for them so yeah I believe that we need to have diversity um in order to in order to have different points of view um different points of view and hopefully create a more let's say inclusive space the other problem obviously is there is the lack of um the lack of certainty when it comes to regulation um it's we don't really know like what we're doing um and so and we're afraid of of doing things because yeah basically just by writing code you can go to jail uh which is kind of weird to me and nobody's talking about it and there's like there's like a few people that talk about it like what what's happened with the the one of the developers of tornado cash um yeah it's uh you know it's it's a concern for all of us like we we don't know uh what we're going to expect or what we're going to get just by launching something um and yeah it creates fear it creates a lot of fear um and yeah we need to we need to find ways to challenge this and I guess I guess the ways is try to find Bridges also with the traditional world uh even though we say okay we want to create our own world but we're still we're still in this world um and yeah there has to be some bridges for us to actually uh actually do whatever we think that we should be doing in other in order to help Humanity um another issue that we have is the law is low governance when um in Dallas everyone thinks everyone should be voting for everything and I think that's that's not necessarily right um why it's just just because people might not have necessarily the expertise people might not necessarily be that might not necessarily be involved all the time why because as I said before we don't have the rituals uh we don't have like the let's say the [Music] uh frequency for coming and voting and and so on so for example if we were if we knew that every two weeks we should be voting you create a habit so we need to create habits within the dial space in order to let's say improve this uh slowness in governance um another problem is a plutocracy plutocracy um well basically I would say that most of the protocols out there they're managed by talking holders so not they're not managed by the people they're managed by the people with money um and that that creates a lot of a lot of issues first the the way that is the way that is happening is that uh these people that do have money are basically do um participating in governance in order to benefit themselves and extract more for themselves or there's also other problems like for example the people that do have the tokens uh are able to make proposals to the Dao and actually depleted out treasury uh because they do have the tokens and yeah basically they can just take the money away from the Dao uh slowly you know little by little they can take it um also another another issue is that yeah basically it's not really inclusive it's not really like thinking about how we can integrate uh other contributors people think that by air dropping a token other people will care because they have some monetary value this has been proven that no it's not true people don't care they receive a token what they want to do is just dump it they just wanna you know profit um so by giving and by giving an airdrop it won't necessarily mean that the people that receive the airdrop are going to create value for your protocol are going to create value for you now but rather um you know that we're trying to find a way uh to put some some money in their pocket uh because we're still in this in this trap right and they don't really care they don't really care so we need to create more ways for people to actually care about uh about let's say when it comes to decision making and so the power concentration uh this happens a lot uh this happens a lot when it comes to just say allocating tokens to Founders and allocating tokens to um uh uh Financial contributors and there's uh also a lot of information and symmetry so sure people can come and contribute and be part of the Dao and so on but the information stays very at the top um and the ones that have that information they are actually able to let's say x exit you know before other people um and yeah that's that's an issue that's that's a real real issue when we have let's say these people with a lot of power that can actually destroy the price of the token destroy the whole organism juice because they have the let's say their financial Capital to do so uh also another thing that can happen is that um coming back to the photographer plutocracy is that you know you let's say you don't like a protocol um and you have enough resources you might buy the tokens and and start and start let's say voting against let's say against the purpose of the Dao and so on so this could potentially happen as well um another thing another problem is the lack of a structure um and I put here what a structure means a structure is the arrangement of and a relationship between the parts of all elements of something complex um so a structure a structure I believe is uh is needed because when you don't have a structure basically it doesn't mean that the structure doesn't exist a structure there will always be a structure it's just that is invisible structure so I personally prefer to have a visible structure or transparent structure that an invisible structure why because when you have an invisible structure basically the people that have power that are hidden uh they basically can control and and and and do whatever the heck they want um so I personally prefer to have some form of a structure um another problem is the unbalanced transparency uh there's transparency let's say maybe how much let's say we're going to raise how much we're going to sell but they might not be necessarily transparency with everything um and transparency could be a very a double-edged sword uh transparency can create also a lot of problems within communities so for example in Dallas where uh all the all the um let's say salary or grants are completely open and transparent uh people start to be humans you know we use humans and we use start to be jealous about what other people are making that person is probably working only 10 hours I'm working 30. uh why is that person making more than me and all of these let's say no more human issues that we have um but yeah but then transparency in the other hand is also super super important because we want to know we want to know how actually the tokens are distributed uh who are making the decisions on how these tokens are distributed um also another another issue with uh trans let's say with uh when there's not enough transparency for example when it comes to all the contributors is that you run into problems like you might have uh two people pretending to be one person for example um and and trying to get some some grants from The Vow um and yeah we saw that also with the yeah we saw that with the bank less now and and how someone was actually using coordinate in order to get more money um and yeah we we see civil attacks because of that we see people trying to pretend that there are two three four people uh and just getting money from the Dow um and yeah just not being fair fair to to all the other contributors uh or obviously one that is very important is the lack of system sustainability uh most of the projects in the space um I would say more than 80 of the projects or even 90 of the projects in the space they don't they don't generate any Revenue um the way that they are sustaining themselves is by selling a token and doping a token uh there's real non-sustainability in most of the in most of the different protocols and the different dials in the space so how can we actually create value that brings uh brings more money to the treasury that then can be distributed to the different participants of the dial and now other and the last problem that I'm going to talk about is that uh you know people are super excited uh when they uh they meet let's say a new girl a new guy and they're like falling in love and you're like oh wow this is amazing um and then you know after a couple of a couple of weeks you start like losing that that spark that is there so how can we actually maintain that spark well I personally believe is by let's say creating more fun games and trying to involve the community in many different ways that can hopefully um keep them engaged and that the condition doesn't drop over time um and yeah those are some of the problems that dials have I can talk for a couple of hours about problems with Taos but it's only 20 minutes uh if you guys want to connect with me uh scan this QR code send me a message and thank you so much