Emergence of Colorado DAOs

thinking of advancement has anybody heard of Colorado cooperatives being used as legal rappers for dows [Music] it's like a thing Dao's actually are quite big in Colorado so our next panel is going to be all about Colorado dows and the various things that we're doing to make them cool functional and legal don't stand in front of the speakers guys yeah come on up so I'm not going to do introductions I'm going to let our wonderful moderator Anjali Young you can sit there actually you should have the solo have a seat guys where's James it's right back there let's see if we can get them James Young James Young get up here James main stage get up here there he is we have a mic for you did you get a mic you know I'll I'll let you use mine how about that just give it back okay guys Colorado Dallas let's do it all right welcome everybody wow these lights are bright um thanks for being here on a Friday night that's just super awesome that you're here um today we're going to be talking about Colorado digital Co-op and using that as a legal wrapper for your Dow everybody here has been participating that in some way or another and so we're excited to get started I'm going to ask everyone to introduce themself let's start with Lacey McDonald all right how's it going I'm staff sergeant lace McDonald I'm with the big green Dow I'm one of the founding members of it nice to meet you my name is yev muchneck I'm a web 3 lawyer located in Denver Colorado and a legal Steward for opolis the employment Commons Spork down and collabland I'm anjalian I'm the co-founder and chief Community officer for Abridged Inc we are the makers of collabland and we just land launched a dow called the collabland co-op team everybody my name is Willie I am head of decentralization for the fox Foundation which is a not-for-profit org dedicated to supporting shapeshift Dao and achieving full decentralization and also a Community member with giveth and ATX Dao and narsdale to name a few hey I'm Bill Warren I'm the head of product at opolis and also helped with the formation of sportdowell and worked on Dow house which is a popular and awesome Dow management platform so I'm a big Dow fan uh James Young co-founder and CEO of a bridge we launched a collabland co-op um recently and uh I'm a huge fan of Dallas myself I co-wrote the white paper for Malik and we launched the maulik down at East Denver actually in 2019. so great to be here awesome started into for everybody um what's your experience with Dallas like can you tell us right now what you're doing in Dallas and maybe a little bit of your experience in Dallas let's start with Lacey all right well uh experience with Dallas it's really been big about uh community and that's been Central to the Big Green Dow you know I believe there's a term called touch the grass and we do really well in IRL for sure because we're about food and sovereignty and food Justice and philanthropy we're trying to flip it on its head so uh big green Dow pretty much gives the power to uh Frontline workers and distributing funds and giving them unrestricted funds unlike which will not add on to the workload so on top of that with the ability of using like our token structure that our governance like we're really decentralizing you know the power that is held by a Chosen Few is distributed among all uh folks that are a part of the Dow and we have over a hundred non-profits that work in food Justice and food sovereignty that's awesome touch grass that's right we do we do use that so we sort of act as the legal backend infrastructure for for dawifying and providing a legal wrapper for your Dow we happen to be huge fans of the Colorado Co-op statutes and I think we're going to be talking a lot about that right today um but I've been a part of Ukraine Dao which is something that we were talking about backstage um and yeah yeah so we're kind of kind of the legal back end in my work with launch legal and Jason weiner PC um have put Colorado on the map as the Delaware of co-ops yeah thanks yeah that's that's right Ukraine Dao so all right for that uh how about you Willie so I first dabbled with Dows eat Denver 2020 actually and um did a hackathon project for the Dow to save the world it was called cause we got first place and we took all the eth we won and we use that to build what became the new version of giveth so um meanwhile I was working at shapeshift and I had seen firsthand the power of Dallas and the fact that if you have a a great meme a good mission that other people around the world align with they can get involved join the Discord and coordinate to ship amazing software without any Central legal entity or authority so um when Eric uh Voorhees founder of shapeshift said that we're we're gonna go full down that was like the best day ever for me I was super excited jumped out of my chair and screamed and yeah um helped to kind of set up a lot of the Genesis shapeshift Dao and have been involved ever since and accepted the role at the foundation because I thought it was a noble Mission and someone needed to basically play that stepping stone as shapeshift transferred from a centralized organization to a Dao controlled by the community but the last role I will ever have in a corporation it's all Dao's going forward I love it and I used to be a CEO of two startups before shapeshift and it's a lonely job being a CEO a lot of pressure the job never ends it's just analysis of stuff to do you got investors and the team depending on you and it's a lot of stress and you feel like you can never take a break and I much more prefer a dow or it's a community of leaders and we all share the responsibility um it's a better fit for my lifestyle amen so my Dow Journey kind of started probably in James's shadow where um I started a consensus folk back in 2018 that was really focused on political and social action and when we saw the Malik Dao come out he thought like huh this could be the future of pax and non-profits and just social impact groups activist groups generally so we took that code and forked it and played with it and through my initial startup peeps democracy really tried a bunch of experiments around social action through Dallas and then we got into like defying downs and finally I landed at opolis where a lot of what I do in addition to our core product stuff is think about how we can decentralize a service that's highly regulated but should ultimately be owned by the users of the product and so thinking about how to split up governance and make sure people are empowered in the right ways but also making sure that people with kind of the right information are making the right decisions is something that keeps me really busy and also very excited about the Dow space awesome well I feel like I'm falling in your Shadow now with collabland and the co-op here and falling in the steps of Obelisk so I think it's this kind of give and take I think that's the beauty of being part of the ecosystem being able to share and learn together and we kind of all pull each other up uh you know in 2019 when uh Malik Dao started uh it really was just to get awareness with eth2 and now we're all proof of stake and that's all happened there was a lot to learn in kind of this first generation of Dao so I helped with Malik and helped start metacartel as well which uses the same code base but the kind of social structure was a bit different and the cause and the purpose of it was different and now with the call the collabland co-op we have to interface with the real world they're like AWS bills to pay and we're hopefully going to lean a lot on obelisk in terms of employment and so there's this engine interesting kind of evolution that I am going through when it comes to Dows where I think with the collabland co-op what is going to be really critical for us is leadership and being able to surface leaders quickly and crowdsourcing leadership from people that are coming in just from the internet and I think of my journey in terms of dows of like everyone that's highly aligned it's easy to get them together and for a common cause and a purpose but I think that as we move forward from a centralized organization as a bridge to then exiting to community with the collabland co-op is how do we keep intact informal leadership structures that are more Dynamic at play and so we just crossed since we launched our token last week 50 000 people that are in our Dow and so how do you coordinate that so it's this being able to surface leadership at scale I think is kind of for me the next evolution in terms of this experiment experimentation with Dallas uh James that kind of brings me to this topic which I was going to bring up a little bit later but I'm going to bring it up now which were what are some unexpected challenges that come up when you're either creating Adele or once a dow reaches some level of maturity um any how about Lacey well uh I could tell you know from my experience so far with the big green down I think one of our unexpected challenges is um as people who work in the field uh how can we make this more practical for us right this technology and how we can we integrate the two where it's seamless so it's like you know we already have practice with that with like your Facebooks and your twitters and whatnot like how can we really apply it where you know our folks that are working in the non-profit world are able to do the work that they need to because that's where we want them right changing lives growing food and how can we utilize these particular tools to make it easier for them to blend the world of the digital age and the real world I think that's been something that's been somewhat of a challenge to make it more practical I think that we've achieved some pretty good good goals there especially when it comes to like the governing stuff and all the input that we get from all the other different organizations that are out here but uh for sure we're definitely working those Kinks out and uh if anything we've had a few litmus tests with our Dow and I can tell you it's been successful so it's awesome um bill or Willie any unexpected I mean I know there are so many unexpected challenges so pick your favorite I think focus is really hard in a doubt I don't know if it's unexpected it might be a little bit expected but it's definitely something that comes top of mind uh because you don't have a CEO or a leader anymore and so it's really up to the community to coordinate and sometimes when that happens like people want to go in a bunch of different directions but it is so valuable to have like an aligned team rowing in the same direction and so it's difficult it takes a lot of communication it can take longer um and yeah some stuff we do at like shapeshift Dao is just going above and beyond so like even if you have sub-dials and you have we have a product work stream and the community has delegated authority to that product work stream to prioritize the road map and decide what features get built but the product work stream knows that it's in their best interest and it's worthwhile to go through the process of proposing a roadmap and getting buy-in and getting feedback from the community on if there are other decisions because just that simple ACT results in everybody feeling much more aligned once the proposal is passed and they had the chance to give that feedback and other suggestions so yeah very difficult to do it without a CEO there's pros and cons but there's ways to coordinate and make sure that you still get that really valuable alignment yeah I'd say like smart contracts are pretty easy you can do one in like a couple weeks what's really hard is community governance and community building we as a species have been working on that for 20 50 000 years and still haven't figured it out perfectly so Dows are really just the next iteration of us as a society as a people trying to figure out new ways to coordinate that's always going to be like messy and tough I I so when we started Malik and Metta cartel you know there isn't this notion of like a tradable token and that was purposeful in terms of the framework and when uh in the way that the molecule works is that you have to have someone Champion you in to get accepted so there's this kind of and it wasn't fully intentional but looking back on it now there is this kind of foundational layer of Human Relationships and Trust where you know you have some doubts that you know just like okay we have a token and now come and join our Dao and that is different so what is surprising to me having started with this like human relationship to get into a Dao and then seeing the ecosystem evolve where you know it's more kind of uh almost like a flash mob coming together uh and coordinating around an idea they don't know each other they don't have those relationships and what binds them together isn't ideal at first not the relationship so when launching um collab land we call it a co-op and we're kind of staying a little bit away from the term Dao because it seems to mean different things to different people and I think that's the unexpected thing is that I have my own concept of what a Dao is from my experience and other people have different ideas and so I think what's important is like having that intention a chart or a Manifesto or mandate that kind of or Constitution that binds and tells everyone what this Dao is about and so um you know this is crypto moves very fast kind of it re-emerged in 2019 four years later we see so much proliferation so many different varieties of dows so I think what's unexpected is people have their own assumptions of what it is it's not quite a clean slate yeah absolutely and I think that Segways really nicely into why Colorado like we all chose Colorado for our Dow structure what makes Colorado special what can we learn about Colorado it's like for the people in the audience that are learning about what is the Colorado digital Co-op structure and if you want to get involved with it and why would you get involved with it so I'm going to ask yeah who's the lawyer for us the Colorado Co-op and it's amazing thank you I would say that what what makes Colorado really stand a part um from other jurisdictions is our very friendly regulators and are you know we saw Governor polis come up on stage yesterday and Tao how friendly the state is and it's true you know we accept um tax payments in crypto you know he'd launched the campaign selling nfts for when he was for his re-election so that's that's really ingrained into the mindset of kind of innovative Innovative thinking and you know I can tell you that we sat at a round table for governor polis for web 3 Industry leaders probably six months ago they're so receptive about what can be done to make the state more Progressive and more and bring in kind of the web 3 Community here as far as the LCA statutes the co-op statutes we have a particularly good LCA law here that makes Dao's and co-ops fit really well and I think it's pretty well established that if you have an unwrapped Dao you you will default to a general partnership and there's a lot of potential liability for Dow members there so in terms of choosing the right entity structure for wrapping your Dao co-ops are really really suitable they're not for everybody but they they really are flexible legal creatures and Colorado just makes it even more so yeah so there are a couple of other states that are doing uh Dow rappers doubt entities can somebody speak to and is anyone interested in speaking to why they chose Colorado and why they preferred to Colorado to maybe Wyoming for example I would say we have a bunch of uh innovators here in Colorado for sure and I think that especially for uh people of color in this particular industry it's extremely important to see representation and uh in fact Right Here In This Crowd right now we got David and Casey here Pioneers in their own way and definitely with their expertise helped assist in building you know this Dow here with big green but uh I also have to say man just not just here you know there's a this particular Dow the Big Green Dow isn't just centralized in Colorado but we have a lot of innovators all over the world when it comes to food sovereignty and just having that type of community the wisdom of the crowd has been extremely important so uh but I would say because Colorado is my home state that's why it's no fear yeah I think Colorado cooperatives scale Community better than a Wyoming LLC you know if if I were going to start a journal tomorrow with 25 friends I'd probably do an LLC if I wanted to start a dowel that could scale up two 50 000 people I'd choose a cooperative that's right um all right next question I wanted to ask is I'll add something here oh yeah I didn't jump in because shape shift isn't is not a Colorado Co-op I think I'm here because shapeshift used to be headquartered in Colorado when it was a centralized Corporation and we chose to go full Dao with no legal entities I think it's good just to paint maybe the whole Spectrum for anyone who's listening that um Colorado Co-op I think if we were going to go for one of the rappers I think Colorado's what I've heard is the best out of all of them which is awesome so go Colorado but it's not the only option and I think there's just trade-offs to consider so if you're thinking about starting a dow definitely first of all talk to a lawyer I am not a lawyer um check out the Colorado Co-op but it is quite possible to do it without any legal entity and it's important to know what some of the trade-offs are so like if you go to the no legal entity route you're giving up the ability to sign contracts and enforce contracts you can't do that as a dow without a legal entity and there's a lot of stuff that comes with that you can't have bank accounts that's probably the other big thing and that's some of you guys might need a bank account in order for your Dow to achieve its vision but that's pretty much it as far as I understand there's also the liability question and whether you're able to give your uh contributors protection which was one of the things that you can give up without a legal entity it hasn't been enforced yet but that's what the lawyers I've heard say although we work with opolis so at shape shift we encourage all the our contributors especially U.S contributors to get their own LLC to provide some later protection and yeah because we haven't gone illegal entity route there's a lot of things that shapeshift Dow can do that it could not do if it did have a legal entity so those are some of the trade-offs to keep in mind if you're considering launching your own down I think that's a great point and there are different tryouts and for us we have to like touch the real world we have to have bank accounts we have to pay bills you know things like that and we chose Colorado because of the president and the rich history I think and just a lot of it isn't in the spirit of the law and why the Cooperative like legal structure exists and that's what we want to do we want to build up a community uh you know it was formed before there was anything considered online but I think the spirit of being a digital Cooperative Still Remains the Same and now we can be based in Colorado but we can have like a worldwide presence yeah that's right and we can toss that over to yev again but the Colorado Co-op structure has been around a lot longer than Dows have been around that's right so how were they used before and what was the kind of first experience of now Dao's using the Colorado Co-op yeah Colorado co-ops have been around for a while and we've seen everything from you know coffee shops worker co-ops that come together multi-stakeholder co-ops a co-op that's that's similar to like an Uber or Lyft where you're actually rewarding the users of the platform and they are rewarded and patronage distributions based on their patronage activities so I think that's pretty grounded in the law that that you know you can have members that are that are giving something to an organization and taking something out and you have this this kind of beautiful Harmony around um being structured for those stakeholders right that there's governance there's kind of economic outputs and it's not just for a top-down kind of shareholder traditional corporate structure so you're really rewarding the the contributors and that's that's kind of one of the biggest overlaps with daos that you're wanting to give voice to your members you're wanting to reward those that are active that are participating that are building um and that's what you can do with a co-op thank you um I don't know how much time we have left so I'm going to move into some hot take questions which is what's your hot take I'm gonna say spicy take for Dows for the future of Dallas futures of the down um I guess hot take would be Community Building like that is going to be the that's the Cornerstone of the Dow but how do you Empower folks you know in whatever your choosing down may be I know in the Big Green down the biggest thing like I said has been unrestricted funds to empower folks that are doing the work and then on top of that when they become a part of the Dow they're going to be a part of that structure that governance structure so any decisions that are made everybody has a part in that so if we want to move together in a different direction like we'll be able to do so if we govern it together but the biggest thing has always been you know participation the reward is that you have a collection of amazing human beings I want to give a shout out to the og6 that's out there probably watching Juan day Catherine a day Vero and uh Miss Diana like you guys have been amazing and uh helped craft me for sure and that's just a small contribution of the larger picture with the big green down but it's always been around growing food changes lives and we have a common structure there a common idea that we follow behind and all the dials that have all the non-profits that have joined that you know we've definitely been working with uh folks across the country to in real life which has been extremely beneficial that's awesome and actually I was on another panel earlier with Willie and we were talking about purpose and how purpose should always supersede the process and how you really that's what Humanity needs that's what all of us need is a purpose to um work around and so to bring ourselves together any hot takes on this side yeah so a hot take is usually kind of a contradiction but this is what I think will happen I think that Dows are going to be like human Centric so in the age of like we're seeing you know GPT three come out and AI happening with Facebook Google uh and now open AI I think what will happen and this is going to be this kind of Leverage that will happen slowly and then suddenly is this connective tissue that's going to be led by AI versus like on using on-chain data and selective off-chain whether it's decentralized IDs and verifiable credentials so that different Dows can come together at whatever point in time that in terms of the goal or the event that they want to meet and corporations will not be able to compete traditional corporations because you need on-chain data augmented with like off-chain stuff so I think AI is going to help bridge that Gap in between Dows and cooperations and you're going to see this fluidity happening online that I don't think you we've we're really able to understand quite yet so you mean like Dows are going to be able to create Partnerships in real time to solve a specific issue and be able to coordinate at a faster level and more organic level than corporations would yeah exactly got it thanks yeah so I think I mean the bear Market helped clear out some of this but there were a lot of fake Dows out there nobody on this stage falls into that category not going to name names but there are a lot of fake dials that were actually like four guys with a multi-sig raising a bunch of money from people and a limited group making all of the decisions and I think while those can be in the short term very effective and look really successful that those are the organizations that quickly die versus if you have real community if you take that time to build consensus build communication build a sense of shared purpose you're going to last longer even if it's Messier and so I think it's it's going to take a cultural shift for us to move from corporations where things like Feel clean and we've got like that person in power that we can either follow or push responsibility onto to a dow some trick kind of world where you know you've got two vectors of responsibility one as an individual contributor that's important and what is a community that's really important and that's very different from how we've operated in the 20th century and 21st century thus far absolutely I think that's a great point to end on so I want to thank everybody that's on the panel today um but that's that you heard it from Bill we're in a cultural shift and all of us have to be Advocates of that cultural shift so all of us definitely are and for all of you that are out there that get inspired by the idea of community controlled governance um endows you know go out talk about it tell people about it it's going to take all of us so thank you so much let's down touch that grass [Applause]