Empowering DAOs: Decentralized Interoperability Panel | ETHDenver 2023

Okay, thank you so much for joining our panel on empowering Dows with decentralized interoperable tooling. Um, I'm joined by panelists from Radical, Gitcoin, and SAFE. And today we're going to um talk about infrastructure and other issues affecting Dows. So, uh, my name is Kate. I work at Ceramic.

And this week we had a very exciting launch of ComposDB on ceramic. So ComposDB is a decentralized graph database that developers can use to build any application um that you might want to use with a graph database. Um especially those for Dow tooling, reputation, social, and I'm excited to jump into uh what that looks like with the panelists here. So, I'd love to pass it over to you all to introduce yourselves and talk about your projects. Uh, we can start with you.

Thanks, Kate. Um, uh, yeah, I'm Andrew Dixon joining here from, uh, from Drips, which is part of the radical community, and we're working on building tools to allow, uh, open source developers to crowdsource funds directly from their communities to support their work in the open. Oh yeah, here. Hello. Is it me?

Am I just Am I just killing these mics? What is going on? Hello. Okay, we have one good mic now. Uh my name's I'm Kevin Olsen from Gitcoin.

Uh I'm a workstream lead for Passport, Grandstack, and Aloe. Um, Gitcoin. Who knows Gitcoin? Some of you. So, we're the largest like crowdfunding platform on web 3.

We killing it. Hello. Oh, there we go. This one's working. So, uh, yeah, we help you fund open source and public goods.

So try to keep it short because I think I have five seconds until the mic stops. I'm Lucas. I'm from SAFE. We're building a decentralized custody protocol uh that helps a lot of Dows to to manage assets to have their treasury onchain to coordinate around assets on chain. Yeah.

Check one two. Um okay. So to kick it off, we wanted to talk a little bit about decentralization. Obviously the north star is to have Dows that are fully decentralized. But what I think is interesting about this panel is we have some folks who started Dows in a fully decentralized way, others that started a bit more centralized and have since adopted more decentralized tooling.

So I'm curious to hear from the panelists um your journey and sort of where you're hitting that mark of getting closer to full decentralization. So, we can start with Andrew if you want. Cool. Thanks. Yeah.

Um Oh, is it okay? Okay. Um yeah, so with with Radical, we started as um so Drips is part of the Radical community. Maybe some of you have heard of Radical. And um uh we started as a pretty centralized uh company actually and have been progressively decentralizing more and more um into now now decentralizing all the way into a DAO and um even splitting kind of into separate organizations for drips and the radical code collab stack which is kind of the other part of the product.

So we've kind of gone in in that direction towards being much more decentralized and the vision is to continue decentralizing even more over the next year or two. Is this on? It's not on. Oh, it is. Oh my god, this is gone.

Okay, good. So, Gitcoin started as a pretty centralized entity. There was a like a company, I think it was incubated inside consensus. Uh, and then we launched a a token and became a DAO uh a little over a year ago, 18 months ago. Um, and in that process, we actually had the the product and engineering groups were still sitting inside of the holdings company and eventually migrated to the DAO uh la halfway through last year.

So we're like slowly decentralizing oursel as just as an organization and actually bringing ourselves into Dowo space. But then actually on a tech side too, our initial product was a very kind of like web 2.5 sort of centralized app. So the Gitcoin classic that most people are familiar with uh that we ran up until about the end of the summer last year was very much just like a big Python Django app. We've been rebuilding that.

So that's all rebuilt now and actually launched today uh or announced today as Aloe and Grant Stack. So we have a provisionalist protocol which is our grant stack uh powering our grant stack. Um so we've actually been taking ourselves structurally into decentralization but then also from the tech stack out. So now everyone can build and launch their own grants programs on grant stack. I mean um pretty much doing copy pastas here but like safe.

All right doesn't work. Oh, okay. So, safe was also a very centralized project to start with and uh but but what's important is like that the the protocol was decentralized. I mean we uh the the protocol of safe was decentralized from the beginning. Uh so there was not never ever some upgrade or some admin key in safe.

Uh so now we're we're on a um we're we're on on track to also decentralize other aspects of the safe project like the interfaces. Now we we didn't want that to just there's like one interface to safe. So we worked uh to to push other interfaces. There's now like 30 different projects that integrate with the safe protocol and there's also like uh some backend infrastructure that we've been running in the past and we're uh doing some projects actually together with ceramic as well uh to decentralize that aspect because we realize that like safe becomes such a critical aspect of many Dows and uh like it we should remove every each and every centralization factor there over time. Um but yeah Can you guys hear me?

Oh, I think it's working now. Um, it's awesome to hear the different paths that that you're all on with the decentralization journey. And I think what we want to talk about most today is the interoperability uh between what what's being built in the space. So I'm curious to hear, you know, between Gitcoin Passport with Drips, like how are other Dows leveraging these these in their in their own stacks and um what else can we sort of do to start to replace some of the centralized tooling that we're using with these more interoperable and module uh tooling stacks? Okay.

Uh so like in terms of like decentralized tooling stack um yeah so we built passport on top of ceramics. So one of our goals for the passport product if you don't know it this is a a app you can go and collect various identity addestations to build up a sort of statistical view of personhood right so rather than trying to be like a hard KYC provider we're trying to create kind of a unique proof of personhood through many many pluralistic identity signals. We chose to build that on top of ceramic to make sure that we had a 100% of that data uh available on a decentralized network and still maintain that uh goal. Um it was really important for us partly for neutrality so people understood that the data that we were collecting had no PII in it. We wanted to make sure that was available and anyone could look at the records that were sitting on ceramic and verify for themselves.

It's true. You know, we're not going to dox you if you connect your Twitter handle with your your your wallet. Um so that was a big part of it. part of the neutrality and sort of credibility that we needed for that product. But then also the composabilility, right?

So we had Orbit Club and some others that now have just made the VCs that were issuing like a native uh uh kind of primitive on their platforms, which is super cool, right? You don't have to worry about holding this like sort of toxic PII in a database and hope nothing happens to it. You just you do privacy kind of like by default, meaning you don't store that data and you make sure the data is available in public. So there's like buyin and consent from the users. So it's it's a super important principle I think to also drive the right kind of decision-m to take these uh these distributed data networks and uh on as a design choice maybe maybe so I want I want to maybe pick up on on the API part um so we we've saved there's like an API that we run that uh also many external teams are are like relying on to have their own interfaces running.

Um, and we like how do we think there about decentralization? It's actually like three paths forward. Um like there's always like the the pure uh decentralized kind of uh path where which think which is more like let's build out a completely uh decentralized network where there's like uh incentivized players that participate in there and they provide the service and that's something we do with with s ceramic using compost DB where there should be like a decentralized database where people can go and get data about their their saves like pending transactions and stuff like that. uh but there's also two other aspects which I think shouldn't be uh dismissed which also contribute to decentralization which is uh let people run their own back end easily because if they don't rely on like a centralized API if if we make it easier for them to run their own uh back end then there there's also less of a reliance on on something that's provided from from one entity um and the other one is just have incentives for others to to also contribute these services um like we we have this indexer uh where like we provide this this for free. Um but the like there's really value in there and like it's it's not that far away from a service that like Infuro is providing to projects.

So we also want to get projects like Infuro of sorts to to provide this also like more uh like more maybe focused on on performance more on like scalability which we cannot provide for free and like these three factors together I think will lead to the decentralization there. Nice. pass it around. Nice. Yeah, those two examples you guys just gave really really resonate with me.

I mean um with drips, we're actually building on passport right now. So, um which builds on ceramic in turn and uh and yeah, I mean I think you know one way to think about decentralization. I mean the ultimate sort of source of composability and decentralization is um you know blockchains like the Ethereum mainet or layer 2. But there's also as we all know there's a lot of limitations. There's things you can't do there.

And then you know adding in these powerful features like what passport enables or what safe enables you really need more power than what's available on you know the EVM onchain alone. And so um uh yeah I really liked what you were saying Lucas about how uh you know an a different strategy for approaching decentralization is to say okay it's not all under full consensus on chain but um we just need some instance of the service and and we're going to allow multiple people to run a a service and maybe even create incentives um you know projects like the graph are also exploring this but um and and then just have different sources of trust so like you know Gitcoin is operating an IM server but they provide the IM server infrastructure so that anyone else can operate an IM server as well and that's you know a different style of decentralization that enables a lot more power and user experience. So if I can just piggyback on that, I think there's like this idea too of making yourself open and available to decentralization. Even if you're not going to bootstrap a network of IM VC issuing services like what we we would have had to do, we can remain some kind of, you know, credible path towards decentralization and the design choices we're making by open sourcing that and making sure that that's something that other people can participate in when they want to. So I think it's a lot of it's like kind of going back to design design choices that let you again keep those paths to decentralization open.

Yeah, 100%. Um, I guess, uh, doubling in on what you said, um, do you think that there's an argument to be made for sort of hedging your bets as being a DAO so that you can allow web two organizations to work with you still having open APIs and what are sort of the risks there for a DAO? Okay, it's so hard to hear each other. Yeah. Um, so I heard I heard the question, but um, I think to paraphrase that back uh, as I'm remembering this, it was choices you might make to centralize things.

Is that about right? So, and why you might do that? Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of it comes down sometimes to just user experience. If it's in your product, right, you can't necessarily guarantee, you know, fast like roundtrip reads and writes to some of these systems.

So you might have to have a centralized caching system or something like this which is I think part of like what's going on in the safe infrastructure layer. Um so that's a a thing I think you can take those design choices on early and then again look to decentralize yourself progressively. Um but there's a lot of tooling that we actually just take on that is you know centralized tooling. We're all using Google and Discord and like this right? Um and I think you can still take a pretty like open approach to it right?

So like defaulting to everything is visible to everyone in your DAO. Um you know making sure the channels that you're using I think you've taken a really interesting approach to make sure the channels in your discord are open readable and writable to everybody. Um and actually just embracing sort of openness in terms of data. So there's there's a lot in that choice you make to centralize and use centralized tools that can still embrace the ethos of decentralization. Maybe besides user experience, I also think um like one drawback of using decentralized tooling is uh definitely speed performance um because like I mean and and also flexibility like when you start off with with a D with a project you usually need to to be like quick to market you you need to be flexible.

You don't know what tooling is the right one. uh switching cost of tooling in a decentralized uh world is a little bit higher because there's like more co coordination around it. Uh and and so it's it's it's perfectly understandable to start with more centralized tooling to begin with. Uh and then you just need to identify which ones are the the critical pieces where you shouldn't compromise where you should immediately switch to decentralized tooling and then the other ones that are more nice to have more kind of long-term decentralized this is something which uh which can be worked on later on. Yeah, Kevin, what I thought you what you said I thought was really interesting around um you know, you can use centralized tools like Discord.

I mean I think almost every project uses Discord at this point. Um but you can use them in a much more decentralized way. you can have a cultural norm like for example with our team um every conversation that can be had in public on public channels we try to do that and I would say it's the vast majority of all conversations even down to the details of of design choices or you know things we're going to build um and uh so so yeah I think that's a really important distinction is that like there's sort of the theoretical aspect of it and then there's the practical and you can get a lot of practical decentralization for some of these less mission critical things I mean you wouldn't want to like run your treasury on Discord use nose to say for that. But like um you I think for day-to-day conversations it's fine to be on a centralized tool if you have a strong cultural norm of a decentralized use of that tool. Um maybe one other area that I have noticed some kind of friction around your question of like where does it make you know where is there a challenge around it is um is like often with contributors a lot of folks still want to be paid in fiat or need to be paid in fiat or need like real world organizations often if people have a mortgage for example in the real world they like need some kind of counter signed letter from like a real world org and that's been a tough one because I think a lot of these orgs want to go full cryptonative you know everything paid in stable coins to contributors or um the community members, but um often that's that just has real world like implications for folks who are contributing to the project.

So, I don't know if you guys have experienced that at all in your projects, but be curious to hear. I know that's been a a friction point with us and the community and the team are constantly back and forth on this question. Yeah, it hasn't been a major issue for us because we've I think we've used uh Opouls for most of the folks that need to have some kind of real world um kind of tiein for their finances and we've also uh done a few rounds with work dow to look at that for people who might need that extra level of like you know incountry employment. Um currently all our folks are still independents working directly you know again with the DAO. maybe some people have an LLC or something like that to kind of make that that more a little bit of a legal rapper or to be able to like work with OPI list and get like a some some employment letters.

So, it hasn't been a a major issue for us interestingly though, but I'd actually be really interested to hear how you're set up at at SAFE. I mean, we we are still very traditionally sending each month for for like payroll like fiat transactions to or fiat transfers to to contributors. Um but we we do have our ambition to get as much of it on chain as possible and just plugging here a nice project which is monium which allows you to have um oh yeah to have your assets on chain to then trigger a transaction on chain with like a stable coin but it it creates like it then via monium creates a fiat transfer uh via the saber network directly to a bank account and that's like immediate it's it's pretty much I think it's for free or or very low fees it allows you to have all assets all the payroll onchain But it triggers like uh like real world transfers on uh on on fiat uh net rails. And I think this is like a good kind of uh kind of step towards having more operations on chain. I'm not aware of like what really is there like in terms of uh like KYC requirements and like centralization risk and stuff like that.

But I think it's already better than just triggering regular fiat transfers. Um I think as we wrap up my last question would be in your words what do you think the best way forward is for DS to work together to work more toward that north star of full decentralization and I see it happening in two different ways from where I sit working at ceramic. Um for example uh Nounsta is considering using ceramic as its basically data layer for their org so that they can then build applications that become interoperable within their ecosystem um for contributors and members. But there's also plugging in tools that are already built and standards that have been created by Dows that have come before other Dows to do that. So uh what do you guys think is the best way forward for Dows to continue to decentralize with the knowledge that Dows have different you know goals and are doing different things with different types of members.

Cool. Okay. Yeah. So the so the question was what are the different ways that Dows can support each other in continuing to decentralize as as we go forward on this web 3 adventure? um that we're all super stoked to be on.

So um I kind of see two main ways. So I think the first way is like from a um what I think of as like primitives or tools or libraries perspective. And um you know this is something that I think like safe and ceramic and um and passport I mean and Gitcoin in general like we're and and and drips as well building you know these primitives around drips and splits like we're kind of building these actual tools that that the other can build on. So a lot of us are building on ceramic or we're building on ceramic by virtue of building on passport. These kind of give the building blocks.

So these are kind of like the technical pieces um their their services or their tools or their libraries that that just enable more decentralization. Um I think that's super important. It kind of unlocks new better usability to compete with web 2 to like actually make this possible for real people. Uh the other way is just through cultural norms. Kind of like we were talking about earlier.

um you know h establishing a cultural norm that you're going to use Discord in a certain way, you're going to interact with your contributors, your community in a certain way that's more decentralized and that's more of a soft thing, but I think it can be equally as important especially for the aspects that are harder to provide good usability around. Yeah, that's a plus one on both of those. Um you know, like building on each other's things with the the Aloe protocol and the Grant Stack launch, we're really excited to get uh Drips going as part of like our milestone based payouts for grants. So there's tons of this just like building on top of each other but also the making the decision with your products to make them you know what like Legos like turn everything into Legos right um so plus one to that that's huge and that keep just driving that flywheel of value right that if we build something and somebody else builds on top of that just encourages us to keep trying it right so there's a certain amount of just like adopting each other's tools and and uh like helping to drive that whole thing forward um and then yeah cultural norms is huge too right it's don't be afraid of using a centralized tool as long as you use it in a very open way. I love what what both of you said because actually many don't know but safe originated from like an internal product that was internal tool that we used at Inossis.

Uh so it's something that we needed and we we built it ourselves and then we just open sourced it and everyone started adopting it and that's why it became so like a composable DO tool at the end of the day because everyone just had the same needs and uh so we're still so early in in this industry that if you have an issue build it build an internal tool but then open source it because it's very likely that others have the same issue and then we can form communities around it can form composibility around it. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time and thank you everyone for listening. Um, yeah. [Music] Heat.

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