DAO-mocracy (Alex Zhang)

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Most things don't need to live on the blockchain, most
things don't need to be crypto based. But in a
world where that technology provides real value to that organizing
structure that I think adao is a really great thing
to explore in terms of how you can create fundamental
transparency and sort of value cruel to people who participate
in that network. Welcome to How to Citizen with Baritune Day,

(00:26):
a podcast that reimagine citizen as a verb, not a
legal status. This season is all about how we practice democracy,
what can we get rid of, what can we invent,
and how do we change the culture of democracy itself.
We're leaving the theoretical clouds and hitting the ground with
inspiring examples of people and institutions that are showing us

(00:47):
new ways to govern ourselves. Way back in the year
two twenty one, I tried to buy an original copy
of the United States Constitution. Okay, me and thousands of

(01:08):
other people tried to buy the Constitution. I was part
of this group called Constitution Doo. DOO stands for a
decentralized Autonomous Organization, and it was formed by a few
dozen people who wanted to bid on the nation's founding document.
It was essentially a crowdfunding campaign where anyone who was
interested could pledge cryptocurrency to the bid and by doing so,

(01:32):
have a say in what would happen with the document
if we won. So very nerdy, but people got into it.
Constitution Dow raised nearly fifty million dollars in a week.
We did get beat at the auction, and in hindsight
it was pretty obvious. You don't enter an auction with

(01:52):
everybody knowing how much money you're willing to pledge. But
the energy around it was amazing and it was cool
to be a part of this flash mobby group purchase
of a piece of US history. And it's not just
Constitution loving freaks who are into DAOs. They vary in use,

(02:13):
in membership, and in purpose, and to me, they give
us a way to use digital tools to structure an
essentially online cooperative model of self governance. The thing that
makes DAOs different from your typical company or nonprofit or
coop is that they're built on blockchain technology. Yes, blockchain.

(02:35):
I'm sorry to have to say this word to you.
I know you've heard of it and it probably makes
you think of people coming to take your money. I'm
not here to steal your money. There's no tokens, there's
no FTX schemes, there's nothing like that. Okay, I don't
believe we need to financialize all human activity or speculate
on fake Internet money to feel like we're making progress.

(02:56):
But underneath the flashy headlines of fraud, there is a
technology worth understanding. Blockchain is a form of relatively secure
and radically transparent storage. You can think of it as
a database that can be used to store financial transactions,

(03:17):
but also transactions like votes or even moves in a
video game. There's almost no limit to what you could
store in it, and when we think about citizening and
self governance, a DOW is an attempt to create this
kind of human organizational layer on top of that blockchain
with some of the same principles. The blockchain creates transactional transparency,

(03:40):
and the participation of people through a DOW helps secure
and increased trust in the overall operation. The code itself
doesn't make those things happen, but it can help ensure
Collective self governing groups like neighborhood cooperatives aren't new, but
given how much time we're collect actively spending in technological spaces.

(04:02):
It's worth asking, can we design systems in the digital
world where we can truly practice collective decision making and
resource sharing better than what we've seen done in the
physical world. Alex Jang has been asking this question for
a while. Alex is the mayor of Friends with Benefits now.

(04:23):
Friends with Benefits, or FWB for short, is a doubt
that's essentially an online club with thousands of members. Those
members decide what those benefits are and how to manage
their collective financial resources. Basically, FWB is a chat room
with a bank account. Think about a subreddit you're really

(04:43):
invested in, or an old Aowell chat room. Think of
those structures, but this time they've got a treasury and
some voting mechanisms attached. And with those new features, you
can do so many more things than just chat activities,
like funding projects, supporting artistic innovation, and organizing events and meetups.
The list goes on. Dows like FWB are a fascinating

(05:09):
place for us to learn some of the ways we
might citizen in the future, and they can give us.
They give me a little hope that when it comes
to our digital spaces, we can still define community for ourselves.
We don't have to subject ourselves to these manipulative attention
extraction platforms. Investing in online spaces doesn't have to mean

(05:33):
divesting from our communities and our democracy. In fact, it
could mean the opposite. So I met up with Alex
over Zoom along with our virtual audience to learn how
we can upgrade our virtual citizening after the break, Alex
Jang on the benefits of doos and the potential of
creating digital spaces instead of being consumed by them. We're

(06:05):
gonna be talking about web three and dows today, and
just very briefly, web threes, like the allegedly new version
of the Internet which has users not just being users
but also owners, are the platforms that we are a
part of. Alex Jang is an advocate for how Web
three technology can help propel culture and large scale human
coordination forward. He's the de facto mayor at Friends with Benefits,

(06:29):
a crypto enabled cultural membership and community cited by The
New York Times as one of the most interesting uses
of doos right now. I don't know if the time's
meant to rhyme like that. Formerly, he was the creative
director and president of Summit Series a global community and
evinced company, which is where Alex and I met. Alex,
Welcome to how the citizen. What's up? Super happy to

(06:51):
be here and good to see you. It's good to
see you too, it's been a while. I want to
get your perspective on the big picture before we dive
into the world of FWB and possible to democracy enhancing
skills that we might gain through DOO activities. But by
some estimates there are about ten thousand dows. I want
to know how you think this structure of ADAO compares

(07:12):
to a traditional hierarchical company or to a representative democracy
whereas citizens slash members, we elect decision makers to determine
our laws and our spending and even what's allowed in
terms of our actions. What's the DAO structure offer that's
different from what these other structures were more familiar with offer. Yeah,
that's a great question. First off, thanks for having me.

(07:33):
Love to talk everything democracy and in between. And incredible
to see this community that you've built here. It's really
really fun. Yeah. I think to sort of first take
a step back and like demist defy dows decentralized autonomous organizations,
because I think there can be a lot of sort
of baggage and different things attached to it, which really
is an organization that has assets that live on the blockchain.

(07:56):
So that is my first sort of clarification point, as
you cannot be a DOO don't interact with crypto or
the blockchain. It is fundamentally attached to how an organization
holds in custodies its assets, which are primarily crypto based assets.
And then from there a DAW can be structured as
centrally or decentrally as possible. I call it sort of

(08:16):
a spectrum of decentralization, or other writers call it, you know,
being progressively decentralized, no different than you can choose to
run your LLC or your c corp any way you want.
I've advised and supported many different DAOs that are completely
flat decentralized and bottoms up governed all the way to
ones that look a little bit more in the middle.

(08:38):
I would say, how f TOBB is where we operate
as a representative democracy as opposed to a direct democracy.
And then you have those that are very tightly knit,
tightly coordinated, centralized leaders, which are DAWs of four people
and they decide which art to buy and collect and sell,
and that isn't, as say, flatly governed by its users.
So I would offer that there is not one fits

(09:00):
all DOW and dows are can contain a spectrum of
centralization or decentralization. But fundamentally, why DOW is a question
many people should be asking because even hearing that there's
ten thousand of them is kind of frightening because I
believe many of them shouldn't be a DOO. But a
DOO should only exist, in my opinion, if one you
have a cryptocurrency based sort of organization or reason for

(09:23):
existence and to the need to decide how to allocate
those resources should be governed via on chain decision making,
voting and governance. And so, really, where doos become exciting
to me as I look across five years, ten years
as the cryptocurrency industry continues to evolve and mature, Is

(09:45):
that doos feel like a really interesting organizational structure framework
for Internet based communities that leverage cryptocurrency as ways to trade,
exchange and create value for its users trade exchange, change
and create value. So one, thank you for not telling
everyone to go start a doubt. I just appreciate the

(10:06):
non boosterism of that maybe right for you, maybe not
right for others. This common denominator that is blockchain based
on chain, crypto held assets. I don't want to get
too much into the rabbit hole, but since we're on
the subject, now, can you, for those who are not
deeply enmeshed, give your ambassador translation of the value of

(10:31):
putting an organization of people like this on a blockchain? Yeah?
Happy too. So similar to why I was saying, you know,
not everything should be a doubt, Not everything should be
on chain or even a crypto based organization. What is
fundamentally interesting about cryptocurrency? And just for even the room here,
Like I got involved with crypto two years ago, like

(10:52):
fairly recently, I met Bartunda when I still thought crypto
was a total scam, and I was like, this makes
no sense. To centralize finance component made no sense or
interest to me. I was formerly worked in sort of
art and culture and events and community building, and it
was only until I started to really peak a little
bit behind the curtain when I started to see the
fundamental technology of cryptocurrency being interesting. The idea of a

(11:17):
decentralized monetary system that was sort of borderless was really
interesting to me. It still boggles my mind that on
a national holiday you can't wire money to somebody when
they need to receive money. So things like that started
to became really really interesting. And then as I started
to apply that thinking of the principles and values and
tenants of cryptocurrency and how they would relate to other

(11:37):
industries like culture, civics, community, I became really interested with
sort of two components. One transparency. I think currently in
society we're all struggling with a lack of transparency, from
corporate lack of transparency to governmental lack of transparency. And
the fact that the blockchain is literally transparent. No one

(11:58):
can obfuse skate it because it is all hoarded on
chain and anyone who can go look for the data
can go find that data and query that data became
really really interesting to me. And perhaps a world in
which different organizations imagine if you could see how Facebook
is spending their money or a private companies were spending
their money in real time and where they were allocating
that sort of capital. So that became really interesting to

(12:20):
me as someone who had been in community based organizing
movements organizations and saying, oh, how as a community based organization,
it would be cool to see how that community is
actually deploying its capital, is it spending its money, who
is it paying, how much are they paying those people?
What are they actually doing to One was transparency, and
then two is what I call value accruel. And so
previously I'd worked a lot in various different art and

(12:42):
culture entertainment spaces, and I was always really upset by
how artists seem to be creating a lot of value
but not capturing a lot of that value. Yes, yes,
I just I want to interject all that point. So
many of us have heard, felt and lived with the
consequences of being the product in a digital perspective on

(13:02):
a Twitter, Facebook, corporate owned thing, and we're just kind
of feeding some economic machine that values not being returned
to us in any tangible way we can connect with
our own friends. Yeah, but they're monetizing that and making
money off of that. And certainly art has been rife
with that kind of exploitation of value, and so did
the concentration of it. So continue with the point I

(13:24):
would just so enthusiastic I had to jump in there
on the value point. Yeah, No, I totally agree I mean,
we know that whole narrative of the platform sort of
monetizing it via advertising models, and I just became really
interested in how creators, unlet's just use that big bucket,
whether it's someone writing on social media and creating content,
to a visual artist or a musician, that value that
they're bringing to an organization or to a platform, how

(13:47):
that value could actually accrue to the edges of that
network versus just the central owners of that specific platform.
And I saw that in both massive social media platforms
but also community projects that had really great intentions, but
seeing how as a community began to grow, ultimately the
organization the owners were capturing a majority of that value
as opposed to the actual contributors of that specific community

(14:08):
or movement. And so it became an interesting thought experiment
in the beginning of me and my sort of partners
where we were all exploring and cloudbrators of if cryptocurrency
could store financial value, could it store cultural value right,
and could that cultural value be translated financially to actually
reward people who are bringing them full selves and their
and bringing value to the table as it relates to
a social media network or as it relates to a
club scene in Bushwick. It was both similarly interesting to me.

(14:32):
And that's how Friends with Benefits essentially it was created,
was a social network that was community owned and where
value could accrue to the people who brought their ideas,
their artistic expression, their connections, their full selves into a
membership club or network, and could that value be captured
equally across the board. Bravo, I am signing up for

(14:55):
no longer paying cover charges at a club, but making
the club pay me because I'm bringing cool there, he goes,
and now who's in charge? Let me see your ID bouncer.
Friends with Benefits. It's a great transition, and FWB has
been called this group chat will a shared bank account,
decentralized SOHO house, this global VIP private club with a
lot of cultural influencers amongst its membership. Can you give

(15:17):
me more about the history of it and why you've
described it in these ways, especially on this point around
cultural compensation, you know, as a premise for this particular gathering. Yeah,
so the origin stories are actually you know, quite experimental
and accidental, as I find with most fun scenes or
things that weren't too serious in the beginning. I mean,
even the name of our organization, FWB, you know, is

(15:39):
all sorted as a joke. Trevor mcfederis the founder who
I've been friends with for quite some time. Has been
sort of a really interesting sort of creator and entrepreneur,
and he's always sat at the interesting intersections of sort
of culture and new media technology, and so he was
particularly interested in this concept of cultural capture in terms

(15:59):
of value, and over the course of a weekend, he
created the FBB token as a joke and sent it
out to a bunch of his friends. I was one
of those friends, and there was like twenty or thirty
of us hanging out in this group chat that at
the time it was tiny or minuscule. And this was
all during COVID, and so all of us were locked
in at home, all of us were bored, and all
of us were asking questions about what is crypto? What

(16:20):
is Web three? What are NFTs? This was right when
the boom of crypto started to sort of occur and evolve,
and we were all in this room together essentially making
sense of what was happening together. And when we started
to see was a couple interesting things. One we saw
that people then began to feel a stronger sense of
ownership by holding the FTBB token and feeling a real
sense of pride over the network, that they began to

(16:41):
propose ways to evolve and change the network. You know,
I had this early saying of like when you see
trash on the ground, pick it up. We started to
see that happened really organically. You know, Hey, let's add
this channel, Hey, let's remove that channel. Hey, let's put
in a code of conduct early so we can avoid
issues of X y Z ahead of time. And as
someone who's been involved in lots of different community projects
and also social networking projects, I was like, this kind

(17:04):
of behavior feels different the early adopters of an online network.
That felt very similar, a sense of pride, a sense
of identity attached to sort of an online cohort. But
what felt different here was an actual sense of ownership
in terms of, Okay, this actual token, this asset that's mine,
is custodied by me, is actually both my entrance into
this experience and also a thing that gets to grow

(17:26):
over time as more value is sort of being created.
And that sort of collectivism was the thing we wanted
to experiment with in a digital space. And so then
the story is quite you know, twenty people, thirty people,
one hundred people, five hundred people. And then by then
I was like, wait, this is really interesting. I sort
of want to step into more of a leadership role
here because it was me and seven other people sort
of contributing. And that was when I sort of stepped

(17:48):
into my role as the mayor sort of you know,
elected myself and a core team into this role. And
the first thing I'll say, which I think is a
fun conversation for this group here in terms of its
adjacency to sort of urbanism and civics, is you know,
wanting to be really clear that my role was not
as a CEO, but was as a mayor, and then
I'm here to sort of represent the people. And I
thought that fundamental shift in that leadership role would plant

(18:11):
the seeds for an online community or social network platform
to be actually built people first as opposed to platform first.
And so that sort of kicked off. How FTERBB has
been sort of governed today and now it's a six
thousand person, you know, membership community organization. It's a community
owned social network where funding projects across the network within

(18:31):
the community. We've thrown hundreds of events all over the
world organized by community members who received tokens as compensation
for organizing those events, from gallery tours to coffee tasting
to club nights in Paris, to building our own social software,
our own products, and in our own physical goods like
apparel and merchandise and CpG, with all of that value

(18:52):
accruing back into that shared bank account sort of no
different than like almost like an ip or like a franchise,
where where value sort of flows back that shared treasury,
and that shared treasury you know, is a reflected This
is a question and a kind of checking my own understanding.
I join, I pay to join, and I pay in

(19:12):
the form of these tokens that I hold. So as
I bring value to the community, the value of my holdings,
my ownership stake also goes up. Is that the kind
of mutually beneficial economic theory behind this? Yeah, why do
you care so much about the culture part, mister mayor,
And I want to come back to the mayor in
the election point in just a second, But how are

(19:32):
you defining it and what does that mean for you
in terms of the currency here culture like capital c
like at large, the community's culture. The idea that FWB
itself is built around music, around arts, around these cultural
things where there are many dows which are built just
around the idea of the token itself totally totally right,
or they're organized to purchase something like that constitution dow,

(19:54):
which I was also a part of because I thought
it was weird and fun. So culture is the focus here?
What yeah? I mean? I think first off, community that
comes together organically and experimentally often has like threads that
connect it without it even being like an explicit manifesto
or mission statement. Right. I think we all came together
because all of us worked in cultural spaces, and I
think to date the crypto narrative has been heavily dominated

(20:15):
via financialization speculation and this you know ico boom and
by this token and number goes out initial coins offerings,
and we were all, like, you know, a lot of
us also our technologist were interested in technology, not cold
hard technology, but how technology can perhaps enhance human connection
and human experiences. And while this crypto boom was happening,

(20:37):
we all just became interested like can this actually accentuate
these cultural spaces that we all sort of came from.
And so that's sort of like one track that we're interested. Okay, fundamentally,
how does this technology impact our industries was where this started.
And the second, I think the more sort of like
meta angle of it is a lot of us have
been frustrated because we've participated in many different cultural spaces,

(20:59):
from those early nightclubs or bar scenes in certain neighborhoods
that then became overly gentrified once high rise commercial development
and real estate agents came in and q the Williamsburg narrative.
And we've all been a part of those various different
stories and those fifteen year movements and were interested in
perhaps new mechanics or ways where those early artists could

(21:22):
actually capture some of that value on that gentrification curve,
and interested in does that same curve apply in digital spaces.
And so we were really interested in, like, clearly, there's
going to be a role for culture in crypto. At
that moment, there wasn't quite one yet. Everyone participating in
crypto was heavily financially oriented, and NFTs really became the

(21:44):
first framework where culture could enter crypto. Artists could actually
create digital artwork and have that be stored on chain,
and we were just the community layer on top of that.
Movement that saw a need to connect creators, technologists, developer
subject knowledge experts, people who were first timers, and to
create a fun space of camaraderie where folks could learn,

(22:05):
share and exchange knowledge together while also playing with the
fundamental technology itself. So yeah, so you've got a culturally
oriented membership club where the value of that collective is
more formally recognized than others and maybe more fairly distributed
than the historical analogies were often familiar with. Yeah, and
I'll add the last point, which I think it helps

(22:26):
click it for a lot of people, is those tokens
beyond value cruel are also the fundamental way you vote
in the network. So it's how you're able to put
up a proposal to fund an artist in residency program.
It's how you're able to vote on how we want
to change the network. Recently, community members proposed actually merging
two membership tiers because they were unsatisfied with one of

(22:47):
the membership tiers and they said, this is actually a
lackluster experience, and we want to propose merging these two
experiences together. And that was brought up by a community
member that went to a very contentious debate and it
passed and it's been implemented, and so it's one of
those is where how I think about it is, imagine
if the first thousand users or Facebook could actually weigh
in on the advertising model. That's how I approach and

(23:07):
think about this is would that have changed the outcomes?
And that vote not just being like a pole system
that actually doesn't care any weight, like Elon running on
Twitter doing polls all day. That vote is actually the
fundamental stock or equity or value cruel of that organization
and that entity itself, Like that became really really interesting
to us. Yeah, and that part fascinates me as well,

(23:29):
because merely having money in the system, you know, charging
for use of the service can give you us a
greater sense of one to pick up trash. But being
an owner is a whole other thing. So being a
subscriber is very different from being an owner and then
having say in the decision even the structure of the
thing itself. That's just it's distributing power in this form

(23:50):
of the practice. Then, as you said, there's a big spectrum.
What are the other ways that someone experiences that value
or cruel. I'm a member of this thing, I get
to propose, I get to vote, I get to launch
external experiments, and overall the value of my tokens might rise.
How else there's value accumulation experience by these participants. Yeah,

(24:11):
I think without being corny, corny, it's okay'll be corny. Like,
you know, an inside joke or a meme inside of
our community is maybe the benefits were the friends we
made along the way. You know that I didn't write
that try to warn me and I against my judgment.
I gave you the benefit of the j but you know,
without being corny, I read and I was like, that's

(24:33):
actually true. Like I think what transcends all of this
is it's not really about the money. The money, you know, currency, financials,
money is a is a weird thing, and it makes
things interesting. It makes things dark, it makes things exciting.
It places value on things that might not need to
even have value placed onto them. But we can all
agree money is interesting and ultimately the community currency is

(24:55):
a vehicle for the conversation that ultimately drives the connection.
And that's what's interesting to me full stop, is just
the people who have met and connected through friends with benefits,
who have become co founders, who have become business partners,
who have received funding for their nonprofits, to you know,
met their life partners. It's it's been incredible to see
and those are I think anyone who who's in movement

(25:17):
building or community building, the ultimate like aha moment is
always when that compounds over. You know, we've been doing
now for two and a half years, not a long time,
but to see now full companies that have gone on
and built incredible things in the ecosystem because they met
in a chat room is always really really exciting. It's
not an open community. There's an application process, there's a cost.

(25:38):
How does one become a friend with benefits? So right now,
essentially we think about it as a citizenship and tourism. Okay,
so there's citizenship as in, if you want to become
a member, you apply, and the community read your application
and votes on it and welcomes you in. And essentially
all we're looking for is that you're here and you
want to contribute. So step one application application, then the

(26:02):
community votes, and then if that application is accepted, you're
then sent instructions and a welcome email, college admission vibes,
and you're onboarded and there's all these new member, welcome
hangs and all this sort of stuff, and what's the tuition.
The tuition is seventy five tokens, which I fluctuates from
five hundred bucks to seven hundred field bucks. And once
you're in, you're able to go float around our digital city.

(26:23):
There's hundreds of channels in the discord. We've actually built
our own mobile app and it has its own social
feed and so there's all these digital connections. But that
is a portal into the hundreds of events that are
organized by the community around the world in your city
to be able to interact and connect with people in
real life, as well as getting access to various different
digital and physical goods, products and sort of services from merchandise, apparel, cold,

(26:47):
you know whatever, the community sort of making and creating.
That's what membership looks like. That's what citizenship looks like.
And that citizenship allows you to fundamentally vote. Let's you vote,
have a say, put proposals up, and contribute to and
of all the network itself. Tourism is how you participate
in FWB. If you don't want to be a member,
you can actually participate in various different physical events, digital

(27:10):
events just by holding f TOBB tokens much lower threshold
one to five FWB, from ten bucks to fifty bucks,
and you're able to go to various different things that
are all organized by the community. And our hope is
that you know, if you like visiting our city, you'll
eventually want to move here. Who are these members or
the tourists where what kind of people are signing up

(27:31):
at this point or have signed up at this point? Yeah,
I think there are people who come from a whole
swath of different backgrounds, but mostly cultural backgrounds are music, entertainment, technology, etc.
Who are interested in how crypto might affect their industry
or their space. It's folks who are asking these kinds
of questions who are interested in the role that this

(27:52):
might play in it and are looking to connect with
other people in this space who are here for bigger
reasons beyond just you know, making a lot of money
or flipping NFTs or buying tokens. Like it's really people
who are fundamentally interested in the technology itself and it's
implications for culture. That sounds very familiar, That sounds actually
pretty attractive. How much money all got in the bank,

(28:13):
You got these tokens, You've raised money. Part of the
whole thing is a group chat with the bank account.
So what's the treasury like? Yeah, what's cool is the
treasury is all in chain, so everyone can see and
view all in real time. The assets that this community holds.
I think it's about eighteen nineteen million US dollars worth
of sort of various different assets. And you know, at
its peak was like fifty million dollars and you know
about six eight months ago. Okase on the fluctuations of

(28:36):
the tokens and other tokens that we hold from ethereum
to other community tokens that we hold for subcommunities that
have spawned out of FWB. But yeah, the treasury probably
holds right about in eighteen twenty million dollars right now.
A value in there, and what in your view are
a couple of the coolest things to emerge from this
community from this environment, whether it's a product and app,
a relationship, a tool, What my dad look like? What

(28:59):
has that look like? Yeah, let's see. I mean earlier
this summer, we threw our first community produced festival, which
was really rad. We rented out a Liberal arts campus
outside of Los Angeles. Seven hundred community members came down
for that and we threw a three day sort of
symposium that featured music from James Blake, Jpeg Mafia, and

(29:20):
one o Tricks Point Never to talks and discussions and
discourse from leading sort of experts in the community and
outside of the community, with a full culinary program and
wellness program, And it was absolutely incredible and all the
community members, you know, half the lineup was community members
who offered up their talents or their skills and were
compensated in tokens for their sort of contribution. So that

(29:42):
was just a really incredible highlight of the year for
me to see this digital city, which can kind of
feel kind of alien like or foreign or sterile, to
then see everyone in real life and it totally felt
surprising and refreshing to meet someone that I had shared
a digital experience with for the last two years to
spend time in person. You know, a lot of us

(30:03):
grew up on internet forums. I think that's also another
common threat of FWB community members is a lot of
us were early early you know, music forums, punk forums,
aol aim chat rooms. You know. Our average age breakdown
is I would say, like mid twenties to like late
thirties and so a lot of folks being very familiar
with forum culture and sort of that now spelling into

(30:24):
sort of IRL world is an interesting thing that's been explored.
So I would say that's been an amazing highlight. And
the one I'm most excited about is just us actually
building our own social network. So we're in sort of
like beta mode right now. We've got about one hundred
community members on there who are like battle testing it
right now. We're planning on releasing it Q one of
next year. And the idea as essentially, you know, everything

(30:46):
to date has been run on top of a discord.
Discord is essentially run platform comes with its fair share
of challenges. It's very hard to hit that learning curve
of how do you filter through hundreds of channel yeah,
completely synchronous messages with no seemingly order to the chaos,
and it's like slack on cocaine. It's like slack on coke, Yeah, exactly,

(31:08):
exactly with thousand and you can imagine that with thousands
and thousands of people chatting every single day, you get
tagged in something and you can't find it. Yeah. And
so after serving the landscape and trying out a couple
different solutions, our community decided to build our own, so
we've been building sort of our own mobile app experience
that is actually primarily sort of image base for now

(31:28):
and allows for the community to share almost like an
Instagram or TikTok, share content within this community. That also
aggregates all the events happening in our community as well
as all the profiles so everyone can connect and add friends,
as well as the governance so inside of the app
itself you can put proposals up to change and evolve
the network itself, which is also such an for me.

(31:49):
It's an easy lead to go from what if that
were the experience in my other social networks and it's
the missing piece. Those decisions are being made but by
invisible committees that I have really no sway over, more
of a bid, every choice to join or not to join. Okay, Alex,
you're the mayor. You've used the word city like thirty times.
You said you elected yourself, which sounds like a dictator.

(32:11):
Just frame this for me about what does it mean
for you to be the mayor and do this facilitation
that you've described, and how does the city metaphor apply
In a little bit more detailed to f TOVV. Yeah.
So it all started when this was sort of being
built and we were all in real time like asking
ourselves like what is this. Every day new people were joining,

(32:34):
you know, Press loves to kind of put their stamp
of approval or disapproval on things, and all of a sudden,
the narrative was to centralized soho house, which you can
clearly see why a lot of us were eye rolling
to that and being like, that doesn't totally feel like
what we're trying to do here. Instead, we were interested in,
really like, what does an online community on steroids look like?
Like this felt more like a subreddit that had its

(32:55):
own economy than like a member's club that was like
about eating forty dollars salmons and you know, schmoozing. We
were more interested in, just like, what is an online
community that actually builds its own economies look like? And
someone in the community actually said, FWB isn't actually a
company or a Deessentiliz solo house. FWB is a city

(33:17):
that isn't physically distributed yet, and that for some reason clicked.
We were on a town hall with hundreds of us.
We do town halls every month. Where we talk about
issues in the community, and we all ask ourselves, wait,
this totally is like a city, just abstract away the
physicality of it. Yeah, like we are a city in
that if you were to ask what type of person
does New York City attract? We could all clearly, you know,

(33:38):
break down stereotypes or types of people that thrive in
New York But you cannot pinpoint one user of New
York City and so people who like pain, people who
love pain exactly, massacists and so and so. For us,
we were like, wait, that is totally how we want
to steward and build FWB. We want to FVB to
be open to everybody. Yes, New York City issive. Yes,

(34:00):
New York City is known for its culture and for
its food and for its art, similar to f TOVV
being known for its culture and its art and its
cultural sort of proximity. But ultimately, New York City is
what you make of it, as is FTVV is what
you sort of make of it. And so once we
started to run through that analogy and we began to
really explore various different urban theory and urban planning frameworks

(34:21):
to how we should grow AFTERVB, things started to make
a lot more sense. So for example, not running AFTERBB
like a startup or a company that seeks that's everybody else?
Does that? Everybody? We want? Interesting? The premise is that
your social network, your digital gathering space, your online community
needs to be a business totally. And you said no

(34:43):
one needs to be a city. To continue on what
that difference feels like. Yeah, and so when you call
something a business, a business exists to drudge profit and
profit comes from hopefully your revenue is more than your expenses,
and then that extra amount gets distributed to owners. Cooperatives
are interesting because that surplus gets distributed to the entire pie.
But we were really interested in a city framework because

(35:05):
we thought, instead of thinking about pure profit, how do
we actually think about GDP, How do we actually think
about expanding economic activity of the network. How do we
actually think about income per individual? How can we think
about generating opportunities for people inside an FTVV? How do
we think about our import and our export strategy where

(35:29):
we can actually import goods and export goods and capture
fee on those goods that go back to the treasury
and utilize the community as a cooperative to essentially promote
and distribute those various different goods or products or services.
And so we began experimenting with a couple of things
to test that thesis out. Early on, we began to
create artwork in the form of NFTs. We had so

(35:50):
many artists, visual artists, graphic artists inside the community who
we're experimenting with NFT technology. And Eric, who an amazing designer,
created a project called Monarchs, which were these beautiful digitally
generative butterflies. And you know, he had a long back.
He was the creative director at Essence and Nike, and
he created this amazing butterfly project that generated three million

(36:12):
dollars in terms of primary sales, and he chose to
give f TOWB you know, ten percent of that revenue
back to the treasury in exchange for the community itself
supporting and uplifting that artist. That generated you know, close
to half a million, seven hundred thousand dollars within the
course of that sale, which then we used to begin
to fund various different art programs and other experiences inside

(36:34):
of F TOWB. So, you know, thinking about the idea that, okay,
how do we actually expand economic activity of a cohort
of individuals as opposed to primary business models of communities
to date, which are like recurring subscriptions, were charging an
entry fee and monetizing explicitly on how many users come

(36:54):
in to your individual network. So let me pause you there.
The example that you gave. My first question was like,
why would an artist run it through FWB when they
can just launch their thing? But there was a value
exchange of the kind right promotion distribution marketing, which could
cost money. Your GDP analogy is really interesting to me,
and I saw a comment from Tanya Fox and the

(37:16):
chat Hello Tanya, So I want to plug this one
in right now. There's limits to the value of GDP,
right Like GDP doesn't capture all sorts of things. GDP
is a measure of planetary destruction in some ways as well.
So how much does your city metaphor adhere to methods
of city management that we're trying to get away from

(37:37):
versus more sustainable, regenerative ways of managing city collectively that
we want to approach and be more like? Yeah, absolutely,
I mean obviously our city analogy is is quite theoretical.
We're very much not leaning exclusively on running urban infrastructure
play here. I think it's really just looking at really
alternatives to running profit in businesses in terms of community

(38:02):
organized platforms. So it's really less about like, oh, everything
we do has to follow the city analogy. It's more
borrowing and remixing components that feel more organic to community
driven projects. And so I at least believe that if
your primary product are users and people, there should be
a way to attribute value and grow value for those individuals,

(38:23):
as opposed to just purely extracting value from those individuals.
After the break, what elections and voting on the blockchain
look like and what we can learn about economics from
the club. Yes, we talk in nightclubs. It's such a
great episode. I'm curious about the decision making structure of FWB.

(38:51):
You don't as mayor impose your will in the community.
You've talked about people floating proposals and their tokens allow
them to vote, but high level of view how our
decisions made and how our proposals floated and voted a
pun So right now, I would I always say the
FWB runs much more like a representative democracy as opposed
to a direct democracy. So we've had a lot of

(39:12):
roles that have been sort of put up for a vote,
an election, and then the community votes that person in
because I believe, you know, tragedy of the comments. You know,
the whole notion that if you have just like thousands
of people making thousands of decisions, you know, you kind
of get a pretty chaotic mess. But if you have
a thousand people sort of electing a group of decision
makers with the right sort of checks and balances put
in place of sort of say impeachment in an extreme scenario,

(39:35):
to just various different checkpoints along the way, you can
actually run a somewhat symbiotic, flat sort of leadership structure.
Because the truth is also a majority of people don't
want to lead. A lot of people just want to
be along for the ride. Not everyone wants to like
necessarily work inside of a cooperative. And so in our instance,
I would say, you know, a third and a half
of our roles have been elected in terms of like

(39:55):
the community as some role where it's you know, whether
there's the city representatives or they're in specific roles, and
then other roles are a little bit more evergreen, as
it's a little bit of like just keeping you know,
at the end of the day, like a lot of
this is theoretical and where we are like a two
year old experiment that a lot of it requires just
keeping the lights on, you know, our legal team, our
operational team, myself, like various different folks. Where if I

(40:17):
was just going up for election every single year, I
think it would get quite exhausting quite soon. But the
goal very much is as FTBB continues to decentralize. It
was started centrally by one person with a founder. It's
now past leadership hands multiple times. I anticipate my involvement
in a sort of a mayoral capacity for another year
or so before another person is able to step in.

(40:37):
Once we've hit a couple of key sort of legal
milestones and operational milestones of how it can function, that
f TOBB can continue to decentralize and be governed by
its token holders or its community. What does the town
hall feel like? How do those operate? How many people
show they're electric? It's I mean literally because they're on
like a server. Yeah exactly that man figuratively. But they're fun.

(40:59):
You know, they're there are a chance for us to
check in, me, to check in with the community. You know,
we'll throw them on zoom no different like this. People
are chatting all day and asking questions. You know, we
usually have some sort of a presentation. It's almost like
our board meeting where we'll present to the community of
like metrics, projects, accomplishments, areas of improvement, and then we
open it up for questions. And so it's a mix

(41:20):
between a town hall to an Apple keynote presentation of
exciting shiny products and events and things that have emerged
from the community. And it's very much round robin where
we pass the mic around and allow different folks in
different sort of team leads who've worked on really great
projects to share what they're working on. You know, from
our editor of an editorial platform that sort of covers

(41:40):
news and essays across culture and Web three, and that
has a really interesting perspective. In POV, it's definitely more
on the more critical side of Web three, which we
love in terms of ways it can improve. And it's
not just crypto crypto crypto, but talking about the downsides
of constitution dow and how it lost its way, or
you know, diversity issues of diversity and inclusion in Web

(42:03):
three and how that can be improved, all the way
to our product team providing updates. But yeah, it's very
much like a fun way where we're able to check
in and communicate information as well as create a space
where people can just share how their experiences. So you've
used this representative democracy analogy. You even have town halls
like physical cities. Do I'm wondering if you also see
FWB as this sandbox for experiments for ways to practice

(42:27):
new methods of communal self governance. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean
the whole thing is a massive experiment every day and
we tell ourselves that, and within that experiment is a
myriad of micro experiments from like quorum based voting to
quadratic voting systems. Like we're really much on the forefront
of exploring new forms of voting mechanics that are beyond
one person, one vote or one token one vote. But

(42:48):
instead let me Yeah, I do want to get wonky
about that, because I think part of the spirit of
my question is I think so many of us feel
collectively uninspired by democratic small D democratic practice actually means.
And so we have our ritual voting experience, and we
have our built in lack of faith and trust in

(43:10):
our representatives in our representative democracy, and we are fatigued
by the influence of outside money and all these things. Cool. Cool,
So yes, double tap on that one. In terms of
the decision making tools you are playing with, can you
define the quadratic voting, define the quorum based thing as
opposed to just one token, one vote, one person, one
vote as we know in the outside world. Yeah, totally,

(43:31):
So trout voting frameworks one person, one vote, Right, you're
a citizen's sort of registered to your identification, you can
cost one vote. In crypto, that's a little bit more
hard because of what it's called civilly resistant, meaning it's
actually very difficult to verify that one person is actually
one person, right, because it's one wallet, one vote, and
so someone can create hundreds of ghost wallets and be

(43:53):
able to vote because there's no real identification system in cryptocurrency. Honestly,
no different than being able to spin up dozens of
fake Facebook accounts to be able to go right, because
you just create infinite email addresses, create up new Facebook accounts,
and then imagine that tied to a voting heroistory. So
that's one person, one vote, one wallet, one vote. Then

(44:15):
there's one token, one vote, which obviously the red flags
go off of like, well, if you just have more tokens,
you get more voting. So then they begin just how
your current system feels like it works exactly. So then
que quadratic voting, which is a way to sort of
de emphasize one token, one vote while still giving power
to people who have accumulated tokens, because ultimately accumulating tokens

(44:37):
doesn't necessarily have to be singularly a bad thing. Many
people enough to bebe earned their tokens for contributing and
working and showing up to events, and so one might
posit you deserve more say in the network because you
actively have shown up and you've actively been to town halls,
and you are a valued member of this network. So

(44:57):
quadratic is essentially a way to create an add weight
in voting of those tokens, and it allows for you
to place a level of confidence quadratically into quadrants to
say this is how much I actually care about this decision,
And it condenses the level of voting so that let's
say you have one token and I have one hundred

(45:19):
tokens on a one token, one vote, that would be
very stark, and a more quadratic format that might be
trunk because the weight that you're applying to yours. You
might your total sum exactly. You might be like, you
know what, I actually don't care about this that much,
so I'm going to put on a one to ten.
I'm going to allocate ten percent to this. But you know,
it'd be cool if it passes, but my life doesn't

(45:39):
change if it doesn't. Versus a major proposal, and like
everything is on the line, like you know, an election.
We explored quadratic polling with Audrey Tangue from Taiwan, and
exactly this infrastructure, which just reveals a different level I
would say, a lower level of seeming polarization. Yes, because
when you ask by any request and did you get

(46:00):
binary answers exactly weighted questions and you get weighted and
nucunced answers, and so counting votes in that way is
also very interesting. Why, Alex, other than the sort of
potential scamming of like multiple wallets coordinating to vote attacks,
what is your incentive to experiment with these methods of

(46:22):
digital civic participation? Why are you messing around? I just
think it's fun, you know, I think like I think
like so much of civics is boring right now and unengaged,
and like you said, we're all bored and looking for
new outcomes and new ways to engage with those outcomes.
And I think for us, like where overall, civic participation
is probably waning, and the younger kids get, the less

(46:43):
they even care, it seems, and ultimately we're interested in
shifting that narrative and that perception of civic participation to
not just equating to voting in a presidential election or
voting in a local, you know, district election, but insteady
voting in spaces you care about being one of them,
digital being one that our kids are probably spending eighty

(47:04):
percent of their days and lives in. And so I
think creating more interesting ways for people to have a
say in their digital spaces that doesn't need to feel
so complicated but can feel fun is something that we
really really care about. So a fun example for that
would be we started organizing these events through the community

(47:24):
all over the world, and we thought, wouldn't it be
fun if we could actually elect city leads to top
in a little bit more budget to throw bigger and
more fun events and almost have a little bit more
sort of jurisdiction over a specific city and oh yeah,
a little bit more autonomy. And so what we ended
up seeing was dozens of people apply, submit campaign videos,

(47:47):
create campaign strategies to become the LA lead in the
New York lead, in a London lead, in San Francisco lead.
And then all that was running in a massive election
where we had people like postering and going on podcasts.
It was so fun to see and all of that
to me was just like, I hope this encourages people
just to even go out and vote in their towns

(48:08):
and their cities, because clearly you can see how fun
this is to just give people power and to pick
your favor in a root for someone on a micro level,
which I think local is important, and that local, you know,
sort of just drives more engagement because it feels closer
to home. Yo, you were singing my tune. I don't
know that I've ever shared with you that I was
mayor a four square Like I won an award for

(48:29):
being the best mayor in the four Square universe and
I competed with someone for the mayorship of one Venue
in New York City and Nolita, and we had campaign
rallies and we both signs and we did. We picketed
each other's moments, and it just it made civics fun,
even though that was a sandbox we were playing and
we had no ownership over the platform plan the main

(48:50):
technology fun. I mean, that sounds so fun four square
back then, and like now we're left with these massive,
behemoth social networks that don't feel fun anymore. So I
want to build on that, and I'm seeing a bridge
and I hope that this is where it can go.
If more people participate in social taws like this with
the city metaphor rather than the business growth metaphor, it's

(49:12):
a chance to play around with democratic culture. It's a
chance to kind of use those muscles of not just voting,
even quadratically, but contributing. What you described about sort of
having your civic contributions recognized by attending events, by showing
up for town hall meetings, by bringing your offerings to

(49:33):
the community, to participate even economically, and that rather than
just keeping it to yourself, so resource distribution. I want
to see that practice replicated beyond the discord server right,
and beyond the FWB app. Do you see that bridge happening.
Do you think that this online civic innovation practice can
affect our offline civic innovation practice. Yeah. Absolutely. I think

(49:56):
it's all modeled behavior, right. I think if people can
begin to see that these annas are fun and they
work and they can improve something, it might restore faith
in the overall system and structure itself, which then might
encourage more sort of ripple out effects for people to
get involved in their own local organizations or their own
local cooperatives or groups. So our focus at least is
to really think about, you know, the role that crypto

(50:18):
can plain culture. You know, we want to be advocates
of crypto. We know crypto has been cursed with a
case of really really bad pr and rightfully so, tons
of scammers, tons of charlatans. It's a very muddled space,
but for us, we care about being advocates for it.
We threw an event in New York at Good Room,
a legendary club in green Point that was really struggling

(50:38):
during COVID, a bar venue that has been a sort
of a bedrock of Brooklyn for ten years. And we
threw a party, and we did an auction with all
the proceeds to go to that venue and raised sixty
seventy k in crypto and taught that venue how to
set up a wallet, had to custody that those assets,
how to earn you more of those assets that ultimately

(50:58):
they said helped them achieve fifty cent of their fundraising goal,
be a kickscharter. Things like that. We just want to
show people that crypto doesn't all have to be bad.
It doesn't all have to be about gatekeeping. Isn't all
have to be about scams. There's people building interesting things
in this space. It's coming whether we like it or not.
And we hope to be one of those corners of
the Internet that uses crypto in an interesting way to

(51:19):
show folks that it can accrue different forms of value
beyond just financial and it can lead to stronger human coordination,
can lead to better incentive design, and can hopefully create
new digital spaces that are more closely and sort of
self or community governed than our existing options. I want
to spend three more hours with you. I can't do that.

(51:40):
What I can do, though, is reflect briefly on the
crypto comment as a bridge to the role of economics
in general. You've cited Wendell Berry, this poet, novelist, environmentalist,
saying a community to be whole must also be an economy.
My cards are open, I hold some crypto assets. I'm
a member of some dolls. I'm also deeply critical of

(52:01):
the idea that we need to financialize things in order
to innovate them, while I'm also excited by new models
of ownership. So I'm conflicted, but informedly optimistically skeptical, and
hearing that quote about community to be real must also
be an economy that rubs me a little odd. It
sounds a little controversial, and I'm like, does it though,

(52:21):
at least the way we have recognized economy with infinite
growth and all the harm that comes along with it.
So can you just explore that a little bit with me?
What do you mean by that? Why do you cite
that statement, and how do you think it means we
should practice community truly? Yeah, I love that question. I
think we need to decouple the definition of economy from

(52:42):
like late stage capitalistic American economy. I think economy as
a definition is just an exchange. And so when I
say that a community to be whole must also be
an economy, I do not mean a community to be
a whole must be a late stage capitalist profit driven
to tea. An economy doesn't even need necessarily be money.

(53:03):
It can be an economy of non financial goods. You know,
if you study sort of like who the author but
debt the first thousand years, the first quarter of the book,
like it's the history of debt and how debt was created,
and they study how most of these sort of groups
and tribes and organizations of people existed and scaled by trading,
you know, leila cloths and seashells and various different goods,

(53:26):
and currency was just the most effective way to actually
create a ledger of one goat equaling you know, six
cows or whatever. And I can only speak to the experience,
I know, as I'm not an economist, and I you know,
I'm a club kid. Clubs have economies. You're trading and
bartering backstage tickets, drugs, drink tickets, experiences, sex, whatever it

(53:47):
might be. There's an economy there, there's an exchange of energy,
there's an exchange of experiences. Because I think any community
that has actually begun to grow an identity, there is
always an inherent urge I believe to create, to create memes,
and I use memes. Is the broad conceptual thing, to
create shared language, to create culture, and an economy. An

(54:12):
exchange of those components, whether the financial assets or non
financial assets, feel incredibly native and organic, an emergent. And
so yeah, when I quote Barry, I don't mean that
every community needs to have a token, or every community
needs to be financialized or should exist to drive profit.
Any community that has meaning, there are probably ways in
which that community exchanges things between each other. Whether it's

(54:33):
a potlock and they all bring you food to a house,
that's a form of an exchange of value being exchanged
across one another. Thank you for that update. The book
is Debt The First five Thousand Years by anthropologist David Graber.
Y'all did a census, Mayor you did an FWB census,

(54:53):
and we touched on this. You know. One of the
pieces of feedback was that the discord was overwhelming, said
it was a fire hose, And so you're trying to
solve that, right, you already announced this app and that's
going to help that out. But do you think in
terms of the scale that a DOO could get how big? Right?
Do you think a DOO could work at the scale
of a nation or a major city or something in

(55:15):
between a state. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean I'm not a
huge subscriber of bology network state. I think he can
be a little bit too techno utopian. But like BLOGI
Strinivasian who wrote a book called Network State, which is
digital cities and digital nation states. Look, yeah, I think
dows could reach that scale, right. I think you're seeing
dials that have now accrued sixty seventy eighty million dollars

(55:36):
worth of assets, which could probably become comparable to super
super small towns. I think it's only amount of time,
our cities the only amoutter of time before some of
those dows begin to actually connect and trade with each other,
forming super dows. I think that's totally in the world
for But I think maybe the question under your question
is like, what does that actually look like? What does
it take to get there? You know? I think ultimately

(56:00):
anything that reaches the scale of a nation state will
ultimately become a network of dows. There will be subdows
as we call them in sort of our space, where
you have micro committees or organizations that custody their own assets,
that trade and interoperate with the parent dow organization in
interesting ways. That ultimately that network itself, you can call it,
you know, I don't know, federalist, you know, states versus

(56:21):
the nation. However, people would want to structure it. Right now,
it's still super early, and it's still super reflective based
on a larger crypto economy. But I totally see a
world of wunch. DOWS can reach very large sets of
scale that end up becoming sort of networks or nests
of smaller organizations. One thing that I'm intrigued by is
I'm concerned about a divestment from the IRL universe in

(56:44):
favor of online universes. I think that's what freaks me
out so much about Zuckerberg's vision of the metaverse, that
we're just going to live with goggle strapped to our
faces and as it eventually, just have like catheters and
feeding tubes and never leave our shelves. You know, well
we kind of stored inside, but we'll have all this
rich life through the screens. I want to see the combination, right,

(57:05):
I want to see us use digital tools to enhance
not just our digital lives, but our whole lives. And
so thinking about DOWS, what if we flipped it a
little bit and said Okay, you're already a member of
an apartment complex or a county or a city, and
as a part of that residential relationship or that physical relationship,

(57:25):
you get a DOW membership too, to enhance your ability
to self govern with others. And so you're not kind
of trading one for the other, you're hopefully using one
to inform the other. Have you seen anything like that?
What do you think about that idea of kind of
a complementary DOW or online governance community rather than a

(57:46):
substitution for physical community. I mean, that's by far what's
most exciting to us, right. I think we all don't
subscribe to zucks Daddy Zucks, you know, metaverse link up,
you know, goggle Verse is not interesting to us either.
We've we've always said technologies to accentuate reality and highlight
physicality and be a lot more high fidelity, you know.

(58:08):
I always say we live in the metaverse now, right,
Like our phones are so connected to our lives and
I can open it at this exact moment and find
fifteen things to do in New York City and friends
to connect with immediately and jump into it. And that
to me feels like some liminal space between physical and digital,
which is I think the actual definition of the metaverse
in terms of Dows's applications to real world structures. Yeah,

(58:31):
I love that. I think I saw someone in the
comment mentioned city doos. You know a way that DAWs
can steward land conservation and preservation. You know, I think
for us we're very much coming at it from physical
We're thinking about CANADAO actually govern a decentralized events network?
You know, is there a way where daals can actually
reward an allocate capital to people who want to throw
events all over the world. That's something that I'm super

(58:51):
interested and passionate about, you know, full loop to the
beginning of like most things shouldn't be taos, I totally
still stand by that most things don't need to live
on the blockchain, most things don't need to be crypto based.
But in a world where that technology provides real value
to that organizing structure, that I think a DOO is
a really great thing to explore in terms of how

(59:13):
you can create fundamental transparency and sort of value cruel
to people who participate in that network. You've mentioned many
times that doos are not required and that crypto is
not required. I kind of want to emphasize that point.
In season three of this series, we head on Pia
Mancini of Open Collective, which has created this framework for

(59:35):
organizations to collaborate around fundraising, legal, administrative, and offer full
transparency around all those numbers so they can save money,
but also show how they're using money, especially if they
are kind of decentralized organizations like mutual aid societies, etc.
And don't have the budgets to hire their own lower,
their own accountant, etc. You know, to what degree is

(59:56):
the token of requirement versus money of some kind? Can
it be credit cards? Can it be US dollars? To
still achieve so many of the goals that you want,
which is value, a cruel, transparency, and a sense of
participation beyond some concentrated group. I mean for transparency and value, cruel,
those are the tenets of cryptocurrency, right, So I think, like,

(01:00:19):
I don't know how you would enforce credit card transparency
or you know, because those are all managed on centralized servers,
you can't really look into that unless the company published
publishes that data, and then there's no way to even
verify that what they publishes. A hunters and occurate versus
on the blockchain. No one can manipulate that. That's all
run through smart contracts. So that's me baritune day here

(01:00:39):
with an explainer Tune Day. Smart contracts were conceptualized by
computer scientist and legal scholar Nick Zabo way back in
nineteen ninety four, and they've since been incorporated into blockchain
networks that cryptocurrencies like ethereum and Bitcoin run on. To
try to be as simple as possible. A smart contract
is a computer program written into a blockchain, and it

(01:01:02):
automatically executes the term of an agreement or contract when
certain conditions are met. In theory, this eliminates the need
for intermediaries like my very trustworthy accountant or lawyers or notaries,
and help ensure that all kinds of contract terms are
followed transparently and accurately. Now, smart contracts do have limitations.

(01:01:23):
You've got to be able to express your contract terms
in computer code. In the first place. That code is
tamper proof, which is good for security, but bad if
you make a mistake in the code or need to
change the contract because you can't. And there's a lack
of legal and regulatory clarity on how these contracts are
treated by existing authorities. So overall, smart contracts are a

(01:01:45):
great safeguard in theory, but they're still being worked out
in practice. Sound familiar, kind of like democracy. Oh yeah,
here we go. Anyway back to Alex's I'm having too
much fun on the blockchain. No one can manipu like that.
That's all run through smart contracts, So that to me
addresses transparency value cruel. You know, sure value cruel can

(01:02:07):
can be reflected in equity, which has been done in cooperatives.
That's you know, yeah, that totally solves that, but it's
very hard to you know, I've invested in support a
lot of different fractionalized equity companies. You know, we've seen
so many of our friends raised companies on like micro
equity fundraises. I think those are great and those are
super effective. I just think they're very non favorable to
non US clients, people who don't have bank accounts, people

(01:02:30):
who want to engage in it. It is a little
bit limiting in that capacity as well. So there's a
large animal in the room that I want us to address,
which you've hinted at in terms of the scandals and
controversies plaguing this whole crypto space, and we've had many,
many collapses. The value of overall coins and tokens is
down sbf ftx FWTF. Right, there's it's wild with the

(01:02:55):
promises that were made in the mismanagement in something that
was supposed to be transparent and help people without traditional banking,
you know, a crew value, and the opposite has happened
in that case, but not just that case, many others.
You're in this world. FWB is a part of this world.
What's been the impact of the loss of trust in
a system that was supposed to be a solution to

(01:03:17):
the loss of trust in the system? I mean it's
a real shame, right. I think crypto really has been
the subject of really really bad pr for rightful reasons.
And I think in any space that's so hyper financialized,
you had a lot of people who flight it in
to make a quick buck. That's the issue with these
hyper capitalist environments. It's effect on us, luckily, hasn't been massive,

(01:03:40):
mostly because we've always operated in more of like sort
of a social cultural space as opposed to like a
purely defy financialized space. Sure, it's made people a little
bit more hesitant to be like, okay, am I about
to buy this token right now? Is that actually real thing?
You know? I've had a lot of people come up
between the last month and a half. Not FBB people,
but more just like your aunt at Thanksgiving, who is

(01:04:02):
like his crypto going to fully viscrate. Is it even
going to be a thing anymore? Yes, it'll still be
a thing, you know. It is going to continue to exist,
just as a space for the industry to continue to
evolve and step up and improve transparency. It's communication because frankly,
what SPF showed and FTX has showed that FTX is
actually a case where if it were actually decentralized, that

(01:04:24):
would not have been possible. It would have all been transparent,
it would have all been clear. You would have been
able to see the movement of funds from various different
on chain you know accounts to different on chain accounts.
The issue was he ran a decentralized company incredibly centralized
all around him, and so ultimately, while the whole thing
is completely disastrous, he was an example of why more

(01:04:47):
decentralized exchanges like UNISWAP are literally and technically impervious to
what happened. It is impossible for that to occur because
it is decentralized. Not if the entire UNISWAP team died,
it would continue to run and exist and the exchange
would continue to fulfill exchanges of currency. Like, that's really
exciting to me. And what do you think will keep

(01:05:07):
FWB on that side of things? Keep it from being
phased out for the next shiny thing. We say, we're
not a crypto community or a community that uses crypto,
So I think as long as we keep community at
the center of it, and we continue to play with
the tools in an interesting way that enhances the community
and we remain culture first, then we'll be fine. Culture

(01:05:27):
waxes and WANs. Look at a fashion house. You'll have
a great season and the next season it will be irrelevant,
and then it'll come back. And you know, I think
of scenes and communities as similar. You can't be the
hot community forever. And ultimately, as long as you're creating
real value, people are really connecting with each other, it's
coming from a place of genuineness, I think will continue
to evolve. We actually kind of love bear markets because

(01:05:50):
you actually attract people who are here for the right reasons.
After we started in a bear market. We're now seeing
more artists join, being like, all right, it's cheaper now,
and I can actually experiment and the stakes feel less high,
and I don't need to launch an art project that
gets me global press like all my peers, and instead
I can make a stupid little project and share it

(01:06:11):
and have fun with it and not be stressed out.
That's what we love versus in the bull market, it
was everyone joining to jump onto the train, which is fine,
but those people aren't the ones defining and creating the culture. Well,
and my motivation and our strong motivation for having you
here is to talk about the value of the self governance, experimentation.

(01:06:32):
And if the price of experimentation is so high because
the markets flooded with people who don't care at all
about that, they just care about the financial speculation, then
they're actually crowding out our ability to learn from things
like this to improve things. Well, beyond this, how has
being part of a DOO affected the way you show
up as a citizen, as a colleague, as a collaborator,

(01:06:56):
as a member of community. My leadership style and all
the organizations I've been fortunate to lead has always been
much more of a facilitator. I've never been like a
dictatorial do this because I say I'm the boss. Even
in scenarios where I have been, you know, the CEO
or whatnot, I've always enjoyed being sort of one that
distributes power, one that uplifts and creates structures for qualify

(01:07:20):
people to emerge into lead. Nothing makes me happier as
a manager than when someone you're managing excels and exceeds
and now is really owning a specific department or category.
Dows is that with your users, which is so fun
to me. Dows is that with your community members where
anyone who's done community work, let's call a social nonprofit

(01:07:42):
civil rights work knows it's about uplifting those people who
are showing up to all the various different rallies and
events and empowering them and to create sort of that
network effect where ultimately, because of all volunteers, you're not
even actually paying them. And so I think of that
as like something that's always just been fundamental to my
leadership style, and DAWs have just now supercharged that because

(01:08:02):
now it's like a lot more literal. Now I can
actually compensate them in sort of this native currency. Now
their work can be recognized on chain through the format
of proposals, and that's created this really interesting loop where
now I show up in spaces that aren't even cryptospaces
from you know, various different communities or nonprofits that I
support or advise on, and try to bring some of

(01:08:23):
that similar sort of consensus making between directions as opposed
to like, I'm the boss, let's do this, because I
just don't think that that's just not how I that's
not a high lead. So it's giving you a place
to practice more of what you been preaching. Us are Alex.
We title this show how to Citizen because we believe

(01:08:44):
citizen is a verb, not simply a noun and a
legal status. It's something a lot more and it involves action.
If you are to interpret citizen as a verb, how
would you define it? What does it mean to citizen?
To you? I think to citizen is to have an
opinion and then to feel the sovereignty to be able
to put that opinion into action and to collaborate. Citizen

(01:09:07):
is that translation from opinion into action and that sort
of forward energy momentum of feeling like you can actually
make a difference in a structure. I think many of
us have opinions about things, but we keep them to ourselves,
or we mumble them or whisper them to a friend.
But I think in so many different social structures, digital, physical,
the ability to have an opinion on how something could
improve or change and then be able to put that

(01:09:29):
into action in a constructive and collaborative way. It feels
like how I would citizen constructive and collaborative, because yeah,
there's definitely no shortage of opinions, but that's for sure.
Moving them to action is another one. Alex, thank you
so much for joining me for this conversation. Thanks for
having me. This was fun. Okay, we are shifting gears

(01:09:49):
into the community. Speaking of community and an audience questions.
First up, Tanya Fox, you got Alex Alex today. Thank you.
I'm Tanya Fox in Montreal, Canada. With taking venture capital,
how does that affect the weight of other people's voting
and how is that distributed in terms of the profitability

(01:10:12):
of the other two kens. So we raised venture capital
back in November. It was about ten percent of the supply.
That was a proposal actually, so the community agreed to
accept venture funding. So we put together a proposal that
outlined all of the terms, and then the community actually
had like counter points, which was really interesting, and then
we actually negotiated and I was almost like a proxy
with the investors, and one of those counterpoints is actually

(01:10:35):
decreasing their voting power. So they wanted obviously the venture
conpitalists wanted more ownership in the network, but the community said,
we don't actually want you to have the equivalent amount
of ownership to voting power, and so we actually agreed
on a fifty percent decrease in their actual voting stake.
So while they own ten percent of the network, their
voting powers equivalently like five percent of the network. So
that was an example of diminishing sort of their governance

(01:10:57):
participation in terms of profitability. This is an early stage projects,
so they're just betting on like, hey, this is the
most interesting project we've seen of like Dow token usage,
and if this is the next New York's Digital New
York City. We just want to own a lot of
real estate. So they bought about ten percent of that
real estate. That allowed for the capital to go into
the treasury to then fund all these various different community
projects and endeavors and so I think their perspective of

(01:11:18):
profitability is as FBB continues to expand, more people join,
more people participate, more goods and services are being created.
The Dow holds dozens of various different equities and various
different companies that have emerged. It's them sort of owning
a percentage in sort of that conglomerate or that holding
of all these various different community owned assets. Thank you
for that, Alex. We're moving on to ned hit. Your

(01:11:39):
question did all right? I'm ned calling him from outside Madison, Wisconsin,
ho Chup Nation territory. So I'd like to hear more
about the mechanisms you have for ensuring I mean, kind
of like what you were seeing with the venture capital thing,
but more also to ensure that tokens do not equal
gatekeeping into terms of who gets the sort of demographics

(01:12:02):
that get to be full participants. You know, that question
of we give tokens out to people who do earn
them can very subtly and quickly shift to we give
tokens out the people we believe deserve them and that
we believe in becomes a really tricky thing. I'm curious
to know how that's worked so far. I mean, I've
got kind of maybe like a hot take in general

(01:12:23):
that I you know, sort of in praise of exclusivity,
and then I think like exclusivity actually plays a really
important role in society. I don't believe in like explicitly.
I just don't think all gatekeeping is necessarily bad. I
think if everything were inclusive, I don't think there will
be anything sort of at all. I obviously believe in
inclusivity inside of a community, but I believe if you
can create an organization that has vision, values and mission

(01:12:45):
and principles, it should turn certain people on and turn
certain people off. That's how you actually create a culture.
And so I think in terms of the token equaling gatekeeping,
we've done as best as we cant of making that
accessible to the people that we want to attract, which
the people want to attract our creatives, artists, technologists. Because
FTVB isn't for everybody, just like New York City isn't
for everybody, or you know, various different towns that you

(01:13:08):
choose to live in, and so our perspective has been, like,
you know, ensure that price has various different entry points,
ensure that there's always grant programs and scholarship programs where
folks who are qualified and are a good fit but
don't have the financial means can join and ensure you
have transparency and where those token they're going to in
terms of who's earned them and who hasn't, and sort
of carry oneself with humility and knowing that like will

(01:13:31):
continue to evolve it based on real time feedback of
how things are going. So that's sort of been our
approach to date. Like I said, we've modeled a lot
of it after like club culture, and club culture definitely
isn't perfect, but that's sort of been was a studio
fifty four quota dictatorship at the door, democracy on the
dance floor is the other thing that you know, we've
always kind of resonated where thanks for that, Alex, I

(01:13:51):
mean in praise of exclusivity. Definitely a hot take. I
don't think you're advocating for illegal discrimination, of course, but
what resonates with me is the idea that you yata
culture by having a vision, values, mission, and principles real quick.
I mean, that's what we're trying to do here with
how to citizen to create a culture of democracy. Now
ned in terms of your question about who gets rewarded

(01:14:13):
for contributions and the fairness of that. It sounds like
the ability to abuse that system is going to be
limited by how transparent the system is. So thanks for
your question. Ned. Okay, now we have Sarah Hughes. Hello,
Sarah Hughes here in Rochester, New York, part of the
unseated Adona shown a territory. I am curious just because

(01:14:35):
there's been a lot of information coming out recently about
the environmental impacts of data mining, of crypto mining, of
data farms, just all of the infrastructure required to maintain
blockchain and all of these other technologies online. And I'm
kind of an oldie. I'm trying to keep up with
the tech. But I would like to ask you if

(01:14:56):
you are others in the DOW world that you are
aware of are taking that in to account in terms
of scaling and also what the potential environmental impacts are
of this kind of community. Yeah, so I can't speak
to like bitcoin, there's tons of environmental issues with Bitcoin
or the dozens of other chains, but in terms of Ethereum,

(01:15:17):
the main currency that ours is built on top of,
has made it a top priority to address the environmental issues,
and the Ethereum community actually put up it's called the
merge and it was actually the biggest system upgrade that
was run by decentralized group of developers that is now
reduced by like ninety four percent the environmental efficiency of Ethereum,

(01:15:37):
which is really exciting for that community. Yeah, Ethereum's system upgrade,
it's changed the way they validate transactions in the merch.
Back in September twenty twenty two, actually reports said that
the switch reduced its energy usage by over ninety nine
which is amazing. So thank you for the questions. Sarah,
all right, We've got one last question, and I'm going

(01:15:57):
to ask on behalf of this person who's in a
very loudspace. Janine didn't a vice repeat contributor here, University
of Delaware professor, and it was circling back to the
questions about inclusivity. Janine wrote specifically, what does the mayor
think about issues of inclusion and diversity? What are the
demographics do you worry about that? Why or why not?

(01:16:19):
I just want to tag on. I know the way
FWB grew initially was through networks, right, friends of friends,
it was friends with benefits and those can be exclusive
in a way that is biased against people who've been
excluded already, Like if you're not in the network, you
can never be in the network because no one in
the networks knows you, and vice versa. And so I'm

(01:16:40):
very curious in terms of that access point, how you're
trying to get beyond the inherent bias of that kind
of seed community. In addition to just tacking onto a
Janine's question about demographics overall and your own thoughts on
the diversity level and inclusion and diversity from a conceptual level,
we care deeply about inclusion and diversity. It's one of

(01:17:02):
our core values. I agree that network growth tends to
be relatively homogeneous. However, we started in an artistic community,
which tends to be much more heterogeneous. Trevor's a black founder.
I'm an Asian American co founder. Like our team from
the outset was very focused on creating a network that
started with diversity built into the fundamental core of it. Unfortunately,

(01:17:26):
crypto and technology skew heavily mail. So I would say
the crypto industry at large, I would say, is like
eighty percent mail FWB sits probably close to like sixty
forty seventy thirty, and we're constantly putting out initiatives to
attract and create safety and onboarding for more diverse backgrounds
that aren't our traditional sort of main mix. But I

(01:17:47):
would say, like just at its core, we just started
from a really diverse community, just from the onset. So
many people who join FWB it was their first ever
cryptocurrency asset. In terms of diversity inclusion, you know, you
can make a ton of arguments. Diversity spans obviously beyond
just race, from gender, to age, to socioeconomic background. We
probably haven't been great at age. We're all relatively young,

(01:18:09):
and we're learning really quickly, and we mostly skewed towards
late twenties, early thirties, mid thirties. Geographic regions pretty global,
huge on sen in Asia and Europe. But obviously being
a LA New York scene in community, fifty percent of
our network, forty percent of our network are in those
key cities. We believe deeply in diversity. We're constantly improving it.
But I would say it's about sort of putting in

(01:18:31):
those mechanisms in place and making sure that your core
leadership team is diverse, which I'm really proud that ours is.
Thank you, mister Mayor, Thank you Janine, thank you Sarah,
thank you Med and thank you Tanya for your contributions.
I don't have any tokens for you, but I got
a lot of love for you. Alex. Thanks for taking
the time with us. It was really really what I
was hoping for. Appreciate you, bro. Thanks everybody. As promised,

(01:18:59):
I didn't pitch you on any crypto tokens in this episode,
and honestly, I really appreciate what Alex shared about the
possibilities in this space. But I want to be clear,
I'm not selling you anything. This is not a call
to DOW or to blockchain or to crypto. This is
a call to innovate and update our practice of citizening.

(01:19:24):
In the case of Alex and participation dows like friends
with Benefits, The questions they're asking apply well beyond blockchain
based communities. They're the same questions we should be asking,
whether we're talking about online communities or those offline. Are
we valuing people's contributions, are we fostering a collective economy?

(01:19:47):
And are we making decisions about the spaces we care about.
We spend so much of our lives existing through online platforms,
and just like we care about how we show up
in physical communities and the systems that run them, our
digital common spaces demand our citizen in two and now

(01:20:13):
it's time for some actions. Starting with an internal reflection,
Take a moment and think about your relationship to the
digital spaces you spend time in. This could be social media,
gaming or a group chat. Where do you feel like
an active participant, where you set the terms and the
tone of the environment. Where do you feel passive like

(01:20:35):
someone else is in charge? How might you change that relationship?
Our next action is in the category of becoming more informed.
We can create a healthier culture of democracy through Web
three beyond starting and joining doubt. If you're new to
this world, the New York Times has a great primer
on what Web three even is, and we've linked to

(01:20:58):
it in the show notes. You read that take a
deep dive into the history of squads, a form of
social and economic organizing that shifting power and social dynamics
away from an individualistic society. And if our conversation with
Alex made you curious, check out our season three conversation
with Eli Pariser from New Public. We go deep on

(01:21:20):
how to better design digital public spaces, and, last, but
not least, here's what I want us to try. In
terms of public participation. You're likely part of a decision
making group, a tenants or homeowners association, a parents group,
a committee at work. I'm so sorry, I'm a committee
at work. By the way. Now, the next time you're

(01:21:42):
at one of your meetings, take note of how the
group makes decisions, who speaks, who's silent, what areas are
open to input, and what's considered off the table? Is
there even an agenda? See if you can identify the
kind of culture the group has chaotic, deferential, something else.

(01:22:02):
Can you find any opportunities for the group to make
that culture more small d democratic by rotating speaking or
leadership roles, or even just openly acknowledging how decisions are
made and how that might shift. We don't always need
to find or start new groups and spaces to practice

(01:22:22):
this democracy thing, so let's start where we are. If
you take any of these actions, please brag about it
online and use the hashtag how to citizen. Also tag
our Instagram how to citizen. I am always online and
I really do see your messages, so send them finally.
See this episode show notes for more on these actions

(01:22:44):
and a link to our bookshop dot org account where
you can find all the books Alex mentioned and any
others you've heard about while listening to the show. How
to Citizen with baritun Day as a production of iHeartRadio
Podcasts and Row Home Productions. Our executive producers are me
barrettun Day, Thurston and Elizabeth Stewart. Our lead producer is

(01:23:05):
Ali Graham. Our associate producer is Donia abdel Hamid. Alex
Lewis is our managing producer, and John Myers is our
executive editor. Our mix engineer is Justin Berger. Original music
by Andrew Eapen with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions,
and our audience engagement fellows are Jasmine Lewis and Gabbie Rodriguez.

(01:23:26):
Special thanks to Joel Smith from iHeartRadio and Lay Labina.
Next time on How the Citizen, Alex believes that a
community to be whole must also be an economy, but

(01:23:46):
he doesn't mean they need to increase wealth, inequality or
drive profits at the expense of our humanity. A community
economy is just a system that acknowledges the exchange of
value and it can work for all of us. No
one believes that more than economist Kate Rayworth. What do
you think is the shape of economic progress? Because if
you listen to an economist, if you listen to a politician,

(01:24:09):
the shape apparently is growth, endlessly, right, always, always more.
Because no amotter how rich nation already is. I'm in
the UK or in the US. We live in two
of the richest countries in the history of humanity, and
yet our economists are politicians think that the solution to
all of our problems lie in yet more growth, endlessly.
There's no end in sight. Now, there's something utterly absurd

(01:24:31):
about that, and I think we really need to take
seriously what is the shape of progress? Kate Rayworth, author
of Donut Economics, Seven Ways to Think like a twenty
first century economist, shares how we can create an economy
that works for all of us, including our planet. Yay Earth,

(01:24:55):
grow home productions,

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