Building Power Structures with Parker Jay-Pachirat | Layer Zero

Parker Jay-Pachirat is a founding member of Boys Club and a venture capitalist at FinTech Collective. Driven by data and challenging assumptions, Parker takes a deeply individual approach to the crypto space, studying systems and power structures at a broad scale. Join us as we dive into the basement level of crypto, the philosophical and ideological levers that lay foundation for this political, cultural, and economic movement. ------ 📣 Galxe | Explore Crypto’s #1 Credential Network https://bankless.cc/Galxe ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave 💠 NEXO | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/Nexo 🔐 LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger ⚡️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod ----- Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 4:00 Parker Jay-Pachirat 7:30 Critical Theory 12:20 Governance and Power 15:01 Historical Connections 19:30 Tribes 23:30 The Regulation Example 29:05 What are our Values? 34:00 Diversity and Unity 43:00 Making Rules 52:25 Enabling Change 59:50 Law and Culture 1:07:40 Expressing Values 1:16:30 Looking Forward ------ Resources: Parker Jay-Pachirat https://twitter.com/parkerjayp Boys Club https://twitter.com/BoysClubCrypto Fintech Collective https://twitter.com/fintech_io ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  We need to understand the systems of power that we are operating inside of in order to be able to essentially break out of them.

• 0:12David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. The decipher punks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, I'm talking to Parker J. Patirot, who is a venture capitalist at Fintech Collective and also a core member of the Boys Club. And Parker and I resonated with each other when we found that what we're interested in in our backgrounds,

• 0:49David Hoffman?

  people think are actually like very far away from crypto, my background in psychology and hers in what is called critical theory. We're talking about college majors here, but actually, there are things that are very directly related to what is at the basement level of crypto. And so Parker and I had this hour-long conversation just unpacking what is critical theory? And what are these things about like power structures in crypto? And how crypto is changing the form factors of power structures and what a power structure really is? And how things like DAOs and social movements and NFTs are allowing for new power structures to be expressed

• 1:30David Hoffman?

  by still, but still not by changing the rules of how power structures begin in the first place. So I think you guys are really going to enjoy a conversation that is very close to the metal as to what we are doing here in the crypto space, which is disrupting power and also creating new power structures, hopefully ones that are fundamentally better and more expressive and are more aligned with the people that are inside of them. So without further ado, we'll go ahead and get right into the conversation with Parker right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. In all of my years in crypto, I have never been hacked, scammed, or lost money to a thief. And a lot of that credit goes to my Ledger hardware wallet. The Ledger Nano X and the Ledger Nano S Plus hardware wallets allow users like you and me

• 2:13David Hoffman?

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• 2:56David Hoffman?

  And they also have an awesome advanced trading platform, Nexo Pro, where you can get the best possible prices and trade with 50% discount on fees. And Nexo also lets you earn interest on your crypto in Bitcoin, ETH, or other assets. And they also give you an instant crypto line of credit with as low as 0% APR. And they also give you access to a crypto-backed Mastercard, of course earning you more crypto when you use it. So enhance your financial life with Nexo, who ensures all credit lines are overcollateralized with insurance on all custodial assets. Nexo, the right place for your crypto. So click the link in the show notes to join over 5 million users who are getting the most out of their crypto. If you've been listening to Bankless, you know that we're fans of the modular blockchain thesis.

• 3:38David Hoffman?

  The idea that blockchains will separate execution from data availability and consensus, allowing all three to become the best versions of themselves. And Fuel has built the fastest modular execution layer in the industry. By supporting parallel transaction execution, Fuel unlocks significantly faster throughput for the web3 world. Fuel also goes beyond the limitations of the EVM with its own Fuel VM, which is more efficient and optimized, opening up the design space for developers. And lastly, Fuel brings a powerful developer experience with its own domain-specific language, Sway, and a supportive tool chain called Fork. With Fuel, you can have the benefits of smart contract languages like Solidity while adopting the improvements made by the Rust tooling ecosystem, letting the Fuel development environment go beyond the limitations of the EVM.

• 4:21David Hoffman?

  If you want to learn more, there's a link in the show notes to see how you can get involved with a Fuel network. What's up, Parker? How's it going?

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Hi. Great. How are you?

• 4:29David Hoffman?

  Good, good. Parker, what would you say that you do in crypto?

• 4:33Speaker 00

  I am an early-stage investor in both crypto startups and tokens. And I also am on the founding team of Boys Club, which is a social club, DAO and community focused on women and non-binary builders in Web3.

• 4:51David Hoffman?

  And how would you say you got here?

• 4:54Speaker 00

  Great question. It's been a long and wild journey, I would say.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  I grew up in a very activist family, going to protests. Super lucky to be super well-traveled. And attended a school that was very liberal, liberal arts school, and took a major there called Critical Theory.

• 5:21David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and that is how you came to be here in the studio with me today.

• 5:25Speaker 00

  Yes, indeed. So, within that major, we were really interrogating systems of power. Most people in the major go on to work for a nonprofit, or start their own, or do some kind of activism lawyering. But around my second year in uni, I somehow stumbled across an article about the ethics of AI. And that led me into this deep tech rabbit hole. I was staying up every night, researching, reading about brain-machine interfaces, tech space, a lot of bleeding-edge tech.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  Started working for a few startups, worked for a VC. And I think one thing to note here would be... Most people that I was surrounded by at the time were actually very anti-tech. And anti-capitalism, anti-entrepreneurship. And I actually started making a lot of connections between what I was studying in school and the opportunity that I saw this tech present to create better systems in the world. I knew about crypto for a while, like I knew it existed, I knew tokens were a thing. My lightbulb moment really happened when I started looking deeper into blockchain

• 6:54Speaker 00

  technology. And I had this moment of really realizing, wow, just like all of these other innovations and inflection points that have come before it, right? Like the internet, AI, the world wide web, all of that, blockchain technology presents not only a tremendous opportunity to reimagine our financial system, but also to reimagine how we coordinate, how we exchange value, how we mobilize, how we express identity and privacy. And yeah, that made me want to get involved.

• 7:34David Hoffman?

  Okay, so the valence of what you were up to before crypto was liberal upbringing, very like politically motivated, but also unlike your peers or cohort perhaps, more tech-accepting or tech-optimist than the people that you surrounded yourself with. And also I'm getting the gist of somebody who is perhaps a little obsessive and a futurist and a little sci-fi and also can connect things like things like political science and tech and AI and the current state of like society. This is kind of like the gist I've gotten from you from talking to you just now, but also previously. And this lightbulb

• 8:17David Hoffman?

  moment for me came when we were talking about your major, critical theory. Maybe we should go down that rabbit hole first because I think that will help define the rest of this podcast. What is critical theory? I had never heard of this major before and how did you just resonate with it so much?

• 8:34Speaker 00

  That's a great question. So the major actually is only offered at the university I attended. So it's like very niche. And like I said before, at its heart, it's an interrogation of systems of power. It's very interdisciplinary in the sense that it draws upon everything from philosophy to anthropology to political science. So a lot of social sciences. And it aims to combine different kinds of methodology with practice and practice. And I'd say its overarching aim is to explore, interrogate, uncover systems of power that

• 9:16Speaker 00

  are widely taken for granted and challenge a lot of the normative assumptions in our society with the ultimate goal of, you know, fostering students who can create social change. And I actually think back to that time, right? And think back to, you know, like I would say I am at my heart and core like a sort of activist person, like I'm very opinionated. I have very high conviction about things I believe in. And I think the connection between that and also, you know, being excited about the future, right? And being excited about the opportunities and sort of thinking about,

• 10:01Speaker 00

  okay, where is the world going next? And also like, how do we want to shape it? And I think that, you know, really really led me into the path of what I'm doing now, both in Boys Club and with Fintech Collective, my fund.

• 10:15David Hoffman?

  So the study of systems of power is an interesting phrase because it's not totally like descript, like it's very broad. Like the study of the systems of power.

• 10:30David Hoffman?

  And you, I mean, you said it was multidisciplinary, of course, and it must be. But maybe we could unpack that a little bit more. Like, what is a system of power? And what does it mean to like, study these things?

• 10:40Speaker 00

  I think power is very multifaceted. There's so many different kinds of power. Some are visible and explicit, some are invisible. And I think there's a wide range, right? Like, I, I would argue that power exists in any situation. But I think-

• 11:01David Hoffman?

  In any context?

• 11:02Speaker 00

  In any context. It exists in this conversation. It exists in our society. It exists in the way we're going about our day to day lives.

• 11:10David Hoffman?

  So just as a small microcosm, I'm the one managing these cameras right now. And that is a form of power that I have in this particular context. And so that, that's what you're saying at a very small scale is perhaps what power is. Look, now we're looking at you. But then we could also, like, what you're saying is it exists in many, many contexts. So, you know, the President of the United States also has power. And so like, critical theory is power at all scales is kind of the idea?

• 11:36Speaker 00

  I would say that's, so that's the idea. Like, that's, that's the framework that it's operating in and focused on, right? So everything from like sovereign power to individual power to soft power, social power, right? Social capital. All of these things are related. And I think the goal with critical theory is to make, or to attempt to make invisible or assumptive forms of power more explicit. We need to understand the systems of power that we are operating inside of in order to be able to essentially break out of them, right? Which is where I think crypto comes in.

• 12:22David Hoffman?

  One of my favorite episodes that we've done on Bankless was with Joel Menegro from Placeholder. It was called, I think, Governance and Power. And we were talking about like, why do these governance tokens have value? We were trying to answer that question. What's the association with governance and price on the secondary market? And he really like, destroyed my previous intuition as to what capital was. Like, capital, it's like the money that you have in your bank and also the net worth of your combined portfolio. That's what capital is. He was like, yes, but also incomplete. There's also social capital, right? Like, how much, how much, how many favors do you have stored in the bank with your friends? Like, how, how much can you like, move the needle of something? And I think perhaps what you're

• 13:04David Hoffman?

  talking about with, with critical theory is like, okay, if we can figure out how to identify all forms of capital, not just financial capital, not just social capital, political capital, whatever you want, whatever you want it to be, that starts to look something like critical theory? Is that what, is that a good definition?

• 13:23Speaker 00

  I think that's pretty accurate in terms of really getting at this idea of like, capital is so much more than, than is what's obvious. I do think like, the sort of ideologies that critical theory comes from does come with some political motivations, at least in the major that I was in and in the environment that I was in. But I think like, one really interesting learning, right? Like, some, some people come to me and they're like, how did you start there and get here and do what you're doing now? And I'm like, I actually see, you know, kind of a straight line through, right? Like, I grew up in a family where challenging

• 14:06Speaker 00

  authority was encouraged, which I'm really grateful for, and where there was a lot of value placed on not just, oh, what is the answer to the question, but what kinds of questions should we be asking, right? Like, the key is not in the answer, but in the question itself. And so I think like,

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Within critical theory, I took a lot of what I learned and the way that I learned to approach the world from a framework perspective. And you know, after sort of exposing myself to many different kinds of people and beliefs that strayed far from my own at the time, I was able to really see like, okay, you know, there's, there's a lot of values in crypto that I think transcend like politics.

• 15:02David Hoffman?

  And I think if we're talking about critical theory, which again, I'm still learning what this thing is, we do have to have like a historical perspective as well, because we can't just understand systems of power without seeing how they've like changed and adapted. And again, you've already said that how this is like a very multidisciplinary thing. I would imagine history is one of these things that you must study to understand like critical theory. How, how do you see crypto as like a continuation of this whole thing of, of systems of power? Like you said, like, uh, critical theory and crypto is a direct correlation. It's not like a long meandering road. It's actually a direct first critical theory, now crypto. What, what do you see is so direct about this?

• 15:46Speaker 00

  Crypto is obviously super new and exciting and it's full of people who are mobilized around, or united around not accepting, right? The system that we're currently in and, and being able to imagine a different, better one, right? And so I think like these modes of, of not just accepting kind of what we're told is right, or what we're told is the normal thing to do. And trying to imagine like a system outside of that is really where I see the connection. Although I do see within crypto, definitely, you know, I'd say the crypto community departs

• 16:30Speaker 00

  a lot from some of those ideological roots of critical theory, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing. I actually really like the, the diversity of thought that I've seen within the space so far.

• 16:46David Hoffman?

  Would you, would you say that critical theory doesn't have diversity of thought? Or is that a? That invalid question.

• 16:52Speaker 00

  Um, that's a loaded question to ask. Um, I think within my major, um, there was no diversity of thought. It was very, very, uh, liberal and, um, woke. Um, and I definitely still like hold some of the beliefs that I did at the time. Um, but like I said before, like, I really took the initiative. Once I started learning about all these other things, like, I was never exposed to growing up or in my school, right? Like tech or finance or any of that. So I really just like, it was a totally new world for me. Um, and once I started exploring that, I, I started challenging my own assumptions.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  Cause I was like, wow, everyone else around me has been saying like, tech is bad. Capitalism's bad, like all this stuff is bad, so we shouldn't engage. But I was like, no, this, this is awesome. Like I was like, you know, when you have a crush and you have like butterflies and like they're all you can think about. That's literally how I felt like every single night, like staying up every night. Still have like my notes in my notebooks, like just learning a bunch of stuff. Um, but anyways, like going through that, I, I also started, you know, realizing like, okay, what things was I sort of taught or not just taught, but expected to believe, um, within this major, um, and within this institution and school. Um, like how much of that actually resonates with me, right?

• 18:21Speaker 00

  And so, um, I mean, we talked a bit, uh, a few weeks ago about thinking for yourself, right? Um, and I think for me at the moment, like I, once again, like, so you're in a very polarized system and there are some of my beliefs that would fall, um, far on one side and some that would fall far on the other. And I'm comfortable with that. Um, and I actually think it's a really good thing that, you know, to be able to, um, not just like loop all of your beliefs or positions on certain issues into one, um, bucket, right? And to actually try to like discover for yourself, like what do I believe?

• 19:04Speaker 00

  And, um, one, one sort of moment in that journey has been, um,

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Surrounding myself with people across the spectrum. Like I'm friends with many different kinds of people who would fall on both extremes, in the middle. And I think we're like, kind of losing that as a norm in our society right now.

• 19:29David Hoffman?

  One of the interesting things to me about crypto is that

• 19:33David Hoffman?

  everyone who understands crypto, there's like a secret handshake that people have, like, oh, you're a crypto person? I'm also a crypto person. And like you get to, in the same way that like, religion played this role way back when, where like, if you, I don't know, I'm guessing a world that I never lived in, 1500s Europe, where like, maybe you lived in Spain, but then you traveled across to like, what is Germany? Again, these countries didn't exist back then, but you get the point. But if you're under the same banner of the same religion, you can shake hands with that person, like, yeah, we're on the same page here.

• 20:02Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:02David Hoffman?

  And that's what it's like to be a crypto person, is like, oh yeah, you're, you also are crypto? Like, we know the same stories, like, haha, Michael Saylor, like, we have the same like cultural memes. And all of a sudden, there's like a connection here about like, what values that we have, because they're largely going to be similar. But then they can also diverge, like, okay, you're a crypto person, sweet, like, Federal Reserve, haha, money printing, haha. But also, wait, what kind of crypto person are you? Are you a Solana crypto person? Are you an NFT crypto person? Are you an Ethereum crypto person? Are you a Bitcoiner? And so like, there's this one part about crypto where people have broken out of old society. And all, if you're a crypto person, you have all gone on the same journey as all these other crypto people, which you've broken out of like,

• 20:45David Hoffman?

  what is kind of like Plato's cave of society? Like, we're no longer in the cave, we're kind of woke to the way the machinations of the world works, because we're crypto people. And then you enter crypto, and then like, there's a new set of like societies to go into, like, you have the Ethereum societies, the Solana societies, the Bitcoining societies. And so, it's always been interesting to me that Crypto offers like a new like slate of understanding, like a new scaffolding for people to like map on new understanding to and then and then like pick a different route. And so like where a lot of people previously might have identified as like a Democrat or a Republican liberal conservative, you get into crypto and people tend to lose a little bit of those older identities and then they pick up new ones. How would you

• 21:29David Hoffman?

  say that this relates to critical theory or does it at all?

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Um, great question. I'd love to take it in a little bit of a different direction though, because you actually just touched on this massive thesis that I have at the moment. Um, so I've been doing a lot of like research into uh political polarization. Like studies show Pew, uh Pew Journal has a lot of great studies on this that I think deserve a lot more attention. Um, like if you look at the charts, it's kind of insane. Like over the last 10 years, political polarization has skyrocketed. Um, now more people than ever before say they wouldn't be in a relationship or even want to be friends with someone who

• 22:13Speaker 00

  has a different political um sort of identity as them. At the same time, over the past 10 years, we're seeing religious affiliation in extreme decline. And just like you said, right? Like religion and the church is where people used to go to find their community, to find their value system, to find a shared ideology and a shared identity that they like passed along to their children, right? Um, now people are losing that. They don't have that anymore. And I think they're turning to um political parties to find that. And don't get me wrong. I think it's a really good, healthy and positive thing to be politically active and to care about these issues and pay attention to them.

• 22:59Speaker 00

  Where I think, you know, things might go a little wrong is like when you, when you're in a two-party system and America's, you know, one of the only countries that does this, it's not working great, is those two systems can only work in opposition to one another. And so I think the question then is like, how do you solve the issues that you're trying to solve if the way you're trying to solve them is always by relying on this othering?

• 23:29David Hoffman?

  And like Just to unpack that a little bit more, what you're saying is that there are like a larger and larger part of our political system in America is that I'm a Democrat because I need the Republicans to fail and/or vice versa. Like I'll be a Republican because like the Democrats can't win. And it's not necessarily like you pick a tribe because of what you believe in, it's that it's what you don't believe in. And so like

• 23:53Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 23:54David Hoffman?

  Can a community exist simply as like being an antithesis to another community? Does it doesn't seem like a very strong foundation for communities to exist upon.

• 24:03Speaker 00

  It seems like a negative flywheel effect. Yeah, exactly.

• 24:07David Hoffman?

  And what are the consequences of this? Why is this bad?

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Well, I think, I think it prohibits progress. It sort of sets up the landscape where there's only two buckets, right? Like if I'm a Democrat, I believe X, Y, Z about these certain issues. If I'm a Republican, I believe X, Y, Z about the same issues. Like it buckets all of your belief systems and like all of your beliefs into one category. But like if you look on an individual level, like humans are so complex, right? And they also change over time. And I think there should be more room for that. Like how could we, how can we progress as

• 24:48Speaker 00

  a society if we're not tolerant of or open to being challenged and changing our beliefs? And, you know, we're operating in a very like binary fixed system, I would say. But I think there should be more room for flexibility and discussion.

• 25:08David Hoffman?

  More diversity of thought.

• 25:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, more diversity of thought. Exactly.

• 25:11David Hoffman?

  Do you see crypto offering like a platform to solve some of this stuff? Like how do you see crypto fixing this?

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Great question. I don't know if crypto fixes it. I think that's a pretty broad statement to make, but I will say, like I said before, like crypto definitely, crypto is definitely political in certain ways, right? Like, I definitely think it attracts libertarian-minded people. But I think its emphasis, at least in my experience, has been on values, right? Of like transparency, social mobilization, like open and open financial system. And all of those things allow us to maybe build different political communities within that.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  But by like sharing this already like shared set of values, we're able to accomplish a much more. But I do think we're at an interesting time in crypto where we're seeing more divisiveness within the community as well.

• 26:14David Hoffman?

  You mean more tribalism?

• 26:16Speaker 00

  I think this is very illuminated after the tornado cash situation of where do, where does regulation come into play? There are people who are strong believers of regulation in crypto and, you know, might say, this is the only way we can truly realize crypto's full vision by having the right kind of regulation to onboard everyone, including enterprise institutions. And another that might argue, no, like the full vision of crypto being realized means that there is no regulation. So at least in my, in the sort of communities and spheres I'm in, that's more of the divisiveness I've seen, which I think is interesting.

• 26:59David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so that debate is one part, like, there are some Ethereum developers who are, who will like refuse to work on a client that supports censorship at the base layer, right? Which is kind of where this tornado cash conversation has really gone. Because that's where the logical conclusion is, right? If we want to like have these things be like Regulatory friendly, we kind of need to bake in certain rules at the base layer, but that just turns off basically everyone of the developers that came here in the for the, you know, in the first place, right? And then there's newer parts of crypto that are like, well, if we want like Ethereum and Bitcoin to scale out to the whole entire world, we're gonna have to play nice with the previous power structures that exist.

• 27:39David Hoffman?

  We need to like interoperate with old rules rather than like conflict with them. And so I think maybe what you're saying is that there's like this, these a divide growing in the crypto space where like some people are like, we should sacrifice something to get adoption. And then there's like the hard line of libertarians are like, we'll sacrifice nothing and we'll just have whatever we have at the, at the, at the end of this. And this, this seems to be like a deeper, deeper issue than just like, I'm a Solana person, I'm an Ethereum person, I'm a Bitcoin person. This is getting down to like the very basement level of crypto.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  I agree. I think it's way deeper than just, you know, um, kind of like what sector of crypto are you into or supporting, but it is like a very fundamental question that quite directly affects the future of the space. And I think a big question becomes like, you know, what this is really calling into question is like, what are the fundamental values of crypto and of the people engaging in this system, right? Like, what does it mean for to realize crypto's full potential? Is it onboarding everyone and sort of being flexible about the framework or approach or form in which that takes? Or is it like

• 28:56Speaker 00

  sticking true to what I would say is the initial vision? And yeah, like being hard about that and like refusing to engage in anything else?

• 29:06David Hoffman?

  I think that question, what are our values is probably a question that's relevant to any system of power that throughout time. And so it's all is like, as so long as there's a community, there's probably always this question. Do you have any thoughts about to like, how that question in particular has permeated throughout all systems of power and throughout history?

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, what comes up for me there, and I'm literally just like riffing here, but what comes up for me there is like, not just what are our values, but like, how are our values expressed? And like, what does it mean within the in-group to comply to those values? Um, right? So like, we could say like, like, this thing is the value. Um, but I think more and more, we've gotten into these sort of prescriptive modes of thinking of like, if you're not doing this thing, if you're not doing that thing, it means that you don't agree or sort of like comply almost to this value.

• 30:04David Hoffman?

  You're not in the tribe.

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Right. So like, I think, I think maybe a more complex question than just like, what are our values is like, how does the socially acceptable way to engage within a value system or to show supportive of value, like change over time? Um, I think it obviously changes a lot depending on the context. Um, like, we've seen it change a lot in the past five to 10 years, right? Like with the rise of like Instagram infographics, I would say, like, um, I've been thinking a lot about actually like Instagram infographics and

• 30:43Speaker 00

  I think there's like a social pressure to post them when, you know, there's one issue to the next, right? But, um, there's a lot of like, you know, I wonder sometimes like when people are posting these infographics on their story, is it more for like a signaling effect? Or more to not be?

• 31:01David Hoffman?

  What an Instagram infographic is?

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. An Instagram infographic, I would say it's like a really pretty nice like graphic design Canva like poster, um, explaining facts about an issue or like stating an assertion um, or position on an issue and explaining why the viewer should believe in it.

• 31:24David Hoffman?

  So it's like narrative work, propaganda work, propaganda, not in a negative sense, but also half negative?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Yes. Like, quite literally, yes.

• 31:32David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:33David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  And like it's so like all see people like posting infographic and I used to be an infographic poster myself, I will say. But I'm like, okay, like, you know, that's great and all, but is that more to feel like, oh, I'm doing the right thing or like, oh, I want other people to see me supporting this issue or being on this side, especially in the climate that we're in versus like, do you actually like care? Are you actually deeply thinking about these issues and like talking about them within your day to day life?

• 32:08David Hoffman?

  Are you virtue signaling or do you actually believe what you're posting?

• 32:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's gotten way easier, way more easy to virtue signal than ever and also to not even realize you're doing it.

• 32:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:23David Hoffman?

  I think that that brings up the question of like, as going back to like, you know, critical theory and organizations of people throughout time that create systems of power, how these people, how these communities spread information and and define, and this is why I asked that question, like, what are our values? How do like, it's great when a community can ask ourselves those questions and I think crypto in its very beginning stages actually has like the privilege of not being so large that only a few people have to ask that question for that kind of to become the conversation at the time.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:56David Hoffman?

  Like during this tornado cash era, it was Eric Wall that put out that post on that that poll on Twitter saying, hey, Ethereum community, would you ever support censorship at the base layer? And that one tweet was like this one opportunity for this whole entire Ethereum community to rally behind and say, no, we'll never support it, never, ever, ever. And that was like, it's like a unique opportunity that we have as a crypto community is like, we have crypto Twitter. We also had this one tweet to focus on where we got to define our values in that one particular moment. But I would imagine throughout history, there's been like less more loose ways, less concrete ways, less specific ways for communities to actually figure out what they value. And now we're like in going to the political spectrum, we have like the Democratic and Republican

• 33:40David Hoffman?

  like national parties, which kind of like define the values a little bit. They are, they just, they decide who's on the team and who's not. And so that's like a system of power that's largely out of the hands of people. But overall, like there's also like so many other different like organizations throughout history, like every single revolution ever. How did they define like what they cared about and why were they revolting in the first place? And who was able to like lead that conversation? Have you ever, how do you think about this as it relates to the crypto space, like dissemination and acceptance of like narrative? While there's also like, we know there's Twitter bots out there trying to pump bags. And so like that's out there like an influence. Like, how do you think about this in the crypto space?

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Well, bot networks are on the rise.

• 34:24David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  But yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. I mean,

• 34:32Speaker 00

  one thing I'll say is like, you said a little earlier that the sort of Democratic and Republican party are sort of setting different values right in defining them.

• 34:46Speaker 00

  I think like from a very high level, external

• 34:51Speaker 00

  point of view, that's true. But one interesting thing that I've been noticing recently in developing all these friendships with many different kinds of people in many different political places, like we actually share the same values. Like we share the same values of honesty and authenticity and being a good friend and family building and transparency. But the way that we think is the best to go about the way of like realizing and achieving those values in our day to day lives in society might actually be really different.

• 35:28David Hoffman?

  So the theory is the same, but the execution's the different, the debate.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yes, like I actually met someone at, um, where was it like December or somewhere recently at a conference? And we were talking like really vibing and we're talking about like taxes and how we think that should go. And we were like super aligned and I was thinking, oh, it's probably this person's probably like super aligned with where I see myself or feel myself sit at the moment on the political spectrum turns out opposite. And once that was uncovered, like they had a totally different attitude towards me. Like, and that really like took me back and I was like, hey, like, don't you think this is kind of funny though? Like, I, I think it's cool. Like, we have the same values. We just think we should go about them or maybe construct the framework around them in different ways.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Um, and I think like that defensiveness is natural and like I, I definitely used to be like that, like very much. Um, but I actually think like there's a lot of alpha in finding people with the same values as you that have really different beliefs on the outside, um, or, or beliefs of ways to go about realizing them and like talking more about that. And so within crypto, that's like one thing that I see as an opportunity is like rather than, um, starting with like more of an external perception of like, you know, political motivations or parties. We're starting with the values. Um, and then there's like different kind of factions that, and, and I think you see this also like within crypto, like it's really interesting because across the different,

• 36:59Speaker 00

  you can usually see it in really different ways, like DAO people, like very like hippie, kind of like communism vibes. Like in, in like the most like affectionate way possible. Cause obviously I'm in DAOs, but like then like there's other parts that are like very libertarian, very like, you know, no government interference. Um, but like we're all united by the same values as someone, say, at least like for the most fundamental ones. So I think it's really interesting and I think it's like a great opportunity to sort of rethink the way that we talk about these things and think about these things and like identify ourselves with these things.

• 37:37David Hoffman?

  It definitely has been one of my most interesting experiences moving to New York is like. In Manhattan, you have like the trading firms and you have all the traders out there in Manhattan. And then here in Williamsburg, there's like a lot of Dow people, which are like, like the Burning Man types, right? Yeah. And then there's like, there's also the DeFi people in Soho with like OpenSea and Uniswap and DYDX. And then you got like the NFT people out wherever they exist.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Times Square?

• 38:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, sure. Yeah. In Times Square. Yeah. And like, but then also like LA has got a bunch of like NFT people. And like, you're right, these find, these people all kind of have a particular vibe about them. Like they're all, they all find each other, right? But then also like you were saying, we were talking about how like, um, there's the same, they have the same fundamental philosophy, same belief structures, but then different ways to like go about that. And that's, that's been my like, my biggest ideas to like the difference between Bitcoin and Ethereum. We have the same values, even though the Bitcoiners will never admit it about Ethereum people. We believe in the same things. We just, one, one group of people says, yes, and Bitcoin is how you express this. And then the Ethereum people is like, no, Ethereum is how you express this.

• 38:48David Hoffman?

  But it all collapses down to like the same values at the end of the day, which is kind of like what I was going back to earlier. Like previously before crypto, people had like these alignments, like liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat. And then you go through like this filter of crypto. And if, if you can make it through the other side of crypto, you kind of lose your old identities. And then you like latch on to new ones, like instead of Republican, Democrats.

• 39:12Speaker 00

  We need to do like a study on this. We need to do like a quantitative study on like what? Well, I think it could be, I mean, here's the thing is like, it would not be super accurate because self-reporting and self-surveys are not accurate. But for a starting point, we could do like, um, sort of how, how did you, or how, you know, before you got into crypto, what would you say is your primary political association? And like after, where would you fall on this scale? I think that'd be super interesting.

• 39:44David Hoffman?

  Did your political affiliation like change or political demeanor change when you, after going through the filter of crypto?

• 39:50Speaker 00

  It did, but I don't even know if it was just crypto, honestly. Like I. I made it a really big initiative in my life to really do everything I could to make my own opinions on things. So like for like every morning, for example, like I read far right news sources, I read far left news sources, I read like what I would try to find or say are like the most moderate news sources. So I try to read like about the same stories and the same events that are happening through many different lenses. Because everything is biased these days, right? Like, and, and again, like, this is something I really like realized and noticed

• 40:31Speaker 00

  too, after like leaving the the kind of like liberal arts bubble I was in, which by the way, like, I don't know how familiar you are with that scene, but if if your beliefs-

• 40:43David Hoffman?

  Also into liberal arts school, yeah.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah. So like, I don't know if at the time, though, for you, like, it might have been different because like I'm younger than you, but like, in my experience, it was like, if you don't believe these things, you are literally ostracized from the community, like ostracized.

• 40:56David Hoffman?

  Cancel culture?

• 40:57Speaker 00

  Oh, like-

• 40:57David Hoffman?

  Big time?

• 40:58Speaker 00

  Cancel culture was the culture.

• 41:00David Hoffman?

  Oh, no.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  Like, yeah, no, seriously. And when you're surrounded by that for so long, like, it just, you know, it's group think. And so, yeah, I don't want to be in that, even in crypto, like, there's group thing in crypto. So I just think it's like important to expose yourself to many, like, diverse information diet, healthiest diet out there.

• 41:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  Super important. And like, that's also for me how I found like new interests as well.

• 41:30David Hoffman?

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• 42:11David Hoffman?

  join the community, dive into the developer docs, bridge your assets, and start building your first app. With Arbitrum, experience Web three development the way it was meant to be: secure, fast, cheap, and friction free. The Layer 2 era is upon us. Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem is growing every day, and we need Layer 2 bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a Layer 2 life. Across is the fastest, cheapest, and most secure cross-chain bridge. With Across, you don't have to worry about high fees or long wait times. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. Across's bridges are powered by Uma's Optimistic Oracle to securely transfer tokens between Layer 2s and Ethereum. Across is critical ecosystem infrastructure, and Across V2 has just launched. Their new version focuses on higher capital efficiency, Layer 2 to Layer 2 transfers,

• 42:55David Hoffman?

  and a brand-new chain with Polygon, all while prioritizing high security and low fees. You can be a part of Across's story by joining their Discord and using Across for all of your Layer 2 transferring needs. So go to across.to to quickly and securely bridge your assets between Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Boba Networks. The Brave Wallet is your secure, multi-chain on-ramp into Web3, and it's built directly into the Brave Privacy Browser. Gone are the days of managing multiple wallet extensions that put you at risk of phishing, spoofs, and tracking. With the Brave Wallet, you can securely manage your crypto assets across more than 100 different chains, including Ethereum, Layer 2s, Solana, and more, all without downloading risky extensions. The Brave Wallet is easy to set up and removes the headache of jumping between wallets and extensions.

• 43:39David Hoffman?

  It's lightweight but packed with great features, like built-in token swaps, buying and holding NFTs with a gallery view, and support for hardware wallets. But also much more than that, because Brave is shipping new features every single month with a mission to make Web3 easier to navigate for its over 55 million users. Wallet extensions are a thing of the past. So get started with Brave's Web3-ready browser today and experience a decentralized web seamlessly without all the clutter. You can download the browser at brave.com/banklist and click the wallet icon to get started. One of the things that I've been thinking about lately, while I was writing out the notes for this show, I had an inspiration for a tweet, and I tweeted out, "Smart contracts, democratize the ability, democratize the access to writing the rules." And this is something, this is an idea

• 44:24David Hoffman?

  that Ray Dalio put into my head a while ago, where he was like, yeah, like, different empires come and go, and sometimes empires clash, and when they clash, it's really... Just a fight over who's gonna write the rules. Like, so when one empire wins, they subjugate the loser empire to their rules. Uh, it's like we, it's our laws that are canon, not yours. And if like, they don't agree on laws, then they have like war. And it's usually an economic war. And this is what I see kind of happening with like Republicans and Democrats is like, all right, we have the Republican Party and then the Democrat Party. And these are just like trading blows as to who gets to write the rules for the next four years. And we're going into crypto and we have, we have the ability for people to like, you know, write smart contracts. These are like, you can democratize access to writing the rules.

• 45:08David Hoffman?

  We also have like now we have DAOs, we have NFT projects, we have DeFi apps. And all we have communities that are around these things. And so like now each one of these communities kind of gets to write the rules. Now, it's not at the same scale of an empire or a nation state, but it's still pushing the ability to create power structures, like create rules to the hands of the communities. And so when we talk about like this idea of like changing power structures and changing like, changing like orientations of people's alignments, whether it's like a political alignment or just like an ideology alignment. How do you think that this changes the way that society will work? When like all of a sudden we have many, many, many more cultures that are outside of just like the political spectrum and now inside of crypto communities.

• 45:52David Hoffman?

  And they all get to write rules. Like, what, what do you think are the consequences of this?

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Well, dude, I think it's, I think it's so exciting. Crypto economies are introducing like fundamentally novel and innovative ways of doing governance in human life that we have never seen before. And the design space is so open. It's, it's crazy. And I think few, few realize this, like, like crypto economies, like we have now dynamic voting in almost real time. We have, um, voting systems and governance mechanisms that are completely unconventional to how traditional corporations and institutions work. And like I said before, like the design space is so open. Like, I think recently in recent months, we've seen a lot of criticism of DAOs and DAO governance.

• 46:41Speaker 00

  And at least on my timeline, like I've been seeing a lot of tweets on, you know, DAOs as a business model, never gonna work, like this is never gonna work. All of these like DAOs are failing.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  And I'm like, okay, but what's the common thread for the DAOs that are failing? It's, I would say, most of them are using token-based voting governance, right? I am so excited about the design space that exists to create more dynamic forms of governance mechanisms. Like, I think humans are, humans are dynamic, humans are complex. Like, our beliefs, as you've been talking about in this conversation, our belief systems change over time. We get new information to contextualize, right? And I think, number one, fixed voting in like, in a snapshot period of time, I don't think is the most optimal way to go about voting.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Like, I'm really excited about this, this sort of novel governance mechanism called conviction voting, where basically you like stake your vote, and every day, or whatever time metric you can set ideally, it gains more power. And then you can retract it, rather than like, I vote today, and in two years, maybe I wish I hadn't done that, but there's nothing you can do to change it. But I also think, like, we shouldn't be, we shouldn't be putting decision-making power, or privileging decision-making power for people that just have the financial means to do so.

• 48:18Speaker 00

  And like, when you do that, you get like a very, I would say, over time, like a very corrupt system, where there's this sort of tragedy of the commons, where like, people, like the general population of voters within the system knows that their, their vote won't really make a difference. So they get voting fatigue, they don't participate. And then you have like, one, two, three, maybe four major actors controlling everything, oftentimes in a way that is not reflective of what the general majority wants. So I think there's like an urgent call to action here to put a lot more research,

• 48:58Speaker 00

  documentation, and experimentation into our DAO governance mechanisms. Like, I think, yes, we are seeing DAOs fail, and that is such a good thing. How could we ever progress if we don't have that point? And like, what can we learn from this? And what are the patterns? We were talking about this before. We were talking about investing and like how we're huge like pattern identification people.

• 49:25David Hoffman?

  Pattern recognition, yeah.

• 49:26Speaker 00

  Yes, pattern recognizers. But same thing, we should be doing that now. We should be applying that now. We should like have more initiatives for like peer reviewed research journals to study these different DAOs and their governance and voting mechanisms as case studies and come out with reports. And there actually is a lot of this. If you look on like J store, there's so many good peer reviewed journals on DAO governance and protocol. Yes, I'll send you some after this, like with my annotations. There's, there's so many good ones and they have realized crazy things. Like I will read these and I go back to like the voice company. I'm like, guys, we, I'm like so fired up and I'm just like, no one fucking like gets what I'm, I sound crazy, but.

• 50:11David Hoffman?

  It sounded animated, it sounded energetic.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:13David Hoffman?

  Clearly tapped into something here.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  It's so exciting. Like, for example, I think I may have told you about this study, but there was a, there was a study that basically used all of these decentralized in-person resistance movements over time, right? So like Occupy Wall Street was one, the Zapatas movement was one, and they basically like studied, you know, what made these communities and organizations disseminate over time? Like what led to their ultimate unsustainability?

• 50:48David Hoffman?

  Why'd they fail?

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Right, why did they fail? And like, one thing that they found was in the proposal process, like when there, when someone made a proposal, it was rejected and there was no follow-up. People didn't feel heard and so they ended up like leaving the organization, right? They didn't get feedback or an explanation on why. And like, this is something that like in the sort of like code is law, like protocol is law, I guess, like mindset or ideology, I think we really fail to recognize, right? Like I, and I think we also failed to underestimate the, the salience of governance that is done off-chain in a, in a more like concealed way, like. Private calls, personal relationships,

• 51:35Speaker 00

  soft power, right? Like, all that does affect the way people vote in governance.

• 51:40David Hoffman?

  Only some governance is actually done on-chain.

• 51:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:44David Hoffman?

  Yeah. It's like that iceberg meme where like, the on-chain governance is just like the tip of the iceberg. It's just the part that's expressed.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  Totally. And like last night, we were talking, and then like, we were talking about delegation and delegating tokens. And like, I, like I said, I'm, I'm for delegated governance, but I also think like, how do you account for these very significant variables within that, right? Like, someone literally just being more socially popular, right? And like, wanting to appease to them. Like, that is human nature. And without anonymous voting, like, I think we, we do see a lot of that today. But yeah, I think there's like, I'm excited. I think there's a lot of design space that we still have left to conquer.

• 52:27David Hoffman?

  I think I super resonate with the idea that so many decentralized movements fail or dwindle or just dissolve because a lot of their energy of their community members dissipates when their community members try and exhibit some change, express some change upon the movement. That change doesn't work, and they don't know why, or they don't know how it didn't work, or they don't know, they don't really have any next steps, or like, they don't have any lessons to be learned. They don't feel heard. And there's like this part of the human brain, the human condition is like, people kind of just want to be heard. They like, they want, they want their existence acknowledged, right? We all have goals. When, when things get in the way of our goals, that gives us negative emotions. And, and we, if we want to align with something and be a part of something, we need positive emotions.

• 53:12David Hoffman?

  We're gonna, we're gonna move away from the things that make us feel bad. We're gonna go to the things that make us feel positive. And if we are, have these goals that we want to express onto these political movements, which people generally like, really feel strongly about, but we don't feel heard. We're gonna go do something else. And so the, when, when you tell me that the decentralized movements fail because people can't feel heard, my mind goes back to this like, uh, idea that we were talking about earlier of different forms of capital. There's financial capital, which is token votes, which we kind of know are like, you know, new and not complete.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:48David Hoffman?

  There's like social capital, which what we were talking about, well, kind of popularity contests. Well, you know, sometimes that popularity context is Vitalik Buterin and his really good idea about how something should work on Ethereum. And maybe we should listen to that. Sometimes it's actually just like a, you know, malicious. I could go both ways. But I think what I'm hearing you're saying is that there are these DAOs that are trying to figure out different ways of enabling their community members to express what they want to see changed in their DAO that doesn't necessarily restrict down to how many tokens do you have, or like how popular is your profile picture handle inside of Discord? How can we enable these community members to express themselves without that being

• 54:29David Hoffman?

  like gamable or attackable or like fall apart because like a poor mechanism design? And this seems to be also like, kind of close to the metal of what critical theory is? If I'm, if I'm trying, I'm still trying to learn what that is.

• 54:42Speaker 00

  Aren't we all?

• 54:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's kind of the point. Uh, what are your thoughts on that whole ramble?

• 54:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, that definitely resonates. I think humans just want to see and be seen.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  That may or may not be what it means to like, love someone. Um, if we want to go that deep, but I think like-

• 55:03David Hoffman?

  I'm happy to, because I wrote, I wrote a little bit about that in-

• 55:05Speaker 00

  Oh, you did?

• 55:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Tell me more.

• 55:07David Hoffman?

  Yeah. So the, the idea was that, um, all of these new DAOs, I think this was in the middle of a NFT summer. Um, uh, but also, also DAO summer is that like, all of these DAOs now compete for our love. Where like the centralized fixed concrete algorithms of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram are like trying to compete to make us angry. Cause that's the one algorithm. It's like, it's the rage algorithm. DAOs now and like all of these social organizations on Ethereum, which there are many, NFT projects, DAOs, sometimes, sometimes even DeFi apps. They're now trying to compete for your love. And so it's like, it's these protocols that

• 55:50David Hoffman?

  enable their community members the most are the ones that are going to find the most alignment and are going to find the people that not sell their token. And show up in that Discord because that community feels the most loved. And it's also, I think, fits into the meta around like gone are their days of Bitcoin as the static asset and CryptoPunks as the static NFTs. All future NFTs are likely going to be productive as in they're going to have a team or organization that like makes that NFT useful. And what is that? What does useful even mean if not just like making that owner feel special and warm and fuzzy? And like alignment and having loyalty with their assets.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:30David Hoffman?

  And if, if owning these assets opens particular doors in DAOs, whether that's governance changes or just like perks, whatever, so long as like the community member feels heard in a community that they share values in, that community should do well. So that's, that's kind of where I was going with that.

• 56:49Speaker 00

  That, that really resonates. And I think like NFTs aside, I think we, we can see this a lot with web two examples of when people are starting communities and DAOs, I'm like, it's really, really important to be as specific as possible.

• 57:09Speaker 00

  And like, don't be afraid to be niche. Like what are the strongest subreddits? Like the weirdest stuff that you've ever seen? That is like so niche and weird, right? Like those are the strongest communities because they're really united around something specific and they, they know why they're there and they really feel a shared, whether it's a value system or interest or whatever, common problem. When you're starting a community, like a lot of community, um, communities that I see like starting up like they're like, okay, how do we like appeal to this group, this group? I'm like, no, just focus on one thing. That's how you're really going to attract intrinsically motivated participants, like you're saying. If you're very intentional about who this community is for and like who it's for not, who it's not for.

• 57:52Speaker 00

  And then like from there, like you're saying, I think there's this huge component as well of like, A, giving, um, giving community members the resources that they need to understand how to, uh, how to interact with the community and like what opportunities exist, right? So, um, you know, where do I go for this, for this question? Or, um, you know, what are, what are ways I can meet others in the community, whatever it is. But really like context setting, I made a meme about this, but, um, it's really important to set the context so people feel a sense of familiarity and feel equipped with like the knowledge they need to thrive in the community. And then from there, I think like this also circles back to an earlier point in our conversation about, um,

• 58:36Speaker 00

  creating an environment for diversity of thought and opinion.

• 58:41Speaker 00

  And I think sometimes that just means like opening, really opening the conversation up and, and being willing to engage with the others that have different beliefs than you. And like, I sort of talked to you a bit about this before, um, but you know, I think within Boys Club, um, and I'll speak like from my own personal perspective as Parker, like, I think we've been very intentional about creating a space, um, where our, our values are clear. Like our mission is clear, our vibe is clear, um, but we're also not telling people what to think or what to believe, right?

• 59:20Speaker 00

  And we're saying, here's what we, here's the kind of culture, um, that we want to see in crypto and web three and that we want to drive. Like, join us, right? And then those who resonate with that can join. But I think we, we've been really intentional about, um, And even with, you know, some external pressure, like not putting a statement out, for example, that we're not sure resonates with all of our members. Just because like people from the outside might assume it does. Yeah.

• 59:52David Hoffman?

  Sure, sure. One of the same like thoughts that I came out of that same like DeFi summer, NFT summer is that, and this came after Blau's platform Royal, where he had this tokenized music platform. And the idea of like a tokenized piece of art, but this also works with the DAO community too, where the crowd, the token owning crowd now also has a voice. And so like, say you have the performer, right? The value creator, and this could be Blau, the DJ. This could also be like the boys' club, core team, whoever's like, there's always like two sides of an organization, right? Like, there is no such thing as an artist without the consumers, right? And so there's always been like a two-way conversation between artists

• 1:00:37David Hoffman?

  and their fans. And, you know, the artist will do something that the fans like, and then the crowd goes wild, right? But now we have tokens. And so like, now when the artist does something that the crowd likes, the token goes up in price, or the token just becomes more useful or something. And it gives like a back and forth conversation when there's a way for this community to express themselves back to the leadership. Or, and sometimes that leadership is just like the DAO governance, which is themselves. They are their own leadership. But when the community has a voice, there can be kind of this two-way narrative, this two-way conversation as to like, okay, what do we want this to become? Whether like, whether it's Blau, the DJ saying like, all right, what kind of music do you guys want? And like that, the community can actually like be given the driver's seat a little bit.

• 1:01:22David Hoffman?

  And going back to like smart contracts actually give communities the power to write the rules. And we have tokens allow the communities to have voice and control and influence. And all of a sudden, like, writing the rules is something, and again, tokens, and maybe we're still stuck in the age of like snapshot token votes, but like, we're trying to get out of that, out of the dark ages. Maybe that's what we'll call it when we look back on it. But all of a sudden, like, the communities are able to like, kind of write the laws, and, and express themselves and their values to each other and, and themselves. And all of a sudden, we get to like, it feels like we get to steer something that we weren't able to steer before.

• 1:02:00Speaker 00

  Totally.

• 1:02:01David Hoffman?

  How do you think about this?

• 1:02:02Speaker 00

  Okay, so I'll relate this back to actually a course I took within the critical theory major, which is called Resistance Movements and the Law. We basically studied a bunch of resistance movements and then compared them to legal kind of case studies. And we're ultimately trying to answer this question of, does culture shape the law or does law shape culture? And one really-

• 1:02:26David Hoffman?

  Repeat that question again, because that's hot.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  Does culture shape the law or does law shape culture?

• 1:02:32David Hoffman?

  Love it.

• 1:02:33Speaker 00

  I would say they're a cycle of mutual constitution. But there was a really interesting study that's always resonated with me and it just keeps coming up in my work in Dallas. And basically it showed like there are these types of community kind of lawyers or policymakers that often do a bunch of professional institutional research, market research, you know, you know, the whole thing, like, and then make policy recommendations. But ultimately, in the follow-up with those communities, usually the policies like five years later were not actually found to have much impact or actually fix the problems that the community is facing.

• 1:03:18Speaker 00

  But the lawyers that actually went into those communities and spent like significant amounts of time, like weeks and months with individual community members, talking to them, listening, really trying to understand like, what are your daily problems and like, how do you think that we should solve these? Like, yes, I'm the expert, but like, how do you, how do you see this, you know, being solved for? Or what would you like support and help in? And the lawyers who spent that extra time actually embedded within the community came out with policy recommendations and changes and outcomes that five years down the line were significantly more successful in solving that community's problems and in improving

• 1:04:02Speaker 00

  the day-to-day life of those communities than the ones that made like external recommendations. And I think, I think about this a lot within Dallas and like, it relates to what you're saying in the sense that-

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  DAOs are almost like from the get-go, right? Like, expected to think of the community. And we see this in when there's a treasury that doesn't have a lot of community allocation, that's like, not a good look, right? Like, there's this new expectation from the get-go that I think DAOs present of listening to the community and getting their involvement and participation that I haven't seen really exist anywhere else before. And I think that's really interesting. And like you're saying, like, tokens are like a mechanism and vehicle at enabling that. But I also think like synchronous communication, going back to the sort of proposal drop-off, follow-up

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  thing, is really important. Like, one thing that we recently integrated into like our proposal process in Boys Club is a Zoom call. Like, if you're making a proposal, you have to hold a Zoom call. And if everyone can't attend, like, that's okay, but you have to hold a Zoom call to like pitch your idea and just like get others' feedback before the voting goes live. And like, we used to do a system where it was just posting a proposal, having a async discussion, and then going into voting, but we realized like the Zoom call is actually like very, very important.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  And

• 1:05:34David Hoffman?

  What did the Zoom call bring to the table that without it, the Boys Club wouldn't have?

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  It's a great question. I think like more openness and fluidity to the discussion and like a different level of just humanness that you can't get through chatting on Discord.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  And also like the ability to explore different ideas or different opinions in real time with people that you care about and that you have, that you share skin in the game with on the same thing.

• 1:06:09Speaker 00

  And like, I know Dina and Natasha kind of talked about this like when they were on the pod recently, but Um, one thing that really struck me when I started working with them, which is about a year ago when Boys Club started in November of last year, um, was I was like, whoa, they are so honest about how they're feeling. Like, they're like, I'm really nervous about this. I'm, I'm feeling like worried about this or doubtful about this or hot feeling insecurity around this thing. And I was like, wow, cause like personally, I was coming from before a mindset of like, okay, I of course am feeling those things in my day to day life and like work sometimes, but I'm not going to share them. I'm not gonna like, like, you know, um, you know, like the meme where it's like the guy and he's like, I made it up. Like, I'm

• 1:06:52Speaker 00

  not gonna like tell everyone I made it up, obviously. But like then working with them, like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna tell everyone like how I'm really feeling. And like, it builds this level of like trust and honesty where also where we're able to like, like hear that and like hear someone say, oh, I'm feeling like nervous about this or insecure about this and be like, oh, like you shouldn't be like, you're good. And like, that can actually like really make a difference in the morale. Um, so that was sort of a long one to like thought there. But, um, that being said, like, I think, yeah, fostering that level of like vulnerability within your community, combined with encouraging diversity of thought and then creating like operational and logistic systems that enable that, um, I think really will

• 1:07:33Speaker 00

  work to produce, um, what you're saying, like this sort of shared ownership and decision making and discussion.

• 1:07:39David Hoffman?

  Have you ever thought about how, um, what crypto is supplying to the world with what we're talking about? There, there's different ways to express yourself. There's different like factions to align with, like whether you want to join Boys Club or like pleaser Dow, like pick your Dow, bankless Dow, pick your Dow. There's so many different ways to like have your values be expressed by the Dow landscape. And that's kind of like my bull case for DAOs is like, there's a Dow out for you. It's kind of like, you know, you're going, you're going into college and like, all right, pick your club. Like there's a club, there's a Dow for you somewhere. And so you can find your tribe. Uh, if there's not one, then maybe you should make one because maybe other people are looking to find like resonance. Have you thought about how the, and this is what I mean when I say what crypto's

• 1:08:21David Hoffman?

  supplying to the world? That we're supplying all of these places for people to like perhaps Feel resonance with. Have you thought about how this kind of relates to what is lacking in the outside crypto world? Where we have like millennials and zoomers who for the feel are the first generations to feel less empowered than their parents. And they don't feel like the boomers listen to them in society. And have you thought about how crypto like actually solves or not necessarily solves, but just like answers to some of the the growing voids that are in society these days?

• 1:08:52Speaker 00

  I think with like DAOs and the governance spectrum and design space that exists today, like what I what my initial thought is, what immediately comes to mind is just like more effective means of grassroots organizations achieving their goals and also building their own cultural cultures and identities like while I am not the biggest fan of token voting, like that is probably a great system for some DAOs. And like, that's great. Like, I don't think we should be going around saying like, all DAO should do this, all DAO should do that. Like, like you're saying, it's very customizable across the stack.

• 1:09:33Speaker 00

  And I think what that means is like for maybe the first time ever in history with these innovative and novel forms of governance and forms of organization. Different organizations specifically can more quickly mobilize around a common goal or a common value and achieve that. Like, we saw that with Ukraine DAO. We saw that almost with Constitution DAO. Like, Ukraine DAO raised more money in the first week of it being formed than the UN did for humanitarian relief in Ukraine.

• 1:10:09Speaker 00

  Like, actually conceptualize that. Like, that's fucking crazy. Can I curse on here? That's fucking crazy. Like, it's insane. And like, that's so cool. And I think that really goes to show like, I'm also getting really into this idea of like flash DAOs and like, when does the DAO disseminate? Like, probably like not all DAOs should strive to or be expected to exist forever. So I think we're really

• 1:10:31David Hoffman?

  The goal is to not have Ukraine DAO.

• 1:10:33Speaker 00

  What?

• 1:10:33David Hoffman?

  The goal is to not have Ukraine DAO.

• 1:10:35Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. Yeah. And the goal is to like, Create a spectrum of ways to organize mobilization and governance in a way that enables different DAOs with different objectives and working in different timelines across different scales to quickly and effectively achieve their goals. And I think that's like super cool because like if you think about it, it's the way I kind of like envision it's like all these different like factions like you said before, like you also use that word, working outside of the system. But I think within DAOs too, we're reaching a lot of weird questions, like big hairy

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  questions of like, like I've been reading um this book, uh rethinking, reimagining organizations that talks about like this teal teal model. And it's very similar to what we've been doing within Boys Club and like also kind of what Orchid out as with like different guilds or pods that each have their own sort of mini DAOs inside of them, um working together to form one DAO. But like basically the whole thesis of the book and the teal practice um is borrowed from like corporate structures. So like almost in the same way that we're reaching this circle within the wider crypto

• 1:11:54Speaker 00

  community of like, okay, does crypto just become sort of like a token economic system and like blockchain that the government is like running on? Like DAO is now are sort of reaching this point, I think where it's like, oh, like our DAO is just like basically like now adopting corporate structures.

• 1:12:15David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  I don't think it's like necessarily good or bad and but I think it's like interesting that we're seeing this like full circle thing. And I wonder like what the sort of, I guess, like peaks and valleys of different like lifelines within the evolution of this will be. Oh, one other thing that I've been thinking about um is I was thinking a lot about, I've been thinking a lot about like parenting, like I'm really excited to be a parent one day. And so like I think a lot about like, oh, like, how do I want my kids to do this or that? And I was thinking like, Hmm, seems like a lot of parenting might actually just be about like fostering intrinsic motivation and creating like positive feedback loop incentive mechanisms for your kids.

• 1:13:01Speaker 00

  And then I was sort of thinking like-

• 1:13:02David Hoffman?

  Can you unpack that a little bit? Why, why is that?

• 1:13:04Speaker 00

  Um, well, I think it's like, I think intrinsic motivation is really important, right? Like, um, at least for me personally, I, I was raised without a lot of pressure. Like my parents were never like, oh, we want you to be successful in this way. Or we want you to go down this track or do this thing, um, or go to this school, like, or get married. Like, those were never conversations, but the conversations are more like, this is the type of person that we want you to be like, um, like a kind person and-

• 1:13:36David Hoffman?

  It's a little more meta.

• 1:13:37Speaker 00

  More values based, I would say than like, more values based than, um, than like outcome based or like label based. And so I think like by starting with the values like that foster a lot of intrinsic motivation, just in how I interact in the day to day world. Um, and I also think like by fostering intrinsic motivation, um, you're also by proxy encouraging a lot of curiosity. And like you're encouraging your children or whoever to like, awesome, like get so excited about this. Go explore it. Go figure it out. Go try this thing. Go fail.

• 1:14:14Speaker 00

  And then the like incentive mechanism thing, I mean, that's like everything from like brushing your teeth to like going to school and like just all, you know, all these things. Um, but I was thinking about how there's a lot of like relation between maybe how Dao is talk about, you know, getting contributors involved in fostering that kind of ownership and like with parenting, I don't know yet. But, um, I was sort of thinking about like this next generation of like Dao parents and like what will they be like?

• 1:14:42David Hoffman?

  So you're saying that you can kind of apply the idea of how to be a good parent to also a DAO? And say, hey, if we can get this like smaller part of the DAO to start like creating a feedback loop inside of itself, then that little part of the DAO can like self perpetuate and we don't have to think about that anymore. And now that's a cell like an auto functioning part of the DAO. And then we can like create this over and over and over again for many, many parts of the other parts of the DAO. And if we can do that enough times, like all of a sudden the DAO as a whole is like the self perpetuating ecosystem. Is that kind of the idea here?

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  Yes, I was actually thinking of it as the inverse of like, oh, how can we apply these like sort of DAO models to children? But because I was thinking about like tokenomics, right? And like, there's all these things involved in it with like, how do you create systems where people are rewarded in the right way? Even with like a vesting schedule, I was thinking, I met this crypto person who gives his kid a choice every month of like, is his allowance in like USD, like cash or like Roblox? And I was like, wow, this is really cool. It's almost like, kind of like a vesting, like option schedule. And that, I don't know, I was just sort of thinking about

• 1:15:57Speaker 00

  DAO people and crypto people are such nerds about incentive mechanisms and positive feedback loops and intrinsic motivation and ownership. And like, those are all things that like matter in like parenting too. So I wonder if we'll see like a change in like with the ethos of crypto. And I think this really circles back to like the very beginning of this conversation of like, what are the values in crypto? And like, what do we care about and think about? And like, how does that translate? I guess across, how might that translate across generations?

• 1:16:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And also, how do we, how do we like incentivize it, right? Like, how do we manifest it? Yeah. So if we were to zoom out and say, say DAOs get their shit together, and maybe we can also answer what that even looks like. We can, let's fast forward like five, 10 years into the future where a lot of this idea and thought and like practice of applying some of the things that we've been talking about today on the show, and DAOs like start to like, you know, start to get their ball rolling. What, what does your, the successful versions of DAOs in the future look like? What are they doing that have helped them become successful? What do they need to do?

• 1:17:04Speaker 00

  I don't want to be prescriptive. Like, I don't think there's one right way to do DAOs. Like, I know how I personally feel about certain things within DAOs and like what my preferences are.

• 1:17:14David Hoffman?

  But you could also zoom out more and just say, hey, like, DAOs have figured out ways to hear their communities better. Right. We can get a little bit more meta about it.

• 1:17:21Speaker 00

  Right. I think, yeah, like getting more meta about it. I think in a successful DAO world, a few years down the line, we will see a proliferation of diversity in DAOs, both in what they're united and mobilized around and in the ways that they operate. And then I also think, like, to get there, like I said before, like, we need more experimentation, we need more research, we need more documentation. We need to actually be like more academically, I think, rigorous about the, about the development of this industry or space or sector within crypto. Because like those peer-reviewed journals I found,

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  those are like nuggets of alpha. And like, you would never find that on crypto Twitter.

• 1:18:09David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:18:10Speaker 00

  And like, I literally just found them by like-

• 1:18:11David Hoffman?

  I can't remember a single time I've ever seen a peer-reviewed article spread on crypto Twitter.

• 1:18:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Like, but we need both, right? And like, I, we, we do, like, it'd be helpful, right? In these conversations where people are like, this DAO model is failing, it doesn't work. It'd be helpful. We need evidence and data. Like, I'm a very data-driven person. We need data to back that up. And so we need to be able to point to, to different DAOs that have succeeded and failed over time and actually have measurable ways of like documenting that and consolidating and presenting that information.

• 1:18:45David Hoffman?

  I think that's just a simple call to action of like, hey, let's, let's codify our learnings and make that shareable, which is kind of just like what open source is. I mean, we're not writing software here. We're kind of, sometimes we are with things like Orca Protocol. But like, we're just saying like, hey, we need to like share more information about like how these structures are working. And maybe that is, is why I had you on the show today to talk about critical theory. Because isn't that what that is? Is that, is that part of like what this whole thing is? It's like spreading knowledge as to how power structures work. And we kind of need our DAOs to have a little bit more power these days.

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  It's knowledge and power structures all the way down, for sure. Yes.

• 1:19:25David Hoffman?

  Parker, thank you so much for, for joining me on Layer Zero.

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me.

• 1:19:29David Hoffman?

  Cheers.

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  Cheers.

• 1:19:30David Hoffman?

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• 1:20:15David Hoffman?

  fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless Nation.