SotN #47 - Gitcoin DAO & $GTC token, with Kevin Owocki

Gitcoin is turning itself into Gitcoin DAO, governed by the community and GTC holders! Come learn all about Gitcoin DAO, GTC distribution, and the responsibilities of the governors! ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ 🎖 CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini 🔀 BALANCER | EXCHANGE & POOL ASSETS https://bankless.cc/balancer 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING http://bankless.cc/uniswap ------ State of the Nation #47: Gitcoin DAO & $GTC token Guest: Kevin Owocki In this week's State of the Nation, we bring on Kevin Owocki to discuss the decentralization and DAO-ization of public goods funding platform Gitcoin, and the launch of their $GTC token. Kevin is the former benevolent dictator (CEO) of Gitcoin and a General in the war against Moloch (human coordination failure). The purpose of Gitcoin is to provide a platform for open-source software developers to acquire funding for their projects. Kevin mentions that open-source creates $500B in economic value yearly. In the crypto space, and on the internet at large, open-source development means that something is free to use, fork, or build on. This accessibility has been a driving force behind web development, and Gitcoin's mission is to create a business model for open-source software developers. Gitcoin has raised around $20M since its initial launch in November 2017. Gitcoin DAO is seeking to meme itself into the Quadratic Lands, where public goods are well-funded and digital democracy reigns. As Gitcoin has grown, it has come to the point in which a DAO is more well-served for Gitcoin's goals of activism and open-source development. Anti-fragility and distributing points-of-failure are key benefits of transitioning into a DAO. The alignment of incentives between the individual and society is crucial for optimizing capital efficiency and organically generating a better society. GTC = Grow The Community ------ Resources: Coordination Failures https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/know-thy-enemy-coordination-failures Claim GTC https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-alpha-alert-claim-gitcoin-token Gitcoin https://gitcoin.co/ Quadratic Lands https://gitcoin.co/quadraticlands/ Kevin on Twitter https://twitter.com/owocki?s=20 ----- 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.

• 0:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, we are here, another episode of State of the Nation. This is the time of the week where we talk about what's happening. We've related to big picture stuff, the themes of the Bankless Newsletter and Podcast. We try to drop some insights and action items for you. Coming in hot today, super excited about this. Gitcoin DAO just launched, the GTC token just launched. If you've ever given to Gitcoin, you may be a recipient of GTC. We are talking to Kevin Owocki, who is the founder of Gitcoin and responsible for helping to launch this DAO today. Super excited about it. David, are you excited, man?

• 0:49David Hoffman?

  Oh my gosh, absolutely. And I think there's no one more on the forefront of thinking about why DAOs? Why digital organizations than Kevin Owocki? And that's why I'm really excited to get him on the show today because we can all, we can talk about, you know, simple, all the basic reasons that everyone hears over and over and over again about why DAOs are good. And those are all real. But when we take them and think about them at more abstract, more satellite level views, things get really interesting and Kevin is a great person to talk to about that. And, and so I'm really excited to get that conversation going here on the State of the Nation.

• 1:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  So we are going to be talking about the Gitcoin DAO launch, solving the public goods funding problem, not just for Ethereum, not just for crypto, but I think even larger than that. We're also going to be talking about the future of work. In the future, you may be working for a DAO if you're not already, not a company. Super exciting topics and I think themes of the Bankless Podcast Newsletter writ large. David, before we get in with Kevin, we should talk about some announcements. We dropped an MEV podcast this week on, on Monday. It's big brain stuff, but just distill it down for us. Why should folks tune into that and download that episode and give it a listen?

• 2:05David Hoffman?

  Yeah, MEV is the hard problem of crypto. It is the thing that could really just compromise a lot of the reasons why we think crypto is cool. MEV is the problem that if you are the person proposing a block, either as a Bitcoin miner or an Ethereum validator, you have god mode over that block. And that really sets you apart as an entity away from the rest of the network. And there's a discrepancy between the values of the network and the interests of that one individual person. And this can really send these systems into haywire mode. It can really destabilize these systems. And so Phil, Diane, Georgias Konstantopoulos, and Charlie Noys are really at the forefront of thinking about this subject. And we had a fantastic conversation, the first conversation that all three of them

• 2:50David Hoffman?

  have been in a room together. And things go from the very concrete to the very philosophical at the very end because, like many of these things that we touch in crypto, things kind of end with philosophy and really big thinking. And so we really, really appreciated that conversation and really glad we could get that out. And like you said, Ryan, on the intro of that podcast, I think that is the first of many MEV shows that we must do on the Bankless program.

• 3:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  It was probably the first of many listens too. I just listened to it for a second time this morning, just finished it so I could let these topics really digest, but super important. We also have a Liquidity AMA, Ask Me Anything. Liquidity is an algorithmic stablecoin. Stablecoin as the definition that Bankless would use, which means it's not backed by a meat space bank or institution. We're having them on for a live stream Ask Me Anything tomorrow at 12 Eastern, I believe. David, anything you want to say about that?

• 3:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I used the Liquidity project as an example in my CoinDesk talk yesterday as one of these big, like new, brand new DeFi protocols that have come out very recently that is all about capital efficiency, capital efficiency, capital efficiency, right? Ether as a collateral asset inside of Liquidity is a 110% collateralization ratio, so really, really low, and also 0% interest. And that is The competitive advantage behind liquidity. Uh, and really, if you view DeFi at a bird's eye view, it's just competition for capital efficiency. And liquidity is one of the newest protocols to engage in that competition. So we got, uh, Robert, uh, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, uh, La- La- LaCal, uh, to get-

• 4:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  Robert L.

• 4:34David Hoffman?

  Uh, Robert L.

• 4:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Robert L. number two, not compound Robert L.

• 4:38David Hoffman?

  Uh, he's coming on to answer all of our questions about liquidity and how it works.

• 4:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's gonna be hot, guys. That is why you subscribe to Bankless on YouTube. You subscribe in the podcast. That's the way you get this alpha. Uh, speaking of which, Arbitrum, next Tuesday, they're coming on State of the Nation. And I've just heard from them, they still plan to, to launch on May 28th. So I'm super excited about that, David. Arbitrum, of course, is a highly anticipated roll-up tech scalability solution for Ethereum. So we're going to talk to them next Tuesday. Another reason to subscribe to the Bankless podcast. But David, I'm going to start this episode with a question I ask you every single State of the Nation that we've done so far, which is this. What is the State of the Nation today, sir?

• 5:21David Hoffman?

  The State of the Nation is slaying, and we could not do that with anyone else other than Kevin O'Wakki. We are slaying Moloch. That is really the through line for me, what Gitcoin is trying to do. It's trying to slay Moloch. And if you are privy to the Moloch conversation, you know that he's the god of coordination failure. And the thing that Gitcoin is trying to do the most is allow humans to coordinate. Uh, and you might also know that it's actually impossible to slay Moloch, but you can wound him and make him retreat. Uh, and so that is what we are trying to do this week on the Bankless State of the Nation. We are slaying Moloch once again.

• 5:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh, my God. Can we solve the tragedy of the commons problem? Can we figure out how to give to public goods? That is the topic for today. I'm super excited about that. Guys, we're going to be back with Kevin in just a minute. But before we do, we want to tell you about the fantastic sponsors who make Bankless possible.

• 6:15David Hoffman?

  Aave is a borrowing and lending protocol on Ethereum, and just recently released Aave version 2, which has a ton of cool new features that makes using Aave even more powerful. With Aave, you can leverage the full power of DeFi money Legos, yield, and composability all in one application. On Aave, there are a ton of assets that you can deposit in order to gain yield, and all of those same assets can also be borrowed from the protocol if you have deposited collateral. Here you can see me getting a 200 USDC loan against my portfolio of a number of different DeFi tokens and ETH. I'll choose a variable interest rate, because it's a lower rate than the stable interest rate option, but I could choose the stable interest rate option if I wanted to lock that interest rate in permanently.

• 7:00David Hoffman?

  One of Aave's V2 features is the ability to swap collateral without having to withdraw your assets, trade them on Uniswap, and then deposit them back into Aave. Aave does all of this for you, all in one seamless transaction, so you don't have to repay loans in order to change the collateral you have backing them. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com. Balancer is DeFi's most powerful automated market maker. Typical AMMs just have two tokens inside of one liquidity pool, which can lead to fractured liquidity across the many pairs in DeFi. With Balancer, you can access the full power of multiple tokens inside of one single AMM, which unlocks an entirely new playing field of possibility. This makes Balancer an awesome building block for so many different use cases.

• 7:44David Hoffman?

  Balancer pools can make asset indexes, but instead of paying fees to portfolio managers, Balancer lets you collect fees from traders who use your portfolio for liquidity. Additionally, Balancer smart pools can be programmed to have properties that change according to predetermined rules, such as changing the swap fee based on market conditions, or even liquidity bootstrapping pools, which can help you launch and distribute your token with day-one liquidity. At Bankless, we used a liquidity bootstrapping pool to sell our BAP t-shirts to much success. Balancer V2 brings powerful new features that makes your money work even harder for you. In V2, idle tokens are capable of generating yield in DeFi without sacrificing liquidity in the pool. To top things off, Balancer is reimbursing all gas costs with BAV rewards, meaning that all your gas costs are returned to your wallet with the Balancer Governance token.

• 8:28David Hoffman?

  Balancer's mission is to become the primary source of liquidity in DeFi by providing the most flexible and powerful platform for asset management and decentralized exchange. Dive into the Balancer pools at pools-balancer exchange.

• 8:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right, guys, we are back with Kevin Owocki, who is the benevolent dictator over at Gitcoin, which is a platform to help fund public goods and open source software. Of course, Bankless got its start there as well. He's also a general in the war against Moloch, the god of human coordination failure, and he's helping us slay human coordination failure through Gitcoin. Kevin, welcome once again to Bankless. How are you doing again today on this glorious launch day for Gitcoin?

• 9:16Speaker 02

  Hey, Ryan. Hey, David. Thanks so much for having me. Things are good. We released GTC, which is the token, the government's token in network, has no economic coordinate, Gitcoin DAO, which will be a DAO that generates public goods funding experiments, matures them, and eventually sends them out into the world to slay Moloch. So things are good. We brought the site down a little bit with our record levels of traffic this morning, but we got it back up and feeling pretty good about that now.

• 9:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  You definitely got hugged to death this morning for a while. And is this like, is this like record traffic for Gitcoin and the website?

• 9:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had about 2,000 users on the site this morning when it was going down. And during the, our record during a Gitcoin grants round has been like 800 or 900 people on the site. So number go up with website traffic.

• 10:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's awesome. I think it's only up from here. Let's start with this, Kevin, for folks that aren't actually familiar with Gitcoin. Maybe this is their first time hearing about Gitcoin. Why Gitcoin? Why does it exist? What's the purpose?

• 10:21Speaker 02

  For sure. So Gitcoin is a place that you can get coins if you're a software developer working on open source software. Open source creates $500 billion per year in economic value. When I start a startup, I don't write my own database server. I don't write my own web server. I don't write my own open source financial system. I use Ethereum. I use Nginx. I use Postgres. And these are open source technologies that allow people to stand on the shoulders of giants when they're starting new ventures. And one of the problems is that there's no business model for open source software. It's open source and it's available for free, so why pay for it? And it's Gitcoin's mission to make sure that we can create business models for open source software. After all, we have programmable money.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  If we could program our values into our money and if we valued open source software, then we can get open source software developers paid. They can get coins, they can quit their corporate job and they can just work on our digital infrastructure and that's our mission.

• 11:14David Hoffman?

  You guys have been crushing that mission so far. This is some of the results. Can you walk us through some of the results that you've seen so far with Gitcoin?

• 11:25Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah, so gitcoin.co/results is our results page and it updates every three hours. It's like the last update as of right here is a minute ago. We've done about $20 million worth of open source funding, depending on when you. It's a volatile cryptocurrency, as you know. And I think it's between 19 and 20 million dollars right now. Doing about $6 million per quarter as of the last quarter. But Q2 is not over yet and Gitcoin Grants, which is when we move the most money to open source software developers, starts in about two weeks. So expecting to do a couple million dollars per quarter. And you know, the big metric for us is how many software developers can quit their jobs and just work for the open internet.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  And so at $20 million, there's been about a dozen or more software developers that have told us that they've found their next gig or their next opportunity for Gitcoin. So super proud of that.

• 12:18David Hoffman?

  It's been a theme on the Bankless program to really talk about the ways that these protocols are disintermediating people from money and people from other people. And really, at the end of the day, changing the technology and changing the money of a society is really changing almost everything there is about money. And so what I really see Gitcoin doing when we see these metrics of, you know, $3,000 per hour being streamed out to open source developers. We are really, the net result is we are changing the culture of work. We are changing what work is. And to me, that is really the through line for Gitcoin. It's a cultural change platform for, you know, instead of having a nine to five paper pushing job where you go in

• 13:01David Hoffman?

  You look busy and you do maybe two and a half hours of work while you're there for eight hours. Instead, there's more, something closer to, you know, more fluid work. You choose what you work on, you choose when you work and you choose how you value your work and your relationship to that. And I really see Gitcoin pioneering that path. Kevin, I know you have thoughts on this. Where does your mind go when you think about culture, work and Gitcoin?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah. I mean, the analog that I always use when I tell people about blockchain, they ask, what is blockchain? I don't answer that question. I say, why blockchain? And I say, the Internet of Information changed the world because now computers could send information across a computer network. And it changed everything in society that relies on information. Entertainment, media, politics, journalism. And so I think we have the Internet of Value and now we can send value across the computer network. And the allegory is that that's going to change everything in society that relies on value transfer. Whether that's banking, insurance, investment, Zen jobs, I think, is really the one that people miss because we're all so busy. I mean, DeFi is amazing, don't get me wrong, but you want Ethereum to go mainstream, you gotta hit people where they're at.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  And for 95% of the world's population, their financial lives is their jobs and not their investments. And so I'm super passionate about, okay, we're moving forward into this world. How do we make it as good for talent as possible? How do we optimize not just for, in the terms of economics, how do we optimize for the labor and not just for the capital? And I think that the way that you do that is you provide new earning opportunities, new opportunities to level up to the world's labor. And software engineers is just a logical place to start because software engineers are going to be able to figure out what a nonce is and how to broadcast a transaction on Metamask. But hopefully we'll create a better world for the world's workers, expanding out from what we learned with software engineers to communities across the world.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  And I don't take that lightly. I think that this is a really important part of people's lives. And we're not going back to the world that used to exist, but we can create a better world for them. And so for me, I think one of the real things about Ethereum that's pretty cool is we're moving from the industrial Age when there was a lot of hierarchy in the organizations that we were involved with. And now we're moving to a network age where the everyday average participant can uh can can work for the open internet and can work for the network. And one of the cool things about that is like, imagine a mesh network of jobs where I can work for David one day and Bankless the next day. And then I can go work for the open internet after that. And so a mesh network of jobs where we're all working with each other peer to peer.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Instead of working for a boss who works for their boss who works for their boss is I think where we're gonna go. And the the last thing that I'll say is just that there's a lot of jobs that needs to be reinvented. There's there's compliance, there's insurance, there's retirement that's bundled with jobs. And we're just at the starting line for how people are gonna earn in the 21st century. I'm really excited to be pushing this forward along with other great projects in the Ethereum ecosystem. Like Opus, like Radical, like Common Stack that are trying to create a better world for the world's labor, not just for capital.

• 16:13David Hoffman?

  Kevin, there's a line in the Cypherpunk manifesto that says, uh, Cypherpunks know that cryptographic protocols make social structures. Uh, is it too generous to say that Gitcoin is a Cypherpunk platform that coordinates funding towards other Cypherpunk platforms? And to me, the evolution of the Cypherpunks is that, you know, they made they made early cryptography and then that made Bitcoin. And then and then that made Ethereum. And the cool thing about Ethereum and also the cool thing about Gitcoin is that the cyph- the cryptographic side of things has kind of been taken care of. And now we can do other crypt Cypherpunk stuff that's not necessary about cryptography, but still of the Cypherpunk ethos.

• 16:53David Hoffman?

  And and my my mental model for Gitcoin is that it's a Cypherpunk Cypherpunk platform that funds other Cypherpunk things. Um, Ryan started the Bankless newsletter and got his first, uh, you know, donations from from Gitcoin. I started just writing about stuff, writing about the things that I saw in DeFi. Uh, and I got my first funding out out of Gitcoin as well. And so kind of both Ryan and I are graduates of the Gitcoin platform. And neither of us know how to code, but yet I still think we are kind of promoting Cypherpunk values. Um, how do you think about Gitcoin in the inside of that context?

• 17:27Speaker 02

  Um, well, I've read the Cypherpunk manifesto. I think it's certainly interesting. Um, I do think that the mainstream is going to be a little bit maybe.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Turned not turned off, but like, I don't know. I don't. I don't know if I see the word cypherpunk going mainstream. Uh, I think open source software has already gone mainstream. And so, um, I love Ethereum. I think cypherpunk values are really interesting to think about as we go into this new world, but I'm an open source maximalist. And I think that open source software is just the bee's knees. It produces so much value for the world. And I think that, uh, I'm a, I'm an open source maximalist and I want to see open source software developers getting paid. There is a natural overlap with cypherpunk values and with Ethereum values there. But I would say that I'm an open source maximalist more than anything.

• 18:14Ryan Sean Adams?

  All right. So Kevin, uh, take us into Gitcoin DAO. So we've talked about why Gitcoin as an organization exists, funding public goods. Uh, now you are choosing to, and Gitcoin is choosing to decentralize itself. So no longer Kevin, the benevolent dictator, just a member of a digital organization, a DAO, as, as people called them before. Let's talk about this and, uh, I'm, I'm going to open up the, uh, the, the welcome to quadratic lands. Interface for you because that's a great place to start as you talk about this, but why a Gitcoin DAO?

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. So I mean, I, uh, I, so, so this is the quadratic lands. This is the promised land that we want to bring everyone to. Meme technically, we're trying to meme ourselves into the quadratic lands, which is just a world where there's more digital democracy and public goods are funding. There's unicorns there. You can see it on screen.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  So, so basically what we want to do is we want to create a better world for the world's workers. And the quadratic lands is this mythical, uh, mythical place that we want to go to. It's the, uh, it's, it's the promised land where public goods are well-funded and digital democracy reigns. And I think that, you know, that's the economic way of, of describing it. But imagine a world where we could rewrite the rules of economic gravity, uh, in order to favor the common person. And, and, and we could build a world in which there is serendipity, serendipity just being defined as chance luck of. For the everyday person, whether that's economic luck or social luck, a world where we're all supporting each other because we now have programmable money. We can rewrite the laws of economic gravity to build programmable money.

• 19:58Speaker 02

  And as we were thinking about how do we meme this into existence, how do we build this world? We just didn't feel like a company was the right opportunity to do this. If we're going to eat the Ethereum dog food, then we felt a DAO was a better vessel for the quadratic lands than a company could ever be. And I'll just share a little bit of a personal experience for me. I think that, you know, companies are vessels for entrepreneurism and DAOs are vessels for activism. Um, I have been an entrepreneur for the last 12 years and I have run companies before that have raised VC capital. And then the bankers are leaning on me to extract from the users and get as much value out of them as possible so that they can return funds for their LP. Their LPs and I just don't want to be doing that with my life.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  My community at Gitcoin are some of my best friends and I have a deep reverence for them. And I felt like there was no way that we could align incentives without making it so that Gitcoin was serving the community and governed by the, by the same community. So if I'm a manager of a, of a startup, I might have my users on my right and my investors on my right, on my left. And my investors are saying, hey, get as much money out of these users as possible. And I didn't want to be in that position. I wanted the users of Gitcoin to be the governors of Gitcoin. And so anyone who's building Gitcoin DAOs is focused on what's good for the end user. And so that's the main reason why we wanted to, um, push into a DAO.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  The other little anecdote that I'll just share is that people talk a lot about the decentralization of power. And I have just been through a brutal two-year bear market in the Ethereum space and I'm excited about the decentralization of stress. I don't need to do that for the Bitcoin mission anymore. I want the world to be able to carry this forward and I want it to be anti-fragile. Uh, and like, you know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm so dedicated to this mission, but I, you know, I, I want to, I, I don't want to be the single point of failure. Anti-fragility is a really important part of these missions and these networks. And if I'm the CEO, um, I like to say philosopher king, not benevolent dictator, by the way, you know?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Uh, but, but I do think that, um, o- over time, I would like to have the same privileges as everyone else in the network. And that's a part of decentralization. That's a part of the ethos. And so we're really trying to, uh, not just to walk, uh, talk the talk, but to walk, to walk the walk and become a DAO.

• 22:17David Hoffman?

  Kevin, you said you want the same privileges as everyone else in the network and that's a little bit of coder speak or computer science speak coming out there because I think the what you may be alluding to is that literally privileges as according to the the protocol, right? Like if on a computer, on a PC, you have different levels of privileges if you have admin access or not, right? And one of the ethos of this industry is that everyone has equal access towards Ethereum. There is no, you know, there is no admin access to Ethereum. Everyone has equal privileges. And I think what you're saying is that, you know, with this hierarchy of companies where, you know, bosses are stacked upon bosses are stacked upon boxes, right? You know, not in my pay grade, right? No, there is just one pay grade, right?

• 23:01David Hoffman?

  It's just everyone's on the same flat topological map. And I really like this chart that you put in in your announcement post where you talk about how in Web 2, it hits the limits of scale sooner than in Web 3 world or a DAO world. And also that limit, limits of scale turns into an extraction model rather than what I see you calling here an enabling model. And this is again, what I was going to back to say to say earlier, this is really just fundamentally changing the culture of the way the world works, right? Like there's just the alignment of incentives allows for things to just be net beneficial to everyone because we have that compressed hierarchy into a topological distributed map.

• 23:47David Hoffman?

  Kevin, I see you as a leader in that charge and I really enjoy all these conversations of this nature that we have. But I also know that the listeners are itching to hear about the GTC token and the nature of how it got distributed. Because now people who are previous users of the Web 2 version of Gitcoin are now the governors of the Web 3 version of Gitcoin. So can we talk about how the GTC was elected to be distributed to all the current stakeholders of GTC token?

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Totally. Well, GTC stands for Grow the Community, or Gitcoin if you want to be conventional. And basically, the idea here was that I kind of think of where we're at now as the midpoint in the Gitcoin journey. We've built the coordination mechanisms, we've built a platform, and about half of the tokens are going to going to myself and Gitcoin's investors, and then also through a retroactive airdrop to people who have funded public goods on the platform in the past. And you know, that's no mistake. We think that if you funded Gitcoin grants, then your values are aligned with Gitcoin. And you've not only said that your values are aligned with Gitcoin,

• 25:01Speaker 02

  you've showed us that your values are aligned with Gitcoin by taking your money and putting it where your mouth is. And, and so this is the halfway point in the Gitcoin journey. Half of the tokens have been released to stakeholders who have pushed Gitcoin to where it is in the past, and half will be pushed in the, as a community treasury, to people who are helping to grow the network in the future. And so there's a treasury of 50 million GTC that are sitting in a compound fork that the community can make proposals, and anyone who's providing value to open source software and to Gitcoin that is approved by our on-chain governance, the DAO's on-chain governance, can get rewarded in GTC in future governance rights for their providing value to the network.

• 25:46Speaker 02

  So if you go to quadraticlands.com, then you'll be taken to the token distribution experience. And that's just basically this, this, this beautiful experience that, that we've built for everyone in order to get their tokens. You have an airdrop, most likely, oh, my video went off, one sec. You have an airdrop, most likely, if you've contributed to Gitcoin grants or hackthons in the past. And basically, what we're asking you to do is to do a proof of knowledge, so watch a two-minute video about how, about Gitcoin's mission. You can't govern Gitcoin without understanding our mission. So you do a proof of knowledge, and then you do a proof of use, which is basically figuring out who in the community you want to delegate your tokens to, and then, and only then.

• 26:30Speaker 02

  And you go to proof of receive, which which is when you actually get your tokens. And it looks like from the browser you're showing me here, it looks like you've received your tokens. So.

• 26:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  I have, I went through this process. So Bankless Station, I went through this process. It was, uh, it was super seamless. And also super fun. Like it, it very much felt like I was a part of, of something uh, much bigger than myself. By the way, my compliments on the video, Kevin, um, whoever put that together just did a fantastic job. And, um, yeah, and you know, uh, getting the tokens, proof of knowledge, the proof of use. I actually delegated my tokens to a member of the community that, uh, that I trust for voting. I might get more involved in governance as it goes, but the process was seamless fun. And like, I am super excited to see what this community does because I think

• 27:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  the, the, the process of distribution here, you very successfully screened for people who are very invested in public goods, uh, on Ethereum. And, um, you know, I just

• 27:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  seeing what other DAOs have accomplished when they have that highly engaged, invested community. I'm just super excited to see where Gitcoin takes this.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  Well, Ryan, if you don't mind, I'd just love to double click on, um, proof of use, which is the second mission right here. Um, I don't know if you can click on it, but if not, if you go to mission slash use, um, in the URL bar. Uh, basically what we're doing is we're asking people to delegate their governance rights to members of the Ethereum community. If you click, I am ready right there, you'll see what I mean. Uh, so delegation mode is enabled, it looks like. And then if you click continue, then you're going to see 40 members of the Gitcoin community who would like you to delegate your governance rights to them in the, uh, in the process. And so this is actually a really super essential point. Most on-chain governance systems launch a governance token and they have really low voter turnout.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  And I just think that the consent of the governed is the only legitimate, uh, frame, is the only legitimate foundation for governance. And if you have low voter turnout, then how the heck are you going to govern, uh, have the consent of the governed? And so basically what we're doing is we're setting the starting Conditions of Gitcoin DAO such that everyone has delegated. And therefore, we're going to have much higher participation. This is the theory at least, by the way. If everyone's delegated at the start, then we're going to have much higher participation because 95% of people aren't going to follow all the debates on the governance forum. But if they can delegate through liquid democracy to someone who is, then you still retain the consent of the governed in the high voter turnout. And I think that, you know, we're all standing on the shoulders of giants with open source software.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Just very, very minimally pushing forward the state of the art around decentralization. I hope that this is Gitcoin's contribution to the space is 100% delegation at the start. Just means that you're going to have way better voter engagement and turnout in the future of the DAO. Because the starting conditions were set that way. So that's, that's the hope and the theory with proof of use.

• 29:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  And by the way, guys, this is of course fully permissionless. So anyone can become a delegate. So you can paste your own address in here. You could rise up the ranks and get people to, to vote for you. That's super exciting. One other thing we've got to talk about because we, we started this. When you're talking about the Gitcoin DAOs sailing off to, setting off to quadratic lands, right? And I noticed on the quadratic lands homepage, there, there was, is this notion of implementing quadratic voting as well. Can you talk briefly about that? Because that would be a, a really innovative concept that maybe Gitcoin DAO is uniquely positioned to pull off.

• 30:08Ryan Sean Adams?

  So talk about what that is for folks who don't understand why it's important and how the DAO might be able to pull that off.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Sure. So this gets into a little bit into theory, but basically there's this thing called the Matthew effect, which is the compounding gains of accumulated capital. And it applies to matters of, of, of money, but it also applies to, applies to matters of like fame or status. Like the rich get richer is basically the Matthew effect. And there's this economist called Glenn Weil, who invented a method of mechanism, a mechanism for voting that basically optimizes for what the poor and the many want to see happen, not just the rich and the few. This is a big part of the ethos of decentralization is What is the, what is the, what is the most democratic way that we could fund public goods? Bitcoin grants is famous for quadratic funding.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Um, and one of the things that we are interested in doing in Bitcoin Dow at the governance layer is making it so that the people who have the most tokens don't have the loudest voice. So the poor and the many over the rich and the few is the ethos of quadratic funding. And what if we could bring quadratic voting to the base layer of Bitcoin Dow? And so there's actually an, an, an active proposal that's being submitted in the next couple of days, I'm told, that is coming bottoms up from the community to fork the governance of Bitcoin Dow and to make it into quadratic voting. Instead of one-to-one token voting. And I think that, you know, I said proof of uses are one real contribution into moving governance in the space forward.

• 31:37Speaker 02

  I hope quadratic, well, I, I should say that I am trying to withhold my, putting my finger on the scale too much because I want to see as much happen bottoms up from the community as possible. But I do think that quadratic funding and voting is, uh, from my perception, a part of the ethos of Bitcoin. And being the first Dow that has quadratic voting at the base layer would be a major contribution forward. Because one-to-one token voting can be captured by the rich people. And I think that Bitcoin wouldn't be Bitcoin without the ethos of, of quadratic voting and quadratic funding in the base layer. So I'm, I'm keen to see how that governance vote plays out over the next several, several months.

• 32:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  And Kevin, if that goes through, if that's implemented, what would that mean? So there are obviously, uh, some in the Bitcoin Dow community who have more tokens than others. There, there are some quote unquote whales. What, what would that mean, uh, for kind of the whales versus the, the everyman with the, with the smaller set of, of, uh, tokens?

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Well, it means that my voting will be way less influential. And I think that that's a feature, not a bug. As networks decentralize, you want to give tokens or you want to give, uh, voting power from people who are just there early to people who are showing up and, and contributing their sweat equity into the Dow. And so I think it's a feature, not a bug that the whales don't have as much voting power. And basically what you're going to see is that everyday citizens who just verify their identity as a unique human are going to, uh, in mass, in aggregate, have way more voting power. And that could sway the Dow towards more democratic decision-making, optimizing for what are the masses of people want to see as opposed to the richest holders?

• 33:15Speaker 02

  And so that's the theory. Um, we've seen it kind of in practice in. Quadratic funding and quadratic voting are the same thing. It's just one is with votes and one is with funding. For those of you who have followed Gitcoin Grants in the past, you may know that the projects that are funded on Gitcoin are the ones that our peers are the ones that respect them. It's not some central grant administrator who's deciding which projects get funded on Gitcoin Grants. It's do you have the respect of your peers and how many of your peers respect your project? And I think that taking that exact same concept and applying it to governance would be a real interesting development in the space. So it hasn't been done before, but I'm curious to see what happens when it has been done.

• 33:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Guys, I just want to make a big comment here because this level of experimentation is what excites me so much about Ethereum. So Kevin started this by saying, hey, we've moved from the industrial revolution to this whole network revolution where we're all part of networks, right? But we're stuck in the past where we have a capital structure that's based in the industrial revolution. Where mine goes to is exactly what you said. What if Uber had a similar mechanism, right? What if rather than issue Uber tokens to VCs and all of their shareholders, they issued it to actual drivers in their network and they empower those drivers with stake to do some level of quadratic funding? Like, how much differently would the Uber network look?

• 34:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  If this level of experimentation was available for them? So this is why this is such an exciting unlock to me. And I can't wait to see how this plays out. Anyway, David, you were going to tie something off, I think.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Well, I just want to interject real quick there. Like, we've talked about Gitcoin being a talent marketplace in the past and I really think that Uber has squeezed their drivers in a way that's not fair. They get them to buy these cars and then their earnings have gone down over time.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  The gig economy is not the internet of jobs. I think the internet of jobs needs to be more democratic and more favorable to labor, not just to capital. And so I would reject Uber as a primer for what Gitcoin's doing in just saying that the capital structure of DAOs is going to be owned by their workers and/or governed by their workers, I should say. And so I think that that's the big difference between the internet of value and the gig economy, or at least I hope it is.

• 35:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well said.

• 35:35David Hoffman?

  And the way that Gitcoin DAO is launching, I think, well, because this delegation right off the bat, I think is really important because there is this inevitable tension between centralization and efficiency and decentralization and fairness, right? And people have it hammered into their brains in this industry, like decentralization, good, decentralization, good. But if you really take decentralization to its logical conclusion, you end up at the heat death of the universe, right? Like, at some point, there's too much entropy. Like, we have to centralize decision-making back into a distributed group of people, but we can't just have maximum decentralization at the start. And then that model, along with launching with quadratic governance, I think,

• 36:18David Hoffman?

  I think that is, hopefully, could be a model for things to come. Kevin, I want to tie off the distribution, because we talked about the tokens, of which I believe there's 100 million. 15% got airdropped retroactively to Gitcoin participants. And one of the measures of how you guys retroactively airdropped the governance token is what you call gross marketplace value. How do you come up with gross marketplace value? What is that?

• 36:44Speaker 02

  Totally. So gross marketplace value is a web two term, and it just basically means that how much money is passed through the network? How much money was to get to open source software developers? And if you go to gitcoin.co/results, you see that $19 million worth of value has been provided to open source software developers through Gitcoin. And so basically, what we're doing there is we're just taking, of that $19 million, we are taking, we're doing, for the retroactive distribution, we're taking 50% for the sender of that money and 50% of the receiver of that money, and applying a pro-rata distribution according to who has funded the most open source software on a per-dollar basis.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  And so basically, that's the retroactive distribution strategy, is that if you funded public goods on Gitcoin in the past, you have more governance rights over Gitcoin, regardless of whether you were the sender or the receiver of that transaction.

• 37:40David Hoffman?

  And so this is a very awesome anti-sibyl mechanism to have, whereas you know, some people got like the Uniswap airdrop like 20 times, right? Even though it wasn't really the intention, but it was just like, it's just the way that it was. The nice thing about the Gitcoin airdrop is that it's actually not linked to a private key, it's linked to your GitHub account. And so you won't, no one will be going and scrounging around for private keys to go find, to find their, their Gitcoin airdrop. The, the other categories I want to, want to talk about are the stakeholders and the investors. So who are, are there any VCs or capital, venture capital funds that own some of these, some of the GTC distributions and, and what are their vesting schedules look like? Can you share some of those details as well?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm actually reminded that we need to write a post about this still. And so I want people to hold me to that, that we're going to be as transparent about how the company exists, as long as the company exists. And I think that the long-term vessel for this will be the DAO, but the company is what got its off, got it off the ground. So I started Gitcoin in my basement in 2017. I'm back in my basement because of coronavirus. And, and basically the first money into Gitcoin was Joe Lubin and Consensus. They took us from a project that no one was using to a project that MetaMask and the Ethereum Foundation was using. And they put about $5 million into Gitcoin. We spent that bull market and the bear market at Consensus and then raised $11 million

• 39:05Speaker 02

  from Paradigm in January of this, January, February of this year. And so basically the distribution to the stakeholders in the company are primarily Paradigm and Consensus. And we were very, very clear that our mission is funding open source software. And we turned down a lot of term sheets from people that we thought were not going to be mission aligned. And so I want people to hold us to that mission alignment and community alignment over the long term. At the same time, it was important to get capital in the bank to get Gitcoin off the ground. And so that's why those, those, those parties do have a distribution of, of GTC along with myself and, and the Gitcoin team. But like I said, the, the mission alignment and

• 39:50Speaker 02

  The uh the mission and community alignment is the super is the most important thing. And so about a third of the token table is going to is going to people who've gotten us to where we are at this point. And we're seeing two thirds that is going to be distributed to the community in the future. So uh that's that's about where things are landed and hold me to doing a blog post about this in the future.

• 40:12David Hoffman?

  As a as Gitcoin governor, yes, yes, I will. Um, one one last comment I want to touch on before we hit our sponsor break and get into uh more more brainy parts of these these conversations. Uh, you met you mentioned how there's fifty percent of GCC meant for the future of Gitcoin and put into the Gitcoin Dow Treasury. And also fifty percent of uh for the past. Can you just talk a little bit more about why that fifty fifty future past uh distribution makes made sense to you?

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just kind of felt like we were in the middle point of of our journey and about to move into the end game of Gitcoin, which is to build a Dow of Dows that generates public goods, funding experiments, matures them, and then eventually decentralizes them. So we're solving for the generator function of public goods funding, by the way, like Gitcoin grants and Gitcoin hackathons are just child dolls of this main Dow, which is producing new means of funding public goods. Um, and so like, that's the end game. Uh, just kind of felt middle point with with Bitcoin getting off the ground and being a brand that people knew and and trusted. And our eventually decentralization and movement into that end game. And so um fifty percent has gone to people who have funded on the platform

• 41:19Speaker 02

  or who have invested in the company, either in their time or in their labor in the past. And then fifty percent is going to go to people that, subject to governance, are contributing to Gitcoin's uh further decentralization and impact on the world. So we've got uh some community work streams that have been proposed. One is around decentralizing Gitcoin. So um, hands to God, we're

• 41:43Speaker 02

  We're a centralized platform. I have the admin keys of the platform. It's work stream is designed to get the technology out of my hands and in incredibly neutral environment on to host it on like IPFS or something. So decentralized Bitcoin is number one. Austin Griffith and I and the Bitcoin Dow have partnered to come up with a public goods funding prototyping work stream, which is basically just launching new D apps that can fund public goods that could be funded by Get Coin Dow and other DAOs in the space. We've got a public goods funding work stream, which is just basically about coordinating the funders league, the people who fund, work on, on, on Get Coin Grants. And, and then we've got a governance work stream, which is just basically, you know, it's the community organizing how they want to govern Get Coin.

• 42:27Speaker 02

  Ratifying Get Coin Grants rounds is they're going to be one of the first uses of the governance work stream. Get Coin Grants Round 10 is coming up in two and a half weeks. We also received a pretty, and by we, I'm talking about the DAO, not the company, received a pretty large donation of Akita tokens that are worth several million dollars. And so what do we spend those on is another matter the governance is gonna, is gonna be handling. So

• 42:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  Oh my God.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  The future.

• 42:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is this all the dog coin stuff? Like, is that where you're talking about? Doggy token donations?

• 43:00Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah. And I am so happy that I don't have to make the decision about where they go. Maybe Dow can figure it out.

• 43:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can you just?

• 43:07David Hoffman?

  Talk about decentralizing stress, right?

• 43:09Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. Like before we go to break, can you talk about how crazy that was? Like, what happened with that? So Get Coin received a whole bunch of doggy tokens, right?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So Vitalik went into his wallets and a bunch of these dog tokens, I think Sheib was the first, put 50% of their network into Vitalik's wallet. And I think Vitalik, I, I can't reason about his motives, but he sent a bunch of Sheib tokens to the India COVID Relief Fund. He sent millions of dollars worth of dog tokens to Get Coins to the community multisig for Get Coin. This is before the Dow had launched. So there was no on-chain governance to send them to. And so Vitalik, I think, was just kind of taking the, the tokens that he'd received because of his clout and donating them to good causes. And the book value of his tokens was in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Nothing surprises me in crypto anymore, but that surprised me a little bit to wake up to, to that happening a couple of weeks ago.

• 44:05David Hoffman?

  Hundreds of millions of dollars, absolutely insane. So like now, now, now post Gitcoin Dow, basically that just goes to the Dow Treasury. If anyone wants to, to contribute to that, they can. So if you get airdropped doggy tokens, you don't want them in your wallet, you could send them to Gitcoin Treasury. And now it's up to Gitcoin GTC holders to essentially vote where those funds go or how to allocate them.

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Yep, exactly. We've got a tally.com is the voting interface that we're going to be using. And Gitcoin is a, is a Uniswap fork. And actually, I think if I'm not mistaken, Bankless Dow is a Uniswap fork as well. So we have the same governance mechanism. We'll probably have to trade some tips about, about governing DOWs in the future.

• 44:48David Hoffman?

  No, I think we're all figuring this out as we go, as the nature of the industry. Kevin, there's a very awesome amount of very sick art behind you. And that's what we're going to get into in the second half of this show because you have a comic book that you have been working on to go along with this release of Gitcoin Dow. So that's where we're going next. It's really sick. I've already seen it. So stay tuned for that. But first, guys, we have to take a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Bankless is proud to be supported by Uniswap. Uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure. Instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans, Uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on Ethereum, which is what Ryan and I call a money robot.

• 45:30David Hoffman?

  No human counterparties or centralized intermediaries, just autonomous code on Ethereum. Input the token you want to sell and receive the token you want to buy. Something brand new in the Uniswap ecosystem is the Uniswap Grants Program is now accepting applications for grants. We have been saying this for a while and we'll say it again. Dow's have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap Dow, apply for a grant to Uniswap. Just look at the size of the Uniswap Treasury. It's almost $3 billion. This mountain of capital is looking for labor. Do you have something of value to contribute to the Uniswap Dow? No matter how big or small your idea is, you can apply for a uni-grant at unigrants.org and help steer.

• 46:15David Hoffman?

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• 47:44Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hey Bankless Nation, we are back with Kevin Awaki. This has been a really exciting exploration of Gitcoin, the Gitcoin DAO and GTC token. Now we're going to talk about this sick comic book. Kevin, folks can see our screen, what are we looking at here?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Well, I was actually on Bankless podcast about a year ago with Amin Soleimani and David, talking about how Moloch, the god of coordination failure, is the root of a lot of suffering in the world. And we were talking about how Ethereum as a tool for coordination could be used to slay Moloch. And you know, you can never kill Moloch, you can never kill coordination values, but you can at least set Moloch back. And we were trying to figure out how to tell That story in a format that wasn't a 40 page blog post or a two hour bankless podcast. By the way, David, I love the podcast we did, but it's two hours long. Um, and so we came up with this comic book, which basically tells the story of the Ethereum community assembling to fight Moloch like a comic book, basically like a Marvel comic.

• 48:44Speaker 02

  Um, you know, I'm a big X-Men fan. I'm a big Avengers fan and telling it in a format that's engaging and concise and gets the information out there is I think one of the ways that we can, we can help Ethereum go mainstream. So, uh, David, your episode, uh, your podcast episode inspired this. And so, uh, thank you for helping us give this to the world.

• 49:05David Hoffman?

  Well, the whole point of the podcast is of course to allow for surface area for people to condense the same things that they hear on the bankless podcast or on the, on the bankless newsletter into smaller and smaller, smaller, uh, you know, packets of information. As we all know, memes are extremely important in this world. And going from a two hour podcast to a, a comic book is a very strong condensing of a lot of information. And Ryan, if you keep on scrolling through this, there's a, there's a lot of like symbolism and metaphor here. I particularly like this page, which, uh, the, the page of the ra- rabbling, the rabbling individuals. And to me, I see, uh, the problem of Dunbar's number, right? In the first two, we have a family who argues, but then they come together because they know everyone.

• 49:45David Hoffman?

  But as soon as Dunbar's number, which is if for those that don't know Dunbar is Dunbar's number is the number of people that you can mentally account for with your relationships. And as soon as you get beyond about 150 people, coordination failure starts to occur, right? And there, there's fissures. Uh, and, uh, as the groups grow larger and as society grows larger, you see Moloch just nebulously rising up out of the background. I think that's really, really cool. Uh, and then, and then going down even further, uh, this is the, the, oh yeah, oh God, this is so good. Just he just appears and starts to pull out the strings of all the people of the world because they can't figure out how to coordinate. And I think my favorite page in this, this comic book, Ryan, if you keep on scrolling down,

• 50:28David Hoffman?

  is all of these individual, separate little fighters, separate little Avengers. My mind goes to all the individual, uh, uh, grants, grant recipients or, or DAOs on Ethereum, or just entities that are all trying to figure out how to coordinate, right? We have the, the yearn DAO. We have, you know, we have the, the. Sushi Swap DAO, we have all these like on-chain DAOs. And now we are also starting to tinker with off-chain DAOs. And I kind of consider bankless DAO as a part of this. And Gitcoin DAO is kind of an off-chain DAO. It's more about coordinating not on smart contracts on Ethereum, but on values and culture and ethos off-chain, right?

• 51:08David Hoffman?

  And the cool thing, the cool metaphor I see is there's all these separate little bots, individual little Gitbots. And then if you keep on scrolling down, Ryan, they all come together to form the ETHbot, right? And that is Ethereum. Like, what is Ethereum other than, one more page, Ryan, I think. What is Ethereum other than, or just keep going. There we go, the ETHbot. What is Ethereum other than just a collection of smaller entities, right? And what is the world other than just like, you know, neighborhoods, communities forming neighborhoods, forming counties, forming states, forming the nation-state, forming the globe, right? The more like surface area we can generate for coordination, the more we can coordinate. And that's kind of what I see as Gitcoin and now Gitcoin DAO

• 51:53David Hoffman?

  is surface area for coordination and coordination infrastructure. That's why I think this comic book is so sick. And the other just awesome thing that Gitcoin is really doing in the world of Ethereum is bringing in a lot of really sick art and meaning and memes and culture. So not only are you guys a platform for funding other things, but also bringing in like a lot of really sick art. And I think that's really important.

• 52:19Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah, I mean, I'm just so passionate about this story. And, you know, I don't know if anyone else is a Power Rangers fan. I plead guilty to that as well. And just seeing, using that as a metaphor for the Ethereum community coming together and fighting coordination failures. I really do believe that this technology is for more than just creating decentralized casinos. I do believe that we can coordinate on a deeper level. And that's what this comic book is designed to do. It's designed to spread that word and hope pill as many D gens as possible. We want to take as many D gens as possible and show them the meaning of Ethereum and make them into regens.

• 52:56David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so go ahead, Ron.

• 52:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can we talk about that for a minute, Kevin? So there are a lot of folks listening who probably haven't heard the Moloch podcast, which goes into this in like two hour form, right? But this is not just about solving like money Lego problems on Ethereum and creating a new bankless financial system. That's certainly part of it, right? That that is a coordination problem that maybe we're solving first. But if I look at these these bots, there are all sorts of coordination failures like sprinkled throughout the the world that we live in in the 21st century, right? So talk about things like nuclear proliferation or talk about things like, you know, the coming artificial intelligence and issues that that rise as a result, or we talk about pollution and global warming.

• 53:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  All of these are tragedy of the commons, Moloch style problems. And that really is the pitch for to the world of why Ethereum, right? It's because we can start solving these basic human coordination problems. Is is that right? Is like Ethereum and its Gitcoins hope and aspirations wider than even like decentralized finance and empowering software, software developed engineers and empowering a new labor labor force? Can we? How can we hope to solve these big problems? And what's our message to the world?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  For sure. Yeah, I mean, I think that like, you know, my favorite part of this is if you scroll up the page that has the Ethereum logo, this this one at the bottom, it says Ethereum is the digital tool for coordinating information, identity, resource management, markets, reputation. And and I think that, you know, I want to eat a little bit of humble pie here and say that this is all potential energy. This story is not written yet, and coordination is a tonic every day. And, you know, it could devolve into just a decentralized casino and never be anything more than that. But it's my hope that we have programmable money and it has. So the whole problem with like, by the way, like, I love America, like, I love, like,

• 55:00Speaker 02

  our national culture, but like, America only governs America and our court systems are really backed. Up right now, um, we now have a global coordination mechanism in which we can resolve disputes just using the EV like you think thirty dollars in gas for a transaction is a lot like. Try having to fly out to New York to settle some dispute with someone and your court case keeps on getting delayed and you keep on having to travel back and forth like. Ethereum is a global coordination tool we can which can instantly arbitrate disputes anywhere across the world and so we now have this coordination substrate across the world. Um, and for the last twenty years, we've been able to communicate across the world, but we haven't been able to build trust and coordination across the world with each other.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  Because our legal jurisdictions didn't cover disputes uh across worldwide and so I think that we have the raw materials. To build this deep bot and to fight coordination failures on a global scale, but we have to choose to coordinate. So we still have to build it. And the whole idea with Bitcoin is to better is to better coordinate it like that's why we're building a DAO of DAOs that funds public goods and helps us coordinate on a global scale like. We have the talent, we have the software developers, we have the capital, we have the tools to do it and now we just all have to choose to do it. And we may choose to, we may not. It's up to us. Coordination is a choice every day.

• 56:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's super cool. I love how this ends, by the way. It's just like the ETH bot just punching and like trapping Moloch. With a blockchain, by the way. Yeah.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  So, so uh if you go to the last page, um, you'll, you'll note that you can only set Moloch back. You can never completely kill Moloch and so the last page. With Moloch's eyes ominously in the background, uh, you know, it's possible that we could do a sequel where there's where there's a bankless bot and a CLR fund bot and. When I told a meme about this podcast, he was like, he was like, you should, you should call the uh, you should call the sequel Mola, Moloch and all the terrible sequels. So I think we're gonna try to get a meme to be featured in the sequel as well since he's been a great, big proliferator of, of the meme, but. Um, I would just remind us, Ryan, that like, yeah, Moloch can, or Ethereum can set Moloch back, but will never ever completely vanquish Moloch.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  It's just up to us to, to choose to coordinate and to set it back as much as possible.

• 57:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  But this is like the pursuit of humanity, right? This is how society has progressed throughout the ages is like scaling trust, basically.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  If you take a long arc and yeah, an optimistic view.

• 57:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, absolutely. And that's very much what our MEV podcast was earlier this week is like, how do we pursue the MEV problem? Moloch across all of these chains. Super cool. I mean, at least for me, this is, this has become kind of the, the reason for why I'm in crypto. Like, which is much, which is even broader than so. I, I thought for a time, so when I first got into crypto, I thought for a time, I, a brief time, I'm in crypto to get rich. Right? Like, I thought that at first and I'm like, no, I'm actually in crypto for self sovereign money. And then that became like, no, I'm in crypto for a more bankless money system for the world. Right? And like now it's even expanded beyond that.

• 58:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  I'm in crypto to solve, to help solve, to be a small part of solving human coordination failures. And that is like such a broad lens and such an exciting lens. This is the reason like, I feel like I can spend my entire life here because like, what else is there? Like, what? I mean, there are, there are other important things, but like the, the, the big problem that humanity faces. If we want to scale our species, if we want our, our, our children, our grandkids to, to, to live a, a better, more peaceful like life is solving human coordination failures. Like, that's how we scale civilization. That's how we make the world a better place.

• 58:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  So it's really at least become for me, Kevin, and I think you've captured here in the comic book, like the reason for why crypto. And I start to see everything through this lens, dude. Like, all of the problems in the world, I see through this lens now.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I will say that right now we're at this really tough point where industrial age capitalism is failing. The institutions that our parents relied on are not serving our generation anymore. And there's so many people that are just hopeless and dejected because they think it's all fucked. But now we have this information age and we have this new institution of Ethereum and coordination. That could create a better future for the humanity. And so people are letting go of that last monkey bar and you just have to tell them about that next monkey bar. You have to, you have to give them hope that these new institutions are going to be able to lay a foundation for their family and for the good of, of, of their, of their community. And so I think that a lot of people are getting into crypto at start, at the start to get rich. But

• 59:44Speaker 02

  as David and I like to say, crypto wasn't designed to make you rich. Crypto was designed to make you free. And so, you know, if we can, if we can populate that, I know so many people, by the way, like myself included, who just came into it and they thought they could make a quick buck, but then they got hope filled by the culture and by the mission of a lot of these DAOs. And now they're in it for the culture and they're in it for a better world. And I think that that's just part of the story arc. Crypto wasn't designed to make you rich. Crypto is designed to make you free.

• 1:00:10David Hoffman?

  Well, the next steps in slaying Moloch in the grand scheme of things is, I think for the listeners, the 200 plus listeners watching this live stream and also the listeners on the podcast later is to go claim your GTC tokens and be a governor of the, of the DAO. Kevin, what else should listeners and viewers do to help further get coin, get and get coin DAO and also to further slay Moloch?

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Totally. Um, we did a retroactive distribution of 25,575 people, I think, but open source has touched the lives of everyone out there. And so if you didn't get a retroactive distribution, you can go to gov.gitcoin.co and figure out how to get involved. And if you do some, if you create value, then maybe the community will reward you by letting you capture value by giving you a distribution of GTC. It's not up to me, it's up to the DAO. The other thing that you can do is that we created this comic book about the Ethereum community versus Bullock and you can get it on store.gitcoin.co. All proceeds will go to funding public goods. And also, if you're not into comic books, we've got unicorn socks. Everyone in the Ethereum space seems to like unicorns and I'm very happy to be.

• 1:01:20David Hoffman?

  Unicorn socks is a, is now make my, anyone's ears pricks up. How, how much do those cost?

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  Uh, so we're selling them on the store, I think for, it comes in a swag box, which is like 50 bucks.

• 1:01:32David Hoffman?

  So not $60,000?

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, not not $16,000. And if you find me a dev panels, give them to you for free. My wife wants them out of the house at this point.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got a sense of urgency to get them to move them. Um, but yeah, um. Yeah, thank you so much for having me on. It's been a real pleasure to talk about this and I hope that we can solve the the coordination failures of the world in the future together.

• 1:01:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Awesome, Kevin. Thank you so much. Thanks for sharing this with the bankless community. I know you have a ton of Gitcoin supporters, many who are excited about getting into the Gitcoin DAO. I'm I'm reminded, David, of Josh Rosenthal, that that episode we did on the crypto Renaissance where he says to everyone, what what is, you know, one piece of his three words of advice or three thoughts for us is go join a DAO, go get involved in one of these things. The Gitcoin DAO is doing fantastic work. And if you're curious, if you're interested, don't spend much more time listening to podcasts and like reading social media, go join it, go do something. That's how you get involved in this movement, in this mechanism. Once again, Kevin, thanks for all your work and thanks for stopping by.

• 1:02:43Speaker 02

  Public goods are good. See you later.

• 1:02:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, they are. Guys, action items, of course. Go read the announcement post in the show notes. Claim your GTC, start participating in the DAO as you're part of that initial drop. If you're not, contribute in other ways and you might be in the future. Also, read Kevin's article on coordination failures. We will include that in the show notes. That was something he published in Bankless a couple of weeks back. Of course, as always, guys, risks and disclaimers. ETH is risky. Crypto is risky. None of what you just heard was financial advice. All this stuff is risky. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Can I, Ryan, really quick, before we wrap, can I add a disclaimer? GTC is a governance token and it has no economic value. Don't buy it. Come on to Gitcoin DAO and earn it by working for the DAO. Has no financial value. Thank you.

• 1:03:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. Thanks, Kevin. Bye, guys.

• 1:03:42David Hoffman?

  Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcasts, and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks, and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles, and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless Premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders, Ask Me Anythings, and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other

• 1:04:27David Hoffman?

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