Addressing BanklessDAO Drama

In case you weren’t aware, last week and over the weekend, Bankless became crypto’s main character. In today’s episode, we share our reflections on the backlash we received. What happened? Did we deserve it? And why are we here? ----- 🏹 Airdrop Hunter is HERE, join your first HUNT today https://bankless.cc/JoinYourFirstHUNT ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE ⁠https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2 ⁠ 🦊METAMASK PORTFOLIO | MANAGE YOUR WEB3 EVERYTHING ⁠https://bankless.cc/MetaMask https://feeds.flightcast.com/%E2%81%A0https:/bankless.cc/MetaMask ⚖️ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM ⁠https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ⁠ https://feeds.flightcast.com/%E2%81%A0https:/bankless.cc/Arbitrum%20%E2%81%A0 🔗CELO | CEL2 COMING SOON https://bankless.cc/Celo 👾GMX | V2 IS NOW LIVE https://bankless.cc/GMX 💲 USDV | NATIVE OMNICHAIN STABLECOIN https://bankless.cc/usdv ------ TIMESTAMPS & RESOURCES 0:00 Intro 3:10 Bankless Backlash https://twitter.com/DeFi_Made_Here/status/1728159809827217412 4:14 bDAO Proposal to Arbitrum https://x.com/banklessDAO/status/1728380541949653060 5:42 Raiding Treasuries https://x.com/0xShual/status/1728078219625070926 7:25 Shit gets mean https://x.com/Ketherche/status/1728416271409295692 8:40 bDAO “were not BanklessHQ” clarifying thread https://twitter.com/banklessDAO/status/1728380541949653060 https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1728203036999164017 22:00 F Bankless Season 23:13 Is Bankless net bad for Ethereum? https://x.com/RyanSAdams/status/1728507517997658567 25:00 Watching the press cover you: https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/11/27/breaking-down-the-bankless-backlash/ 27:40 David’s Long Tweet https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1728849871682048136 30:30 Next Steps 32:35 In Conclusion? https://x.com/intocryptoast/status/1728544232087130273 32:52 Why are we all here? https://twitter.com/defi_mochi/status/1728703547121062273 https://x.com/Fiskantes/status/1729428463017132487 https://x.com/TrustlessState/status/1729303906201543128 41:24 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here: https://www.bankless.com/disclosures ⁠

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

• 0:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  How do we start this, David?

• 0:03David Hoffman?

  I don't know, man. God, what a weekend.

• 0:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think there's... I'm okay. How about you?

• 0:10David Hoffman?

  Pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, so we're going to enter this conversation and the biggest question that I have is that we're about to talk about a bunch of Twitter stuff that happened on Twitter this weekend with Twitter people. And I have no idea how, what percentage of our YouTube and RSS FOD podcast listeners are like, oh, yes, I totally know what was going on and I'm interested in this versus I'm not on Twitter. And even if I was, I didn't see what you're talking about. And so I don't know what the drama is you're talking about. I have no idea what percentage of our like podcast listeners are on Twitter and inside of that same arena exposed to the same things that you and I are exposed to.

• 0:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  But a bunch of people probably have no idea what you're talking about. You're just talking about Twitter. Okay. So the first topic is David and I accidentally became main characters this weekend on Twitter. There was massive backlash.

• 1:02David Hoffman?

  Oh my God. It dominated all of crypto Twitter.

• 1:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, there were stories about it. It was intense and we were in the middle of it. So we're going to talk about what happened. We're going to talk about, did we deserve it? We're going to talk about like, what do we do? And then I think there's one common theme of this episode, David, which is the next topic. Why are we here? I feel like I had another glimpse of that existential crypto crisis of like, what am I even doing here?

• 1:28David Hoffman?

  What are we doing?

• 1:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  What are the rest of us doing here? And also, where are the apps? I mean, it's all under that theme. So Bankless listener, I hope you will give us some grace if we are a little self indulgent today. Maybe a little more nihilistic than usual. I hope, I hope not, but I'm a little feeling a little down in the dumps as we go into this episode, David. I don't know about you.

• 1:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah, existential is a word that comes to mind, certainly.

• 1:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Existential? Was this an existential crisis? All right, we're gonna get into all of it, but before we do, our friends and sponsors over at Near have a message for Bankless listeners. What is that, David?

• 2:05David Hoffman?

  Near data availability is a thing for Ethereum rollups. At a fraction of the cost that it costs for data for rollups to purchase Ethereum's data availability, you can purchase some data from Near instead at 1 8,000th of the cost, I think. 8,000 times cheaper. I don't know if those math, that math works out. But Near is not only just a layer one for Near as it has always been, but is now also a data availability for Ethereum rollups as well. Working with Polygon to help onboard many new chains and many more developers into the world of Ethereum-based rollups and Near-based data availability. There is a link in the show notes to get started with Near.

• 2:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, did Near pay to say that?

• 2:44David Hoffman?

  Near paid the company that I am a owner of to pay. They paid me to say that.

• 2:50Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 2:51David Hoffman?

  Apparently makes me a grifter for like a decent chunk of crypto Twitter's beliefs.

• 2:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  I am, I am in disbelief at that, David, that you would dare have a sponsor on this show. Let's talk about the first, and this is where we get a little self-indulgent. So I don't know how your Thanksgiving was, David, but mine was just fantastic. And then Black Friday, and it was very black. It was very dark for me.

• 3:20David Hoffman?

  My Thanksgiving was Friday because we did it a day late because half the family was all watching football.

• 3:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  You were dealing with this drama.

• 3:29David Hoffman?

  It was on Thanksgiving for me.

• 3:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  Dude, I'm sorry, man.

• 3:32David Hoffman?

  I was able to put my phone down. I was like, okay, there's a mess going on over there. But I'm, this turkey is delicious.

• 3:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  While you were putting your phone down, I was fighting on Twitter.

• 3:42David Hoffman?

  Yeah, you were recording.

• 3:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Arguing with people. Let's talk about what happened. So this was one of the first tweets I saw. Another day, another attempt to drain Arbitrum Dow Treasury. And here's a picture of me.

• 3:52David Hoffman?

  You.

• 3:52Ryan Sean Adams?

  Looks like a place of reverse U N O card. And what am I doing? This is a picture of me attempting, it looks like, to drain the Arbitrum treasury for $1.8 million.

• 4:05David Hoffman?

  Hey, you paid me a modest amount. You're trying to drain the Arbitrum DAO for $2 million. What are you doing, bro?

• 4:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so there is this proposal, proposed by the Bankless DAO for a global education onboarding campaign. Here's the link to the proposal. It's a full abstract, basically a marketing education proposal put together by the Bankless DAO. Could you give some context in like what we're talking about, what this proposal is, what this particular Twitter account is complaining about, why they're charging you and I with trying to drain the Arbitrum treasury, David?

• 4:42David Hoffman?

  Sure. So the Bankless DAO is a collection of sub DAOs, each kind of specializing in different arenas, if you will. So there's translations, and then every single like translation also like there's people that will translate stuff into Spanish and people that will translate stuff into like German. So each one of those, its own like organization. And then there's like the marketing department, and then there's like onboarding and educational docs. There's many different departments that come together, and this, all of this amalgamated into this package that Bankless DAO proposed to Arbitrum for 1.8 million arb tokens, $2 million, to do all of these things if the Arbitrum DAO accepts. So Bankless DAO amalgamates all these services. Here's what we will do. Here's all of the services. Offer, you know,

• 5:27David Hoffman?

  trade, trade offer, you know, we have all this package for you. We will, we receive $2 million of arb tokens.

• 5:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  1.8 million arb tokens precisely, which is valued at about a dollar each or so. So like 1.8 to $2 million.

• 5:41David Hoffman?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 5:42Ryan Sean Adams?

  Another tweet. So Bankless, literally raiding treasuries and grants, begging for money because they apparently generate no revenue. In this space for years, doing content education interviews and market recaps, but still somehow poor, launched a token that went to zero. Okay, what's the context of this tweet? How is this related to Bankless and our media organization?

• 6:04David Hoffman?

  So this Twitter account is tagging Bankless HQ, which is our, mine and Ryan's, bankless LLC, that our Twitter account. And so they say, hey, Bankless HQ is literally raiding treasuries and begging for grants. And they are, what they are doing is they are thinking that this Bankless DAO proposal to Arbitrum is us, is Bankless HQ, not Bankless DAO. And so the overlap, like Bankless DAO and all of those services provided are provided by a bunch of workers in the DAO. And then there's Bankless HQ, which is what we are. And we are not asking Arbitrum for the $2 million of tokens. And we would not be receiving them $2 million of tokens. Only the DAO would.

• 6:44David Hoffman?

  And people are confused about the lines that separate HQ and DAO. And as I say these words, I'm like, yeah, okay, I kind of get it.

• 6:54Ryan Sean Adams?

  You kind of get why they're confused.

• 6:56David Hoffman?

  I kind of get why they're confused, yeah.

• 6:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, well, so we were on the receiving end of this attack. Like, you should change your name from Bankless to Shameless. There is just a lot of charges that David and I, and Bankless is just a company that likes to grift people and rip people off. I've heard many similar stories from you guys, industry insiders who've dealt with you. You have to own up to this and accept or change your ways. Stop being a grifter, David and Ryan, was the basic charge. And then there were just like other straight up mean tweets like this. Like, this guy goes, Ryan, you're getting old. Your job as a man was to leave behind a legacy, something of value for future generations. The time is ticking, but it's already too late. They will remember you for living a half-assed life, grifting to make ends meet, a faceless man, half-man, half-meme.

• 7:42David Hoffman?

  Well, half-man is correct.

• 7:45Ryan Sean Adams?

  But it's actually Heffra butt. So tweets like this were absolutely like just pouring in my timeline.

• 7:50David Hoffman?

  It was deafening. It was overwhelming. It was, I didn't know that there were that many people left in crypto.

• 7:58David Hoffman?

  It was seemingly all of them.

• 8:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  And it was very difficult when a lot of these are anonymous accounts or a lot of these are accounts I don't really know. Some of them aren't though, David, and some of them were jumping on this train and just being like, yeah, like what's up? What's Bankless doing over there? Why does it need this money? And it was so inundated that every time we tried to explain in a thread, you'd just be drowned out by all of these haters.

• 8:22David Hoffman?

  Another wave.

• 8:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. If you've never experienced like a social media mob attack, it's very painful. It's very intense. It's like a mass, like a crowd, like throwing rocks at you.

• 8:33David Hoffman?

  It's like, it's like a Twitter DDoS of hate. It's like, it's a hate, hate DDoS.

• 8:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  Basically. And so I tried an effort to actually clarify this. And this was a little defensive, I would say, but, but I was, I was seeking a bit more to clarify. So the reality is a few things. Bankless DAO is actually a completely separate entity from Bankless Media. The podcast that you're listening to, the LLC that David and I run. So the DAO is actually a community that neither David nor myself or any in our media company control. And that's actually how DAOs are supposed to work. So maybe you could explain the genesis of the DAO itself and how it's kind of separate.

• 9:14David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so the, in 2021, you know, the rise of Bankless from being kind of a niche media organization catering to just like the people that were left in the bear market of 2019. Bankless kind of rose in popularity as Ethereum did, as the bull market did, as the crypto markets did in 2021. And by the time the mid of 2021 came around, like crypto was on like a lot of people's radar. That's where we had got like Mark Cuban on. And that's where we got, just like we popularized Ethereum to YouTube in ways that most people didn't. And we're explaining it's a, Bankless was having a very great moment of success after grinding it out in the bear market for a while. Simultaneously, while we were having just a lot of new listeners, kind of onboarding people onto the mission,

• 9:59David Hoffman?

  this idea of DAOs comes about. And me and Ryan, your, your DMs, my DMs on Twitter are just flooded with support of people saying, hey, I just love what you guys are doing. I love the content that you guys have. How can I help?

• 10:13David Hoffman?

  And it would come, it would be from people from all walks of life. Like I am like, literally like, I don't know how to help. I'm a dentist, but I would just love to help out. And I'm like, I really appreciate this sport. I don't know how to have a dentist pay like part of the HQ company. I really appreciate that you want to go like build in the movement, but we'd like, I don't, we don't know have, have room for you. And because like especially there were like hundreds, hundreds. And simultaneously, this DAOs as an ideology, as a movement, as a alternative way of organizing people, that whole thing is blossoming throughout 2021. So what do we do? We just smash these particles together. Oh, there's so much support for like the bankless idea, the bankless mission, the bankless ideology, and we don't have enough room at Bankless HQ, Bankless LLC to fit all of this.

• 11:09David Hoffman?

  Smash those things together, you make a DAO. Bankless DAO was inceptioned in May 4th, 2021. We mint this token. We find all of the on-chain footprints that we can for bankless aligned people. And we just airdrop the token to them and say, boom, we've made Bankless DAO. We had a Discord set up, like go into the Discord. And from then on, it started to auto-organize.

• 11:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so one of the first proposals we put forward to the DAO, so again, we had no tokens at inception. One of the first proposals was a Genesis proposal. So David and I don't write smart contracts. We couldn't spin up the website. There's a group of people who helped us kind of inception this thing and launch it. And we called that kind of the Bankless Genesis team. And so we submitted a vote to the DAO with their existing tokens to allocate to the Genesis, Bankless Genesis team and Bankless LLC 25% of the total bank supply. And that would give these entities kind of like governance moving forward and some potential level of control. And that

• 12:07David Hoffman?

  There were 12 people in the Genesis team, including you, some developers, website developers, designers, et cetera.

• 12:12Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. And of that, Bankless LLC, I think, got 15%. You and I got like 3% or 4% individually. And the rest of the Genesis team kind of got the rest. Now, an important element of the story, Bankless has not sold any tokens at all. Has not participated in any votes so far. Neither have David nor myself sold any tokens or participated in any voting. I mean, I think it quickly became apparent that we couldn't coordinate all of the energy that was being outputted by the DAO. And so we were best in position to just kind of like lead the movement by way of podcasts, by our newsletter. Like, there was so much activity in there. Every time I would go into the DAO Discord, I would just

• 12:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  get overwhelmed by like, I can't organize all of this, right? And that was cool because the DAO was doing things on its own and was operating on its own. So that's, I think, another part that the Twitter mobs were missing, which was that neither myself nor you nor Bankless Media had ever financially benefited from the DAO. We'd never sold a bank token. All the wallets are public. We've refrained from governance votes. So we're not actually controlling this thing. So when we say these entities are separate, which is what I was replying to many of the skeptics on Twitter, it really was separate. Like, I had no idea this proposal was going for it. I had no idea that Bankless DAO had this list of consulting services that they were providing to various DAOs.

• 13:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  And people went back and they said, oh, they've done something similar to optimism and provided services for them. I didn't even know any of that was going on. And I think crypto Twitter collectively was in disbelief that a DAO was actually operating as a DAO, or that you wouldn't know about it, or that like, this thing is called Bankless DAO and you're called Bankless, so you must be one in the same. It was just like not computing to all of the skeptics. Some of them were trolls, some of them were haters, but I think there were some good faith critics there that were just like, come on, guys. Like, this has to be a grift.

• 14:12David Hoffman?

  Yeah, the idea that like, because we would say we're like, it's totally, we're just totally unaffiliated with the DAO. It's like, well, I mean, when we say that, we're like, yeah, we're not in the Discord. We're not doing the labor. Those aren't our services. Those are their services. And so there's a pretty clear line that's drawn. But then also, when we say, yeah, we're totally unaffiliated with the DAO. Well, no, like, we incepted it. We minted the tokens.

• 14:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's true.

• 14:38David Hoffman?

  We have the tokens.

• 14:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 14:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And so like, what do you mean you're not affiliated with the DAO? You guys fucking made it.

• 14:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  We just meant we did create that proposal and didn't know about it. And the financial proceeds don't go to us. But I think a lot of people in crypto Twitter was having none of it. And so some people were like, then why'd you even create the DAO in the first place? And that part of it, like, here's why. It's because we wanted to try this DAO experiment. We wanted to experiment with Bankless as a headless brand. The idea of Bankless is not that it's just a podcast or a newsletter. The idea of Bankless is that it's a movement that everyone can go bankless. And so we wanted to create surface area, crypto native surface area, so that people who are attached to the movement could find a way to like, get in a Discord room and actually collaborate and do this. And by the way, by the way, people don't know this, but Bankless DAO is doing a lot.

• 15:27David Hoffman?

  Yeah, they're doing so much.

• 15:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's one of the Dao-iest DAOs that exist. They've spun up all sorts of different products. They have different chapters. There's a Bankless Brazil that we've gotten to know. There's a Bankless Japan, translating content, creating educational content. There's a Bankless Africa, all sorts of international branches. Like, the DAO is doing things. It's not doing everything perfectly, okay? But like, these are fantastic people. It's not a rug. It's not a grift. It's an actual DAO that operates by way of Discord channel to organize their community and by way of token vote. And it's actually a really cool experiment.

• 16:04David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and I think this is where a lot of the misunderstanding comes from. It's like, most people, when they think of DAOs, like Maker DAO or the Ave DAO, there's like one centralized DAO where there's like a central command and list of people. And that's just like not how like the Bankless DAO works. Like, the actual Bankless DAO is actually a subset, like an amalgamation of a bunch of sub DAOs. There's like 20, 30, 40 plus different sub DAOs.

• 16:36David Hoffman?

  Inside of Bankless DAO and the actual like head of the organization doesn't exist. There's a few like coordinators that coordinate resources and manage like stuff between sub DAOs. But like the actual the Bankless DAO is is actually much more of a blurry line than what people are are considering to be like a DAO. There are no boundaries that are in or out of the DAO. It's just all these different sub DAOs, Bankless Consulting, Bankless Publishing, The Rug, Fight Club, like the Audio Video Guild, the Legal Guild. Like if I had time, I could go in there and start listing off 30 more. And then when you add all of these sub DAOs together,

• 17:16David Hoffman?

  then you get some sort of semblance of like the greater Bankless DAO, but it's it's headless. It's much bottom up. It's like it's like five people get together and they make a sub DAO called Bankless Something and then they're a part of Bankless DAO. So it is actually a decentralized DAO, unlike every other DAO that Crypto Twitter is familiar with.

• 17:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. And so I think a lot of people didn't understand that. So there was there's a lot of dunking. But the truth is like, I'm proud of what the DAO has done, just in general, not this specific proposal. And again, I can't speak to this specific proposal, but keep in mind, the proposal, like it wasn't a raid on the DAO. It's a simple, I'm sending you a response to like-

• 17:59David Hoffman?

  It's a trade offer, trade offer.

• 18:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's a trade offer. Do you want to buy these services? Yes, no. I mean, Arbitrum Governance is going to review this on its own merits in the ROI and make a decision like they would with any other vendor. So it's not like a raid. I don't understand the outrage specifically targeted towards this proposal, but was caught up in this in this Twitter narrative.

• 18:17David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  There's a comment on this tweet, David, where I was getting like, I was explaining this and trying to kind of defend our position. Udi, of course, says, "My man, I love you, but this is a really long tweet. You could have just renamed the DAO instead." Like, there's an element of, I understand there is some brand confusion here between Bankless HQ and our media company and Bankless Dow. But the reason we did that at the very beginning is so that everyone could latch on to the Bankless movement and kind of make it their own. And so it could live and scale past you or I and this podcast and this newsletter all around the world.

• 18:51David Hoffman?

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• 19:33David Hoffman?

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• 20:15David Hoffman?

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• 20:59David Hoffman?

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• 21:42David Hoffman?

  and GMX users get a referral link to lower fees for you and your referrals. Try out GMX V2 now at app.gmx.io. Now, on to the show. And separately from all of this, there seems to be like these semi-regular seasons, and which is just like Bankless pile-on seasons. It's just like, we do something that people take offense to, that make people feel aggrieved by, and then that like is like lighting a match that lights a bunch of like Tinder that's been like set over the past few months. And then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, like a few people are hating on Bankless. Like, I also have like my grievances to air. And it turns into a contagion, and it turns viral. And it's like, oh, we're hating on Bankless. This is the moment in crypto Twitter we're hating on Bankless.

• 22:25David Hoffman?

  And this happened like five times over the last...

• 22:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  This is the worst, though.

• 22:30David Hoffman?

  This was the worst and the loudest by far.

• 22:34Ryan Sean Adams?

  Honestly, I don't know how this affects you, because again, you were trying to have Thanksgiving, but like it started for me Friday and then continued into Saturday. And this was like 48 hours of attack. And like, it hits me. I'm like, am I like, am I a grifter?

• 22:48David Hoffman?

  Well, because you and I are like, we try to be truth seekers. And when like 100 accounts are tweeting at us every hour saying you guys are grifters. I'm like, wait, wait, am I? And then I have to like think about it, like, no, fuck you.

• 23:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, that's what you think. I it takes me a while to come to that conclusion. Right? So, I mean, even people in the Ethereum community. So some some accounts were coming out defending us like DC investor is like, hey, Bankless has helped onboard thousands of people. And then Foo Basler, who's in the Ethereum community says Bankless has had a long pattern of behavior and bad marketing from the Bankless team. So a lot of Ethereum OGs actually think Bankless does more damage to Ethereum than good. And I just saw that. And I was like, wait a second.

• 23:34David Hoffman?

  What does he mean?

• 23:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  What does he mean?

• 23:36David Hoffman?

  I don't know what he means.

• 23:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's again, it's this is what Twitter makes you think you staring in the funhouse mirror and it reflects back at you and you're like, am I, do I really look like that? Is that mean?

• 23:46David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 23:47Ryan Sean Adams?

  And so you tweeted out some questions like this, but so did I is the truth is the day Bankless is bad for Ethereum is the day I leave. Like, I don't, I don't want to do this if like, we're the bad guys.

• 23:57David Hoffman?

  Yeah, we're here to help Ethereum.

• 23:59Ryan Sean Adams?

  And we're here to help people in crypto. I mean, I don't want, if I'm a grifter, I've turned into a grifter without knowing it. Right? Like, what am I doing something wrong here? And so I asked the question is, is Bankless net bad for Ethereum? And this is when more support started.

• 24:15David Hoffman?

  The tide started to turn a little bit.

• 24:18Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. So Anthony Sisano is sort of course, a Bankless isn't a massive good net good for Ethereum and all of crypto. You've done, done a lot, more than 99% of people. Benjamin Cohen, net positive by far. Eric Voorhees, this is the one I really cared about hearing about, you know, Anthony as well. But y'all are great. Stop worrying about and feeding the drama.

• 24:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I guess that's good advice. Right?

• 24:41David Hoffman?

  We know that.

• 24:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless listener, we know this, but it's also like, it's also very hard.

• 24:47David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  Because Twitter, yeah, Twitter can become a reflection of like, the current crypto narrative. And it gets echoed as we saw, like, News stories, reporting about this, people like reporters from the block.

• 25:01David Hoffman?

  Right, this made the news.

• 25:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, Frank Shapiro from the block said, well, do you think that proposal is like valuable or not? Like, I really want your commentary. I'm like, I don't know. I have not reviewed it.

• 25:13David Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's not my proposal.

• 25:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's not my proposal. Like, I didn't do it, but that's not an acceptable answer.

• 25:19David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 25:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  So I know we have to not listen to you, all of these critics, but I'm telling you, when you're in the thick of it, it is absolutely overwhelming.

• 25:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, there's like, the response that came out, I was like, oh yeah, bankless is like a net good for Ethereum. This might be me just like, being really personal about this, but the whole like net good thing, I have a problem with, and people have told me that I need to not take this too seriously. And I still have a problem with it, but it's like, I'm not here to be a net good. Like, a net good is like, oh, there's some good, there's some bad, but on net, like, it's good. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm here to be an overwhelmingly positive influence for crypto and Ethereum for the world. Like, I'm here to only do good. That's all I've got as motivation left. And so like, when people come and say, oh, yeah, you know, when you net things out, they're pretty good for you.

• 26:11David Hoffman?

  I'm like, fuck, why am I here? Why am I doing this?

• 26:16Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, there's a lot of requests from us to kind of list the things that were bad about us. And like, some of them are just bad faith critiques. Like, you have ads, you have advertisement.

• 26:24David Hoffman?

  Your titles are clicky, clickbaity.

• 26:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes, you have YouTube thumbnails that we don't like. And like, a lot of that is, you know, easily dismissed, but, um, no, some of it kind of hits closer to home. Anyway, I didn't find a lot of good.

• 26:40David Hoffman?

  Some of the people who say things, okay, oh yeah, like there, there's a history of bad behavior. And I'm like, I would like the specifics. Like, did you get any like specifics that was like, oh, okay?

• 26:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  So like, an example, Mark from AVE, who I think is fantastic. He, he's been in AVE from the very beginning, kind of a DeFi.

• 26:59David Hoffman?

  Long-term builder, yeah.

• 27:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless is 90% good educational conference content, 10% grift.

• 27:05David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 27:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I was just like, Mark, what's the 10%?

• 27:09David Hoffman?

  Cause I, as soon as I discover what that 10% is, I'm pruning it for my life. Thank you.

• 27:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. And, and his reply was, oh, I didn't mean grift. I just meant like, you guys run a profitable. Business, so you're commercial.

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  Profit maxi.

• 27:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  Profit maxi.

• 27:23David Hoffman?

  90% good content, 10% profit maxi. I'm like, oh, wait.

• 27:26Ryan Sean Adams?

  We have ads.

• 27:27David Hoffman?

  I have a media, we have a media business.

• 27:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  We have 20 people that work at Bankless HQ and help us produce this podcast, help us generate the newsletter, all of the analyst reports that we use and all the tools that we do. Okay, so all of that happened, right? I guess, what's the, what's the conclusion on this? What's the end of the story? Did we receive any signal from all of these events? Because I think we did. And we finally put this together on Sunday and tried to put a wrap on all of it. But, you know, this is your tweet to sum it all up, I think.

• 27:54David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and it took a while to get here to write this tweet. Like, a couple people had to DM me and be like, yo, calm down.

• 28:03David Hoffman?

  And like, people, people were just like, and when it comes from people that you trust and know, like, it hits different. And so, you just need the trusted advisors in this space to like, walk you through it, right? And then, once they do, it's like, okay, this is pretty obvious. So I put out this tweet, and I said, "To lead with the obvious, we could be better in accepting criticism of Bankless. We hold Bankless very dear, and like I, and I think you too, have this innate reflex to protect it when we see it being unfairly attacked. This clouds our ability to hear what crypto Twitter is trying to tell us, especially when it's drowned out by very obvious and unwarranted and off-base hatred towards Bankless. Please forgive me for blindly throwing out the baby with the bathwater when it comes to crypto Twitter to constructively tell Bankless how it feels about stuff."

• 28:46David Hoffman?

  Basically, crypto Twitter is like, "Well, you guys, like, David and Ryan, we just explained the history of Bankless DAO just now. I'd say, most people were unfamiliar with that, or at least have forgotten about it, and have not been tracking the progress and work, very real work, that Bankless DAO has been doing for other protocols, just like the proposal that they made to Arbitrum." And so, they just, and then Bankless DAO makes this tweet, "We're asking for $2 million." And like, that gets enough virality for people to be re-exposed to Bankless DAO for the first time in a while. And the first time that they see Bankless DAO in a first time in a while is they're asking for $2 million. And then, they associate it with like, "Yeah, we have a lot of ads on Bankless." And then, they smash those particles together and be like, "They're grifters."

• 29:32David Hoffman?

  Anyways, I'm going back into the defensive thing. So I'm trying to not do that. So like we like, yes, we understand how like if you are not tapped into the Dow, even though like Ryan and I are not tapped into the Dow, we're still like-

• 29:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  The branding isn't clear.

• 29:44David Hoffman?

  The branding's not clear. Like, so like, wait, so Ryan and David are just asking for like Arbitrum tokens via the Dow as this sly, grifty little mechanism of getting more Arbitrum tokens?

• 29:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 29:56David Hoffman?

  Like, that's like a conclusion that people came to.

• 29:58Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 29:58David Hoffman?

  And so like, okay, I understand branding's not clear. Like, we have tokens, but we don't vote in governance. So we're like, we are affiliated with the Dow, but it's an independent entity. It is all confusing. I understand.

• 30:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes. And there's-

• 30:12David Hoffman?

  It's actually gonna only get more confusing as time goes on. And as if we have another bull market and we have even more people come into the space, they're just gonna see like, oh, Bankless, Bankless Dow. Same, same.

• 30:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  That's the, that's the signal through all of the MOP attacks is just two things. The branding between Bankless and the media company that we run and Bankless Dow is unclear right now. So we need to-

• 30:33David Hoffman?

  Which, which is the experiment. Which wa- is the experiment.

• 30:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  That was, but we've seen ways it can lead to bad outcomes, basically. And so one of the steps that we're going to do is submit a governance proposal to the Bankless Dow to kind of clarify the branding between Bankless, the media company, and what we do, and Bankless Dow itself. So that is a work in progress. The other thing that we're going to do is burn all the bank tokens. I don't want any question out there that like, David and Ryan control the Dow in any way. You-

• 31:05David Hoffman?

  Our beneficiaries of the Dow.

• 31:07Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, our, yeah, our profit motivated, set this up because like they want to be extractive from the community. No, that was not the intent from the get-go. And to quash any doubts, it's just simpler just to basically burn the bank tokens. So that's what we're doing, our personal tokens and Bankless HQ. And I think the Dow is going to be okay. Like, they're going to thrive, they're going to do what they do, they're going to self-organize. The truth is like- We didn't do any of it.

• 31:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 31:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  We had very little participation, right? We were kind of like spiritual support, movement support in this organization. Everything that they've done is kind of theirs. And anyway, that's the conclusion that we came to.

• 31:47David Hoffman?

  And I would also say, like, going back to what I would said, there's actually no bankless DAO. There's actually just the conglomerate of sub DAOs that when you form them together, then they are like, hey, guys, like, I think we are bankless DAO. Like, that's how I articulate what bankless DAO is. And like, the real DAO, for me, like, the way that I articulate this thing is the idea, the bankless idea. Freedom, sovereignty, sovereignty through protocols, cryptography, like, all of the ideas and values that we talk about here on Bankless. Both Bankless LLC and Bankless DAO, in my mind, serve that idea, that grander idea. And that is the broader DAO, is the idea of Bankless.

• 32:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  Lowercase b, anyone can go bankless. This is the bankless movement. I mean, anybody can go bankless. It's not just a podcast, not just a newsletter. This was the conclusion, I think, for me. Toast tweeted this, "In all seriousness, if bankless are the current main characters, then we're doing okay." So David, I guess if we became the villains last weekend, maybe crypto Twitter feels okay about that.

• 32:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, if we're the worst people.

• 32:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Least bad villains, maybe.

• 32:51David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 32:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  At least we got that.

• 32:52David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 32:53Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so that existential crisis, David, leaves maybe to a broader existential crisis. It's like, what are we doing here in crypto? And this was one interesting reaction and outcome from this whole series of events. It's much broader than, I think, Bankless. And gets to the question of like, why are we here? This is DeFi Moki tweeting out, "The mistake I always see from people in crypto, like Bankless, the mistake they make is thinking too much about being net positive for the space." Go see your tweet. You said you were here to be really effing more than net positive, but like a.

• 33:25David Hoffman?

  Overwhelmingly positive.

• 33:29Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah. The tweet continues, "Don't kid yourselves. We are in this land of degenerate capitalism only to make money." And then name some developers that are kind of DeFi developers, Andrew Krone and someone else. They contributed so much to this space and still get shit on. Token price going up equals contributing to crypto. Token price going down equals rug. Oh, by the way, we didn't include that part of the story, but the bank price, uh, token price down bad. But we don't care. We've never talked about that. That's never been a thing. It's a governance token.

• 33:59David Hoffman?

  But what do you think a valueless governance token is?

• 34:01Ryan Sean Adams?

  Right. At the end of the day, though, that's the only two things that matter on crypto Twitter. Yes. And I think this, maybe this is crypto Twitter culture versus all of crypto, um, culture. We could, we could unpack that, but this general idea of like, we're here for the money.

• 34:18David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 34:19Ryan Sean Adams?

  I, I responded to this.

• 34:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  I know this isn't true because it's not why I'm still here. Yeah, we all want to make money. That's good in itself, but not when it's the only reason we're here. Crypto is a system of digital rights and freedom we can pass down to future generations. That's why I'm here. I don't think crypto Twitter necessarily resonates with this take, but, um, what do you think about it? Like, this is sort of the nihilism, I would say, versus like, we're here for the values. We're here for the money versus we're here for the decentralization. What's your take on this? Are, are we being like naive in, I don't know, doing this whole bankless thing?

• 34:56David Hoffman?

  Order of operations, right? If you, if you are here for the money, the, the, the money, the fact that crypto is about money is like this very like unfortunate thing. That's very necessary because that's what we're here to do. There are people who are-

• 35:10Ryan Sean Adams?

  Is it unfortunate?

• 35:11David Hoffman?

  Well, cause, because like you are, you can come to crypto for the tech. And then that as a, uh, and then you work in crypto and you build crypto. And then the assets follow the builds, that what you build, right? And money follows the tech. But then some people come and it's like, well, I'm here for the money. And then they actually extract from the people that are here from the tech, right? Does that make sense?

• 35:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  It does, but why can't, I don't understand why it has to be binary. Why can't you come for both? Why can't you come for like long-term wealth creation?

• 35:40David Hoffman?

  I'm here for the tech money, the money tech. Right. It's like, yeah.

• 35:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  The, like, the, the values, to the extent we make crypto useful for the world and our values are, are manifest, right? Our bags will go up, but it doesn't happen like overnight.

• 35:55David Hoffman?

  I think Twitter is especially this nihilist space where there is no values in crypto. There's only money. Twitter is also the highest place of conversations. That's where the action happens. That's where the activity happens. That's where the alpha happens. And so if you're here for the money, that's where you are. But if you're here for the tech, you're on much slower places like the Ethereum Magicians Discord, right? Or like forums. And so I think Twitter itself just bends towards the people who are here for the money the most and who are the most nihilist.

• 36:28Ryan Sean Adams?

  Can I just make a distinction? Because I truly am here for the money as well. I mean, bankless has always been about investing on the like, going bankless, it's about wealth creation. Like, I think there's another slice of things where you can get, I'm only here for the tech. And I don't think that's true.

• 36:47David Hoffman?

  That's also unsustainable, yeah.

• 36:48Ryan Sean Adams?

  The money is the tech. This is social technology. It's like we're creating new store of value and a new banking system. Of course, we're here for the money, right? But not just the money. That's all I'm trying to say is like, if we're only here for the short-term games and the pontification of everything and the pyramid schemes, and we're not creating long-term value, long-term wealth creation, then it's totally empty to me. And I'd rather not be in this space. Like, I don't know why I'm here. I could go like, remember, we had that conversation with Sam Bankman-Fried a long time ago? And he was like, you know.

• 37:22David Hoffman?

  I don't care about decentralization.

• 37:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  I could make money on trading orange futures, like the prices of fruit. I don't care how I make money. I'm just here to make the maximum out of money.

• 37:33David Hoffman?

  Currently trading mackerel. Did you hear that? Sorry?

• 37:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  No.

• 37:37David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah. He needed to get a haircut. So he had to get some mackerel to pay for a haircut.

• 37:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  The fish.

• 37:41David Hoffman?

  Jail money. Yes, jail money. Anyways, that's a diversion. We'll talk about that.

• 37:48David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a true story. I think the topic of money is kind of an interesting litmus test. I think when you and I, when you and I are faced with a prompt, money. Like we've done content on this. We think like ledgers, like anthropology, culture, writing, like precious metals, like the history of money, the money as a philosophical concept, because that's interesting technology, like money as a technology throughout time is like a way to accept that prompt of money. And then other people take the prompt of money is like, yeah, charts, TA, you know, narrative trading, like stuff like that. And so, yeah,

• 38:31David Hoffman?

  money like is a, people will look at money and like it will reflect back at them many different things. And yeah.

• 38:38Ryan Sean Adams?

  I just, I think that there's a third way to like, you can do the philosophical, you can do the short-term trading, which is what this DeFi moke accounts. But the third way is like, as a long-term investor, right? Like number go up over time. That's great. If Ethereum is successful, it will be over, well over 10K. It will, it will be worth, you know, trillions of dollars. And I think that is fantastic. I think it's the best like wealth creation event that our generation will see in their lifetime. And there's no like shame in that, but that doesn't mean that's the only reason we're here. You know, like, and it's not, it's, I actually don't want to be in this crypto

• 39:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  thing if we're not creating something of value for the world and for future generations, because it's back to that 2017 Vitalik tweet. Like we've done all these things, but have we earned it?

• 39:35David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 39:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  Like, I think there's a way to like, earn the value, like the actual wealth creation of our assets. And I think it's just a time horizon thing, short-term versus long-term time horizons.

• 39:49David Hoffman?

  Yeah. You know, you know, the old, the term in like the genealogy of humans, homo habilis. Like I think it was the, I think maybe it's us or maybe the humans that came before us, habilis, like homo habilis is handy man, as in like they started using tools. And this is like the birth of technology, right? There's like a, this thought concept of something alternative called homo economicus, economicus, which is like economic man.

• 40:12David Hoffman?

  Every single person has economic calculus that they run in their brains at all times, right? Like in the dating market, right? Like you're, everything is a market, right? Like I'm, want to go for lunch. Which sandwich do I get more value from? Which mate do I get more value from? Everything is like an economics conversation. And so like, like invisibly, everything is an economics calculus to a lot of people. And so when they, when they come to crypto, like we are homo economicus. We come into crypto and like, we start doing economics calculations inside of our brain. And I think a lot of like people on Twitter with this like, what, you know what else is distorted in crypto? Like money. It goes up by a hundred X really quickly. That's very distorting.

• 40:57David Hoffman?

  Right? Like the narrative of X of Twitter, where this conversations about these things is also very distorting. Everything just gets really distorted. And so I think in, in the era of like rage machines that are crypto, like that are our web two protocols, we get a distortion of what like it even means to be here for money. And it ends up, I think, just defaulting to like nihilism a lot.

• 41:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  There you go. All right, guys. So those are the takes. Um, I mean, a little self indulgent this weekend. I think talking about our own problems and Twitter and media.

• 41:31David Hoffman?

  I've got another problem. You want to, I've got another problem. Yeah. I opened up this conversation. It's like, I have no idea how many of the podcast listeners are going to like, be interested in this Twitter related content, or they're like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? I also don't know how to get that answer from them.

• 41:48David Hoffman?

  How do they tell me is like, I don't give a shit about your guys' Twitter drama. Move on. I don't know how to receive that because the place I would go and get that information is to Twitter. Hey, what did you guys think of the episode? And like, that's not who I'm trying to get feedback from right now. I'm trying to take a timeout from Twitter.

• 42:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are you really? Is that, uh, is that? No. Are you gonna delete the app? Are you gonna take a break? No, I already took my break. You might be in a healthier state if we do. Bankless Nation, thanks for hanging with us. Gotta end with this, of course. Crypto is risky, so is social media. My God. You could lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier in your mental health. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.