Pet3r Pan | Layer Zero

Pet3r Pan got into crypto around 2017, writing his Before Bitcoin series and finding his way into the Ethereum community. As a core member of the movement, Pet3r is one of the earliest DAO pioneers as a champion of Metacartel. This conversation revolves around the power of curating people and projects. Metacartel has instantiated itself as a loose-ish collective of certified 'good people.' Trust, positive sum personalities, and vibes are all forms of capital under this new paradigm. It's pretty cool. ------ 📣 ZERION | Your Gateway to the Metaverse! https://bankless.cc/Zerion ------ 🚀 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​ https://bankless.cc/go-gemini%E2%80%8B 💧LIDO | DECENTRALIZED STAKING https://bankless.cc/Lido 👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave 🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants/dharma ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 4:00 Pet3r Pan & Before Bitcoin 8:18 Getting Started in Crypto 14:21 Tech Startups 18:39 Communities and Vibing 27:33 Genesis of the Culture 34:35 Metacartel Origins 43:00 Becoming a DAO 53:54 Making DAOs Cool Again 58:01 Why Care? 1:05:14 Sustainablility 1:10:32 Financial vs Social Capital 1:17:29 Trust & Culture 1:21:59 Defining Metacartel 1:27:40 The Vision 1:32:06 Closing ------ Resources: pet3rpan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pet3rpan_?s=20 Before Bitcoin Part 1: https://pet3rpan.medium.com/history-of-things-before-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-part-one-e199f02ca380 Before Bitcoin Part 2: https://pet3rpan.medium.com/history-of-things-before-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-part-two-94c4576005 Before Bitcoin Part 3: https://pet3rpan.medium.com/before-bitcoin-pt-3-90s-cryptowars-e857915fab82 Before Bitcoin Part 4: https://pet3rpan.medium.com/before-bitcoin-pt-4-00s-new-millenium-426d6e3dcb1a The Digital Culture Revolution: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/the-digital-culture-revolution ----- 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.

• 0:07David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero is a podcast that focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been. Today, I'm talking with Peter Pan, who is a fellow class of 2017 crypto person, got into the world of crypto around the same time I did, made similar typical newbie mistakes that one does, buying XRP.

• 0:47David Hoffman?

  But Peter immediately injected himself right into the core of the Ethereum community and kind of led the charge for DAOs. He was one of the earliest DAOers to really kind of reinvigorate this whole DAO revolution, starting, I think, in maybe early 2019. Peter's legacy, along with others as well, is Metacartel. Metacartel was the first DAO after Moloch DAO to really use the dope Moloch framework and to try and bestow part of what its visions should be upon the world via funding grants. But it's really turned into much, much more than that.

• 1:28David Hoffman?

  I think Metacartel is, it's a meme that is also a public good, kind of. It's a vibe that we all, as a collective humanity, can tap into. Defining Metacartel, I think, is inherently impossible, but I think you will, as a listener, understand why after you listen to this conversation with Peter Pan. So without further ado, let's go ahead and get right into that conversation. But before we do, 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 Autonomous piece of software on Ethereum,

• 2:11David Hoffman?

  which is what Ryan and I call a money robot. 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. DAOs have money and they are in need of labor. If you think that you have something to contribute to the Uniswap DAO, 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 DAO? No matter how big or small your idea is,

• 2:55David Hoffman?

  you can apply for a UniGrant at unigrants.org and help steer Uniswap in the direction that you think it should go. That's exactly what we did to get Uniswap to be a sponsor for Bankless and you can do the same for your project. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring Bankless. The era of proof of stake is upon us. Proof of stake systems like Ethereum, Terra and Solana allow the industry to move away from the hot, loud and wasteful proof of work systems and return back to a cottage industry of individual stakers and individual validators. And that is what we need to make this industry stay decentralized. Individuals must play their part in crypto network validation. And that is what Lido is here to do. Lido makes staking accessible to everyone at the click of a button. By delegating your stake to Lido's network of nodes,

• 3:39David Hoffman?

  you can access the yield offered by proof of stake systems and claim your share of the network transaction rewards. Do you have 32 ETH and want to stake it to Ethereum, but running a node sounds intimidating? Or maybe you have less than 32 ETH and you need to pool your ETH with others so you can access staking yields? Lido offers a solution for both. Simply go to lido.fi, choose which assets you want to stake and deposit them to the Lido validating network. Lido is working to make sure proof of stake stays as decentralized as possible and is committed to decentralizing its own validating network to eventually become a completely permissionless protocol. So if you want to stake your ETH, Terra or Sol and get liquidity on your stake, go to lido.fi to get started.

• 4:23David Hoffman?

  All right, guys, we are here with Peter Pan. Peter, what's up?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  It is a pleasure to be back on Bankless. Well, Layer Zero, I guess.

• 4:34David Hoffman?

  Layer Zero, no.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  You have different serieses, right? Yeah, you have different like serieses and focuses and.

• 4:41David Hoffman?

  Totally, yeah. Layer Zero is just basically the Tuesday flavor of Bankless at this point. So yeah, it's the Bankless podcast, but the Layer Zero sub category, I guess. Yeah, I'm stoked to get you on for longer than just 30 minutes because the only other time we've had you on the show was the 30 minute pre-interview about what it was like to write that before a Bitcoin series, which turned into like an audiobook type podcast.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, yeah, that was beautiful. Thank you so much for doing that. Yeah.

• 5:13David Hoffman?

  Thank you for.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  It was so weird because, yeah, it was like you, like I wrote it and like going across into crypto and like no one taught like I, some people read it, so it's cool, but no one really like Sean is like, no one cared about it for pretty much two and a half years.

• 5:31David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:33David Hoffman?

  When you wrote it, it was in the depths of the 2017 mania, right? So like not necessarily the, the community that would appreciate a post of that nature.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  So the funny thing was that, yeah, this was one of the first things I discovered crypto, started going to rush like workshops, dead workshops in 17, but I think in 2018, I went full time, just like, I want to learn about the space. I want to find a job. I want to do stuff in here and I started asking questions really on a fundamental basis of like, you know, what is crypto? What is blockchains? What is technology? Like what, what is cryptography? Who created cryptography? And when I wrote it, it was just like, I couldn't, I want to say through the history, I first started talking to crypto people again. I realized I couldn't really, I didn't, I basically didn't shut up about this stuff. And then I think that's when I realized I should, I should, I should write this down. And I think I've, the series is mostly finished.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  When the time I went to my first ever crypto conference in May 2018, that's right. In, in Toronto for EdCon. I was a sponsor, it was a sponsored trip, like some people, Bucky Poobah in Sydney funded me to go on a scholarship to go to the conference. And I didn't know anyone, I didn't have any friends. So in the hashtag EdCon hashtag for the conference, I just posted like, I kept them posting this link of like the seventies intro to history on before Bitcoin. And surprisingly, I had met a few people such as Philip and Chris Safer, like who are working on Brainbot and I'm token back there.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Like just different people I know, although to today that like, actually like came across what I wrote and then like actually read all of it.

• 7:18David Hoffman?

  Because, because you just tweeted out the, the link with the hashtag, just because you spam it?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I barely like, I barely had any crypto follows or anything. And I just like spamming that hashtag of like, hey, check this out, the history of crypto.

• 7:31David Hoffman?

  That's hilarious. Not, not too many people know this, but I kind of have a similar like entrance into crypto for at ETH Denver 2018. I wrote out some essays that I thought would be interesting and I didn't have a Medium account. I didn't know what a Medium account was at the time. And so I printed out these essays and I was handing them, I literally had a backpack that felt like 20 pounds of paper. And I was handing them out physically to people at ETH Denver 2018.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  I think some of the early CypherPunks did that as well. I forgot who it was, but you know, they were handing out the CypherPunk manifesto and paper to people.

• 8:08David Hoffman?

  Right. They were doing that in the eighties and nineties, right? Not, not after a medium had been invented.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  That's right. Good point.

• 8:18David Hoffman?

  Okay. So the, the very basic question that I think I'll start with is like, how, what was your first entrance into crypto? How did crypto land in your life?

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Honestly, um, I think, well, I think this went back to 2012 and 13 when I was online. I was like doing weird internet things. I was like learning how to like, it's like they were online. They were like weird forums about things such as like, how do you social like social engineer systems so you can get like free cans of Red Bull, right? Or like, you know, you learn, it's like, it was a whole forum about like, you know, weird tricks in society, like in life, sort of, it's like.

• 8:56David Hoffman?

  Real life bugs, real life exploits?

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like really, exactly, real life exploits and bugs that was sort of harmless, right? Like, how do you get free cans of Red Bull? It's like he messaged the support being like, oh my God, I've bought six cans and there were absolutely nothing in all of them. They were, I wanna, I would like a replacement, please, right? Or like, how do you get a small fry at McDonald's for free? Just go when it's busy and ask that they missed, they missed it, right? Um, like weird little society bugs like this and that, and one of the forums was like, uh, yeah, they were like, you know, it's like, hey, you can earn several dollars a day clicking captures. And, uh, that happened to be a site where you basically like, it was like Bitcoin falls back in 2012 or 13. Uh, and that's where I discovered Bitcoin. I just like for a day or two.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  And like, you know, barely sense just clicking on captures and like getting Bitcoin from different drips and faucets. And I think that's when, um, yeah, and, and I didn't think too much about it. I was like, this is weird. Why am I doing this? This is, I'm gonna stop doing this. This is like a very little benefit to me.

• 10:01David Hoffman?

  Was it, was it because of the money or just because you could?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Because I could. I was like fascinated with, I like set up wallets. I was like collecting like mini bits of satiries every time. Uh, and I, I just went down different rabbit holes, you know, uh, on the internet like that. So like, you know, I still have the account to today. So it's like, today it's like $70 maybe, right?

• 10:24David Hoffman?

  I was about to ask, wow, did you, were you one of those few people that actually kept the private keys of their first Bitcoins they ever got?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually surprisingly, I don't know how I dug it up, but I like, I remember one day I was just like looking like, I wonder if like, uh, I have anything and just like social email and yeah, I still have it actually.

• 10:45David Hoffman?

  Too bad airdrops aren't really a thing on Bitcoin because those balls would have

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, so I learned about the then skip didn't care anything about it. I was really like working in mostly like tech startups in Sydney. And like 17, uh, 16 and 18 and, um, around that time period. And, uh, I sort of got bored of like building web two. And I think I started exploring again. Uh, and, and, you know, I think I started hearing about like, I think in the mid early 17, like people talking about investing in Ethereum. How like, you know, uh, and I was like, wait, what's Ethereum? And I learned there was like many different cryptos other than just Bitcoin. Like, I heard about like OMG made safe, like see a coin. I'm like, what the hell is no this? I'm like, what the hell is all of this?

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Uh, and then that, uh, wasn't so basically like watching YouTube shitcoins for like, you know, shitcoin videos for a while until I think in September, October of 2017, when I went to my first ever, um, crypto workshop where, uh, that Bucky Puvah, the legendary dev of Sydney, the godfather of crypto in Sydney, basically it was back then like running, uh, four hour workshops at a time, several times a week around like, what is a private key? What is a blockchain network? It's like, what is, I can, you know, what does it look like to run a light node, sync a light node, right? Like, and that's when the, when I went to my first one, I was like, basically like it blew my mind. Like I was like, whoa, that's like, this is way more than just like,

• 12:15Speaker 01

  uh, speculative investments. This is like entire like platform. Like this is something that was going to be super huge and just like fell down the rabbit hole pretty hard. Like I went to every one of the workshops pretty much, um, afterwards and, um, yeah. Uh, and I think, uh, that was my entry into crypto.

• 12:36David Hoffman?

  So there's often, at least for people who come into the Ethereum community, there's like two aha moments. There's the aha moment of like, oh, this crypto thing is for real and it's here to stay. And then there's the aha moment is like, oh, this crypto thing is really all becoming encapsulated by Ethereum. Did you have those two aha moments as well? It's not, you definitely had the first, you just described it. Was there an Ethereum aha moment?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  I, to be honest, I was definitely an XRP holder in the beginning. I like bought everything. I bought Litecoin, I bought Monira, I bought XRP. I was like, and I think I showed up to that Dev Workshop being like, "Yeah, I'm an investor."

• 13:13Speaker 01

  And they're like, "What are you investing in?" I'm like, "Oh, like Ripple's gonna be totally like..."

• 13:19David Hoffman?

  Revolutionary.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  "Thank you." And they're like, "I sort of now understand why they're looking at me in a weird way." And I think over time, like, what I, I just realized that all these really shady people were like hanging around all the other projects. And only really the real developers and builders were hanging around Ethereum, the Ethereum community. So I sort of like naturally like, you know, made that realization of like, "Oh, this might be the most legitimate one."

• 13:50David Hoffman?

  The developer that you were talking about who's leading the workshop, when he was talking about private keys and blockchain networks, was he, was he using Ethereum as like the model or was it more just like technology independent?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  No, it was definitely Ethereum. He was showing me Eve, like Litecoin, thinking he was showing us how to deploy YSC20 contract for Remix, you know, and we were using like, you know, I think Efa Wallet back then as well. Yeah, it was like very Eve-centric. So, yeah, yeah.

• 14:21David Hoffman?

  When you were, you said you got bored with working in Web 2 and you worked for tech startups. So what were you doing for tech startups? Like, what's your like technical skill set before you came into crypto?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was a UX designer, so I talked to all the users, right? So the last project, like Web 2 product I worked on was cancer aid. So it was like, basically, this, it's basically like if you have cancer, you're mostly like guided by treatment plans and like, you know, based on paper, right? Like, you know, there's no real way to actually like deliver information real time from like yourself to like, you know, clinicians, right? So like the whole lifecycle of like getting cancer and like going into remission and like treatment, like it was just, it was like in chalk and like stone.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Basically, right? So it was like, I was working in an app that basically collected all data, fed it to clinicians. And I was a person really understanding, talking to all the cancer patients, clinicians, family members, everyone part of the journey and just like, understanding the problem space. This was like very early on with the startup now, still running today. Um, and uh, yeah, I was, I just talked, I was the person that talked to everyone, uh, and put details into a doc and distilled them into products and like features and problems and data to business of marketing and, uh, you know, product and, you know, I designed UI and, but you know, a lot of it was talking to people.

• 15:47David Hoffman?

  What about that, like behavior or activity? Do you see yourself like recycling skills into this current web three crypto world?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Like, yeah, I, I sort of feel like I hadn't like with community building. I just like, um, well, I feel like with community building, I, that's a lot of what I've done in the last couple of years and still do a lot of today, like at least helping projects for this. Um, and I would say that a lot of it is just like, I take a, I, I, I really, I guess, take a lot from product design and York's design and user research, because I think

• 16:21Speaker 01

  in product design, right? Like you, uh, the heuristic or that what you're taught is basically to really focus on user needs and, you know, build empathy with users and customers, right? And I feel like the equivalent of that of being user, like having user and product obsession in web two is like the web three equivalent is probably like being community for us and having empathy for community members, right? So, um, I think that it's really the same thing. And like design in general, it's like, design is a process, right? Of like, ID, like identifying problem space, ideating solutions, testing it, iterating, getting feedback, right? And with product design, you're, you know, I guess, or being a UI designer, web designer,

• 17:04Speaker 01

  or mobile designer, you just basically you're assigned specific mediums in which you execute design for, right? Um, like you're, you're, you know, whether you're a graphic designer as well, visual designer, motion designer, you, you have techniques and tools to solve the problem, right? Or create an outcome or create an experience. I feel like with, um, you know, building communities. It's really designing, you're designing an outcome, you're designing an environment, designing a journey for people to go on to reach a certain goal. And instead of, you know, wireframes as being the medium which you express the design through, you're doing that through communication, text, storytelling, organizing the layouts of discords even to

• 17:46Speaker 01

  branding, to, you know, all these things and to relationship building. These are your tools and, you know, instead of me looking at sketch and drawing boxes all day and doing, using drop shadows, that's probably more like people are more of the interface of community building. So this is the analogy I've always, I've always had, you know, and whenever I'm stuck, I usually think like, what, how do I design myself out of a situation or so on?

• 18:15David Hoffman?

  So when I, this is really interesting and I'm trying to figure out the right question to ask. So it feels a little bit like social engineering, right? Where with UX, you're trying to optimize towards an outcome. My social engineering has like a very negative connotation, but right, like

• 18:30Speaker 01

  It does. It's a very shady, it's very shady connotations. It's like, no, it's not good.

• 18:35David Hoffman?

  Right. But also like almost explicitly crypto is, we are trying to, we have tools to tinker with incentives. What does that mean? We're tinkering with social dynamics, right? And in the intro to the show, I always say, cypherpunks know that the code they write creates social systems or impacts the people that use it, right? And so like when we're designing these communities, like when you're a UX designer, you're trying to just basically ease the frictions to get the outcome that you want, right? Like we have this outcome, we want to make as many users as possible go through the complete process and actually achieve the outcome. With like communities, they're almost like, isn't an outcome because the community needs to define the outcome? All your job is to do is to get people into

• 19:18David Hoffman?

  the community, right? And have the community figure out the outcome.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  I think it different communities can exist in different ways, right? Like, you know, the way you described it, like, you know, the community decides outcome. Totally right. But a part of that journey is like helping, like, often like times, it's like facilitating that discovery of what that community wants and creating like and creating clarity, right? Like, that is also the process. And once you have some love clarity, it's like people like, I guess your job is to help people get that, right? So in a way, it's very, it definitely is very emergent, but there's also something very like operationally rigorous about like, once you've like identified what the community wants, you've often also have to help the community get momentum and find, make its steps towards that, right? That's why I think

• 20:08Speaker 01

  oftentimes, like, the moment in which a community really becomes alive is often when, like, you find the community's trust win. It's like, you know, there's plenty of groups that come together, want to do things, but they often fizz away because nothing ever gets done. There's no ownership, right? And oftentimes, I feel like the key there between, like fizzling out and like really becoming something special where everyone jumps on and adds on is like, you know, sparking the first win, the first victory for that group, and getting, making sure that it's a victory that everyone can feel, so that some sense of ownership around, right?

• 20:43David Hoffman?

  Do you think that, like, so imagine a hypothetical community has come together, there's a decent amount of energy in there, but there's no W's yet, there's no wins, but there's some semblance of shared purpose and reasoning goals in some direction as like, we don't know where our wins are going to be, but we're going to be, they're going to be over here, like, we're going to go that way, find a W out there.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 21:05David Hoffman?

  Do you, do you think that, like, maybe the actual instantiation of finding that W can actually change the out, the, the direction of the communities? Like, well, there's, there were, there's 30 degrees of direction that we're going to go, we're actually going to go 30 degrees to the, to the left, or, and we're also going to go 30 degrees to the right, but we're going forwards, but they actually find the, the win 30 degrees to the left. And so everyone stops going right. And because the win was over to the left, the win actually dictates the future direction. Have you, have you seen anything like that?

• 21:39Speaker 01

  I've seen communities where, yes, it definitely has dictated that, but I feel like the story of Metacartel is the opposite.

• 21:45David Hoffman?

  Oh, tell me.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  A lot of Metacartel, a lot of Metacartel has been like, I've always been very like, very like organized. So like, I want to like, make sure we like find wins, structured wins. But it's always like, I feel like whenever I've tried to guide the community in many ways, it's what I've ended up achieving is more like in set, like performing inception to people being like, making sure that like, you know, it's like, we need to get, go somewhere, let's go. I think we're in this direction. And then like, some people resist, it's sort of the meme doesn't catch on. And I'm like, all right, whatever. And then very naturally, we actually do go somewhere because people are generally aligned of like the requirements of where we need to go. And strangely enough, it's like,

• 22:27Speaker 01

  the answer is very emergent, right? And then over time, I realized that, you know, you need enough chaos and noise to exist. Uh, you know, like some, that is actually something like, you know, a good thing. You want a lot of, uh, you know, like sort of friction and like bouncing, you want ideas to float in and out. You want that to be collisions of ideas. And that's sort of where, you know, yeah, the men pull that is. And that's where I think, you know, um, yeah, direction comes from. So like, I realized instead of like forming direction first, uh, you know, like one of the things I, the mentality shifts I went from in terms of making doubt proposals,

• 23:05Speaker 01

  was like, instead of like pointing in a single direction first, I, you know, I started writing proposals that really just outlined the vision of where we want to go. And then getting alignment there. And then just like hoarding discussions around that vision. And then very naturally, the, the sort of the actual tactical, um, direction really emerges from some of the members, right? Like it just, it sort of clicks when the right meme comes abroad, right? Um, yeah. And, and so that's how I've learned sort of how to operate.

• 23:35David Hoffman?

  There's, there seems to be like a chicken and an egg discussion here, right? Like, do the visions dictate the wins or do the wins dictate the visions? And I mean, it sounds like there's an interaction between those two things. Do you have an opinion on which one's more important?

• 23:51Speaker 01

  I don't think the, uh, sometimes one is important, like sometimes a long-term direction is important, is more important than the current short-term focus, but sometimes you need to also run with it. Sort of like, I feel like running communities or fostering communities is a bit like being sort of a DJ, sort of like, you know, you're like, uh, you're mixing tracks that work well with each other. You should, you sort of know what uh, tracks are putting on, but at the same time, you're reading the room and the next track that you thought was gonna be good 20 minutes ago, might not be the right track now, like, you know, uh, but there might still be this overall theme and that you wanna like mix throughout the night with, right? Like the, you have a certain set of song

• 24:35Speaker 01

  selections, right? That you wanna like play within. Uh, and there's no right answer, but like, um, you know, so I think you have to be really present and, and sort of have your finger on the pulse on making sure you go explore the areas that the community wants to explore. Uh, and at some times make trade-offs to just like push a community to a certain area because it needs to go where it needs to go, right? And I think that is like the, you know, like it's like not too much salt, not too little, just, just right, just, just enough, right? So, um, that's a cooking analogy, I guess. It's like, you know, yeah.

• 25:12David Hoffman?

  It, it makes sense because when you're, I'm not, I'm not a DJ. I think you are, or at least you very much appreciate people that DJ.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I appreciate my warehouse raves and the sounds.

• 25:23David Hoffman?

  Yeah. Okay. Okay. So it seems to be like the, the shared goal behind like a crypto community, a community at large, but like what we're really talking about crypto communities. And a DJ is like, there's a, uh, an energy, right? There's a vibe that must be sustained. Uh, and the DJ's job is to sustain the vibe while also directing it, right? Like making sure the vibe stays alive. Uh, and same thing with a, with a community, right? Like there's a vibe and the best thing, the, the goal of a community is to make that vibe shared by more people, right? So DJs want their music to be listened to by more people. Uh, DeFi communities or crypto communities want their community values to be shared and vibed

• 26:04David Hoffman?

  with by more people and then have that vibe become like stronger and stronger and stronger over time.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 26:11David Hoffman?

  It's just like this core energy of like, there's probably other examples as well.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 26:16David Hoffman?

  Also like tied into this as well.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  Perfect. Yeah, no, this is a perfect way to describe it. And yeah, and you know, it's like oftentimes in DAOs, it's like get shit done or have fun or do both. And like, you want to have a bunch of mix of both and do things that's in line with the vibe of a community, right?

• 26:35David Hoffman?

  Yeah. And like, there's got to be some sort of semblance, balance between like play and work and play, right? Because if you're all, if everyone in the DAO is working and no one's playing, well, is that really a vibe? But also, if everyone's playing and not working, then like, the vibe's gonna die. Because like, all the economic resources are going to get expended.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely right.

• 26:59David Hoffman?

  The whole coming like

• 27:02Speaker 01

  This should be a chart. It's like the trade-off of like

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the future, like MBA, the crypto version MBA, it's like vibing, working. It's like, we've got to find the perfect triangle, like of equality here, you know?

• 27:21David Hoffman?

  Work hard, play hard.

• 27:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, the conjoined triangles of vibing and working.

• 27:30David Hoffman?

  There's something here. Somebody else take this and run with it. Peter, what was the first like crypto community that you felt aligned with and identified with?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Good question. I would definitely say I came across.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right. Yes, this is. So my first crypto conference, like in May of 2018, you know, at ConSum, the day before the conference, I went to this event, where, you know, like, people were talking about EIP Zero. It was a, back then, I think the sharing community was like, basically in a bit of a shit show, like, you know, because the EIP 999 just happened, which is basically this like idea to hard fork, right? Oh, no, no, it was like, I think Parity's Uh proposal, I'm not sure what it exactly was, but I think it's Parity's proposal to like, uh, like hard fork Ethereum, but that was shut down because like there was like a parody multi-sick hack.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that, that, I think that was right. Yeah. Uh, and the funny thing was also EIP 999 backwards is like six, six, six, die. I just remember that, like, like that meme.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  So yeah, people were talking about, uh, EIP zero. Um, I mean, I, EIP nine nine nine. So like, you know, huge contention because like Ethereum hard forked, uh, from the DAO and that happened, right? But what about parity modesting, you know, blah, blah, blah. So EIP zero was a effort to basically go around the entire Ethereum community, collect feedback on how Ethereum should be governed, what its values were, right? Uh, it was just one of the first attempts to really put this on paper.

• 29:14David Hoffman?

  Right. Um, and There's a reference to layer zero here somewhere with EIP zero.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:19David Hoffman?

  It's like the genesis of, the genesis of the culture, right?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  That's right. And I think, uh, that was an online survey and I was like helping like collate the survey responses together, right? In a Figma board. Um, but I, that was a meetup like held by the Ethereum magicians. That was in charge of like hosting discussion about, uh, EIP zero and, uh, EIP, uh, nine nine nine. And I think there was like Justice Steiner, like, uh, it was Lane, Red Tech, like, uh, Hudson. I think Griff, uh, Griff Green, they were on a couch and there was like a, uh, some downtown Toronto meetup phase. There was like L4 there, like all the people I saw on Twitter, but were like just on all of that, like RL on the couch, like talking about this stuff.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  And I was just like sitting there like this, like little, you know, dumb nut, just like listening in and like trying to keep up. Um, and I think that resonated because they were truly trying to like protect something important, which is like this, like the community around Ethereum, right? And making sure it doesn't like fragment and, and, you know, making sure governance was sort of, sort of conducted in an open fashion. I so I really that I think that's the first community I really like resonate with and like Boris Mann was sort of really in the in the weeds there helping coordinate everything. I was trying to do, I wasn't, I couldn't really participate in any of the discussions. So I just like did the dumb, stupid stuff like, hey, I cleaned up the GitHub issues. I I tagged all the posts, you know,

• 30:47Speaker 01

  I wrote the notes for this, right? I did things such as like, oh, let's like, don't know anything about the product managers in Ethereum and Web3 back then. So I'm going to do each product interviews, right, on everyone, on all the PMs I knew. And yeah, and that meetup, I just like remember being like, wow, this is like, it's like such a privilege potentially to like contribute to something so big, right? And that was like, what a strong impression. I was like, I want to, I want to do important work one day, like these people.

• 31:20David Hoffman?

  Having the Ethereum Cat Herders as your first community that you came into with is insanely awesome answer. I was expecting to hear some random community that like died out a few, a few months later.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  If I joined today, it'd be like, oh my, hey, I joined this like social token thing, like, it's like, we're all getting tattoos, you know, like.

• 31:42David Hoffman?

  Getting tattoos. There's, yeah, I'm sure there's going to be an organization like that if it's not, if not already.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Oh, it exists.

• 31:48David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah, no. Wait, oh, is it, is it the NFT or what is it? Non-fundable?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, hashtag shout out to Proof of Ink Dow.

• 31:56David Hoffman?

  Proof of Ink Dow. I have not inquired as to how I get my ink. They're not real tattoos, though, right?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  No, they're 100% real. There's about like 12.

• 32:05David Hoffman?

  RC721? Oh, boy. I'm not sure I'm ready.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  Okay, hang on. I'm not done with the Ethereum Cather's section. Why, why, you hinted to it, but I just want to want you to unpack and elaborate, like, why did you decide to commit so much energy to this organization that you just met? Like, what motivated you to do like the basic stuff, even when you couldn't understand the bigger stuff?

• 32:29Speaker 01

  To be honest, when I first, I guess, uh, joined the firm, like when I, I guess it goes back to before Bitcoin, that series, and I, like, I originally would join just so like, I wanna like, I knew, like, I think late seventeen, after going through the workshops, I knew that crypto web free interferium was like, going to be, like, it was the most, I was so, I didn't, I couldn't explain it to someone very coherently, I couldn't, I didn't do anything in it meaningfully, but I just, I knew it was like the, the first meaningful invention that, uh, you know, of crypto, really, which was like my dedication of time and energy. It was like, I just was so sure that this was going to be a thing. It was like almost

• 33:09Speaker 01

  undeniable, like, it just felt so obvious. And I was like, it just made sense to get a head start. I had a fun one and one else and like, learn about all of this before it became even more complex. Uh, and then, you know, that, when I went into sort of the history of cryptography and realized this connection to the cypherpunks, um, I sort of became very inspired by the sacrifices and all the work that people did, you know, back in the seventies and eighties and nineties. And I really, you know, for the first year, uh, you know, the, at least from the start of my journey into Ethereum, I felt very inspired to like, do something meaningful, like do work that would be eventually like recognized.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Somewhere, you know, like in the, like, like in fifty years later, like my, my one wish is just like, have some piece of work that I've like walked on, just like remembered as like somewhat sort of a building block, right? Um, so like, that was very inspiring. Um, and so I felt like this was important, worthy work that like, needed to be done and no one else was going to do this, nor could I really contribute in any other fashion. Like, you know, everyone else was, back then, everyone was hiring developers, but no one needed like, uh, community builders or like comms, like, you know, no people who can't code effectively, right, aren't engineers.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Um, so I felt like this is the best grunt work I can do and, uh, so, uh, this sort of movement, right? So that's what I did.

• 34:35David Hoffman?

  And so, uh, your resume also includes being a very early, if not the earliest, member of Metacartel? When did, uh, how far ahead in the story am I skipping ahead here?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Um, you know, maybe so Metacartel, really the formations happened, you know, in September of two thousand, of that year, two thousand and eighteen, that's right.

• 34:57David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  So, yeah, like, I think, you know, basically, Metacartel originally was a technical working group around a UX solution known as Meta-Transactions, hence the name.

• 35:09David Hoffman?

  Right, right, wow, that is a trip, yes, yes, okay, sorry, keep going.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, so in the same EdCon, I believe, in Toronto, there was a UX Unconference, and that, that UX Unconference, Alex Van der Sand presented Universal Logins, a UX login solution, that was, that used gasless voting and multi-sig key management, right? And that was like revolutionary, and like, everyone's like, oh my god, this is like the future of UX, we're gonna bring mass adoption, you know, mass adoption is like solved, and I guess this, his technologies, like, he outlined, he didn't really, Alex Van der Sand didn't invent Meta-Transactions, but he was the first one that really popularized and then brought it into the minds of everyone, right?

• 35:55Speaker 01

  And so, his video of talking about Universal Logins spread around, and, you know, I think, you know, I started working project that, you know, also wanted to work in the same areas Meta-Transactions. So, and I think the first ever, like, real-life working group that emerged around Meta-Transactions was in, the first ever Eiffel Inn out in two thousand and eighteen. And, yeah, that's, and I remember very distinctly, almost photographically, like, the first meeting of NP, like, people from, Steph from Nosis, like, people in status, just gathering in the hall of Factory Berlin, you know, just, hey, like, we're here, like, let's talk

• 36:37Speaker 01

  about Meta-Transactions, and how do we stand, what do we need to do, like, sanitize the contract interface, can we create a decentralized Meta-Transactions network? And after that event, we started a Telegram group, which is, which is still alive today, which is like the main ecosystem chat from Metacartel, like, it's sort of, just like general news and stuff like that, but, you know, well, we started the Meta-Transactions Working Group, and then... We thought that was a boring name after a couple of weeks. Well, you know, so we like put up a vote on which name we should name the working group. And I think, you know, we named it Meta Cartel because actually that wasn't the first name we voted on for. The first name was El Cartel de la Meta. I mean, that was like MPs.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Like, it was just like a weird, it was like at first vote, it seemed it won the outstanding vote, but like it just was not very easy to pronounce. So we're like the second most bad meme, bad meme, immediately bad meme. It was like not even like that long. It was like half a day later, we realized it's bad. Let's change it to Meta Cartel. And the one that was voted in was like Meta with a Meta space cartel. And they were like, no. And then MP was like, no, you put it together.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Right. So it's like Meta Cartel. And then that's, I guess the meme is like, we're the only ones working in meta transactions. Cartel of knowledge.

• 37:58David Hoffman?

  How many people were there in the Telegram chat at the time?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  No more than like seventeen, twenty. And I, so we were running the meetings, we were writing meeting notes and we wrote down everyone who attended as well. So I think like, you know, we have the HackMD documents like back then, where it's like, we also, I've also wrote like a blog post overview of all the problems we were trying to solve. Right? And yeah, it's like no more than twenty five, twenty, twenty people trying to work on this back then. Yeah.

• 38:28David Hoffman?

  And so that, a group of people working on these like problems that we're trying to solve that reminds me of one of the talks that I listened to at MCon where somebody, it might have been you actually, talked about how Meta Cartel was formed. At least at the, maybe it was the Meta Cartel venture side, trying to fund projects that were solving the problems that Meta Cartel ran into. And so like kind of linking this back into our discussion about like how a community establishes a vision for itself. A, it's very, very emergent, but it seems to be like this community just formed, formed around like, hey, there's this technology called meta transactions. It can be a huge UX upgrade. Everyone here believes, sees that vision of the huge UX upgrade.

• 39:12David Hoffman?

  So let's form a group around this. And all of a sudden that group turned into a more instantiated community. What was the next steps after putting everyone into a Telegram and like finding a name for the organization? What happened next?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess the fun fact was Austin Griffith was the first one to join that Telegram group chat as well.

• 39:31David Hoffman?

  Really?

• 39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I saw the screenshot that's like, um, and so, yeah, after people joined, uh, we like met offline a couple of times, like East San Francisco, we were like hung out, did things. And then it was, it was like in October, like early October, we had East San Francisco, and that's where the Metacartel logo came about as well.

• 39:53David Hoffman?

  For those that don't know, the Metacartel logo is a chili pepper and a sombrero.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  It was dancing and a maracas and it was MP, yeah, dictate, and it was Frankie Nines as well, like drawing the thing. Um, and when it came out, I was like, this is awful. Like, I wanted to be a serious, serious, like, research group. I was like, I need a job. I sort of need some credibility, like, like, you know, I'm like putting effort into this volunteer sort of like,

• 40:21Speaker 01

  come on, like, and like, people love the chili logo. And I'm like, really?

• 40:26David Hoffman?

  Well, at the same time, Ethereum had its unicorn logo. Were you, maybe you were in the mindset of just like, hey, I need to look professional because that's what this world is about? Is that the mindset?

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I had this mindset of like, I need to look professional because like for us, like, I'm like, I'm like getting to the end of the year and I haven't like done anything. Like, you know, I haven't like, and I like need to like, I'm, I was like, I'm running out of money. I like, I need a job. Like, I'm like, that was like, like, like, okay, um, and but, you know, like, I grew to love it over time, but, you know, back then I was like, oh, God, really? Just like, okay, whatever. I was like disgruntedly like accepted the logo. So that's an example where like, I really wanted to be one thing, but if people loved it, let's go with it, right? So, um, yeah, and, and I guess the unique part about the initial seed of Metacartel was that

• 41:16Speaker 01

  there was a lot of people who joined the community, like a lot of people that was part of the initial technical working group around use experience. What like if you're an OG, so what definitely some, right? Like really like people who are around like Stefan from Nosis and people like that, but um it was like a lot of new people. And I think that's what like really spiced up the group from the beginning. It was just like people who came in seventeen, early eighteen, who just like were application scrubs. Like we didn't like, we couldn't work on like base layer stuff. We couldn't work on scaling. We just like wanted to build cool stuff, right? Like for end users and that's what we get about.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Um, and that I think seeded a lot of the DNA of like Metacartel, which is like, you know, have fun, do things like run it like sort of run and gun, like, you know, uh, move fast and experiment, which is the opposite of Ethereum back then, which is like, how do we like build the next thousand years of Ethereum? You know, how do we, uh, you know, yeah, build all this infrastructure. We want, we just wanted to experiment and move fast. And um, it was a fairly counterintuitive sort of mindset as well, like, and that, and that's what actually I think like signaled and attracted all this, all the interesting people that uh, became at a cartel, um, you know, like, you know, early on.

• 42:34David Hoffman?

  There's definitely this like generational phenomenon where generations in crypto find themselves like they all, like we all got into crypto with the same background. Like we all, we, here's like the centralized blockchain scam that we all fell for at the same time. Uh, and then, and then we found Ethereum all less more in the same like few months or so. And then yeah, everyone finds like commonality in that when they actually got into into crypto. Hey guys, in the second half of the show, the story of Metacartel continues. It is an endless story. It's a long-term games story. So the story by hopefully by definition does not end. But unfortunately we have to break up the podcast to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible.

• 43:16David Hoffman?

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• 45:27David Hoffman?

  trade them on Unswap, and then deposit them back into Aave. With Aave, users can do this in one seamless transaction, saving you time and gas costs. Check out the power of Aave at ave.com. That's A-A-V-E dot com. But I just want to keep on going with. The story. So Meta Cartel formed after an alliance behind like trying to work on Meta Transactions, came up with a name, came up with a logo. What was the motivational energy to keep this organization like coherent? Was it considered an organization at this point? Or were you still kind of in this like, oh yeah, there's like a group of people under this like label? Like, take us from the pre-organization to actually an organization.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a very good framing. Yeah, it was like, honestly, because it had like the chili logo. And I think because that helped much, actually, like I'm so thankful, like because of that, because if it was a serious thing, I might have treated it more like a serious thing. But because it had a chili logo and like had at least amazingly like smart people crowd around it. And like, for some reason, it slowly gained a lot of legitimacy. Like, you know, you just like had smart people coming in to like collaborate and solve problems. And I, but despite that, I just sort of brought it as a huge joke that got bigger and bigger. Like, we like printed out a Meta Cartel shirt and like gave it to Alex Van Nistel to wear. And we printed the logo on the wrong side of the shirt. It was backwards. So we like had to make

• 46:56David Hoffman?

  On purpose?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Alex Janison, no, we made a mistake. It was just like, why the fuck? Some printed shirts? And for some reason, the logos on the back were like, who the hell did this?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  And then we wanted to have Alex Van Nistel wear it. But he's just like, oh yeah, I'll wear it backwards. So I don't know if you can find it, but in 2018 in Prague, he was giving a talk and he used this totally backwards shirt, like just looks weird. And yeah, and then we were like, oh my God, like Alex Janisens wearing our shirt, wearing the Meta Cartel shirt, you know, and I think then I had a, I remember the interaction where I was trying to give Joseph Lubin, sitting in the front row, a Meta Cartel logo, like sicko. And he's like, what the hell is this? And I just sort of shied away. I didn't explain it. I was just like, look, habit. This is enough. And so, yeah, anyways, we tried to solve Meta Transactions over the new, like, I think at Prague

• 47:55Speaker 01

  is when we made a breakthrough and like, you know, a lot of the main problems were solved around Meta Transactions. And that's where the gas station network came about, when Tabuki really made this like, the design shift, you know, and

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it I I think in the new years, like early two thousand nine nineteen, then like, you know, Eve Denver, whatever, like, I wasn't at the Eve Denver, but like, and a lot of the research problems are over. So I felt like, okay, this is, this was like a fun thing. This is done. I didn't even think about it, right? Until I think like, uh, you know, people, someone was like in the Telegram Metacartel chat, like, hey, like, where are we meeting up? And this was like for Eve Denver, like, meet up to do what? Like, like, and and I guess at that point, we had like spent a lot of time together as a group, like we had, we, we, you know, hosted dinners and we took our whole restaurants out, filled up the whole restaurant, you know, we've like,

• 48:52Speaker 01

  did a lot of research calls offline and online and it became, I I think when the first person volunteered to, you know, like, volunteer to run the meetup and fund the meetup and like find sponsors and the autonomy came together. I think that's when I really started taking Metacartel very seriously. I was like, wow, this is like, there's now a community here. It is not just me trying to keep it alive, you know? Um, and I think that's when I was like, okay, like, I'm gonna dedicate this next year. Um, like, I love time boxing initiatives and sprints, like, I'm gonna time box one more year, uh, or one year to purely focus on growing Metacartel as a community.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  And I just knew that it was a very valuable hub of people who are very application minded, and I didn't really know where I would go. I like, you know, I talked a lot with Drew Harding and James Young, like, back in late two thousand eighteen about, like, should we create like a DAP development, you know, studio, adventure studio? Can we create a DAP incubator? And I think that's where my mind went. It's like, how do we get more DAPs? How do you build more DAPs? And how to experiment with more use cases? And it took on more generalistic sort of focus of like, let's build stuff that's useful.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely did not get that off the ground because we had no credibility. There's no money, there's any well, no track record as well and, and really failed to like, I think we tried, literally tried to form a DApp incubator, but we're like, where do we get money? Like, I don't know. Like, do you know?

• 50:23David Hoffman?

  You know, no one has the ether.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're like, um. How do you, how do you do this thing? Don't know. So we fluffed around for a bit more until I think, and that was also when Molok Dow was launching. And I think James Young was talking about Molok Dow to me, yapping his goddamn ear off to me, like, you know, about Molok Dow, Dow is called, and I basically like blocked any sentence in my mind of Molok and Dow in it for like a while until I think I realized that like when Molok Dow made its first grant. And I was like, wow, like this is the first ever Dow I've ever seen or like existence. That is actually like creating a growth valley today.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  And that's when I really like started to pop up and like, oh, wow, I want to join this thing. And, you know, obviously they didn't let me because I was poor and I don't know, no one knew who I was as well.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  And, but, you know, that was the moment where I was like,

• 51:28Speaker 01

  fuck you guys. I'm gonna create my own Dow. Or like as a joke, just, it was initially a joke. I had a chat, a call of Cassandra and Amin, like as a, like a debrief of like, why the fuck was I like not allowed to give away my own money and volunteer? It was like, yeah, and then they're like, why don't you create your own Dow? Or turn Meta Cartel into Dow, launch a Dow from Meta Cartel. And I was like, great, let's, why not do like a grant style, focusing like a Molok Dow, but focusing like other application layer?

• 52:02David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah, that's what Meta Cartel, that was my first impression of Meta Cartel was just another Molok Dow, but with a more specific direction of what it wanted to fund. And it was like, it was Molok Dow for the UX layer. Is that right?

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And I spent about a month talking to fill my days up of calls like 10, 12 calls at a time, just talking to everyone I knew in the space, which is not a lot, and just asked everyone for money to put it into a DAO. Um, and I think that back then that was sort of not exciting, but not exciting enough. Uh, and I think like, you know, we announced it down like, you know, but surprisingly, I guess when we announced it more publicly, people really wanted to experiment DAOs. And I think even more after when like Joseph Lubin and Vitalik uh, and consensus E F put in like four million, four, five million dollars in Smoloch DAO. It was like, oh, wow. This is like, this is happening, right? So, um, but even then we could barely scrape together $150,000 by June

• 53:04Speaker 01

  um, to launch the thing. Like it was honestly a dire sort of effort of like, and it was, I guess like we scraped together maybe a thousand, 1.5 thousand ETH at, at the time, which was like a hundred dollars roughly, or even less ETH than, than that. Oh no, it's definitely less. It was like 900 ETH, 800 ETH. Yeah. Um, and uh, we were just like trying to figure this out. I was super scared, like never done a DAO before.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, I was like shaking, like, and we had a first DAO meeting and I was like trembling in my voice. I was like, trying to get people to introduce themselves. And I was like, do, do people want to do stuff now? Like, are people like, do people like this? Like, I just, no frame of reference. I was just like scared and trying to do things.

• 53:53David Hoffman?

  But going back to some of the things we were talking about at the very beginning of this is like, it seems to be that Metacartel was definitely a balance of work and play, right? Like they had this goofy logo, had this kind of funny name.

• 54:08David Hoffman?

  There wasn't really a shared vision or shared direction that was very well defined yet, but the vibes were very strong. It sounded like, like the one thing that Metacartel had going for it was like really, really good vibes. Uh, and then we enter like the whole Moloch DAO phase where, uh, you know, Amin kind of pioneered, uh, the whole. Whole like making DAOs cool again. And then Meta, Meta Cartel was probably was just like right behind the whole DAO movement. It's like, well, whatever, we don't, we still don't know what our, our organization is going to be about, but we can at least formalize it into a DAO and kind of go from there.

• 54:49David Hoffman?

  Were you, would you say you were like the lead community organizer or lead community manager of?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I was the, I was the lead slave of Meta Cartel.

• 55:00David Hoffman?

  The drummer.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I did, yeah, I, I did everything and anything the community wanted me to do. I was operating at its wish. I was enforcer, right? Like, you know, and to be honest, like now I haven't like thought too much about that time period when like just trying to formalize. What is Meta Cartel and you know, what it is like as a DAO, right? I was, holy God, pretty shitless scared. I was like, literally did not know what I was doing. I was like, hopeless, like people don't get pissed that I'm like wasting their time. I'm like, it's just like, and when people committed, I'm like, I'm just like,

• 55:43Speaker 01

  make sure you commit the ETH, right? Like, and the onboarding instruction, like, like it was basically, I don't know, like it wasn't, it was for ETH scan. Yeah, we got everyone to onboard for ETH scan. You know, for the contract interface there.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  And we're like, trust me, like this is legit, like this, it was like a instructions in a Notion doc. And I just like made CRM being like paying everyone to like onboard.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  And I was like, just a lot of times scared. I was like, you know, like people who committed like hundred ETH and like, they were, they were very important commitments. And I was just trying to make sure that like they came for a right. But then we got it off and running. And I think,

• 56:27Speaker 01

  yeah, a lot of those people I knew, a lot of people reaching out like that wanted to join and it was a mix of like. People that just I think were ready to experiment like in hindsight, it was like a very forward thinking like everyone who sort of pledges of Metacartel DAO at the start are like doing fascinating things now today, just like it was like really like people who wanted to build DAOs and experiment and they were the first people who took the leap of faith. I felt like with Moloch, it was a lot of ETH whales, but these people with Metacartel, like we raised a minimum pledge amount to, you know, 10 ETH from 100. So it was like a lot more like ordinary people builders and like less ETH whales and

• 57:08Speaker 01

  you know, that I'm like, I'm like ever like so thankful to anyone even pledge anything to that DAO like back then because without their leaps of faith, like it would not be like, we would never have done the experiment like it was literally people like, you know, uh, you know, just people from the community to being like, look, here's 100 ETH like

• 57:30Speaker 01

  like here's experiment, you know, like, and I'm like, thank you, sir. Like,

• 57:36Speaker 01

  like, you know, like, I, I just, it was, I really couldn't help them back, uh, you know? And, uh, I think that's what I really cherish about the culture of like, let's just do it like, you know, um, and yeah, so, and so very so like eternally thankful to like everyone who like pledged back then and just like or even retweeted or even supported the thing like, you know, yeah.

• 58:01David Hoffman?

  So why did you give a fuck so much? Like if it was, if the direction of Metacartel was undefined and like the vision was unrealized and, and the direction like no one really knew what you were doing and you didn't even know where Metacartel was going. Why did you put so much energy into it? Why did you commit so hard?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in early 2019, uh, I mean, yeah, I was like trying to like, I was gave myself some leeway of like, okay, let's spend a couple of months trying to figure out Metacartel stuff. We'll commit a year, but. To be honest, two, three months into the year, when I was trying to failing to get the DAP incubator stuff off the ground, I started looking for jobs again. I was like applying to places for PM roles, comms. Yeah, yeah, like crypto jobs. It was like comms roles, community management roles, like ops roles, anything non-technical. No one would hide me, like no one would like pick up like response to my like application seed, like no one would. And I was like, I'm so fucked.

• 58:58Speaker 01

  Like, I'm like, I'm like getting pretty broke. Like this is, you know, uh, like not good, like. Um, and I think like the medical stuff, things like when I, when I was rejected and this prospect of like building a DAO, it's like,

• 59:18Speaker 01

  you know, like there was the decision of like, go find a, continue finding a job or like, go continue wandering in the desert. I like, just like be, accept this, like this possibility that I might just get fully lost and like not come back out alive or well. And I think to do anything really out there and creative, you just, you have to accept and the fate, this potential fate that you might just get really lost and not, and it might not be a good outcome, right? So I just like, I was like, fuck it, you know, this is, there's a chance that like doing the first Fokumala was going to be a really big and interesting experiment. This is potentially a chance to like make a mark, right? Like, you know, uh, in the space and

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  uh, yeah, I just went, went into it. And I think, uh, that's when actually like Binance, uh, tech from Binance X, they were doing fellowships. They had plenty of money back then. So I guess they were just funding like cool projects in the space of fifteen thousand dollars, five thousand dollars a month. So it's like a three month, uh, thing. And that came in super clutch. Like I would have, that just like funded, like, you know, I got to Berlin, it was super cheap, lots of kebabs. You know, I split the payment, the fifteen thousand dollar payment, uh, five thousand dollar payment every month. Two free ways, some to P, some to Alex Hoffman, who was working in the DAO back then, some to, uh, myself and, um, just like, that was super clutch. And then once we had money in the DAO, I was like, okay, like I was just sort of

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  every now and then like begging for some money, you know, like, hey, here's a kind of like a couple thousand, like three thousand, two, three thousand dollars, three, four thousand dollars here and there, like literally like every two, three months. This wasn't like a weekly thing. It was like. Three months later, I was like, I had no money. Please, I need to go to DevCon. Like, you can have five thousand dollars. Um, and, um, yeah, people were like, yeah, of course. But to me, I was like, just privileged to like walk on a thing. Um, and yeah, and, and, you know, surprisingly, we had, uh, we got somewhere, I guess. And I think a lot of the, we didn't know what we were doing. We're just like funding different things. Like we funded Kickback, we funded, uh, like DAO ideas, right?

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  And I think that's when we started going from just DApps to like thinking more about DAOs of like, okay, we have grand DAOs, but what about DAOs for parties that sponsor events?

• 1:01:39David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  What about DAOs that are like, uh, that are project? How do you turn a project into a DAO? How do we, uh, can we take a, create a dev shop DAO, right? Uh, what about an investment DAO, like an upgraded version of the grants DAO that could actually value capture, right? Like, um, and that's where I think a lot of Metacartel ideas were like, you know, formed then was like really discovered. And also questioned like, what is the future we want to build here? Like, why are we so interested in DAOs? And that, and, and I think in the latter part of 2019, especially when we had an offsite, we called MCon Zero, right, which was like fifteen of us, just like coming to Denver for an offsite after, you know, um, after Osaka DevCon. We like came together to talk about like, what are the values of Metacartel?

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  What, uh, the visions that we wanted to build, like in Web3? Um, and what are we going to stand for? Like, what is, uh, what are we going to walk on in? You know, and that was very pivotal sort of like moment, sort of time period for Metacartel.

• 1:02:36David Hoffman?

  When, did you go into that conversation with your own answers? As in what you wanted to see Metacartel turn into?

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely none.

• 1:02:43David Hoffman?

  Yeah? You were there to listen?

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely none. Uh, we, yeah, I was the guy, I was like, let's do, let's hang on Denver. And then like, oh, people were like, yeah, let's do it. Um, and I was just, I was like, mind blown that like, we could get like fifteen brilliant people from the internet to meet IRL in Denver. Um, it's just like, that was mind blowing itself, like, let alone MCon, the recent MCon one, like, where like got several hundred people to come together, right? Um, and I think like there was a moment in like the, our brainstorming sessions and our Airbnb where like, What like, what do we, what is our vision? And just like, super quiet, like no one. And then I think I just like started ranting, like without any thought in my mind, like, everything's gonna be a game.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Like, you know, and then people, I'm like, yeah, like, you know, this is like the shit Ekman Glare for like, that will turn everything into a game, like, you, you know, you can, uh, like, schools will be game, like, work will be gamified, right? Like, you know, um, you're working DAOs, like, everything will be, we just like started ranting, like, you're being absurd about the future with what we knew about DAOs, right? And we wrote it all down in, in this thing called the Web3 Manifesto, um, and that's, we should have probably used that as an investment thesis in hindsight as well.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  You know, we shouldn't have just like wrote it down and did, do not too much with it, um. But, and then we wrote down our values, we, that was a bit more, you know, there was more clarity there, I think we could put it down, but, um, that was a very spontaneous moment in the middle of that room, where we're just like, sort of, like, yeah, like, really expressed like, where we thought the future was going, and like, that was like a strong driving force of like, we want to build this like world that was equitable, richer, you know, fairer, right? Um, and a, a place that could benefit more and more, right? And create more and, and increase less scarcity. Um, you know, so like, and yeah, I think, um, that's one of the uniting factors, I think, of Metacorp, it's not only our values and like,

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  what we care about, but also like, we all generally, I think, are like builders, like, we were like, either like, not like coders or like product people, like, you know, traditionally, it's like, everyone who's there is like, here to build the future and like, of like what Web3 is and like, uh, to explore the frontier, right? And none of us there were like, really, I think, like, really, in a full attack, basically, right? Um, um, that's one way to describe it.

• 1:05:14David Hoffman?

  How do you speak about the values in this conversation where you just started ranting and other people were there and everyone was sitting in a circle, all trying to come to terms with how they didn't have an identity about what this thing was, but everyone realized that they needed one and no one knew what the answer was. How or why did this whole growing the pie attitude or sustainable wealth approach and creating wealth and sharing it like that's for something I find very, very deep with. And one of the reasons why I'm attracted to the whole meta cartel cohort of individuals is like, they know that the cool thing about

• 1:05:59David Hoffman?

  Web three and Ethereum is that we have found ways to generate wealth sustainably. And we get to the and the more we actually share it, the more we actually get to generate. That took me like, I only kind of discovered that mental model and like very, very recently. Some of the meta cartel people have been talking about this and since day one. Can you just talk about how that sort of vision and ethos arose? Who like, who voiced these opinions the loudest? What did they say? How did it come about?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  I think that this was from the very, very start of like meta hotel from the walking group days. Like, it just made sense that like, why are we like talking about like meta transactions and isolated pockets? Let's come together like much more powerful, smarter. You know, we can get much more done by collaborating. And there was just like this collaborative energy, I think from the very, very, very start. We took that energy to events, like to create events to we took that energy into everything we did. And I think that really was the driving forces. And then I think like somewhere early along the lines, I knew this African proverb called like, if you want to go far, go alone. If you want to go

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  far, go together. And I just like slapped it somewhere. And everyone's like, yeah, that's like, that's our thing. So that and then so I think that was like this random sort of meme that clicked as well, you know? And I think This is where like everyone really carries it, like really has ownership over this. Everyone truly believes it in the bottom of their hearts that this is like the best way to actually conduct ourselves in Web3 to work with each other, right? Like we have Metacartel is like a community of different DAOs and different people. Like we don't have a single DAO anymore, right? So there's just initiatives of Metacartel. And despite that, we all try to support one another's initiatives. We try to, we are like this social fabric that collaborates with events.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  And, you know, the reason I think we still stick together is because like everyone who's like drawn to it, I generally like feel that like we can benefit one another by like actually operating in a very positive some manner. And just like people curation, I think was a big focus throughout all of Metacartel too. Just making sure you had very well, well natured like individuals who are more, who are givers than takers. Right? And we looked for other givers in spaces and brought them in.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  And I think that is like sort of the key, key, right? Like, you know, um, and yeah, we've had to remove a few bad apples over the years. Only a few, to be honest, but um, yeah, like, I think there's a huge focus in curation. And there was this energy at the start as well.

• 1:08:47David Hoffman?

  Um, when, if ever, did the conversation about economic sustainability come about? Was ever a moment where it's like, hey, guys, like, it's really cool that we're, that we give away money. But like, you can only give away money for so long until you run out of money, right? Did the conversation of like, how do we make Metacartel economically sustainable ever come about?

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, we did throughout the whole time, but I think it was only that it only got, became more of a talking point when, um, I think like I really started to burn out in like early 2020. Just completely burnt out. I think like barely just got benched out up and running then, um, and massive burnout. Just like lost all motivation, like wanted to, I was like instantly when I burnt out, like secluded myself from all social media or communications like two weeks. And I think like.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  I just like realized what I was doing, like working like literally insane hours like uh like it would be, I didn't even count the hours, it's like this is the only thing I did every day and I had one day off and I would just be a vegetable for that day. And I think like that creative energy that that you sort of like have, the the type, the energy that you know, makes you go wander in a desert aimlessly. In search of me, you know, such as something interesting to build, right? That does have a short fuse on it like uh and you know, uh if you can't operate in that mode, which I was operating for the last two years then. Very, you know, in a sustainable fashion. And I think that's when we started thinking, that's when we started formalizing roles, paid roles.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  But by then it was sort of like, okay, like I'm like totally like burnt out. I just need space and time.

• 1:10:30David Hoffman?

  Right. Um, in hindsight, now that you are where you are, have you gotten more financial capital by working for or with Metacartel or social capital?

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  That that was the thing I realized when I burnt out that like social capital doesn't put food on the table, doesn't pay for flights and uh pay for, you know, you can't fund other people with social, like you can't. I I was, I also saw other starving teams and projects that were doing amazing things and I just was totally helpless almost. Like in helping them and I just felt like terrible. I was like, I literally can't help you. I can reach, I I, you know, I can tweet about you, but but you know, I can't actually like put food on the table for you. And I think that was like a very, and that experiencing that myself made me realize like, oh, wow, like.

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  It, you know, I think I went from very idealistic, like this is, let's just experiment to like, oh, wow, like if we were sort of powerless about any resources. And we're not being sustainable and not generating more resources, accumulating more as a community, right?

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  We can't, we don't, we're sort of powerless, right? And and you know, uh, and if we care about others and we want to help others, we have this like. Responsibility to make sure we are sustainable and that we are actually do like, you know, uh.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Grow resources and grow leverage, grow ability to help people and like, like resources, wealth, governance, power, influence, social capital, all of this, I feel like is totally meaningless unless you're able, you're able and willing to use that to like benefit others and like, why else would you like, you know, like, yeah, that's sort of the mind shift I sort of made and, um, yeah, and that's sort of what I think Metacartel turned from like a research house more into like, how do we like make sure we make sure like the projects of everyone and Metacartel succeeds? How do we make sure the people individually succeed? Both, you know, like from the personal, you know, like, you know, satisfaction of the

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  personal lives to like the, you know, financial to the create, like whatever they wanted to achieve, right? Like that became more of that of a focus. And I think that's sort of been stemming on ever since last year. And we're yet to maybe, we're yet to like reestablish what Metacartel is about, but it's been a lot more of that in the last year or so than just let's experiment for the sake of experimenting. Let's, you know, let's just give out grants and do things without thinking about the long term.

• 1:13:05David Hoffman?

  Is that where Metacartel finds itself today is in search of economic sustainability?

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  I would say that really falls in the individuals of its members, but I would distill Metacartel like today to the most trust, like I would say, at least personally from my opinion, like I'm trying to make it the most trusted, most goodwill, good natured list of like curated list of people in all of crypto, right? Like that's a highly curated list. And that's like what it is. It's like, you know, that if you're in presence of Metacartel, you're in good company, like, you know, amongst people who play shitty games, you know, you're going to have a sense of love of trust, like automatically the mood slider, you're, you know, you're more able to express yourselves and, you know, let your guard down a tiny

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  bit because you know, you're amongst people who are, who share your values, but also you're amongst people who are willing to like protect those values as well, right? And enforce it and to also like curate for those values, right? And I think that's what we're trying to really consolidate Metacartel more around, you know?

• 1:14:16David Hoffman?

  So does that mean that Metacartel is more of a social DAO? Like, maybe, maybe it's

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  I would say so, yeah.

• 1:14:23David Hoffman?

  It's a curated list of good people.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the love of curation is not just like you buy, I think,

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  would, who knows if we're ever going to have a, but like, right now, as of the thinking is like, we want to have like, the best curation, like, the most anal, most like, backbreaking love of curation as humanly possible, like, uh, like, yeah, like, uh, multi-human factorial vibe checking and not just like, we like this person, it's like, we've walked into this person, we've interacted over a long period of time, they've shown how they make decisions, they vibe well, like, they get involved, they lean in, like, this level of like, curation and just making sure that, like, we endorse and we like, help the people that are truly these gems that care about the same things we do, succeed in any way, shape or form, right, with the collective leverage that we have.

• 1:15:15David Hoffman?

  Right, so when Metacartel's like, culture and vision and ethos vibe, if you will, is like, you must be a good person, a provably good person, and then also be able to use that goodness for others, and have an interest in doing that, when we, like, it's very easy to have a positive sun, some nature, when like, everyone is inside of this group with a positive some nature, helping other people with positive some natures, helping other people with positive some natures, and so it's a great way for positive some natures to rise to the top, right? Like, you can actually bootstrap, but historically, people always say, like, you know, nice guys finish last, right?

• 1:15:57David Hoffman?

  Like, if you're, if you work for others, then others will just take advantage of you and extract that. But if you can actually put up borders around the good people, and say, like, here, all the good people go in here, and you find yourself with, you won't actually find anyone in Metacartel that's extract only, because by definition, it's a curated people of list, a listed, a curated list of people that, if you give something to them, they give something more back to you, and then you give something more back to someone else.

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we celebrate like those that give selflessly like it's like we make sure we consciously like chant like you know really acknowledge and like you know highlight that and I guess it's like Metacottles version of a good person you know like a Metacottles good people up to your your call you might think we're a bunch of assholes and that is totally fine that is okay but we're like a guild we're a faction in this space and we're of a certain flavor and those that are sort of amongst a call or potentially very well vetted or just endorsed right in some way should form you know we will probably walk on something more formalized but for now it's a

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  bit more like you know amorphous and you know sort of I guess like peer vouched but we want to make sure that like you know yeah there's a sort of protection and not only in protection but like this platform to empower those right like that give the most and like a social doubt like in many sense now yeah

• 1:17:27David Hoffman?

  This might be I have a very trusting nature and it's in the past it's definitely like cost me I've trusted people that I should not have trusted this is before crypto and the last the last few days in Colorado and MCon a bunch of all the MCon people the manufacturing people went out to where was it was it Breckenridge or somewhere in Colorado

• 1:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah in somewhere so like oh no no lake actually but

• 1:17:58David Hoffman?

  Well maybe we'll tell that story Anyways like this a group of people they rented out like six houses so we could all go hang out with each other in the middle of the Colorado mountainside and almost everyone brought their backpacks with their laptop and also ledger in it and everyone just like tossed down their backpacks into a little like here I put your backpacks over there like dump it over there and then everyone just like started walking around the hills of Colorado in varying states of sobriety yeah no one like everyone knew that everyone else's ledgers and laptops were like right next to each other and no one gave a flying like like no one cared at all

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  That's that's the first time it's ever come across my my mind that like people's ledgers and laptops were all bunched up next to each other in a room those in a house houses that were totally unattended and you couldn't

• 1:18:51David Hoffman?

  I didn't know 50% of the people there Like I had, like I did not know. Oh yeah, like I'm not actually in like Meta Cartel. And so like, there's a bunch of

• 1:19:00Speaker 01

  You're in the circles now. You're pretty, you're pretty like, you've hung out with like most. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So like, I actually feel like you don't need to be like part of any specific DAO to be a Meta Cartel community member nowadays. It's sort of like, you show up, it's like, you know, it's like you show up to the, I don't know, like the scouts or I don't know, you show up to the, some gym a couple of times and now you're regular, I guess.

• 1:19:25David Hoffman?

  Right, right, right. And Yeah, so are there defined, you are in Meta Cartel or you are not? Is there, is there, is there, is there anything like, like actually defined there?

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  I would say varying degrees, but we need to do a better job. That's why I think, you know, over the Christmas, over the end of this year, we're definitely gonna, there's a clear intent to really work on defining those, uh, what those boundaries and well, probably what we'll do is just like initially like come, walk on a list of five, 600 people who are like these are Meta Cartel people to get added, um, you know, fill out this type form and this is the person that's a balancer and you might gradually decentralize that. Like, you know, we might give everyone an NFT and say like, you guys, every year, you guys vote on five people who are the gatekeepers and balances of this list.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Just like, keep it super lightweight. Like you don't need to have voting, like, you know, curation is done by the best curators, like, you know, not everyone's the best curator of people. Um, so, and I, and I think most people get that, like a lot of the core P Meta Cartel has been around for ages. Like they've always like sort of had suspicions of like, why, like, why, why isn't it like many times, like very militaristically like run? Like, wait, what? Like, you know, there's a lot of dictator memes, even though we're DAO and like, but I think over time they trust the process that like, you know, you give someone, you delegate someone power, you trust, that is literally a value of Meta Cartel. Trust, trust, like, like back others, right? Like, place of trust in them, right? The here for reason.

• 1:21:00Speaker 01

  Uh, and you know, you can withdraw the trust anytime if you wanted to. So as long as that's there, you know, um, go for it. Um, so we're gonna probably formalize that some way, shape or form and maybe like, you know, just something like democracy. Uh, you know, revisited but unchanged. It's like five people are gatekeepers.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  To remove anyone from the list, three people need to vote, three out of five, multi signers, I don't know, to add anyone, two out of five. And just the goal is to not grow that list quickly, but painfully slowly, like, yeah, very appropriately, announce members every three months. This should be a process that lives, you know, in the background.

• 1:21:42David Hoffman?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  And I think, yeah.

• 1:21:45David Hoffman?

  It sounds like Meta Cartel. Sorry, go ahead, go ahead.

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  And I think the end goal is like, you know, and we just have this on-chain list of addresses where like, you guys all get priority access to like, all these great things. Um, yeah.

• 1:21:58David Hoffman?

  It sounds like Meta Cartel has actually never been wholly defined. Sounds like it's always been a little bit of, it's just like a vibe, not a, not a constitution, vibes only. Do you think that like, maybe that's actually the optimum, optimal path for Meta Cartel is to kind of only be a vibe and not ever have a constitution?

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  It's a good question. If someone comes up with one and we all vibe with it, yeah, why not? But you know, I think we've just, I feel like we've always just, just done enough.

• 1:22:37David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  To like, to like, just created just enough social infrastructure for the group to be functional and to go where it needs. And beyond that, it's, I think you get like diminishing level returns in terms of how much effort and thinking you put in.

• 1:22:54David Hoffman?

  How much meaning do you describe, ascribe to the Meta Cartel name? Like, I know it was kind of created on a whim.

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:03David Hoffman?

  Meta Cartel. Does that mean, name mean anything?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:23:09David Hoffman?

  Or at least to you?

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  It's sort of, it's, I, it's definitely a bit numb to me, I think, you know, because it's just like, it's been everywhere, but I think the meaning of it is.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Definitely of a like, it's a chaotic good at its best. It's like a chaotic good nature, like sort of energy, right? And that's the sense I get from it. And when I think about it, I think, when I think about Metacartel, I think about like the standards it's set in the past by, you know, the former members, the members in the past, the practices we've done. And it sort of makes me feel like, you know, we should continually, it's like there's something to live up to, at least in the past, right? So, um, I, and like a lot of the work we did, I think with in 2019 and 18, it's like we could probably never replicate ever again. We were in a totally different state of mind, like just focused as well.

• 1:24:09Speaker 01

  And with the right people, right, growing together. And in that sense, you know, it's like a very rich, I feel like it's this really rich journey and piece of history we've all sort of been able to share, thankfully. You know, and different people keep joining it. I think that's something we wanna foster. It's a journey that everyone adds on and on, you know, like some of the best, most active members, you know, are the new ones oftentimes, right? They bring the energy and the vibe.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  And I almost feel like, you know, when I'm like working with One KX and working another DAOs and helping other people form DAOs, like Metacartel was like, as like this element of like chaotic good. It's such a, it gives it so also so amorphous, like it's just sort of very undefined. It's been shifted in what it is over the years. I sort of use it as this like, almost this expression of community, this nature. It's like you study, we study nature because it's not controlled, it's erratic and it's, you know, emergent. Like, you know, we study how the forest grows, how lightning flashes across the sky and we look at the patterns.

• 1:25:16Speaker 01

  And I feel like what Metacartel was, was this sort of phenomena, which I often reflect upon and try to learn from even years onwards, right? Where like, how do you run a community? What went right? And I try to take pieces of that. But I was, you know, when I'm like just continually tunnel vision in, you know, because I think you're in a different mode when you're like working on something a hundred hours a week, completely broke and you need to create something. You know, you like you're with your back against the wall and like, uh, I, I definitely not, uh, at that state level or in that state of mind anymore. And I'm trying to like, It's like a fossil which I'm trying to learn from, right?

• 1:25:52David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 1:25:55David Hoffman?

  The, it kind of feels like Metacartel is like a meme in the sense that like, I remember I worked as a, at an ICO advisory company in 2017. That was my first crypto job and like a number of the ICOs that came through the pipeline were like tokenized memes. It was so antithetical, right? Like, we're gonna take a meme and we're gonna tokenize it. We're like, you actually can't tokenize a meme. A meme is something, literally, if you try and capture it, it goes elsewhere. And I feel like that's, that's why I asked, maybe Metacartel's better off with undefined vision. Because if you try and define it, well, whatever Metacartel is, will actually just route around the definition and it'll turn into something else. Like, great, we made, we informally instantiated Metacartel.

• 1:26:41David Hoffman?

  Well, fuck it, let's spin up a different Telegram and like talk in that one instead. I feel like if you try and capture it, the energy will actually just go elsewhere.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  This is a very profound point, actually.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  It's a, it's amazing point, like, yeah, because like even whatever we do, well, like, I think we're gonna call it the meta something or Metacartel's thing, not the Metacartel. Right? That's a meme that will like, we may be like instantiated, maybe some of the values and the visions that will like be there. But it's almost like, it's like hidden, it's like this been in, it's been so many blocks now. That like, it's just buried in the history of Ethereum and like fossilized by all the hashes, right? And we can do nothing now but to look back and learn at what those transactions meant and then try to interpret those, right? And what will happen onwards is other blocks we sort of do make, right? Yeah.

• 1:27:39David Hoffman?

  My, my vision of Metacartel, what the name actually means, like, well, first you have meta and crypto people love being meta, right? Like, we like zooming out.

• 1:27:51David Hoffman?

  Crypto, in my, in my opinion, crypto people are kind of tapped in to how the universe works, almost better than anyone else, any other cohort of individuals in the world, in the universe. Like crypto people, they, they, they connect weird dots and then, then they get it right, right? And so they understand the world, they understand the universe at a meta level, right? And then the cartel aspect is like, a cartel is like the first early formations of a government, right? Like, what do you get about a cartel? Cartel comes knocking on the door and says like, hey, we want to offer you guys protection. And then the people answer, respond like, uh, protection from what? It's like, oh, anything bad from happening, including us, if you don't pay us. That's what a government is,

• 1:28:34David Hoffman?

  right? Like governments, like, hey, like, you gotta pay your taxes. And if you don't, we'll throw you in jail. Like, that's just one's legitimate, one's brand new. So like, we have this nebulous group of people, which, as, as we've discussed, are a group of people with shared vibes, shared values, a positive sum nature, with a commitment to help that positive sum nature be bestowed upon other people, also in the meta cartel. And so while we were walking around the hills of Colorado, I very much felt like if Ethereum and if the, the values, Ryan said something on the weekly roll up last week that stuck with me. And when it was, uh, when you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. And so

• 1:29:19David Hoffman?

  the idea is that like, when, when you take in, when you use Ethereum and we come, become a part of DAOs and you adopt NFTs, you start to adopt the values that are embedded into these systems, to the values of decentralization, the values of everyone is equal, everyone is an admin. And so going back to meta cartel, we have this group that is very, very meta, that understands the world at a very deep level and self-selects for people that with a positive sum nature, that hopefully in my mind, it actually is the new

• 1:29:50David Hoffman?

  Like society, the new culture, the new genesis of the new culture, right? Because we want to, we want to completely rip out the old financial system, inject it with this new financial system. And then as a result of that, really what we're trying to do is we're not just trying to get people to adopt new technologies, we're trying to get people to adopt new values. And so for me, Metacartel is like the new social layer zero, right? The new layer zero for not just like crypto, but for the whole rest of the world. And if Metacartel can keep on self-selecting for the people that carry the vibe forward and add energy to the vibe, hopefully Metacartel blankets the whole entire world with its values, with its vibe, right? Like, and maybe, maybe it's way too ambitious to assume that like, you know,

• 1:30:35David Hoffman?

  every single person's a Ethereum address will be a part of the Metacartel. But I do think that more sneakily will Metacartel come to envelop the whole entire world by blanketing the whole entire world with its values.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Wow, that's a profound vision. Yeah, I, I, I guess it's weird to see someone else showing, talking about Metacartel like that because Metacartel has just been this like tragic like hiccups, this series of hiccups and, you know, misadventures and like somehow we're like stumbling forwards. And then like now we're here and it's been, you know, maybe three years since Metacartel's been around, like who knows where we'll be in like seven years and Metacartel's like 10 years old, right? And, but I think that's like, I guess one, yeah, and I guess like, who do you want your neighbors to be in crypto, right? Like, how do you want them to be like?

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  Right, like, yeah.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  So, you know, and I, I think like we'll keep doing what we'll keep doing and, you know, I think this has this insane focus of like, you know, championing and cherishing and appreciating great people, you know, great people who give and play positive some games. And hopefully, yeah, it leaves the space one person better, I guess, right?

• 1:32:05David Hoffman?

  Peter, who are your heroes in the space?

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:32:09David Hoffman?

  Who are your great people?

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  This is super hard. I think definitely like Amin Soleimani, like he's amazing mentor, like of me, helped me so many ways from like lending me a couch to like massage bedroom to sleep in in his spank house back in 2019, like fought broke. I think he's definitely one, I think, you know, and then I think there's many others like, you know, like the Odyssey crew, like, you know, Yale, like James Young, all these other people like that I'm not mentioning, just like the early Metacultural folks that are like sort of really like shaped how I think. Yeah.

• 1:32:59David Hoffman?

  Awesome, Peter. This is a fantastic conversation. Is there any, anything, any part of this story that I haven't gone down yet?

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  No, I think this is amazing. Yeah, like I think we really went through everything, all things Metacultural history, right? And we talked a really, we really went into what it was really about. And I think hopefully those who are listening may get a better sense of what we are beneath the events, beneath the memes, beneath the surface layer events you might come across. Reason why we are the way we are, like, you know, why we might even be fairly selective and exclusive in the way we operate in, in many ways. And

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  so, yeah.

• 1:33:43David Hoffman?

  What's the, the biggest lesson you've learned in crypto that you think would be relevant for, for listeners to hear?

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  I think Metacultural would have never, I think, like been this so important to me if I didn't like take a leap of faith and just like fuck it. And, and you know, like, just to, like, I think, like, to be willing to just wander and be lost, like, like with, with something that I felt was important, right? So I feel like, you know, if you feel like something's super important, you don't know where it will take you, but you believe it's an important cause and mission. And I would say, yeah, like, And there's this huge ominous sense of unknown, like go for it like this. This is like back yourself and something interesting will happen.

• 1:34:30David Hoffman?

  When you you use the wandering in the desert metaphor, like you're out there broke, wandering in the desert, trying to find something. Did you did you actually find something? Or did you actually just make a settlement yourself out of this piece of the desert? And then that settlement actually ended up working out, which you think is more accurate?

• 1:34:52Speaker 01

  I think.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  I don't know. Yeah. It's more like, you know, I made enough noise to attract a village. And then that village now sustains why am in many ways, right? Like, it's like, it's funny, because I'm like,

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  almost the delinquent of the village or city that is Metacostal. And I'm taking care of me now. Like, it's like, you know, I'm like, I'm lost. I need a car, you know, back to from the mountains to Denver. I'm like, please, please help, you know, like, you know, yeah. Someone, please, you know, help do this thing. Or we need a venue like these brilliant people stepping up. And yeah, so like just privileged, I guess.

• 1:35:44David Hoffman?

  Peter, thank you for coming on Layer Zero. This has been a fantastic conversation.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  I really appreciate it, David.

• 1:35:52David Hoffman?

  Cheers.

• 1:35:54David Hoffman?

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• 1:36:39David Hoffman?

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