Episode 54: Reimagining DAO Governance | David Phelps, Cowlaborator at Cowfund, Core at JokeDAO, EcoDAO
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Episode 54: Reimagining DAO Governance | David Phelps, Cowlaborator at Cowfund, Core at JokeDAO, EcoDAO
TimeStamps
[01:07]
Davis Phelps introduces himself, gives brief background.
[02:16]
David Phelps relates being a jack of all trades to DAOS
[04:48]
Davis Phelps talks about YouTube and Twitter platforms.
[10:48]
David talks about DAOs and community.
[15:01]
Davis talks about DAO Governance.
[21:58]
David talks about being a contributor at Gitcoin and what a web3 Twitter would look like.
[26:04]
David talks about Memes
[30:10]
Davis talks about projects
[34:05]
David talks about co-creation.
[0:00]
Humpty Calderon
Intro
Hello and welcome back to Crypto Sapiens. I am your host, Humpty Caldron, and today we have a very special episode with David Phelps, co-creator of Joke DAO, Eco DAO and Cow Fund, and he's also a writer and a steward at Gitcoin. David has been interviewed a lot about joke DAOso we're not gonna be covering that in this episode.
Instead, we have a much broader discussion on topics like DAO Culture 100 Xing Twitter Web three memes, and Collaborative Creation. On that last piece, David later tweeted, One mistake of 2021 was assuming that co-purchasing creates communi. No relationship works that way. Instead, you play board games, sing karaoke together, share life stories, cry, laugh, tell each other that you love one another, and that's what DAO needs.
So there's a lot to unpack in this conversation. So let's just get started.
[01:07]
David Phelps
My name's David. I'm a co-founder of Joke. Do, , we are a governance platform. A creator of Cal Fund, a Web3 Angels Collective. I write on web3@davidphelps.sub.com.
I also co-founded now called Eco DAO. I have two businesses as well, I am a Jack of all trades would be the nice way to put it, but probably that speaks more to my ADHD and overall as a human being.
[01:56]
Humpty Calderon
That's an interesting way to kind of frame. Who you are. I wonder if that has some relevance to maybe the way that a lot of doubt contributors see themselves to where there's like maybe a lot of breadth and not a lot of depth, or that idea of being a jack of all trades.
[02:16]
David Phelps
I think, crypto tends to attract people who are highly associational. , you're talking about a movement, , that is, you know, at the intersection of economics, art, finance, politics, , et cetera. And so anyone you know, with initiatives, these tends to. Be interested really in the intersection of these things.
Like that's where crypto is powerful, is, it's not in any one of these individual fields necessarily, but often the intersection of those fields, , to combine them in ways that haven't been done before. so I do think, you know, yeah, crypto tends to draw a breadth ish kind of people, but I do also think like the world we live in today where we're exposed to more information, subcultures, et cetera, tends to, you know, in many ways we are privileging breadth over depth when we are online every day. To some degree, and I would also say that depth is something that is very easy. To replicate with technology. , you can, you know, run the most advanced calculations with ai, , that no human could do. But breadth is, you know, associational. And that is something that is, is still still fairly unique to us.
Those people who can find the intersections of two different skill sets, even if they. Totally deep on either one of them are often more valuable than the people who are like the experts in either one. of course there's many exceptions in crypto as well. Like it, it does include the top cryptographers of all time, you know, are working in a space as well.
And there are people just with extraordinary, extraordinary technical depth too. but, but even then, you know, you'll, I mean, look at italic, like half the posts are, you know, about uses of CK uses of Snarks and then the other half are about, you know, creating better governance systems, , for society. And, and that's, that's incredible breadth.
[03:58]
Humpty Calderon
So you touched on something there where, I wonder if we can unpackage this for a little bit, and you were talking about, our society and how, you know, breath is maybe kind of readily accessible and maybe part of that reason is the internet. the information just being so readily available, being able to like, learn, across a variety of, you know, kind of ideas and concepts. I wonder if The internet as it's evolving, or at least the distribution channels as they've evolved right from maybe, early days with YouTube and how we could go and learn something there to the short form product, platforms like TikTok, right? Yep. Have affected also the way that we consume information and how maybe we can act on that information.
[04:48]
David Phelps
I think so completely. I mean, There's been this incredible polarization of culture over the past 20, 30 years, in every way. Right? And, and, and what I mean by that is like we've really lived through this user generated content age, and we've seen that in every way, right? Like politics is like, we have user generated politics, which are grassroots campaigns, figures like Trump and Bernie would not have been possible 20, 30 years ago, because they really come both. Having this like authenticity to voters, , in, in seeming as though they're not playing the game, even though of course they are. , and seeming more like, you know, populist figures who just emerged out of nowhere and contrarian, but also because they went viral. Like they constantly go viral because there is a grassroot supporter, grassroots supporters who.
Give them distribution in ways they wouldn't have gotten in traditional media. Right. And so that's true for TikTok Stars as well. That's true for artists as well being discovered in SoundCloud. It's true for DJs. That's true for finance. One of the first pieces I did in crypto is called User Generated Finance.
Really arguing that crypto is, is also part of this user generated, trend as as well. So, you know, on on the one side you have what I think is like very much a valorization of kind of amateur relatable. You know, theatrical, , constructs that are openly theatrical. And so Trump is an example of that.
But so is anything on TikTok? Right? This is a piece I wrote recently called Context Disruption. Really arguing that these are the figures who really understand the attention economy are the ones who are so theatrical, but they show that they're theatrical, you know, they're performing.
Right. The way that you do on TikTok, like the, the effects are cheap. And then on the other hand of all this polarization, then you have the giant Hollywood spectacles and the billion dollar campaigns and Right. So we, we, But what we don't have is like the art house cinema in between. We don't have like the sitcoms right in between.
We don't have like the mainstream, you know, nuclear white family that's like sitting DAOn for dinner every night and having a few chuckles, like that kind of media is. because you either have the temp pole, billion dollar productions, , I mean, this is, this is really an idea, from, from Peter Turnin, or you have the much more amateurish, relatable kind of content. It is this incredible, change for us because it means that like if you're consuming amateur content that's gone viral, then suddenly you're exposed to all these new voices, right? You're exposed to all these random people who can make it famous for five, you know, 15 minutes on Twitter.
You start to get those perspectives too. So, you know, again, there's a tension here. On the one hand, we're falling into subcultures, which are very cult-like, and we're really all kind of drinking the Kool-Aid of whatever subculture we're in online, in the, in the absence of a mainstream culture that is institutional, right?
On the other hand, we also are getting a lot more perspective and we also can belong to multiple subcultures as well. And so I think that's a lot of, you know, discourse around identity politics. Over, over the past 10 years is really broadening, broadening our scope of perspectives. but for DAO contributors, it's also this idea of like, I don't belong to one culture, I belong to multiple, Like I can contribute to multiple DAOs.
I’m not defined by, by being part of one. And again, to bring things back to tensions like this is both this kind of beautiful thing. There's no history of being able to belong to multiple cults, , right? Like the whole definition of a cult is you can't belong to multiple cults. This idea that I am a free agent.
I am myself, I am not defined by the community I'm in, but I contribute to it, I think is the really beautiful thing about DAOs. , the flip side of that is to say like, we've gotten to this end point of labor. , where people are not only like totally on their own as freelancers, but they can't even get full-time work.
They're only getting part-time work from, you know, different DAOs if they happen to get paid. So again, there's, there's a real tension here because it is this beautiful thing to be able to have this power as a contributor, , to, you know, be almost like polyamorous with your work. , on the other hand, it's this kind of awful thing that you.
You know, just trying to pick up a bunch of odd jobs and we've all become part-time freelancers without any sort of stability or, or, or dependence. Again, and, and this is the big theme here in the absence of institutional support, which is, you know, really crumbled over the, the past 10 years.
[09:05]
Humpty Calderon
If I were to try to summarize and draw thread from what you've just, were talking about is that media over time, and maybe similarly, politics has, been able to feature new voices because of the way that narratives are constructed, the way that, culture has changed part of that, also driven by the way that we consume information. Andk I wonder if, you know, you talked about subcultures, you talked about, DAO culture, and you talked about, you know, polyamorous.
You know, relationships. I wonder if we can kind of think about and also talk about cults, maybe some of the challenges, is that we have discovered ourselves maybe more completely through Yeah. This entire revolution of media and politics about who we are and how we identify. And because of that, it's a cult of me, right?
It's like I know who I am and I belong. And that is what you bring to organizations and DAOs even.
[10:15]
Davis Phelps
I would like to think that's true in some ways, but I really don't think we're operating in like sovereign individual, era. Like that's, that's more eighties, nineties freelancer. , I think the era we're in is really like we are, we're learning.
We have to collectivize and we have to have shared values and community with other people because if they can't back us and we can't back them if we can't take care of each other. We're fucked. Like we are, we are, we are totally stranded on our own right? And like, we've just seen that over and over again, like absence of unions, you know, just disappearance of, of any sort of like structural support, healthcare, et cetera, for workers has, has left people really, really stranded.
And so I would actually say it's much more about, people really, really wanting community. Like we're, you know, the internet is this end doer are almost like a pharmacon, like, like in other words they, both of the disease and the. Like the internet has stranded us. We are all alone, you know, in our bedrooms only talking to people on screens, , totally isolated from the world that we live in.
and then we try to use that to develop, you know, deeper communities and connections as well. And valorize that, and, and it's true the internet, you know, offers incredible types of communities you can have before to connect with people who share your interests, who aren't necessarily in your locality.
and so that is a huge. But at the same time, like, yeah, I think if anything, people are desperately craving the ability to get validation from relating to another group. And in fact, like that's why we've seen a lot of really cultish behavior, in DAOs. Like, , if we're being honest here, like. You know, the promise of DAOs is very, very separate from the reality of DAOs.
And there are a lot of DAOs that operate like Colts and there are a lot of DAOs that operate very abusively. And there are a lot of DAOs that are not paying people and a lot of DAOs that are making people reha, you know, reapply for jobs. And there are a lot of DAOs where the founders have all the power and a lot of DAOs where the delegates are being threatened if they try to challenge the power of the leader and a lot of DAOs where there's just social optics because everything's public, that no one wants to contest the leader. And, and many DAOs are much, much closer to tyranny, and to feudalism than they are to even like a web two corporation. Like web two corporations are actually much more democratic than most DAOs
So yeah, the, the promise here absolutely should be unlocking yourself, unlocking your ability, and then using. You know, unique contribution that you have, your unique voice, , to be, you know, a creative input into, into a system that can now benefit from having you. That's what we're trying to do.
It joked out, right? But, but for the reality of it right now is, is, is, I would say somewhat scary, , and somewhat the opposite of that too. Yeah, maybe I'll reframe or, or kind of reword what I was, what, what I was saying earlier. It sounds like maybe it's not like this, cult of, of, of, of me, but it's more the discovery of who I am, my values.
Yeah. And then finding communities that share those values. . And so that's how you're able to build something together because the, you know, the, the background, the intention is, is the same. The mission might be maybe something that we definitely vibe with, but as long as the values are true and, and, and authentic, and, and in line with our own, maybe that's the way that we can build these communities.
Yeah. Yeah. I, hope that's true. I do think, you know, as humans, we're morally a lot more fragile than we tend to believe, and so, , it's very easy for those values to get warped and, and changed as well. depending how, who we associate with and, and what groups we're in, but yes, yeah, I, I think for sure, that should be the unlock.
Just we need to be really careful. That's also how cults have traditionally operated too.
[13:01]
Humpty Calderon
It's funny when you said that, it reminded me of my mother, , growing up and she's like, you know, depending on who you're gonna hang out with, your values will shift. And I remember she like used to hammer that in as kids, right?
Like always constantly talking about that. And it's true. You're, you're, you're very much, , you know, spot on there. It's true. So depending on the people who you associate with. Could definitely, , warp your values. You were talking about joke. Do, and I, I get it. You've been talking a lot about joke. Do so we're not gonna get too deep into that.
Cool. Because it's probably anybody who's, who's listening to this other podcast and learn about joke. But you did. Touch on joke. Do. So I wonder if you can just relate it to the conversation that we're having in terms of like, governance and maybe that freedom that people can, , achieve or that, or that, or that shared, , kind of, , power or, or, or, or just the way that they can govern their communities and their organizations where they probably couldn't have without it and it's framed by the discussion that we're having.
[15:01]
David Phelps
One way that I think about it is that almost every discussion in DAOs so far in terms of governance and in terms of voices has made this assumption. And that assumption is that your voice is your vote. The way that you express yourself in a DAO is to vote.
And so then everything else follows on that. Should we do quadratic voting? Should we a vote decay? , you know, should we like reward contributors with greater voting power? is one vote, you know, one token, one vote. A good system like, you know, what civil, you know, mechanisms do we need? And these are all really good questions and really valid and, and absolutely necessary because voting is a form of expression.
This is also an assumption, the dysmorphic, an assumption that's being made because we live in giant governments with representative democracy, , where you have 300 million people and there is no way to really coordinate what you think except through voting. And so voting is the way to do that. When you have a system that is like 10 or 20 people, maybe even a hundred, maybe a thousand, to say that the only way that you can really have a say is to vote on someone else's idea.
Is a massive constraint and is, is not unlocking what is actually powerful about Web three, which is the ability to build these small sub communities and, and have co-ownership. So yeah, what we're really thinking about is, you know, yeah, we should think about all those questions of voting. Yeah, they matter.
I, I can go deep into those. Why rank choice voting I think is a much better way of doing things, et cetera. But, but fundamentally, You might as well have a company like, like if, if you just want to have, you know, a core team that is like putting proposal up and saying, Do you agree with this? Then everyone votes on them.
Like, have a company, like a company can do that if you wanna unlock a DAO where you're really unlocking the individual powers of contributors to have creative expression. On what they think, then you need a system where they can also submit and propose. And so that's what we've built, right? It's really that simple, which is, you know, for any contest, you can actually have your participants, however you define them, submit and, and, and creatively advocate for what they want.
And then they, they can go on social media and advocate for it. They can create discussions. and then from there they could actually create relationships with others because they need to collaborate with others to, to win these contests. so that's, yeah, that's very much I think, at the heart. Of how we're thinking, which is like a, DAO should be unlocking the creative potential of individuals.
And instead what they're usually do is subjecting them to the vision of leaders. and this is, this is a totally warped view of what, what a DAO could be and, and very deadly and hopefully, you know, some small joking way. , we are, we are battling that. Yeah. You, you, so you circled back to like the social aspect of, you know, engaging communities and maybe even through governance as well.
Twitter. Is quite important for web three, it seems, in terms of being able to like, share narratives and ideas out there and build communities. I, you're, I would say probably very active on Twitter. Fair to say? I, I would, I would, , unfortunately agree with this. Yeah. . Okay. So why do you think Twitter has become like this platform that is like so, , meaningful to conversations and Web three?
Is it that we're missing the tools to be able to do that in, you know, traditional, you know, or more, web3native fashion? Or is it that Twitter just fits and, and works? Yeah. , there's, there's probably no one answer for this. I mean, Twitter's essential for lots of industries, right? but it, you know, one is the acceleration of information in crypto.
inform. It moves so quickly and like crypto itself is a form of information transfer. As much as we think about it being finance, Finance is really just the primitive that we've first used, to build out what is essentially a new information distribution system for. on chain messaging and, and what we're messaging right now is money, but there's many other things that we're starting to message as well, like data and art, et cetera.
Right. Identity. and so, so information moves so quickly that you need a way to ca, you know, catch up. And often that means making this compromise between, you know, really well research reporting that takes days to produce versus like the instantaneous speculation, right? and so Twitter, Twitter supports that.
I think, you know, Web three is also, It's a, it's a very 21st century project that is very much built on memes, , and built on culture, , to, you know, To a great degree. the informality of Twitter is very core to the kind of ethos of Web three generally, which is a fuck you financial system. Fuck you, status quo.
Fuck you giant military government backing. , we're taking this in our own hands, bitch. Like, we're gonna burn this place DAOn. Like, fuck it, let's go. and so like, you know, it really, it really is like much more conducive to that. , more pirate style, gorilla style, information campaigns that might not be as quite as reliable as, you know, traditional journalism, but are but at the heart of kind of like antis, status quo.
you know, do it yourself. user generated movement. yeah. And, and then I think also just like, because, you know, crypto is to some degree global. You know, doesn't have anyone who you could really call an expert at this point. No one knows what they're doing. , essentially it is a, it is a conversation platform as well, , for people to be able to find each other.
Almost everyone I know now I met through Twitter, and that's not something that you could get from a traditional news source. I could not go and meet people in the New York Times. Right? and so like having my news source be a conversation platform, of course, is a huge unlock. And the final thing is like, Twitter's also a governance platform.
And, and we don't talk about this, but like, essentially like people are voting by putting a, like on something and upvoting it to, you know, , to curate it too. So, it's a really powerful governance platform to showcase what you should be looking at in a decentralized way. , I would say, you know, Twitter, Twitter in some ways is proto web3 as well, I, I think there's ways of making a hundred x better Twitter, but it's very hard, you know, once you have those network effects already in place.
[21:25]
Humpty Calderon
So I have two questions from that, and one has to do with like, what would,a web three Twitter look like? And that, this doesn't mean like reinventing the wheel and starting a brand new, platform, but it could just be like actually integrating web three native tools into Twitter.
the other has to do with governance. You as a steward, you know, for Gitcoin, I believe, I wonder if you can draw parallels with like governance as a steward on a project and this like soft governance or just governance in general on a platform like Twitter. Are there parallels between the two?
So maybe we can unpack one before the other. Your choice.
[21:58]
David Phelps
yeah, good question. Let's talk about what a hundred X Twitter would look like. I have a tweet on. I'll, I'll read it out. Actually, let me, let me find it, if you don't mind just giving me a second. This is from May. I said a web three. Twitter needs to be a hundred x better than Twitter.
Itneeds every tweet should be an on chain proposal. , with enough votes, a transaction is executed. All content can be recomposed and sold on chain contributions, holdings that consent determine what you see. , and it should be user owned and developed. This might sound like a certain project now that I might be giving too much away here.
so yeah, I think, you know, again, if you think about Twitter being a governance platform, like, like there's this tremendous opportunity for it to surface on chain data and track on chain data of what other people are doing as well, but then also be a way to contribute to that on chain data too, right?
You need the flywheel, like it needs to both be a distribution surfacing mechanism, like for. What are my friends buying? What are they voting on? You know, what, what are, what NFTs are they minting, Right? to give you that alpha in some ways, but like it also has to go the other way, where you can actually do those things on the platform too, right?
Like you should be able to like somebody's post and like you're essentially are putting on chain data, that is helping curate that. and then open source, the algorithm. Like people can have different algorithms to, you know, showcase this in different ways, depending how they like, So yeah, I think, I think like that's, you really need to offer the alpha for it and you also need to be able to offer the ability for people to build out their own profiles and contribution records as well.
That's interesting. So hopefully to draw a line between that and the other question, if Twitter were to 100 x and it would be this Web three native platform, how. Governance or how, how could other projects integrate, , their governance systems to Twitter? So as an example, going back to being steward in a project, what are ways for a project to maybe leverage, , like what Twitter does well and maybe in a future ideal world, if it were to 100 x in the way that you described it, how could they potentially like bridge some of those, , process?
Yeah, I mean, that's a technical question, right? That like lens and forecaster are kind of focused on right now. you know, which is very much like, you know, how do you, how do you integrate so that like your, you know, your account is a wallet essentially, right? And any time you are doing these actions, it is in some ways on chain.
And of course there's a massive UI barrier to this right now, like just having to like confirm the transaction in your wallet. is a killer for, for, you know, like imagine every time you liked a post, you had to do that. So, yeah, I think there's two pieces. Like one is actually like, you know, incorporating the other protocols, which is not that hard.
Like this is all open source or, or rather, I should say, like, it's, it's permissionless, , so that you could, you know, essentially incorporate other protocols into your own, or, but the, the harder question is probably the UI question, Like the harder question is like, and you're charging people, you know, even like a temp of a set to confirm a transac.
Like how do we get around that? And that's probably honestly where subscription services will come back. and having, you know, putting up like 10 matic a month and then being able to just do whatever you want on web through Twitter will be powerful.
[25:17]
Humpty Calderon
So you were talking about memes just moments ago, and I really kind of wanted to hear your thoughts on this because it feels like some of the projects that.
Do relatively well, maybe compared to others that don't necessarily harness the power of memes. really just kind of share these, this, that they break DAOn this really technical information into really fun bite-size pieces of content. What are your thoughts about memes? In the current ecosystem, and I think you yourself kind of share a couple of memes.
I'm not saying that you're, that every tweet is a meme, but I think you've done, you know that very well in the past. What are your thoughts about like memes as a way to convey information now and what would, like, what would a web three native meme look like? Yeah. good question. You know, me, memes are, memes are, are, are a couple things.
[26:04]
Davis Phelps
First of all, memes are a decentralized technology. and so parallels I would say to this would be like, oral tradition, , like passing DAOn, you know, , the odyssey from town to town, , would be an example. The blues right. Pass around from folk singers, from 10 town jokes, I would say are also like, you pass on joke, you don't know who originally told it.
Like all of these are, are, are, you know, kind of like folklorish, media that is distributed locally and virally, by people who recreate it each time that they, distribute it. So part of the fun of a joke or a blue song is that the way you distribute it, You actually perform it and you perform it in a new rendition as well.
Right. And so I think memes are just the 21st century of this kind of like decentralized media. And, and, and you know, with all of these, these are always considered to be, you know, folky or not official because we always wanna venerate the great visionary artists who have a single way of doing things and take all the credit for it.
But, you know, in truth, culture has historically been built much more in these kind of communally created, decentralized projects of jokes, blue songs, soul tradit. , even the Bible in some ways is, you know, or, or religious texts are often like this too. and where we don't know who created them or, or churches, you know, sometimes too, right?
Like char, We don't know who created them. , we, you know, we, we know that they were created by a lot of different workers who each put their own creative input into them. And so, yeah, I think of means just being like the Internet's version of folklore, in that way and, and really powerful because you are incentivized to distribute it because you also get to recreate it and you get to perform.
And it's, it's, it's, it's this kind of media that like, you know, says to you. You get to be a star, , in this really easy way where it's like 90% of the work's been done for you. And of course, like what does a TikTok do at, you know, what are like all the, you know, TikTok videos generally are just, you know, a variation of this, where 90% of the work has been done for you.
You did the last 10% to recreate a new version of it. and you get to be a performer who is, who is also distributing at the same time. I don't think it's anything new. but I do think it's, it's really powerful in the attention economy. because in the attention economy, , it's really hard to know what to pay attention to.
And we have so much information and so many voices and so many people out there that anyone who can distill that into a really recognizable, piece of media will often go viral. And, and you'll see this all the time right on Twitter, that like the tweets that really go viral are not the ones that have original insight.
, they're the ones that tell you something you already knew, but in a really profoundly articulated, and so, you know, it plays to. Saying, Oh, d . Right? Like, I, like I already knew this. And that's like, essentially memes are doing this. Like they're not translating tough ideas for you necessarily. I've tried playing with some of those memes before, like the Dan Short or Here's what Dan Charting works, right?
Like, yeah, it's a cool educational tool, but that's not really why people respond to memes. Like people respond to memes because it, it is the. Simplest reduction of the things they already know and they already feel. And I think you, again, jokes are like this, Blue songs are like this, oral tradition is like this too.
Like they go viral because everyone wants to retell it because it's true to them as well. And it has this like both universality that everyone can relate to it, but also this like individualism be that each person's putting their own mark and their their own touch on it too. Which is, which is really.
[29:42]
Humpty Calderon
Hmm. That's interesting. I like how you bridge this across like a variety of mediums too, including TikTok as a way of like, exemplifying how memes, have continued to evolve. And so to that effect, I wonder is there anything Web three can do to make memes like transcend. Like TikTok has a, you know, kind of shifted the way that we present a meme.
What do you think web3 media or web: in general, that technology can assist with the creation of more interesting memes?
[30:10]
Davis Phelps
I mean, there've been a couple projects, for this. Avi's Done one, Yelp has done one. Like, yeah, Yelp did a really cool on mirror like a year, year and a half ago, where it was like, you know, Anybody can submit an image and then someone can submit a caption.
If you sell the meme, there's an automatic distribution of funds between, you know, the creator of the image and the creator of, the caption. And, you know, like a year ago, a lot of the focus on crypto was like co. Payment, like being able to, you know, split payments between different people. But I think you can simplify it even further and say like, you know, a, a big, a big use case for crypto is just attestation.
It's just being able to attribute content, whether or not you get paid for it. Being able to say, this was the first person who put this up, because we have a public record of it, Right. Historically, and we can track that data, on chain. So I think like, you know, Part of it is like, yeah, creating these like family trees to see who created stuff.
But again, like the point of means isn't really who created the, the first one. Right. that's fun. And that's, you know, the folklore, folklore itself. But like, I, I don't think that that's, you know, necessary even so, , yeah. Can like. You know, web three do this kind of like permissionless, you know, recomposed images in a way that we can do it with defi.
Yeah, absolutely. Is that a meme? Yeah, absolutely. But is it necessary for web three to do that? I don't know that we need, you know, like I, I'm not a total on chain maxi either. like, you know, the, just having that be a funnel to get people into Web three, I think is, I think is the really exciting use case.
[31:55]
Humpty Calderon
Very interesting. So it almost sounds like part of the, , evolution may be the collaboration aspect. Right? And similar to what you were saying with TikTok in the, ability to, what's the word, , duet, right? Where you can then add. To an existing meme. you know, maybe there's something to be said about the collaboration aspect, and I think you were, , Yeah.
Saying yup. Would be the, like one of the ones that you, you saw to do this, , probably more recently
[32:19]
David Phelps
I think you pointed to something profound there, which is like, You know, the big challenge is like, how do we actually build collaborations? Like right now, the only way we've really done it in crypto is for people to buy stuff together.
And even then, they're not even usually buying it together. They're just buying the same thing. Like a bunch of people buy the same community token. you know, like maybe you can get them to buy the same nft, , and, and join together as a community to buy it. But, but so much of our principles of like community that we talk about are just co-ownership and coying, and that's a really lame form.
Friendship , like, sorry, but like, if. Not that it's not useful, not that it doesn't serve a use case like at all, but like buying something is probably the end state of a relationship. Like, you know, you don't start off with a partner buying things together and you know, that's where you end up once you've become partners and you've gotten a house.
and that point it becomes really valuable to be able to buy things together and have that joint bank account. But like before you get there, what you really want is like relationship building and you. Activities and you wanna, you know, be, before you have moved in with your partner and, and bought a new house, you wanna play board games with them.
You wanna go out and watch a movie together. You wanna tell jokes with each other. You wanna tell buddy, you know, each other's family history and your lives and like what you felt and you wanna sing songs at karaoke together. You know, like, like you wanna go dancing together. Like, like these are, these are all the things that we haven't done in, in DAOs.
And so, yeah, like it, you know, the unlock would be the meme that like people can co. You know, it, it, it's really, it's really giving people opportunities to collaborate in a relationship building way rather than a buying way. that I think will unlock those coying opportunities. Long, long term.
[34:09]
Humpty Calderon
The co-creation aspect, I wonder, I mean, where, what are some of the tools or frameworks that exist right now that can facilitate that?
Like the co-creation process that I think of are maybe some way to, on the creative side, you know, have some sort of like, Platform or application where people can come together and generate something beautiful or something meaningful to them that, you know, whether it's, you know, a piece of art or whether it's like a poem, whatever, like you co-create this and there's some providence then that, , links or associates, this completed artifact to have come from both of you, which I.
Quite beautiful. If you think about it. It's, it's like dating. but you know, just there's, there's some sort of public, you know, public primitive, something that exists that other people, that, that's tangible, that other people can interact with that then is representative of that, , union or of that relationship at that time. I think that's really interesting.
[34:05]
Davis Phelps
I think you have to gamify everything, like fundamentally to get people to pay attention and participate and build relationships. You. Whether or not you have that financial piece, you need to gamify everything. And, the more that people are participating in structures with limits, and that might be limited time, limited attention, limited partnerships, et cetera, like that's, that is what is going to enable them to work together on, on, on stuff.
So, you know, it's not the only answer. Like people need to be able to be paid well. They need to find people they actually genuinely relate to. They need to find, like, you know, be able to trust. As well. , but, but yeah, I do think gamification is really missing from all of these all, you know, almost every, every sector.
and one reason Defi, you know, Summer really took off was because at a really simple level it was a game. and it was a game to play. And I think that was really, really profound. but it was a really simple game, , and it wasn't really, it wasn't an emotionally rewarding or relationship rewarding one.
[36:11]
Humpty Calderon
Yeah, I mean, I feel like we can jump into a rabbit hole there and kind of try to, , create some distinctions in terms of like how we can create these more emotionally rewarding games, that are, you know, gamified like defi, but that aren't necessarily just like financialized, right? The reward isn't just purely financial.
That's definitely my vibe. The reason for, you know, a lot of the things that I do in this space is because I'm trying to find, , ways to reward, , you know, certain activities and behaviors in the ecosystem. Obviously gamifying it, but doing so through non-financial means, I think that that's still a space that we have not seen.
Even fully developed or even just barely the beginnings of what that, that looks like. Any projects active out there that you can maybe just think off the top of your head. They're like, Oh, they're, they're probably doing a good job at like gamifying web3, , interactions or just generally interactions and rewarding them through non-financial means that may be emotionally.
[37:22]
Davis Phelps
Pretty hard to, to come up with these examples. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to do it with joke DAO, right? And there are definitely use cases where that happens, where you can hack the attention economy just enough that people are campaigning for themselves on Twitter for their proposal, getting others to vote on it, as well.
, There is this irony that, you know, sometimes the worst run DAOs create the best relationships, because they're so contentious and there's no coordination. People kind of have to fend for themselves and build alliances, and so that's interesting to see play out that actually. , some of the DAOs that really seem like they're so badly run and, and frankly they are, have actually created greater opportunities for relationships than really well coordinated ones that are doing well because there's no opportunity for, there's no reason to like try to sabotage or create relationships or campaign for your own thing when you're working within a well-oiled system. but yeah, , you know, , definitely like, I think. It's very, it's very, very hard to come up with examples, because frankly, technology isn't really there yet.
Like we've just built this for finance. So like, you know, all the technology to date is really just about finance, even NFTs, right? , or about buying and selling, and that's the only use case. But I think, I think in the next cycle we're gonna start to see a lot more of these that are really focused on gamification to incentivize people to collaborate and work together with each other, and definitely, yeah.You know, there, there's. Stuff out there like, you know, launching chess games and, you know, Hume and, and stuff like that.
[39:16]
Humpty Calderon
Oh, that's exciting. Well, thank you for that. so as we wrap up, last question, yeah. Is there someone or something that has been super influential to you in your crypto journey to learn and become a better, you know, contributor, thinker?Collaborator?
[39:35]
Davis Phelps
I wanna, you know, have, send a chat. There was a lot of people who supported me. You know, when I really started deeply going DAOn the rabbit hole in 2021, nobody knew who I was. I was writing. Mark Gabrielle, said, You know what, like, nobody knows who you are, but your stuff is good.So I'm gonna promote it and I'm gonna help you edit it. Like, which is incredibly kind thing to do. Legion like took me under her wings and, and, and said like, Here's how you need to invest. Like, talked about deals with me at hour for hours without needing to, that, that was incredibly, incredibly kind thing, to do, to do as well.
Scott Moore, reached out to. when nobody knew who I was and got me involved in Bitcoin and we had a long conversation, became one of my, my closest friends. there, there's just a lot of people I owe. I think the person I probably owe most is Anika Lewis. And, and Anika and I, met through the generalist Mario's community and we were doing deep dives into economics and economic theory, and we were rooting Ray Dalio and, and macroeconomics and, and we realized, You know, all signs point towards decline of US power and decline of US dollar long term, although short term, it's looking quite good right now, you know, what is the next global order that's gonna take its place? And we started having this debate like, you know, it looks like China, like China just seems like it's cleaning up and, you know, winning deals and is on the ascent and, you know, shows all the signs of like an early incumbent. But then we thought, what if the next, you know, global Empire isn't, isn't a, a physical nation.
What if it's the internet? Like what if the internet is the next global? And that, and that thought that we had, that we started writing about together. Sents, just both deep Down the crypto rabbit hole. And it was really, Anna and I went on this kind of journey together in, in the beginning of 2021, and I owe her so, so much for that.
And still one of my best friends, one of the best people I've, I've ever met. , and she has a great dog too, which is very important.
[41:36]
Humpty Calderon
amazing. Well, I mean, where can people learn more about you and definitely where can people read what you're writing? Yeah, David Phelps dot sub stack.com is the best place.
[41:48]
David Phelps
That's where I put my actual real thoughts. The tentative thoughts go on Twitter. those are usually ones where I'm playing around with them and usually looking to see what's wrong and off that people will challenge me on. , and so that's at divine underscore economy as well. if that's more the, the gamification of thought than actual thought, if that makes any sense at all.
[42:10]
Humpty Calderon
Yeah, 100%. Well, David, I mean, honestly, thank you for your time. This was an amazing conversation and I personally learned a lot. I promise you I did. Oh, my pleasure. I, I really enjoyed this. Thanks so much. That's wrap. Thanks for listening to Crypto Sapiens. If you enjoyed this podcast, please do give us a five star review.
Wherever you listen to your podcast. It costs you $0 and means the world to us, and it helps other people discover content like this one. If you wanna listen to conversations like this one, you can visit our website to listen to more of those@cryptosapiens.xyz. I look forward to reconnecting with you at our next discussion.
In progress sprinkles
Hello and welcome back to Crypto Sapiens. I am your host, Humpty Caldron, and today we have a very special episode with David Phelps, co-creator of Joke DAO, Eco DAO and Cow Fund, and he's also a writer and a steward at Gitcoin. David has been interviewed a lot about joke DAOso we're not gonna be covering that in this episode.
Instead, we have a much broader discussion on topics like Dow Culture 100 Xing Twitter Web three memes, and Collaborative Creation. On that last piece, David later tweeted, One mistake of 2021 was assuming that co-purchasing creates communi. No relationship works that way. Instead, you play board games, sing karaoke together, share life stories, cry, laugh, tell each other that you love one another, and that's what DAO needs.
So there's a lot to unpack in this conversation. So let's just get started.
[01:07]
David Phelps
My name's David. I'm a co-founder of Joke. Do, uh, we are a governance platform. A creator of Cal Fund, a Web3 Angels Collective. I write on web3@davidphelps.sub.com.
I also co-founded now called Eco DAO. I have two businesses as well, I am a Jack of all trades would be the nice way to put it, but probably that speaks more to my ADHD and overall as a human being.
[01:56]
Humpty Calderon
That's an interesting way to kind of frame. Who you are. I wonder if that has some relevance to maybe the way that a lot of doubt contributors see themselves to where there's like maybe a lot of breadth and not a lot of depth, or that idea of being a jack of all trades.
[02:16]
David Phelps
I think, I think crypto tends to attract people who are highly associational. Uh, you're talking about a movement, uh, that is, you know, at the intersection of economics, art, finance, politics, uh, et cetera. And so anyone you know, with initiatives, these tends to. Be interested really in the intersection of these things.
Like that's where crypto is powerful, is, it's not in any one of these individual fields necessarily, but often the intersection of those fields, uh, to combine them in ways that haven't been done before. so I do think, you know, yeah, crypto tends to draw a breadth ish kind of people, but I do also think like the world we live in today where we're exposed to more information, subcultures, et cetera, tends to, you know, in many ways we are privileging breadth over depth when we are online every day. To some degree, and I would also say that depth is something that is very easy. To replicate with technology. Uh, you can, you know, run the most advanced calculations with ai, uh, that no human could do. But breadth is, you know, associational. And that is something that is, is still still fairly unique to us.
Those people who can find the intersections of two different skill sets, even if they. Totally deep on either one of them are often more valuable than the people who are like the experts in either one. of course there's many exceptions in crypto as well. Like it, it does include the top cryptographers of all time, you know, are working in a space as well.
And there are people just with extraordinary, extraordinary technical depth too. but, but even then, you know, you'll, I mean, look at italic, like half the posts are, you know, about uses of CK uses of Snarks and then the other half are about, you know, creating better governance systems, uh, for society. And, and that's, that's incredible breadth.
[03:58]
Humpty Calderon
So you touched on something there where, uh, I, I, I wonder if we can unpackage this for a little bit, and you were talking about, uh, our society and how, you know, breath is maybe kind of readily accessible and maybe part of that reason is the internet. the information just being so readily available, being able to like, learn, uh, across a variety of, you know, kind of ideas and concepts.
I wonder if. The internet as it's evolving, or at least the distribution channels as they've evolved right from maybe, uh, early days with YouTube and how we could go and learn something there to the short form product, uh, uh, platforms like TikTok, right? Yep. Have affected also the way that we consume information and how maybe we can act on that information.
[04:48]
David Phelps
I think so completely. I mean, There's been this incredible polarization of culture over the past 20, 30 years, in every way. Right? And, and, and what I mean by that is like we've really lived through this user generated content age, and we've seen that in every way, right? Like politics is like, we have user generated politics, which are grassroots campaigns, figures like Trump and Bernie would not have been possible 20, 30 years ago, because they really come both. Having this like authenticity to voters, uh, in, in seeming as though they're not playing the game, even though of course they are. Uh, and seeming more like, you know, populist figures who just emerged out of nowhere and contrarian, but also because they went viral. Like they constantly go viral because there is a grassroot supporter, grassroots supporters who.
Give them distribution in ways they wouldn't have gotten in traditional media. Right. And so that's true for TikTok Stars as well. That's true for artists as well being discovered in SoundCloud. It's true for DJs. That's true for finance. One of the first pieces I did in crypto is called User Generated Finance.
Really arguing that crypto is, is also part of this user generated, trend as as well. So, you know, on on the one side you have what I think is like very much a valorization of kind of amateur relatable. You know, theatrical, uh, constructs that are openly theatrical. And so Trump is an example of that.
But so is anything on TikTok? Right? This is a piece I wrote recently called Context Disruption. Really arguing that these are the figures who really understand the attention economy are the ones who are so theatrical, but they show that they're theatrical, you know, they're performing.
Right. The way that you do on TikTok, like the, the effects are cheap. And then on the other hand of all this polarization, then you have the giant Hollywood spectacles and the billion dollar campaigns and Right. So we, we, But what we don't have is like the art house cinema in between. We don't have like the sitcoms right in between.
We don't have like the mainstream, you know, nuclear white family that's like sitting down for dinner every night and having a few chuckles, like that kind of media is. because you either have the temp pole, billion dollar productions, uh, I mean, this is, this is really an idea, from, from Peter Turnin, or you have the much more amateurish, relatable kind of content. It is this incredible, change for us because it means that like if you're consuming amateur content that's gone viral, then suddenly you're exposed to all these new voices, right? You're exposed to all these random people who can make it famous for five, you know, 15 minutes on Twitter.
You start to get those perspectives too. So, you know, again, there's a tension here. On the one hand, we're falling into subcultures, which are very cult-like, and we're really all kind of drinking the Kool-Aid of whatever subculture we're in online, in the, in the absence of a mainstream culture that is institutional, right?
On the other hand, we also are getting a lot more perspective and we also can belong to multiple subcultures as well. And so I think that's a lot of, you know, discourse around identity politics. Over, over the past 10 years is really broadening, broadening our scope of perspectives. but for Dow contributors, it's also this idea of like, I don't belong to one culture, I belong to multiple, Like I can contribute to multiple Dows.
I’m not defined by, by being part of one. And again, to bring things back to tensions like this is both this kind of beautiful thing. There's no history of being able to belong to multiple cults, , right? Like the whole definition of a cult is you can't belong to multiple cults. This idea that I am a free agent.
I am myself, I am not defined by the community I'm in, but I contribute to it, I think is the really beautiful thing about Dows. Uh, the flip side of that is to say like, we've gotten to this end point of labor. Uh, where people are not only like totally on their own as freelancers, but they can't even get full-time work.
They're only getting part-time work from, you know, different dows if they happen to get paid. So again, there's, there's a real tension here because it is this beautiful thing to be able to have this power as a contributor, uh, to, you know, be almost like polyamorous with your work. Uh, on the other hand, it's this kind of awful thing that you.
You know, just trying to pick up a bunch of odd jobs and we've all become part-time freelancers without any sort of stability or, or, or dependence. Again, and, and this is the big theme here in the absence of institutional support, which is, you know, really crumbled over the, the past 10 years. If I were to try to summarize and draw thread from what you've just, uh, were talking about is that media.
uh, over time, and maybe similarly, politics has, been able to feature new voices because of the way that narratives are constructed, the way that, uh, culture has changed part of that, also driven by the way that we consume information. And I wonder if, you know, you talked about subcultures, you talked about, uh, Dow culture, and you talked about, you know, polyamorous.
You know, relationships. I wonder if we can kind of think about and also talk about cults, maybe some of the challenges, uh, is that we have discovered ourselves maybe more completely through Yeah. This entire revolution of media and politics about who we are and how we identify. And because of that, it's a cult of me, right?
It's like I know who I am and I belong. And that is what you bring to organizations and, uh, dows even. I, I, I would like to think that's true in some ways, but I, I really don't think we're operating in like sovereign individual, era. Like that's, that's more eighties, nineties freelancer. Uh, I think the era we're in is really like we are, we're learning.
We have to collectivize and we have to have shared values and community with other people because if they can't back us and we can't back them if we can't take care of each other. We're fucked. Like we are, we are, we are totally stranded on our own right? And like, we've just seen that over and over again, like absence of unions, you know, just disappearance of, of any sort of like structural support, healthcare, et cetera, for workers has, has left people really, really stranded.
And so I would actually say it's much more about, people really, really wanting community. Like we're, you know, the internet is this end doer are almost like a pharmacon, like, like in other words they, both of the disease and the. Like the internet has stranded us. We are all alone, you know, in our bedrooms only talking to people on screens, uh, totally isolated from the world that we live in.
and then we try to use that to develop, you know, deeper communities and connections as well. And valorize that, and, and it's true the internet, you know, offers incredible types of communities you can have before to connect with people who share your interests, who aren't necessarily in your locality.
and so that is a huge. But, uh, at the same time, like, yeah, I think if anything, people are desperately craving the ability to get validation from relating to another group. And in fact, like that's why we've seen a lot of really cultish behavior, in Dows. Like, uh, if we're being honest here, like. You know, the promise of Dows is very, very separate from the reality of Dows.
And there are a lot of Dows that operate like Colts and there are a lot of Dows that operate very abusively. And there are a lot of Dows that are not paying people and a lot of Dows that are making people reha, you know, reapply for jobs. And there are a lot of Dows where the founders have all the power and a lot of Dows where the delegates are being threatened if they try to challenge.
Uh, the power of the leader and a lot of Dows where there's just social optics because everything's public, that no one wants to contest the leader. And, and many Dows are much, much closer to tyranny, and to feudalism than they are to even like a web two corporation. Like web two corporations are actually much more democratic than most Dows
so, so yeah, the, the promise here absolutely should be unlocking yourself, unlocking your ability, and then using. You know, unique contribution that you have, your unique voice, uh, to be, you know, a creative input into, into a system that can now benefit from having you. That's what we're trying to do.
It joked out, right? But, but for the reality of it right now is, is, is, I would say somewhat scary, uh, and somewhat the opposite of that too. Yeah, maybe I'll reframe or, or kind of reword what I was, what, what I was saying earlier. It sounds like maybe it's not like this, cult of, of, of, of me, but it's more the discovery of who I am, my values.
Yeah. And then finding communities that share those values. . And so that's how you're able to build something together because the, you know, the, the background, the intention is, is the same. The mission might be maybe something that we definitely vibe with, but as long as the values are true and, and, and authentic, and, and in line with our own, maybe that's the way that we can build these communities.
Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I hope that's true. I do think, you know, as humans, we're morally a lot more fragile than we tend to believe, and so, Uh, it's very easy for those values to get warped and, and changed as well. depending how, who we associate with and, and what groups we're in, but yes, yeah, I, I think for sure, that should be the unlock.
Just we need to be really careful. That's also how cults have traditionally operated too. It's funny when you said that, uh, it reminded me of my mother, uh, growing up and she's like, you know, depending on who you're gonna hang out with, your values will shift. And I remember she like used to hammer that in as kids, right?
Like always constantly talking about that. And it's true. You're, you're, you're very much, uh, you know, spot on there. It's true. So depending on the people who you associate with. Could definitely, uh, warp your values. You were talking about joke. Do, and I, I get it. You've been talking a lot about joke. Do so we're not gonna get too deep into that.
Cool. Because it's probably anybody who's, who's listening to this other podcast and learn about joke. But you did. Touch on joke. Do. So I wonder if you can just relate it to the conversation that we're having in terms of like, governance and maybe that freedom that people can, uh, achieve or that, or that, or that shared, uh, kind of, uh, power or, or, or, or just the way that they can govern their communities and their organizations where they probably couldn't have without it.
Uh, and, and it's framed by the discussion that we're having. Yeah. Yeah. so one, one way that I think about it is that almost every discussion in Dows so far in terms of governance and in terms of voices has made this assumption. And that assumption is that your voice is your vote. The way that you express yourself in a Dow is to vote.
And so then everything else follows on that. Should we do quadratic voting? Should we a vote decay? Uh, you know, should we like reward contributors with greater voting power? is one vote, you know, one token, one vote. A good system like, you know, what civil, you know, mechanisms do we need? And these are all really good questions and really valid and, and absolutely necessary because voting is a form of expression.
This is also an assumption, the dysmorphic, an assumption that's being made because we live in giant governments with representative democracy, uh, where you have 300 million people and there is no way to really coordinate what you think except through voting. And so voting is the way to do that. When you have a system that is like 10 or 20 people, maybe even a hundred, maybe a thousand, to say that the only way that you can really have a say is to vote on someone else's idea.
Is a massive constraint and is, is not unlocking what is actually powerful about Web three, which is the ability to build these small sub communities and, and have co-ownership. So yeah, what we're really thinking about is, you know, yeah, we should think about all those questions of voting. Yeah, they matter.
I, I can go deep into those. Why rank choice voting I think is a much better way of doing things, et cetera. But, but fundamentally, You might as well have a company like, like if, if you just want to have, you know, a core team that is like putting proposal up and saying, Do you agree with this? Then everyone votes on them.
Like, have a company, like a company can do that if you wanna unlock a Dow where you're really unlocking the individual powers of contributors to have creative expression. On what they think, then you need a system where they can also submit and propose. And so that's what we've built, right? It's really that simple, which is, you know, for any contest, you can actually have your participants, however you define them, submit and, and, and creatively advocate for what they want.
And then they, they can go on social media and advocate for it. They can create discussions. and then from there they could actually create relationships with others because they need to collaborate with others to, to win these contests. so that's, yeah, that's very much I think, at the heart. Of how we're thinking, which is like a, Dow should be unlocking the creative potential of individuals.
And instead what they're usually do is subjecting them to the vision of leaders. and this is, this is a totally warped view of what, what a Dow could be and, and very deadly and hopefully, you know, some small joking way. Uh, we are, we are battling that. Yeah. You, you, so you circled back to like the social aspect of, you know, engaging communities and maybe even through governance as well.
Twitter. Is quite important for web three, it seems, in terms of being able to like, share narratives and ideas out there and build communities. I, you're, I would say probably very active on Twitter. Fair to say? I, I would, I would, uh, unfortunately agree with this. Yeah. . Okay. So why do you think Twitter has become like this platform that is like so, uh, meaningful to conversations and Web three?
Is it that we're missing the tools to be able to do that in, you know, traditional, uh, you know, or more, uh, web three native fashion? Or is it that Twitter just fits and, and works? Yeah. Uh, there's, there's probably no one answer for this. I mean, Twitter's essential for lots of industries, right? but it, you know, one is the acceleration of information in crypto.
inform. It moves so quickly and like crypto itself is a form of information transfer. As much as we think about it being finance, Finance is really just the primitive that we've first used, to build out what is essentially a new information distribution system for. on chain messaging and, and what we're messaging right now is money, but there's many other things that we're starting to message as well, like data and art, et cetera.
Right. Identity. and so, so information moves so quickly that you need a way to ca, you know, catch up. And often that means making this compromise between, you know, really well research reporting that takes days to produce versus like the instantaneous speculation, right? and so Twitter, Twitter supports that.
I think, you know, Web three is also, It's a, it's a very 21st century project that is very much built on memes, uh, and built on culture, uh, to, you know, To a great degree. the informality of Twitter is very core to the kind of ethos of Web three generally, which is a fuck you financial system. Fuck you, status quo.
Fuck you giant military government backing. Uh, we're taking this in our own hands, bitch. Like, we're gonna burn this place down. Like, fuck it, let's go. and so like, you know, it really, it really is like much more conducive to that. Uh, more pirate style, gorilla style, information campaigns that might not be as quite as reliable as, you know, traditional journalism, uh, but are but at the heart of kind of like antis, status quo.
you know, do it yourself. Uh, user generated movement. yeah. And, and then I think also just like, because, you know, crypto is to some degree global. You know, doesn't have anyone who you could really call an expert at this point. No one knows what they're doing. Uh, essentially it is a, it is a conversation platform as well, uh, for people to be able to find each other.
Almost everyone I know now I met through Twitter, uh, and that's not something that you could get from a traditional news source. I could not go and meet people in the New York Times. Right? and so like having my news source be a conversation platform, of course, is a huge unlock. And the final thing is like, Twitter's also a governance platform.
And, and we don't talk about this, but like, essentially like people are voting by putting a, like on something and upvoting it to, you know, uh, to curate it too. So, it's a really powerful governance platform to showcase what you should be looking at in a decentralized way. Uh, I would say, you know, Twitter, Twitter in some ways is proto Web three.
Uh, as well, I, I think there's ways of making a hundred x better Twitter, but it's very hard, you know, once you have those network effects already in place. So I have two questions from that, and one has to do with like, what would, uh, a web three Twitter look like? And that, this doesn't mean like reinventing the wheel and starting a brand new, uh, platform, but it could just be like actually integrating web three native tools into Twitter.
Uh, the other has to do with, uh, governance. . and you as a steward, you know, for Bitcoin, I believe, I wonder if you can draw parallels with like governance as a steward on a project and this like soft governance or just governance in general on a platform like Twitter. Are there parallels between the two?
So maybe we can unpack one before the other. Your choice. Yeah, yeah, good question. Let's talk about, uh, what a hundred X Twitter would look like. I have a tweet on. I'll, I'll read it out. Actually, let me, let me find it, if you don't mind just giving me a second. This is from May. I said a web three. Twitter needs to be a hundred x better than Twitter.
Uh, it needs every tweet should be an on chain proposal. Uh, with enough votes, a transaction is executed. All content can be recomposed and sold on chain contributions, holdings that consent determine what you see. Uh, and it should be user owned and developed. This might sound like a certain project now that I might be giving too much away here.
so , uh, yeah, I think, you know, again, if you think about Twitter being a governance platform, like, like there's this tremendous opportunity for it to surface on chain data and track on chain data of what other people are doing as well, but then also be a way to contribute to that on chain data too, right?
You need the flywheel, like it needs to both be a distribution surfacing mechanism, like for. What are my friends buying? What are they voting on? You know, what, what are, what NFTs are they minting, Right? to give you that alpha in some ways, but like it also has to go the other way, where you can actually do those things on the platform too, right?
Like you should be able to like somebody's post and like you're essentially are putting on chain data, that is helping curate that. and then open source, the algorithm. Like people can have different algorithms to, you know, showcase this in different ways, depending how they like, So yeah, I think, I think like that's, you really need to offer the alpha for it and you also need to be able to offer the ability for people to build out their own profiles and contribution records as well.
That's interesting. So hopefully to draw a line between that and the other question, if Twitter were to 100 x and it would be this Web three native platform, how. Governance or how, how could other projects integrate, uh, their governance systems to Twitter? So as an example, going back to being steward in a project, what are ways for a project to maybe leverage, uh, like what Twitter does well and maybe in a future ideal world, if it were to 100 x in the way that you described it, how could they potentially like bridge some of those, uh, process?
Yeah, I mean, that's a technical question, right? That like lens and forecaster are kind of focused on right now. you know, which is very much like, you know, how do you, how do you integrate so that like your, you know, your account is a wallet essentially, right? And any time you are doing these actions, it is in some ways on chain.
And of course there's a massive UI barrier to this right now, like just having to like confirm the transaction in your wallet. is a killer for, for, you know, like imagine every time you liked a post, you had to do that. So, yeah, I think there's two pieces. Like one is actually like, you know, incorporating the other protocols, which is not that hard.
Like this is all open source or, or rather, I should say, like, it's, it's permissionless, uh, so that you could, you know, essentially incorporate other protocols into your own, or, but the, the harder question is probably the UI question, Like the harder question is like, and you're charging people, you know, even like a temp of a set to confirm a transac.
Like how do we get around that? And that's probably honestly where subscription services will come back. and having, you know, putting up like 10 matic a month and then being able to just do whatever you want on web through Twitter will be powerful. So you were talking about memes just moments ago, and I really kind of wanted to hear your thoughts on this because it feels like some of the projects that.
Do relatively well, maybe compared to others that don't necessarily harness the power of memes. really just kind of share these, this, that they break down this really technical information into really fun bite-size pieces of content. What are your thoughts about memes? In the current ecosystem, and I think you yourself kind of share a couple of memes.
I'm not saying that you're, that every tweet is a meme, but I think you've done, uh, you know that very well in the past. What are your thoughts about like memes as a way to convey information now and what would, like, what would a web three native meme look like? Yeah. good question. You know, me, memes are, memes are, are, are a couple things.
First of all, memes are a decentralized technology. and so parallels I would say to this would be like, oral tradition, uh, like passing down, you know, uh, the odyssey from town to town, uh, would be an example. The blues right. Pass around from folk singers, from 10 town jokes, I would say are also like, you pass on joke, you don't know who originally told it.
Like all of these are, are, are, you know, kind of like folklorish, media that is distributed locally and virally, by people who recreate it each time that they, distribute it. So part of the fun of a joke or a blue song is that the way you distribute it, You actually perform it and you perform it in a new rendition as well.
Right. And so I think memes are just the 21st century of this kind of like decentralized media. And, and, and you know, with all of these, these are always considered to be, you know, folky or not official because we always wanna venerate the great visionary artists who have a single way of doing things and take all the credit for it.
But, you know, in truth, culture has historically been built much more in these kind of communally created, decentralized projects of jokes, blue songs, soul tradit. Uh, even the Bible in some ways is, you know, or, or religious texts are often like this too. and where we don't know who created them or, or churches, you know, sometimes too, right?
Like char, We don't know who created them. Uh, we, you know, we, we know that they were created by a lot of different workers who each put their own creative input into them. And so, yeah, I think of means just being like the Internet's version of folklore, in that way and, and really powerful because you are incentivized to distribute it because you also get to recreate it and you get to perform.
And it's, it's, it's, it's this kind of media that like, you know, says to you. You get to be a star, uh, in this really easy way where it's like 90% of the work's been done for you. And of course, like what does a TikTok do at, you know, what are like all the, you know, TikTok videos generally are just, you know, a variation of this, where 90% of the work has been done for you.
You did the last 10% to recreate a new version of it. and you get to be a performer who is, who is also distributing at the same time. I don't think it's anything new. but I do think it's, it's really powerful in the attention economy. because in the attention economy, uh, it's really hard to know what to pay attention to.
And we have so much information and so many voices and so many people out there that anyone who can distill that into a really recognizable, piece of media will often go viral. And, and you'll see this all the time right on Twitter, that like the tweets that really go viral are not the ones that have original insight.
Uh, they're the ones that tell you something you already knew, but in a really profoundly articulated, and so, you know, it plays to. Saying, Oh, duh. Right? Like, I, like I already knew this. And that's like, essentially memes are doing this. Like they're not translating tough ideas for you necessarily. I've tried playing with some of those memes before, like the Dan Short or Here's what Dan Charting works, right?
Like, yeah, it's a cool educational tool, but that's not really why people respond to memes. Like people respond to memes because it, it is the. Simplest reduction of the things they already know and they already feel. And I think you, again, jokes are like this, Blue songs are like this, oral tradition is like this too.
Like they go viral because everyone wants to retell it because it's true to them as well. And it has this like both universality that everyone can relate to it, but also this like individualism be that each person's putting their own mark and their their own touch on it too. Which is, which is really.
Hmm. That's interesting. I like how you bridge this across like a variety of mediums too, including TikTok as a way of like, uh, exemplifying how memes, uh, have continued to evolve. And so to that effect, I wonder is there anything Web three can do to make memes like transcend. Like TikTok has a, you know, kind of shifted the way that we present a meme.
Right, Right. What do you think Web three media or Web three in general, that technology can assist with the creation of more interesting memes? Yeah. I, I mean, there've been a couple projects, uh, for this. Avi's Done one, Yelp has done one. Like, yeah, Yelp did a really cool on mirror like a year, year and a half ago, where it was like, you know, Anybody can submit an image and then someone can submit a caption.
If you sell the meme, there's an automatic distribution of funds between, you know, the creator of the image and the creator of, the caption. And, you know, like a year ago, a lot of the focus on crypto was like co. Payment, like being able to, you know, split payments between different people. But I think you can simplify it even further and say like, you know, a, a big, a big use case for crypto is just attestation.
It's just being able to attribute content, whether or not you get paid for it. Being able to say, this was the first person who put this up, because we have a public record of it, Right. Historically, and we can track that data, on chain. So I think like, you know, Part of it is like, yeah, creating these like family trees to see who created stuff.
But again, like the point of means isn't really who created the, the first one. Right. that's fun. And that's, you know, the folklore, folklore itself. But like, I, I don't think that that's, you know, necessary even so, uh, yeah. Can like. You know, web three do this kind of like permissionless, you know, recomposed images in a way that we can do it with defi.
Yeah, absolutely. Is that a meme? Yeah, absolutely. But is it necessary for web three to do that? I don't know that we need, you know, like I, I'm not a total on chain maxi either. like, you know, the, just having that be a funnel to get people into Web three, I think is, I think is the really exciting use case.
Very interesting. So it almost sounds like part of the, uh, evolution may be the collaboration aspect. Right? And similar to what you were saying with TikTok in the, ability to, what's the word, uh, duet, right? Where you can then add. To an existing meme. you know, maybe there's something to be said about the collaboration aspect, and I think you were, uh, Yeah.
Saying yup. Would be the, like one of the ones that you, you saw to do this, uh, probably more recently or, Yeah. Yeah. I think you pointed to something profound there, which is like, You know, the big challenge is like, how do we actually build collaborations? Like right now, the only way we've really done it in crypto is for people to buy stuff together.
And even then, they're not even usually buying it together. They're just buying the same thing. Like a bunch of people buy the same community token. you know, like maybe you can get them to buy the same nft, uh, and, and join together as a community to buy it. But, but so much of our principles of like community that we talk about are just co-ownership and coying, and that's a really lame form.
Friendship , like, sorry, but like, if. Not that it's not useful, not that it doesn't serve a use case like at all, but like buying something is probably the end state of a relationship. Like, you know, you don't start off with a partner buying things together and you know, that's where you end up once you've become partners and you've gotten a house.
and that point it becomes really valuable to be able to buy things together and have that joint bank account. But like before you get there, what you really want is like relationship building and you. Activities and you wanna, you know, be, before you have moved in with your partner and, and bought a new house, you wanna play board games with them.
You wanna go out and watch a movie together. You wanna tell jokes with each other. You wanna tell buddy, you know, each other's family history and your lives and like what you felt and you wanna sing songs at karaoke together. You know, like, like you wanna go dancing together. Like, like these are, these are all the things that we haven't done in, in Dows.
And so, yeah, like it, you know, the unlock would be the meme that like people can co. You know, it, it, it's really, it's really giving people opportunities to collaborate in a relationship building way rather than a buying way. that I think will unlock those coying opportunities. Long, long term. The co-creation aspect, I wonder, I mean, where, what are some of the tools or frameworks that exist right now that can facilitate that?
Like the co-creation process that I think of are maybe some way to, uh, on the creative side, you know, have some sort of like, Platform or application where people can come together and generate something beautiful or something meaningful to them that, you know, whether it's, you know, a piece of art or whether it's like a poem, whatever, like you co-create this and there's some providence then that, uh, links or associates, this completed artifact to have come from both of you, which I.
Quite beautiful. If you think about it. It's, it's like dating. but you know, just there's, there's some sort of public, you know, public primitive, something that exists that other people, that, that's tangible, that other people can interact with that then is representative of that, uh, union or of that relationship at that time.
I think that's really interesting. I think you have to gamify everything, like fundamentally to get people to pay attention and participate and build relationships. You. Whether or not you have that financial piece, you need to gamify everything. And, the more that people are participating in structures with limits, and that might be limited time, limited attention, limited partnerships, et cetera, like that's, that is what is going to enable them to work together on, on, on stuff.
So, you know, it's not the only answer. Like people need to be able to be paid well. They need to find people they actually genuinely relate to. They need to find, like, you know, be able to trust. As well. Uh, but, but yeah, I do think gamification is really missing from all of these all, you know, almost every, every sector.
and one reason Defi, you know, Summer really took off was because at a really simple level it was a game. and it was a game to play. And I think that was really, really profound. but it was a really simple game, , and it wasn't really, it wasn't an emotionally rewarding or relationship rewarding one.
necess. Yeah, I mean, I feel like we can jump into a rabbit hole there and kind of try to, uh, create some distinctions in terms of like how we can create these more emotionally rewarding games, that are, you know, gamified like defi, but that aren't necessarily just like financialized, right? The reward isn't just purely financial.
That's definitely my vibe. The reason for, you know, a lot of the things that I do in this space is because I'm trying to find, uh, ways to reward, uh, you know, certain activities and behaviors in the ecosystem. Obviously gamifying it, but doing so through non-financial means, I think that that's still a space that we have not, seen.
Even fully developed or even just barely the beginnings of what that, that looks like. Any projects active out there that you can maybe just think off the top of your head. They're like, Oh, they're, they're probably doing a good job at like gamifying web three, uh, interactions or just generally interactions and rewarding them through non-financial means that may be emotionally.
pretty, pretty, pretty hard to, to come up with these examples. Yeah, I mean, we're trying to do it with joke dow, right? And there are definitely use cases where that happens, where you can hack the attention economy just enough that people are campaigning for themselves on Twitter for their proposal, getting others to vote on it, as well.
Uh, There is this irony that, you know, sometimes the worst run Dows create the best relationships, because they're so contentious and there's no coordination. People kind of have to fend for themselves and build alliances, and so that's interesting to see play out that actually. , some of the Dows that really seem like they're so badly run and, and frankly they are, have actually created greater opportunities for relationships than really well coordinated ones that are doing well.
Uh, because there's no opportunity for, there's no reason to like try to sabotage or create relationships or campaign for your own thing when you're working within a well-oiled system. but yeah, uh, you know, uh, definitely like, I think. It's very, it's very, very hard to come up with examples, because frankly, technology isn't really there yet.
Like we've just built this for finance. So like, you know, all the technology to date is really just about finance, even NFTs, right? Uh, or about buying and selling, and that's the only use case. But I think, I think in the next cycle we're gonna start to see a lot more of these that are really focused on gamification to incentivize people to collaborate and work together with each other, and definitely, yeah.
You know, there, there's. Stuff out there like, you know, launching chess games and, uh, you know, Hume and, and stuff like that. But, the only, the only big project I can think of that actually consistently thinks about this is Ave with both Lens and with Newt. And they're very, very focused on this with Lens and Newt.
and it's gonna be interesting to see some of the experiments they're doing there. Oh, that's exciting. Well, thank you for that. so as we wrap up, last question, yeah. Is there someone or something that has been super influential to you in your crypto journey to learn and become a better, you know, contributor, thinker?
Collaborator? I wanna, I wanna, you know, have, send a chat. There was a lot of people who supported me. You know, when I really started deeply going down the rabbit hole in 2021, nobody knew who I was. I was writing. Mark Gabrielle, said, You know what, like, nobody knows who you are, but your stuff is good.
so I'm gonna promote it and I'm gonna help you edit it. Like, which is incredibly kind thing to do. Legion like took me under her wings and, and, and said like, Here's how you need to invest. Like, talked about deals with me at hour for hours without needing to, that, that was incredibly, incredibly kind thing, to do, to do as well.
Scott Moore, uh, reached out to. Uh, when nobody knew who I was and got me involved in Bitcoin and we had a long conversation, became one of my, my closest friends. there, there's just a lot of people I owe. I I, I think the person I probably owe most is Anika Lewis. And, and Anika and I, met through the generalist Mario's community and we were doing, uh, deep dives into economics and economic theory, and we were rooting Ray Dalio and, and macroeconomics and, and we realized, You know, all signs point towards decline of US power and decline of US dollar long term, although short term, it's looking quite good right now.
Uh, you know, what is the next global order that's gonna take its place? And we started having this debate like, you know, it looks like China, like China just seems like it's cleaning up and, you know, winning deals and is on the ascent and, you know, shows all the signs of like an early incumbent. But then we thought, what if the next, you know, global Empire isn't, isn't a, a physical nation.
What if it's the internet? Like what if the internet is the next global? And that, and that thought that we had, that we started writing about together. Sents, just both deep down, the crypto rabbit hole. And it was really, Anna and I went on this kind of journey together in, in the beginning of 2021, and I owe her so, so much for that.
And still one of my best friends, one of the best people I've, I've ever met. Uh, and she has a great dog too, which is very important. M amazing. Well, I mean, where can people learn more about you and definitely where can people read what you're writing? Yeah, David Phelps dot sub stack.com is the best place.
That's where I put my actual real thoughts. The tentative thoughts go on Twitter. those are usually ones where I'm playing around with them and usually looking to see what's wrong and off that people will challenge me on. Uh, and so that's at divine underscore economy as well. if that's more the, the gamification of thought than actual thought, if that makes any sense at all.
Yeah, 100%. Well, David, I mean, honestly, thank you for your time. This was an amazing conversation and I personally learned a lot. I promise you I did. Oh, my pleasure. I, I really enjoyed this. Thanks so much. That's wrap. Thanks for listening to Crypto Sapiens. If you enjoyed this podcast, please do give us a five star review.
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