Episode 26: Chase Chapman | Orca Protocol, Rabbithole - Preventing Dystopia on The Other Side of Web3
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Chase Chapman x Crypto Sapiens
Timestamps and Transcripts from Crypto Sapiens episode with Chase Chapman
by salmanneedsajob#6938
Timestamps
0:00 - Show Intro
0:46 - Guest introduction
1:24 - Chase's journey into crypto
3:01 - What is Web3?
5:24 - What about DAOs captured Chase's imagination
9:56 - People's relationship with work
12:09 - Onboarding & Permissionless work
22:33 - Thesis of Chase's podcast
26:37 - Learnings from the Podcast
27:54 - Building the right mental models in crypto
29:32 - Value as a Creator in Web3
32:24 - Gaps in Web3 onboarding
38:01 - Transitioning from Web2 to Web3
43:35 - Outro
Transcript
Humpty Calderon: Welcome to Crypto Sapiens, a show that hosts lively discussions with innovative web 3 builders to help you learn about decentralized money systems, including Ethereum, Bitcoin, and DeFi. The podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. And it is not financial advice. Crypto Sapiens is presented in partnership with BanklessDAO, a movement for pioneers seeking freedom from the limitations of the traditional financial system.
Bankless DAO will help the world go bankless, by creating user-friendly on-ramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media, and culture.
Humpty Calderon: Hello everyone. And we are back with another episode of Crypto Sapiens. Today we are talking with Chase Chapman. Contributor to the web through the ecosystem, including Index Coop, Orca Protocol, and RabbitHole. She also hosts On The Other Side, a podcast that explores the human side of web 3. We discussed the catalyst to DAOs over the past year, and what sets them apart from traditional organizations. We explored DAO onboarding, permissionless work, and creating value-aligned incentives.
We also talk about our podcasts and much, much more. Lots to unpack here. So let's get started.
Chase Chapman: I got really interested in crypto and web 3 in 2018, because I was working in marketing doing data analytics, and essentially ran into a lot of these problems around data ownership, around provenance for data, and all that stuff.
And ultimately realized that crypto was this really interesting space that was potentially solving a lot of those problems. And I also had this history and love for economics. I did model UN in high school and all of those things. And so had this kind of passion for human systems at the same time.
All of that ended up being these patterns that I found in crypto, and I think people were calling it web 3 then, but not really. So I started exploring the space. Ended up actually co-founding a company with a mentor of mine, built developer tools for a couple of years, and then really got into what I would call more of the web 3 side of things over the past, little less than a year, I would say because I do think that there's a pretty big difference between different parts of crypto. And I think web 3 obviously is a term that people are using for a bunch of different things. But the little corner of the internet that I exist on, I think is different from other parts of crypto.
So I like to make that distinction.
Humpty Calderon: That's cool. I guess, what does web 3 means to you, right? Because this is one of the things that I feel is at least pretty emergent is the use of that term. At least when I first popped in the term, crypto was pretty popular. That's really how we alluded to everything in this space,
And then web 3 just feels like one of these words that started popping up maybe early last year, around the emergence of DAOs at the same time. So from your personal experience, what is web 3?
Chase Chapman: It's funny because when I first heard web 3, a couple of years ago, it's a term that's been used by a lot of different technology movements to mean different things. I think in crypto we've really taken it and pushed it forward, and I hope that the web 3, that we're all referring to ultimately ends up being this next evolution of the web. Fundamentally, the way that I think about it is, when we think about web 2, and the evolution of the web more broadly, I think we're in a little bit of like a feudalist moment and I think that's a charged term, but what I mean by it is there's a very small group of people that control most of the internet and have most of the influence.
When you think about companies like Facebook and Google and all of that. And I think to me, what web 3 really is this movement toward a democratic internet. That's owned by the people who build but also use these protocols. And ultimately I think a lot of that matters because you have a say in these digital spaces that you live in.
I think a lot of this was catalyzed also by COVID, sort of pushed towards being at home and spending more time in digital spaces where we kind of realized like, holy shit, we're living online and spending so much time here, but we don't have a say in how it's governed and built and what that really means.
And so to me, web 3 is all about making that more democratic, open, and really giving people a voice in the digital landscape that we exist in.
Humpty Calderon: That's interesting. Certainly, I agree with you. I think you know, COVID certainly accelerated, maybe some of these things that were already happening or being discussed, in much smaller niche circles.
With DeFi summer happening in 2020, it seems almost immediately NFT spring in early 2021. And then around the time of maybe the summer, we saw a tremendous surge of DAOs. So this interest in how we can leverage these decentralized technologies to, create or capture value for the people that are using the technology and the tools, seem to really accelerate.
A lot of the experimentation, I think, happened much quicker than I had seen in years prior. And so, you know, from your, From your experiences, what are some of these things that really kind of captured your imagination as to like, oh, this actually may be a thing, this may not just be just a trend, but this is actually a movement in terms of web 3 and you know, all of these different, implementations of DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs.
Chase Chapman: One of my favorite things about DAOs is they're really, skeuomorphic in a way that I think is super powerful. So when you think about defined NFTs, those are also skeuomorphic in some ways, they do look like the systems that we understand in the world of web 2 and finance, but I think you really have to buy into a certain philosophy to like, truly understand the possibilities around NFTs. A good example of this is if you don't exist on crypto twitter, and you don't have friends there and you don't understand the social dynamics of crypto Twitter, you're probably going to have a really different relationship with NFTs than someone who spends five hours a day on Twitter, looking at NFTs or engaging with people who use NFTs as a status symbol and all of that kind of. I think DeFi's a little bit different, but in some ways similar in that most people don't understand any of the things going on around yield farming and around moving assets in the way beyond DeFi. I think DAOs are much easier for most people to understand in the sense that they're companies or Co-ops, or collectives, they look quite similar and you don't really need to buy into a lot of the philosophies and foundations of crypto to believe the DAOs are really impactful. Because ultimately what they allow you to do is have this collective of people who can actually own an entity or a platform or whatever it may be in a way that legal structures are just a really hard, way to do. And so I think what really captured my imagination and attention at first was that there's been this massive movement over the past couple of decades towards teal flat organizations like Zappos, very famously pioneered, that at a really large scale, a lot of companies had experimented of course, before that, but Zappos was one of the famous ones.
And so I think we've actually seen a movement towards flat organizations more broadly outside of the context of crypto. But, DAOs really put what the people from The Ready, who I absolutely love who are a consultancy that helps companies become more self-managing. The way that they put it as DAOs put a backend on to this front end of self-management. And flat organizations where you've had a lot of teams and companies try to have employees become more self-managing, but at the end of the day, they're still employees.
And if you can't touch the ownership structure, You know, a company like Airbnb and make it so that hosts and guests and, people building the software own it, then you're only doing, this type of work at a certain level. And so I think DAOs were really exciting to me and captured a lot of my attention because they kind of aligned with what I think was already happening.
That's kind of how I think about the world that DAOs are entering. And of course, as just a side note, I think again, COVID forced a lot of people to rethink their relationship with work. We're seeing that in terms of labor markets right now, and I think DAOs are coming in at a really interesting moment where a lot of people who work for different companies have a lot of power.
So I think that's also a moment in time that we're existing and it makes a lot of this more prominent.
Humpty Calderon: I think you bring up a point that is, kind of worth diving into a little bit more than that is people's relationship with work certainly feels a little different today than it did a year ago, or just even a few years ago.
And. I think certainly a lot of that, had to do with the demands or that prioritization, I guess, of work. In terms of what they were doing prior to COVID and then what they were doing while COVID was running rampant around the world. And I think that I agree. I think that people felt that there was an imbalance in their relationship with work and maybe, an unfulfilled, experience with the work that they were doing.
And so I think what was the term, the great resignation. I think they were talking about where people were resigning from work, because they wanted to explore things that made them happy that fulfilled them, you know, in ways that the work that they had been doing for years, certainly didn't. And so I think DAOs certainly have opened up the opportunity for working in a way that is aligned with the individual, right? There's just so many opportunities. And I think that the way that people can be onboarded to these communities, to these organizations is a lot better than maybe the way that people would normally get onboarded onto another job. Right. It's really more on the contributions to that project and really where you want to contribute and where you find fulfillment.
I would be curious to hear your perspective because I think you probably have shared some of this on crypto twitter before is in terms of some of these challenges that DAOs have in terms of onboarding, and I think that it's probably not just one thing, but maybe if you can talk about one or two things that you feel that you've seen, in terms of how DAOs are onboarding individuals today, and maybe that can be improved into the future.
Chase Chapman: Onboarding is such a fun topic because there's so much around it. I think there are a few different angles to think about onboarding through in terms of DAOs. The first one I think is considering that most people have never worked in an organization where they are a true owner. And what that means is you go in with a mindset that is pretty influenced by hierarchical
organizations. You typically have a boss or a couple of people that you need to make sure they know you're doing a good job and that's kind of it. You're told what to work on all of that stuff. And I think one of the biggest challenges or hurdles in joining an organization like a DAO is actually understanding that you no longer have someone else to blame for the things that you don't like about your work, and you have the power to change them. And I think there are certainly worlds in which DAOs need to get this right. And I don't think a lot of DAOs have the structures yet to really empower contributors, to change things that they don't like, and take initiative. Like I think a lot of DAOs have inherited a lot of hierarchical structures that maybe don't empower that, but really well-architected DAOs, make it so that you figure out what you want to work on.
If you're not happy with something, it's your responsibility to either fix that or change the situation, you know, whether it's someone you're working with or whatever, it's your responsibility now to go ahead and do things. Like I said, we're not taught to be owners in that way. And so I think that's a big mindset shift from an onboarding perspective that DAOs need to be thinking really seriously about is like, how do we teach people to be owners? So I think that's one thing. I think the other thing that's definitely a spicier or take, but that I think, I'm still doing a lot of contemplating on that I think as a broader space, we need to be thinking about is totally permissionless work in a lot of cases is really hard to do and not always beneficial.
And I think that there are a lot of layers to this and I think it's not binary. It's not like, you know, it is or is not permissionless. I don't think that's how these things should work. But totally permissionless work where anyone can come into a DAO start doing work and get paid for whatever work they want to do assumes that there's this infinite demand for labor that does not exist.
Like, it's fine if you do that. But if you expect to get paid for anything that you want to work on, there needs to be some value to an organization where that actually makes sense. And I'm not saying it's not possible. I just think it's a really interesting philosophical stance that we've taken that I'm not convinced is perfect in practice.
It works for networks like Bitcoin or Ethereum because each validator or miner, if you're bringing in the same set of hardware, brings the same amount of value to the network. More people is a more decentralized network that totally works. We've inherited that logic I think in DAOs.
And I don't think that's perfect logic when you have a specialization of humans in organizations, like DAOs. Like the human layer of abstraction totally changes the complexity of the system. So, all that to say is that I think onboarding not only needs to prepare people to be owners and sort of help guide them and educate them and get them in that mindset. I also think it needs to consider that, not all work is necessarily best positioned to be permissionless. And I think there are probably systems that we need to start considering in different DAOs are going to have totally different needs. Some DAOs will be able to be completely permissionless, but I think that's another really important aspect of all of this.
Humpty Calderon: I like that second part that you talked about, which is permissionless work. So we're recording in the BanklessDAO, and one of the first things that I, really liked about this, DAO when I first jumped into the discord server, is that its positioning in terms of like a media and culture DAO. Right? So as someone who is a creator, I felt that there was like synergy there between the work that I was already doing, the positioning of the DAO. But throughout, you know, 2021 and into 2022, it really has shifted in terms of its, kind of value proposition to its community is how individuals coordinate, collaborate and work together.
And so the term that I keep hearing thrown around as it's, you know, really trying to be the future of work. So I am interested in that and exploring that a little bit further in terms of permissionless work, but, infinite demand of work. I guess I'm trying to understand how we can identify work in terms of the work that people can take and contribute, you know, on an occasional basis, how we connect people in that way, and, then the work that is maybe recurring that maybe needs the contribution of someone or someone's, you know, multiple people over a long period of time. Like, how have you seen, I guess some of the DAOs you've worked with or have jumped into their discord server, achieve this in a way where you would say, well, this is a good example of how we can start to identify that work and, onboard individuals to contribute to that work, but also very easily off-board them and say, well, that work is no longer available so you can either leave or just try something else.
Chase Chapman: I'm going, to be honest. I don't think there are very many good examples that work all of the time, different stages.
So like, what I think is interesting here is that the stage of a DAO, the goals of the DAO, all of that matter a lot, when we think about this kind of thing. When you're early in an organization and you step up and propose something that is aligned with what they want to do, I think it's a lot easier to get support for that and start doing it in some ways, it's probably harder than others. But that process looks different for a DAO that's mature, that has a very clear set of guidelines for how they do things, has a super clear strategy for where they're going, or maybe a very unclear strategy for where they're going. Like I think the stage of the DAO matters a lot. I'm sure that there are examples of DAOs that do this? Well, I don't know of any that do it super well in a way that feels like it works over time.
I think for some doubts, you know, it's bounties that are pretty specific as sort of experiments for working with someone where you have a bounty, for example, for someone to edit the video that you take from recording this, and if they do a good job, then you offer a more consistent commitment. I think I talked with Spencer Graham, about DAOhouse and what they're experimenting with, and I say that because I haven't looked directly at it, but Spencer is a great thinker on some of this stuff. And he was talking about how they've created this framework for commitments, where if you commit more time to the DAO, the DAO will commit a more consistent sort of paycheck to you.
I think that's really interesting. So I think there are a lot of interesting ways to think about commitments and vetting and all these different things. I think it just changes for every DAO. And I think the nature of the DAO matters a lot too, where if you are running a really, specific and opinionated brand, if you're creating a really specific and opinionated brand, You might not want it to be open to anyone, you might have a much more rigorous process, or maybe you don't, and maybe you do make it super open and anyone can create under the brand that you've built. Like, I think it's so dependent on the type of organization you want to build and what the economics of that look like and all that.
And I'll also add that my thoughts on, specific tasks not having infinite demand are definitely still forming. So I'm very excited to be proven wrong on that. And I also think that there's something to this conversation around scarcity and abundance. Like I think my statement around not having infinite demand is coming from a place of scarcity, as opposed to thinking about things with abundance, where it's like,
I see that maybe there's not an opportunity for me to work on a certain type of task right now, but what if I created an entirely new type of revenue opportunity for us and I worked on that. So I think there are ways to reframe it where you can definitely tap into a little bit more abundance in the sense that it's like, okay, if money is a problem, and if you can't pay me for this type of work, how can I create
More money and I think that's very doable. I think there are ways around that. But yeah, I think it ultimately does come down to the question or I suppose, dynamics around scarcity and abundance.
Humpty Calderon: That's wonderfully said. So I know we've talked a lot about DAOs and we're falling deep down the rabbit hole.
I think for me personally, because I feel like you have such a wonderful connection to this space, but there's also another topic that we wanted to broach while we were on this call, and that is the topic of opportunities for creators. So on the other side, which is how we started this conversation, or this podcast was is a podcast that you produce regularly. And then you talk to key contributors of this space, exploring the space from a very high level. Can you walk us through kind of the vision to that? And then we'll leverage that to go into how there are opportunities for more than just developers in this space to contribute in the education, and visibility, and maybe even onboarding of people into this space.
Chase Chapman: Well, I always like to start by giving credit to Brian Flynn from RabbitHole for pushing me to start the podcast. He's a friend of mine and, was just like, you need to, you need to start doing something and you're chatty, so you should start a podcast. So I started the podcast mostly with this thesis that I'm really interested in trying to avoid dystopia with web 3. And I think fundamentally dystopia is actually any society that leans too far in any ideological direction. So true decentralization, maximalism, or true transparency, maximalism or. Freedom, you know, they're all of these, trade-offs that come with that, like there's freedom and security.
Those are trade-offs that are real when they're implemented in the world. And so I think when you go too far in any direction, that's actually where you get a dystopia. If everything that we did ever was fully transparent, that would be bad. Like people would not like that. And they would be really big downsides to that.
And so a lot of the podcast is intended to explore the human side of all of this, with this sort of underlying, hope to try to avoid, or at least have open conversations about what we do and don't want in this space and kind of getting around this question of like, how do we avoid dystopia? And part of the thought was if Mark Zuckerberg had been a lot more open about the challenges and trade-offs that he was facing while he was building Facebook, would we be living in a better world today?
And maybe the answer is no, but I also kind of feel like there's a chance that it would have created space for a much more public discussion about some of the trade-offs that we're making by choosing, to build the technology that we're building in a certain way. And so that's basically what the thesis was behind on the other side.
It's also just a fun place to explore my own curiosity around a lot of this stuff. And I think I sort of stumbled upon being, I suppose, a creator. I don't even think of myself as a creator to be honest, which is kind of interesting, but, that's the story and hope behind the podcast.
Humpty Calderon: So in terms of the thesis and in terms of trying not to build a dystopic world with the technology that we're creating and are facilitating a discussion from a high level where hopefully we're surfacing some of these challenges and discussing them openly, what are some of these conversations that you've had that you felt either warranted more discussion with individuals that you felt are contributing to this space in a way that is, really kind of positioning the technology and the ecosystem as a whole in a better place, the opposite of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.
Chase Chapman: That's so interesting. I've had so many people on the podcast that I really admire, like Amir from Black Hand, God, it's so hard to say all of them, because seriously, every person I've had on, is doing amazing things. But people like Amir are, I think, paving the way for what you can do with this technology at both the human level, at a financial level, all of that. But I've also brought in people, like, Amir, Latasha, Kinjal Shah, just so many great people. And then on the flip side, I've also brought in people who are definitely less web 3 specific, but who have thought a lot about these things that are essentially like paradigms that have emerged in web 3.
Like Jasmine Sun, Dave Ehrlichman, all of these types of people who are really thinking about networks, about decentralized organization, about, like a voiceover exit, all of these concepts that we've sort of stumbled upon in web 3, or it's like, oh, that sounds super familiar because it totally is the dynamic that we're dealing with.
And ultimately the main thing that I've learned from the podcast is actually one of the most valuable things you can do in crypto is build the right mental models. Because once you build the right mental models and you understand and are able to label the paradigms that are emerging, you can pretty much predict what's going to happen.
it's not hard to say, oh, DAOs are going to decentralize fully and then centralize because they don't have the right structures for understanding how to systemically go about X, Y, and Z, which is also why I love people like Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans from the ready, because they understand a lot of this stuff.
But in any case, I think a lot of it has been about how do we build the right mental models to anticipate and understand what's likely to happen if we take X, Y, and Z action in this environment. And from there, I think we're able to learn from history essentially, what to avoid because, you know, it's the whole, history repeats itself. It really does. And if we're able to identify the same patterns in a different context, I think we're able to avoid a lot of the downsides of some of these systems and really navigate them in a much more clear way. It's also just a really good lens to think about crypto through when you find those mental models. I think otherwise it can be really chaotic and confusing.
Humpty Calderon: That's that's really good. And yeah, I think asking you to find like one or two, people that you've interviewed or talked to on the show is hard. It's like asking who is your favorite kid. That was unfair on my part, but, you know, I think that that's interesting.
I mean, what you've mentioned, I think it shows the incredible value of the work that you've done with the show because there's a diversity of thought that is featured in terms of, you know, the people that are working on it, but also, the different perspectives from, you know, not necessarily web 3 native individuals. So, you know, for me personally, at least with Crypto Sapiens and some of the other, you know, things that I've produced in the past, I feel like it really is something that I've enjoyed doing, because it's something that is important in the space or advancing the education of it because it's really just such a complex thing to get started with.
Right. I mean, if you just consider some of the barriers or hurdles to entering the space down, starting with just like setting up a wallet, I think it can be pretty frightening, to most people. And so telling stories, I think from that human level, right. And being able to talk about this space in a way that's accessible and friendly and, and inspiring hopefully, we can go beyond just some of the technical complexities and really just talk about it from a high-level philosophical level. Right. In terms of the things that we're trying to change and hopefully inspire people to take that leap and then providing them with the resources to be able to, continue their journey, by learning and then doing.
To that point, I think the work that you've done, with On The Other Side has been hugely beneficial, to achieving that and to doing that. What are, you know, what are some of the things that you, I think in terms of both your experience with DAOs, but also your experience with producing the podcast that you feel are some gaps in the way that we educate individuals, that are just learning about the space and conversely, or maybe, in addition to that, opportunities for people who already in this space that can then take on as maybe some way to contribute to a DAO or on an individual level, to move this space forward in a way that is, inclusive of people from all backgrounds that aren't necessarily, familiar with this technology, or maybe even in a way naturally, able to connect with people, right? Talking about maybe extroverts versus introverts in terms of how they connect with people and how they build relationships.
Chase Chapman: It's so funny when I think about onboarding people into the space, because I feel like I have such a terrible perspective, mostly just because I dove so deeply into the technology side of things for a couple of years, and then recognized all of the cultural aspects of web 3 from crypto twitter and dove in from there. And so I think I had a really good foundation to build on that allowed me to think deeply about a lot of the things that are popular conversations on crypto twitter.
And it's hard for me to empathize with or understand what it would be to not have those foundations but to see cultural conversations happening. And I say that not because it would be impossible, but because they genuinely don't know, I struggled to think about would, how much of this is easy to understand how much of this is abstracted away, and all of that.
So to me, I think one of the big gaps that I've seen with things like RabbitHole, which, which are focused on onboarding people into the space, and something that came up when we were having community conversations was okay, so there's navigating this technology, which I think is one thing that's very overwhelming to people. I think there probably need to be a lot better resources, not just on, what you should learn, but what you don't need to know. Like, I think a lot of people love talking about consensus mechanisms and all of these different things that, aren't required to understand the impact of a lot of the stuff that we're doing in web 3.
Like it's good to know, but the whole, you know, canonical examples, like people don't know how TCP IP works to use the internet. That's just the basic way that we engage with technology. Like you don't need to know everything. And So I think it's more useful actually to understand what you can ignore sometimes.
And then I think the other thing that stood out to me in conversations with people who were getting onboarded into the space was actually pointing them in the right direction of projects based on their values. I think it's really easy to get caught up in different communities that you ultimately realize are not aligned with your values.
And then sort of write off web 3 as X because that's how the community was set up where that's, how those values existed. But of course, like web 3 is so multi-dimensional, there are so many players in this space. And so I think a lot of it is actually helping people find their space.
Like even something like Friends With Benefits or Bankless are great examples of this. There are people who are going to really vibe with FWB and people who are going to really vibe with Bankless, and those are not mutually exclusive, but finding your community and finding those people, I think has a lot of value as you're learning all of this stuff.
Because then you've built this foundation that's very human. As opposed to having to read everything everywhere and try to feel like you're an expert before you engage with anyone. And ultimately, no one is an expert. There are definitely people who are a lot more knowledgeable than others, but I think that everyone is learning.
And frankly, a lot of the viewpoints of people who are not currently in crypto are the ones that we need to be hearing. Like we need anthropologists and we need all these types of perspectives to build a technology that people actually use and enjoy that is not just dystopic. I think it's really about like learning what you don't need to know, and then also finding communities that align with your values and your vibe and all of that stuff.
But I think those are pathways that we need to be creating that I think are pretty big gaps.
Humpty Calderon: I think you touched on something, that is probably should be top of mind for many communities and projects that maybe sometimes gets left behind because a lot of it starts with technology first and then we build the community around that.
And that is the value of that project. And a lot of those values, many times are driven by the leadership of those projects. And so I think that's certainly something that. It would be familiar and, or kind of something that most projects and web 2 get started with is trying to identify, you know, who they are, what they're building that purpose so that as they're building it, they have a very clear picture of who they're serving and seems to be that that is not always the case in web 3.
And I think, maybe we're not borrowing from some of these frameworks that already work from traditional web 2 and then iterate from that. I think the hacker mentality sometimes gets the best of us and we really just try to build, and we forget about really where everything should be starting from, which is from that very human perspective, human level, which is who are we building this for? How are they going to be using this? Who are we and how do we connect with these individuals? And then having that really permeates the entire project or community organizations. And so, 100%. I agree with you. I think that's something that, we need to be more mindful of as we continue to develop these communities and projects.
The one thing that I wanted to maybe, want to explore a bit more with you, and because I have seen you tweet about this, so I'm curious about what you've found and maybe some of the other questions that maybe have surfaced from this. You're right. In terms of using technology in the traditional space, right.
Let's call it web 2, we don't ask, necessarily how the fundamental protocols work in order to be able to use email or browse the internet. Right. Or message one another. However, with blockchain, I feel like we do pay a lot of attention to this. And I guess I wonder if some of that is because of some of the technology that, or on the product side, some of the tools that we've built aren't necessarily so user-friendly. Where it's like, we're seeing a lot of the actual like protocols and, and framework. It's very visible, right? It isn't necessarily as user-friendly as maybe most tools would be in web 2. So I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing from that tweet, what do you think is without we need an order to make that leap, because it really feels like a leap more than a transition away from talking about this space from purely a technological perspective, to just simply being able to use something that is, friendly and just simply works.
Chase Chapman: This is something that I feel like people have been asking for a long time in crypto, and I think the less we ask it, the more likely we're in the moment where people are actually using it. And I say that because people used to ask this question, I think a lot more than they do now because we have built this ecosystem where we're like, oh, okay, cool.
We're not just talking about why don't people use NFTs for X, Y, and Z, or seeing actual use of NFTs in this digital sort of world, same goes for DAOs where it's not like why aren't people using DAOs for this? You actually see people using DAOs in interesting ways. The question of bridging web 2 and web 3, I think has also always been this big, topic of discussion.
And I actually think that there are a lot of people who are trying to bring people into the world of web 3. There are a lot of great companies like Dapper with NBA, top shot, and other projects that have done a lot of work in getting people into this space. And I used to say, I don't think about this as much, I guess, but I used to say like, actually sort of immersing yourself in web 3, like putting on VR goggles. It's just an entirely different world. Of course, that sounds kind of ridiculous and cliche, but really, I think once you buy into web 3, you start to recognize things like property rights, digitally, that hadn't had before. Even this idea around, owning the products and platforms that we use, once you're an owner of a product or a platform to go back to using software or listening to music or whatever that you're now used to owning feels terrible.
Even like, I always joke about this, like paying rent in my apartment instead of owning a house. I won't ever do that again. Once my lease is up and buying something because I'm so used to ownership now in a meaningful way. And I have this visceral reaction to rent extraction. And of course, I'm also in a position where that's even possible.
A lot of people don't have the resources to buy a house in general. I think more broadly what we're sort of doing is instead of this being like a leap from web 2 to web 3, I think what it actually is this slow cultural shift towards helping people see the power of ownership and the fact that that can exist digitally.
And I think that's cultural in the sense that it's a principle that we need to adapt and normalize and all of that kind of stuff. To me, the most powerful thing we can do is build experiences that are pretty seamless. That don't seem scammy that are much more approachable, but fundamentally that helps people understand the power of digital ownership, composability, and all of these different things. Like I bought my mom a shield, which is, this project that I know John Palmer and others for on. And she, I think fully started to understand the power of it when she saw that, not only are there likely going to be a lot of derivative projects, but also it's totally creative commons, so you can use it for whatever you want. Like all of these different things, there are these fundamental principles she started to grasp. And I actually think that matters even more than making sure that people are set up, you know, with Metamask and all this stuff.
Of course, that matters. But it's the principles I think that are important. And it's bridging those principles that I think is going to make one of the biggest differences when we think about, really transitioning from where we are today to web 3.
Humpty Calderon: And that's a wrap. I truly hope you enjoyed this conversation.
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