Episode 41: BanklessChick | DeSci & TalentDAO - Founder TalentDAO
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Status
Timestamps:
1:44 - 4:36 - BanklessChick’s Introduction to her Journey
4:36 - 11:40 - What is DeSci, how DeSci has evolved and how DeSci-centric DAOs have evolved.
11:40 - 12:29 - TalentDAO’s start
12:29 - 15:15 - The Vibe around DeSci with Conventions
15:15 - 21:56 - TalentDAOs role in the DAO landscape, with Decentralized Science
21:56 - 25:27 - The TalentDAO manifesto, and the results from the manifesto
25:27 - 30:18 - The role research plays in creating better communities.
30:18 - 36:34 - The importance of diversity in funding for communities.
36:34 - 42:01 - BanklessChick’s experience with diversity in DAOs and Web3
42:01 - End - BanklessChick’s Web3 Inspirations
Transcriptions
BanklessChick
Humpty: Welcome to Crypto Sapiens, a show that hosts lively discussions with innovative Web3 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 Bankless DAO, 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.
Hello and welcome back to Crypto Sapiens. Today we are talking to BanklessChick, Core founder of TalentDAO. Our conversation explores her background in research science, her contributions to BanklessDAO, including being a member of their Governance Solutions Engineers and the inspiration for launching Talent DAO.
As Bankless Chick says, ETH Denver was where she first learned of DeSci and is where Talent DAO was born. Later at Amsterdam is where Talent DAO made its debut. Bankless Chick believes DeSci will use science to save the world and the role of TalentDAO is to make sure that DAOs are using the best science to achieve that mission.
Finally, we tackle some of the diversity and inclusion issues plaguing the science community and present opportunities for DAOs to evaluate these issues to keep from repeating them. There's lots to unpack in this podcast. So, without further ado, let's get started.
BanklessChick: So I joined BanklessDAO I think in June of last year. So very early and at the time I was working in the Analytics Guild, Research Guild and Writer Guild, sort of just doing a lot of content creation and data analysis on, uh, discord data for the Bankless DAO. So you know, during that time just had the opportunity to get a lot of insights on how communities operate and communicate, coordinate, and I just found it very interesting and I saw just a really huge opportunity for just more DAO research to be done in the wider ecosystem in general. And I think there's a lot of people interested in DAO research, in DAO governance work. But the big thing I'm seeing, or kind of the biggest gap I saw is like there's a lack of like scientific rigor in a lot of the sort of thought leadership and opinionated frameworks that come out. So I said to myself like, Well, maybe we could create sort of DAO of researchers and sort of create a curated community of scientists, you know, create a who have both the interest and the capability to create, like, really high quality, uh, insights on sort of how DAOs operate and how they, you know, what they need to do to thrive. So really, Bankless style was kind of my crash course. Is working and what isn't working with DAOs, you know, we've had a lot of success with thir certain things and then other things we've struggled to do, like we've always kind of been working on our token utility and, and governance tends to change here and there. So I saw a real opportunity to kind of take my learnings from BanklessDAO, and I sort of used that as the problems I wanna solve with TalentDAO.
TalentDAO was officially started in October of 2021 and since then I've kind of had a foot in the door in BanklessDAO still a bit of a different capacity. So as you may know, I'm one of the governance solution engineers, which is basically kind of like a appointed group to do strategic work. For the DAO related to org design and governance and our priorities. So, you know, I don't have as good of eyes on the ground in some of the guilds that I used to, but it's been really nice to be able to sort of test different assumptions and experiments at Talent DAO and then take those insights back to the GSEs and see what we could do at the, uh, you know, to influence and implement new pilot ideas at BanklessDAO. Like So I guess that that journey was super organic and it was really just a natural extension of the things I was interested in and quickly realized that the themes I was doing at BanklessDAO could be a DAO in and of itself. So I wanted to test that assumption and so far it seems to have been, uh, a, a good intuition and I think talent dos had a lot of really great organic growth.
Humpty: Yeah. Thank you. I think a, that was wonderful introduction to your journey there, but also to the, to talent do and the space of DeSci. There's a lot here that I want to touch on and I wanna unpack. One of the things that I do want to, I guess ask that may lead us into a lot of interesting conversations here and maybe even touch on some of what you've already been sharing here. But, you know, the space of DeSci uh, decentralized science, that's not something that was necessarily part of our jargon language a year ago And, but it just feels like It's emergent, it's growing, There's a demand for it. Obviously TalentDAO is focused in the space of Desci research primarily. What, what does it mean that DeSci has been, you know, kind of growing at the pace that it has And that I think, and this is obviously just my opinion, but the projects that have been coming out in the space of DeSci seeing really robust and they're really good ideas that are finding communities that support them.
Bankless Chick: Yeah, it's really interesting. I always joke that I was working in DeSci before I knew DeSci was a thing, so I had actually never heard DeSci the concept until ETH Denver. So earlier, I guess in February of this year. It was the first time I had ever heard, heard of it, and had the opportunity to connect with a few different DAOs and, and different companies working in the space. And up until then, it was a really disparate community. I have to give a shout out to the Smart Contract Research Forum commonly referred to a SCRF they really did a great job at ETH Denver sort of bringing us all together and really kind of, you know, lighting the spark for what would start to form a creative or a cohesive ecosystem. And it was really neat being able to meet people. And I always compare it to kind of like the first time all the Avengers meet where it's kind of like, Oh, there’s some other superheroes, I didn't know you were doing this too. And it was a, it was a, it was an exciting time. It, it gave me the same vibes as sort of early bankless days when we had just launched and we were all just kind of running on a high and just felt like really uplifted. Prior to ETH Denver, I did not actually know anything about DeSci, but I can share some perspective from what I have learned to Kind of just doing a little history. I think the first time the term was ever mentioned was back around 2018 in our research paper about peer, the implications for peer review if we were to leverage sort of a peer-to-peer network that operated within like a blockchain smart contract protocol. So super interesting paper and very influential in my own thinking on how to do peer review. And since then, you know, the Primarily most dominant narrative in the DeSci marketplace right now is really focused on biotech and pharmaceutical, which makes sense because it's a relatively lucrative sort of commercialized aspect of science. You know, it might not be the most purest form of scientific endeavor. But I think that what organizations like Molecule have done, what DAOs, like VitaDAO have done and what they are doing is really exciting. And to those who don't know, so Molecule is sort of like a NFT marketplace for biotech companies to basically use NFTs for fundraising. And then VitaDAO is a DAO that funds, um, longevity research. It was one of the first DAOs that molecule helped launch from their launchpad. There's a few others, so like DeSci Labs similar to TalentDAO and that we're working to build both communities and infrastructure and tooling. DeSci world is kind of like a DeSci Metaverse is what they aspire to be. So there's a lot of really cool projects out there. There's a company called OpSci that's working on identity solutions. Think that right now there is a lack of sort of shared direction and goals within the ecosystem. It's been interesting to see how a lot of the, what I would call like scientific knowledge domains have formed hierarchies in traditional Web2 academia.
I'm seeing this same thing happen in DeSci and, and what I mean by that, like to speak very plainly, like everybody cares about, you know, Biology research but social science has always kind of been like not as important. And, and that's like very true for like very many different sciences, right? Like physics versus chemistry versus like astrophysics versus, you know, marine biology. All of these receive different funding allocations by the government, and those funding allocations really reflect the different sciences that we tend to value or focus on. And I think one of the ideals of decentralized science is that we fix some of that hierarchy. But so far I haven't seen that in kind of the current state of DeSci so before I keep talking about that, I think I could ramble on for DeSci a little bit. So I'm gonna like pause for a second and let you reign me back in if you wanna, if you wanna clarify on anything.
Humpty: No, it's fine. I can let you ramble all you want. I mean, it's, this is such a, such a novel space for me. While I would admit that I probably have more knowledge than maybe others in the space, it, it is just not a space that I would normally occupy. The space of research and science and to see this kind of developing as a domain in Web3, It is, it is thrilling, but also it's something that I can't keep up with. So I, I appreciate your rabbit, the rabbit hole you were taking me on, but let, let's, I would do wanna touch on something here that you mentioned and then we can continue and that is in terms of the impact That ETH Denver had in terms of organizing people and maybe even surfacing some terminology and standardizing maybe even more so that terminology, and that is something that I've been hearing a lot of when I interview people for this podcast that they mention often that ETH Denver was influential to them because either that was their first conference or that was the first time that they actually got to connect with people that were building in similar spaces to them or validated the work that they were doing. It just seems like ETH Denver has this gravitational pull that brings people together and then has a reputation that goes back, you know, several years, which then allows for some of these ideas maybe to become a little bit more, you know, solidified if you will and gain more traction. So it's just interesting to hear that for you, you also had a similar experience at least with connecting with people, but also having an un, a deeper understanding of that DeSci itself was a movement. Beyond what you were already doing with TalentDAO, because you were mentioning earlier that TalentDAO was established October of the year before.
BanklessChick: Yeah. I think a lot of people refer to ETH Denver as DeSci's breakout moment. And I would certainly agree with that. To this day, there's actually a, a, a community steward group that we formed, that’s about 10 different people all representing different communities, We’ve been having multisig DeSci.eth, very proud that we own that and we still meet weekly to discuss what we are working on. We have in the past funded Travel Grants for people to attend different conferences and we sponsored some of the funding Amsterdams DeSci band which is if ETH Denver was a breakout moment I would say Amsterdam is our big day bio. So it was like our, we had a three day venue event full of DeSci speakers, and it, that was sort of the first time this was in April now that it really felt like we were of a more for focused community. But I definitely agree i think ETH Denver is a really special place. I personally am burnt out on conferences for the rest of this year, but ETH Denver will definitely be one I, I am sure to attend every year. It's just a, a really great experience.
Humpty: Yeah, I agree with you In terms of the, the conferences, they do tend to take up a lot of energy as much as you can gain from them, especially because there's a lot of travel involved. For most of us, we're not next door to where a lot of these events are happening. I would recommend checking out MCON that's coming up It's around the corner. It's in September. It's in Denver. A lot of the same folks that gravitate to ETH Denver go to MCON that's also in Denver. So just if you were interested in maybe one more with similar vibes in terms of builders, in terms of the types of conversations that are hosted there. That's a fun one. I attended last year and I planned to attend again this year. So, you know, just as a heads up for that one, maybe save a little energy for it if you were interested in it, but yeah, no, it's, it's really great to hear too how the space of DeSci and individuals who have connected like yourselves, you know, ETH Denver, continue to evolve both your relationships, the communications, and the work that you're doing through these, you know, in-person events. It just seemed also, it was hard to miss The energy and activity happening at ETH Amsterdam, even for those of us who weren't there because Crypto Twitter was a blaze with comments and vibes in terms of the people who were there and the types of events that they were participating in and the type of people that they were connecting with. So I'm happy to hear that you had a wonderful experience there and were able to take a lot from it as well
Bankless Chick: Yeah, it was a good time and I have to admit you, you're making a liar outta me a little bit. So I did apply to MCON that is the last official conference. If I do get accepted to go, that'll be the last one I do for this year. But I agree, it looks really cool. I think it's meta cartels hosting. It looks like Cabin DAO is involved. I actually just got back from Dan in Austin at the ca, The Creative Commons, they have like cabin do has like this little cabin out and just about 40 minutes outside of Austin. And we rented it for like this retreat and a handful of DAO contributors from the DeSci space. We all showed up and co-worked for a week together. But all this to say, it looks like a really good group is putting that conference on.
Humpty: I second that as well. Having been there last year, which apparently was our first one, it didn't feel like it because it was so well organized. I would expect nothing less than that For this second event for the second year. So just to get back on to our to topic here, one of the things that you mentioned previously was the lack of shared directive and goals happening in the space of DeSci. And maybe that's something that can also be applied to DAOs, where sure, there may be a few exceptions in terms of DAOs and the direction that they have and shared goals that they operate under. I wonder if you wouldn't mind speaking to maybe the role that TalentDAO could potentially fill or support in terms of helping DAOs become a little bit more organized, helping DAOs become a little bit more, I guess, with better direction based on the quantifiable research that you performed there? Are you doing anything like that? Is that kind of on the horizon? Is that kind of the intention of DeSci and TalentDAO?
Bankless Chick: Yeah, really good question. And I think this makes us, makes a really good distinction on how TalentoDAO is, is like really different than the rest of DeSci because we are not sort of only DeSci you and most of the sort of existing DeSci crews, like they were DeSci people that got into DAO. Whereas Talent, DAO is a DAO that got into DeSci right? So like a lot of these, uh, existing communities, they're using DAOs as a means to an end, but they're not like studying DAOs. So like, Talent DAO itself is more into like meta science. And we specifically are focused on studying coordination structures, organizational structures, team dynamics, you know, DAO contributor like engagement and burnout. So, From our perspective, DeSci is an experiment, like they are our research participants. So like we're not trying to build the next Covid drug or like fund longevity research or, you know, all those other things which are really cool, but that's not what we're focused on. So I think our role in DeSci is to help create direction for the entire ecosystem and to help ensure that all these different DeSci DAOs truly succeed using the best possible. Science we have available. So like right now we are, we're doing a couple things to try to support that. We have an ongoing study related to decentralized leadership, which has been really exciting. We've already one content piece out related to that, which is like this huge literature review written by, uh, one of the scientists in our community and they cite like a hundred years of literature and Basically set the stage for what it looks like to to lead leaderlessly in DAOs so we're also doing some research in onboarding DAOs governance well as community engagement and sort of what we call network health. So I think like our intentions is to kind of have one foot in and one foot out of DeSci you know we talk about like how crypto's in a bubble like deci is in like DeSci bubble within a bubble. Within a bubble. They are very isolated with blinders on. And many of the people in that space have zero experience with DAOs. So like, it's a very different demographic, right? Like the, the DeFi people give off very different vibes, very different competencies, very different backgrounds than a lot of the people that end up in DeSci and that's okay. But I think the, the biggest existential threat for DeSci right now is relying on traditional ways of organizing and coordinating and not truly fully leveraging the power of DAOs and sort of like blockchain native coordination tools and governance tools. So I think if DeSci's job is to use science to save the world TalentDAO's job is to use, you know, make sure that DAO Built in the DeSci ecosystem are using the best science to achieve their mission.
Humpty: That’s interesting. So it almost seems like Talent DAO is operating in this kind of tooling space, but at the human level versus, you know, at the product or tech level.
BanklessChick: Yeah, I think that's an interesting way to phrase it. I wouldn't disagree. I phrased it before as sort of like the coordination layer versus the governance layer. Orca calls this trustware versus socialware I think David Hoffman's referred to it as layer zero, where like we're really are focused on that human coordination layer in like how do we build the tools that you can't see, but you know, we need them. So we certainly are interested in like building open source technology tools, but we are mostly focused on like optimizing the human protocol, I guess.
Humpty: Yeah, that's amazing. It just reminds me a little bit of, of our own personal mission here at Crypto Sapiens. Right. Can be perceived as just being a podcast, a media project. But there is something more beyond that When we connect people, when we reach out to projects and individuals to feature them and you know, kind of share about the work that they're doing and the impact that they're making in the space of Web3, it really is to create a space that's more inclusive, a space that is accessible so that we can bridge that gap As we set out and the royal we of onboarding the next billion people to Web3 right? Like it's a nice term, but really what does it mean There's more to that And we feel that there needs to be something more substantial and part of that is the human connection. So I really like that cuz it just kind of reminded me of, of some of what we do here as well. So thank you for that
BanklessChick: Yeah, definitely. I, I say this in our manifesto and it's, I quote it on my business card that I, I am under the opinion that DAOs are the greatest human coordination experiment of our time. So, you know, Talent DAO is here to study that and to figure out what works. I think I said this on Twitter a few days ago, that I, I am fully convinced that the insights that we uncover over the next five years will help define how we think about DAOs and how they are structured over the next 50 years. I do believe that most of the seminal sort of academic literature on DAOs has yet to be written. And I think Talent DAO is gonna be an author of a lot of it.
Humpty: Well, I'm excited for that. So you've introduced the Manifesto and I'm glad you did because I did want to touch on that, I think as a really powerful piece that was shared. Can you just briefly touch on What that is really it's intention and some of the results that you've seen from sharing that manifesto with your community.
BanklessChick: Yeah definitely. So I think for us, the manifesto is, is really kind of context setting on why we're here and why we do what we do. Many manifestos, you know, might go into DAO Mechanics, or tokenomics, and or incentive protocols. We don't, we don't touch on any. You know that stuff is coming, but this is really kind of the preamble to what Talento does and and the thesis statement overall If I was to sum up the manifesto, it's that traditional work is broken in that we are unable to push humanity forward at any anymore based on our current work structures. And in order for everyone to pursue what we call self sovereign work, it becomes necessary for us to explore this new frontier. So That's kind of the, the main thesis is that traditional works broken, DAOs offer sort of an optimal way to coordinate in that you as a worker should have the ability to work anywhere you want, whenever you want. So we kind of set the stage explaining the trends and this, this applies globally, but it is more of a, a US-centric view. So I will acknowledge that some of the data we cite is, is based off the US basically since the 1970s Welf Income inequality has rapidly increased. It's actually as high as it's been since the Great Depression and It might actually be higher now, and then also factor in inflation, high as it's ever been.
Another graphic we show is the amount of money you earn proportionate to the productivity you generate. So since the seventies, productivity has increased linearly at a like nearly 1,000 x, but wages has remained flat. So, you know, we, we make the argument that while your value and productivity has continued to increase the value generated to you, hasnt, And at the same time, wealth inequality is increasing. So your value is being extracted from others. And that's why we have this thesis that traditional work has failed us and that really there is no opportunity for individuals to be autonomous anymore. So that kind of defines, you know, from the societal sort of macroeconomic perspective, why DAOs have emerge and then the rest of the manifesto discusses more specifically the promise of DAOs and why we think they, They are very promising, but they haven't really quite hit the mark. There's a lot of work to do and then, you know, we kind of close out with the only way to ensure DAOs succeed is to create a new focus scientific field that is solely focused on studying DAOs.
It's interesting for us because getting into DeSci is sort of a means to an end and In that the only way that we think you can successfully study DAOs is if you are a DAO and you sort of are working through these problems yourself and you have to create an entire new research publication system that is community owned, that's fully transparent, that's on chain and open source. So that's kind of like what talent art does to exist. We have this thesis that traditional works broken DAOs are very promising, but there's a lot of work to go, so we have to do good research. And because this is a new field, we need a new type of research. So we're focused right now on building sort of this peer review called the Journal of Decentralized Work and publishing our findings about DAOs in the process.
Humpty: Yeah. You kind of touched on something that I wanted to, you know, talk, talk to you about and that that was, does good research help us create better communities? And I think you kind of were sharing, I think in, in, in your current statement that if we organize You know, around, you know, DAOs and you know, like what TalentDAO has done and we work together to do good research, We can build better systems, we can build more thriving communities, and I think that can be applied to DAOs as well. I know one thing that You mentioned being interested in discussing as well, so I think now as good as time as ever to talk about is building inclusive communities in science. So let's, let's maybe use that as a segue in terms of how DeSci has grown from, you know, its genesis and how we can build more inclusive communities just generally and also in the space of science.
BanklessChick: Yeah, that's a really good question and, and certainly a topic I'm very passionate about personally. So I think like at a high level, science in general is not well represented. You know, most scientists are male pri primarily Caucasian or then I think like maybe like Indian are like the two main demographics that are, that are in stem. And I saw a graphic on Twitter a couple days ago that was like something like two or 3% of scientists and physics are actually women. So like, it's a, it's, it's definitely not as diverse of a field that I, that I would like. And so far DeSci is about the same which isn't too surprising. I mean, we have diversity is and inclusion challenges in sort of wide crypto in general, and I think this is only amplified by sort of that other state problem statement I mentioned earlier in that, that there's certain science fields that get more attention than others, Right? So and, and that's understandable. Like curing the, the implications of curing cancer. Are are gonna be far, far more important than the implications of developing a new survey for like a employee engagement measure, Right? They're just different themes. But the problem is, most of these communities, I'm not seeing a ton of effort going into making them more inclusive.
So I think that there are a few existing groups doing some sort of advocacy work and raising awareness. But the majority of DeSci right now is still primarily young white male founders, which don't have any issue with that. I would just like to see more representation and particularly fundraising. I tweeted about this a while ago. This, this has been a really weird experience for me cuz I started TalentDAO prior to my transition. So I had sort of this experience of trying to fundraise and do business being perceived as a male versus now as as a trans woman. I, I feel, I find my personal experiences very different certainly more challenging, certainly more awkward, and I think that, you know, that's, that's like that for a lot of people that are either women or come from some sort of demographic that is historically underrepresented. I think that what we're trying to do with our research is figure out ways that we can enable sort of best practices that create an opportunity for Inclusivity to be part of the emergent process. You know, part of DAO to me that's so exciting is like a lot of it's self organized. So like, it's like how do you create opportunities for the type of emergence you want? So like a few things we do at TalentDAO that we talk about is like how we handle onboarding is probably not as, you know, large scale or as efficient as it could be, but it's very individualized, it's very personalized and it's very sensitive to the fact that Some people are more shy than others. Some people prefer one on one communication. Some people like to chat versus text. Some people like to text versus chat. Um, so we try to onboard people one at a time and are sensitive to their sort of cultural and demographic background. And I think that while our growth has been more organic, I think it's been very fruitful in that a lot of our team is very diverse. Like even on the core team, we have several women, people of color. We've got people from different parts of the world, like Italy, Chile, Africa, you know, all over the East and West coast of the US. And I think that that wouldn't have been possible without us, you know, kind of implementing some of those intentional practices.
Humpty: You've really shared a lot here and I think there's a lot to go through. Certainly I think in terms of onboarding and creating better mechanisms to connect with people that come from different backgrounds, that have different levels of engagement or different comfort levels of engagement, I think is important and certainly a space that is important to me as well. And in terms of scaling organizations to ensure that they remain diverse. Right? Having that present and maybe even top of mind as you're developing these mechanisms, I think that that's really interesting And thirdly, the other thing you touched on was fundraising. Both as a perceived white, you know, as a white male, and then someone who is a trans woman. Like I think that that is interesting and I want to touch on all of these things. So why don't we just go in order. I think the first thing you touched on was in terms of like fundraising and I, I do see that there's a gap here in, you know, uh, I would consider myself, I guess, part minority, but you know, part majority being a Latino man. And, but there is certainly, you know, in, in Crypto Twitter, a lot of conversations that are happening in the gap, the, the gaps that exist in terms of fundraising when it comes to women and certainly for individuals in the LGBTQ community. So what do you think we can do and maybe what are some ideas you can offer? In terms of how we can improve the fundraising systems so that we are more cognizant of diverse communities and projects that are led by individuals from different groups and, and, and then that way that we can spread that funding across different types of projects, you know, led by different types of people.
BanklessChick: Yeah, that's a really tough question and it's one of those things where, you know, I always try to bring solutions not problems to the conversation, and this is one of those conversations where right now I have a lot more problems than I do solutions. I think that something that would make it more helpful is to have a way for projects to be evaluated independent of the background of the founders. I mean, obviously you want to know like their skills and like their work and education background and track record, but do you really need to know their, their gender or their orientation or whatever, You know, whatever from the, from the first pitch call, Probably not, I know from personal experience that, you know, I don't always like to go on camera, A lot of people don't, and that's pretty common in crypto. And depending on the call, I sometimes go on camera, but a lot of times they won't. And I think some in like investors that really rubs them the wrong way. And I think that it's a bit unfair to make assumptions of sort of a person's capability or professional experience or interests simply if You guys didn't wanna be on camera. Maybe they just look like shit that day. Maybe, you know, like it's, it's, it doesn't have to be that complex of reasoning for not wanting to, I think that if we had sort of a platform that let people sort of rate ideas and, and rank different projects and opportunities independent of the teams Like almost kind of like, you know, I'm thinking in a research perspective now, like double blind studies, right? You know, this is like classic stuff. There's been so many studies on hiring bias and like if you have two candidates and you review their credentials, they have the same credentials. As soon as you know, the demographic or gender or what that other those candidates look like, that factors in to who you favor more. So I think like in a lot of the pre-screening that goes into pitching, it would be great for that to be more anonymous or pseudo anonymous. I also think like there probably needs to be, like for VC firms and stuff, they probably need to get more culture and sensitivity training. I don't think there's, I don't think it's necessarily malicious. I just think there's a lot of ignorance. People are ignorant. You know, for me personally, this is typically the, It's funny, so these are like usually the two scenarios I run into, I either get if people meet me on Twitter, they see Bankless Chick, and then I get on the call and they go, Oh, is this actually like, who is this again? Like very clearly. They're like, Why do you sound like a dude? And I'm like, Okay, well here's why. Blur on the flip side, you know, my discord handle and, and a lot of my sort of initial on chain identity was tagged to this Saul Thorn thing, which is very like androgynous slash like masculine leaning. So I'll hop in the call and they'll be like, Oh, I thought Saul Thorn's a dude. Like you, are you not a Dude? So it's just like, either way, it's just like, it, it's, it's an awkward situation for everybody. And I think it distracts from the core purpose of the conversation which is, do you have a addressable market with a, with an opportunity? Do you have a problem we're solving? Do you have a community that has traction and cares about it? And do you have a team that can pull off the solutions to build it? And if the answer is to all of that's yes, Then it really shouldn't matter who I am, what I look like, what I care about, what I think, and I'm just not seeing that as as the reality today. So I don't know what the solutions will be, but I think probably the two easiest ones are create more sort of pseudo anonymous processes to evaluate pitches and probably provide more training to people who are actively doing a lot of investments and meeting with a lot of people. I Wish I had more ideas, but right now I, I'm, I'm pretty stumped myself to be honest.
Humpty: Yeah, those are, and again, thank you for walking us through that experience and some of those ideas. I think those are really, really important and great ideas. I wonder, Now that we're seeing these decentralized funding DAOs, right, How that can change, I've seen these funding DAOs or Venture DAOs be more diverse. I think that's, that's certainly something that plays a role in my opinion, is who is your leadership? Do they occupy, you know, some of these groups as well, You know, are they members of some of these more underrepresented groups? And if so, they may be more sensitive to recognizing founders from these groups as well. And you know, in other words, maybe some of these individuals, if you come from a majority group, You don't necessarily see these. They may, they may not even, you know, come up into your periphery for some reason or the other. But having more diverse organizations certainly allows for people from different backgrounds to recognize others from their own communities. And I think that's certainly one way. But I do like the idea of also having processes that are Pseudonymous, especially in the space of Web2. I, I just feel like that just goes hand in hand, right? There's a certain pseudonymous nature for, you know, crypto for Web3, and it would be interesting to see how something like that would work. Obviously, something that I am thinking of regularly being that I also am co-founded to a project that's in the space of reputation where it seeks to surface your reputation based on your activity and your history of work versus who you are. Like revealing your identity isn't always a, something that validates you as an individual who is reputable.
It is actually the work that you do. And so how can we build on that? And so I wonder if there's also a level of decentralized trust that can be earned based on your commitment to developing in the space of Web3. The, you know, the, the legacy, the body of work that you have based on both your traditional, you know, maybe Web2 work and also the work that you're doing in Web3. So because all of this is emergent, I think that there's a lot of opportunities and I would be really curious to see how maybe even technology can help bridge some of these issues.
BanklessChick: Yeah, I definitely think that fundraising mechanisms that DAOs and Web3’s provide is a huge opportunity to be more inclusive. I, myself, personally, actually have had a much better experience having the ability to remain pseudonym anonymous and have multiple on chain identities. I think that's a real benefit to people that historically might get singled out. I always tell people that, you know, I came out to People had banklessDAO before I did publicly, like in the real world. And I did that mainly because I felt comfortable sort of exposing that part of myself under the auspice of, you know, an identity that was kind of inconsequential. Like if it blew up in my face and you know, hundreds of transphobes attack me. Okay, well delete Saulthorin and create a new Twitter and move on. So I do think like there's a lot of benefits to pseudoanonymity and I think that, you know, having the ability to fundraise like things like what cultDAO is doing is just so cool. Um, how they're just kind of truly decentralized Investing in public goods, I think is like very promising mechanisms that could hopefully in the future may diversity more, more equitable. Last time I checked, less than 2% of all VC funding went to women. If I had to guess and dissect that number for trans women, it's probably less than like 0.05%, maybe less than that. So like, yeah, we've got a lot of work to do, but I think that DAO's, you know, on chain reputation and identity systems, Presents a huge opportunity to reinvent the world of business for minorities.
Humpty: Yeah, 100%. And you know, I personally, because we've been in the Bankless DAO, I think almost as long as one another, I have seen your transition. I remember one of those, I think it was DAOversity was an init initiative that we were building out within the Bankless DAO. And you were in attendance and you came in and you yourself started to open up to us and it was beautiful to see. And I did see the transition even in the, in the, in the name Saulthorin to Bankless Chick and how you had both and at one point you're like, Eh, I'm gonna afford Go Saulthorin and you knows Bankless Chick. So I will recognize that as well and add that to the introduction that, you know, Bankless Chick is an identity and one that you Are very proud of and seem to go by on, on Twitter at least.
BanklessChick: Yeah, it's um, I, so I have on my profile, my pinned tweet, I just explained this, I created this business card and all, it doesn't have my real name. All it has is 3.eth addresses and each dot eth address signifies a different part of sort of my professional life or on chain Web3 life. I break down, like why I chose two Different names instead of consolidate them all. But Bankless Chick is obviously like, I love what Bankless is doing. I'm a big believer and I've said before, like, I would love to see everybody who wants to be, and the talentDAO server completely bankless by 2030. So that's like a, a, a personal goal of mine. So I purposefully have this username in the Twitter space because I like to rep it publicly. I still use Saulthorin in the Discord though, and I, I don't see that changing just cuz it would be Very difficult at this point to like switch thousands of people that know me in that name. I, I don't really wanna have to redo all that reputation, but yeah, I agree It has been, I, I remember that call actually, the diversity call, and that was one example of a safe space that I think Bankless created for me.
Humpty: That's amazing Well, we're reaching the top of the hour here, That's amazing I can't believe time has flown by because this has been such an amazing conversation with you. We've covered so much and I've learned so much more about you that I didn't know before. So yeah, I appreciate you coming on. There's one question that I like to close out with and so I will go ahead and, uh, ask you that question and you know, and please do answer it however you wish, you know, in, in the space of Crypto Twitter or just generally doesn't have to be on Twitter. Well, who is one person that you follow that has been influential to your crypto journey?
BanklessChick: Interesting. I'm gonna try so hard not to pick anybody from BanklessHQ cuz I feel like they've been influential for all of us. But that to me is obviously a given. I mean, David and Ryan literally opened my eyes to a different world. Um, so I'm forever thankful to that. I think outside of that, I really appreciate some of the tweets from Frogmonkee has done some really great stuff that I appreciate. I'm trying to think of another person that there's just, honestly, there's so many. This is a really hard question. I wish I would've had time to think about this. I would say that certainly the Bankless people, certainly like Bankless OGs in general, Josh Rosenthal, actually, I really like a lot of the stuff he says, like he's, he's very philosophical in his content and I appreciate that. I would say like that is a high level answer
Humpty: Yeah. This is something that I'm trying that's new. Um, because, you know, the whole purpose of this podcast at least, is to, you know, amplify and add visibility to people who are building in the space of Web3, Right? And so I'm always curious to hear who has been influential to those who we bring onto the stage here so that, you know, we can connect with them, we can give them more visibility and if we have the opportunity to bring 'em onto the stage here as well. So I appreciate you sharing the names of those individuals. We'll be following those that I'm not already. And uh, yeah, thank you for your time. I really appreciate you coming here and you know, kind of sharing your story and introducing us to the space of DeSci.
BanklessChick: Yeah. Happy too. Thank you so much, Humpty. Thanks to all the team at Crypto Sapiens and it was fun. We'll have to do it again sometime.
Humpty: And that's a wrap.
I really enjoyed my chat with Bankless Chick. I especially enjoyed our talk on human coordination and building the tools we can't see, but know that we need to connect with Bankless Chick, Please follow her on Twitter @saltthorin. And to learn more about TalentDAO, go to talentdao.io and on Twitter at Talentdao_
Thanks for listening to Crypto Sapiens. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five star review wherever you enjoy your podcast. It cause $0 means the world to us and helps others discover this content too. You can also find more conversations like this one by visiting our website at cryptosapiens.xyz.
I look forward to reconnecting with you at our next discussion.