Bankless - Addressing BanklessDAO Drama

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

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

How do we start this, dude? I don't know, man. God, what a weekend. I think there's, I'm okay. How about you? Pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, okay, so we're going to enter this conversation.

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

the first topic is David and I accidentally became main characters this weekend on Twitter there was massive backlash against bank. It dominated all of crypto Twitter. Yes, there were stories about it. It was intense. And we were in the middle of it. So we're going to talk about what happened. We're going to talk about did we deserve it.

We're going to talk about like, what do we do? And then I think there's one common theme of this episode, David, which is the next topic. Why are we here? I feel like I had another glimpse of that existential crypto crisis of like, what am I even doing here? What are we doing? What are the rest of us doing here? And also, where are the apps? I mean, it's all under that theme.

So bankless listener, I hope you will give us some grace if we are a little self-indulgent today. Maybe a little more nihilistic than usual. I hope not. But I'm feeling a little down in the dumps as we go to this episode, David. I don't know about you. Yeah, existential is a word that comes to mind, certainly. Existential? Was this an existential crisis?

All right. We're going to get into all of it. But before we do, our friends and sponsors over at NEAR have a message for bankless listeners. So is that, David. Near data availability is a thing for Ethereum roll-ups at a fraction of the cost that it costs for roll-ups to purchase Ethereum's data availability. You can purchase some data from NEAR instead at 1,000th of the cost, I think, 8,000 times cheaper. I don't know if that math works out. But near is not only just a layer one for NEAR as it is all.

always been, but it is now also a data availability for Ethereum rollups as well. Working with Polygon to help onboard many new chains and many more developers into the world of Ethereum-based roll-ups and NIR-based data availability. There is a link in the show notes to get started with NIR. David, did NIRPaid you say that? You're dirty Gryder. Near, NIR paid the company that I am a owner of to pay, they paid me to say that. Wow. Apparently makes me a grifter for like a decent chunk of crypto Twitter's beliefs. I am in disbelief at that, David, that you would dare have a sponsor on this show. Let's talk about the first. And this is where we get a little self-indulgent. So I don't know how your Thanksgiving was, David, but mine was just fantastic. And then Black Friday came out. And it was

very black. It was very dark for me. My Thanksgiving was Friday because we did it a day late because half the family was watching football. You were dealing with this drama. It was on Thanksgiving for me. Dude, I'm sorry, man. See, I was able to put my phone down. I was like, okay, there's a mess going on over there, but I'm, this turkey is delicious. Well, you were putting your phone down. I was fighting on Twitter. Yeah, you're recording with people. Let's talk about what happened. So this was one of the first tweets I saw. Another day, another attempt to drain Arbitrum Dow Treasury. And here's a picture of me. You. Looks like a play Reverse Rino card. and what am I doing?

This is a picture of me attempting it looks like to drain the Arbitrum Treasury for $1.8 million. Hey, you paid me a modest amount. You're trying to drain the Arbitrum Dow for $2 million. What are you doing, bro? Okay, so there is this proposal proposed by the bankless Dow for global education onboarding campaign. Here's the link to the proposal. It's a full abstract. It's basically a marketing education proposal put together by the bankless Dow.

Could you give some context in like what we're talking about, what this proposal is, what this particular Twitter account is complaining about why they're charging you and I with trying to drain the arbitram treasury, David? Sure. So the bankless Dow is a collection of sub-DAOs, each kind of specializing in different arenas, if you will. So there's translations. And then every single like translation also like there,

people that it will translate stuff into Spanish and people that it'll translate stuff into like German. So each one of those, it's shown like organization. And then there's like the marketing department. And then there's like onboarding and educational docs. There's many different departments that come together and this all of this amalgamated into this package that Bankless Dow proposed to Arbitrum for 1.8 million ARB tokens, $2 million, to do all of these things if the Arbitrum Dow accepts. So Bankless Dow amalgamates all these services. Here's what we will do. Here's all of the services. Offer. Trade offer.

We have all this package for you. We receive $2 million dollars of Arb tokens. 1.8 million tokens precisely, which is valued at about a dollar each or so. So like $1.8 to $2 million. Yeah, exactly. Another tweet. So bankless literally rating treasuries and grants,

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

which is our mine and Ryan's Bankless LLC. That our Twitter account. And so they say, hey, Bankless HQ is literally raiding treasuries and begging for grants. And they are, what they are doing is they are thinking that this bankless Dow proposal to Arbitrum is us, is bankless HQ, not bankless Dow. And so the overlap, like bankless Dow and all those services provided are provided by a bunch of workers in the Dow. And then there's Bankless HQ, which is what

we are. And we are not asking arbitram for the $2 million of tokens. And we would not be receiving $2 million of tokens. Only the Dow would. And people are confused about the lines that separate HQ and Dow. And as I say these words, I'm like, yeah, okay, I kind of get it. You kind of get why they're confused. I kind of get why they're confused. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, so we were on the receiving end of this attack. Like, you should change your name from Bankless to shameless. There is just a lot of charges that David and I in Bankless is just a company that likes to grift people and rip people off. I've heard many similar stories from you guys, industry insiders who dealt with you. You have to own up to this and accept or change your ways. Stop being a grifter, David and Ryan, was the basic charge. And then there were just like other straight out mean tweets like this.

Like this guy goes, Ryan, you're getting old. Your job as a man was to leave behind a legacy, something of value for future generations. The time is ticking, but it's already too late. They will remember you for living a half-ass life, grifting to make ends meet, a faceless man, half-man, half-meam. Well, half-man is correct. But it's actually half-ro-butt. So tweets like this were absolutely like just pouring in my timeline.

It was everywhere. Deffening. It was overwhelming. It was, I didn't know that there were that many people left in crypto. It was seemingly all of them. And it was very difficult when a lot of these are anonymous accounts or a lot of these are accounts. I don't really know. Some of them aren't though, David.

And some of them were jumping on this train and just being like, yeah, like, what's up? What's bankless doing over there? Why does it need this money? And it was so inundated that every time we tried to explain in a thread, you'd just be drowned it out by all of these haters say. If you've never experienced like a social media mob attack, it's very painful. It's very intense. It's like a mass, like a crowd. Like throwing rocks at you. It's like it's like a Twitter DDoS of hate. It's like it's a hate hate DDoS. Basically. And so I tried an effort to actually clarify this. And this was a little defensive, I would say, but but I was seeking a bit more to clarify. So the reality is a few things. Bankless Dow. is actually a completely separate entity from bankless media,

the podcast that you're listening to, the LLC that David and I run. So the Dow is actually a community that neither David or myself or any in our media company control. And that's actually how DAOs are supposed to work. So maybe you could explain the genesis of the Dow itself and how it's kind of separate. Yeah. So in 2021, the rise of bankless from being kind of a niche media organization catering to just like the people that were left in the bear market of 2019. Bankless kind of rose in popularity as Ethereum did, as the bull market did, as the crypto markets did in 2021.

And by the time the mid of 2021 came around, like crypto was on like a lot of people's radar. That's where we had got like Mark Cuban on. And that's where we got just like we popularized Ethereum to YouTube in ways that most people didn't. And we're explaining it. So bankless was having a very great moment of success after grinding it out in the bare market for a while. simultaneously while we were having just a lot of new listeners kind of onboarding people onto the mission this idea of dows comes about and me and ryan your your dms my dms on twitter are just flooded with support of people saying hey i just love what you guys are doing

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

for like the bankless idea, the bankless mission, the bankless ideology. And we don't have enough room at bankless HQ, bankless LLC to fit all of this. Smash those things together. You make a Dow. Bankless Dow was in September 8th, 2021. We mint this token. We find all of the on-chain footprints that we can for bankless aligned people. And we just airdrop the token to them. and say, boom, we've made bankless Dow. We had a Discord set up, like, go into the Discord. And from then on, it started to auto-organize. And so one of the first proposals we put forward to the Dow,

so again, we had no tokens at Inception. One of the first proposals was Genesis proposal. So David and I don't write smart contracts. We couldn't spin up the website. There's a group of people who helped us kind of incept this thing and launch it. And we called that kind of the bankless Genesis team. And so we submitted a vote to the Dow with their existing tokens to allocate to the Genesis, bankless Genesis team and bankless LLC 25% of the total bank supply.

And that would give these entities kind of like governance moving forward and some potential level of control. And there were 12 people in the Genesis team, including you, some developers, website developers, designers, et cetera. Yes. And of that bankless LLC, I think got 15%. You and I got like three or four percent individually and the rest of the Genesis. Your team kind of got the rest.

Now, an important element of the story, bankless has not sold any tokens at all, has not participated in any votes so far. Neither have David nor myself sold any tokens or participated in any voting. I mean, I think it quickly became apparent that we couldn't coordinate all of the energy that was being outputted by the Dow. And so we were best in position to just kind of like lead the movement by way of podcasts, by our newsletter. Like there was so much activity in there. Every time I would go into the Dow Discord, I would just get overwhelmed by like, I can't

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

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

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

like, we intercepted it. We minted the tokens. That's true. And that's true. We have the tokens. Yes. Yeah. And so like, what do you mean you're not affiliated with the Dow?

You guys fucking made it. We just meant we didn't create that proposal and didn't know about it. And the financial proceeds don't go to us. But I think a lot of people in crypto Twitter was having none of it. And so some people were like, then why did you even create the Dow in the first place? Right. And part of it like, here's why. It's because we wanted to try this Dow experiment.

We wanted to experiment with bankless as a headless brand. The idea of bankless is not that it's just a podcast or a news. The idea of bankless is that it's a movement that everyone can go bankless. And so we wanted to create surface area, crypto native surface area, so that people who are attached to the movement could find a way to get in a Discord room and actually collaborate and do this. And by the way, by the way, people don't know this, but bankless Dow was doing a lot. Yeah, they're doing so much. It's one of the Taoist Dow's that exist.

They've spun up all sorts of different products. They have different chapters. a bankless Brazil that we've gotten to know over there. There's a bankless Japan, translating content, creating educational content. There's a bankless Africa, all sorts of international branches. Like, the Dow is doing things. It's not doing everything perfectly, okay? But like, these are fantastic people. It's not a rug. It's not a grift. It's an actual Dow that operates by way of Discord channel to organize their community and by way of token vote. And it's actually a really cool experiment. Yeah, and I think this is where a lot of the misunderstanding comes from. It's like most people

when they think of DAO, it's like MakerDAO or the AVE DAO. There's like one centralized DAO where there's like a central command and list of people. And that's just like not how like the bankless DAO works. Like the actual bankless Dow is actually a subset like an amalgamation of a bunch of sub-dows. There's like 20, 40 plus different sub-DAOs inside of bankless Dow. And the actual head of the organization doesn't exist. There's a few like coordinators that coordinate resources and manage like stuff between sub-DAOs. But like the actual the bankless Dow is actually much more of a blurry line than what people are considering to be like a Dow. There are no boundaries that are in or out of the Dow.

It's just all these different sub-dows, bankless consultants. Bankless Publishing, the Rug, Fight Club, like the Audio Video Guild, the Legal Guild. Like, if I had time, I could go in there and start listing off 30 more. And then when you add all of these sub-dows together, then you get some sort of semblance of like the greater bankless Dow. But it's headless. It's much bottom-up. It's like five people get together and they make a sub-dow called Bankless Something.

And then they're a part of Bankless Dow. So it is actually a decentralized Dow unlike every other Dow that crypto Twitter is familiar with. Yes. And so I think a lot of people didn't understand that. So there's a lot of dunking. But the truth is, like, I'm proud of what the Dow has done, just in general. Not this specific proposal. And again, I can't speak to this specific proposal.

But keep in mind, the proposal, like, it wasn't arrayed on the Dow. It's as simple, I'm sending you a response to trade offer. trade offer. Yeah, it's a trade offer. Do you want to buy these services? Yes, no. I mean, Arbidum governance is going to review this on its own merits in the ROI and make a decision like they would with any other vendor. So it's not like a raid. I don't understand the outrage specifically targeted towards this proposal, but it's caught up in this in this Twitter narrative. Yeah. There's a comment on this tweet, David, where I was getting like, I was explaining this and trying to kind of defend our position. Udi, of course, says,

my man, I love you, but this is a really long tweet. You could have just renamed the Dow instead. Like, there's an element of, I understand, there is some brand confusion here between bankless HQ and our media company and bankless doubt. But the reason we did that at the very beginning is so that everyone could latch on to the bankless movement and kind of make it their own. And so it could live and scale past U or I and this podcast and this newsletter all around the world. Right. Cracken knows crypto. We are all on the journey of building a better financial system. And Cracken has been leading that charge for over a decade. Crypto is. world-changing tech and it's Cracken's mission to accelerate the adoption of crypto so that you and the

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there seems to be like these semi-regular seasons in which is just like bankless pile-on seasons. It's just like we do something that people take offense to that make people feel aggrieved by. And then that like is like lighting a match that lights a bunch of like Tinder that's been like set over the past few months. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, like a few people are hating on bankless. Like I also have like my grievances to air. And it turns into a contagion and it turns viral. And it's like, oh, we're hating on bankless. this is the moment in crypto Twitter we're hating on bank lists.

And this happened like five times over the last. This is the worst though. This was the worst and the loudest by far. Honestly, I don't know how this affects you because again, you were trying to have Thanksgiving. But like it started for me Friday and then continued into Saturday. And this was like 48 hours of attack. And like it hits me.

I'm like, am I, am I a grifter? Well, because like you and I are like we try to be truth seekers. And when like a hundred accounts are tweeting at us every hour saying you guys are rifters, I'm like, wait, wait, am I? And then I have to like think about it. I was like, no, fuck you. I'm fine. Well, that's what you think.

It takes me a while to come to that conclusion, right? So I mean, even people in the Ethereum community. So some accounts were coming out defending us, like DC investor was like, hey, bankless has helped on board thousands of people. And then Fu Basler who's in the Ethereum community says, bankless has had a long pattern of behavior and bad marketing from the bankless team. So a lot of Ethereum OGs actually think bankless does more damage to Ethereum than good. And I just saw that.

And I was like, wait a second. What does he mean? What does he mean? I don't know what he means. Again, this is what Twitter makes you think. You're staring at the fun house mirror and it reflects back at you. And you're like, am I? Do I really look like that?

Is that mean? Right. And so you tweeted out some questions like this. But so did I. The truth is the day bankless is bad for. Ethereum is the day I leave. Like, I don't, I don't want to do this if, like, we're the bad guys. Yeah, we're here to help Ethereum. And we're here to help people in crypto. I mean, I don't want, if I'm a grifter, I've turned into a grifter without knowing it, right? Like, what, am I doing

something wrong here? And so I asked the question is, is bankless net bad for Ethereum? And this is when more support started. The tide started to turn a little bit. Yeah. So Anthony Sassano is, of course, Bankless isn't a massive good, net good for Ethereum and all of crypto. You've done a lot more than 99% of people. Benjamin Cohen, net positive by far. Eric Voorhees, this is the one I really cared about hearing about, you know, Anthony as well. But y'all are great. Stop worrying about and feeding the drama.

I guess that's good advice, right? It's just bankless listener, we know this, but it's also like it's also very hard. Yeah, Twitter's hard. Twitter, yeah, Twitter can become a reflection of, like, the current crypto narrative. And it gets echoed as we saw, like news stories of reporting about this. People, like reporters from the block, like, Frank Scha. It's made the news. Yes.

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

Like, I didn't do it. But that's not an acceptable answer. Yeah. So I know we have to not listen to you all of these critics, but I'm telling you, when you're the thick of it, it is absolutely overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. There's like, the response like came out.

I was like, oh, yeah, bankless is like a net good for Ethereum. This might be me just like being really personal about this. But the whole like net good thing I have a problem with. And people have told me that I need to not take this too seriously. And I still have a problem with it. But it's like, I'm not here to be a net good. Like, a net good is like, oh, there's some good, there's some bad. But on net, like, it's good.

I'm like, no, no, no, no. I'm here to be an overwhelmingly positive influence for crypto and Ethereum for the world. Like, I'm here to only do good. That's all I've got as motivation left. And so like, when people come and say, oh, yeah, you know, when you net things out, they're pretty good. I'm like, fuck. What am I here?

Why am I doing this? Well, there's a lot of requests from us to kind of list the things. that were bad about us. And like some of them are just bad faith critiques. Like you have ads. You have advertisement. Your titles are clicky, clickbaity. Yes, you have YouTube through them that we don't like. And like a lot of that is, you know, easily dismissed. But, oh, some of it kind of hits closer to home. Anyway, I didn't find a lot of good things. Some of the people who say things, oh, yeah, like, that's a history of bad behavior. And I'm like, I would like to specifics. Like, did you get any, like, specifics? I was like, oh, okay. So, like, an example,

Mark from Avey, who, I think it's fantastic. He, he's been in Avey's from the very beginning, kind of a D5. He said, bankless is 90% good, educational content, 10% grift. Right. And I was just like, Mark, what's the 10%? Because I, as soon as I discover what that 10% is, I'm pruning it from my life. Thank you for the feedback. And his reply was, oh, I didn't mean grift. I just meant like, You guys run a profitable business. You're commercial. Profit Maxi. Profit Maxi.

90% good content, 10% profit maxi. I'm like, oh, wait. We have a staff. We have a media business. We have 20 people that work at Bankless HQ and help us produce this podcast, help us generate the newsletter, all of the analysts reports that we use and all the tools that we do. Okay. So all of that happened, right?

I guess what's the conclusion on this? What's the end of the story? Did we receive any signal from all of these events? because I think we did, and we finally put this together on Sunday and tried to put a wrap on all of it. But, you know, this is your tweet to sum it all up, I think. Yeah. And it took a while to get here to write this tweet. Like a couple people had to DM me and be like, yo, calm down.

And like people, people were just like, when it comes from people that you trust and know, like it hits different. And so you just need the trusted, like, advisors in the space. We like walk you through it, right? And then once they do is like, okay, this is pretty obvious. So I put out this tweet and I said, to lead with the obvious, we could be better in accepting criticism of bankless. We hold bankless very dear. And like I, I think you two, have this innate reflex to protect it when we see it being unfairly

attacked. This clouds our ability to hear what crypto Twitter is trying to tell us, especially when it's drowned out by very obvious and unwarranted and off-based hatred towards bankless. Please forgive me for blindly throwing out the baby with bathwater when it comes to crypto Twitter to constructively tell bankless how it feels about stuff. Basically, bank, the crypto Twitter is like, well, you guys, like David and Ryan, we just explained the history of bankless Dow just now. I say most people were unfamiliar with that, or at least have forgotten about it and have not been tracking the progress and work, very real work that Bankless Dow has been doing for other

protocols just like the proposal that they made to Arbitrum. And so they just, and then Bankless Dow makes this tweet, we're asking for $2 million. And like that, gets enough virality for people to be re-exposed to bankless Dow for the first time in a while. And the first time that they see bankless Dow in a first time in a while is they're asking for $2 million. And then they associate it with like, yeah, we have a lot of ads on bankless. And then they smash those particles together and be like, they're grifters. Anyways, I'm going back into the defensive thing.

So I'm trying to not do that. So like, yes, we understand how like if you are not tapped into the Dow, even though like Ryan and I are not tapped into the Dow. The branding isn't clear. The branding's not clear. So like, wait. So Ryan and David are just asking for like arbitramed tokens via the Dow is this high, grifty little mechanism of getting more arbitram tokens.

Yes. Like that's like a conclusion that people came to. Yes. And so like, okay, I understand. Branding's not clear. Like we have tokens, but we don't vote in governance. So we're like, we are affiliated with a Dow, but it's an independent entity. It is all confusing.

I understand. Yes. And there's a trick that's actually going to only get more confusing as time goes on. And as if we have another bull market and we have even more people come into the space, they're just going to see like, oh, bankless, bankless Dow. Same, same, same. That's the signal through all of the mop attacks. It's just two things.

The branding between bankless and the media company that we run and bankless Dow is unclear right now. So we need to. Which is the experiment. Which is the experiment. That was, but we've seen ways it can lead to bad outcomes, basically. And so one of the steps that we're going to do is submit a governance proposal to the bankless Dow to kind of clarify the branding between bankless, the media company and what we do and bankless Dow itself.

So that is a work in progress. The other thing that we're going to do is burn all the bank tokens. I don't want any question out there that like David and Ryan control the Dow in any way. Are beneficiaries of the Dow. Yeah. Yeah. Our profit motivated set this up because like they want to be extractive. from the community. No, that was not the intent from the get-go. And to quash any doubts,

it's just simpler just to basically burn the bank tokens. So that's what we're doing, our personal tokens and bankless HQ. And I think the Dow is going to be okay. Like, they're going to thrive. They're going to do what they do. They're going to self-organize. The truth is, like, we didn't do any of it. We had very little participation, right? We were kind of like spiritual support, movement support in this organization. Everything that they've done is kind of theirs. And anyway, that's the conclusion that we came to. And I would also say, like going back to what I would have said,

there's actually no bankless Dow. There's actually just the conglomerate of sub-DAOs that when you form them together, then they are like, hey, guys, like, I think we are bankless Dow. Like, that's how I articulate what bankless Tao is. And like the real Dow, for me, like the way that I articulate this thing is the idea, the bankless idea freedom sovereignty sovereignty through protocols cryptography like all of the ideas and values that we talk about here on bankless both bankless LLC and bankless Dow in my mind serve that idea that grander idea

and that is the broader Dow is the idea of bankless lowercase B anyone can go bankless this is the bankless movement I mean anybody can go bankless it's not just a podcast not just a newsletter this is the conclusion I think for me toast tweeted this in all seriousness If bankless are the current main characters, then we're doing okay. So, David, I guess if we became the villains last weekend, maybe crypto Twitter feels okay about that. Yeah, if we're the worst people on... At least bad villains, maybe.

At least we got that. Okay, so that existential crisis, David, leaves maybe to a broader existential crisis. It's like, what are we doing here in crypto? And this was one interesting reaction and outcome from this whole series of events that is much broader than I think bankless. and gets the question of like, why are we here? This is Defi-Moki tweeting out,

the mistake I always see from people in crypto, like bankless, the mistake they make is thinking too much about being net positive for the space. Go see your tweet. You said you were here to be really effing more than net positive, but like a overwhelmingly positive. Yeah. The tweet continues. Don't kid yourselves.

We are in this land of degenerate capitalism only to make money. and then name some developers that are kind of defy developers, Andrew Cronier and someone else. They contributed so much to this space and still get shit on token price going up equals contributing to crypto, token price going down equals Ruck. Oh, by the way, we didn't include that part of the story, but the bank price token price down bad. But we don't care. We've never talked about that. That's never been a thing.

It's a governance token. But what do you think of valueless governance token is? Right. At the end of the day, though, that's the only two things that matter on crypto to Twitter, yes. And I think this, maybe this is crypto Twitter culture versus all of crypto culture. We could unpack that. But this general idea of like, we're here for the money. I responded to this. I know this isn't true because it's not why I'm still here. Yeah, we all want to make money. That's good in itself, but not when it's the only reason we're here. Crypto is a system of digital rights and freedom we can pass down to future generations. That's why I'm here. I don't think crypto Twitter necessarily resonates with this take, but what do you think about it? This is sort of the nihilism, I would say, versus like, we're here for the values. We're here for the money versus we're here for the decentralization.

What's your take on this? Are we being, like, naive in, I don't know, doing this whole bankless thing? Order of operations, right? If you are here for the money, the fact that crypto is about money is like this very, like unfortunate thing that's very necessary because that's what we're here to do. There are people who are fortunate. Well, because, because like you are, you can come to crypto for the tech and then that as a, and then you work in crypto and you build crypto and then the assets follow the builds,

what you build, right? Money follows the tech. But then some people come and it's like, well, I'm here for the money and that they actually extract from the people that are here from the tech, right? Does that make sense? It does, but why can't, I don't understand why it has to be. binary. Why can't you come for both? Why can't you come for like long-term wealth creation? I'm here for the tech, the money, the money tech, right? It's like, yeah.

Like the the values, to the extent we make crypto useful for the world and our values are manifest, right? Our bags will go up, but it doesn't happen like overnight. I think Twitter is especially this like nihilist space where like there is no values in crypto. There's only money. Like Twitter is also like the highest place of conversation. like that's where the action happens, that's where the activity happens, it's where the alpha happens. And so if you're here for the money, that's where you are. But if you're here for the tech, you're on much slower places, like the Ethereum Magicians Discord, right? Or of like forums. And so like, I think Twitter itself just bends towards the people who are here for the money

the most and who are the most nihilist. I think that's a fair take. Can I just make a distinction because like I truly am here for like the money as well. I mean, bankless has always been about investing on the like going bankless it's about wealth creation like i think there's another slice of things where you can get i'm only here for the tech and i don't think that's true that's also that's also unsustainable yeah the money is the tech this is social technology it's like we're creating new store of value in a new banking system of course we're here for the money right but not just the money that's all i'm trying to say is like if we're only here for the short-term games and the ponsification of everything and the pyramid schemes and we're not creating

long-term value, long-term wealth creation, then like, it's totally empty to me. I'd rather not be in this space. Like, I don't know why I'm here. I could go, like, remember we had that conversation with Sam Begman-Fried a long time ago? And he was like, you know. I don't care about decentralization. I could make money on trading orange futures. Like the prices of fruit. I don't care how I make money. I'm just here to like make the maximum amount of money. Currently trading mackerel. Do you hear that story? No. Oh yeah, he needed to get a haircut,

so he had to, like, get some mackerel to pay for a haircut. The fish. Jail? Jail money. Yes, jail money. Anyways, that's a divergent. We'll talk about that. Let me clear.

Yeah, but that's a true story. I think, like, the topic of money is kind of an interesting litmus test. I think, like, when you and I are faced with a prompt money, like, we've done content on this. We think, like, ledgers. like anthropology, culture, writing, like precious metals, like the history of money. The money as a philosophical concept,

because that's interesting technology. Like money as a technology throughout time is like a way to accept that prompt of money. And then other people take the prompt of money as like charts, TA, you know, narrative trading, like stuff like that. And so like, yeah, money like people will look at money and it will reflect back at them many different things.

Yeah. I just, I think that there's a third way to, like, you can do the philosophical, you can do the short-term trading, which is what this defy-moker accounts. But the third way is like, as a long-term investor, right? Like, number go up over time. That's great. If Ethereum is successful, it will be well over 10K. It will be worth, you know, trillions of dollars.

And I think that is very, very much. fantastic. I think it's the best like wealth creation event that our generation will see in their lifetime. And there's no like shame in that. But that doesn't mean that's the only reason we're here. You know, like, and it's not it's, I actually don't want to, um, be in this crypto thing if we're not creating something of value for the world and for future generations. Because it's back to that 2017 Vitalik tweet. Like, we've done all these things, but have we earned it? Right.

Like, I think there's a way to, like, earn the value, like, the actual wealth creation of our assets. And I think it's just a time horizon thing, short term versus long-term time horizons. Yeah. You know, the term in like the genealogy of humans, homo habilis. Like, I think it was the, I think maybe it's us or maybe the humans that came before us, Habilis, like Homo Habilis is a handyman, as in like they started using tools. And this is like the birth of technology, right? There's like this thought concept of something alternative called

Homo economicus, economicus, which is like economic man. Every single person has economic calculus that they run in their brains at all times. Right. Like in the dating market, right? Like everything is a market, right? Like I want to go for lunch. Which sandwich do I get more value from? which mate do I get more value from? Everything is like an economics conversation. And so like invisibly everything is an economics calculus to a lot of people. And so when they come to crypto, like we are homo-economicus. We come into crypto and like we start doing economics calculations inside of our brain.

And I think a lot of like people on Twitter with this like, you know what else is distorted in crypto? Like money. It goes up by 100x really. quickly, that's very distorting, right? Like, the narrative of X of Twitter, where this conversation is about these things is also very distorting. Everything just gets really distorted. And so I think in the era of like rage machines that are crypto, like, that are our Web 2 protocols,

we get a distortion of what like it even means to be here for money. And it ends up, I think, just defaulting to like nihilism a lot. There you go. All right, guys. So those are the takes. I mean, a little self-indulgent this weekend, I think talking about our own problems and Twitter and media. I've got another problem. I've got another problem. I opened up this conversation. I have no idea how many of the podcast listeners are going to be interested in this Twitter-related content

or they're like, what the fuck you guys talking about? I also don't know how to get that answer from them. How do they tell me? I know. I don't give a shit about your guys's Twitter drama. Move on. I don't know how to receive that because the place I would go and get that information is to Twitter. Hey, what did you guys think of the episode? And like, that's not who I'm trying to get feedback from right now. I'm trying to take a time out from Twitter. Are you really? Is that, is that, are you going to delete that?

Are you going to take a break? No, I already took my break. It might be in a healthier state if we do. Bankless Nation. Thanks for hanging with us. I got to end with this, of course. Crypto is risky. So is social media.

My God. You could lose what you put in. But we are headed west. This is the frontier. And your mental health. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bankless journey. Thanks a lot.