Bankless - Building Power Structures with Parker Jay-Pachirat | Layer Zero

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

Parker Jay-Pachirat is a founding member of Boys Club and a venture capitalist at FinTech Collective. Driven by data and challenging assumptions, Parker takes a deeply individual approach to the crypto space, studying systems and power structures at a broad scale. Join us as we dive into the basement level of crypto, the philosophical and ideological levers that lay foundation for this political, cultural, and economic movement.  ------ 📣 Galxe | Explore Crypto’s #1 Credential Network https://bankless.cc/Galxe  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER:          https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST:                 http://podcast.banklesshq.com/    ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum  ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across  🦁 BRAVE | THE BROWSER NATIVE WALLET https://bankless.cc/Brave  💠 NEXO | CRYPTO FINANCIAL HUB https://bankless.cc/Nexo  🔐 LEDGER | NANO HARDWARE WALLETS https://bankless.cc/Ledger  ⚡️FUEL | THE MODULAR EXECUTION LAYER https://bankless.cc/Fuelpod  ----- Topics Covered 0:00 Intro 4:00 Parker Jay-Pachirat 7:30 Critical Theory 12:20 Governance and Power 15:01 Historical Connections 19:30 Tribes 23:30 The Regulation Example 29:05 What are our Values? 34:00 Diversity and Unity 43:00 Making Rules 52:25 Enabling Change 59:50 Law and Culture 1:07:40 Expressing Values 1:16:30 Looking Forward ------ Resources: Parker Jay-Pachirat https://twitter.com/parkerjayp  Boys Club https://twitter.com/BoysClubCrypto  Fintech Collective https://twitter.com/fintech_io  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. The Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down. And it always has been. Today on Layer Zero, I'm talking to Parker J. Pachirot, who is a venture capitalist at FinTech Collective and also a core member of the Boys Club. And Parker and I resonated with each other when we found that what we're interested in in our backgrounds, people think are actually like very far away from crypto. My background in psychology and hers in what is called critical theory. We're talking about college majors here. But actually, there are things that are very directly related to what is

at the basement level of crypto. And so Parker and I had this hour-long conversation just unpacking what is critical theory and what are these things about like power structures in crypto and how crypto is changing the form factors of power structures and what a power structure really is and what it means to be a power structure in crypto conversations like this and how things like Dow's and social movements and NFTs are allowing for new power structures to be expressed, but still not by changing the rules of how power structures begin in the first place. So I think you guys are really going to enjoy a conversation that is very close to the metal as to what we are doing here in the crypto space, which is disrupting power

and also creating new power structures, hopefully ones that are fundamentally better and more expressive and are more aligned with the people that are inside of them. So without further, we'll go ahead and get right into the conversation with Parker right after we talk to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. The Brave Wallet is your secure, multi-chain on-ramp into Web3, and it's built directly into the Brave Privacy Browse. Gone are the days of managing multiple wallet extensions that put you at risk of fishing, spoofs, and tracker. With the Brave wallet, you can securely manage your crypto assets across more than 100 different chains, including Ethereum, Layer 2s, Solana, and more, all without downloading risky

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Ledger has truly maximized for both ease of use and security. So discover which Ledger device is best suited for your journey by going and visiting shop.ledger.com. What's up, Parker? How's it going? Hi. Great. How are you? Good. Good. Parker, what would you say that you do in crypto? I am an early stage investor in both crypto startups and tokens. And I also am on the founding team of Boys Club, which is a social club, Dow and community focused on women and non-binary builders in Web3. And how would you say you got here? Great question. It's been. It's been. a long and wild journey, I would say. I grew up in a very activist family going to protests, super lucky to be super well-traveled and attended a school that was very liberal, liberal arts school, and took a major there called Critical Theory. Yeah, and that is how you came to be here

in the studio with me today. Yes, indeed. So within that major, we were really interrogating systems of power. Most people in the major go on to work for a nonprofit or start their own or do some kind of activism lawyering. But around my second year in uni, I somehow stumbled across an article about the ethics of AI. And that led me into this deep tech rabbit hole. I was like staying up every night, researching, reading about brain machine interfaces, tech, space,

a lot of like bleeding edge tech started working for a few startups, worked for VC, and I think one thing to note here would be most people that I was surrounded by at the time were actually very anti-tech and anti-capitalism,

anti-entrepreneurship. And I actually started making a lot of connections between what I was studying in school and the opportunity that I saw this tech present to create better systems in the world. Eventually, I knew it about crypto for a while. Like, I knew it existed. I knew tokens were a thing.

My light bulb moment really happened when I started looking deeper into blockchain technology. And I had this moment of really realizing, wow, just like all of these other innovations and inflection points that have come before it, right? like the internet, AI, the World Wide Web, all of that, blockchain technology presents not only a tremendous opportunity to reimagine our financial system, but also to reimagine how we coordinate, how we exchange value, how we mobilize, how we express identity and privacy. And yeah, that made you want to get involved. Okay, so the valence of what you were up to before crypto was liberal upbringing, very like politically motivated, but also unlike your peers or cohort perhaps more tech accepting or tech optimist than the

people that you surrounded yourself with. And also I'm getting the gist of somebody who's perhaps a little obsessive and a futurist and a little sci-fi and also can connect things like things like political science and tech and AI and the current state of like society. This is kind of like the gist I've gotten from you from talking to you just now, but also previously. And this light-bub moment for me came when we were talking about your major, critical theory. Maybe we should go down that rabbit hole first because I think that it will help define the rest of this podcast. What is critical theory? I had never heard of this major before. And how did you just resonate with it so much? That's a great question. So the major actually is only offered at the university

I attended. So it's like very niche. And like I said before, at its heart, it's an interrogation of systems of power. It's very interdisciplinary in the sense that it draws upon everything from philosophy to anthropology to political science, so a lot of social sciences. And it aims to combine different kinds of methodology with practice and practice. And I'd say it's overarching aim is to explore interrogate and uncover systems of power that are widely taken for granted. and challenge a lot of the normative assumptions in our society with the ultimate goal of fostering students you can create social change. And I actually think back to that time, right, and think back to, you know, like I would say I am at my heart and core like a sort of activist

person. Like I'm very opinionated. I have very high conviction about things I believe in. And I think the connection between that and also, you know, being excited about the future, right? And being excited about the opportunities and sort of thinking about, okay, where is the world going next? And also, like, how do you want to shape it? And I think that really led me into the path of what I'm doing now, both in the Boys Club and with FinTech Collective, my fund. So the study of systems of power is an interesting phrase because it's not totally like descript. Like, it's very broad. Like, the study of the systems of power.

And I mean, you said it was multidisciplinary, of course, and it must be. But maybe we could unpack that a little bit more. Like, what is a system of power and what does it mean to, like, study these things? That's a great question. And I think it's one that people have been trying to answer for centuries. I think power is very multifaceted. There's so many different kinds of power. Some are visible and explicit.

Some are invisible. And I think there's a wide. wide range, right? Like, I would argue that power exists in any situation, but I think... In any context. In any context. It exists in this conversation. It exists in our society. It exists in the way we're going about our day-to-day lives. So just as a small microcosm, I'm the one managing these cameras right now. And that is a form of power that I have in this particular context. And so that's what you're saying at a very small scale is perhaps what power is. Look, now we're looking at you. But then we could also, like, what you're saying exists in many, many contexts. So, you know, the president of the United States

also has power. And so, like, critical theory is power at all scales is kind of the idea. So that's the idea. Like, that's the framework that it's operating in and focused on, right? So everything from, like, sovereign power to individual power to soft power, social power, right? Social capital. All these things are related. And I think the, goal with critical theory is to make or to attempt to make invisible or assumptive forms of power more explicit and to understand, right? I believe that too, that we need to understand the systems of power that we are operating inside of in order to be able to essentially break out of them, right? Which is where I think crypto comes in. One of my favorite episodes that we've done on bankless,

was with Joel Monegro from Placeholder. It was called, I think, governance and power. And we were talking about, like, why do these governance tokens have value? We were trying to answer that question. What's the association with governance and price on the secondary market? And he really, like, destroyed my previous intuition as to what capital was. Like, capital, it's like the money that you have in your bank and also the net worth of your combined portfolio.

That's what capital is. And he was like, yes, but also incomplete. There's also social capital, right? Like how many favors do you have stored in the bank with your friends? Like how much can you like move the needle of something? And I think perhaps what you're talking about with critical theory is like, okay, if we can figure out how to identify all forms of capital, not just financial capital, not just social capital, political capital, whatever you want, whatever you want it to be,

that starts to look something like critical theory. Is that a good definition? I think that's a good definition. I think that's pretty accurate in terms of really getting at this idea of like capital is so much more than is what's obvious. I do think like these sort of ideologies that critical theory comes from does come with some political motivations, at least in the major that I was in and in the environment that I was in. But I think like one really interesting learning, right? Like some people come to me and they're like, how did you start there and get here and do what you're doing now?

And I'm like, I actually see, you know, kind of a straight line through, right? Like I, I grew up in a family where challenging authority was encouraged, which I'm really grateful for, and where there was a lot of value placed on not just, oh, what is the answer to the question, but what kinds of questions should we be asking, right? Like the key is not an answer, but in the question itself. And so I think, like, within critical theory, I took a lot of what I learned and the way that I learned to approach the world from a framework perspective. And, you know, after sort of exposing myself to many different kinds of people and believes that strayed far from my own at the time, I was able to really see like, okay, you know, there's a lot of values in crypto that I think

transcend like politics, right? So like within our society and culture today, we're living in a very polarized two-party system. I think crypto presents values that can unite both like like libertarians and like abolitionists. And I think if we're talking about critical theory, which again, I'm still learning what this thing is, we do have to have like a historical perspective as well because we can't just understand systems of power without seeing how they've like changed and adapted. And again, you've already said that how this is like a very multidisciplinary thing. I would imagine history is one of these things that you must study to understand like

critical theory. How do you see crypto? as like a continuation of this whole thing of systems of power. And you said like critical theory and crypto is a direct correlation. It's not like a long meandering road. It's actually a direct first critical theory now crypto. What do you see is so direct about this? That's a great question. I think it goes back to the sort of framework and approach, right, of challenging your assumptions. I think crypto is obviously super new and exciting. And it's, it's full of people who are mobilized or united around not accepting, right, the system that we're currently in and being able to imagine a different, better one, right? And so I think like these modes of

not just accepting kind of what we're told is right or what we're told is the normal thing to do and trying to imagine like a system outside of that is really where I see the connection. Although I do see within crypto, definitely, you know, I'd say the crypto community departs a lot from some of those ideological roots of critical theory, which I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I actually really like the diversity of thought that I've seen within the space so far. Would you say that critical theory doesn't have diversity of thought, or is that an invalid question? That's a loaded question to ask. I think within my major, there was no diversity of thought. It was very, very liberal and woke. And I definitely still hold some of the beliefs that I did at the time. But like I said before, like I really took the initiative once I started learning about all these other things. I was never exposed to growing up or in my school, right? Like tech or finance or any of that. So I really just like it was a totally new world for me. And once I started exploring that, I started challenging my own assumptions because I was like, wow, everyone else around me has been saying, like, tech is bad, capitalism is bad.

like all this stuff is bad so we shouldn't engage but I was like no this this is awesome like I was like you know when you have a crush and you have like butterflies and like they're all you can think about that's literally how I felt like every single night like staying up every night still like my notes and my notebooks like just learning a bunch of stuff um but anyways like going through that I also started you know realizing like okay what things was I sort of taught or not just taught but expected to believe within this major and within this institution and school, like how much of that actually resonates with me, right? And so, I mean, we talked a bit a few weeks ago about thinking for yourself, right?

And I think for me at the moment, like I, once again, like, see you're in a very polarized system. And there are some of my beliefs that would fall far on one side and some that would fall far on the other. And I'm comfortable at that. And I actually think it's a really good thing that, you know, to be able to not just like loop all of your beliefs or positions on certain issues into one bucket, right? And to actually try to like discover for yourself, like, what do I believe? And one sort of moment in that journey has been surrounding myself with people across the spectrum. I'm friends with many different kinds of people who would fall on both extremes in the middle. And I think we're like kind of losing that as a norm in our society right now.

One of the interesting things to me about crypto is that everyone who understands crypto, there's like a secret handshake that people have. Like, oh, you're a crypto person. I'm also a crypto person. And like you get to in the same way that like religion played this role way back when where like if you, I don't know, I'm guessing a world that I never lived in 1500s Europe where like maybe you lived in Spain, but then you traveled across to like what is Germany. Again, these countries didn't exist back then, but you get the point. But if you're under the same banner of the same religion,

you can shake hands with that person like, yeah, we're on the same page here. And that's what it's like to be a crypto person is like, oh yeah, you also are crypto. Like we know the same stories like ha ha Michael Saylor like we have the same like cultural memes and all of a sudden there's like a connection here about like what values that we have because they're largely going to be similar but then they can also diverge like okay you're a crypto person sweet like federal reserve uh-huh money printing ha ha ha but also wait what kind of crypto person are you like you're a salon a crypto person or you're an nfti crypto person you're a Ethereum crypto person you're a bitcoiner and so like there's this one part about crypto where people have broken

out of old society. And if you're a crypto person, you have all gone on the same journey as all these other crypto people, which you've broken out of like what is kind of like Plato's cave of society. Like we're no longer in the cave. We're kind of woke to the way the massinations of the world works because we're crypto people. And then you enter crypto and then like there's a new set of like societies to go into. Like you have the Ethereum societies, the Salinas societies, the Bitcoin and societies. And so it's always been interesting to me that crypto offers like a new like slate of understanding, like a new scaffolding for people to like map on new understanding to and then like pick a different route. And so like where a lot of people previously might

have identified as like a Democrat or a Republican, liberal, conservative, you get into crypto and people tend to lose a little bit of those older identities and then they pick up new ones. How would you say that this relates to critical theory or does it at all? Great question. I'd love to take it in a little bit of a different direction though, because You actually just touched on this massive thesis that I have at the moment. So I've been doing a lot of, like, research into political polarization. Like studies show Pew Journal has a lot of great studies on this that I think deserve a lot more attention. Like, if you look at the charts, it's kind of insane.

Like, over the last 10 years, political polarization has skyrocketed. Now more people than ever before say they wouldn't be in a relationship or even want to be friends with. someone who has a different political sort of identity as them. At the same time, over the past 10 years, we're seeing religious affiliation in extreme decline. And just like you said, right, like religion and the church is where people used to go to find their community, to find their value system, to find a shared ideology and a shared identity that they like passed along to their children, right? Now people are losing that. They don't have that anymore. And I think they're turning to political parties to find that. And don't get me wrong. I think it's a really

good, healthy and positive thing to be politically active and to care about these issues and pay attention to them. Where I think, you know, things might go a little wrong is like when you're in a two-party system and America is, you know, one of the only countries that does this, it's not working great, is those two systems can only work in opposite. position to one another. And so I think the question that is, like, how do you solve the issues that you're trying to solve if the way you're trying to solve them is always by relying on this othering. Right. And just to unpack that a little bit more, what you're saying is that larger and larger part of our political system in America is that I'm a Democrat because I need the

Republicans to fail or vice versa. Like, I'll be a Republican because, like, the Democrats can't win. And it's not necessarily like you pick a tribe because of what you believe in. It's that it's what you don't believe in. And so, like, can a community exist simply as, like, being an antithesis to another community? It doesn't seem like a very strong foundation for communities to exist upon. It seems like a negative flywheel effect. Yeah, exactly. And what are the consequences of this?

Why is this bad? Well, I think it prohibits progress. I also think it sort of sets up the landscape where there's only two buckets, right? Like if I'm a Democrat, I believe X, Y, Z about these certain issues. If I'm a Republican, I believe X, Y, Z about the same issues. Like, it buckets all of your belief systems and, like, all of your beliefs into one category. But, like, if you look on an individual level, like, humans are so complex, right? And they also change over time.

And I think there should be more room for that. Like, how can we progress as a society if we're not talking about? tolerant of or open to being challenged and changing our beliefs. And, you know, we're operating in a very binary fixed system, I would say. But I think there should be more room for flexibility and discussion. More diversity of thought. Yeah, more diversity of thought. Exactly. Do you see crypto offering like a platform to solve some of this stuff? Like, how do you see crypto fixing this? Great question. I don't know if crypto fixes it. I think that's a pretty broad statement to make. But I will say like I said before, like crypto is definitely political in certain ways, right?

Like I definitely think it attracts libertarian-minded people. But I think its emphasis, at least in my experience, has been on values, right? Of like transparency, social mobilization, like open and open financial system. And all of those things allow us to maybe build different political communities within that. But by like sharing this already like shared set of. values, we're able to accomplish a much more. But I do think we're at an interesting time in crypto where we're seeing more divisiveness within the community as well. You mean more tribalism? I think especially after, I think this is very illuminated after

the tornado cash situation of where does regulation come into play. There are people who are strong believers of regulation in crypto and, you know, might say this is the only way we can truly realize crypto's full vision by having the right kind of regulation to onboard everyone, including enterprise institutions. And another of that might argue, no, like the full vision of crypto being realized means that there's no regulation. So at least in my, in the sort of communities and spheres I'm in, that's more of the divisiveness I've seen, which I think is interesting. Yeah, so that debate is one part, like there are some Ethereum developers who are who will like refuse to work on a client that support censorship at the base layer, right? Which is kind of where this

tornado cash conversation has really gone. Because that's where the like the logical conclusion is, right? If we want to like have these things be like regulatory friendly, we kind of need to bake in certain rules at the base layer. But that just turns off basically everyone of the developers that came here in the first place. Right. And then there's newer parts of crypto that are like, well, if we want, like, Ethereum and Bitcoin to scale out to the whole entire world, we're going to have to play nice with the previous power structures that exist. We need to, like, interoperate with old rules rather than, like, conflict with them. And so I think maybe what you're saying is that there's, like, a divide growing in the crypto space where, like, some people are like, we should sacrifice something to get adoption. And then there's, like, the hard line of libertarians are like, we'll sacrifice nothing.

And we'll just have whatever we have at the end of this. And it seems to be, like, a deeper issue than just like, I'm a Salon person. I'm an Ethereum person, I'm a Bitcoin person. This is getting down to the very basement level of crypto. Do you have any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think you captured it really well. I agree. I think it's way deeper than just, you know,

kind of like what sector of crypto are you into or supporting, but it is like a very fundamental question that quite directly affects the future of the space. And I think a big question becomes, like, you know, what this is really calling into question is like what are the fundamental values of crypto and of the people engaging in this system, right? Like, what does it mean to realize crypto's full potential? Is it onboarding everyone and sort of being flexible about the framework or approach or form in which that takes?

Or is it like sticking true to what I would say is the initial vision and, yeah, like being hard about that and like refusing to engage in anything else? I think that question, what are our values is probably a question that's relevant to any system of power that throughout time. Like as so long as there's a community, there's probably always this question. Do you have any thoughts about to like how that question particular has permeated throughout all systems of power and throughout history? Or what role does that question play? Yeah. I mean, what comes up for me there and I'm literally just like riffing her, but what comes up for me there is like not just what are our values but like how are our values expressed and like what does.

does it mean within the in-group to comply to those values? Right? So, like, we could say, like, this thing is the value. But I think more and more we've gotten into these sort of prescriptive modes of thinking of, like, if you're not doing this thing, if you're not doing that thing, it means that you don't agree or sort of, like, comply almost to this value. You're not in the tribe. Right.

So, like, I think maybe a more complex question than just, like, what are our values is, like, how does the socially acceptable way to engage within a value system or to show supportive of a value, like change over time? I think it obviously changes a lot depending on the context. Like we've seen it change a lot in the past five to ten years, right? Like with the rise of like Instagram infographics, I would say. I've been thinking a lot about actually like Instagram infographics. And I think there's like a social pressure.

to post them when, you know, there's one issue to the next, right? But there's a lot of like, you know, I wonder sometimes like when people are posting these infographics on their story, is it more for like a signaling effect or more to not be? Can you define what an Instagram infographic is real quick? Yes, yes. An Instagram infographic. I would say it's like a really pretty nice like graphic design, Canva like poster explaining facts about an issue or. like stating an assertion or position on an issue and explaining why the viewer should believe in it. So it's like narrative work, propaganda work, propaganda not in a negative sense, but also negative?

Yes. Yeah. Like quite literally, yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So like I'll see people like post it infographic and I used to be an infographic poster myself, I will say. But I'm like, okay, like, you know, that's great and all.

but is that more to feel like, oh, I'm doing the right thing or like, oh, I want other people to see me supporting this issue or being on this side, especially in the climate that we're in, versus like, do you actually like care? Are you actually deeply thinking about these issues and like talking about them within your day day life? Are you virtue signaling or do you actually believe what you're posting? Yeah, yeah. I think it's gotten way more easy to virtue signal. than ever and also to not even realize you're doing it. Yeah. I think that brings up the question of like as going back to like, you know, critical theory and organizations of people throughout time that create systems of power, how these people, how these communities spread information and define. And this is why I ask that question like, what are our values? It's great when a community can ask ourselves those questions. And I think crypto in its very beginning stages actually has like the privilege of not being so large that only. And a few people have to ask that question for that kind of to become the conversation at the time. Yeah.

Like during this tornado cash era, it was Eric Wall that put out that poll on Twitter saying, hey, Ethereum community, would you ever support censorship at the base layer? And that one tweet was like this one opportunity for this whole entire Ethereum community to rally behind and say, no, we'll never support it, never, ever, ever. And that was like a unique opportunity that we have as a crypto community. It's like we have crypto Twitter. We also had this one tweet to focus on where we got to define our value. use in that one particular moment. But I would imagine throughout history, there's been like less

more loose ways, less concrete ways, less specific ways for communities to actually figure out what they value. And now we're like going to the political spectrum, we have like the Democratic and Republican national parties, which kind of like define the values a little bit. They decide who's on the team and who's not. And so that's like a system of power that's largely out of the hands of people. But overall, like there's also like so many other different like organizations throughout history. like every single revolution ever. How did they define like what they cared about and why were they revolting in the first place? And who was able to like lead that conversation?

How do you think about this as it relates to the crypto space? Like dissemination and acceptance of like narrative while there's also like we know there's Twitter bots out there trying to pump bags. And so like that's out there like an influence. Like how do you think about this in the crypto space? Well, bot networks are on the rise. Yeah. But yeah, I think it's interesting.

I mean, one thing I'll say is, like, you said a little earlier that the sort of Democratic and Republican Party are sort of setting different values right in defining them. I think, like, from a very high level external point of view, that's true. But one interesting thing that I've been noticing recently in developing all these friendships with many different kinds of people and many different political beliefs is like, we actually share. the same values. Like, we share the same values of honesty and authenticity and being a good friend and family building and transparency. But the way that we think is the best to go about, the way of realizing and achieving those values in our day, day lives and society might actually be really different. So the theory is the same, but the executions, the different, the debate. Yes. Like I actually met someone at

December or somewhere recently at a conference And we were talking like really vibing and we were talking about like taxes and how we think that to go and we were like super aligned and I was thinking of oh This person's probably like super aligned with where I see myself or feel myself sit at the moment on the political spectrum turns out opposite And once that was uncovered like they had a totally different attitude towards me Like and that really like took me back and I was like, hey, like, don't you think this is kind of funny, though? Like, I think it's cool. Like, we have the same values.

We just think we should go about them or maybe construct the framework around them in different ways. And I think, like, that defensiveness is natural. And, like, I definitely used to be like that, like, very much. But I actually think, like, there's a lot of alpha in finding people with the same values as you that have really different beliefs on the outside or beliefs of ways to go about realizing them and, like, talking more about that. So within crypto, that's like one thing that I see as opportunity is like rather than starting

with like more of an external perception of like, you know, political motivations or parties we're starting with the values. And then there's like different kind of factions that. And I think you see this also like within crypto. Like it's really interesting because across the different communities you see it in really different ways. Like Dow people like very like hippie kind of like communism vibes like in like the most like like affectionate way possible, because obviously I'm into Dallas, but like then like there's other

parts that are like very libertarian, very like, you know, no government interference. But like we're all united by the same values as though, I'd say, at least like for the most fundamental ones. So I think it's really interesting. And I think it's like a great opportunity to sort of rethink the way that we talk about these things and think about these things and like identify ourselves with these things. It definitely has been one of my most interesting experiences moving to New York because, like, in Manhattan, you have, like, the trading firms and you have all the traders out there in Manhattan. Yeah. And then here in Williamsburg, there's, like, a lot of Dow people, which are, like, like, the Burning Man types, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's, like, there's also the defy people in Soho with, like, OpenC and Uniswap and DYDX. And then you got, like, the NFT people out wherever they exist. Times Square. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And, like, but then also, like, L.A.'s got a bunch of, like, NFT people. And, like, you're right. these people all kind of have a particular vibe about them. Like they're all find each other, right? But then also like you were saying, we were talking about how like the same fundamental philosophy, same belief structures, but then different ways to like go about that. And that's been my like my biggest idea is to like the difference between Bitcoin and

Ethereum. We have the same values. Even though the Bitcoiners will never admit it about Ethereum people, we believe in the same things. We just one group of people says yes. And Bitcoin is how you express this. then the Ethereum people is like, no, Ethereum is how you express this. But it all collapses down to like the same values at the end of the day, which is kind of like what I was going back to

earlier. Like previously before crypto, people had like these alignments like liberal, conservative, Republican Democrat. And then you go through like this filter of crypto. And if you can make it through the other side of crypto, you kind of lose your old identities. And then you like latch on to new ones. Like instead of Republican Democrats, you have- We need to do like a study on this. We need to like a quantitative study on like what would that look like well I think it could be I mean here's the thing is like it would not be super accurate because self-reporting and self-surveys are not accurate but for a starting point we could do like sort of you know before you got into crypto what would you say is your primary political association and like after where would you

fall on this scale I think that'd be super interesting did your political affiliation like change or political demeanor change when you, after going through the filter of crypto? It did, but I don't even know if it was just crypto, honestly.

Like, I made it a really big initiative in my life to really do everything I could to make my own opinions on things. So like for like every morning, for example, like I read far right news sources.

I read far left news sources. I read like what I would try to find or say are like the most moderate news sources. So I try to read like, about the same stories and the same events that are happening through many different lenses because everything is biased these days, right? And this is something I really like realized and noticed to you after like leaving the kind of like liberal arts bubble I was in, which by the way, like I don't know how familiar you are

with that scene. But if your beliefs. Also into liberal art school. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So like I don't know at the time though for you like it might have been different because like I'm younger than you.

But like, in my experience, it was like, if you don't believe these things, you were literally ostracized from the community. Like, ostracized. Cancel culture? Oh, like, cancel culture was the culture. Oh, no. Like, yeah. No, seriously. And when you're surrounded by that for so long, like, it's just, you know, it's group think.

And so, yeah, I don't want to be in that. Even in crypto, like, there's group thing in crypto. So I just think it's, like, important to expose yourself to many. diverse information diet, healthiest diet out there. Super important. And that's also for me how I found new interests as well.

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contracts, democratize the access to writing the rules. And this is something, this is an idea that, like, Ray Dalio put into my head a while ago where he was like, yeah, like different empires come and go and sometimes empires clash and when they clash, it's really just a fight over who's going to write the rules. Like, so when one empire wins, they subjugate the loser empire to their rules. It's like we, it's our laws that are canon, not yours. And if like they don't agree on laws, then they have like war. And it's usually an economic war. And this is what I see kind of happening with like Republicans and Democrats. It's like, all right, we have the Republican Party and then the Democrat Party. And these are just like trading blows as to who gets to write the

rules for the next four years. And we're going into crypto and we have the ability for people to like, you know, write smart contracts. These are like you democratized access to writing the rules. We also have like now we have DOWs. We have NFT projects. We have defy apps. And all we have communities that are around these things.

And so like now each one of these communities kind of gets to write the rules. Now it's not at the same scale of an empire or a nation state, but it's still pushing the ability to create power structures, like create rules. like create rules to the hands of the communities. And so when we talk about like this idea of like changing power structures and changing like orientations of people's alignments, whether it's like a political alignment or just like an ideology alignment, how do you think that this changes the way that society will work when like all of a sudden we have many, many, many more cultures that are outside of just like the

political spectrum and now inside of crypto communities and they all get to write rules. Like what do you think are the consequences of this? Well, dude, I think it's so exciting. Crypto economies are introducing like fundamentally novel and innovative ways of doing governance in human life that we have never seen before. And the design space is so open. It's crazy. And I think if you realize this, like crypto economies, like we have now dynamic voting in almost real time. We have voting systems and governance mechanisms that are completely unconventional to how traditional, corporations and institutions work. And like I said before, like the design space is so open. Like I think

recently in recent months, we've seen a lot of criticism of DAOs and Dow governance. And at least on my timeline, like I've been seeing a lot of tweets on, you know, DOWs as a business model, never going to work. Like this is never going to work. All these like DAOs are failing. And I'm like, okay, but what's the common thread for the DAO's that are failing? It's, I would say, most of them are using token-based voting governance, right? I am so excited about the design space that exist to create more dynamic forms of governance mechanisms. Like, I think humans are dynamic, humans are complex. Like, our beliefs, as we've been talking about in this conversation, our belief systems change over time. We get new information to contextualize, right? And I think, number one, fixed voting in a snapshot

period of time. I don't think it's the most optimal way to go about voting. Like, I'm really excited about the sort of novel governance mechanism called conviction voting where basically you like stake your vote. And every day or whatever time metric you can set ideally, it gains more power. And then you can retract it rather than like I vote today. And in two years, maybe I wish I hadn't done that. But there's nothing I can do to change it. But I also think like we shouldn't be putting decision-making power or privileging decision-making power for people that just have

the financial means to do so. And when you do that, you get a very, I would say over time, like a very corrupt system where there's this sort of tragedy of the commons where like people, like the general population of voters within the system, knows that their vote won't really make a difference. So they get voting fatigue, they don't participate,

and then you have like one, two, three, maybe four major actors controlling everything, oftentimes in a way that is not reflective of what the general majority wants. So I think there's like an urgent call to action here to put a lot more research, documentation and experimentation into our Tao governance mechanisms. Like I think, yes, we are seeing Tao's fail. And that is such a good thing. How could we ever progress if we don't have that point? And what can we learn from this?

And what are the patterns? We were talking about the C4. We were talking about investing and how we're huge pattern identification people. Pattern recognition. Yeah. Pattern recognizers. But same thing. We should be doing that now.

We should be applying that now. We should like have more initiatives for like peer reviewed research journals to study these different DAOs and their governance and voting. mechanisms as case studies and come out with reports. And there actually is a lot of this. If you look on like J-Store, there's so many good peer-reviewed journals on Dow governance and protocol. Yes. I'll send you some after this. Like with my annotations. There's so many good ones. And they have realized crazy things. Like I will read these and I go back to like the voice club team. I'm like, guys, we, I'm like so fired up. And I'm just like no one fucking like,

I sound crazy. But um. Sound animated. It sounds energetic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Clearly, it's exciting. It's so exciting. For example, I think I may have told you about this study, but there was a study that basically used all of these decentralized in-person resistance movements over time, right? So like Occupy Wall Street was one. The Zapata's movement was one. And they basically like studied, you know, what made these communities and organizations

disseminate over time. Like what led to their ultimate unsustainability. Why did they fail? Right. why did they fail? And like one thing that they found was in the proposal process, like when someone made a proposal, it was rejected and there was no follow up. People didn't feel heard. And so they ended up like leaving the organization, right? They didn't get feedback or an explanation on why. And like this is something that like in the sort of like code is law, like protocol is law,

I guess like mindset or ideology. I think we really fail to recognize, right? Like I think we also failed to underestimate the salience of governance that is done off chain in a more like concealed way. Like private calls, personal relationships, soft power, right? Like all that does affect the way people vote in governance. Only some governance is actually done on chain. Yeah. Yeah. It's like that iceberg meme where like the on chain governance is just like the tip of the iceberg.

It's just the part that's expressed. Totally. And like last night we were talking late and then like we were talking about delegation and delegating tokens. And like I, like I said, I'm, I'm for delegated governance. But I also think, like, how do you account for these very significant variables within that, right? Like someone literally just being more socially popular, right? And like wanting to appease to them. Like, that is human nature. And without anonymous voting, like, I think we do see a lot of that today. But yeah, I think there's like, I'm excited. I think there's a lot of design space

that we still have left to conquer. I super resonate with the idea that so many decentralized movements fail or dwindle or just dissolve because a lot of their energy of their community members dissipates when their community members try and exhibit some change, express some change upon the movement. That change doesn't work and they don't know why or they don't know how it didn't work or they don't know, they don't really have any next steps or like they don't have any lessons to be learned. They don't feel heard.

And there's like this part of the human brain, the human condition is like, people kind of just want to be heard, they want their existence acknowledged, right? We all have goals when things get in the way of our goals that gives us negative emotions. And if we want to align with something and be a part of something, we need positive emotions. We're going to move away from the things that make us feel bad. We're going to go to the things that make us feel positive. And if we have these goals that we want to express onto these political movements, which people generally, like, really feel strongly about, but we don't feel heard, we're going to go do something else. And so when you tell me that the decentralized movements fail because people can't feel heard, my mind goes back to this, like,

idea that we were talking about earlier of different forms of capital. There's financial capital, which is token votes, which we kind of know, we're like, you know, new and not complete. There's like social capital, which what we were talking about, well, kind of popularity contests. Well, you know, sometimes that popularity context is Vitalik Buteran and his really good idea about how something should work on a theorem, and maybe we should listen to that. sometimes it's actually just like a, you know, malicious. I could go both ways. But I think what I'm hearing you're saying is that there are these DAOs that are trying to figure out different ways of enabling their community members to express what they want to see changed in their DAO that doesn't necessarily restrict down to how many tokens do you have or like how popular is your profile picture handle inside of Discord. How can we enable these community members to express themselves without that being like gamable or. attackable or like fall apart because like a poor mechanism design. And this seems to be also like kind of close to the metal of what critical theory is. I'm still trying to learn what that is.

Aren't we all? Yeah. Maybe that's kind of the point. What are your thoughts on that whole ramble? Yeah. Well, that definitely resonates. I think humans just want to see and be seen. That may or may not be what it means to like love someone. If we want to go that deep. But I think like, I'm happy to because I wrote a little bit about that. Oh, you did? Yeah. Oh, my God. Tell me more.

Yeah. So the idea is that all of these new DAOs, I think this was in the middle of an NFT summer, also DAO summer, is that like all of these DAWS now compete for our love where like the centralized, fixed concrete algorithms of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram are like trying to compete to make us angry because that's the one algorithm. It's like it's the rage algorithm. DOWs now, and like all of these social organizations on Ethereum, which there are many, NFT projects, DOWs, sometimes even DFI apps, they're now trying to compete for your love.

And so it's these protocols that enable their community members the most are the ones that are going to find the most alignment and are going to find the people that not sell their token and show up in that discord because that community feels the most loved. And this also, I think, fits into the meta around like gone are there days of Bitcoin as the static asset and Cryptopunks as the static NFTs. All future NFTs are likely going to be productive as in they're going to have a team or organization that like makes that NFT useful. And what does it is useful even mean if not just like making that owner feel special and warm and fuzzy and like alignment and having loyalty with their assets? Yeah. And if owning these assets opened particular doors in DOWs, whether that's governance changes or just like perks, whatever, so long as like the community member feels heard in a community that they share values in, that community should do well. Yeah.

So that's kind of where I was going with that. That really resonates. And I think like NFTs aside, I think we can see this a lot with Web 2 examples of when people are starting communities in Daz. I'm like, it's really, really important to be as specific as possible. And like, don't be afraid to be niche. Like, what are the strongest subreddit? It's like the weirdest stuff that you've ever seen that is like so niche and weird, right? Like, those are the strongest communities because they're really united around something

specific and they know why they're there and they really feel shared, whether it's a value system or interest or whatever, common problem. Do you have a particular subreddit that comes to mind? No. Okay. Yeah, no. But I think like when you're starting a community, like a lot of communities that I see like starting up, like they're like, okay, how do we like appeal to this group, this group? I'm like, no, just focus on one thing.

That's how you're really going to attract intrinsically motivated participants like you're saying if you're very intentional about who this community is for and like who it's not for. And then like from there, like you're saying, I think there's this huge component as well of like a giving community members the resource. that they need to understand how to interact with the community and what opportunities exist, right? So, you know, where do I go for this question or what are ways I can meet others in the community, whatever it is? But really, like, context setting. I made to mean about this. But it's really important to set context to people feel a sense of familiarity and feel equipped with, like, the knowledge they need to thrive in the community. And then from there, I think, like, this also circles back to an earlier point in our conversation about creating an environment. And

for diversity of thought and opinion. And I think sometimes that just means really opening the conversation up and being willing to engage other others that have different beliefs than you. And like I sort of talked to you a bit about this before. But, you know, I think within Boys Club, and I'll speak like from my own personal perspective as Parker, like I think we've been very intentional about creating a space where our values are clear, like our mission is clear, our vibe is clear.

but we're also not telling people what to think or what to believe, right? And we're saying, here's the kind of culture that we want to see in crypto and Web3 and that we want to drive, like join us, right? And then those who resonate with that can join. But I think we've been really intentional about, and even with some external pressure, like not putting a statement out, for example, that we're not sure resonates with all of our members. just because like people from the outside might assume it does. Yeah. Sure, sure. One of the same, like, thoughts that I came out of that same, like, DFI summer, NFT summer is that, and this came after Blow's

platform, where he had this tokenized music platform. And the idea of like a tokenized piece of art. And but this also works with the Dow community too, where the token owning crowd now also has a voice. And so like, say you have the performer, right, the value creator. And this could be Blow, the DJ. this could also be like the boys club core team whoever is like there's always like two sides of an organization right like there is no such thing as an artist without the consumers right and so there's always been like a two-way conversation between artists and their fans and you know the artist will do something that the fans like and then then the crowd goes wild right but now we have tokens and so like now when the artist does something that the crowd likes the token goes up in price or the token just

becomes more useful or something and it gives like a back and forth conversation when there's a way for this community to express themselves back to the leadership. Or, and sometimes that leadership is just like the Dow governance, which is themselves. They are their own leadership. But when the community has a voice, there can be kind of this two-way narrative, this two-way conversation as to like, okay, what do we want this to become? Whether it's Blow, the DJ saying like, all right, what kind of music do you guys want? And like the community can actually like be given the driver's seat a little bit.

And again, going back to like smart contracts, actually give communities the power to write the rules. And we have tokens allow the communities to have voice and control and influence. And all of a sudden, like, writing the rules is something. And again, tokens. And maybe we're still stuck in the age of like snapshot token votes. But like we're trying to get out of that out of the dark ages. Maybe that's what we'll call it when we look back on it. But all of a sudden, like, the communities are able to like kind of write the laws and express themselves and their values to each other and themselves. And all of a sudden, it feels like we get to steer something that we weren't able to steer before.

Totally. How do you think about this? Okay, so I'll relate this back to actually a course I took within the critical theory major, which is called resistance movements in the law. We basically studied a bunch of resistance movements and then compared them to legal kind of case studies. And we're ultimately trying to answer this question of, does culture shape the law or does law shape culture?

And one really... Repeat that question again, because that's hot. Does culture shape the law or does law shape culture? Love it. I would say they're a cycle of mutual constitution. Of course. But there was a really interesting study that's always resonated with me. And it just keeps coming up in my work in doubts.

And basically it showed like there are these types of community kind of lawyers or policymakers that often do a bunch of professional, institutional research, market research, you know, you know the whole thing, and then make policy recommendations. But ultimately, in the follow-up with those communities, usually the policies like five years later were not actually found to have much impact or actually fix the problems that the community is facing. But the lawyers that actually went into those communities and spent like significant amounts of time, like weeks and months with individual community members talking to them, listening, really trying to understand, like, what are your daily problems? And like, how?

How do you think that we should solve these? Like, yes, I'm the expert, but like, how do you see this, you know, being solved for? Or what would you like support and help in? And the lawyers who spent that extra time actually embedded within the community came out with policy recommendations and changes and outcomes that five years down the line were significantly more successful in solving that community's problems and improving the day, day life of those communities than the ones that made like external recommendations. And I think, I think about this a lot within DAWS. And like it relates to what you're saying in the sense

that DAOs are almost like from the get-go, right, like expected to think of the community. And we see this in when there's a treasury that doesn't have a lot of community allocation that's like not a good luck, right? Like there's this new expectation from the get-go that I think does present of listening to the community and getting their involvement in participation that I haven't seen really exist anywhere else before. And I think that's really interesting. And like you're saying, like tokens are like a mechanism and vehicle enabling that. But I also think like synchronous communication, going back to the sort of proposal drop off

follow up thing is really important. Like one thing that we recently integrated into like our proposal process in voice club is a Zoom call. Like, if you're making a proposal, you have to hold a Zoom call. And if everyone can't attend, like, that's okay. But you have to hold a Zoom call to, like, pitch your idea and just, like, get others' feedback before the voting goes live. And, like, we used to do a system where it was just posting a proposal, having an async discussion and then going into voting. But we realized, like, the Zoom call is actually, like, very, very important. And what did the Zoom call bring to the table that without it, the boys club wouldn't have.

It's a great question. I think more openness and fluidity to the discussion and like a different level of just humanness that you can't get through chatting on Discord and also like the ability to explore different ideas or different opinions in real time with people that you care about and that you share skin in the game with on the same thing.

And like I know Dina and Natasha kind of talked about this like when they were on the pod recently. But one thing that really struck me when I started working with them, which is about a year ago when Boyce Club started in November of last year, was I was like, whoa, they are so honest about how they're feeling. Like, they're like, I'm really nervous about this. I'm feeling like worried about this or doubtful about this or feeling insecurity around this thing. And I was like, wow. Because like personally, I was coming from before a mindset of like, okay I of course I'm feeling those things in my day-day life and like work sometimes but I'm not going to share them I'm not going to like like you know um you know like the meme where it's like the guy

and he's like I made it up like I'm not going to like tell everyone I made it up obviously but like then working with them like oh yeah I'm just going to tell everyone like how I'm really feeling and like it builds this level like trust and honesty where also where we're able to like hear that and like hear someone say oh I'm feeling like nervous about this or insecure about this and be like oh like you shouldn't be like you're good and like that can actually like really make a difference in the morale so was sort of a long-minded like thought there but that being something i think yeah fostering that level of like vulnerability within your community combined with encouraging diversity of thought and then creating like operational and logistic systems that enable that i think really will work to produce

what you're saying like this sort of shared ownership and decision making and discussion Have you ever thought about what crypto is supplying to the world with what we're talking about? There's different ways to express yourself. There's different like factions to align with like whether you want to join Boys Club or like pleaser Dow like pick your Dow. Bankless Dow, pick your Dell. There's so many different ways to like have your values be expressed by the Dow landscape. And that's kind of like my bull case for Dow's is like there's a Dow out for you.

It's kind of like you're going, you're going into college and like, all right, pick your club. Like there's a club. There's a Dow for you somewhere. So you can find your tribe. If there's not one, then maybe you should make one because maybe other people are looking to find resonance. Have you thought about how, and this is what I mean when I say what crypto is supplying to the world, we're supplying all of these places for people to perhaps feel resonance with. Have you thought about how this kind of relates to what is lacking in the outside crypto world where we have like millennials and zoomers who are the first generations to feel less empowered than their parents? And they don't feel like the boomers listen to them in society. Have you thought of it? about how crypto, like, actually solves or not necessarily solves, but just like answers to some of the growing voids that are in society these days? I think with like DAOs and the governance spectrum and design space that exists today, like what I, what my initial thought is what immediately comes to mind is just like more

effective means of grassroots organizations achieving their goals and also building their own cultures and identities. Like while I am not the biggest fan of token voting, like that is probably a great system for some doubts. And like that's great. Like I don't think we should be going around saying like, all doubt should do this. All doubt should do that. Like you're saying, it's very customizable across the stack. And I think what that means is like for maybe the first time ever in history with these innovative and novel forms of governance and forms of organization, Different organizations specifically can more quickly mobilize around a common goal or a common value and achieve that. We saw that with Ukraine Dow. We saw that almost with Constitution Dow. Like, Ukraine Dow raised more money in the first week of it being formed than the UN did for humanitarian relief in Ukraine.

Like actually conceptualize that. Like that's fucking crazy. Can I hear some here? That's fucking crazy. Like it's fucking crazy. Like it's insane. And like, that's so cool. And I think that really goes to show. Like, I'm also getting really into this idea of like flash DAOs and like, when does the Tao disseminate? Like, probably like not all Tao should strive to or be expected to exist forever. So I think we're really- The goal is to not have Ukraine-Dow.

Yes, yes. Yeah. And the goal is to like create a spectrum of ways to organize mobilization and governance in a way that enables different Tao's with different objectives. and working in different timelines across different scales to quickly and effectively achieve their goals. And I think that's like super cool because like if you think about it, it's the way I kind of like envision it's like all these different like factions like you said before like you also

use that word working outside of the system. But I think within Taoist too, we're reaching a lot of weird questions like big hairy questions of like I've been reading this book reimagining organizations that talks about like this teal model and it's very similar to what we've been doing within boys club and like also kind of what orc it out does with like different guilds or pods that each have their own sort of mini-dows inside of them working together to form one doubt but like basically the whole thesis of the book and the teal practice is borrowed from like corporate structures so like almost in the same way that we're reaching this circle within the wider crypto community of like okay

does crypto just become sort of like a token economic system and like blockchain that the government is like running on? Like Dow is now sort of reaching this point, I think, where it's like, oh, like our Dow is just like basically like now adopting corporate structures. I don't think it's like necessarily good or bad. And but I think it's like interesting that we're seeing this like full circle thing. And I wonder like what the sort of, I guess like peaks. values of different lifelines within the evolution of this will be. Oh, one other thing that I've been thinking about is I've been thinking a lot about like parenting. Like I'm really excited to be a parent one day. And so like I think a lot about like, oh, like how do I want my kids do this or that?

And I was thinking like, hmm, seems like a lot of parenting might actually just be about like fostering intrinsic motivation and creating like positive feedback loop incentive mechanism. for your kids. And then I was sort of thinking like, can you unpack that a little bit? Why, why is that? Well, I think it's like, I think intrinsic motivation is really important, right? Like, at least for me, personally, I was raised without a lot of pressure. Like, my parents were never like, oh, we want you to be successful in this way, or we want you to go down this track or do this thing or go to this school, like, or get married. Like, those were never conversations, but the conversations are more like, this is the type of person. That was.

you want you to be like a kind person and it's a little more meta more values based I would say than like more values based than like outcome based or like label based and so I think like by starting with the values like that foster a lot of intrinsic motivation just in how I interact in the day to day world and I also think like by fostering intrinsic motivation you're also by proxy encouraging a lot of curiosity and like you're encouraging your children or whoever to like awesome like get so excited about this go explore it go figure it out go try this thing go fail and then the like incentive mechanism thing i mean that's like everything from like brushing your teeth to like going to school and like just you know all these things but i was thinking about how there's a lot of like relation between maybe how dows talk about you know getting contributors involved in fostering that kind of ownership and like with parenting I don't know yet, but I was sort of thinking out like this next generation of like Dow parents and like what will they be like?

So you're saying that you can kind of apply the idea of how to be a good parent to also a Dow and say, hey, if we can get this like smaller part of the Dow to start like creating a feedback loop inside of itself, then that little part of the Dow can like self-perpetuate and we don't have to think about that anymore. And now that's a cell, like an auto functioning part of the Dow. And then we can like create this over and over and over again for many money parts of of the other parts of the Dow. And if we can do that enough times,

like all of a sudden the Tao as a whole is like the self-perpetuating ecosystem. Is that kind of the idea here? Yes. I was actually thinking of it as the inverse of like, oh, how can we apply these like sort of Dow models to children? But because I was thinking not like tokenomics, right? And like there's all these things involved in it with like,

how do you create systems where people are rewarded in the right way? Even with like a vesting schedule, I was thinking, you know, I met this crypto person who gives his kid a choice every month of like is his allowance in like USD like cash or like Roblox. And I was like, wow, this is really cool. It's almost like kind of like a vesting like options schedule. And I don't know. I was just sort of thinking about Dow people and crypto people are such nerds about incentive mechanisms and positive feedback loops and intrinsic motivation and ownership. And like those are all things that like matter. and parenting too. So I wonder if we'll see like a change in like with the ethos of crypto. And I think this really circles back to like the very beginning of this conversation of like what are the values in crypto and like what do we care about and think about? And like how might that translate across generations? Yeah. And also how do we how do we like incentivize it, right? Like how do we manifest it? Yeah. So if we were to zoom out and say Dow's get their shit together and maybe we can also answer what that even looks like. Let's fast forward like five,

10 years into the future where a lot of this idea and thought and like practice of applying some of the things that we've been talking about today on the show and Dow's like start to like, you know, start to get their ball rolling. What does the successful versions of Dow's in the future look like? What are they doing that have helped them become successful? What do they need to do? Great question. That's also that's a hard question to answer because I think I don't want to be prescriptive. Like I don't think there's one right way to do Dow's. Like I know how. I personally feel about certain things within Daos and what my preferences are. You could also zoom out more and just say, hey, like, Dau's have figured out ways to

hear their communities better. Right. We can get a little bit more meta about it. Right. I think, yeah, like getting more meta about it, I think in a successful Dow world, a few years down the line, we will see a proliferation of diversity in Dows, both in what they're united and mobilized around and in the ways that they operate. And then I also, I also, also think, like to get there, like I said before, like we need more experimentation, we need more research, we need more documentation. We need to actually be like more academically, I think, rigorous about the development of this industry or space or sector within crypto. Because like those peer-reviewed journals I found, those are like nuggets of alpha. And like you would never find that

on crypto Twitter. And like I literally just found them by like. I can't remember a single time I've ever seen a peer-reviewed articles spread on crypto Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. But we need both, right? And it'd be helpful, right, in these conversations where people are like, this Dow model is failing. It doesn't work. It'd be helpful. We need evidence and data.

Like, I'm a very data-driven person. We need data to back that up. And so we need to be able to point to different DAOs that have succeeded and failed over time and actually have measurable ways of, like, documenting that and consolidating and presenting that information. I think that's just a simple call to action of like, hey, let's codify our learnings. and make that shareable, which is kind of just like what open source is. I mean, we're not writing software here. We're kind of, sometimes we are with things like Orca protocol. But like we're just saying,

like, hey, we need to like share more information about like how these structures are working. And maybe that is why I had you on the show today to talk about critical theory. Because isn't that what that is? Is that part of like what this whole thing is? It's like spreading knowledge as to how power structures work. And we kind of need our bad dows to have a little bit more power these days. It's knowledge and power truckers all the way down for sure. Parker, thank you so much for joining me on Layer Zero. Thank you for having me. Cheers.

Cheers.