Demystifying DAO’s: Art & Web 3.0

Episode Transcript:

[00:00:00] Kassen: DAO's are really making people think a lot more about how do we actually want to organize ourselves and coordinate and how do we actually reward people who are doing valuable work.

[00:00:11] Kassen: and. there's a lot of cool models and tools that can help us get there, but it's not necessarily like the tools that are going to bring us into the future. It's the patterns that we established in terms of how we work together and how we reward other people for their work.

[00:00:29] Isotta: This is Art Is… a podcast for artists where we brainstormed the future of the art world and the creative industries today.

[00:00:36] Isotta: I'm sharing part two of my conversation with Kassen Qian. If you haven't listened to part one of our conversation, I recommend you go back to season three, episode 14, to hear it in that first half Kassen defines with DAO’s are what crypto miners do and the role of tokens. She also gives really useful examples of how DAO’s work. Notably. She gives the example of the elementary school, which I found really helpful today.

[00:01:01] Isotta: We dive back in exploring some doubts that already exist possible use cases for Dows and the creative world.

[00:01:08] Isotta: Kassen also speaks to the wider spirit around the web through ecosystem and concludes with some tips on where to learn more about Dows. And how does that one up? I really enjoyed learning from Kassen. So I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did

[00:01:22] Isotta: Also, I would love it. If you took a moment to leave. Art is a podcast for artists, a rating and review in apple podcasts. It really helps others find the show.

[00:01:31] Kassen: so a doubt or like a Dao, it stands for decentralized autonomous organization. And that sounds very jargony and confusing. I think. Honestly, a lot of people were still figuring out what does it mean to be decentralized?

[00:01:45] Kassen: And what does it mean to be autonomous? just from an organizational perspective, but I think really what a Dao unlocks that we haven't seen before is ownership in an organization.

[00:01:57] Kassen: So one example that has been in the back of my mind lately is, if you think about an elementary school, so traditionally an elementary school, Principles and administrative staff have a lot of power. They decide, what resources teachers get to have textbooks wise, electronics wise, where the school budget goes basically.

[00:02:17] Kassen: And that sort of decision making power usually lies. Administrative staff and teachers have a lot less say, which is why you often see teachers having to use their own money to buy textbooks and buy laptops for their students, because the school does not allocate adequate resources for their classrooms.

[00:02:33] Kassen: and that's what we see in this traditional model of, this decision-making power being more centralized towards the top of the hierarchy. In maybe like a hypothetical elementary school. That's more based on this down model. Let's say for example, each teacher would have a certain number of votes.

[00:02:50] Kassen: and maybe that could be based on how long they've been at the school or their contributions to the school in terms of like how much have they helped students have good learning outcomes or how much have they elevated the school in terms of becoming a really good environment. and so let's just say each educator or administrative staff.

[00:03:07] Kassen: based on a certain number of factors has an, a number of boats and the school has like a shared budget or a shared treasury of resources. And usually in this web two world, the principal and other people would decide on how to use that budget, but in a web three world where everybody has these votes, you can use your votes to,voice, your input on decision-making in terms of how to use the school's resources.

[00:03:31] Kassen: So if a teacher has. Made a lot of great contributions or if they have been at the school for a longer time, or however you want to qualify how many votes they should have, then they would be able to actually have decision making power to kind of say, I would like the budget to be allocated in XYZ way.

[00:03:48] Kassen: And so everybody gets to have a say in these decisions. Processes.

[00:03:52] Kassen: So now that we've clarified, what a DAO is. Could you give us some examples of a DAO that currently exists and maybe mentioned some other notable use cases for.

[00:04:01] Kassen: Really there's so many different types of dowels and use cases for Dallas, but really what ties them all together is that a doubt is really just a group of people coming together and acting upon a shared pool of resources to try to reach collective goals. And so in the school example, if they formed a dowel around it, that DAO would be trying to use that budget to accomplish the school's goals of.

[00:04:28] Kassen: Educating students and furthering, elementary education. that would be a hypothetical example, but in terms of real examples, I'll start with dowels that have more ephemeral goals. a collective of people who come together and say, for example, constitution, DAO, I really want to buy the constitution and we're gonna all pool money together and try to bid for.

[00:04:48] Kassen: a copy of the constitution at this art auction. and other example is cross house doubt, which is this group of people who came together and they decided we really want to buy an NBA team. And we think fans should have more ownership in how the NBA operates. And I think that's really cool because, Dow's are doing things that really like an individual without a ton of money or economic capital would be able to do.

[00:05:10] Kassen: so that is like a femoral examples. In relation to art, we can also look to examples like please, or doubt and Flamingo DAO, which are two examples of DAO’s, who have really large treasuries. They have a lot of money that they can work with and what they do is they go out and they collect NFTs, they support artists, and they curate their own collection of art.

[00:05:31] Kassen: and so that's, those are two examples, more related to art. And I think another example. Might be interesting too. a lot of artists is, this idea of dowels that can come together and create media together. So one example is mad reality is I don't actually know if they're formally calling themselves a DAO.

[00:05:50] Kassen: They are basically a group of people who came together, they did an NFT sale and they're trying to create the first sort of like web three reality show. and they want to help people find love and it's called mad realities. And basically they're producing this show. but the idea is that, if you're going to come together and create this, like this show or this movie, or create some sort of.

[00:06:09] Kassen: Pop culture artefact. it's not necessarily that people who have the power In terms of distributing the media and going ahead and like getting the people who want to be costed and whatnot, like all of these decisions that traditionally would be given to a head producer or somebody who is just like a single a person, we can kind of open up these decisions to the community.

[00:06:32] Kassen: So for example, if I am a really big fan of the bachelor, right? What if I had the opportunity to be able to. Vote on who should be able to be on a show and not only that, but maybe vote on who the bachelor gives his roses to and vote on the outcome of the show. and so it's really this idea in terms of media dowels, that you can give ownership back to.

[00:06:55] Kassen: not only the viewers, but also a lot of the people who are behind the scenes, like people who are creating the graphics and the designers and the video editors, all of those people who are traditionally, probably making less money than they should. in the sense that like normally when you have this big production, you push it out to the world.

[00:07:10] Kassen: A lot of the people who are gaining the profits from that. People who are distributing the media instead of people who are actually creating the art themselves. And so,I think it's really exciting with like mad realities and these other sort of examples of people coming together to create productions that all of these artists who are behind the scenes and working tirelessly to make shows and movies and these sorts of things happen, with this model of a doubt, hopefully they'd be able to be paid more because you can actually realize people's contributions to.

[00:07:40] Kassen: Whatever artefact and goals that are achieved.

[00:07:44] Isotta: That's really interesting and immediately brings to mind so many use cases for the art world, like just within the museum space, I can think about acquisitions and collecting or even event and exhibition programming.

[00:07:56] Isotta: So how does the dowel model shift depending on the needs of the organization?

[00:08:00] Isotta: And is gatekeeping becoming an issue at all?

[00:08:02] Kassen: I think that's a good question. I think that is largely in a question that pertains to community building in general. So around Aus people who come together and want to form the sense of community and reach goals together, you can decide on. who wants to be a part of your community and how they should gain access.

[00:08:21] Kassen: And generally, I actually really liked the way that Aaron Wright frames this and he wrote this really great piece about the rise of decentralized autonomous organizations in the sense that, there are participatory doubts in the sense that members have, the right to gain access and vote.

[00:08:36] Kassen: And I think philosophically, when we think about crypto. In general, it's this idea that anybody should be able to gain access and, become a miner if they want to and participate in this network. but I think what we're seeing right now in terms of the modern manifestation of Dallas is that, as these different communities emerge, they kind of find their own vibe in terms of how exclusive they want to be and how they want to curate their community.

[00:09:02] Kassen: And I think those things matter a lot more when the curation of your community is very relevant to the goals that you want to achieve as a Dao, because it is true that for some communities you can't be completely open and have, open-access just for joining, because maybe your goal is a little more, focused on the experience of the people inside the community.

[00:09:22] Kassen: and I think. It's something that is well exhibited by a Dow like friends with benefits in the sense that they put a lot of effort into curating a really good community that is full of artists and people who, are really tapped into the cultural side of crypto. there kind of process for getting entry is filling out an application and then buying a certain number of tokens to gain access.

[00:09:42] Kassen: and so it's certainly not the most accessible process for everyone, but as a result of that, the community is extremely curated and that helps with, the Dow being able to achieve its goals. I think it largely comes down to how people want to build their communities around these towels.

[00:09:56] Isotta: can an existing organization, reverse engineer itself to become a Dao.

[00:10:00] Kassen: Yeah, I definitely think so. you don't have to start out as a doubt to incorporate the elements of doubt into an existing organization. And I actually think that, what's special about Dows isn't necessarily like this full blown model of like, you need to have these certain things on the blockchain and you need to have everybody have a wallet and whatnot.

[00:10:18] Kassen: especially just because we're so early right now that a lot of these. Models and patterns are still in the process of being established. But I do think that in terms of giving ownership to the people who enjoy like the work that a museum curates or puts out, you don't necessarily have to become a dowel, especially because, you know, legally there's a lot of open questions there.

[00:10:39] Kassen: one way that could be interesting is, for a museum to help artists establish themselves, On the blockchain. So like minting artists, NFTs giving artists ownership in the organization, you could have a museum token and give artists who are invited to show their art or exhibit their art, some tokens.

[00:10:58] Kassen: And then, maybe based on how many people come and really express their love for the arts or, people who like really. I guess become fans of that artist through the museum. Like the museum would normally just take a lot of the profit there, but it's a lot of more about this establishing this cultural, pattern of coordinating in terms of like looping and the people who are creating value basically.

[00:11:19] Kassen: I really think that is like the larger kind of. Impact for Dallas. so it's not necessarily going to be, oh, we need to use these sorts of smart contracts in this language. Or we need to have these NFTs on this blockchain, but it's more of Dow's are really making people think a lot more about how do we actually want to organize ourselves and coordinate and how do we actually reward people who are doing valuable work.

[00:11:48] Kassen: and. there's a lot of cool models and tools that can help us get there, butit's not necessarily like the tools that are going to bring us into the future. It's the patterns that we established in terms of how we work together and how we reward other people for their work.

[00:12:01] Kassen: So this really speaks to the spirit of the web three ecosystem.

[00:12:05] Kassen: I think what's really exciting about this new Dow model, is that. Traditionally on the internet. There are a lot of people who are just doing work without being rewarded for it. So if I am like a super big fan of star wars and I hang out on the Reddit a lot and I go on fandom and I contribute to the Wikipedia and I do all of these things because I'm really excited about it.

[00:12:26] Kassen: I'm just doing it because I love it, but I'm not really getting rewarded for it. And if you put that. Structure of tokenization and Dow's around the work that people are doing in digital communities. And, in relation to the art and media that they love, you could really start to reward the fans and viewers and the audiences of the.

[00:12:46] Kassen: Kind of media collectives,they contribute a lot to the narratives that people create in the, in artistic world. And, bringing in the people who enjoy your work and are also doing work in their own way. That is just traditionally unrewarded I think is, super, super exciting and very underdeveloped right now, to be honest.

[00:13:02] Isotta: So Practically speaking, how would you recommend setting up a.

[00:13:06] Kassen: Yeah. So personally, I actually think that Dow's in the future are going to look very different from the, from what we're seeing now. and I think that's just because tools are going to be a lot more advanced and, I really think that dads are going to be. Even more distributed in the future. but right now, if you wanted to start a doubt, if you want it to just start with the primitives, not really mess with any new tooling, you could literally just start a discord server and create a token for your community.

[00:13:34] Kassen: And there's this kind of a running joke that Dows are really just like group chats with a shared bank account or a shared wallet. if you think about it that way, really all you need is a way for people to coordinate and talk to each other. So that could be a discord server slack, even though that's pretty web too, like telegram, something like that.

[00:13:52] Kassen: And then you could have something like a shared. Multisig wallet, maybe hosted on, gnosis say for something. and that would allow people to. Put resources in and out of this shared kind of treasury. but there are platforms that are coming out to help people create their own Dows, trying to become this sort of one-stop shop for people who are trying to launch their own doubt.

[00:14:15] Kassen: And so examples of that are Aragon colony. those are all examples of platforms that you can kind of go sign up for an account and launch your own dowel, those set up all these different features and tooling for you. I haven't personally messed with them enough to know the nuances, but I think those are good places to start.

[00:14:32] Isotta: I'm on Twitter at Kassen Q my websites, kassenq.com. I also write on substack and mirror, feel free to DM me on Twitter. I'm pretty active there. Always happy to chat and jam. I know that, this space is generally confusing and a lot of people have a lot of open questions, which is totally fair.

[00:14:51] Kassen: That, and that includes me. So I think we're all just learning together and just happy to, chat.

[00:14:57] Isotta: Thank you for listening to Art Is… a podcast for artists. This episode, I'd like to thank Kassen Qian for sharing her insights and expertise. Also, I would love it.

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[00:15:20] Isotta: You can also support the work I do by subscribing wherever you listen. And by donating to the podcast, the link to do so is in the episode description. Okay. That's it for now. Thanks so much and see you next Wednesday