foreign
[Music]
thank you everyone for coming
I know it's the end of the day I know
it's the end of a big week but we're all
really excited we got a great panel here
for you and I'm super excited to kick it
off
um so my name is Anna I currently lead
Community programs on the ecosystem team
at the cello foundation and I was
previously at maker Foundation
and I'm going to first give you a little
bit of a background for how I ended up
in this space and how I kind of started
thinking about this this panel and this
idea and why I became really fascinated
with the topic of ecosystem growth and
funding ecosystem
specifically
um so I want to give you an example like
working for nobody works for ethereum
and in the same way nobody works for
cello but a lot of us work on ecosystem
and it doesn't mean that there aren't
people working for it but there's people
working for
different entities that are funding
ecosystem growth and ecosystem
development
and watching the ecosystem maker first
being bootstrapped by maker foundation
and then decentralizing to be entirely
managed by the Dell I started thinking
about how do we think about different
levers that we have to leverage
ecosystem growth out of foundation the
primary lever that we have is Grants
um but in and and usually they are
coordinated by a pretty centralized
group of people but at Adele it can be
managed by a governance Community uh you
can tap into unchain funding and then
you can also have various new methods of
ecosystem growth like uh Delta doubt
swaps and other various tooling so I
want to give first everyone a chance to
give an introduction uh starting with
Juan and maybe you can tell a little bit
of a background for how you've seen this
happen at maker
yeah thank you Anna I'm Juan from the
sustainable ecosystem scaling core unit
at megadel a joint maker
um right before the foundation started
to to dissolve so uh yeah it was very
very chaotic and extremely interesting
and since then
I've been pretty much working on scaling
the ecosystem
we used to do a lot of different things
in the beginning
we were very a team that was very um
that different uh
it's a very the skills were very were
very mixed and that was extremely
interesting and then through the last
year and a half or so we've been like
specializing and now we are
we're on the building the like
operational tools for the centralized
Workforce
um then legal resilience and and finally
what we call governance design because
we haven't found a better name yet but
um
yeah that's pretty much uh what I've
been doing for the last year so very
much looking forward to to speaking here
with these great people thank you and
kicking out to Abby hi my name is Abby
um my role now is the head of community
and governance at radical so for those
who don't know radical we basically
build decentralized collaboration tools
and infrastructure for people building
decentralized Technologies
um and so uh but we really consider
ourselves even more so than a crypto
project we consider ourselves more so a
free and open source project
um and so my view on ecosystem scaling
definitely comes from uh the concept of
like ecosystem in open source projects
and communities
um and you realize that in like web3
everything's open source and so
inherently you know we're actually
Building open source ecosystems and
communities and so it's been over the
last couple of years there stewarding
governance and working on community I
think that it's all been about like
combining our crypto community and
ecosystem learnings and what it means to
scale a crypto ecosystem with what does
it mean to scale like an open source
project in an open source ecosystem so
um and I think the difference there is
how do we progressively decentralize to
support the emergence and autonomy of an
open source ecosystem and I think my
focus has been on like optimistically
designing new Futures in which
decentralized Technologies can better
support the coordination and growth of
Open Source ecosystems and the
resilience of Open Source ecosystems so
um so yeah so right now how we're acting
on that and kind of what we're trying to
do in practice is one of my main
projects right now is helping lead the
our transition to the Dao which means a
lot of things but basically means
progressively decentralizing the project
from where we were prior which was
basically like a venture-funded startup
to a foundation with um you know a token
governed Dao to now the next stage which
is you know dissolving aspects of the
radical foundation and transitioning
those responsibilities to an autonomous
decentralized entity that lives within
the Dow is funded via the Dao and acts
as a participant within the Dow among
other orgs that will slowly emerge over
time so
um yeah in that process we're thinking a
lot about what it means to not only
scale an ecosystem but support an
ecosystem that's scaling and what
foundations do you need to put in place
to
um you know kind of actually support
growth and resilience throughout a
progressive decentralization or
transition
um and so we're excited to chat about
that today yeah and Progressive
decentralization is the reason that I'm
so excited to be sharing the stage with
y'all because I feel like we are we've
been at different stages of this and
we've seen this through the ecosystem
perspective but ELP I really want to
hear your background and how do you
think about ecosystem yeah thank you hey
guys it's Al I started my journey like
as an entrepreneur let's say like a
couple of years back with a web to start
up working on like Agriculture and like
food Technologies then I started to
participate in circular economies
researchers United Nation and European
Union under some organizations there and
worked a lot on ground and try to
understand actually what we could do to
improve the lives of people in
developing countries more then I joined
purse with Git coin then I started with
prime now then now I'm doing something
called inverter Network which is we're
trying to learn the traditional know-how
from International organizations like
United Nations and European Union which
they have something called Data portal
where they receive like all the
applications like Grant applications and
they pay milestone-based funding to
these organizations and like individuals
try to empower them trying to teach them
with mentors and program managers such
as like ourselves in the end of the day
and now we're trying to understand
basically how we can design an ecosystem
where the whole empowerment of the
individuals can affect the coordination
throughout can generate this crypto
Network effects that can improve our
basically the games that we play you
know with economical senses I'm excited
to share this stage with all of you to
be honest thank you
thank you thank you and from my
background I actually also started
within the maker ecosystem and the
reason I'm so interested in funding
mechanisms is because I myself
originally started in web 3 as a
beneficiary of a grant from what we then
call Community Development at the maker
foundation and that was really a program
to incubate the next generation of
people that will eventually take over a
lot of the functions and be able to
manage maker protocol through the dell
and so through through that experience
and I I learned I learned so much
because that was such a pivotal time in
our um well for maker but also for the
entire ecosystem because maker I think
was one of the first and really big
projects to do that kind of transition
and then going to sell a foundation I
so I saw the same thing happening but a
lot earlier on
and I
kind of had this I had the front row
seat to seeing how to make this the
ecosystem scaling sustainable you really
have to encourage and you have to design
for intentionally for people to be able
to have this independent thinking to be
able to decide on what things are
meaningful for the ecosystem an
independent process which has to do with
like how do you apply for Grants how do
you access funding in a dial this has to
do with a lot of core units which is a
framework that we'll jump into next and
then also independent sources of funding
because ultimately having funding at
your disposal is what allows you to have
agency and if you have agency then you
can really execute on the things that
are really meaningful for your ecosystem
but to jump into what ecosystem
development really means I want to ask
this to each one of you because what I
learned going from protocol like maker
to a project like cello which is a layer
one is that a layer one your ecosystem
is really dependent on your application
layer and on your projects and companies
that are developing in your ecosystem
and also of course like your community
and your users and your Advocates and
lots of other stakeholders but primarily
it's about developing an application
layer but what is ecosystem development
mean at a project like maker
yeah I I like what Abby said but I don't
think that
that governance should be an
afterthought ever
you really need to work on the
supporting mechanisms and structures and
all these Frameworks that will allow you
to scale properly otherwise you end up
with this type of uh yeah people
screaming at each other
um I don't know so pretty much it's like
you have this bricked version of
governance that doesn't allow you to to
keep going and and looking forward and
and you end up with a mess I can I can
speak a bit more about maker if you guys
let's talk about the challenges and why
why it feels like sometimes it will get
to why it feels like running into a
brick wall coordinating governance yeah
so to just give you the the very quick
overview
um the way we organized it in the
beginning was very optimistic if you if
you'd like and that's why right now I'm
a bit reticent about any any type of
optimistic kind of Grant or or funding
mechanism and what it is that anyone can
come and permission permissionlessly
start a core unit and get funding and it
is very very hard for
if there are no structure there to
actually report on progress on
Milestones on on what's happening what's
there to be achieved you end up with
many delegates that have never run a
company trying to judge a topic that
they might not understand and there's no
auditor or auditing function within this
so you end up with MS and that's a bit
what we're trying to work on nowadays
through maker governance and governance
design
nice
um nice
um so yeah I think that in the case of
radical and maybe more generally like
open source ecosystems I think that
there's like different layers of
ecosystem development right so I think
that there's like ecosystem scale which
is related to increasing the number of
participants whether that be like users
contributors maintainers whatever you'd
like
um and that's kind of also Community
right which is like building
um obviously for an open source project
that's your maintainers and your
contributors and being able to grow your
contributors is um a really important
part of ecosystem development and then
there's resilience which I think
um and I would also say what interplays
with that is like diversity so like
resilience and diversity so what you're
saying is like having a really strong
diverse application layer Network
ecosystem is really important for like a
layer one it actually goes the same I
think for like open source
infrastructure in which you want to be
able to have
um a more diverse client ecosystem or at
least these like technical ecosystem to
ensure the projects like longer term
resilience and so I think that that's
like a really important part um and is
why like um things like grants and rfps
and bounties are really great because
basically you're growing the number of
people who are working on the project
and you're also increasing the diversity
of the project so
um
so that's one and then I think that
there's this other con like dimension of
development which is like
um
I I guess it's kind of like developing
the ecosystem you know what I mean which
is like not just having a bunch of
people but actually
um having kind of more of an idea of how
you're growing people in an ecosystem so
like what you were saying like how um
you know grants Were Meant to empower
new people to take over leadership roles
I think that this is like an incredibly
important point of ecosystem which is
like ecosystem development which is not
just like bringing people in and then
just like having them there it's like
bringing them in and then developing
them and like helping them support and
empowering them and growing them into
leadership positions and and just
becoming like long-term participants and
I actually think that this is like
low-key the most important and hardest
one to do which is like how do you get
people uh to stick around how do you
create longer term incentives
um and how do you embed like longer term
commitment because often this is what's
actually necessary to
um kind of like realize all of these
ecosystem Visions
um and so I think that all of those are
yeah pretty hard to do they all
interplay with each other but I think
um there's a lot of ways to kind of of
like stimulate each type of development
so yeah it almost seems that we we had
all the tools and smart contracts and to
make it very programmatic and we just
copied what we've seen from
from companies or startups and we said
okay we'll run with this yeah so I think
there's a huge Miss opportunity there
that that we're not exploring I'm like
kind of I'm like kind of pessimistic on
just programming incentives because I
don't think that it often in
or encourages the correct Behavior but
it is true is that we do have kind of we
have different tools and we should be
experimenting with like how those tools
look like in the long term I mean we
kind of are with like tokens right like
that's basically like a long-term
incentive mechanism that we're trying to
experiment and build governance around
um but yeah we're definitely like
applying the Corp reform like way too
much and I think it's just us trying to
like process a new design space and like
also trying to make things work at the
same time you know well I think this has
to do with
um like we all like to talk about
onboarding but what are we actually
onboarding into and I working at maker I
really saw this very clearly I think
there's the onboarding into the
technical protocol and then there's
onboarding into social protocol and the
social protocol is what's really
difficult because that's like that's at
the core of how do we coordinate with
each other like we can have all of the
tech stack in the world but how do we
actually Implement those things how do
we coordinate how do we agree how do we
govern well together like the social
protocol is the one that's much more I
think difficult to build built um and so
I think you have a really interesting
perspective that's external to like an
ecosystem it has more to do with
um maybe like developing Regional
ecosystems so I I'd love to hear more
about how you think about ecosystem
thank you just to add really quick like
the other day A friend of mine told me
flow of capital is the flow of trust so
when it comes to ecosystem design as
well like to understand the contributor
taxonomy and like uh kind of building
the development projects in the regions
where it's required we really need to
understand like the kind of requirements
of the system we want to design on the
ecosystem side as well and like once we
understand the system that we want to
design them we can understand the goals
that we want to achieve and in the
meantime if you have data sets to
incentivize we can understand and like
we can basically build on parameters on
projects that we actually want to kind
of interject into that region so for
example if you would have a specific
development projects in some regions and
you could actually have a database to
basically see those milestones and
deliver that they need to do and also
like we can incentivize understanding
sanitization methods that have been used
by different protocols and different
entities whether they are decentralized
organizations or traditional
organizations I think we can also like
kind of have a different perspective to
the ecosystem design where the focus
would be public goods plus empowerment
of the local communities and I think
like also maker and like cello are very
focused on the regional based ecosystem
design which I really enjoy so
I think like last year we were talking
with you like you were kind of
mentioning some a custom design
perspective offers in the local
communities and economies would be
interesting to go into that level as
well if you remember
the whole Grant programs in like in
African regions
um because we could actually establish
like a kind of block spaces for people
to develop themselves and Empower
themselves yeah yeah I love that well
actually this ties in
um into how like the next question that
I wanted to go into which is like where
are we coming from like what is the past
case scenario and like how did we used
to think about ecosystem growth versus
how are we thinking about it now and
what is to look forward to in the future
and when I got to Sello a year almost a
year and a half ago the cell Foundation
was the only entity that was thinking
about ecosystem development and so
Foundation kind of like set a lot of the
goals and like regions and priorities
for where we want to develop but now we
have created a whole system of
governance where people are able to tap
into on-chain funding from the protocol
and establish their own independent
entities that are able to set their own
priorities and their own goals so right
now in the Forum there's actually
several proposals for a latam regional
Dell and for Africa Regional Dell that
will access funding from the protocol
and have this like have the benefit of
the independent thinking which like they
are actually based there like they're in
touch with the local community they're
able to make best decisions but then
also we'll be able to set their own
process for how they want to manage
grants how they want to like plan that
entire ecosystem how they want to manage
deliverables and also have the funding
and they're multi-sig to be able to act
on those things so if there's like a
hackathon they want to sponsor
regionally then they can and I think
that is huge power and like a tremendous
responsibility
um but this is yeah this has to do with
where we came from and where we're going
but
um yeah the next question was going to
be for kind of talking about what was
the past case scenario and where how is
it developing now at each of the other
projects
you want me to start sure I can talk
okay I'll talk maybe about General
previous state as I've seen and kind of
what nuances of like our current state
that I think are different so I think in
like previous state at least not for
like open source ecosystems specifically
because those are basically you know
like decentralized ecosystems in at
their core I think that there was
obviously like a much more like
centralized approach to ecosystem
development in general in which there is
like a directed Force that's like kind
of um yeah just like creating the
community and like running the community
I think of like
um I don't know if like notion is a
really good example of this but like
previous projects that have like have
been built on like Creator communities
in which there's kind of this like
top-down directed Force
um that's driving an ecosystem forth
right and it's very branded it's like
very
um directed it's very structured often
has its own hierarchies because
um ecosystem is being looked at as like
a means of like growth right and um so
yeah I think that's like the previous
state and so I think that like now
what's different is that we have a lot
more headless ecosystems right like
headless Brands headless ecosystems in
which people are um identifying with
different ecosystems and communities
without being explicitly tied to itself
like we're all part of the ethereum
community like I think about how I got
into ethereum and it was through
hackathon and I just started like
hacking right I know it's I didn't know
that I love it no that's like a very OG
hacker with like Griff green at like
common sac and everything
um before I found radical and I think
that this aspect of community is
something that again very much so
um parallels like open source ecosystems
in which like for example like Russ is
this like insane ecosystem right and but
it's very headless in that there's like
obviously because it's a language right
it's like a bunch of people building
this language and Building Things on top
of it
um and other open source ecosystems
exhibit this trait as well and so I feel
like
um now we're seeing companies try to
frame themselves as open source
ecosystems because they're building open
source software again they're also
building uh companies and projects right
and I think now we're seeing this like
mesh of Two Worlds in which this
previous state of kind of like Central
top-down community ecosystem growth and
scaling and this like more decentralized
emerging
um headless ecosystem approach in crypto
right now and I think that that's kind
of like why it's I think hard and people
try to apply the corporate form because
at the end of the day we're not building
on entirely Vault volunteer
volunteeristic voluntary altruistic
volunteer based Network yeah I think
intrinsic organization you know what I'm
trying to say
um we're you know we're building
projects that have um actually like a
lot of like long-term incentives and
value networks attached to them yet
we're building open source ecosystems at
the same time and I think that that's
why it's so tough for us to try to like
process like where to go and I think
governance is actually the answer
because that's the tooling that we can
use to kind of figure it out but um yeah
so I think we're just like seeing this
Clash of like this top-down versus
headless approach
um and I think it's really exciting to
start embracing new forms of the
Headless ecosystem growth approach as we
start looking forward
Juan maybe you can tell us why
governance is the answer
yeah what we've noticed is that um
it's a
I mean we kind of predicted that this
was going to happen and make her scale
to a size uh that it's hard to tell like
the kind of contributors is some
somewhere between 120 to 170 um
and this is because again it's it's
decentralized so it's hard to tell but
what we failed to build uh when we when
we started this this Frameworks to to
allow for M care holders to Direct Value
so we went from a foundation very clear
top-down
um and before we can argue about the
benefits of its grants and how that
worked for better and worse and then we
went to this uh to this mechanism where
we have a lot of core units and there's
really no incentive to integrate or to
collaborate so every core unit is we
have a very flat hierarchy and there's
no there's no way for mkr holders to
push core units to work together or to
integrate or to
um yeah to make things happen and to
create value for the protocol so I think
that's something we will see in the in
the next couple of months is we're going
to see a trend that shifts from
onboarding people which is bring as many
people as you can
to
how do we build this coordination
mechanisms to make sure that we can
actually coordinate so right now there's
no tool that I'm aware of and if you're
building something please reach out to
actually build consensus and make sure
that we can create a decentralized
strategy that involves the owner of the
projects that are the ones holding the
token so
um yeah I might be diverging a bit too
much but no no I think this is great and
actually I think that's this is a great
example of like a past State and moving
into a current state but can you give us
an example of like what what what is a
core unit and how did you
um because you really helped write the
mipset that established core unit so can
you tell us a little bit more about like
what what core units were what core
units were meant to be and what the
promise of core units was versus like
where it is now a year almost a year and
a half later yeah so we we got inspired
I think from from software a bit so we
went to the highest abstraction and we
say well we said what what do you need
and every single project organization
anything it's it's work which is what
are we trying to get done it's the
workforce which is who's contributing
and it's the the incentives of the
capital so basically that's that was it
uh you if you feel a mips 39
um there you declare what your mission
is and what you're trying to achieve for
for maker the Meep 40 is and then maybe
some maker Improvement proposal um
before is a budget so I'm requesting
this much money I'm going to hire all
these people and
yeah and then the 41 was the the
facilitator which is the kind of like
the responsible person accountable to
governance regarding this
um regarding this process and I think
that everything that could have gone
wrong went wrong so we learned a lot
from it uh we ended up with the
facilitator less core units we ended up
with Anonymous off-boardings of Koreans
that were not working out uh we ended up
I don't know upsizing and downsizing
budgets so it was extremely messy we
learned a lot
um
um and yeah that's that's with the the
where we are today and if you have heard
about the endgame plan the end game plan
that's why it sounds so uh so crazy but
it's because we need to
um make the I think we need to make the
ex the implicit complexity we need to
make it explicit and we need to make
sure that everyone understands otherwise
you end up in this uh in this Dallas
where
the the very strong personalities kind
of like Get Away with everything and and
the you can call them the nice people I
guess as a euphemism uh end up like push
aside so so that's a bit what we're
trying to to work with right now the
off-boarding proposal is really
interesting and really really key and
when I got to sell I realized that we
have a way to tap into this pool of
money at the protocol level and the
on-chain funding but we actually have no
off-boarding proposal to claw those
funds back whenever something goes wrong
if something inevitably at one point
does go wrong
um because we are all still learning and
we are still trying to understand like
how to operate how to operationalize
this new paradigm like we all can talk
about the ideas behind it but then once
you start to operationalize it you
realize once the core units have been
out in the wild for a year you realize
all the things that have gone wrong Abby
do you have any like parallels to core
units uh radical and how do you think
about like how interdependent entities
can tap into that funding and yeah if
you've thought about onboarding and
off-boarding proposed those wow so much
we took a lot of inspiration so again
we're currently like in the midst of
this like transition right so we're
currently designing the organizational
framework that will
um absorb the responsibilities that
currently uh remain in the foundation
Council for directing coordinating and
funding all core team development so our
core units are technically called core
teams right
um and so in that process we've kind of
like scoped out like a new ecosystem
design in which instead of envisioning
the radical Dow just funding One Core
team again in the essence of Open Source
and decentralization we envisioned the
Dao which is a community governed
treasury funding different orgs which
act as these like nested polycentric you
know organizations that kind of resemble
sub-dials in the sense that they have
their own governance processes they have
their own memberships
um but they still require certain trust
level delegated from the Dow right and
so
in that process
um in these orgs then become responsible
for being independent thinkers funders
and have their own process within the
Dow using Anna's framework
um about like that they all are then
kind of trusted to allocate Capital
within their mandate and so then they
fund teams and so teams instead of
making proposals directly to the tower
making it to the org themselves and the
org is making the decision on how to
onboard or offward teams within their
own like local jurisdiction if you will
um and so the reason that we did this is
because again like radical success will
be in how we deploy this treasury in the
long term to fund the growth of the
radical ecosystem the growth and the
resilience of the radical ecosystem
right like we're not a D5 protocol you
know we're trying to build a
self-sustaining community-owned and
operated open source project
um and so for us that means
um you know learning and taking
learnings from Dao's about how we can
like make it more effective to you know
coordinate budgets and goals so we're
not just like negotiating like haircuts
all the time you know is um I think that
that process has led us to this like
more emergent model that supports the
autonomy of these orgs themselves and
the governance processes of themselves
so
um in terms of like onboarding and
off-boarding that means that there needs
to be like explicit like I said trust
levels between the Dao the Orcs And the
teams
um and so there's actually like a lot of
really going back to what you were
saying about like designing like smart
contracts and how we can like be trying
out new things instead of like corporate
forms is that there's like a lot of
really cool tools like being built by
like gnosis Guild right now
um uh and with like the Zodiac mods that
allow you know like the like Dao the Dow
is like a community governed um entity
to delegate trust and revoke trusts in
really interesting ways so like one of
those is like I forget what mod is
called but like the Guard Mod I think
um in which a dow can send funding to a
multi-sig but then there could be a mod
built into the safe
um that allows the community to revoke
the funds from the multi-sig
um overriding the the signatures on the
multi-sig when you think about that
that's a really powerful thing because
we're able to rebalance and redistribute
the power of delegating and revoking
trust among an organization and create
more autonomous flows for that which I
think better supports the emergence of
an ecosystem because you're not just
having these like Gatekeepers deciding
who's onboarded and who's not
off-boarding and so that's really
important when you're trying to develop
more headless brands in which people can
be onboarding to the ecosystem and doing
it in a way that's autonomous meaning
the power is distributed yet the
community also has the power to kind of
keep it in check and so these checks and
balances I think are like incredibly
incredibly important and that's I think
our current challenge that I'm really
excited to be diving into now which is
like how can we be encoding those rules
that embed those checks and balances
between the community the orgs
themselves which represent you could say
The Trusted actors in the ecosystem and
then the ecosystem that those orgs are
funding
um and then the general community of
people who are participating and and
supporting like the radical projects so
it's all about like kind of like looking
at all these different participants and
figuring out how to best distribute
power and Trust to support like the
emergence of the ecosystem without just
kind of doing this like whole like
spray and pray approach to just like
know with no accountability or like no
um you know mechanisms for recourse so
amazing
that's super interesting and that's
super important trust is super important
but then also like I want to talk about
process because I think both Dows and
like more centralized foundations really
struggle with this because like we can
give a grand but then how do you
ultimately like report on the success of
that Grant and how do you track
Milestones because same as in maker like
a core unit or a facilitator can get
money but then it's it's the
facilitator's sole responsibility or
like the team's responsibility to then
like see through how that team is
allocating funding and like Juan you can
talk about later uh more so like the
challenges with that but I know you're
developing a lot of actual like tooling
with the proposal inverter for how you
can
um how you can go about like putting
together a proposal getting funding for
the proposal tracking milestones and
then reporting on those Milestones so
I'd love to hear your perspective on
this thank you process perspective
um so I think like we have like this
traditional like a know-how that has
been working for the last 20 years like
that has circulated around two trillion
dollars I think globally
um United Nations World Bank EU they
always fund milestone-based funding they
require proof of work as in like upload
documentations they assign you mentors
and program managers and I think that's
kind of what you touched upon as well
like it's kind of mycelium like a
mushroom Network in a way if you if you
would like to say where you need to have
hand holding in the culture and you need
to make sure this hand holding has a
cultural infrastructure that has been
built upon right so that's what's really
interests me in the end of today with
Milestone and deliverables so if you
could actually write a proposal and
every we could separate the funders to
ecosystem funders and verifying funders
so I custom funders being trying to
incentivize the communities and
individuals to build on top of their
infrastructure and verifying funders
being the subject matter experts who can
like look at the projects and understand
the again requirements problems and what
can be done and if you could coordinate
that I think like we can get to a level
of distrust layers where a custom
Founders can trust the verifying funders
by verifying Founders can bear verify
the actual Builders of the costume so
that's kind of what we're trying to
achieve with the motor Network now we
are building like this mechanism where
you can write a proposal applied to Any
Grant application or like dial funding
through that or traditional organization
funding gaps as well like African grants
program in Tanzania and then they will
ask you additional questions according
to their cultural infrastructure that
they built upon may that be kyc or like
specific requirements about the
contributors and Builders and then it's
basically Milestone based funding where
you have to upload the work you have to
provide the feedback as a funder you
have to provide the feedback and as a
builder you have to provide the feedback
so we can have this feedback loops in
the end of today it's just a give it an
example from the inverter yeah I like
the mycelium networks I think checks and
balances should actually be reframed as
like symbiotic relationships it's
technically the same thing I actually
think we have more potential to build
symbi symbiosis between like
participants in a system than like just
checks and balances to like reframe the
language and instead of applying like
all of our like political corporate form
stuff to it you know
yeah and I agree that I think that
eventually we need all the the tools to
make it super easy for anyone and make
sure that it's uh that is extremely easy
and the guardrails are in place
um
yeah I'm curious you know if you're in
terms of Grants and if you're using any
type of specific tools that you have
liked or or if you follow a more manual
process a personal ad maker is extremely
manual uh can we like notion like all of
the dials run on Ocean everything runs
on notion pretty much an ocean pipeline
so how many times can we say notion in
this paper we've been telling with the
with different tools
um and yeah looking forward to find one
that will actually work I think that's
also an industry that will help us a lot
in terms of tooling and grounds but I
think we need to reach that point where
it's almost permissionless and there's
almost no no one to to yeah to to verify
it right eventually I don't know use
Claris or something but uh I hope we get
there yeah yeah and we've experimented
with a few
um like grants automation tooling I mean
well first of all like yes we do
actually use an ocean pipeline to track
grants and we we have an application
that comes in like we have this whole
process that we build out where like an
application goes in it gets assigned uh
like a few reviewers
um they like based on their area of
expertise the way that we do grants is
by vertical so like if there's like an
nft vertical or like I personally fund
community and ecosystem or community and
education grants so like I would review
that vertical and then we have like a
whole process for moving that Grant down
a pipeline
we in the future like we really wanted
to experiment more with um like open
decision making and being able to post
um all those applications to like a
public forum but then the challenge of
the foundation is we can't always
disclose
um like exact applications or like what
people are the amounts that people are
requesting for so some of the way that
we try to solve this is one tool we're
going to Pilot is Quest book
or not Quest Book quest book yes Quest
book is one of it no
is it yes
yes okay great isn't an accounting
software that's not what I'm trying to
say
QuickBooks okay okay Quest Book quest
book request book
um and climate Collective which is
actually one of the first or I guess the
second uh independent entity that has
gotten money from the protocol to
specifically fund like climate and refi
related projects they're going to
experiment with Quest book as a way to
do like more decentralized and more open
um grants process then the other way is
like we just use git congrants as well
and like we match we do matching rounds
on bitcoin grants like that to me is one
of the
like best open source like open
Community participatory ways to do
grants that's external to an ecosystem
um and I think we're still learning so
yeah if anyone is building uh grounds
tooling
I want to have to know I want to give a
shout out to our grants lead uh boredom
who was actually someone who came
through the community and now leads our
grants program we're only in we just
finished the first season starting up
the second season now
um but their approach to Grants is
really cool and I think it's something
that I'd like to see more in the space
in which I don't think grants should
just be this like single singular like
one-dimensional type of funding and that
grants are an opportunity to again like
not only source more people and grow an
ecosystem but to provide and develop
people within an ecosystem and so um
what they're doing with like the grants
program is actually trying to reframe it
kind of as a little sub-dial build its
own governance processes have its own
management
um that allow uh for people not only for
other orgs within the radical Dao such
as like the core development org which
is the core teams to direct work by
submitting like rfps or something but to
also experiment and this is what they're
going to start doing now uh with how you
can even decentralize the decision
making of the grants itself right which
I think is like another me means of
creating more autonomy in these funding
sources instead of it being kind of like
our it's like not our foundation grants
program right it's boredom's grant
program and boredom is listening and
kind of creating a symbiotic
relationship with like the core teams
themselves and so there's a lot of Cool
Tools like for example they're using um
outer space badges which are basically
like these like non-transferable nft
badges to
um create uh you know a like spawn a
membership model that exists within the
down can be recognized by the parent Dao
but have its kind of own structure
integrate that with snapshot and now you
have like a decentralized governance
system that's like very very scoped to
the participants in within that certain
Realm of the ecosystem and I think that
that's going to be a really cool
experiment and how can you again support
the emergence of these kind of like
independent funding streams that have
their own mandate yet also
um you know create these trusted
relationships so that like other orgs
can kind of check the power of the
grants and the Dow has to kind of
approve of like allocating fun funds and
so I think that that will be like a
really good experiment moving forward
and you know seeing what tooling can
kind of support that type of
organization yeah totally and also
um I'll I know that Prime has done a lot
of work on like Prime rating and
conviction voting as a way to also like
separate signal from the noise and
understand which grants are like
worthwhile funding can you tell us more
about how you think about that yeah um
so basically the main concept is
conviction model so which would be a
again a trust layer so if you would to
recognize specific Grant programs and
like be satisfied with their approach to
the grants hand holding the projects
that they select and the the way that
they actually onboard them to their
culture and their organization at a very
high level so they can actually
participate in their governance
participate in the decision making
process so once the conviction model
works like when a grant program approves
the Grant and provides the feedback so
how how can they track the other grant
program in the ecosystem and see their
feedback and like kind of generate this
feedback loop on with for individuals
and also the projects that the
individuals are working on so that's
kind of my Approach like we need more
transparency in terms of like the grant
funding we need more transparency in
terms of like the the way that we build
things together because we have this
coordination which it's a human
coordination we all know each other for
a while we've been working together for
a while and uh like this kind of
accelerates us as well to a certain
degree we have a specific understanding
of what we're building I mean to provide
that to the newcomers to this ecosystem
to our ecosystem and the kind of neat so
I feel like you know like built Brick by
Brick and make sure that we have a solid
infrastructure and onboard people to
that um in a way yeah totally and from
the perspective of a contributor or from
a perspective of someone who is maybe
newer to the ecosystem like do any of
you have any like key takeaways or
advice for how can someone get involved
who wants to like grow an ecosystem
um either like at a protocol level or
like open source ecosystem in general or
or built tools for Grant uh funding
anyone can jump in
yeah
um
now I find that I I I went such a bit on
the bull versus bear Market situations
and and it's crazy how
um when it's a bull market you see a lot
of I don't know dowels or contributors
uh popping up like mushrooms after a
rainy day but then when you move to the
bear Market everyone's panicking and
then everyone's thinking about the the
token holder so it's interesting this
perspective of how you go back and forth
and I was actually thinking about what
Simona said about that not all the
organism needs to move at the same pace
and then how do you manage like how how
do you know when when it's time to cut
that part to make sure that the hole
survives to to not uh
yeah do not kill the whole thing because
of of one part and uh with that in mind
um it's uh I think it's a it's a great
time to to build and focus on providing
value I think the the market is great
for that it definitely uh cleans a lot
of the of what Peter Pan was saying
about the kumbayaos
um so we'll we'll see what the what the
real value is
um but but yeah if you're a contributor
and you want to join potentially find uh
yeah an organization that you like that
aligns with your values start to provide
value and eventually you I think you
will be picked up right now
we like to say we like to say that those
are our leader of uh leader fool instead
of leaderless
um but the truth is that I don't think
that everyone wants to be a leader maybe
uh so some people really like the
framework to and be like
yeah being told what to do so we need to
find those Frameworks to make sure that
we can onboard not just the the Giga
brains and the and everyone that that
can do that from that perspective so
yeah I think that um I do think that now
in the bear Market we're like laying the
bricks we're laying the foundation for
kind of the ecosystems to develop
um in the next cycle if you will
um and I actually think that there's a
lot of projects that are currently
navigating successions of power
um for the first time or maybe for the
second time and that there's actually a
lot of opportunity for ecosystem
leadership to kind of shine it's hard
though because I think actually how you
get involved is different from data down
from ecosystem to ecosystem and often I
think
um uh grants or kind of like trying to
achieve some sort of like funding stream
through an organization is like a great
way but there's something more deep
there in which like finding
um an ecosystem in a community that you
align with principles wise and trying to
kind of like participate in that
Community for like and align yourself
with that community so it's it's tough
because I think that a lot of people
like
um for example like as we were trying to
get like our grants program off and
running there's a lot of people who like
didn't know how to engage in the process
and maybe we're like since we didn't
understand how we really wanted to do
grants a lot of people had expectations
for how other people did grants
and maybe we you know like miss a lot
you know didn't meet people's
expectations and so I think it's tough
but I do think that there's like if I've
seen like I the most Prime examples of
ecosystem development in the radical
ecosystem it's come from community
members who just started like showing up
and and being in the in forums and in
the community and talking and asking
questions who then started answering
questions for other people asking
questions who then started being you
know the people that you'd go to when
you want to distribute power permissions
or Capital
um and while for us we're still kind of
like learning about what our ecosystem
growth should be as we also figure out
all the other things with radical it's I
think that what we're trying to do is
like lean into those like more
one-to-one like individual like
relationships of supporting people like
growing into leaders within the
community themselves and empowering
um them as they emerge instead of again
like gatekeeping it so
um and I think that that comes with like
a lot of like
I feel like my answers are more about
like what we can do to support people
coming into the ecosystem better and
it's like a lot of like like intentional
program development you know of not just
uh building an audience but building a
community
um it's a lot of like thinking about
grants more intentionally not just as
distributions of capital but as uh uh
gateways into kind of like other means
of development within a project
um and also kind of embracing more like
ecosystem relationships I think um and
kind of like Partnerships just adds
really quick
um so basically I feel like also as a
web Chief reagent let's say you know
like kind of product project agnostic
person the most important thing to the
newborn board is I would say like first
of all learn like to read a lot we have
a lot of learning curves and that you
need to go through but most important is
mentorship like apprenticeship that's
that's that's helped me a lot in web 2
web 3 in my life in general and I see
like uh we have amazing leaders amazing
people that actually cares about like
what they're building their mission is
uh how can we generate public goods how
we can actually improve our society
Prosper our society and if you can find
these people and like just reach out to
them and don't don't be even shy you
know like I just ask them to mentally
because I think like many people that I
know great leaders in the psychosystem
they would love to mention newcomers and
like teach them what they know and
learned because we learn as we teach and
new teachers you learn you know so just
want that on top of that I wanted to
Circle back to yeah to the expectations
and Leadership it seems that the default
or the first one out there is the gold
standard for anything which I think is
extremely wrong an example is the
delegates in maker though the first one
just started the Forum thread saying
this is my platform and we had a call
with them and that was it so now every
delegate in pretty much the whole
industry has the platform which is just
a forum thread and maybe a call
introducing themselves to the community
and delegates in this particular case
could be so much more than that they
could provide Frameworks they could
provide reports they could provide so
many more things and and all we're
getting is just this oh I'm voting this
for this reason
and this applies to almost everything so
try to think outside the box going back
to Ops 1 try to provide value when you
approach someone instead of give me
something to do it's more like hey I
thought that this could be of use what
do you think if you think it's horrible
try to get me in the in the right
direction but it's extremely important
to try to be proactive and and to help
your Mentor or your team mentor to to
help you otherwise you just take a
burden that that no one was occurring I
think we've come full circle to uh
ecosystems being mycelium Network and
all of us being mushrooms in the network
and the dowels imitate nature as Simona
pointed out earlier in the week and with
that we only have five more minutes so
if we want to take a couple of questions
or just say some closing remarks or
where can people find you all and
connect with you after after Devcon
can talk about where we connect and then
I can hand my microphone off to anybody
who has a question
um but yeah you can follow radical
radicals ridic on Twitter and you'll
probably see be seeing a lot on our
Forum radical.com Community about the
transition I write discourse like this
is my job now discourse posts and so we
have a lot of really cool ones that are
kind of like outlining our transition
and a lot of really cool stuff there
that's happening in the open uh in the
open and you can follow me at Abby Abbey
underscore tick home t-i-t-c-o-m-b
because I also tweet about this a lot
awesome you can reach out to inverter
Network and also help ergin TR I got a
haircut so the profile picture doesn't
represent it but you can still find that
um yeah thank you I'm
0x7u4m which is Juan just in lead speak
yeah I have a very common name so all
the combinations were already taken
sorry Mom
[Music]
mine's just Anna Alexa K on Twitter and
telegram so anytime feel free to reach
out and continue this conversation and
I'm guessing that this is our cue to get
off the stage you have time for one
question
yeah totally Louise
hi yep um you were mentioning about like
these difference between symbiotic
relationships uh instead of check
imbalances and I would love to know like
uh could you expand a little bit more on
that and how how would that look like
uh yeah so I think that it's about
um I think well I say this word way too
much but I think it's about resilience
right and that like when you look at our
natural world actually everything is
built off of not really checks and
balances like you I think that that's
kind of more of like a competitive way
to look at it like when something spins
out of control something checks it
however when you look at like natural
symbiotic relationships
um the difference is because checking
balance is like constraining power
um and uh kind of creating means of like
limiting power where symbiosis is
creating relationships that grow and
that Thrive and that like spawn
um and I think that that's kind of the
difference in which I think symbiosis
symbiotic relationships are often less
of this like linear
um check and balance and more of this
like Dynamic exponential growth
um at least from my limited Research
into microbiology
um and I also think that but I do think
that this concept of like thriving
versus constraining is the difference
that I see in which when you think of an
ecosystem you you see an ecosystem not
again is this like
um I mean some people do again it goes
back to like natural selection if like
what you think about like kind of
biology in general but I think newer
takes on biology are looking at
ecosystems as these like very diverse
interconnected networks um that are all
building on each other and are all and I
think we're now realizing the
interdependencies
um and I think that's those
interdependencies are not like a check
in a balance they're kind of a
dependency on each other to survive and
so I think that that's a way more for me
a more inspiring take on kind of how we
can be building ecosystems in general
because if you're working on
interdependencies instead of like one
person checking versus the other
um I think that you can build more
resilient ecosystems because we're
focusing and it's like how we it's
honestly something that we embody and I
think in the ethereum space off the bat
right is that we want to be composable
we want to be modular we want to be
supporting each other's ecosystems
because together we're more resilient
together we are this like headless
listing that is ethereum that is like
web3 and that's more of a symbiotic
relationship than like a check and
balance kind of like competitive thing
so I think it's coming from like a
personal opinion but totally makes sense
I think what makes sense to me is like
it's switching the model from like one
to many relationship where it's like one
person at the top having connections to
many people to many to many
relationships and it's the bonds between
the it's it's the bonds between the
nodes in the network versus like one
person towards many people
any more questions
great thank you so much for coming and
we're sticking around and at the end of
Devcon everyone
wow thank you all for being the last
panel amazing