PoolTogether Community Podcast #51 with Zakku from Coordinape

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast, and I'm your host, Hot Mike, aka Tim, aka living in a boot down in Austin, Texas, and I'm here With Zach Hu from CoordinApe.

Zach, thanks for being here. This is super exciting.

I can hear that. And thank you. It's great to be here.

So listen, we love CoordinApe over here at the PoolTogether community. The Epics or Epochs, which I'm excited for you to clarify for us how to properly pronounce that word, they're a fun, thing, and I love dishing out the give. I love giving out the give. I love working with Ivy on user testing and like giving some feedback. It's always very fun. And then I get to see my feedback implemented in Coordinate, and you're doing the Lord's work. It's awesome. So thank you so much for the product. Can you tell me, how did you get here? How did you even arrive at Coordinate?

Sure. And it's awesome to hear that you like giving. Hopefully you also like sending and receiving notes too from all your fellow contributors. And yeah, you guys are one of our OG and most favorite users as well. So how did I end up at Coordinate? I guess the short version is I started my career way back when I was a sustainability consultant. So I was working with like all sorts of companies on sustainability strategy. And so this was like working with Dell, Apple, and Intel and all of their tier 1 suppliers on how do we do various sustainability initiatives. And what I noticed in sort of all my projects were just like how badly we need to collaborate and how important collaboration is across all sorts of different scales and ideologies and worldviews and organizations and how generally bad at it people are, and lots of reasons for that. So I just got really interested in this idea of coordination and collaboration generally, and that led me to co-found an organization called Converge. And Converge was a consultancy that essentially brought together corporate, government, and nonprofit leaders to solve systemic issues, right? So how do you steward 500,000 acres of redwoods? You know, we'd bring together logging company CEOs and ranchers, as well as, you know, Cal Fire and tribes and land trusts and activist groups, and figure out, like, how do we, how do we make decisions together that are really impacting all of us when we have, you know, much different ideas about, about what we should prioritize and what should we do? And so Converge, essentially we did that work all over the world. And how I think about it now is what we were doing is creating like IRL DAOs, bringing 60 people together who all have important day jobs and want to collaborate together and are trying to figure out how do we prioritize and make decisions and incentivize this work to happen. And so I was doing all sorts of awesome projects with With Converge and then discovered DAOs. I reconnected with a friend of mine who was Tracheopteryx and was at Yearn and sort of started getting involved in Yearn and just really kind of went headfirst into DAOs. Heard the podcast on Slaying Moloch with Kevin Iwaki and Ameen, and I was just like, oh, there's There's a name for this. How are we going to scale coordination and collaboration at the scale that's needed to address the wicked challenges we're facing? And so in working at Yearn and starting to learn about DAOs and how they work, we saw the need for decentralized, basically decentralized payment. And one of the interesting things about Converge is that we never had anyone on payroll. no one had a salary. The way that we got paid is we would do a project and invoice the client, and then we'd put that money in the middle of the table and everyone who worked on the project would talk about like what they think was a fair way to divvy it up. And so, you know, we sort of leaned on that and lots of other experiences and thought about how can we scale that kind of process. And so, yeah, Coordinate was really born out of that experience and also obviously the experience of DAOs needing a way to do this. So we created it for Yearn and they were using it internally and then other DAOs just started asking if they could try it. And so we slowly started opening it up and it turned out a lot of people liked it and it kind of spun off from there.

That's so good. That's so good. I love that visual of just money in the tail. I mean, yeah, put it in the middle and then let's talk about how it It's divvied up. Yeah.

Yeah. We affectionately called it Thunderdome, assuming that it would get really contentious, but it really didn't. It turned out actually to be like a really powerful way to improve team performance because it creates this really tight feedback loop, you know, where you're telling people what they did that was awesome. You're telling them about the things they did that maybe weren't as valuable as they thought they were. You're practicing having critical conversations with each other, which builds trust and accountability, which are really like the foundations of Coordinate. It's like, how do we build more trust, connection, and psychological safety, and also commitment and accountability? Like, those 2 things we think are always going to result in a higher performing team. And so, yeah, Coordinate was really an attempt to sort of, can we scale those things asynchronously?

And it also, at least, at least at the backend, you have conversations about priorities of the DAO, right? Or so, so if they're not upfront priorities that are clarified, you definitely get the message once the, once you divvy out the money afterwards as what the collective feels is valuable and what is prioritized. And then you would assume that that conversation would continue into the next. Now, answer my question. Epic or epoch? Which is it?

Oh, this— the brutal answer is that sometimes even in the same call, I'll use both. I think that if we had a chance to do it all over, we may choose different terminology than a word that seems like it's almost in sort of either/either category.

Yeah, right.

Epoch and epic are both acceptable. And I don't know, maybe we should have called it something else that people could pronounce.

I mean, okay, I love that there's ambiguity there and it's up to you and both are fine.

That's very representative of DAO ethos, that there is no one right answer and that there are many paths to being right.

Right. And then you've just freed me from many difficult conversations that I was going to have Fighting the course of truth on the proper way to pronounce it. But now I can't have those anymore, which is fine. So I'll do other things. So now, IPAC? No, IPIC. Fight me. Okay, nice. And cookie. So how's it gone so far? How's it been going with Coordinate? I've noticed there's been a lot of changes in the UI, at least for me. I think there are a lot. There's some cool kind of features. But what are some key takeaways, some key learnings of the Coordinate journey?

I think, yeah, I mean, one, there's so many, but I think key learnings is the obvious ones are it's best to start with something and iterate. The first, obviously, our UI and sort of everything we're doing is trying to figure it out as we go. And feedback from folks like yourselves is the only way to do it. Just keep Keep trying and showing it. How do we simplify? I think, you know, for me personally, given my experience at Converge, I think I'm really curious to lean more into how can we make the notes and the sort of interaction more robust. You know, I was surprised at the amount of the impact that notes have on people. And so Like really giving the context, you know, if I get 10 give, like, oh, that's great. But why? You know, I really, it's, and it's the, you know, we know this from lots of research and literature too around just teams and team performance that appreciation and acknowledgement is a huge motivator for folks. And like I said, at Converge, you know, the conversation was as important, if not more important than the allocation. And so how can Coordinate really support teams in having those conversations? We've done some different prototypes with actually facilitating conversations amongst people, kind of doing a retro of the circle. How did that land for you? Did you feel like it was fair for you? Was it fair for everyone else? What did you notice about what we value? So I think CoordinApe is great as a compensation tool. I also think it has a lot of potential as a culture tool more broadly to really do sensemaking in the DAO and make people feel really seen and appreciated for their contributions in addition to getting paid for them. And so broadly, a big learning for me is that desire for for connection and acknowledgement and appreciation is really strong. And I think we're really keen to find a lot more ways to support people diving into that end of things. And then the other one that maybe again is just super obvious, but key learning is for all of us in this DAO space to remember that what we're doing is really, really hard. I think it's easy to forget because we're kind of, at some level used to working asynchronously and remotely, but it's an incredibly high degree of difficulty to try and get connection and coherence and all those things that we know are so critical for teams to do it across time zones and cultures. We're doing it all in text-based communication, which is not how we evolved as creatures. Most of our communication happens nonverbally, for example. And so how does How does tone and intention come across? Like, all these things that we're trying to do, we're doing on hard mode. And so I think some of the early exuberance around DAOs is like being tempered now. It's just like, oh, this is actually really hard. And I think we all need to be very forgiving and kind to ourselves as we're attempting all of this because We're not in an office together. We're not face-to-face building relationships, trust and connection, having hard conversations. All these things are compounded massively by doing it in global asynchronous networks.

It's really interesting that the notes are so important because as you said, things are really hard and you're doing a lot of work and you're doing a lot of things for a lot of people. And you're like, oh shoot, I need to give out my Give. And then you, because you want to, you want to give out your Give. And so you go give out your Give and then, and then notes are kind of like left behind. But then when you get a note, there's this moment like I, so I don't, I don't receive Give. I've opted out of Give. And so as you're talking about notes, I'm like, I wonder if I've gotten any notes, even though I can't receive Give. And I did. I had a note and I screenshotted it because it was so sweet. So it was like this moment, this magical moment that's outside of necessarily the maybe primary value or the main thing that Coordinate does, which is, you know, it's— I don't know, I would say DAO compensation, right? Like some sort of like— but maybe you would say, Zach, something different that Coordinate is specifically because of the 2 things that you mentioned of things that are being very important. is that the notes are so like the encouragement and the humanness of it, right? And the DAOs are such meritocracies and the notes aren't necessarily like— I feel like you kind of walk away from that meritocracy and we remember we're human at some point, you know? So

exactly, you need both of those elements, right? Like the give or sort of like the accountability piece of like, I did what I said I was going to do. I made tangible contributions to the value we're all trying to create. And then the notes are really like that trust and connection piece, which is like, hey, just imagine the difference between I got 10GIVE versus I got 10GIVE and a note that says awesome work. And then I get 10GIVE and a note that says, hey, I really appreciated the way you did this thing. Like, I can really tell how much you you care and like the quality was awesome. Like we're really lucky to have you, right? The kind of motivation that, that, that, that provides is, is a totally different thing. And the kind of culture that provides is a totally different thing. And I think the unique kind of potential or opportunity at Coordinate is, is that those 2 things are tied together, right? So if you just had kind of a, a kudos platform where you go around and, and, and give people shoutouts and stuff, that's great. But it falls off pretty quickly, right? Because everyone's like busy and just showing up to give kudos and give shoutouts. Like that happens in Discord, but it's not the same as when it's really tied to compensation, right? When it's tied, like it has a lot more stakes, it has more teeth when those 2 things are tied together. And that's why You know, I think, and we can get into roadmap stuff if people are interested, but for Coordinate, it's like, you know, the compensation is kind of the key or the entry point. But really we see like a lot more opportunity for, you know, building that culture around, you know, appreciation and acknowledgement as well as compensation. The compensation kind of gives the hook to bring people into that conversation more.

So for the Web3 citizen, the person who wants to both live and work and play in the Web3 space, they still got to pay rent, right? They still got bills, they got their internet, their phone bills, all this stuff. And there isn't necessarily a guarantee on the give or You know, so, so I— how does— how, how has Coordinate been able to do that? You know, like give you kind of that rock-solid compensation, like, I know I'm going to be able to pay my rent this month or that sort of thing, while also being able to do the things that you were talking about, like actually reward merit and work and output and, you know, coordination for the DAO?

Yeah, I think one definite sort of pattern that we've seen is that instead of being sort of an all or nothing, is that teams are using things like, you know, the fixed payments option on our vaults, or what we do internally at Coordnape is have kind of a floor, you know, so anyone that's a core contributor, there's kind of a UBI and the GIV sort of act as more of a bonus. And it's a significant bonus. A lot of people, do a lot of, a significant amount of the people budget goes into a coordinate circle, but at least there's that sort of baseline recognizing that, like you said, we all have lives and we all have fixed expenses and we also all have different things going on. And sometimes you're not going to be able, you're going to have months where you're really crushing it and get more give, and there's going to be other months where there's other stuff going on and for whatever reasons, you know, you're not going to get as much as you have in other months. And so finding ways to use it as a bonus is one way that we've seen people use it. And, you know, we're also— we're thinking about obviously, like, what are some other ways that people can, you know, work across DAOs? And that's why one of the things we're really thinking about is the reputation piece of GIV. Currently, we're working on ways to take Give on chain, essentially. But you know the idea that that give is probably like one of the highest signal reputational markers there is right now in Web Three. As far as like I you know I know how to show up and contribute value to a DAO. Look like people have paid me for that. And so being able to have have those give accrue and be able to to take them with you. You know if someone shows up in your DAO and says, "Hey, I'm here to help." And you can see that they have 5,000 GIV from 600 DAOs. That's a really strong reputational marker. And so that's another thing that we're actively working on is a way that the GIV mechanism can still happen gasless, but the people can basically take their GIV and show them off on chain.

Yeah. And I'm speaking from my experience coming from PoolTogether's GIV program, but there's You know, depending on which DAO is using Coordinate, they're going to have different features enabled. And also, I mean, as you're designing and building, there's going to be so many, so many tugs, right? So many pulls like, hey, can Coordinate do this for us? Can Coordinate do that? We have a very special use case. We have a very special use case. So how do you value, like, how do you prioritize features and resist scope creep and kind of stay toward the center of what you're trying to do? And I would also love to know what that is. Like, what's your, if you could give me like your value proposition or that, that like quick, that pithy statement and who your customer is. I just asked a bunch of stuff, but you know what I'm saying,

Zach. I do. I, you know, when you ask like, I mean, how do you, how do you prioritize? Like, that's, that feels like kind of the holy grail in some ways is being able to answer that question coherently because there are, there's so many good ideas where it's such a nascent stage in terms of DAOs that it's really difficult to say like, oh, here's the obvious next step. User features, the stuff that people are asking for, like, yeah, these are great ideas. We have other great ideas that no one's asking for yet. We're also thinking not just about DAOs, but about teams. Like Converge was not a DAO, but we certainly got a lot out of this kind of process. And so yeah, trying to figure out where is the most bang for our buck in a very, with a limited dev team is sort of a constant process. As far as what we're ultimately going to, I mean, I see Coordinate becoming basically like the center of sensemaking, I hope, for DAOs. Like, you know, eventually you can imagine a place where you go and, and looking at the map is not just like seeing how GIV was allocated, but, but being able to look at all sorts of different kind of data, you know, being able to go there and look at different work groups and see what they're working on, what, what progress they're making, being able to look at specific folks and understand the different skill sets that they have. You know, one of the biggest pain points of DAOs And I would say organizations generally, but DAOs especially, is like, what's going on, right? How do you get everyone to be a high-context contributor? And I think Coordinate can play an important part there as well as, like I was mentioning before, the cultural piece. I think there's a way that we can really enhance the connection and trust amongst DAO contributors and also you know, really, really increase the quality of conversations that people are having and people are able to have. So we have a little MVP that we'll put out at some point around giving feedback, right? And sharing feedback. Like, you know, the notes could not just be like, hey, here's what you're doing awesome, but also a little bit of like, you know, here's what might be even more awesome. And so a place to hold those conversations, I think as well. Ultimately, I'd see Coordinate being a place where people can, teams can do sensemaking and really bond and also build accountability through giving and compensation, as well as build reputation both within their DAO and within the broader ecosystem.

I think what's been very helpful for me is to get clear on priorities, even at a monthly level or an epic level. And so even facilitating, having those conversations and having that North Star At a short-term level or short-term, short time period thing, and then working toward that is so— just even that bit of clarity has been so freeing for me. And, and it's really interesting that Coordinate, not only you're, you're influencing how people are being, you know, rewarded and working together and encouraging each other, but there's also this like potential clarity creation. I mean, we talked about this on the back end, but even on the front end. Yeah. And so That's just, yeah, it's—

There's one project that's sort of hacked together, and this is a feature we would, you know, we would love to build. Instead of allocating to people, you can allocate to ideas or projects and basically create like a really, you know, a signaling vote essentially that has a visual component. So you can kind of use the map and instead of seeing where give was allocated, you can see where People are allocating priority. Again, it's a sort of sense-making, you know, what should we be working on? How should we be allocating budgets? You know, there's a lot of opportunity there for allocating beyond just compensation, like allocating the attention of the DAO. That's something that's not on our immediate roadmap, but some people have done some really cool experiments around. And, you know, the other answer to your question, like, how do we prioritize? I mean, we're, We're on a path to become a DAO ourselves and ultimately would love to see Coordinate be a protocol where people can come build all sorts of stuff that they want to see it do. And over the long term, we'd be a DAO where people can make whatever they want.

Yeah, I'm thinking business development and thinking partnerships and who you can work with. There's obviously, again, scope creep, but a lot of this stuff is like, this is what makes DAO work so hard is it's unexplored. And there's got to be a lot of exploring even when the markets are down and even when things are looking bleak. We don't know yet. Like, we're figuring all this stuff out. And also, like, it's in the exploration that the most powerful things, the moon— sometimes you don't even know about the moonshot until you've like happened upon it, right? Right. And so even thinking about like PoolTogether, using PoolTogether in Coordinate, like if a DAO has limited resources, they can actually stake those, deposit those resources into PoolTogether, and then the give becomes chance to win. Right. And you're just winning off the yield. So it's no loss compensation for DAO contribution through PoolTogether. And just even that kind of partnership. Somebody can build that. Somebody could take CoordNape as a protocol and take PoolTogether as a protocol and be able to boom, slice and dice and create Cord PoolTogether Nape.

Cord together. Exactly.

Yeah, it's kind of redundant, but yeah, coordinate together.

But yeah, I mean, I think for me personally, I mean, that's one of the things that attracts me most to this space. And that's why I can't really imagine working anywhere else right now is just because it's so fertile for experimentation, the unlock of composability and the unlock of DAOs being able to move really quickly. Like, hey, if you get enough people that are interested in something, you go, you don't have to get a VP to sign off on something in order to go try it. And so, yeah, really excited for Coordinate to become more and more of a protocol that people can build stuff on composably. That's definitely our, I'd say, medium-term goal is progressive decentralization into a DAO.

I want to walk back to what you were saying about the tasks and where you were saying this is obviously really preliminary whiteboarded stuff, But just thinking about having tasks or a list of maybe, maybe like each team in the DAO creates a list of priorities or projects that they could be working on. And then the GIV is distributed based on the value that the DAO creates or that the DAO collectively assigns to each of the things, each of the things. So, you know, there always needs to be— I'm even finding this in my experience in PoolTogether. Like, I want to include as many people as possible, but then there's also at some point somebody's got to push, like somebody's got to go do it. Somebody's got to go, like, make the decision. And so it's interesting just thinking about this collective prioritization, but then also the individual or the leadership execution of it and balancing that. So have you— is this being tried? Who's trying this? I want to pick their brain on how that's going.

Yeah, versions of it are being tried. I mean, most of my experience in this kind of process comes from our Converge work. So we're doing this sort of in a room with 100 people and how do you decide what we're going to focus our collective efforts on? Where are the leverage points we think are going to matter? And the process we would use there is actually Things didn't really make it up to the quote unquote vote or leaderboard until they had someone who was lead. We used this framework, lead, partner, follow. And basically anything that didn't have someone who said, yes, I will lead and be accountable for the results of this thing, doesn't even get a chance to be voted on just because we know that this is a prerequisite for anything being effective. You have to have You have to have someone who says, yes, I am the person, I will do this, because otherwise it's everyone's job and thus no one's job. I think, I mean, the project I know that kind of hacked this together, they did an interesting thing where they used it as signaling and it was primarily around a budgeting conversation. And so, you know, they basically said, as we decide budgets for different work groups, We're going to let the whole community basically assign 25% of the budget according to just where they think, like basically signal voting. And then the budget team sort of allocates the rest. But there's a lot of ways I think that we could see people not just— it's never an all or nothing, right? Like, oh, let the community decide is not always the best strategy, but also You know, let's, let's let some small group decide everything, not the best strategy either. So how do you, how can you make hybrids of sort of like getting the people in the community who have the highest context be able to contribute their perspectives to things? I think that's, that's where there's, there's a lot of potential and not just in Coordinate, obviously, you know, there's a, there's a whole lot of tools out there that can help with this kind of, this kind of sensemaking and how to direct things and how to tap into both like the wisdom of the expert and the wisdom of the crowd. And, you know, there's other ways that people do this in circles, for example, of giving, like core team people have more give to allocate so that, you know, they have more of a sense of what's going on because they're closer to a lot of the day-to-day operations. So it makes sense that you can kind of weight their votes a little bit more. Again, in some context that matters. So I think we're always going to be playing again in all organizations, but especially in DAOs with this dynamic tension between how do you tap into collective intelligence and how do you trust the wisdom of informed leaders? That's always kind of a line we're all walking.

I love this high-level conversation and the I need to get more involved in the DAO conversation and thinking about this stuff, especially. I mean, I'm even thinking churn, like churn is a real thing in any environment, right? But I feel like in Web3, in DAO structure, and as we onboard new people to crypto, it's just way— it's, it's, it's a heavier lift to onboard people, especially people who are, you know, new to crypto. I've been in— I've been full-time in crypto since it's about a year. Last November is when I got full-time into crypto and just thinking about how far I've come and then the questions I'm fielding from others. And it's like, oh, I was totally there. And I don't even feel snooty about it because I haven't had enough time to feel snooty about it. But so even the simple thing with CORDA of GIV and understanding how GIV works, it took me like 5 epics to think about Okay. A give is a percent, and this is how PoolTogether uses CoordNape. I'm not sure. I would think this is the same function throughout, but you have a pot of give. Everybody gets a certain amount of give, you know, core team members could have more give than others, but each give is a percentage of the whole pot of whatever the reward is. So for us to pull together, it's the pool token. So we have a certain amount of pool tokens that are given out every epoch. And then the GIV that you get is the percentage. Your percentage of GIV on the whole amount of GIV is the percentage of pool of the whole amount of pool. And for me, I just couldn't get it. I was like, I want more GIV. And they're like, it doesn't matter. Like, if you get more GIV, then you're just diluting your— I guess it's just giving me a more precise way to give out stuff. I'm not rewarding people more. So even that dynamic for me was like difficult to grasp. Any thoughts on that, Zach? A better way to communicate it?

I wish. Yeah, I've tried lots of ways and I mean, it surely is just like you said. I think everyone kind of has a click moment and that first moment when you're doing it, it's like, wait, what? I think I certainly fall prey to the— I've been operating this way for a long time, almost for 10 years. I've All of my income has come from this kind of process. And so I forget how weird it can be and how weird it can feel to operate in this way. We're certainly focused on how do we make this simpler? How do we make this more intuitive? What kind of graphics can we use? Progress quests so that you really walk people through in a very simple way their first epic. We've definitely noticed that from an analytics perspective, like teams that make it through, it's funny you said 5, your 5th epic, teams that make it through 5 epics, we have really high retention on. But there's another cohort of folks that start a circle, run one epic, and then don't run another one. And I think that it's, part of it obviously is like, is UI, and part of it is there's specific context, but a lot of it is this mindset shift. And to your earlier point, our challenge in DAOs is that there's a lot of mindset shifts that need to take place from the sort of standard way that we've been taught to operate. Frankly, I mean, in speaking as someone who comes from the United States, but I think in a lot of Western contexts, We're taught from the beginning, we go to school and there's a principal and the teachers, and then there's the students, and then we go to work and there's a boss and managers and then employees. And that whole paradigm of sort of tell me what to do is something that's really deeply ingrained. And when we get to a DAO and all of a sudden everything's flipped and you're totally sovereign, right? And you have so much freedom. To what do you want to do? But it's also all on you. We have to do this sensemaking together, and it's a really big mindset shift. We need to figure out how do we do this together? And there's lots of hot take debates around it in DAO world of like, are DAOs for everybody? Are we, or are they better suited to a certain kind of entrepreneur? entrepreneurial bent, at least right now as they are. And I think clearly as tools get better, as our products get better, DAOs will start to look a little bit more like companies, hopefully not too much more, but there's 400 years of really good management thinking about how do you get people to coordinate toward a goal. that just because some of the things that corporations do are awful doesn't mean they also haven't figured some things out. And so I think we'll start to see lots of hybrid going on. I think companies will start to look more like DAOs as far as composability and autonomy, and DAOs will look more like companies as far as structure and clarity and those things that they're good at.

I think an analog with PoolTogether as far as like a communication or a functional dynamic, I don't know what I'm saying, is like the concept of delegation. It's like a super powerful thing, I think. But I also, I've drank, I've had some of the Kool-Aid, is the fact that I can deposit into PoolTogether and then I can delegate out my deposit to others. It's a way for me to help them win and get some crypto if they have not had any crypto. And then— Yeah. And it's— and I don't lose any money, right? So, so we running poolmanager.eth, basically it's a, it's an account that helps delegate out hundreds of thousands of dollars to people and for them to win and get prizes to win. So when I say, hey, you've won a $10,000 delegation, somebody is like, what does that mean? And I'm like, well, you see, it means it's really cool because you get $10,000. But there's just these layers that you have to kind of process through with them. To indicate the value that they're getting. And then like, and then they win or sometimes they don't win, but it was cool. But I have to like convince you that it's cool. So anyways, it's just like, yeah, we're creating these new products and then also thinking a way to communicate them and how to communicate them to my mom and also somebody who's a developer who's not Web3, et cetera, et cetera. So marketers, they—

You may want to— I'd start with the Web2 developer first and then—

That's for sure. Exactly. Well, even having a conversation with Polygon and them talking about bringing on, say, Starbucks, and they're like, well, first we have to talk to somebody about Bitcoin. Just basically a normie, right? You talk them through Bitcoin and then you talk them, and once they're okay with Bitcoin, then you get them to ETH. And once they're okay with ETH, then you get them to DeFi. And once they're okay with DeFi, you get them to Aave. And then once they're okay with Aave, then you can talk about PoolTogether. Oh my good Lord.

I think that though, you know, that we have at least, I mean, it's going to be a very long time. It's going to be a lot of work to sort of help people understand like why we think Web3 is cool or you know, speaking personally, like why I think it's important. But the good news is that, you know, the, like the wind is at our back. You know, the legacy systems are not improving. Legacy systems aren't getting better or offering people anymore. They're offering less and less. And, you know, I love this quote from Buckminster Fuller. You know, you don't improve things by fighting against the existing paradigm. You make a new one that makes the old one obsolete. And I sort of paraphrase that as, you know, throw a better party. We don't have to try to convince people of things. We can just throw a better party here and eventually they'll come over. You know, there's a reason folks like you came and checked things out and were like, this is cool, right? I see a ton of potential here. This has got a lot going on. That's kind of why a lot of us are here is kind of looking beyond, I just see in the comments, you know, the, the, that which won't be named popped up, FTX. You know, for, there, there's people that hear crypto and think about all the casino kind of shenanigans and speculation, but at the core of Web3, you know, I think a lot of us are here, especially in the DAO space, are here because we see, you know, the potential of a really transformational technology that allows for harnessing collective intelligence that allows for coordination of people at a global scale. And I think we just need to keep trying to find ways that makes that easier and more accessible and more fun for people, and we'll win. We won't have to fight against these old broken legacy systems. Hopefully, if we can stick around long enough, we can start making our own. That's sort of to me like the golden promise that's out there is that we can use these peer-to-peer collaborative networks as we're building them now and doing things like DeFi, but eventually really start moving atoms. Again, shout out to the folks at Cabin DAO who are building physical neighborhoods for people to co-live at. DAOs are doing amazing stuff. So exactly, exactly. That's what we need to— I think that kind of narrative is important to hold us together through all of these growing pains that we're experiencing now and will continue to experience in the future.

I love that, throw a better party. And then I'm like, wait, what is the party? And I, and it's, I, as a marketer, I totally like, I want to sell good stuff. Like I want you, I want to bring like product matters. Like marketers have to inform product and have to be involved in that because you're, you have target audience. Like this is really, who are you developing for? What problem are you trying to solve? You know, and so, as you said that, throw a better party, which is the paraphrase of the quote that you'd mentioned earlier, is, is I'm like, okay, what is the party? And it's the people, it's the product, it's like how we collaborate with each other. And so, yeah, I'm going to be mulling on that and just thinking about, yeah, what is that party? What am I communicating when I'm talking to people? What, why don't I want to work at Google anymore? You know, I used to want to work at Google so bad. And then I like, seriously, I really don't. I mean, yeah, I really don't. This is going to come up in an interview when I'm interviewing at Google, like in a year or something. No, but, uh, but yeah, I just, I don't, I, I've, I've moved on, at least in my mind, in my heart of like, no, no, I really believe this is the future. Again, it's that Kool-Aid moment. Right. I mean, right now is horrible. I mean, on Twitter, You see the capitulation. People are walking away like, no, I'm done. No, this is over. I'll see you in 5 years, maybe. So, could you comment on these times, Zaku? How are you doing? How are you holding up? What does this mean for the broader crypto space?

I guess I'm optimistic because another one of my favorite quotes from de Hock is, the situation is far too dire, and it's far too late to be a pessimist. I think that that what we're building in Web3, I just, it might be naive, but I think it's important. I think peer-to-peer collaborative networks are going to be crucial to navigate a lot of the realities that we're facing. I think that we look across institutions and see a lot of things that are kind of hopelessly busted, whether it's government or whether it's education or whether it's quote unquote criminal justice. Like all these things are kind of like, I don't, I think they feel like beyond repair of incrementalism. And I think that Web3, like this incredible opportunity to tokenize value and to start to quantify qualitative things, to track value, to trade value on chain, it just feels like a huge opportunity to start really fundamentally retooling things and cutting out these middlemen of financial institutions, of governments, these captured systems, and really start to find a way to just collaborate peer-to-peer. And it, I don't know how far in the future we need to look before the network tip, like network effects take a hold, right? And all of a sudden, like instead of having to offboard and find a way to transfer to fiat and deal with all this, like when can I just go wallet to wallet? I live down here in Costa Rica and, you know, I just bought an ATV for an ETH and I was like, oh, this is like, I just had a little tiny experience of the future. Even though, you know, it's the same experience as Venmo, but it's just, it's all these on-chain, you know, things that we can do. And I think as we think about, you know, how are we going to really address climate change? Does it, do we think that governments are up to it? Because it doesn't look like it. But what is a way that we could use these systems we're building to start incentivizing carbon reduction or incentivizing? I mean, there's some awesome projects going on where we're putting carbon directly on chain from small forest landholders. Like there's glimmers of what the future looks like. And so if you're in it for financial gain and speculation, yeah, this is a terrible time. But I think if you're in it for really rethinking like how can we how can we coordinate and collaborate to make things better for everyone, then it's still an incredibly exciting place to be working.

Congratulations on the ATV. That's very cool.

Yeah, it's happening down here a whole lot. And I think being at DevCon and talking to a lot of folks just throughout LATAM region, I guess, but huge adoption of crypto. And in a lot of ways, there's more of a necessity down here to start understanding like, how can these things serve us right away?

And that was a peer-to-peer transaction, right? It wasn't at the ATM or the ATV protocol?

No, no, that was just wallet-to-wallet. But that's increasingly becoming more common here.

We have a question from the chat that I think is— because as you're talking about this, Zach, I'm thinking of, do we need these new systems because As you said, I mean, yeah, the systems are broken or things aren't being solved at the speed at which they need to be solved, or the motion is not going the way that we need. And there's also, like, right, the decentralization need to fight corruption or not corruption. Well, yeah. Or nation states overreaching in power. Yeah. But then also, like, is there a direction of, like, Hey, no, we're headed towards something because there is a better way. It's not necessarily a negative reason, like a reason out of the negative, but it's a reason toward a positive or toward a— no, no, actually, even though this decentralization thing is more difficult, it can— like, I feel like there needs to be that promised land more shown rather than the escape from Egypt shown, you know? And so I'm trying to— I still have trouble, difficulty communicating what that promised land is. But it's easier for me to communicate the getting out of Egypt problem.

Yeah, I think that kind of points to throw a better party. And huge shout out to Awaki and all the folks working on the Green Pill. If you haven't seen the Green Pill and sort of the kind of stuff they're putting out, really helps paint the picture of Like, you know, I think the tagline is like how crypto can, crypto economics can save the world. But it really does point out a lot of the ways that this can create a fundamentally better system. And I also think, you know, going back to the mindset piece, and this gets like maybe, you know, a little far afield philosophically, but I feel like, you know, in the same way that sort of the mindset of an employee is like, tell me what to do. And one of the big mindset shifts for a DAO is sovereignty is like, no, I'm in control of things. The same thing is happening at a much broader scale. Like, you know, we need to sort of realize like, hey, there's no, you know, government, there's no billionaire philanthropist coming to save us. Like, you know, we're the ones we've been waiting for. And we're going to have to figure this out, whether it's about income inequality or climate or all forms of oppression, like all this stuff that we're dealing with both in local and global scales, we have to figure it out. And I think that Web3 and DAOs really help people get that mindset more embodied and more figuring out like, oh, I have agency here. And so I think that's what we can point people toward is this idea that like, yeah, you could go work for Google or you could go work for PoolTogether and actually get a say in the system. You can get tokens and you can show up and when you add value, you're rewarded commensurately for it. I think that is kind of one of the fundamental really exciting things about Web3. And I think that's a story we can tell. Like, look, this is not something that we have to do that's against the old system. This is just a better way to do things for us. And it's hard to have— we don't have a massive amount of concrete examples of that yet, but right now, I mean, I feel like we're throwing, sowing 1,000 seeds and that If we keep at it, they'll start to bloom and we'll really have some results to show people that this can be a much better way to work and organize.

Yeah. Even as you're talking and saying throw a better party, and then the old mindset is like, tell me what to do, which I totally experienced that at Pull Together. That's how I arrived. I saw needs and I helped out. I took notes, things like that. There was that shedding of the tell me what to do and it'd be like, well, here are the opportunities I see. And it's the same with throw a party. It's like, tell me what the party's like. It's like, no, no, no, let's create the party. Let's decide together rather than tell me what the promised land is. No, no, let's form that together. But I said I was going to get to a chat question and I didn't because I went off. But this is a really great conversation. I'm having fun. Zach, but what about introverts versus extroverts in the working styles? You know, the ENFPs and the Type 7 Enneagrams versus the Type 2s and all of that. Do you see— is there a way for everybody to thrive in that, or are you seeing kind of some people dominate and win out more?

I mean, there has to be a way, right? There has to be a way for everyone to win. I certainly think that especially, you know, in early days, and I would say we're still in this when the Discord is sort of the, you know, the primary place where things happen, it's hard not to go down that slippery slope of like, you know, the people who are the most active, the most vocal, you know, because of the nature of Discord, it's easy for them to dominate the conversation, right? No one's— this is like one of the big challenges with text-based conversation is if someone's a blowhard, you can't just turn to the person next to you and start talking. Like, they're there and running it. And so I think it's the job of all of us and individual DAOs, like, certainly as we're thinking about tooling at Coordinate, for example, like, we've called this like the silent genius problem, right? What do you do when somebody is just Like not interested in engaging in these kind of conversations and doesn't want to feel like they're, they're, you know, honking their own horn and they're just like, I just want to do the work. And then, you know, not enough people really know what they're aware of or are aware of all the stuff that they're doing. And so, you know, there's solutions to that, like making sure that, that, that high-context folks have more gives so that they can reward people that maybe others don't know. We're also working on what we're calling strategies, but basically ways that you can, you know, strategies you can put in place to augment give after it's given. So for example, if someone has a role tag of like backend developer, and just by the nature of the work that they're doing, they tend to be more focused and heads down and an individual contributor working on stuff or of a much smaller team. Maybe they don't participate in the Discord that much, but they could get some sort of like a 10% or 15% weighting for anyone with that role on their give. So it sort of reallocates according to these different roles. So that's another thing we're thinking about. How can you, instead of trying to quiet the extroverts or encourage the introverts to talk, how can you just make the system sort of more fair to all these different modes of being and personalities. And I also think it's sort of inevitable that we'll find more nuanced tools for remote, decentralized global teams. And then there's this other piece that I think is also really valuable, which is how do we upskill our own emotional or psychological intelligence of the team. It's like, how do we create norms so that someone can say, hey, we haven't heard from— wow, we haven't heard from Smart Investor on this call. Do you have anything you want to say? How can we create invitations for people we haven't heard more from? There's cool tools I've seen out there at various times. I remember I did this experiment several years ago With a tool that someone made where it was a— yes, I know you're here, Smart Investor. It was just an example. I haven't heard your voice, but it was a tool that basically tracked contribution time during a meeting. So you could see right away like, oh crap, Zach talked for 70% of that meeting. Like, we know that that doesn't lead to positive outcomes. So How can we, like, how can we up the emotional intelligence of our teams? You know, how can we get better at tapping into the collective intelligence? You know, do people know about these kind of simple tricks and norms around, like, how do we invite people in? How do we make, you know, room for different ways of knowing? Obviously Discord and I would say crypto in general, I would say our entire Western culture in general is way over-indexed toward the cognitive, right? Toward the head, like the brain. Show me the data, show me the reason for things. And a lot of other totally valid ways of knowing get shut out. So those are all— there's a ton of fertile ground for us to explore, for us to learn from lots of other cultures, other ways of knowing, other ways of doing things, and incorporate them in. So there is a very long-winded answer about extroverts and introverts.

The time has flown by. I'm like, I want to keep going, but I got to go to lunch and I want to be respectful of your time, Zachary. But this is so good. And I really appreciate what you're doing at Coordinate. But I know that Richard, Smart Investor, myself included, we're all just encouraged to hear from you. You use these services, you use these protocols, But when you get to actually talk to the people behind them, I know that it just reinvigorates us. So, thank you so much for what you're doing, the work that you're doing. I'm going to give some people some give for being on this call and participating because it was so encouraging to see. So, thanks for that. And anything else that you wanted to cover before I close off our time together? I want to give you the floor for final words.

No, just a lot of gratitude for y'all for You know, using, using Coordinate, giving us the feedback. You know, similarly, I get, I get super invigorated. I know our team will too, hearing folks that are getting value out of what we're doing and just really appreciate everyone coming to listen as well. I think the more that we can have these conversations and sort of remind, remind each other and ourselves kind of why we're here and what we're going for, I think that's, that's really powerful long term as we're doing the day-to-day work of of making products and trying to do things that are valuable. Keeping the big picture in mind is, for me, incredibly helpful.

And we'll end it right there. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. This is great.

Awesome. Yeah, I really appreciate it. Appreciate the community and the energy you guys are bringing. This was really fun.

Awesome. All right. Well, I'm going to see if I can get the group to go out to the campsite, the cabin.

Yes. Check out CabinDAO. Awesome place for an offsite.

Awesome. Cool. All right. Ta-ta.

Cheers. Thanks, everybody.

Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.