Chase Chapman on DAOs and Creating on the Internet

Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Infinite Money Glitch. I'm Zach. I'm here with my co-host Martin, and today we have a very special guest, Ms. Chase Chapman. Chase, welcome to the show.

Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to chat.

We are so excited to have you, Chase. I know we've, uh, we talk very, very frequently, and I know that it's your first time meeting Martin. And so for everybody else, including Martin, who haven't met you before, why don't you give us a brief background on you? Where do you come from? How'd you find your way into crypto? And our favorite question, what was your first memory of the internet?

Oh boy, my first memory of the internet. I'm going to start with that one. I really wanted to play. I really enjoyed playing these like Barbie games on my computer in my basement, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to like use the keyboard because I was young enough where like I could visually see what was going on and I was intrigued, but I couldn't actually like type in a username or whatever. I didn't know what was going on. And I remember just pure frustration. And then when I would get help doing, you know, type it in the little username, it was pure joy. Um, so yeah, early, earliest probably memory is that being able to use a mouse but not a keyboard, which is kind of insane when you think about it. That's like—

Yeah.

The equivalent of iPad babies. Um, and then how I got into crypto— I was in college working in marketing doing data analytics, ended up falling down the rabbit hole because basically like the blockchain or whatever was like this really interesting solution to a bunch of the problems that we had around data provenance, and then ended up basically just being like, holy shit, this is way more than like just, you know, random marketing analytics. data stuff. And so ended up starting a developer tooling company when I was in college for Web3, did that for a bit, stepped back from that, did a year contributing to DAOs and making content and having my own podcast. And now I work for a DAO tooling company called Metropolis, and I also still make content and do all the things and obsess over DAOs constantly.

I love it, I love it.

And big shout out to Julia at Metropolis. We love Julia and we love Metropolis.

Totally the best.

Big stans over here. So Chase, obviously you found your way into a very specific niche in crypto around DAOs. And I know that we worked a lot together in the kind of DAO realm while I was at Rabbit Hole. And I'm curious, you know, for those that aren't really familiar, how would you explain what a DAO actually is? And how would you, I guess, differentiate between the definition of a DAO and like what DAOs actually look like in practice today?

Yeah, well, I don't know. I'm curious how you guys define a DAO, because Martin, I'm sure you have a very different idea from the noun sense even than like Zach, for me. But I mean, my way in like the, what I would call the height of DAOs and like, you know, the, the 2022 era, 2021, whatever, would be, you know, DAOs are like a company, but they're more democratically run and they're these like internet-native organizations. I think that was like very skeuomorphic and made a lot of sense then. I feel like now we're moving into a time period though where like we're ready for something bigger. And so I think my definition is definitely evolving. So I like to think about DAOs as more like certain characteristics, especially when I explain them to people who are like not into crypto. Like one of the main things that I like to talk about is, you know, the power of unionizing and actually thinking about how you can give employees power and what would that look like in digital spaces. And so to me, that's one of Um, the like main foundations that I like to talk about is, is organizations run by the people who create value in them. And I think DAOs tend to be more digitally native. Of course, I still think that's like very far from the vision that DAOs originally sort of had set out for them around being these like autonomous organizations that are like fully decentralized. And we can get into all that stuff and the differences between where DAOs have actually evolved, but that's That's kind of the current state of how I explain DAOs.

That's super interesting. Martin, how do you understand what a DAO is? Because I know Nouns DAO is very specific. How would you describe a DAO?

I think it really depends. I think what I've been feeling is I feel like there's a need for a new term almost, or like new terms for DAOs because it feels like, yeah, she actually had this tweet, I guess maybe it was like yesterday about what like autonomous in DAO means. And like you said, You know, it's a combination of automation, so smart contracts enforcing agreements and autonomy, decentralized voting mechanisms that minimize risk of centralization. And so I think when I think about nouns, I think they balance, they have those 2 very clearly. It's like nouns, like regardless of what, whatever happens will probably keep going forever unless like, you know, there's some contract upgrade or something that destroys it. It'll keep going on forever. And I think that's really great. And I think that's— Really powerful. That's why I think some people refer to Nouns as kind of like one of the few like true DAOs in that sense of the definition. But I actually think like organizations that use like Ethereum to function but are not fully autonomous, I think is okay. Like, I feel like almost like if you just have like a regular old organization, you have your local book club, You have your local, whatever, like fund, and it exists on Ethereum and it runs like through smart contracts or the money just moves through the blockchain. I actually think that's equally exciting and interesting to me. It doesn't need to be fully autonomous to be interesting.

It's funny, I probably sit like, probably sit in the same camp as both of you in that I think the definition is ever-changing. I think the one that sticks in my head the most, mainly because it's memorable, is Cooper Turley's definition of a DAO, which is just a group chat with a bank account. And yeah, it's overly simplistic, of course, but at the end of the day, like decentralized autonomous organization, it's such a mouthful. People don't really get it. Chase, I like how you described it as it's basically a company, but more democratic. And the people who are creating the value get to capture that value, hopefully through tokens. And obviously, yeah, it's a group chat. They normally have a Discord or a forum of some kind and they vote on these proposals. I guess like, The way that I see it evolving over time is that we move from this like thought of a group chat with a bank account to hopefully moving it more and more on-chain so that this autonomous side of these organizations can actually take hold. And I don't think we've actually seen that yet. So I think that's where like the most interesting, I guess, new opportunities arise. And it brings to mind this idea of a quote called like code is law. And people in crypto talk about this a lot. They say, you know, code is law when referring to crypto more broadly. But this especially applies to DAOs because of this autonomous, you know, aspect to them. And Chase, building off that tweet that you had, I think the second reply to it was something like humans are the ones who make decisions and the smart contracts enforce them, and that's what makes them autonomous.

Mm-hmm.

So given that you can automatically execute these proposals on-chain, if the DAO is actually autonomous, How do you think about like the benefits and drawbacks of fully on-chain DAOs versus the more loose definition of this like group chat with a bank account?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting 'cause a lot of this stuff ultimately comes down to like basically saying, why are we doing what we're doing? Like, I think the whole, you need to be decentralized because that's our ethos does not make a lot of sense. Like, you should really be thinking critically about why these things are true. Which I think Martin kind of goes to your point too. Like, Nouns has this interesting balance that has actually worked because they're striking that balance. Like, that's— it's not just to be like, we look like a DAO, that's pretty cool, you can call us a DAO now. Like, that actually worked well. And so, um, I think when we think about a lot of these pieces and thinking about how to sort of straddle the line between being off-chain and on-chain, or relying— like, with Metropolis, we came up with this framing that I really like, which is like socialware and trustware. Trustware is mostly things that are on-chain that happen, these on-chain assurances. Socialware is stuff that relies on humans, basically, whether that be social relationships with humans or an individual human to make the right decision, whatever. And so, um, the way that I like to think about that is like, where do you need trust assurances where you actually don't wanna rely on humans to ensure that something is, is happening in a way that is, um, you know, enforceable or trustworthy or whatever it might be. And so like a great example of that is what— I mean, I'm not a big DeFi girl, but a great example of that is if you do look at the way that, um, uh, creditors have been paid back if you are using a DeFi protocol as opposed to being, um, in some sort of, sort of fake crypto bank situation.

Sure.

Or real crypto bank, I don't know. But anyway, like, I think that trust assurances there are actually really, really valuable and important. And so you can see the ways in which having enforceable smart contract code that ensures that you're getting paid back first makes like a lot of sense. And so I always think about like, where do you need trust assurances and where, where is it actually okay to rely on human beings doing the right thing or making the right decisions? And I think that's kind of how at least I think about striking the balance.

Sure.

There is also like legal arbitrage or regulatory arbitrage. Like, there are all those pieces, but At a fundamental level, I think Vitalik wrote a lot of great stuff as well about convex and concave decision-making and all that kind of stuff that I think on the decentralized side can also make a big difference. So that's the autonomous piece, and then the decentralized piece is different.

Yeah.

I mean, so it's all really interesting. And I think when I think about DAOs, I have to often ground myself in the fact that today most DAOs are not decentralized, nor are they autonomous. And it's funny because I have a tweet that says most DAOs aren't decentralized or autonomous. They're basically just organizations. And it's one of my highest engagement tweets ever. And that, you know, it's funny, but it also doesn't make me very, I don't know. I just like, I don't see people as crazy about DAOs as they were a year ago. Right?

Yeah.

And so with most DAOs not actually being decentralized, not actually being autonomous, Why do you think this is and how do you think we move to a place where the DAOs that actually need to be decentralized and actually need to be on-chain end up that way? And then the orgs that frankly want to be flatter, more democratic, maybe they use a token to do their voting, but they're not decentralized because they have a leader of some kind and they're not autonomous because they're not actually executing the proposals and the changes through smart contracts.

Yeah. I mean, To me, like, a dystopia is anything that takes a certain either philosophy or principle to the fullest extent without considering that everything should probably be balanced in a spectrum.

Sure.

Like, I think where we're at today with DAOs is basically just, uh, like, result of the fact that both decentralization and autonomy, or automation, depending on what you think that word means, are a spectrum. And so I think when we sell the vision for anything, we're selling what we see as a utopian version of, of whatever that might be. Um, but I think the reality is that, like, utopias don't exist, unfortunately. And again, if you take something super far in one direction, you actually start to see something that looks a lot more dystopian. And so Basically, what I think we've realized is that like you can't fully decentralize something and have something that's fully autonomous for the most part. There might be a couple of organizations that you can do that with, but I just don't think that that's actually the case for a lot of things. And so I think that where we're at with DAOs today is we had a lot of excitement and hype. Amazing. I think you need that to fuel experiments and interesting things. DAOs have not lived up to that because they never— I don't think most things ever live up to the hype in the way that you think that they will, but they still transform our society in a lot of ways. I mean, I think I— people always talk about early internet, you know, stuff, but I think it's similar. Like, people are talking about the early internet doing certain things that now we look back and we're like, that's kind of a goofy thing to think, but it did transform our society in a lot of amazing ways. So I think that the, the difference in how we've talked about DAOs a year ago and how we talk about them today is a lot more a result of the fact that we've just realized that, like, What we, what we imagined wasn't quite gonna work the way that we thought. And I think now we're in the trenches figuring out what actually does work and trying to balance those things, which like, I think like Announce, for example, has done an interesting job for a very specific type of organization. The challenge is, and some people love to act like every DAO can be like Announce. I think to think that is dumb, frankly. And I, that rhetoric I think is, counterproductive for the space because I think a lot of organizations have very different goals from what like Announce does. And so I think that's part of the challenge too, is like we need to boil down why do certain organizations work well based on their constraints and what they're working with versus how do we run other types of organizations with, with a similar ethos, but acknowledging that like the goals might be very different, which is going to require a very different structure. So I think that's the other part of it. It's just more complex and nuanced than we thought it was a year ago.

Totally, totally. I appreciate the nuance that's coming in. And I think the one thing that I'm hearing is, you know, nothing ends up going to kind of the extremes of the spectrum. It always ends up reaching some sort of steady state that takes a little bit from each side and compromises a bit. But I do think that, you know, although I agree with you that not every organization needs to be a nounish DAO, I do think, at least today, that nouns is the I guess it's the, it's the odd one out. It seems to be the most promising, truly decentralized and truly autonomous DAO. Martin, how do you think about this type of stuff? And how do you think about the nuances that are getting added as we move into this bear market, the frequent activity that's still happening in the Nouns ecosystem? How do you kind of think about these changes that are happening in the space and where Nouns fits into the picture?

Yeah, no, I would agree. I think with Nouns, I think it works really well for what its objective is, which is to like proliferate this brand. And a great way to do that is every day someone can opt into this, can buy an article of clothing, basically an NFT from that brand, and then have a say in how that brand gets built. I think that works really well for that model. There's, but we haven't really seen other DAOs succeed. Like, and that's the thing is I feel like until there's like another DAO that uses the model and actually like really succeeds on a level of Nouns of like, okay, it's been around for a year, it has a pretty good like active community. You know, some drama probably is unavoidable, but like nothing, you know, existential until we see that. I think that it's hard to say, but I do think there's something about the model that's really interesting. It does have downsides. Like a big thing that has been talked about in the Nouns ecosystem is it's really hard to actually reward builders in the ecosystem with Nouns equity, right? Like to actually pay someone who builds for Nouns DAO with a Noun, the DAO has to buy one of its own Nouns. So kind of do like basically like a stock buyback. And then like give that out. And so the DAO does own some nouns that it's bought from itself essentially. But that's not like a super sustainable model. So there's no not solutions there. So yeah, I think with nouns it just feels like there's a need for, I think it works really great for that model, but it's not clear to me that it's like the best for everything. And I think it, there's gonna be, I think there's gonna be different models for different like objectives basically. I think Chase is kind of spot on with that. I feel like nouns works really great for nouns. Like, I think it's like one of the most interesting spaces in the ecosystem right now, but it's not super obvious to me actually that it'll work for everything, or at least it's possible. That's a possible outcome. But to me, I feel like we need to test it out for a while before we can say that for sure.

One of the things that comes to mind here when you talk about DAOs is not only the different way of working in the actual org, but the different funding mechanisms and the different expectations of scale that come with these new types of organizations. Chase and Martin, I've talked to you both individually about different types of businesses that don't necessarily fit like the traditional venture capital model. And for those that aren't as familiar, you know, VCs really expect their startups that they're investing in to be a billion or $10 billion plus outcome. The reason for which is because venture capital is a power law. 9 out of 10 of the companies they invest in are going actually to zero. And so they need one that's going to, you know, pay back all of the losses that they've made. 100 or 10 times over. And so when we think about businesses that don't fit that model, DAOs often come up in conversation. And I talk to a lot of investor friends and founder friends in crypto who constantly question why are VCs investing in DAOs when we have no sort of comparable exit to map to in terms of how they scale, how they grow, and what an exit strategy is for a DAO. So when we think about this kind of shifting culture of work and identity online, we all have these interests in like different types of business models. I'm running a venture-backed company. Both of you are in DAOs. How do we think about these new business models as it relates to prior business models? And Chase, how do you like think about more broadly businesses that shouldn't or don't scale exponentially like a venture-backed startup?

Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot because Especially as we're in a bear market, like it's interesting to see what got funded in the bull and sort of what the thesis behind it is. I feel like my brain goes in two directions, so I'll separate out how I'm thinking about this into two key pieces. One, I think crypto is new, so no one really knows what's gonna make returns. I think from the previous bear into the bull, you saw like insane returns for funds. Obviously, there are like these low interest rate phenomenons, blah blah blah.

Yes.

But beyond that, like, and, and so you have a lot of capital coming in, people need to deploy it, whatever. But I do think that right now we tend to see very few crypto businesses that, um, acknowledge that they are probably not venture-backable. Like, I have not seen, except for potentially organizations that are doing Gitcoin grants where they're clearly like being supported by their communities, Maybe you could argue that like, um, projects that are being funded in the Nouns ecosystem aren't being venture-backed. Like, there are definitely arguments and, and projects that are coming up that are relying on grants and things like that. Um, but I think more broadly, like, we just have a lack of ability to differentiate between businesses that are venture-scalable and businesses that aren't in the space. And I think we tend to treat a lot of lifestyle businesses like they are going to be venture-backable, and I think that's Probably not the case. Frankly, I think one of the reasons that we do this, and this is the second place my mind goes, is like it's incredibly easy to fall back on governance as a value capture opportunity, and it's pretty unclear if that's actually going to be the case. So right now, you know, the the way that I think a lot of crypto businesses justify, especially ones that have been venture-backed or raising, justify valuations and all of that is by saying, "Well, we're gonna have a governance token," and I think it's frankly like our equivalent of an ICO. For this, this, and a lot of ICOs, like that was kind of the argument in the first place. But now we have a brand new spin on it, which is DAO governance, blah blah blah. And so I think that that's one of the main reasons that we see a lot of this stuff happening right now. Obviously, when you wrap up like identity and community and all that other shit into the idea of governance, you're just like supercharging the perceived value, and there actually still might not be as much value as they. You think there is. So I just think we need to think more critically about what kinds of organizations are actually going to be able to scale and create value for a large amount of people to the degree that we think, versus like thinking more about what does it mean to have local— sort of local so much as you can be like local to parts of the internet— businesses that are internet native. Like, not every business that is internet or crypto native makes sense to have that type of return. And like, maybe that's a great thing. I think that you can, if your goal is to make money, or if your goal is to create value, like you can do all of those things at a local level and, and not take venture money. So I don't know, that's, it's something that like grinds my gears a little bit in the way that we think about venture-backable businesses.

Chase, do you, do you, I guess, what are some examples of like, 'cause my, my theory on why people aren't like, are expecting these bigger returns is that we haven't seen like, True, like small lifestyle businesses in crypto. And I think we're not seeing them because there's no true small problems. There's only like big existential or like things that you're, you know, like there's only these very big things. There's not like, hey, I would pay someone like $10 to do this for me, right? Like, you know what, we're not seeing those just yet. And I've talked to Zach a little bit about this of like, I want to see like the sudoku.com of crypto.

Mm-hmm.

Like what is just like, some super simple, like kind of boring business, but that just like makes sense, right? Like the internet exists, people wanna play Sudoku, they play Sudoku on the internet. It's faster than waiting for the newspaper in the morning, right? Like it's just an example of like Web2. Do you see like lifestyle businesses in Web3 that like are like generating like true, just like simple boring revenue, or you think it's kind of a chicken and egg, like the funding isn't there, so no one's building those businesses? How do you see it?

It's kind of interesting. I feel like, I mean, I think part of what's challenging is that what comes with the promise of ownership is the promise of upside in general. So like, when I think about what is feasible for a lifestyle business, you know, or the equivalent of, of a sudoku.com or something like that, I imagine like an NFT community that does one very simple thing and it does it well and people appreciate that and come back to that. I'm sure communities like that exist. I think like Thirsty Thirsty, I think it's called, is like an interesting community that was doing NFTs to support, um, I forget exactly like what technically they're supporting. I think it's like in indigenous, um, indigenous communities, and there's like a focus on wine or something. But that's like a great lifestyle business in my opinion. Like, that's really— I don't know, I don't think they raised, but that's like a really cool, um, project that's like, yeah, like I'll go to an event every month in New York and, and have an NFT that gets me into that. Like, that's cool. So I think that there are a few examples bubbling up of that. I think some of the challenges that you get there are that, um, I think that if you're going to speak the language that we have in crypto right now, people kind of demand like ownership, governance rights, whatever. And I think that starts to attract speculation regardless of whether or not you want it to attract speculation, which I think is kind of the problem as well. So I do think there's kind of like this weird chicken-egg thing going on where it's like no one wants to build lifestyle businesses in the first place because that's hard to do. And then you end up, even if you try, getting the people who you don't want speculating, speculating, and then they price everyone else out. So I feel like that's part of it. And then I also think we just haven't hit product-market fit for a lot of different things. And so we're experimenting with—

Yeah.

The bigger the better, and we need to take those experiments down a notch and sort of ground ourselves in what's realistic.

I wonder if it's more like basically just crypto-enabled lifestyle businesses. Like we, we had a friend Adam who also has a crypto podcast and he uses like NFTs and like, you know, does like kind of has a whole interesting strategy around it. And it's like, that's a lifestyle business that works really well. This thirsty, thirsty, thing seems kind of like it's like drinks or like more like lifestyle, like brand type thing, but it's enabled by NFTs. So I wonder if like, basically it's, as much as I hate this term, but like Web 2.5, right? Or it's just like a mix of just using NFTs and using a crypto audience and monetizing that, but without it being like this kind of crazy new innovative thing. Maybe that's the in-between here.

Yeah, and I mean, I, and I actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I think Thirsty, I don't know if Thirsty Thirsty even makes a profit. Like I think they might break even, but that's like the ultimate lifestyle brand. Lifestyle business, I guess. But, um, but I do think like there's something really interesting too here about, you know, the idea of like, okay, cool, so let's say you want to start a lifestyle business. If you're like a Web2 SaaS company, there are 2 things there that make that easy. Number one, you have business models, like to your point about Adam, or even like my podcast, or if you guys decided to monetize this podcast, like there are just existing models for that. Adam, I think, is playing with more crypto-native stuff, which is really cool, but like For my podcast personally, I don't, I don't mess with that. I think a lot of the models aren't there yet, so I'd rather just fall back on, on that kind of thing. And then the second thing, which is true for just like brick-and-mortar businesses, is like financing exists if you need that to start a business. And obviously a lot of businesses are bootstrapped and people save up and, and all that stuff, but like we don't have good financing rails for lifestyle businesses in crypto. We, we base— which to some degree is fair because like starting an internet business is not that expensive. You don't have to have a store and all that stuff. So that totally makes sense to, to some degree. But like, there are upfront costs of starting a business online, and so, um, and especially a crypto business. So I think that there is also an argument to be made that like, until we have alternative funding sources, it's probably going to be challenging to see these types of businesses succeed because they're basically going to be started by people who are much more incentivized to start what they believe to be venture-scalable businesses instead of starting things little. You know, for sure, mom-and-pop type internet businesses, which is funny because the most, most of the businesses that you interact with on a daily basis, like living your life, are not venture-backed companies. I mean, like the bagel place down the street is not a venture-backed company. I think we, we assumed that the internet was going to scale and be able to serve everyone, and to some degree that's true for certain types of businesses. But I hope there's like the equivalent of this, of like a mom-and-pop bagel shop in crypto world. I don't know what it's going to be.

Totally.

But I hope that exists.

I think the talk about alternative funding sources is a really interesting one. And I want to plug something that Martin is doing in the Nouns ecosystem with Explorers. Martin, do you want to talk about Explorer grants a bit and maybe just unpack this idea of grants as a new funding mechanism instead of equity, you know, equity crowdfunding, but also just more broadly equity funding through venture capital?

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because I think there's also a connection to like potentially what small Like smaller funding could look like in a crypto native way. And it's kind of something I'm— a broader theory, but I don't have super high conviction in it. But Explorer Grants is really just a program that I started in NounsDAO that's used as like a way to fund new people to explore the Nouns ecosystem. So in the Nouns ecosystem, like it's pretty straightforward to get money. You can kind of put put a proposal on chain or there's like various like small grants pods and things like that that deploy capital on behalf of Nouns. And that's where we get kind of interesting things like there's a Nouns coffee brand, for example, right? So someone was basically like, hey, I'll make Nouns coffee. I'm assuming they just like had their, you know, somehow have a connection to get coffee and they just put the Nouns logo on it. They put Nouns branding, everything. It's CC0 so they can do that. They got funding from the DAO. So that's basically their kind of like startup capital, but there's, it's equity-free, right? It's no, there's no Nouns doesn't take equity. And I think the bigger question there is like, what is the benefit for Nouns in the long term if they don't have equity in the actual business? And I think that's the alternative model is you get a DAO that basically funds things without expectations of return just to build its own brand. And maybe like if that coffee gets really big outside of crypto, outside of the Nouns community, then that benefits Nouns maybe in a way that's even bigger than an equity in the business would have, right? So that's kind of one way to do it. And yeah, what I'm doing with Explorer Grants is more just like trying to get people in the ecosystem, but actually through doing this grants program, it's also kind of like marketing for nouns in a way. So there's, yeah, there's kind of a bunch of different threads to pull on there. But I think in a world in kind of this like abundance, I kind of call it like abundance mindset a little bit for like—

Yeah.

DAOs and for brands, I think there's maybe a world where like, yeah, you just give money out and like somehow that comes back to benefit you instead of asking for equity. But I feel like that's like a very big shift in mindset and I feel like it doesn't really fit in with like a lot of like capitalism, like principles. So I'm not sure how strongly I believe that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's an interesting comment because what Nouns is doing fundamentally is every day they're asking for money from soon-to-be community members and they're not giving them equity. They're giving them something they own, i.e., a Noun NFT. But I think the, the nebulous nature of what you actually own when you own an NFT is that kind of solution to this problem. And so I think that if you can somehow quantify the patronage that any sort of community is getting through this nebulous thing that is an NFT, I think that might actually solve this issue of like, how do you raise money without giving away equity and without taking on debt? In this case though, I feel like you almost are taking on debt or Nouns is taking on debt. It's just more of like a social debt. And so they now have this social debt to their community and everybody who's holding these Nouns to now continue to proliferate that meme and that brand so that everybody benefits instead of just the creator of the brand. And so I don't necessarily have a kind of end-all be-all point to this, but I think the fact that Users are give— users, owners, whatever, are giving money to the DAO and receiving something that they own that they can't really describe to people. I think that is why this is starting to work and why it may end up being that kind of new funding mechanism for these lifestyle businesses.

Yeah, it is kind of interesting 'cause in the context of like, how is that value captured? And like, to your point, Martin, about like, I don't know, maybe, maybe this, this doesn't quite work in a fully capital, um, or a fully capitalist system. Like, I think there's something interesting here about like localism around this idea that like Nouns is funding other Nouns projects for the expansion of Nouns. But like, who's buying Nouns Coffee? Like, is it people outside of Nouns? And that's the kind of data that I'd be really interested in. And I think you, you probably see similar— I mean, you definitely see similar dynamics in some ways in um, like layer 1 ecosystems where like layer 1s will grant projects money to build on top of them. Are you actually getting more users or are you just pulling from the same group? And frankly, like whether— how you answer that question and what morality you assign to that, like is that good or bad, tells you a lot about how you want your system to scale. Because there's a world in which it's like totally fine for nouns to fund projects just for people who are already into nouns. And it's just like this ecosystem where like the, it's sort of circular. And if people stay, then like maybe that's fine and it doesn't even need to expand outside of it. There's a dynamic there that's interesting.

So maybe that is the answer then to this businesses that don't scale or shouldn't scale question. I'm not saying that they all have to be nounish DAOs, but maybe in a kind of circular way, DAOs actually are that answer because if the people who are so focused on that niche and so focused on that interest group rally together and not only fund the initiative, but then continue paying for the goods that come out of that initiative, maybe it's just this small, self-sustainable little economy.

Yeah.

And I think at the end of the day, the group chat with a bank account or every other definition that we've given to a DAO, Does kind of point at this very localized decision-making, localized funding, localized initiatives. Every single thing about a DAO is really local to the people that are a part of it. And so I think when we think about businesses that don't scale, non-venture-scale businesses, maybe DAOs just are that answer. And it really is just about finding the people who will continue to support you over time. And so maybe that kind of cyclical nature is actually okay. I think we still have a lot to learn over the next handful of years to see how those things shape up.

100%. I mean, it's interesting too, because Nouns does have a fundamental mechanism for growth. Even if you have a circular economy, like, there are new Nouns. There's a new Noun every day. So like, there's an— doesn't mean there's a new owner. Like, there are lots of people who own a lot of Nouns, which, you know, the decentralized nature of Nouns is an interesting question. But like, beyond that, like, Nouns does have a fundamental growth mechanism. It's just, um, limited, which, as like a side note, because not, not to make it fully a Nouns podcast, but I will say, like, I think that one of Nouns' biggest, uh, reasons for its success with a lot of other things happening is that it forces a limit on growth. Like, you only have one new owner every day.

Yes.

And that, or at least one new unit of governance power every day. And like, fundamentally, as, as one of the biggest, to me, challenges with design for DAOs is basically just that, like, you're designing for an unknown number of stakeholders with a wide variety of incentives.

Yeah.

And when you do that from day one, you end up with like a pretty whack-ass system because you're designing a really complex system, even if it's protecting like almost no value. Which is really hard. That's why you have like DeFi DAOs that don't have product market fit, but that vote on like ridiculous parameters for protocols that doesn't make any sense when like they have no users. Like, whose money are you protecting? At the same time, you might have DeFi DAOs that aren't really DAOs. So you have this weird thing. Nouns has like a built-in mechanism for being able to linearly scale that, which I think is a very interesting dynamic that is At least if the nouns model doesn't apply for most DAOs, which I don't think it does, I think it applies for specific types. I think if there's a way that other DAOs, regardless of their model, can apply that type of growth limit, like that is powerful alone.

To shift gears a little bit, I, I wanna talk more about what it's like living on the internet, being a part of these internet-native organizations, and how our sense of self and identity changes as we live on the internet more and more. Chase, I know you and I've talked a bit about, you know, what it's like being vulnerable on the internet and putting your whole kind of life and thoughts out there. So I'm curious, what do you think about the effects that being vulnerable on the internet has on your personal and professional life? Obviously, you've created a pretty awesome following for yourself on Twitter and beyond. But how do you think about the implications of like, being vulnerable online, personally, professionally, on your feelings, everything else in that realm?

Well, it's kind of interesting. I feel like because you guys probably both grew up online, Martin. I don't know how old you are, but I'm guessing similar in age to our age.

Yeah, yeah, Zach.

Okay. I feel like what's so interesting about having grown up in the time that we did is that the internet was like. This sounds so weird and kind of like cringy, but like the internet was like. always like your, like, space, I guess, in your most vulnerable moments. Um, like, I remember being in middle school and being on Instagram and like you compare yourself to other people, like all that shit that like people now do, but like we did from such a young age. And so what's so interesting to me about like vulnerability and intimacy on the internet and stuff is like the amount of intimacy that we have with the spaces that we exist in on the internet. Like Same. If I'm sitting with an uncomfortable thought or don't feel like doing work or whatever, like, I'm going to Twitter or TikTok. And like, that is actually comfort to me. And it doesn't mean it's comforting or healthy, but like, that is how we use the internet in a lot of ways. And so I just think that there's like this really weird dynamic, even I think that's been developed among like my parents, you know. My mom, if she doesn't feel like doing something, is gonna go surf Facebook Marketplace or whatever she wants to do.

Yeah.

But like, there's this level of intimacy that we've developed with the internet itself and with these digital spaces that I think is like so much more significant than we realize. And we can separate ourselves from it, right? Like, sure, the first couple days without your phone are gonna suck, but if you got rid of your phone for a week, like, you'd be fine. You wouldn't— I don't think it would— I think you'd probably be better off because of it. But I do think in our day-to-day lives, we use these spaces as Um, I don't know, these like weird, almost like sometimes numbing, sometimes nurturing, like places that I just think no one ever intended them to really be built for. I mean, I've even seen people use like, um, GPT-3, the chat AI thing, for like, um, as like a therapist.

No.

Which is fucking crazy. No, but it's kind of smart. Like, I think on some level, like, that makes sense. Like, if you align with certain philosophy and you have a certain problem, like Sure, like, why not use like Chat AI? So I don't know, I think— or OpenAI— like, I think that's a really interesting dynamic that we just don't recognize. And then of course, on top of the intimacy with the internet level, there's also like, how do we think about intimacy ourselves on the internet with other people, whatever, which is a different can of worms, but similarly incredibly strange.

So what I'm hearing is like almost you're talking about how the internet provides a space for people to congregate or go when they feel vulnerable or when they feel, you know, kind of in their feelings. How do you think about if we like kind of flip that around? How do you think people feel when they are vulnerable online? And I guess I'm asking this question from a standpoint of like, I guess, content creation or generally just being public online. I think that is very new to a lot of people and I think was definitely new to me a handful of years ago.

Yeah.

And since getting into crypto, now I literally use Twitter as like a public text messaging platform. It's basically like I'm talking to my friends, but everybody else can see it. And, you know, you gotta be at least somewhat vulnerable or at least in some way be willing for people to, you know, bash you and say things like, oh, that was a dumb comment, or otherwise dunk on you in some way. And so how do you think about being comfortable being vulnerable on the internet? And how do you kind of grow that muscle over time, be willing to put yourself out there and deal with whatever comes on the craziness of the internet?

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I had, um, a guest on my podcast who's talking about like, uh, context collapse.

What does that mean?

The idea— basically the idea that, um, when you're on the internet, you are often in spaces where typically, you know, Zach and I have a conversation and like there's so much context around our conversation. There's our friendship, level of trust, that like we've worked in similar contexts together. Like there is so much context around our conversation that like is really, really important in the— in, in terms of like interpreting what we're Talking about. Like, you might say something and you say it because you know that it's like, yeah, Chase knows what I'm gonna say. Like, Chase— or Chase knows what I mean. But when you don't have that, um, and you don't have the ability to be like, oh yeah, I know this person, what you end up with is this weird world of context collapse where you have these interactions with people or you say something and there is like no, um, assurance. That people actually understand where you're coming from or what you mean, because there is no context around it, or there is improper context. And so I think that's like a really interesting aspect of what it means to be vulnerable online, because you don't want to go around the world being vulnerable with everyone you've ever met. Like, you need a certain amount of context and trust there. And I do think like the internet, uh, strips that away from you in a way that can be really challenging, where I think Um, things get tough is when you have vulnerability and context collapse without your own systems for care. And that looks like you being a middle schooler posting on Instagram for validation from other people, um, but not necessarily, you know, if you don't get the kind of reaction that you need, um, because again, you don't have the systems for your own care, like, that actually looks really bad. So I think, um, more broadly, the way that I have approached creating on the internet is I'm creating for me. When I started my podcast, I didn't think anyone would listen to it. I truly was like— like, Brian Flynn, I always give him credit, was like, dude, you need to start a podcast. Like, you need to do something. Like, I did not tweet. I didn't even use Instagram. Like, I had Instagram, but I would use Hootsuite to schedule posts because I knew it was bad for my brand to use Instagram, which is ridiculous. But anyway, um, and so I just created the content or the, the podcast for me and created content for me because I was like, whatever, I might as well just fucking share what I'm thinking.

Yeah.

It's the moment I think that you like want validation from that, that it actually becomes challenging. And so, um, all of that is to say, one, I think context collapse makes a lot of the stuff more challenging. Um, but I think if you can acknowledge that that context collapse is happening and still allow yourself to create and be vulnerable while acknowledging that the validation that you might be chasing is probably not the best way to be creating. Um, and instead you kind of need that— you need to be doing it for some other reason. I think that's like a very good combination for creating on the internet, as opposed to doing it from this place of like chasing validation.

Yeah, that's incredibly good point. And I like this idea of context collapse. I wrote a blog post with one of my prior colleagues, Eric Thornberg, and we called it something like Reality is Up for Grabs. And it was a deep dive into this idea of basically when everybody lives on the internet, you get what Eric's friend called kaleidoscope theory. It's the idea that culture fragments into thousands of shards. And everybody has their own sense of what reality and culture is. And they basically LARP and play out this fantasy alongside all of the other cultures that are competing for attention on the internet. And so the result of this is essentially like skyrocketing and a skyrocketing like acceleration of cultural innovation, but it's at the cost of shared alignment on anything. And so assuming this like doesn't lead to a complete disaster, it's like probably a good trade-off. But it does lead often to, you know, people feeling that, oh, I have to be like so authentic or individualistic on the internet in order for people to listen to me. Which also the other side of that is feeling lonely, right? The positive side of being individualistic is you're special, you're unique. The opposite of that is I'm the only one who is like me, and therefore nobody else can understand, you know, where I come from and what I need.

Yeah.

And so it's, it's interesting that you frame it as context collapse because there are often times where you might be on Twitter, you see like even friends of yours having a conversation. I know I've experienced this before. You see your friends having conversation and you're like, oh, I know these people, I know where they come from, I know their context, but I have no idea what they're talking about. And then the thought in your brain goes to, oh, now I feel excluded. And it's like, well, like, you're not actually excluded. They are just having a conversation as everybody else is on Twitter and all of these other places. But because you lack that context, and because you are looking at a screen in your own home or on your phone, wherever you are in the world, it is this weird isolating feeling that, wow, all of this is happening and I am not like part of it. But on the flip side, if you just invert that and you say, I am the one creating all of this, as you're saying, make things for yourself, ignore the fact that people are going to look at it anyway, it actually has the counterintuitive effect of more people watching your work and basically adding context where the context wasn't there. Um, so I think that's like an interesting tension that arises when we all live on the internet, but I think you explained it very, very interestingly.

And the interesting thing, I think, once you start creating stuff for yourself that you end up running into is, um, the stronger you are in your opinions, the more people are going to gravitate toward what you're saying. And I— so I think that creates some challenges because not only is that not good for you as a creator because you're sort of radicalizing your own thoughts and becoming a lot more closed-minded, um, but it's also like not good for the people that are following you because then you end up with this weird version, like There— I forget who it was or what exactly the story was, but there was this guy who was a YouTuber who started out doing like healthy YouTube content, like he was getting healthier, and then his followers kept wanting him to like eat on camera. I forget what that's called. And then he, he ended up being one of those people that eats like an insane amount on camera and is like physically not well from it. Anyway, that's a horror story of what happens when you listen to what the people who are following you want you to do all of the time.

Yeah.

And so what I think You can— where I think the important piece here is combining like, do it for yourself and do what you're interested in, and have humility about the fact that you are probably not right about everything, and you're never going to be able to be right about everything. So the moment that you put yourself on that pedestal, like, all bets are off, and you're at that point, it becomes a toxic relationship again with the internet or with your followers or whatever it is. So there's like a really interesting dynamic. And Ultimately, like, not everyone wants to be a creator or should be a creator. Like, it's a very specific— I think everyone should have the opportunity to be a creator, but I think like the grind of making stuff all the time and, um, and needing to be like, uh, you know, like I think about like people I follow on TikTok who, when I say creator, I'm thinking about like many millions of followers, have to post multiple TikToks a day. Like, that's not for everyone and it shouldn't be.

Yeah.

Like, some people should just be able to consume shit. and go on with their day. And I think, and of course everyone is a creator in a different capacity. Like, I think if you are working at a company and you're working on a project, you're creating that project. Like, I, I'm personally not interested in gatekeeping what it means to be a creator, but I do think that at the end of the day, a lot of it comes down to like, if you're not, if you're not doing it for you and you have context collapse, that's just a dangerous combination.

Yeah.

Kind of going back to what you were saying around like listening to your audience and kind of like becoming a more extreme version of yourself. I feel like we see this a lot with, I think, I mean, maybe cliché, but I think this is what we're seeing to some extent with like Elon and what we saw with Trump, right? Is if it was, it was very clear that they kind of started doing this thing a little bit randomly. They were probably like a little too online, a little addicted to Twitter, and then it started working and then they became more and more of it. And then they became this just like really extreme, personality. Where do you see kind of like outrage and like extreme, like emotion-inducing, like content fitting into all this? Like, is it something to— it feels like it's the content that performs the best is the content that's the most polarizing, but obviously it's polarizing. Where do you kind of like land on that? Like, should creators— Or maybe just for yourself, like, are you trying to avoid that as much as possible and just go the slow and steady route? Or how do you think about it?

I have struggled so much with this, and I won't go deep into it, but one of the main reasons that I struggled with this, and one of the main things that prompted me, was, um, Milady. Because I think that Milady is an NFT project that has, like, really embodies this, where, like, yeah, they use certain tactics to get attention that are often incredibly effective. Um, and so one of my friends Jay, who I also had on my podcast recently, um, is very into art and is into milady. Like, not necessarily pro or against milady, just kind of like intrigued by it. And I was talking to him more broadly about art, and, and a lot of the art scene in New York is often like— more recently has been very like disgusting art, like just like gross. And it's like—

Yeah, it's like perverse art.

Yeah, and one of his main things was like, there should be— like, I'm not saying that I like this art, I'm just saying that there should be room for immoral art. That's his point. Those are his words, not necessarily mine. But so I've been like struggling a lot with this because I think regardless of whether or not you're talking about art or attention, like, it goes back to the same core belief, which is like, is a performance allowed to, um, like create negative externalities in order to gather attention or whatever.

Yeah.

And I personally know how I like to think about this as someone who like is a very like light creator. Like, I don't— I wouldn't consider myself like a creator creator. My philosophy is like, if I'm creating outrage in order to get attention, I'm probably not in a place that I'm happy with, and I probably should be taking a step back. Um, but I also acknowledge that like it's an incredibly effective tactic for certain organizations. I don't think we can police it, which I think is part of the hard part about even making a moral judgment about it in the first place.

Yeah.

Um, but yeah, I don't know. I mean, I hope that there are in the like future of the internet more local communities where like you can have local outrage that doesn't impact an entire group of people in the way that it is today on the internet. But I don't know. I mean, I'm curious how you think about that.

Yeah, I wonder if it's like, um, the way I've thought about it for myself, even as like a pretty small like Twitter account, is like, I mean, my tweets that have performed the best have tended to kind of pull out like random people who suddenly have a strong opinion about something I said, even when I didn't mean anything about it. Like I make like a very mild criticism or I just observe something and then people are like, well, actually it's amazing. Well, actually it's the worst thing ever. And it just brings that out. And, but the thing is like, actually I would attribute probably like directly and indirectly, like 50% of the followers I have on Twitter to like kind of random tweets like that. And so I wonder which then, you know, serves some purpose down the line. And so I wonder if it's like, it should, maybe it's just means to an end, but it shouldn't, you should stop at some point, basically, like maybe you just kind of say like, hey, I'll just kind of like, you know, play with this for a little bit, see what it does for me, and maybe do it for a little bit. But it's like, But there's a point where you stop, but there's always gonna be more, right? Like you have 100,000 followers, you see someone with 200,000 and you want to be a little bit more ridiculous to get to that goal, right? So I think with all things, it's hard to stop. And Zach and I were talking about this the other day and it's just like, I think I'm, for me, I'm like too existential and like too self-aware and like think way too much about my identity and who I am to like do that. Like whenever I try to do something like that, it creates a real disconnect for me between like who I am, who I want to be, and like what I'm doing. Um, yeah.

One thing I think intent matters too, like in the same way that like there's this study about how people will, uh, people can do something that seems like a job and they're actually much more happy and fulfilled with it before they start getting paid for it. Once they start getting paid for it, like their incentives sort of change. I think something similar happens when you're creating, like you get to a point where you are tweeting because you're interested or tweeting because you're actually inspired versus like tweeting or creating content because you have to, you know, that you have to. I think that type— being like aware of like when you're creating content or more specifically like critiquing someone or having that type of more like, um, critical lens.

Mm-hmm.

I think there's like a point inside of you where you can tell like, am I critiquing this because I'm like trying to pull a weed in this garden that we're all caring for? And I want to call this out, like ZachXBT, who like calls out scammers. That's like the furthest end of that being good versus like, am I, you know, doing this and pointing fingers because I want attention? And I think like that subtle shift can be hard if you're not aware, like self-aware, like you were talking about. But I do think that's like the fundamental thing is it's very much about intention and why you're doing something.

I want to circle back to a point that Martin made earlier when we were talking about I guess the pros and cons of saying emotionally inducing things on the internet. And it makes me think about the impact of ChatGPT and AI on content creation more broadly and the impact that that has on real people on the internet. And basically, I think the overwhelming agreement that people have is that AI, especially these generative transformer models, are going to lead to a boom in low quality but high quantity content. So it's really easy now for anybody to go to ChatGPT and say, you know, act as a LinkedIn content creator in X industry and draft a Twitter thread on Y topic, and they need to be 280 characters and yada yada yada. So obviously you're gonna get a lot of garbage like think boy tweets now. And so it makes me think that The real people on the internet have to in some way dig deeper inside themselves to figure out how are you, you know, intrinsically unique? How are you, you know, otherwise authentic in some way? But I then start to think like, okay, how do you be authentic online? And frankly, it only seems to get weirder and weirder. Right? Like, you know, Instagram first, people being quote unquote authentic on Instagram was taking photos of the sunset outside their window. And then they added a filter to it. So it got less authentic. And then over time, the pendulum swung back when we saw the advent of TikTok. And now you see these weird-ass people who just like, you know, it basically makes all of these really weird niche things seem incredibly normal because you are now like going in this kind of reality up for grabs, context collapse type topic. You find your way into this like really, really pointed niche. And then you see a lot of it and it makes you think it's normal when in reality it's probably, it's like really fringe thing that you happen to share with the 1,000 other people that are in your TikTok niche. So long-winded way of saying, I think that generative AI models will lead to a boom of like really shitty content.

Yeah.

Which leads individual people to become more authentic and more vulnerable online. But I can't help but think that that makes them more weird and more extreme and more emotionally inducing in the content that they put out. And so how do we rationalize this? Like, how do we rationalize the boom in shitty content with the need to be weird in order to be authentic? And what all of that means for like where the internet is going?

Well, I think this gets interesting because I don't know that I would push back a little bit on the idea that, um, AI will make things like inauthentic, and so authenticity will be the thing that veers from that. I think that there are a lot of things that you can create with, um, AI, and like even if you think about like Midjourney and DALL-E or like GPT-3, whatever like actual engine you're using or output you're creating, like I think those things can be authentic to the human experience. I think that if you asked, you know, like ChatGPT like what the meaning of like life is according to the Dalai Lama, like you're gonna get something that's authentic to the human experience.

Hmm.

Um, it's just not generated by a human. So I think where things get a little bit funky is that like veering from— it becomes a question of how can you like veer from the mean to create something that catches attention? Because I, I— the way that I'm currently thinking about like ChatGPT and stuff is basically like it's just pretending to be human.

Yes.

But it, but it's doing a good job pretending to be human. And so like that's what's interesting to me about it. And so what I think we start to see is like even the way that you look at like the way that art has evolved and, and all of that, like all of these movements are a response to the previous one, either taking it to its fullest degree or going completely opposite of it. And so like, yes, I think we're gonna get way weirder on the internet, and I think like the internet 5 years from now will be like really hard for us today to comprehend. But that's how all complex evolutionary systems happen. Like the way that, that markets evolve is absolutely insane. for this exact same reason. You have like a very basic foundational financial, um, primitive that actually starts to become really, really, really complex, like relatively quickly, because you can, and because all of these things are like incremental differences that happen over a period of time. So, um, I think the internet is definitely going to get weirder. I don't know if it's actually going to become more authentic to the human experience, quote unquote, because I kind of think the human experience is the baseline level of weirdness that we always have.

Mm-hmm.

Um, I'm very curious whether or not this becomes a radicalizing force, um, to like further radicalize opinions on the internet, which I think could absolutely be the case, or if it just becomes one of those things where like, A, mediums like video, uh, because they're harder to replicate from like an AI perspective right now, um, just end up being like much more prominent as our ways of consuming media. Like TikTok might end up winning even more so because Twitter could just become a shit show of AI-generated content. Um, but 2, I think there's also a world in which like the medium becomes weirder. Like crypto is a very interesting medium for money, for example.

Yeah.

Um, video mediums could become weirder in ways that we're just trying to beat the game so that computers can't replicate it and we play this game a million times over. Um, so I don't know, like I, I think anything's possible, but I think the— I, I like that you called out authenticity of the human experience, and I think there's definitely an interesting element where like authenticity of the human experience actually has very little to do with our veering from what's standard based on what AI can recreate.

Yeah, I also— I like your reframing of what I said too.

It's more of a—

it's not— it may not be a radicalization, but it may be a diversion from the mean. I think that that is a good way of thinking, right? Is like you become less and less average and more and more unique in some way.

Weird.

Yeah. Weird.

Yeah. Which is going to be interesting. I mean, like, I— and I would argue, like, you know, LinkedIn influencers are not authentic right now either. They're not— they're not particularly interesting. And veering from the mean already gets you a lot further than it probably would. But I think it's really going to be a question of like, maybe that happens faster. Like, to, to the point about, um, like, do you call it— it's not choosing your own reality, what is it called? Crafting?

Yeah, crafting your own reality, manifesting, or whatever the term is.

Yeah, like maybe we just kind of speedrun all of these diversions from the mean, and so we actually end up with a really interesting like world where things happen faster because the baseline is, is actually like a much higher bar. I don't know, but I think I, I— the one thing that I actually am very curious about is that right now I think like quantity over quality is basically the way that we think about TikTok content. We think about Twitter content this way, even YouTube. Like you need consistency and you need a lot of content because people are constantly consuming.

Yep.

I am curious if that's going to continue to be the case or if in a— because you people argue the content is abundant today. I don't actually think content is abundant yet because humans are still creating it. When computers are fully creating content, we will be in a true saturation and abundance of content. I'm curious, when that happens, do we change our opinion on quality over quantity? Um, obviously you have to meet a certain threshold regardless right now to— of quality in order for your content to be sort of number over, over quality. But still, I'm curious if that's going to happen. And I think that actually might be one of the ways like that we divert from the sort of meta meme, which is basically like the current meme is that you need to produce a shit ton of content and don't care about how it actually, how good it is. And I think we might divert from that, but I'm not sure. I mean, I think it's gonna be an interesting next couple of years.

Yeah, totally. How, so how, I mean, we had a really wide-ranging conversation here. We've talked about now internet communities and DAOs and how work and life is shifting on the internet. We've talked about businesses that aren't venture scale. We've talked about being vulnerable on the internet, the effects of AI on content creation. Chase, we really spanned the gamut today. So obviously, you know, it is very clear that we are entering an age where tech just keeps advancing at accelerating rates. And I talked to my dad about this a lot because, you know, obviously he lived through the dot-com boom and bust. And when I talked to him about where we are today, He kind of just tunes out and is like, yeah, like good fucking luck, man. Like I never thought we would end up here. Like I don't know where the world goes. Good luck.

Right.

And so how do you chase? And this is a big question here, but how do you rationalize and come to terms with this like changing and accelerating world around us? And I guess more specifically, What impacts do you think the changes on the internet have on our, like, IRL, in-person lives?

Um, I think the changes— the way that the internet exists and the way that we engage with it, I think, is the most— one of the most, at least, um, important factors in the quality of life for humans for the next 50 years. Like, I think that there is a world in which what I was talking about earlier around comfort and seeking comfort in the internet and the current mechanisms that exist as far as incentives go on the internet, like, actually make it so that, like, people don't know how to nurture and care for themselves because they're so immersed in the platforms that, um, basically are distracting from how your life actually is. I think there's a much better version of the internet as well, to be like totally, um, fair on both ends. And I hope that's where we end up. But like, even when I talk to like people who, um, friends of mine who like have kids, like their kids have iPads, like even if— or, or their kids have phones, like, and you can't really cut them off from this, from, from that at this point, which is like, uh, to me speaks to how much the internet is going to have an impact on the lives of people. you know, beyond us, I think is, is saying something because we already use the internet a lot.

Yep.

Um, if people are going to be growing up with the internet in an even more like foundational way, I think that's fucking crazy. And I think we need to seriously consider how a lot of these things are going to impact people. Um, to me, I think that a lot of this stuff is going to happen no matter what. I'm not like an accelerationist or someone who thinks that we should like make that happen faster. But I do think that like some of these things are going to be really, really hard to like slow down. And so I've always been of the opinion that having conversations about them and trying to build alternative systems that, um, have mechanisms that ideally like do try to optimize for human thriving as opposed to like exclusively optimizing for profits or exclusively like sort of blindly tracking KPIs about how much time someone spends on an app, like I get it. That's not a sexy thing, again, for like a venture-backed business. But I do think that if we think about like, if we have a baseline of like people are addicted to the internet and can't get off of it, again, moving away from the mean, I'm incredibly curious about, um, what's gonna happen for the next couple of generations of internet users where like they acknowledge the ways in which the internet is not good for them. And so actually actively choose to exist in digital spaces that don't fucking like destroy their brains. And I think like that's something that I've spent a lot of time figuring out, like how much do I want to engage with Twitter, in what way, like what does that look like, how can I do that in a way that feels healthy. And so my hope for a lot of this stuff is that no matter what, everything's going to evolve. Technology just happens that way. My hope is that we can more consciously engage with it and build it. I think like building it is one thing. I think like venture capital and, and having to scale in the way that we've expected internet businesses to scale thus far is part of the problem there. I don't have a great solution, but on the user side, like, you really do have a choice on whether or not you want to open up Twitter 27 times a day, including while you're like peeing. And honestly, like, you probably don't need to be doing that. And so I think that there's like— it's very much both, uh, sort of societal, how can we think about this as builders, But I also think it's very individualistic to the point where like, you can, you have a say and you can also help your friends have a say. And so my hope is that people can actually start making those types of decisions. And of course, if you govern the platforms that you exist in, like maybe we can start building in a way that's, that's better, but that's kind of a whole different rabbit hole.

Totally. Martin, do you have a take there? How do you think the internet's gonna impact IRL lives or Anything in that realm?

I really, I'm kind of like your dad, Zach. I think I have no idea. Yeah. Sometimes I try to, even with crypto, I try to like zoom out in a couple years and try to figure out like where, where do we think things are going? Yeah, I don't really have a strong thought. I think it's just gonna keep getting crazier. I'm just excited. I think I'm cautiously optimistic, but yeah, that's, yeah, I don't have a huge take there, but cautiously optimistic.

Sure.

I think what I, what I pull out of a lot of the different topics in our conversation is that the people and the people that we spend our most time with and the products that we spend our most time using really do have a massive impact on how we see the world and how we understand what exactly is happening and where the world is going. And one thing that comes to mind as we talk about the impact of living on the internet on our IRL lives is how is how crypto conferences kind of fit into the picture. And so I see Chase laughing, but on mute. That basically like Jared Dicker, who's a good friend from TCG Crypto, has this really, really amazing blog post where he talks about basically the, the similarities between cult classic rock bands like Grateful Dead and Phish to traveling crypto conferences like ETH Denver to ETH Lisbon. These kind of moving cities all around the world. And I, I want to read a little excerpt from his post because I think that it like ties together a lot of these, you know, personal authentic things, the community bringing the, you know, URL to IRL. And I think it ties up kind of what we were talking about in a nice deep bow. But so he's talking about these traveling cities. And he says, you know, this, this phenomenon of crypto conferences, is very analogous to that of touring fans like Phish, the Dead, BTS, and other acts that have built a culture around their trade. The show itself isn't the main event. The show is the catalyst of getting people together, an excuse to congregate with like-minded people at a moment in time and take that energy with them back to their homes once it's over. And when done right, this desire to connect never ends. It is very rare to be able to break the fourth wall in such a way that the community itself leverages a thing to drive action, but the culture itself is sustained and maintained without the thing needing to be present at all. And like touring fans and their bands, every stop on the road is an opportunity to get more folks to hop on the bus. In a culture built on virtual land without a catalyst to see and feel in person, It's seemingly prohibitive for many to deeply get it and take the time to learn. And so on the most obvious level, online puts most of the onus on the product, technology, and platforms that unlock this feeling of what truly is Web3. And because of where we are in the Web3 lifecycle— it's really early— it can be discouraging for most people to take the time to deeply understand why this crypto world is more fun. The human elements of connection and collaboration are seemingly being worked on But it's a lot easier to understand when you're actually there. So much so that many who are deep in the space never want to miss a show. They make sure that they're there to see their friends, partners, and recruit more individuals who are interested, excited, and sharing the same ideals of a new world. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jared Dicker, for putting this into such a great blog post. But I think it ties up what we're saying here about, you know, the shifting work life in DAOs and authenticity on the internet. It really is about finding the people who really make you feel whole, and then recruiting more like-minded people to that traveling show to get people on the vanwagon and help them see that, hey, tech might be moving really fast, AI might be creating a lot of shitty, you know, think boy content, but what really matters is the personal connections that we're making here through these interests and through the internet that really, really matter. Um, curious if any of you have any takes on that. Or any certain part of that resonated with you?

The one thing I will say is I think taking care of one another is like the most important bear market phenomenon that you experience in crypto. And I think it's very much— it's the opposite of that where like, you know, people are going to argue that crypto conference FOMO and actually acting on it was a low interest rate phenomenon because you Had way too much money to face Pablo Mar. You could extend that out to understand what that means. But in any case, I think at the end of the day, the flip side of that is taking care of one another and showing up for one another when you're not at the show or watching Vitalik in a ridiculous suit dressed up as something. Yep. So I think that's a perfect place to close this.

I love it. Well, Chase, thank you so, so much for joining us and for the wide-ranging conversation. Where can people find you on the internet? Plug your socials. Where's your blog, Twitter? What should people follow you on?

Yes, so Twitter is probably the best place. I'm @ChaserChapman, so it's Chase Chapman but with an R in the middle. Um, and everything else is linked there. I have a podcast called On the Other Side, um, which is othersidepod.xyz. And yeah, pretty much everything that I do is linked on Twitter.

Awesome.

Well, Chase, thank you so, so much. Uh, this was an awesome conversation and we look forward to doing it again soon.

Cool. Thank you, Chase.

Thanks, guys.