The Evolution of DAOs

We sit down with John Reynolds, a Product Manager at privacy-focused developer platform Aleo, to discuss leveraging zero-knowledge cryptographic solutions to help secure information while also providing privacy. John explains how his experiences at the Air Force Academy first got him invested in personal information and privacy concepts, how ZK proofs work, how CBDCs relate to privacy, and more.  

In this episode, Reserve Protocol Co-founder, Nevin Freeman joins us to discuss algorithmic stablecoins. Reserve is a permissionless platform for launching and governing 1:1 asset-backed stable currencies. Nevin explains the initial idea behind algorithmic stablecoins and goes into why the flaws in the Terra stablecoin’s design, leading to its crash, should have been obvious from the design stage. We also discuss the future of the dollar and why designing a sound stablecoin requires some compromise. 

In this episode, Balancer Co-founder & CEO, Fernando Martinelli joins us to talk DEXs! Mark and Fernando discuss DEX aggregators from a DEX builders’ perspective, liquidity migration from L1s to L2s, how the new risk-free rate for Ethereum might affect DEX liquidity, and why Fernando believes in the future most of the TVL for AMMs will be on L2s. 

In this episode, Sanjay Raghavan from Roofstock onChain joins us to discuss bringing real-world assets (RWAs) onto the blockchain. Sanjay explains how Roofstock enables buying and selling of tokenized houses (real ones, not digital), discusses the legal considerations of bringing real estate, and other RWAs, on-chain, and digs into the securities debate surrounding cryptoassets. 

In this episode, Kevin Owocki, Founder of Web3 crowdfunding platform Gitcoin (and now supermodular) joins us to discuss regenerative finance and regenerative funding. Kevin explains what regenerative finance is, why being a degen isn't all that, and why he believes the future of crypto and Web3 lies in "regen" projects (things where resource capacity goes up over time). We also discuss quadratic funding and why it matters, the idea of retroactive public goods funding, and other potentially exciting novel funding mechanisms. 

Another episode recorded live from ETHDenver! In this episode, we’re joined by Yitong and Charlie from Agora, a project that works with organizations like Nouns DAO and Optimism to build public governance tooling and infrastructure. Governance is so important to crypto, which is why we’re discussing it today. How does distributed/community governance actually happen? To what degree is it happening? And what do all these governance tokens that have experienced a “Cambrian explosion” actually do? Yitong and Charlie fill us in. 

Recorded live from ETHDenver, we're joined by Raleon's Head of Product, Jay Jenkins. Raleon is a Web3 marketing analytics and engagement platform. Mark and Jay discuss how marketing automation works in crypto, why performance marketing doesn't work in Web3, and why incorporating hard data in Web3 marketing tends to be harder. Mark and Jay also chat about the conference and how much reach having a booth at a conference really gets you. ‍

In this episode, we’re joined by Megan Knab, CEO of Franklin Payroll–a crypto-native full service payroll company. Megan and Mark discuss the gap in the market for crypto-native payroll solutions, the upsides and downsides of getting paid in crypto, and how more web3 workers opting for compensation in crypto will affect the crypto/web3 economy. Megan also discusses compliance and tax considerations for getting paid in crypto, why stablecoins are a popular choice, and the infrastructure needed for wider adoption. ‍

We've talked a lot about DAOs on this podcast, but we regularly receive questions about what they are and why they matter. So today's episode is a bit of a different format. It's a talk I recently gave at a conference about the importance of DAOs in the context of the history of human organization. In a hundred years, historians may look back on DAOs, rather than money, as the most game-changing innovation to come out of blockchain.But DAOs probably won't evolve in the way most people think today. So let's jump in.

We've talked a lot about DAOs on this podcast, but we still regularly receive questions about what they are and why they matter. In this episode, Mark shares a talk he recently gave on the importance of DAOs, why they’re likely the most game-changing innovation to come out of blockchain, and why they probably won't evolve in the way most people are expecting.