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#28 - DAO governance and regulating DAOs w/ Decent Labs founder Parker McCurley
58 Plays4 months ago
Parker McCurley is the founder of Decent Labs. Decent aims to push decentralized governance and organizations forward through the use of blockchain technology.
How did Decent Labs start?
Founded in 2017, Decent Labs started as a decentralized application development agency during the wild days of the ICO boom. Parker and his co-founder Adam dove into the crypto world by attending conferences and networking directly with emerging blockchain projects. They would walk up to project booths, ask about their protocols, and soon found themselves working on Solidity development contracts, building decentralized applications (dApps) on Ethereum.
As the industry evolved from ICOs to more complex forms of decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized governance, Decent Labs played a significant role in helping blockchain startups build and scale. But Parker always had a deeper vision in mind: transitioning his centralized agency into a decentralized organization governed by the principles of blockchain technology.
What is Decent DAO?
Parker's desire to decentralize Decent Labs and move beyond traditional organizational models led to the creation of Decent DAO. He saw the traditional corporate structure as incompatible with the values of the blockchain space, where decentralization and community-driven governance are key. As Parker put it, being a CEO in an industry focused on decentralization felt “disingenuous.”
Decent DAO aims to provide a fully decentralized organization, governed by its community, not a CEO or board of directors. This transition from a centralized company (Decent Labs) to a decentralized one (Decent DAO) was not without its challenges, but it was necessary to align with Parker’s vision of true decentralized governance.
One of the most fascinating aspects of this shift was the creation of a governance token and on-chain mechanisms that allow participants to make decisions collectively, through proposals and voting. In this system, token holders have a say in the direction of the DAO, ensuring transparency and accountability.
One of the key challenges Parker discussed during the interview was the process of transitioning from a traditional corporate structure to a decentralized organization. This transformation—dubbed “DAOfication”—involves rethinking how roles, leadership, and governance are structured.
In a DAO, roles need to be fluid and adaptable. Parker emphasizes that some positions need to be “sticky” and take the form of elected leadership, while other roles can be more transient and filled by community members on a project-by-project basis. The goal is to balance decentralization with efficiency, ensuring that the organization doesn’t collapse under the weight of its own complexity.
The Intersection of Decentralization and Law
In the U.S., a group of people participating in a DAO could be seen as operating an unlimited liability partnership, meaning that each member could be held personally liable for the DAO’s activities. This is why creating a legal entity, such as a DAO LLC or a foundation, becomes essential for protecting the individuals involved.
As the world continues to grapple with the possibilities of blockchain and decentralized technology, pioneers like Parker McCurley are leading the charge, proving that DAOs are not just theoretical concepts but practical, real-world solutions with the potential to change the way we organize, collaborate, and govern.
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Transcript
Intro
00:00:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
Well,
Discussion on Decentralized Organizations
00:00:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
let me just start by first addressing that the ah two different organizations, Decent Labs and Decent DAO and kind of what is the relationship between these two.
00:00:21
Parker
Totally. Yeah. So Decent Labs has been around since 2017. We were founded in May of that year, and we were a decentralized application development agency. So our team would brand, design, and develop products for startups in what we called it crypto, and now I guess we call Web3. um And so we began during the ICO bull run 2017 where projects were raising capital and they were raising capital for pitches that ah Often didn't even pass feasibility when place upon under further scrutiny um And yeah, we did that for five years and grew business around it um But always planned
00:00:43
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. yeah
00:01:09
Parker
I always hope for two things. One,
Shift to Developing Own Software
00:01:11
Parker
to decentralize and operate as a decentralized organization because I felt ah kind of disingenuous being the CEO of a company working in this industry. And also two, to develop our own software and the relationship relationship between de and labs and de and bow today is like decent labs labs has kind of um It's sort of in the process of like giving all of itself to develop this product and protocol that's now governed by a decentralized ah community.
00:01:36
cyberpunkmetalhead
All
00:01:44
Parker
um And yeah, so that's the transition that we kind of undertook over the last couple of years from a traditional company into a DAO.
00:01:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
Nice, and and you were just saying beforehand that ah you used to just build decentralized applications on Ethereum as an agency before you moved into helping other organizations become decentralized on Ethereum.
00:02:09
Parker
yeah Yeah, exactly. so we We worked with a lot of cool organizations over the years. and and i mean We started, like I said, early 2017. We would go to conferences, walk up to booths. I'd ask people to tell me about their protocol. I'd ask them what technical challenges they were facing. and Often they were like, well, we have this idea that we don't know how to build it. and My co-founder Adam and I were really passionate about Bitcoin and Ethereum. and We would, ah yeah, just pick up solidity development contracts and that's how we started Decent Labs.
00:02:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's a cool story and that's a cool time to kind of, you know, make it through 2017 when everything used to be still quite like relatively a wild west at the time. Like you you had the ICO bubble that you mentioned where. where it was It was crazy to just observe it from from the sidelines. I was into crypto that time. i was Probably my my second introduction into crypto was around 2017. Our first one was a few years before when I was just ah mining Bitcoin and and well with my with my GPU and lost my wallet and just put me off for a couple of years before I got back into it eventually.
00:03:24
cyberpunkmetalhead
ah such are the times.
00:03:27
Parker
Definitely.
00:03:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
I
Significance of Heinlein Quote
00:03:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
was just ask you about one quote that you have on the website from Robert Heinlein, which resonates with me quite a lot. And I wanted to get your understanding of of what that quote means for you personally and for this and now. So he goes, a human being should be able to change a diaper. Plan an invasion, butcher a hog, con a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze the problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
00:04:14
Parker
You know, I'm familiar with this quote, but where was it on our website?
00:04:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
It's on the Explore page. If you go past the project, it's underneath the the core projects that you have ah that you're currently working with, or you have helped fund.
00:04:30
Parker
Oh, wow. Well, first of all, that's awesome. um Yeah, and and second of all, yeah, I mean, what does that quote mean to me?
00:04:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
It's a great quote. It's a fantastic quote.
00:04:44
Parker
um
00:04:48
Parker
Yeah, so I think probably if I'm talking about that in the realm of decent, I'm referring to the startup mentality. I mean, in terms of like my own working principles, um one of them that I try to stick to is doing the things that nobody else is willing to. And that comes from like, you know, my entrance into the workforce as a young man was basically like doing really hard jobs or doing like nasty jobs that nobody else wanted to do. And that's kind of like you can sort most like young man jobs into those two categories, right?
00:05:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:05:24
Parker
Like lift lift up the heavy thing and put it back down or do this gross thing that no one else wants to have to think about.
00:05:24
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah
00:05:30
Parker
And so um you know that that attitude has stuck with me over the years in terms of like willingness to just do the thing. And how that's evolved now is um the way that I think about like customer relationships and really like business development in general in terms of being willing to go like above and beyond. and um Luckily, I no longer have to like lift heavy stuff or anything like that, but ah you know spending time with people and like making someone's experience interacting with your business or your product like really special um just takes a lot of effort and and energy, and that's definitely something that I believe in. I also just think of myself ah mostly as like a generalist. like i'm
00:06:11
Parker
pretty good with learning quickly to like a acceptable level at most things. And so like I think operating at an acceptable level at most things has been really affected for me.
00:06:24
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, well, I guess it's also a really good. ah ah ski I think it's generally better to have a broad skill set where you are proficient enough ah doing several things rather than being really good at doing this one thing, particularly if you're coming from ah from a startup environment where you more often than not have to wear many, many hats, right? Especially if you start off with a small team, You might have to do development, you might have to do marketing, you might have to do PR. I think it just it's makes sense from an entrepreneurial perspective to be able to do more than one thing.
00:07:01
Parker
Definitely. Yeah, and that's ah that's definitely served me a lot as a founder over the years from, ah yeah, I guess just the standpoint of being willing to to jump in and out of things.
00:07:03
cyberpunkmetalhead
ah
00:07:12
Parker
and and also you know every every aspect of the role of an entrepreneur is seasonal. And so there are times when I have to be more of a builder, ah more of a salesperson, more of an operator, more of a financial or legal thinker. um And that's where you know decentralized organizations actually excite me so much because They really, to me, I work at the intersection now of decentralization and law, more so than at the intersection of decentralization and finance, which is kind of how I entered the industry. So and that's that's very exciting for me and also challenging in terms of wrapping my head around how I can contribute in that space.
00:07:55
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. So you said you work more at the intersection of decentralization and law. Do you want to talk a little bit about what that means and and what exactly it is that you're you're working on?
00:08:05
Parker
Totally.
Transition to DAO Challenges
00:08:06
Parker
So I mean, when we started this dallification process, dallification was the term that we used to describe it.
00:08:11
cyberpunkmetalhead
I like that.
00:08:13
Parker
and And the reason we called it that was like, okay, well, we have this five year old organization and it's like, you know, small business, but relatively serious. Like we were doing millions in revenue every year and had about 30 employees and, um, you know, and culture that had been developed over the course of five years that we all cared about, wanted to hold on to. And so the question was like, how do we get all of these awesome people that ah we've developed this team of over the years of decent to work on a truly decentralized project? And and first of all, like that was um impossible, like right off the gate. I wish that we hadn't realized or attempted in that moment to just like,
00:08:59
Parker
do um to so basically have everything. like We wanted to have the same security and structure and comfort and cultural expectation of a traditional company, but become decentralized. so like That just doesn't make any sense. um and you know That started a multi-year process of understanding like what roles in a decentralized organization need to be um more sticky and permanent and take the form of like elected leadership positions, what roles
00:09:33
Parker
are transient and can be carried out by this kind of like supposed ethereal you know talent pool of people that are willing to contribute
Regulatory Challenges in Decentralizing
00:09:42
Parker
to DAOs. Where are those people? That doesn't really exist actually. So there's a really big like process of figuring out how do we execute in a decentralized fashion effectively so that we don't just like go to zero. Like most decentralized projects are destined to. And also There's this question of like, how do we do that safely?
00:10:04
Parker
Because outside looking in, I've seen so many tokenized projects over the years that basically
00:10:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm.
00:10:14
Parker
all sorts of bad things in this adversarial and opportunistic market occur to. you And so how do we like believe in this technology and actually operate as a decentralized ah protocol with like a governance token and like using crypto for what crypto is designed for, ah but still succeed as as as an organization? And how do we navigate regulatory uncertainty and to make progress? And so these are the things where I've been playing with over the last couple of years is figuring out like how How do I do that safely for our team members?
00:10:47
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:10:47
Parker
you know That's one of our core values is safety. It's our last core value, but it's safety first, right? So how do we do it?
00:10:52
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, I mean, it's an important thing to have and ah to to have in in mind at all times, especially because of all the uncertainty in the regulatory space. So um so when it comes to operating or incorporating a DAO, right?
00:11:04
Parker
here
00:11:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
um how does How does the law relate to that? Who are the parties involved that can ultimately take responsibility for the DAO or the the the the decisions ah that the DAO makes with regards to the regulatory landscape? ah Supposedly, if it's a really large, da um say hundreds or thousands of people involved, that becomes more complex.
00:11:27
Parker
Well, yeah, so this is very um subjective, unfortunately. And this is like one of the reasons why I'm so interested in the intersection of decentralization and law and why if you're an attorney watching this who cares about such things or a politician of any kind, um please reach out because I'd love to talk. So, I mean, fundamentally, if we look at a DAO and in a simple format, that's a group of people who've coordinated through an on-chain mechanism like a multisig or a token.
00:12:01
Parker
or NFT collection in order to create decisions together at a base level, generally like manage a treasury, right? And so we're making decisions that have real world impact, quantified by money. and ah If we look at that as a group of US people and I'm going to be mostly referring to us Cases here because truthfully many of these things just don't apply in other jurisdictions, but this is where venture capital and innovation ah Happens at like a massive scale and you know, we want the United States to play a significant role in the future economy as well So that's that's the law and that's the law that people follow suit in terms of financial regulation. So
00:12:44
Parker
Anyway, point is, um doing that in the United States with no legal entity of any kind is just a loose grouping of people that are doing a money activity together. you know That is what we call like an unlimited liability partnership, meaning there's no business established and explicitly stated. And thusly, all of the people involved are like acting personally as independent agents and based on their you know, relative influence or ownership in that system, they are liable for the activities. And so this is why like corporate entities exist. It's so that I can go try something like risky in an effort to produce value for the world without jeopardizing my personal like
Importance of Governance Tokens
00:13:28
Parker
safety.
00:13:29
Parker
And also, that's not really true. Just to be fair, as an entrepreneur, like generally speaking, when businesses fail, entrepreneurs get totally fleeced and hung out to dry. So I would just say, like don't don't think that those things even work that well, because at the end of the day, we are people. Anyway, um so what's like the step up from there would be creating like a corporate entity structure of some kind. And if you're creating a corporate immunity structure of some kind in the United States for a DAO, the issue becomes like we don't even have clear legislation on tokens.
00:14:02
Parker
Okay. So like tokens are like the most simple aspect of this entire system. It's like a fucking number. Sorry. Pardon my French. It's a number of like ownership value in a system of decision-making.
00:14:11
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's cool.
00:14:17
Parker
So like pretty simple. It's like voting weight, right? like We don't have to think about it in terms of, like, DeFi Ponzi's. I'm just talking about this as, like, a cruel system of ownership that happens to be programmable. So it's far superior to the operating agreement that I have in place with my co-founder or any other entity structuring agreement that exists on paper today. So, like, it's better. We should invest in it as a country and as entrepreneurs. um So like if because the US doesn't have legislation that's clear or like clear regulatory guidelines on how to launch a governance token or what to do if your NFT collection has a treasury that it would like to manage together or ah you know what ah liability is placed on an individual signer of a multi-sig if the multi-sig was funded by a DAO and that DAO doesn't have an explicitly stated entity. All of these things are like totally undefined.
00:15:10
Parker
And so your options are either to operate with total personal liability in the United States, or basically like sacrificing with freedom and experimentation, or move ah the global organization to like a other domicile internationally that has like more advanced regulations on the topic of digital assets and on-chain organizations and decentralized protocols and then simply follow suit to like what we expect and what top lawyers are sort of like emitting out as like these are what we think the best practices to operate in the United States will be or better yet
00:15:49
Parker
ah maybe more accurate is here are the best practices that other jurisdictions are dropping and we hope someday that the U.S. follows suit and in the meantime here's how to remain compliant in those. So this is all really confusing and it results in like innovation and money and and jobs going from the U.S.
00:15:59
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:16:06
Parker
elsewhere which is like both part of that's a positive impact on a global organization but I think overall has a negative impact on the United States economy so I do really hope that we like you know, fix that and like allow innovation to happen safely in the United States. Decent is trying to solve that a little bit through software.
00:16:22
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:16:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
I was also going to talk to you about that. um There's definitely something that I meant to discuss with you. But I also want to talk, I was talking to to your colleague Dara just before ah the the recording. And um he mentioned that you although you guys operate in the US, I think he said that you're incorporated in, was it Cayman Islands? Did I get that right? Was it Marshall Islands or somewhere?
00:16:48
Parker
Well, no.
00:16:48
cyberpunkmetalhead
ah
00:16:48
Parker
so So Decent Labs is a US company, right? We're just like a software development studio that's building products for Decent DAO.
00:16:52
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:16:56
Parker
But Decent DAO, ah which I'm not like a ah leader in or or like a member of, is incorporated in the Cayman Islands because of their advanced clear regulations. So we were able to hire like, you know,
00:17:10
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:17:15
Parker
Basically, people and lawyers and attorneys that could work with other people that cared about the decent ecosystem and wanted to invest in it and grow it to like set up an entity that works that way. you know and and And again, that's super limited to like international parties who want to help decent grow and succeed. So it's complicated.
00:17:38
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, and that basically goes back to what you were saying about the the safety aspect of it, right? It helps people that are part of the DAO have a limited liability and have some sort of safety in this.
00:17:52
Parker
Yeah. So for US persons like myself, but I think the most, you know, we're currently just operating as an LLC, uh, just because that's the best thing. And so like, you know, I, that's, that's how we keep, you know, decent labs compliant in the United States, but also extremely limited in terms of like, like very genuinely speaking, like I don't have control or authority over the Dow anymore at all.
00:18:01
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:18:15
Parker
Like I designed it and helped like deploy it. Um, but, uh, but at no point was I like in control of that system.
00:18:19
cyberpunkmetalhead
right
00:18:23
Parker
It was more like just participating in conversation. So, um, which is very limiting, I think, but it is also, you know, just the way that it is at this point.
00:18:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:18:34
Parker
Um, yeah, in the United States. I think that the best auction beyond LLC that's currently on the table is a Duna, and or you know this is a new entity that's coming out of Wyoming.
00:18:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
Okay.
00:18:50
Parker
Wyoming pioneered the Dow LLC, I believe in like 2018, but it hasn't seen much adoption. My primary criticism is that it seems like paperwork and filings are pretty typical of a traditional US organization. And so it's like, what do you get other than just calling it a Dow? Now, in this case, the DUNA is an organization a type of organization based on the the UNA model or the thing that's unincorporated nonprofit association that ah is basically like more alike in structure spiritually to what we expect ours to be and where parties are are members in a more like loose affiliation. and so
00:19:30
Parker
I think for the United States, the Duna entity structure looks attractive for way more nuanced reasons than those I just listed, but it just and fits the mold of like what we're looking for better than these ah other existing entity structures, and so we're interested to see that.
00:19:36
cyberpunkmetalhead
Fry.
00:19:45
Parker
But it doesn't resolve the fact that at a federal level ah tokenized protocols of all stripes aren't really ah clearly legislated or recognized. And as a result, like I think the pattern seems to be that DAOs, when they do require some form of like leadership or administration that occurs primarily outside of the US.
00:20:10
cyberpunkmetalhead
I see. and that ah yeah Well, I think that in in the US, there's been some um small but important victories for for crypto and blockchain in the last in the last year year or so.
00:20:24
Parker
Agree.
00:20:24
cyberpunkmetalhead
And it seems, and I was also talking to the people at Bancor that I was just telling you before that they they're currently not operating in the US because of the regulations there. But um they are keeping an eye on the on the regulatory um side of things in the States. And um ah Mark, I think the product lead there was saying that he feels that in the future, the US will, it looks like that the regulatory framework
Evolving Regulatory Landscape
00:20:53
cyberpunkmetalhead
is shifting to a way that it will allow all of these ah DeFi protocols and DAOs to exist and to thrive.
00:21:00
cyberpunkmetalhead
and Honestly, it would just be it would it would be such a stupid decision not to allow these organizations. They're like they're not going to go away. and and I don't think you should um try to stop some some form of technology just because the technology itself exists. um and It might force you to change the amount of control you have. ah we've We've had top-down organizations for the most part of history because we couldn't really do anything else. Not necessarily because of the most efficient form of organization.
00:21:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
So I'm i'm really hoping to see a change there.
00:21:33
Parker
Definitely. Yeah, definitely. I mean, look, where I've seen us evolve over the last few years as like an ecosystem and and I've been like working and watching a lot of other dials and being very slow and steady in terms of like how we launch and deploy decent. And a big part of that is, to your point, like how these types of structures exist. And here's the thing. I'm not convinced that a bottom-up management structure is going to be effective for execution of anything as as well as a traditional corporate structure.
00:22:13
Parker
but where bottom-up approaches succeed and corporate structures that are top-down hierarchical tend to fail is like taking account for every stakeholder involved in a decision. And so there's all these voices that aren't heard unless we have like you know rapid innovation in healthcare care that's reliant on the petrochemical industry that causes people in the area near the factories to get sick.
00:22:33
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:22:38
Parker
And like so it's just weird, like why are we doing all this to ourselves? Trap that we fall in. um And so I think like government attempts to do that, but seems to be fairly ineffective when it comes to swift action. Corporates are great at swift action, but ignore the consequences. And so could we use a DAO to establish a structure of accountability where accountability is bottom up, but it's to empower leaders ah who need to execute top down to be effective.
00:23:11
Parker
but they are held more accountable. There's transparency in terms of their actions. Governance can happen very quickly on a mobile device. um
00:23:21
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm hmm.
00:23:21
Parker
you know, with with an extreme response rate and ah verified voting so that you don't have to worry about, you know, voters not even thinking that their votes matter because we can prove that they were counted accurately.
00:23:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:23:34
Parker
And so like, these are like just like decision making processes that I think allow us to establish leaders in a much more transparent and accountable setting. And so that's what we're trying to do with decent. It's like we tried And I mean we isn't decent and we isn't like the collective. ah Restarting like governance and political science with Dows and being like direct democracy or um there's like there's been like the feudal era for Dows and there's been like ah like a French Revolution for Dows and it's been really interesting. But basically like
00:24:11
Parker
Where we're at now is, oh, we're back to delegated democracy, because delegated democracy is fairly effective. It's the most modern system until we like can at least support that in a DAO format, then how are we going to get anything else done? So the way it works is decent, and this is why the regulatory aspect is so important. It is like we have a decentralized consensus and like a decentralized governance system that results in the election of leaders, leaders of the decent foundation, ah the legal counsel that's required to make the DAO operate safely in the real world.
00:24:45
Parker
ah leaders of specific projects and aspects that be sent that own like significant strategic input like anything that results in decisions being made future outcomes for the organization ah potential risk to the project itself like all of those things ultimately need to resolve at the decentralized leadership level because like otherwise this isn't a decentralized organization and it has a lot of risks inherent to it that we don't want present in
00:25:05
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:25:14
Parker
transparent open source systems. So you know I think like we're trying to build tools to make it possible for orgs to operate in a safe, decentralized way without um without like making the contributors unsafe. right
Handling Proposals within DAOs
00:25:33
Parker
And and and by by building a software suite that ah mirrors the off-chain structure that's necessary to make that safety a reality as well.
00:25:44
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, and I think what I'm about to say now probably feeds into your protocol that you are ah you were mentioning just a few minutes ago, but there are two parts of in governance, right? There's all always um the voting, which has its own set of complexities, right? Usually in a towel based on the number of tokens that you hold, though it could also be distributed. But then there's also the the ah submitting and making of a proposal, which I feel that that's where it gets really interesting because in traditional governance, you don't always have the opportunity to create a proposal, to put it in front of the voters and let the voters act on that proposal. um Is that something that you guys, like how do you guys handle proposals and how flat is the proposal making structure within the DAO?
00:26:35
Parker
yeah definitely so um For Decent itself, we run any decisions that require action in our treasury through the on-chain proposal process, and we run decisions that affect ah like strategy or agreements between down members and core contributors through an off-chain proposal process, both of which are available in Decent's UI. So we use snapshot and Decent's own governance contracts to do the off-chain and on-chain respectively, and then
00:27:08
Parker
We participate in governance through the decent app that's available at decentdao.org. um Also, through Decent, we have established sub-dows in the form of multi-sigs so that budget is available to leadership that can be um spent in a more like granular, quick way without needing top-level governance decision-making.
00:27:22
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm hmm.
00:27:34
Parker
But because we use Decent for this, ah token holders actually still have ultimate authority over the multi-sig and can veto transactions, freeze the multi-sig, clawback funds, and other ways to basically like protect themselves and not to sever the connection of authority, responsibility, and liability between token holder and multi-sig signer. And we we suggest most DOWs to be set up this way now, where leadership positions are elected in the form of a council. And we use ah hats and savelier in our system as integrations that allow you to create roles in the form of hats and payments for streams or payment streams for those roles using savelier in the form of stablecoin or native token.
00:28:15
Parker
And that way you kind of have a leadership position, um but it's been elected by token vote and token vote can
00:28:22
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:28:23
Parker
take away that position or you know still has authority. And so this is like a form of, I guess, optimistic governance where we're delegating to people and trusting them. um But on chain, token holders are still ultimately in authority or whatever your top level of governance is. It might be NFT collection. It might be ERC-20 governance token. um It might be just a giant multisig. So we allow all of that to exist in our system.
00:28:49
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. And when the voters um are are choosing the council members, is there a defined number of years or months that they're allowed to to but perform their role as member of the council? And um ah when when does that change, if if ever?
00:29:06
Parker
So
Electing and Revoking DAO Council Members
00:29:06
Parker
we're about to run our first elections and I think we're going to do six months.
00:29:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
Oh, okay.
00:29:12
Parker
um So I guess we have to put up the proposal and see how people react to the to the tenure. But our concept here is not so like important to think about decentralization, right? Like when I first got into this, my thought was that like, okay, if we make leadership positions elected, they're going to be like vied after by many people and it's going to turn into kind of like, excuse me, kind of like competitive PvP environment, which we see in DeFi. But the thing about DeFi is that capital is ah fungible. And so we're talking about like money from X and money from Y. Ultimately, what matters is it being cheaper. When I've worked with DeFi firms, I've noticed that the financial software buying mentality is very much in like percentage points of profit impact, not in terms of like user experience or like how much they like the team that they work with.
00:30:04
Parker
Whereas if you try to sell HR software, you know getting really close with like an HR director is like a really effective approach.
00:30:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:30:12
Parker
so when i boil and And that just is based on like people's preferences and like the work that they do and what their daily experience is like. um When it comes to... um when it comes to ah Sorry, man. I just spaced out. What was the question again?
00:30:34
cyberpunkmetalhead
No, that's cool. I was asking about the process of of electing and choosing members of the council, um but we can take it further from there because I was also, um I meant to ask, I'm sure you're aware that one of the limitations of Adao is when having to make decisions which are quite technical in nature, you might not have the technical members of Adao making those technical decisions. um So again, how do you ensure that the members of the council are um the the the right people for for that position?
00:31:09
Parker
Ah, right, right, right. Now now that that brings my memory. So basically, like I said before, like we're not selling PVP, DeFi protocol stuff. like We're talking about human organizations. and the roles that make up the leadership team at a human organization are so nuanced and are so bespoke to the personalities of the people running them that it is an extremely costly and difficult thing that could destroy a system for a leader to be failing in their position or
00:31:40
Parker
to not be replaced. And so the way that we view this voting process is like, you know, or things start small. And so if there's a core team of say software developers or product strategists,
00:31:47
cyberpunkmetalhead
Hmm.
00:31:54
Parker
that are driving a protocol forward and they're in an elected position, the election does not exist to make it easy to ah replace that person with someone better for the job. It makes it so that there is a predefined method to do so in the event of disaster. So like, if I as a leader fail in my position, ah building a decent ah product, like that is really bad.
00:32:11
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:32:23
Parker
and it needs to be possible to eject me and replace me in a mechanism that's already deployed and already exists and I can't change or control um for me to consider the system safely decentralized or to be adequately decentralized.
00:32:40
cyberpunkmetalhead
Hmm.
00:32:41
Parker
because any role or any set of responsibilities that alters the future course needs to be ultimately the token holder decision or a delegate of the token holders. And so we put up those cycles for like six months, but although this would take a lot of effort, like I think we plan to have the also explicit ability to like, yeah, so like you can like revoke
00:32:53
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:33:04
Parker
a role in decent. So you can create a proposal to revoke a role. So let's say you get three months through an elected cycle, and even though we know that semi-annually we want leaders to to have to go and touch base on what they did, how it went, and why they should be up for election again. Halfway through that process, if someone just like spins out completely or goes rogue, there needs to be a method for token holders to protect themselves. And so you can do that using decent, which is pretty cool.
00:33:31
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's fascinating. I
Vision for DAOs in Modern Systems
00:33:32
cyberpunkmetalhead
love this form of governance that seemingly resembles you know back to the Republic days of ancient Rome, um like people taking control and having representatives of the public, voted by the public. It it almost feels like you could bring, I mean, not you could totally bring a Tao-like structure with on-chain governance and rule a country under that.
00:33:48
Parker
Yeah.
00:33:55
cyberpunkmetalhead
I think maybe the kind of that the things that you guys are doing is you're you're testing the waters of this of this new governance form in you know in somewhat of a contained environment, fight organizations running independently but as a DAO. But if this proves a successful experiment, you never know 10, 15, 20, 50 years from now, you know it's entirely possible that we'll probably, we might have you know countries operating as DAOs or a slightly more decentralized version of ah governing ah a nation.
00:34:27
Parker
Well, this is why regulation is is such a recurring topic in this conversation. it's like My vision for Dallas is that the world's most vital institutions like healthcare, education, um energy, agriculture, you know things that like really are like the backbone of society, that like these are the systems that are the most archaic and bureaucratic. and impact us all negatively the most by not having more aligned incentive structures. and You know, DAOs are potentially a means for a more democratic process to occur faster in those systems and to allow like incentives to be realigned and restructured for like actually all the stakeholders involved in those systems like to serve better.
00:35:16
Parker
So, which is quite like this acceleration, this viewpoint of like, let's put all of our vital infrastructure on computers, on JavaScript, but it's like, you know, whatever.
00:35:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
Heh.
00:35:26
Parker
Anyway, it seems more likely to me that that falls or helps than we like all quit and go take jobs at like the biggest corporations in the world and in an effort to change them from the inside out. so
Securing Crypto via Decentralized Contracts
00:35:40
Parker
um Anyway, my point is, like that's what's important to me. And to get there, we have to have safe crypto. And safe crypto is decentralized crypto that's deployed to smart contracts, not fucking FTX or any other custodial solution, um web 2.5 bullshit that's like making money in crypto but using traditional software. So we have to do it that way for it to be safe. And doing it that way is questionably legal.
00:36:09
Parker
So that's like the biggest issue I see in crypto right now that like I want to inject myself in more is like, how do we resolve that? I don't know.
00:36:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. Would you say that decentralized organizations, blockchain in general, um would the with this ecosystem have been further ahead? Have there not been any not not major regulatory challenges?
00:36:33
Parker
Well, I mean, I think it's inevitable, right? So when I got into crypto super naive, like I started decent when I was 21 years old. So I had no idea like what anything was to do with like business or law or financial regulation. And my stance on regulation was very naive. It was that like regulation shouldn't exist. And the accredited investor label is says to keep poor people poor and or to imply that poor people are dumb and don't deserve to make their own decisions when it comes to their money. And all this other stuff was basically like red tape put in place to insulate banks and other financial institutions from competition.
00:37:13
Parker
but then i like witness through my own eyes, through crypto maturing and evolving and how many people got ripped off in the process, that like there's a reason why regulation exists and that like financial custodianship is like a very considerate, sacred and and and intimate experience and relationship.
00:37:26
cyberpunkmetalhead
Heh.
00:37:31
Parker
and like these are things that have to be like very careful ah for society. And otherwise there are victims. Like there are people who like ruin their lives financially, um you know, sometimes to the point of like suicide or, you know, having heart attacks and stress. Like people, people even die over ah poorly ah handled financial decisions, right? Like, like this is like really traumatic, important stuff for people.
00:37:56
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:37:56
Parker
So, so I think, um,
00:37:57
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah. Though you could argue you could argue that you could make bad decisions financially in stocks, in Forex, in just going to Nevada, going to Las Vegas and just blowing it all on hookers and coke and slots. you
Need for Financial Regulation
00:38:08
cyberpunkmetalhead
know it it's it's It's one financial instrument, which again, it just its allows people to express their natural human greed, I think, as long as that exists and it will forever exist you know within ourselves. yeah anything that's potentially exploitable or that elicits FOMO into someone, it will there will be a certain number of people that can't help themselves.
00:38:31
Parker
Yeah. Well, and there's a great example. A lot of people like sex, drugs, and gambling, and I'm not one to judge, but if sex, drugs, and gambling were unregulated everywhere in the world, I think it would be a terrible place to live in instead of just things that are only allowed at one o'clock in the morning in Las Vegas.
00:38:45
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:38:48
Parker
So I think basically all that is to say like there is a necessity for regulation for crypto. like in the United States for it to be explicit, for it to allow experimentation by startups, for it to ah make the consequences very clear and severe for like true scammers and opportunists. It's difficult because the systems we're talking about, the disparity between a scam and something real is generally a technical one.
00:39:23
Parker
And so how do we get non-experts in such a niche subject matter to craft effective policy? There's just so much communication that needs to happen. um But it will happen.
00:39:34
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mm.
00:39:34
Parker
And and I think that, like again, the answer is if you want to be on the leading edge in the United States, then it needs to be you know tokenized protocols, organizations that take the form of smart contracts, free and open source software, ah decentralized governance that happens in public view. We need to be safe doing all that stuff. because that already puts us in terms of disclosure and transparency miles ahead of what is required by the stock market. right So if we are allowed to operate in a truly decentralized fashion, we solve a lot of those issues. um So seeing standard set for what that means would be great. you know We're currently operating on a PDF that someone sent us from Andreessen a year ago.
00:40:14
Parker
sir and
00:40:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
I feel, yeah, no, a hundred percent. And, you know, when it comes to to decentralized organizations, the the reason I find them not only fascinating as ah as a form of governance, but really, really an important, an important form in in today's society is that I look back at, you know, the books that were written back in the nineties about, um, cyberpunk novels with, and all of them, like depicting this anarcho-capitalistic future, right?
00:40:24
Parker
Okay.
00:40:43
cyberpunkmetalhead
When you have, um, this corporation that owns all of the streets or this corporation that owns all of the hospitals. And, and you know, you read these books and like, like, Oh, I couldn't live in that world. I would do something about it if I could, but then people, ah you know, some people don't realize that Google owns 97.4% of the world's search traffic, right? AWS owns over 50% of the world's computing, uh, uh, of the world's compute on the internet. AWS goes down, like half of the internet goes down with it. And I feel that. And I totally you know have the same sentiment there. These these um services should be decentralized. You
Debating Decentralization vs. Convenience
00:41:21
cyberpunkmetalhead
shouldn't have as an organization the power to control over 97% of what people see, what people search for to dictate narratives or to enforce the narratives that you as an organization prefer or you think are just.
00:41:36
cyberpunkmetalhead
ah so there's and I guess the question is, is it too late for people to adopt ah ah you know freedom as opposed to convenience?
00:41:49
Parker
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's really cool because um
00:41:57
Parker
I remember internet when I was a kid being like way more of a thing of like not being sure what you would experience on it. like Flash was awesome, so there was like this super like artistically expressive aspect of the internet where like Flash websites and games and animations were like,
00:42:08
cyberpunkmetalhead
Heh.
00:42:18
Parker
you know super popular and that was like a way more expressive medium. um that The internet was built in more by like designers than by developers at that stage. There was also, and not saying you can't do both, I'm just saying, there's you know there's a difference. um and, you know, downloading, like, keygens for pirated software that had, like, drum and bass playing and, like, the cool little animations.
00:42:40
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah
00:42:43
Parker
And um it was super more, like, creative and, like, kind of, like, wild. And I definitely think, yeah, I mean, when you say 97-plus percent of the internet search traffic blog wants to Google, it's sort of like, yes, and I know exactly what I'm going to get every time I type in a search.
00:42:50
cyberpunkmetalhead
Bye.
00:42:58
Parker
Like, I already know, like, and I know, like, the main media outlets that it's going to share with me. if i look up a popular opinion or topic and it's all very predictable and it just works like a SaaS product because it's also like algorithmically predisposed to the things that it knows that I want from it, which for me is primarily like work and building software. So it's really good at that, right? Because it's, you know, the internet made by people like us.
00:43:20
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:43:24
Parker
So yeah, now what's cool is with like the Web3 stuff, honestly, and at first I didn't really get it, because like I got into crypto through Bitcoin in high school, and it was very like, Bitcoin was a super aggressive, like anarchistic response to the the banking crisis in the United States, and but then globally. and ah Like the NFTs like NFTs really brought in like a big wave of like I would say like consumer crypto people or people who are more attracted to it as like a creative medium and social movement and I kind of like rolled my eyes at that at first because I was so bought into like the burn down the Fed narrative and so I thought it was like distracting but the reality is it's like the stuff that like culture does is that like now when I go to crypto conferences I see a bunch of people even younger than me and who are building really cool shit on the internet that looks fun and interesting like the internet did when I was growing up.
00:43:58
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, yeah. yeah
00:44:19
Parker
So that's like really sweet. like I think that like the next generation of Web3 people, they're building on like cheap and expensive blockchains. They're building better user experiences. They have their own art and creative and communication movement that's occurred. That's like super unique. It like makes me feel like not like the young new person building the the new stuff. um So that's super exciting and it's been fun to watch that happen over the last few years.
00:44:44
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, that that's really interesting. I haven't i hadn't ever considered you know that the NFT hype could be equated to the back of ah you know the 90s where you used to have this and early 2000s where software and and UI and UX just used to be really, really different and now everything standardized. that
Evolution of Smart Contracts
00:45:03
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's interesting. I also felt the same way about NFTs when they first came out. I thought initially that you know Ethereum is barely able to to handle seven transactions per second. Why do we add all of this stuff on the chain when we can just you know focus on what what it's supposed to do? right but it's just It just happened to become a much bigger thing than it was at the beginning.
00:45:27
cyberpunkmetalhead
um I think smart contracts ah when they were first created, and that was back in the 90s, they were supposed to just uphold an agreement between two third parties.
00:45:32
Parker
Okay.
00:45:37
cyberpunkmetalhead
But then you add a blockchain and you add the ledger on on these smart contracts and suddenly it opens up the world for you know organizations like Decent to build decentralized structures that that work at a distance and globally, which I think is fantastic. um
Enabling Efficient DAOs with User Interfaces
00:45:52
cyberpunkmetalhead
I also meant to ask you about the actual protocol that you've built, because I know we kind of launched into this philosophic discussion, which was amazing, but I didn't really get a whole lot of time to to talk to you about the the protocol and how it is that you help other organizations become decentralized. I know that it's a process, if you'd be willing to talk a bit about it, I think that'd be super interesting.
00:46:13
Parker
Absolutely. Yeah. So you can check it out at decentdao.org. And basically um Decent went down this path of becoming a DAO and a venture studio building our own software and but becoming a DAO and building software at a but excuse ah Building software at a fast pace that one would expect from a venture-backed startup um was impossible using the current ways of thinking, operational strategies, and technology that was available two years ago when we began that. And doing it from a standpoint where I thought it was safe from an on-chain decentralization perspective and from an off-chain legal perspective was certainly impossible for us two years ago. so
00:47:04
Parker
What decent is is the result of two years of research with leading law firms in the crypto industry, um large and small-scale DAOs, users of governor contracts, safe contracts, and the various ways that people have learned to participate in on-chain governance. um and people voting through multi-sigs, governance tokens, and NFTs all to kind of create like a single unified interface to allow organizations to operate more effectively and do so in a truly on-chain manner. So um the way that we've accomplished this is we built a user interface that integrates with all the popular governance tools
00:47:49
Parker
like safe, snapshot, hats for roles, failure for payment streams, and others for other aspects of like the DAO operational stack, and basically what Decent allows you to do is structure your organization ah in any way that you might need to to represent different councils, members, committees, token holders, NFT collections that have administrative functionality over one another. And then define roles within those different parts of the organization in the form of elected positions with token vesting and stablecoin payments.
00:48:31
Parker
um manage your treasury and do all of these other activities that are required for like a DAO to function. And it's through a very familiar kind of SaaS like software interface that resolves and proposals being automatically created and deployed to your DAO when you need to actually enact any change. So it's like traditional HR software experience resolves through decentralized governance backed up by smart contracts that ensure that the connections between the different aspects and of players in your organization are actually being formed on chain in a secure way.
00:49:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. That sounds very cool. And do you guys advise at all during that process?
00:49:09
Parker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, basically, a lot of people are just getting started on forming dials. And so we're working with teams to take them through organizational. but It's early over here in California, through the organizational design process, the governance design process. And also, since we're a small team and we're looking to a require like more users as quickly as we can, implementing features that other teams are interested in so that we're able to um build up the product to meet the needs of the market.
00:49:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right. Right. that That's cool. That's cool. um So you mentioned you're you're advising. that What are the latest um or the current organizations that you've you've helped on board or some of the more most exciting ones that you've worked with recently?
00:49:56
Parker
Well, just this week, we were excited because last week we rolled out our integration with hats protocol, which allows DOWs to elect and manage roles through hats, protocols, NFTs.
00:50:04
cyberpunkmetalhead
Sweet.
00:50:11
Parker
So that allows like token gated access to other applications and parts of the organization. And it's a much more like dynamic and, you know, um
00:50:23
Parker
configurable way to manage membership on chain.
00:50:24
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mhmm.
00:50:27
Parker
um And this week we met with one of our users, Contango, which is a VC fund, um who launched Vantadow, which is effectively an angel investment syndicate in the form of a Dow.
00:50:33
cyberpunkmetalhead
Mhmm.
00:50:43
Parker
And they're working with us on Oregon governance design. We just wrapped up those steps and now we're focused on deploying them on chain. and they'll be using that new feature to elect council members and other t key positions of the Angel Syndicate ah that will need authority to form proposals and you know modify and adjust settings for the DAO and submit them to the DAO for governance.
00:51:07
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's very cool. I feel like this entire conversation is is like a ah almost like a masterclass in someone wanting to start a DAO. You're just spitting out ah names of all the different protocols and services that people are inevitably going to use. And I'm going to make sure to ask ah either you or or Dara to give me a list so that I can put them all in the description, because it is just genuinely useful information to to keep in mind. um
00:51:34
Parker
Well, what's exciting is all of those tools are accessible through one interface at decentdial.org.
00:51:39
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
00:51:40
Parker
So you can use Decent to do everything that I just described in one place. And if you can't do it yourself, you can reach out to us. And we offer advisory on both off-chain legal structuring and operational guidance for launching dials and on-chain process for understanding you know how Decent deploys smart contracts on-chain for you that reflect decentralized in a secure way Definitely, yeah, I mean I think if we saw 2017 and 2020 I remember the last project that came out of the ICO bull run that
00:52:06
cyberpunkmetalhead
Nice. and And have you seen um more kind of adoption or drive to to fund DAOs as a result of the recent market bull runs? i so um By recent, I mean last six months-ish or so.
00:52:31
Parker
really but really really excited me was compound finance. And ah compound was really cool because I remember looking at it and thinking like, yeah, this is why tokens are important because we can actually build financial applications using them.
00:52:41
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:52:43
Parker
Back then, very few people had the overlap to know how to build stuff like that. um And then you know it was over. Bull run was gone. I like a lamb. and I was bummed because I didn't see more DeFi innovation during that cycle. Sure enough, DeFi summer comes along and there is more innovation than I think we needed. so basically If we follow that model and look at, like, DeFi Summer, the really exciting thing that came out of the end of that bull run for me were, like, DAOs and, like, decentralized organizations. I feel like, you know, the the the base principles were set by thought leaders like Kevin Awaki from Gitcoin, and the basic tools were in place thanks to the team at Gnosis, Guild and Safe, um to assemble online.
00:53:34
Parker
and During the the bear market, tools like the Zodiac module system and the ability to you know launch and develop more complex organizations on chain came out, but they're currently only accessible through these highly configurable and highly technical interfaces. and so You know, Decent's trying to resolve that last part by building a really easy UX that's familiar to regular people to do this. And I hope that if this market cycle continues to grow and more organizations are assembling on chain, working with crypto and operating in this fashion, that DAOs are poised to be like, you know, DAO summer or whatever. So
Optimism for DAOs' Future
00:54:14
Parker
we'll see.
00:54:16
cyberpunkmetalhead
That was summer. Where you called it now? we we We'll have to wait and see. um
00:54:20
Parker
Well, everyone's saying on chain summer, right? On chain summer.
00:54:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah.
00:54:23
Parker
On chain summer, too, sounds like a meme where it's like we're like partying in a mall fee and like on a boat. And it's like, oh, yeah, on chain summer popping bottles. I don't know if I like that, but whatever.
00:54:37
cyberpunkmetalhead
No, I think it's god it's it's ah it's a vibe, it's a vibe. I think whenever there's you know some movement, this market just... There's the hype that you you you feel like for two years or so that it was gone, that people forgot about it, right? And then market pumps 20% and then just through the woodwork come these people with with all the the crazy hype and memes again. And the the the space is all already filled with you know people willing to do sometimes dumb shit trading stuff, but sometimes it's just they're building incredible stuff as ah as a result of the hype.
00:55:09
cyberpunkmetalhead
um I think it's an emotional market.
00:55:11
Parker
Thank you.
00:55:12
cyberpunkmetalhead
It is definitely an emotional market, but I think that's also kind of what makes it a fun market to be part of both as a builder or as an investor.
00:55:21
Parker
Yeah. I mean, look, I will ah call it a fun market to be a part of when we accomplish my lifelong goal of 100K BTC. you know that's that's That's what I'm waiting for. so The day that I see Bitcoin at 100K, I'll call it a fun market.
00:55:42
cyberpunkmetalhead
but Fair enough. um yeah i'm notm I'm not big on predictions and stuff, but it honestly, it's not it's not that far away. if you um If you look at the historical trends, if you look at the the chart of Bitcoin pumps after halving, it used to be around 1.3 to 1.5 years is the new is the new peak. So if we're just in April, that's probably going to be well early 2025 that we're looking at that. Assuming history repeats itself, it might never repeat.
00:56:13
cyberpunkmetalhead
You never know with these things. Oh, yeah, exactly.
00:56:15
Parker
Rainbow chart, bro. It's always on point.
00:56:19
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah but Have you noticed how they add a new a new a new color?
00:56:20
Parker
The rainbow chart.
00:56:23
cyberpunkmetalhead
Every cycle is a new color on that rainbow chart.
00:56:27
Parker
No, actually, I don't know what's that. That's funny.
00:56:30
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, there's there's ah there's the there's this joke on Reddit that like Bitcoin maxes keep adding colors to the rainbow chart whenever it doesn't fit the pattern.
00:56:40
Parker
Yeah, that's what we do. um but But yeah, man, i'm ah look, I'm excited for for the future.
00:56:44
cyberpunkmetalhead
Uh.
00:56:49
Parker
So we'll see we'll see what happens next. But crypto is always out of my expectations. The last time I dumped Bitcoin was when we were ripping to like 2300. And I was like, there is no way we're ever going to exceed this. And I think I bought back in at like 8K and having some of the liquor crypto sense.
00:57:12
cyberpunkmetalhead
Yeah, a fair enough, man. I mean, it's it's better than than ah not not ah coming back in at all.
00:57:13
Parker
yeah
00:57:18
cyberpunkmetalhead
I have, ah like my dad a few years ago, he got, well, a few years ago in 2021, he got into crypto, and not as a result of me preaching to him. I stayed quite far away from that. I cannot talk to my friends about it, not to do any financial advice.
00:57:32
Parker
21 were deadly times, sir.
00:57:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
I know, I know. That's when he that's when he found found out about a few coins, including ah one that he was particularly fond of mainly because the project team, the the product team was Romanian. it was is It was called Elrond, which then they've changed it to Multiverse. So in this run, it's called Multiverse, right? Then he liked the fact that he could take this kind of almost like pride in, hey, there's ah there's a Romanian blockchain called Elrond. I'm going to invest in this thing. and And he bought in around the top and you know he kind of learned his lesson there, but I feel like it was a small, small price to pay for what could potentially be a lifelong obsession with crypto, I hope.
00:58:13
Parker
Yeah, definitely. um It happens to all of us.
00:58:14
cyberpunkmetalhead
Good lesson.
00:58:17
Parker
There was like the last time I sold crypto and then I just stopped a long time ago.
00:58:25
cyberpunkmetalhead
yeah Yeah, exactly. um do you have Do you guys have, and I mean both Decent Out and Decent Labs, any new stuff coming up for this year, any exciting announcements that you want to make, releases, um events, anything at all?
00:58:41
Parker
Well, the DAO side of things are exciting because with decent labs having finished the hats integration along with the hats protocol team. ah the DAO is now able to elect leaders on chain. And so the first election cycle is going to look like the directors and legal counsel for the Caymans Foundation, which are already installed, but are going to be reflected on chain. And so there will be like a transparent on chain kind of mirror image of the off chain legal structure, which I think is really cool.
00:59:15
Parker
And when that's complete,
00:59:16
cyberpunkmetalhead
That is cool.
00:59:17
Parker
The model that we're going to follow in practice is that DAO proposals will be reviewed by the elected legal counsel and signed off prior to going to on-chain governance. And the DAO now has the ability to basically like taking token holder proposals and then ration about what needs to happen off-chain to make this compliant and legal in the Cambridge jurisdiction that we operate in. And now we have a working clone of the on-chain organization and token holder decision-making process off-chain. So that's really exciting to me, super nerdy. What does that mean? It means that in theory, decent decentnc can now do anything. you know Anything that a proposal comes up for, we now have the right people in place to confirm its compliance status and allow the data to operate in the real world, sign service agreements with other entities and core contributors, launch a new projects, determine its future. I mean, it's like it's like ah like a machine of production that's now just running on its own. So it's quite a beautiful thing to witness.
01:00:17
cyberpunkmetalhead
and That's huge. Congratulations. that That's fantastic news. um For people wanting to join the DAO, what must they do in order to become part of it?
01:00:28
Parker
Um, for people to join the Dow, uh, well right now, uh, our, our governance token of participating governance are all locked up because the whole purpose of it is for decision-making and collaboration. So we didn't want any stakeholders in the system to be motivated to focus on like the token from a commercial perspective, because that's not its intended purpose.
01:00:54
cyberpunkmetalhead
Right.
01:00:54
Parker
Um. The token starts to unlock in December. So I guess at that point, anyone who like really cares about Houston and wants to like get access to it can. I mean, really the only way to contribute right now is you have to come to the Dow and say, I wish to be a core contributor and you have to get elected into a position. And that's the only way to join the DAO today, which is actually, I think, really cool because there's going to be a point in time where you can join the DAO just by, like I'm sure, ah getting your hands on some tokens as a passive holder or ah for you know participating in all kinds of ways. But it's like, we're going to let the DAO kind of unfurl into this thing over time.
01:01:34
Parker
so that we can stay on a very focused path right now. So it's it's it's fun. It's like it's real and we're letting it rip, but it's like, oh yeah, until December, it's only like the 70 of us or so.
01:01:46
cyberpunkmetalhead
ah That's exciting, man.
01:01:47
Parker
Pretty cool.
01:01:49
cyberpunkmetalhead
That's really cool. um Listen, thanks a lot for for joining ah the pod. I had a great time and honestly, a wealth of resource in this conversation for anyone wanting to start it out. So you've said that's decentout.org. um I love it when people experiment with stuff man and I think you guys are doing a fantastic job and I would I would love to have you on again at some point in the future maybe after December just to see how the launch is gone how people are interacting and how like decision making is taking place.
01:02:18
Parker
Yeah, I would love to. And you can reach me at Parker at decentdao.org or at Parker McCurley on Telegram. Andre, I love talking to you. Super passionate. Awesome thinker. I'm
Concluding Remarks
01:02:30
Parker
excited to hear this podcast. I'm sure it'll be the best one I've done. So thanks for having me.
01:02:35
cyberpunkmetalhead
Thank you, sir. Thank you so much. Have a lovely rest of your day and have a great weekend. man
01:02:41
Parker
Sounds good. Likewise. Cheers.
01:02:43
cyberpunkmetalhead
Cheers. Bye bye.