CultDAO: Investing in the Decentralized Revolution with Artorias

Transcript

foreign [Music] network podcast if you're just joining us we are building a coordination a network Society of thousands of hackers dreamers and doers focused on using crypto to bring positive some digital systems to the world this podcast features the people who are doing it and is published every Tuesday and Thursday if you want to learn more visit our website at greenpill.network where you can download the green pill book or you can join the Discord or become a member of your local green pill chapter today on the show my guest is artorius who's a co-founder of cult Dao in a web 3 and decentralization Maxi Artorias is the co-founder of cult Dao which is a public good endow funding mechanism

built to provide decentralized funding to decentralize projects and Noble causes and um there I think a really interesting project a the Aesthetics of cult Dao are much different from the solar Punk stuff that I usually work on in future on this podcast and So delving Into The Cypher Punk mimetic filter of calling a project called Dao and trying to build a network around this idea of decentralized funding of public goods but also with some interesting token mechanics in there so cult dial is always in my Twitter mentions and always uh doing provocative things in the space and so that's why I wanted to have Artorias on the podcast to talk about cult Dao and the projects that they

funding and building a Perpetual good Perpetual public goods funding machine so um a phone episode only I think the second one that we've done with an eight on so we're gonna be cameras off on this episode but um interesting content nonetheless so without further Ado I'll give you Artorias of cult out Valley Dao is an open Global Collective working to finance and democratize the governance of synthetic biology Technologies to protect the future of our planet research and progress into synthetic biology is critically constrained by the world of nation-state regulations and bureaucracy from middlemen but the potential that synthetic biology has for the world is massive it can produce a world in total harmony with nature we can grow stuff using cells like software it's awesome and the best part is we no

longer have to pull carbon out of the ground to grow and maintain civilization don't you think we should be funding this Valley Dow does and that's what they're here to do to try and make the solar Punk World of Tomorrow a reality today so join Valley Dao right now and save the planet at valleydow.bio what's up arterius how you doing I'm very well thank you how are you pretty good can you tell us about cult Dao so the idea of code now is to be a decentralized and public good uh form of Dow funding so the premise of cult is to uh to invest into projects that are pushing decentralization or you know uh a noble cause or actively fighting against

centralization so the way it works is that there's a small transaction tax on Cults uh High sells and transfers that goes into a treasury and then when the treasury is reached a certain threshold which is the equivalent of 15 and a half ethereum worth of cult you can then put through proposal for investment into a project or a course that is in the eyes of the person proposing doing something to push decentralization in some way so that could be whether it's into a a new form of web 3 social media or into uh we've done charitable acts before as well

pushing mental health uh causes essentially when the proposal is submitted by what we call a guardian which are the first 50 stakers of cult and then everyone else below that is what we call the many so the Guardians can make proposals and then the many can vote on them the Guardians themselves cannot vote so the idea of that is to try and uh to descue the the idea of whoever has the most money can push through mechanisms so when that proposal is proposed everyone outside the top 50 of the cold sneakers

can then vote on whether that investment should indeed be made or not and then this all happens automated if it goes through two and a half ethereum worth of coals instantly sent to the dead wall and burned and then 13 ethereum worth of coal is sent to uh whatever the recipient is for that project and then the idea being when that project is uh either matured or the investment has matured profits from that are brought back um off the market and then burn half of it and then send half of it to the dead wallet as I burn half of it and then send the other half to the stakers so

it's kind of a staking rewards but without any sort of artificial inflation of the supply through uh standard staking emissions which is what we see from a lot of current uh defying and staking platforms so essentially the whole idea is to function as a public good that is helping to benefit causes that are pushing decentralization while also providing a kickback later down the line where that whatever that project is or that proposal is has matured there are rewards that are coming back to uh call stakers as an incentivization as well as burning the supply of coal actively creating kind of a hyper deflationary mechanism to the tokenomics

um as I'm looking at cultdowell dot IO and app.cult.io which has some statistics for the size of the treasury which right now it looks like is about 85 eth and the total fund sent is 1400 Heath looks like you all funded some some proposals in the ecosystem I wonder if you could talk about like the public goods that that are coming out of the proposal system and uh how which ones are most exciting to you this is a few that I'm pretty excited about is one of them is a an investment we made into a project called web3 wallet uh sons of crypto so what they're building is essentially a

decentralized equivalent of mesomas they're building a a wallet but it kind of aims to be less centralized than what uh lesson is doing by relying on a specific RPC endpoints and things like that so that was an example of where we're trying to push something that's actively you know quite against centralization and uh building things that are kind of helping the space become fairer and less reliant on singular points of failure Etc another one we've done quite a while ago but it just launched now is most of us so what they do is they are providing a platform for people

to be able to protest but in the metaverse so let's say you've got a a protest that is for a cause that you're really passionate about but it's on the other side of the world not everyone can afford to have their voices heard and go to a protest because they may not have the means to do it but what this essentially is supposed to do is allow people to get together and kind of virtually attend a protest and I think that's a really important thing for people to have access to because it kind of opens up free speech and allows people to uh you know have their say even if they can't afford to

to make the trip to go somewhere that's you know out of their means I'm wondering if you could tell me about the cold down Manifesto next uh whenever I interact with the cold out people on Twitter they're always talking about how we should read the manifesto so um could you take us there next yeah of course so the cold air Manifesto is it kind of functions as the white paper of code it does contain the tokenomics uh flow but it's also kind of a narrative about how there's many different forms in which people might feel downtrodden and like they don't have their say and and the economy is not allowing them to to be who they

want to be and the manifesto kind of touches on a lot of different things that people relate to in the way they feel uh their place in society the idea is to kind of it's kind of a call to arms but not necessarily in like an island capacity or anything but kind of a way to to tell people that there are other people out there that feel the same way as you and it doesn't necessarily have to be like this there are causes that that can help us and I think one of the things that a lot of people say to me is that there is something in the manifesto that kind of rang true for them but it could be one thing that that doesn't speak to

another but there's a lot of stuff in there that kind of there's a lot of different narratives in there that kind of speak differently to different people like some people will be affected by mental health there'll be some people that have been oppressed because of injustices like if it's race or class something like that so it's kind of a way to to tell people that there is a way that things could be better and if we're trying to push decentralization that's kind of a route to a fairer life yeah I mean I found the manifesto to be quite striking in many ways um and you know it kind of feel feels like to me cult Dao is this shelling

point for people who care about public goods people who care about social action but it's kind of wrapped in this very in this very strong memetic filter of being called cult and uh this this beautiful Graphics but that are also sort of much darker than the solar Punk stuff that I uh that I typically feature on the show in traffic in it and so that's why I wanted to feature it is that that memetic filter I think is strong but when you read the manifesto I think you really feel a sense of kinship with other people who believe in the same causes and believe in in funding public goods um but but it's it's much more you all are much more focused on Anon and and I think um like a much more lunar Punk than something like get coin or like the

region ecosystem that I typically that I typically spend time in and so I'm wondering if you could comment on that was that a deliberate choice to have a strong memetic filter at the launch of of cult Dao yeah definitely I think I've heard a lot a lot of people have told me about the pneumatic filter and it's certainly something I haven't actually heard the term before before uh cult but it's yeah it's absolutely a thing and you know you just know that when you put a logo like that on the front or something and call it a cult you're kind of gonna you're gonna give connotations of what it is right off the bat but yeah as you say aromatic filter the idea behind it being it it calls out to those

that are willing to look a little bit deeper on uh they're not just on the surface of what it is and think the kind of person that thinks right that's called Cole I don't I'm in jail with that that's not me those people that they're probably not going to be the kind of demographic that that you'd expect to get involved and you know be part of what Colt is trying to do anyway so it's it is that kind of filter and I had to I have to say I when I first heard the words cult down to me it kind of felt a little bit is this too much you know are people just gonna think oh I'm not joining a cult but it kind of it it is a cult in a way that

people are so passionately behind at this cause and I think overall I think it has helped us as it has helped us find our community and find the kind of people that really gel with the community and kind of fit to fit the message and the vision so it's it's definitely a deliberate like a deliberate effort to to create that mimetic filter and I think well there were people who have definitely been turned off by and see and think oh I'm not I'm not going anywhere near something called cult overall I believe it has allowed us to create this community that are so dedicated and I'm sure you've you've seen I know you you've been uh around

and aware of uh Cole for a while not necessarily directly involved but I'm sure you've seen how diligently the community are actually talking about coal and especially on Twitter it's so it's such a strong community of Engagement like when when someone hits something that even remotely kind of connects with cult's message everyone's on it and it's uh it can get kind of intense uh for a lot of people and I think that's kind of maybe that puts some people off but at the same time if you're part of that I think it's a very overwhelming and engaging movement to be a part of if you are in it yeah you know it reminded me of

molokdal in 2019 just like the memetic filter of like you know Malik is this like demon god of coordination failure but naming your dial after this creates this filter of like people who get in who who understand that Meme um and I feel like with call Dao once you read the manifesto it kind of takes you past the at least for me initially like the the cult thing was like was I was a little bit taken aback bite but when I read the manifesto I was like oh I understand the memetic shelling Point here and then you know the second thing that I I think that I thought was really neat was the the tokenomics of cult and the 0.4 back to the treasury as it trades is sort of an interesting way of creating a I want to say like a perpetual motion machine for funding

public goods and and it was kind of elegant it was the kind of thing that where I was like oh I wish I had designed that into uh dolls that I built so um you know whoever whoever is behind whoever the founding team is I can tell that they're experienced with token economics and creating memetic shelling points and um and so it seems like it's quite strong in that that like you said Bears out in the engagement that you see on on Twitter um when people start talking about public goods I always see a bunch of cult people in my Mansions yeah I think like uh there's definitely a huge amount of inspiration from wallet now in terms of like the pneumatic filter and also just what it is I mean the more that I always will say

You Know It Adele is giving graza it's kind of different in the Yoda with cult you're not necessarily contributing your own thumbs but it's coming from funds that are kind of collectively not donated but are collectively collected from people's interactions with Carl whether that's buying selling transferring or whatever so it kind of gives people I think it gives people a feeling of they are part of it but they're also they're not kind of donating their hard-earned cash in the same way so there's maybe a little bit less kind of uh I don't know the best way to describe it but I mean if you're if you're donating your funds and then someone

else is voting on where that should go you might not like where that is going you could be voting though and it goes there anyway you could think well I've just donated money to a cause I don't even believe in but because it's just through transactions there's not really any ownership over those funds other than what the Dow decides to do with them I think that kind of helps with less of the Lesser people thinking I I don't want to invest in that and it's not fair that my money is going to this cause when it's not something I agree with because it's it's it's like it feels like it's not a traditional Grant giving platform in in the in the same sort of way you've got like a

combination of like it feels like a for-profit token cult but also like a public goods Mission and and I'm wondering if we could if we could pull the threat of that on in like the combination of financial benefits of like a of a token but also like it feels like you have this sense of crypto moving towards a lower emphasis on Direct Financial benefits I'm wondering if you could talk about the mix of motivations that people have for being involved in cult this is something that I have thought a lot about recently and not even that recently I've I've been mentioning on on Twitter spaces that I've done for a few months uh but that emphasis of moving crypto a little bit further away from what it

currently is which is kind of speculation and an investment vehicle and moving it towards what are the benefits of owning that token and keeping it I'm using it for what it should be used as so instead of having at the moment the cycle for a lot of people is put your fear into an exchange buy some tokens sell them for hire and then take that money back out the exchange and buy yourself whatever you need in your IRL in real life whereas I think if crypto really is going to succeed and become adopted by the masses it has to be more

than just an investment vehicle because then it's you're relying on the volatility of it to try and make money whereas what we should be thinking is I want to own this token because what I get from it is access to this or this at the moment the world is token gated by USD by the Dollar by a pound the euro if we have crypto that is used for a purpose that is not necessary to make money or just to yeah to up the value of it can it be used as something that gives me benefits in my life that aren't necessarily tied to being financial and

I think that's something that I would love to see in the next five ten years that emphasis kind of drawn out a bit more it's kind of the way I think about eth at the moment when I when I look in my in my wallets like the self self-custody wallets I I don't have I don't hold loads of eth hoping that the value of it's going to go up I have eaten this wallet so that I'm able to transact and do stuff with the crypto I earn and I think we need to have that mindset for other crypto as well so let's say I let's say I don't think about coal and its value of it uh against the dollar or against Ethan thinking I'm holding this bag off oh I

wanted to go up loads in value so I can sell it for loads of money and then buy stuff uh for my family I think of it like this is my ticket to the governance this is my access to the governance and my participation in the Dow and when we get to that stage where we have uh lots of different tokens that they do different things they give me different benefits in my life but I'm not constantly thinking I need the USD value to go up so that I can do more things in my life outside of this crypto bubble and as long as we're thinking that way quick take is kind of this little bubble that is speculation and that's what I'd

like to see us move away from a bit more yeah I have sort of similar thoughts in you know how can we just basically all of the financially motivated action in in crypto is great because it because it creates a network effect around ethereum and and the assets on the ethereum ecosystem but you know this this podcast and a lot of my work has been about how do we build more pro-social crypto movements and I think that you get into really interesting interesting space when you start to create social change um like shelling points around social change and and around values on on on on chain and I think that in a way that's what cult dial is um although the value valence I think is

like slightly different than something that's more solar Punk um where I spend most of my time and and so like the future of activism and social change on chain I think is really interesting because of how consequential the financial system is and how Global it is and how programmable it is in nature and um one of the reasons why I wanted to study cult was just because it feels like it's it's missing those things in a way that I hadn't seen before so it's quite interesting what y'all are up to so far and um you know I I guess I'm not really ending on a question but uh any any comments on that before we move on yes so the way I'm I kind of I was listening to an episode you did a few weeks back

um it probably by the time this goes out over a month back or so but about hyper structures and I think cult kind of fits that because you talked about uni swap being a hybrid structure because it's kind of it it runs itself it doesn't really it doesn't require input um to do what it's doing and everyone just uses it as its utility which is what it does I kind of think cult maybe it's not quite there yet because it's it's not big enough or well known enough but it can kind of get there in that it is a hyperstructure in in the way that it doesn't have any developer input it doesn't have anyone pushing the buttons other than users and the people that are

proposing or voting I could everything is automated you so you've got people you've got the Guardians that can make a proposal into an investment they can just do that someone could buy whatever they need to be a guardian make a proposal it goes through and then uh they invest in whatever project it is and then it gets voted on comes back and it doesn't need anyone saying right let's allow that to go through let's make this happen it just it works automatically and I think that kind of I think that kind of fits the description of the hyperstructure that that you were kind of talking about in that previous episode and that's the way I want cult

to be viewed by other people at the moment at least like the awareness for it it just it isn't out there like it's kind of it's too Niche to be considered a proper hyper structure yet because it's it's reliant on the current community that know what it is and how it works whereas if we if we can continue growing it make it larger increase the audience it can be used in that way and it can be effective as a hyperstructure in my opinion yeah so hyper structure being something that that runs forever without maintenance or intermediaries and I just love this idea of I used to live in New York City and these institutions that are in the city skyline are so

consequential for the City of New York and for me the hyper structure is is is kind of like the same valence of importance and magnitude but it's imbued onto the ethereum blockchain in instead of into a physical City skyline and it has the same like staying power that uh that a regular a traditional structure would have and and so um when I think about ethereum at scale ethereum in 20 2025 or 2030 it's going to be all these different hyper structures that people can interact with and the sum of all of them is going to be our experience in D5 or refi or whatever the open source Financial system is and um yes it's it's

quite neat to think about where that is all going and uh maybe my segue back into asking you a question is like how can we make Dallas more successful and and where where is cult dial going what where are y'all investing in in uh the future of cultow so I think there's kind of two ways there's kind of two layers to that to that question that that come to my mind one being how can we make the cult Dao as a down more successful and I think all that relies on is just awareness and um and it being used it just needs to be used it's kind of been a weird a weird time period for Colt because it launched in February 2022 literally as the bear Market was you know coming into full swing off the back of of the off the

back of this crazy Ballroom we had in the at the end of 2021 so it's never really seen action in a bull run in that it's it hasn't hasn't just been like number up for the sake of number up where like we saw a couple of years ago so it's it's managed to do quite a lot in a short period of time in a market where it shouldn't really have done quite so well it had it had a huge run up in March April of 2022 and what that did was filled the treasury up massively there was like 1500 Ethan there at one point or 1500 East worth of coal I should say so we were able to make a lot of proposals but the

end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 or maybe not so much the last couple of months but it's been a very tough market and it's been a very slow market for people to build and uh receive funding in so we've invested almost I think going by the each value it's nearing two two and a half million dollars worth of investments into other projects and undoubtedly when you make an investment in a project you don't expect things to come back straight away there's there's periods of building there's periods of uh projects going through maturity stages to grow so we're expecting to see quite a lot of

hopefully quite a lot of successful proposals come back over the next year the next two years while we continue to make other proposals as well so all I really want is for for those to come back and be successful so people can realize this has come full cycle and it proves that it works I think that's that's all we really need to be able to send uh you know Senco mainstream yeah or crypto may seem like you're not not mainstream but as in to get the awareness that's the people I I believe it will be a success if people know that there is something out there that can from their project that is pushing decentralization and it's just about

breaking that little box that we've got on Twitter like we've got this incredible community of people that are so dedicated but it's just there's not enough people that know about it for it to be a proper hybrid structure in the way that uni swap has everyone knows how to use uni swap because it is the way that you you transact and buy and sell in your self-custody wallets we want cold to be the way that people think this is how I get funding for my project rather than be reliant on going to VCS that are going to hang them out to dry as soon as their tokens get unlocked so that's what I want for and that I believe is what would make it a success and so when you say hold down

goes full circle or do you mean that there's a proposal that is proposed and then passed and then that project goes out and is successful and there's some sort of return back to the the call Dow treasury what does that full cycle look like so if we have had that we've had a few we've had a few that have done that we there's a ship related project uh called wolf work which was like like the tldr of it was that it was like a a web 3 LinkedIn kind of thing or web3 Fiverr and we had a really we had really great returns from that that still that still pays out on a monthly basis over it is a 12-month period um I think that started like two or

three months ago but we we got back like two and a half maybe three times our investment on the first month it had okay it had a good pump from the uh from the launch and we were able to take a lot of profit from that and we're still receiving monthly payments to to the Dow from that so we have had some that have come back but we've done so many that I've just you know just growing and still in a period building like which diverse the one I mentioned earlier they literally just launched last last week maybe two weeks ago um so you know that's one that we're really excited about in the future and it's not one of the cases where you just

you want to put it to launch just so you can then get what you want out of it and be done with it you kind of want to see them grow and also be a part of the project as a supporter as a supporting Community um so when I when I say full circle I mean like having lots and lots of projects almost like the first wave of proposals to come through come back and uh you know deliver what has been removed from the treasury and sort of put it back in there and I think that's an ongoing process because there's no there's no set timeline for for investment and and I know there's no right time that you can take profits and things so it's just uh it's almost a

waiting game like knowing when you're gonna get that return from all these proposals that have gone out but we we had about nine months or so that we had proposals that had not we had nothing come back and it was just one way traffic what I'm looking forward to seeing is when we've had 110 maybe 120 proposals go through now and we've had probably maybe 15 20 come back um some of them for losses you know not every investment is uh is a success but I want to see what happens when we have like 50 75 100 projects come back and you know and then we're in the stages of waiting for the next the next cycle and I think that's when things will be

really interesting I just think it's neat to think about at scale what this looks like um and and and I'll say you know keep in mind my experience working with Bitcoin and them being a meta allocator to different projects in this space I see the same sort of thing at cultow um although you are focused on public goods and you're actually generating your return and it makes me wonder if that's like a more elegant uh way way of setting up a a dow as opposed to just like giving away these grids for free so um yeah it's it's neat to see another meta allocator in the space be be successful ourselves as competitors um because you know there's there's no

competition it's people should be providing funding for projects and you know whether that's through Bitcoin grants or whether that's your code as I just see that as a good thing because I I also believe that Bitcoin has the right messaging behind it and you know we're seeing the right kind of projects that come through and receive funding from them too so it's the more funding that you have from like say the matter allocators providing that four good projects then the better the space will be for it yeah and you know this is one of the things I talk about with my other guests like Carl from optimism or in from CLR fund is that you've really got a plurality of allocators in the space that are offering grants in exchange for things

that create social change and at scale it gets quite interesting to think about people who could launch a project and just raise on CLR funds and giveth and git coin and optimism retroactive public goods funding and maybe cult Dao also and uh that plurality of funding I think creates a better ethereum ecosystem for people who want to create social change so um it'll be interesting to see at scale how all these things interoperate with each other definitely and I think it kind of it can help move away from this Reliance on a lot of people a lot of projects that are reliant on VC funding and you know you could they could have you know the life that I've sucked from them because they've given

away too much to a VC that's just in it for the money and you know it can really harm a project in the long run whereas if you have funding from a lot of different uh sources but they're all kind of allocators like like Bitcoin like CR funds I believe like the longevity and sustainability of a project is going to be much higher for receiving funding from from these kind of projects rather than uh just traditional VC firms so take me to a world in which cultow is massively successful what kind of things do we see you mentioned like do people have less VC funding when they're getting projects off the ground but like maximally successful in the next five or ten years what kind of impact do you

hope to have on the world that's a very tricky question I just like helping what it is I it just needs to continue functioning as it is to be maximally successful it just needs the exposure it just needs the the use cases it needs people coming to it and receiving the funding I think but I can only be good for the space if if we're limiting if or even with VCS they're not necessarily or bad people need people need funding and you know people are willing to make the investment into these projects and give them a Lifeline but if we if we're allowing projects to be less reliant on traditional VC funding

and you know it's going to spread more or skewed more towards receiving Public Funding from public goods it kind of takes the power out of the VC fund so it allows a fairer playing field and it's also less Reliance on I don't know how to explain it but it's kind of like more it's a fairer playing field because you're you're spreading the funding across more Avenues and allowing more exposure as well off the back of that like with a lot of VCS what you get is exposure to a network of wealthy

individuals but not necessarily exposure to communities and to other projects that are being funded as public goods whereas if you're receiving funding from coal from Bitcoin you're naturally kind of inheriting support from a community because of it so that Community is then behind behind you the success of your project or is pushing for the success of your project as opposed to just having a few people from a VC firm that really want you to do well because they're going to make loads of money from it yeah so it feels like more access to funding the most interesting projects were democratized access or decentralization um are some of the things that that I

heard in there but um you know I think that maybe the call to action for the listeners just read the manifesto that's that's I think where you describe the type of world that you want to live in or at least your theory of change from the existing world so um there'll be a link in the show notes to the manifesto that people can check out um is there anything I didn't ask that you want to say um yeah like you said people would suggest to read the manifesto or just type in cult on Twitter and you'll find a lot of people talking about us and there's a lot of good people that want change in the world and um we don't kid ourselves into thinking that Paul was going to directly change the world but the more people you have

with the right Vision together the further you have the chance of pushing that vision and uh bringing decentralization to the Forefront of people's minds a little bit more and ultimately I think that can only benefit the space yeah I mean I think it's about building a Channel of for greater combinations of strength and intelligence to come together and that's the fun thing about building networks and um you know cult just feels like a really strong Meme and I'm curious to see see where it goes to so shout out to to everyone in the green pill Network that's that's checking out cult Dao and um and uh our Artorias thank you so much for appearing on the podcast to talk about it thank you for having me cheers

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