Bankless - Creating Memes with Gabriel Haines | Meet the Nation
Primer: Gabriel Haines has been making waves after he shifted towards making meme videos on Crypto Twitter. Join host David Hoffman from Bankless as they discuss how to get on the Bankless show, Daniele, and the projects that Gabriel is involved in.
Background
Is Jewish. Grew up orthodox
Went to Yeshiva up until he was 20
Getting On The Bankless Show
Daniele, the founder of Abracadabra, Popsicle Finance, and Wonderland called out Bankless for being a VC shill platform
David responded “who are you” and that this was not the proper way to ask to appear on the show
Gabriel thought it would be funny to come up with the proper etiquette to ask to appear on the show
“So I think that paying homage to the Bankless core principles and philosophies was the most appropriate way. And I just got to show respect by bowing and reciting the mantras. So here we are.”
- Gabriel Haines
Where Did His Motivation To Create His Stand Up Sketch Comedy Videos Come From?
There’s not a lot of satirical/comedic type of crypto native jokes
Feel like bringing that out and fleshing that medium
Has spent a lot of time on Crypto Twitter and understand the memes and inside jokes very well
Some examples of his sketches:
Was an actual ParaSwap user, but was excluded from the airdrop. Made a video complaining that he deserved 100k
Called Cobie out for being a blue checkmark
On Daniele
Thinks that Bankless should have Daniele on the show because he is an interesting guy
Bankless takes a fundamental approach to investing and acknowledges the power of memes
Daniele is more meme-focused
Both Bankless and Daniele have a different audience
Thinks that the degen culture, when it grows older, may become more conservative
Does not think that someone in TradFi will be able to grasp the meme-y aspects of certain crypto like dogecoin
Why Did Ryan Say that Daniele Have To Put Up 250k To Get On The Show?
It was a group decision
They had Udi Wertheimer on the show twice because CMS Holdings committed to spending $250,000 and $100,000 another time to Gitcoin to host Udi on the show
On The Degen Side Of Crypto
💡 David: Can degening go too far? The degen side of crypto feels like a race to the bottom, with each application and tokens having quicker and quicker ponzi-like cycles.
There’s a lot of greed and people trying to make a quick buck
Could either view it as innovation or a race to the bottom
He grew up in a TradFi framework (e.g. price to sales, price to earnings ratio), but his videos are also an expression of the crypto culture
Thoughts On Frogs
Doesn’t really know
Thinks that it’s a symbol that people resonate with
It’s much older than his experience with memes
CRE8R DAO
Origins
People have approached him to create content before
Thought of gathering a group of creators to offer a complete package to projects, enabling creators to access opportunities and for projects to get in touch with crypto native content creators
Helped started CRE8R DAO, a content creation DAO, to address this need
How Did CRE8R DAO Fare?
Have distributed ~$800,000 dollars to creators
The money was paid directly from the protocols to the DAO, and then distributed to the creators involved
💡 Coordinape is a product of Yearn where contributors vote for the remuneration of every single contributor involved in the project.
Include Coordinape in the initial design of the DAO
How Is CRE8R DAO Organizing Itself?
Initially, they thought that creators could self-organize to complete work and manage the distribution of payment on their own
Realized that they needed a project manager to make sure work actually gets done and to communicate with the client
Can The Project Manager Become Part Of Sales If They Connect A Client To CRE8R DAO?
Doesn’t seen it happening in that exact scenario
Was doing a lot of the sales calls at the beginning. Realized that he wasn’t getting a huge amount of the funds at the end of it
If people are not fairly rewarded, they are not going to have the motivation to continue
Eventually fixed it such that the person closing the sale and onboarding the client gets 10% of the budget
Content Produced By The DAO
There will be a long form interview at the start
Creators then create content based on the long form interview (e.g. summaries, video clips, articles, etc.)
As the DAO matures, more content creators have joined
Have a professional musician, Sara Hartman, and an animator from Netflix, Fvanstry
The DAO does not do any web design or UI/UX
Clipto
While he was making Twitter videos, people approached him to ask whether is he on Cameo
Cameo is a platform where celebrities and influencers create personalized content for fans
He signed up for Cameo but they never got back to him
Decided to make a plea to devs to create a crypto version of Cameo, where payment is on-chain and the fan would receive the content as a NFT
Got 10-15 people on their core team to push Clipto forward
The app is live right now and they are testing it. It is deployed on Polygon
Clipto could be expanded further with an engage-to-earn type of token model
The DAO could come up with an award show every month rewarding the funniest and most viral Clipto video
Cameo doesn’t allow for multiple characters. Foresees Vtubers wanting to play as multiple characters using Clipto
Does not have to be a video, and could be a commission for anything
Long Term Goals For Everything He’s Working On
He had the vision, but the devs do all the work for him
There’s a limit to what an individual founder could do. Doesn’t think that a person can carry a project on their shoulders. They have to tap in to the energy that already exists
“For Clipto, like, I definitely had the vision for it. But the devs do all the work, right? If there's no devs, there's no app. That's just it.”
- Gabriel Haines
Have to make sure that other people are invested with their energy and their time
While doing his own recordings, he had CRE8R DAO to do the editing, uploading, thumbnail descriptions, timestamps, etc.
Editing videos take up a lot of his time. Hence, he has switched over to 1 minute videos which do not require much editing
Sometimes, he will record his short videos multiple times. Often, the first take is the best take
“If I'm able to tap into this of going into a video, and I don't even know what I'm going to say in the video, that is going to be the best type of video (...) but those are the best type of video because you're not inhibited by any type of story and you're really in the moment and you're really feeling it. You're really channeling it.”
- Gabriel Haines
Would be just scrolling through Twitter and reacting to what he sees on his Twitter feed
Respects @songadaymann for his consistency in writing and publishing songs each day. He holds the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days writing a song
When he started doing interviews last year, he set a goal of trying to publish every single day. He ended up creating 150 videos on YouTube
County Capital
In a group called County Capital
Consists of 12 members
Does investments at the early stage (e.g. seed rounds, private rounds)
Got into Paragons DAO, a DAO that is building on top of the Parallel card game
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