Crypto Sapiens - Contribution Management & Bear Market DAOs | Aaron Soskin - Founder at Govrn
Primer: What happens if you are contributing to a DAO and it fails? How do you prove that you have done what you said you did? Enter Govrn, a platform where you can put your contributions on-chain. Find out how this is done in this episode of Crypto Sapiens.
Background
Founder of Govrn
Have been in crypto for 5 years
Love to ski in the mountains and enjoys good music
One year after learning about crypto, he learned about DAOs
“Once I learned about DAOs, it was just game over for me, like that was all that mattered to me.”
- Aaron Soskin
Joined Raid Guild and MetaCartel. Was an active participant in DAOs
Traditional Organizations And Early DAOs
People were thinking how could DAOs/blockchains be used to empower traditional organizations
He found a better way:
Identify problems with traditional organizations
See if we can build blockchain-based tools to solve those problems
“The same way that software is eating the world, DAOs will eat the world.”
- Aaron Soskin
Looked at how civic structures (community, politics, constituents of a city) could organize and empower people to better self-organize
During the early days of Raid Guild and MetaCartel, everyone was willing to experiment in any kind of way
A lot of problems involved communication
When the Discord grew, dissemination of information became important. Popular to have weekly/monthly DAO meetings
As things scaled further, people started to split off and do their own projects
In the early days of a DAO:
You needed a couple of people to really push the DAO forward
10% of the people were creating 90% of the value for everyone to benefit from
Govrn
How Did They Get Started
Looking to empower constituents, not the core group/team
“This is the people living in the city that do really small things every now and then to empower their community, and how do we build tools to help empower them to self-govern.”
- Aaron Soskin
Realized that contributor/constituent empowerment was an unmet space
As DAOs grow, it has become impossible to know everyone
What Do They Solve
Makes it easy for DAO contributors to track their own contributions
Contributors should have on-chain records of their work
To them, contributions should not belong to the DAO. It should belong to the contributors
They are making a contribution graph for DAO contributors to track their contributions
Users come to their platform, report the DAO contributions that they have made, commit the most impressive ones on-chain, and get their peers to validate them
Decentralization And Accountability
Should think of decentralization with an anti-capture framework:
Not just about increasing nodes in a network
The focus is on increasing accountability
Rage quitting is the ultimate form of accountability:
It is the freedom to leave an organization
Is a property of MolochDAO structures
At any point, someone could submit a proposal to quit the DAO and exchange their shares for a proportion of the treasury
Going Deeper Into Graphs
The OG contribution graphs were SourceCred and MetaGame. They were doing this before people even realize what they are doing
Big fan of Coordinape
Seeing a lot of value graphs being built right now (e.g. Coordinape)
Contribution graphs like Govrn are one step underneath value graphs
Contribution graphs enable people to see what types of contributions are the most valuable
If a DAO dissipates, you no longer have anything to show for the work you’ve done. With contribution graphs, you still have records of the work that you’ve done
These graphs can enable retroactive public goods funding
Role Of Govrn In Creating Better DAOs
Current market is similar to the original DAO boom — both were bear markets
In bear markets, DAOs with top-down governance lack money to give out grants for work done. However, work still needs to be done
With Govrn, contributors would still get an on-chain, immutable record for the work they have done. Their work could be rewarded retroactively in a bull market
Most Influential Person On His Crypto Journey
Robert Greenfield, the former Head of Social Impact at Consensys
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