On The Other Side ep 16 - Coopahtroopa: DAO social dynamics + mental health in the metaverse
Primer: In this episode of On The Other Side Podcast, Cooper Turley bares his heart and shares deeply about the DAO space. Learn who he is as a person, what motivates and excites him, and the concerns he have on this space. You won't regret learning about DAOs from him.
Background
5 years ago, he was very big into music. Graduated from college with a music business degree
Did not like what he saw in the music industry. The industry had a very clearly defined ceiling and was rife with middlemen
Found crypto and began learning and writing about various projects
Over time, started to travel to developer conferences
Started doing contracted work for teams. Found out who his tribe and family were in the space
Went through all the different cycles (DeFi, NFT, DAOs)
Social Aspects Of DAOs
A DAO is more of an ethos than it is a hardcoded principle of some clearly defined set of technical roles. A DAO is where people have the intent to share capital and value together to create more value
Do not need to have highly sophisticated tech protocols to launch a DAO. DAOs are the new internet LLCs — it abstracts away the need for a lawyer and a bank account. You just need a MetaMask wallet
He considers people coming together in a group chat and looking to advance their learnings and their communication as a DAO as well
A DAO is united by a shared intent and mission to do things
This is the first time in history where people can have assets that represent ownership in communities
Will Every Friend Group Have A Multisig?
Will be extremely easy for every friend group to have a multisig
The jump from a chat group to a multisig will be more intuitive and easier in the future
Will Social DAOs Want To Scale?
A common thinking that people have is that a larger a DAO, the more value the DAO creates. People fail to realize that the quality of conversations will fall if there's too many members in discord
"I think what people fail to realize that if you just drop 10,000 people into discord, that quality of conversation is going to be really, really bad. You know, if you think about where you spend your own time online, you want to be spending time in trusted pockets with people that you know, and respect." - Cooper Turley
Bullish on the idea of small selective onboarding and being intentional about who's joining
When running a DAO, one has to be really careful about the energy and culture in the community
His biggest worry is that if the DAO scales too fast, they will end up inviting people that have different motives and alignment, causing the top contributors to feel a lot more reserved to actually open up and communicate
DAOs can scale on a one-on-one basis in a trusted system rather than allowing everyone to walk in through the front door
Need to have an onboarding process to make sure that the culture can be maintained
Noticed that when the group starts to scale (> 500 members), people inevitably want to have smaller groups within the DAO to be able to continue their conversation with people that they share similar values and interest with
The community operator's job is to listen for what those new groups might be like. Create systems such that when people identify that they want to have a new space to go and chat and hang out in, you are able to enable them to go and do so
"From my personal perspective, I noticed that every time a group starts to get a little bit big, people typically raise their hand and start to identify where they want to go break off and start a subpocket. And I think your job as an operator is to make sure that when those conversations start to happen, people feel very supported in that. And they also feel like they're still maintaining a part of the larger family as a whole." - Cooper Turley
Dealing With People Who Do Not Fit With The DAO's Culture
A token-permission DAO introduces skin in the game. The capital asset, which represents membership, makes people more aware of their behaviour, incentivizing positive interactions
Noticed that when there is unhappiness with a particular member in a DAO, someone would start to vocalize their unhappiness and the person would typically reflect on their actions. In cases where they don't, community operators would step in to have serious conversations with these people
Moloch DAO have this framework called rage kick where everyone in the DAO can actually kick out a member if the group chooses to do so
Doesn't have the rage kick mechanism in social DAOs, but the same principle applies
Exiting A DAO
Optimal scenario is to leave quietly. Members can sell their tokens on Uniswap
For on-chain DAOs, leaving is a challenge. People do not want to leave because they know the social capital of leaving has a negative signal associated with it
For someone running a DAO, it's okay to recognize that the DAO may not be for everyone forever. There will be people who join in the early days that don't really click well when the DAO scales
Thinks that the killer feature for DAOs is that token-gated memberships is not a sunk cost. People could sell their token/NFT on secondary markets. Liquidity enables people to comfortably enter and exit these communities
Friends With Benefits
When he joined the community a year ago, he saw an amazing group of creatives in a Discord group. Was very excited about it
Have been telling them early on that token price doesn't matter and that what matters is the strength and health of the community
Token price is a direct result of the strength of the community
Now they are learning how to deal with the downside of a successful token price — being inclusive and accessible to people
FWB started out the exact way as every other group chat and DAO — it's basically free to join
Stewarding the conversation and making word of mouth referrals —> gave community members space to meet one another —> people start a formal process to self-organize
Work And Play
Living his life as a fusion of work and play over the past 5 years
Traditionally, the only way to mix work and play is to build a startup together. These days, DAOs enable people to meet other people, form connections, and work together
This is not for everyone
Communities are doing well today because there are people working in it full-time. Hard to scale if there's no one giving all their time and energy
Mental Health In The Metaverse
Crypto is extremely exciting as it's 24/7 with infinite opportunities. People fear that they will miss opportunities if they step away from the computer
Have to make a conscious decision to choose what to care about
Gets worried about this concept of getting tapped out — after achieving success and money in the space, they start to get a little too complacent, a little too comfortable until they lose their touch with crypto
"My biggest personal battle has been, learn how to celebrate success, learn how to share that with friends, because I think that's extremely, extremely important. But recognize that your success over the long term is going to be directly correlated to how involved you can stay. And so there needs to be a balance where you are never going too far down one side of the spectrum. Otherwise, you're just going to set yourself up for misery." - Cooper Turley
Finding A Niche To Focus On
Thinks that finding one area to deeply focus on at any given time is the optimal outcome
Thinking about how he can scale his own growth curve of personal time and energy
People start out solo. Eventually, they realize that playing as a team is the optimal way to go
"I think for a lot of people crypto starts as a single player game and you're learning all the skills yourself. You're leveling up, you're going out, you're doing bounties, you're minting NF T's, you're joining DAOs, just doing all these kind of cool side class. But I think at a certain point, anyone who's successful recognize that they need someone bigger than themselves to scale and leverage their time and energy." - Cooper Turley
How he sees his life now:
Scaling his own time and energy
Finding highly talented people and pointing them in the right direction
His litmus test is to make sure he is doing something meaningful if he is going to pick up a new project. Otherwise, he is just losing his edge
Sad reality is that there are people whom he considers his close friends but don't spend much time with anymore because they no longer have a similar mindshare
Success can cause an individual to become more isolated; there will be fewer people who can relate to them
He always tries to maintain an extremely positive sense of relationship. Wants people to know that, even though he may not participate in their town hall every week, he wishes them nothing but the best
His Brand
Gotten to a point where his brand is a powerful influencing force. He could tweet something and it can move the needle meaningfully. He will never take this fact for granted
Speculative accounts are doing the best on Twitter right now
When he started Twitter, he was writing a lot about DeFi tokens. Those tokens eventually went up and people thought he was making good calls. As he started to scale his brand, he didn't want to be seen as a price oracle that people bucketed him into
Nowadays, he is tweeting more positivity quotes, fortune cookie quotes. People didn't like that because they want free alpha
What he really wants is to be a positive influence in the space
What He Is Most Worried About In The DAO Ecosystem
We are currently in the phase of the market where it's easy to get funded off a cool idea. Worried that people would not stick around when the going gets tough
Saw the same thing happening during 2017
When he work with creators, he tries and make them understand that selling out is not a success. Success is them committing to their endeavours over 2 - 3 years and empowering their community in a meaningful way
What He Is Most Excited About
Excited about how excited everyone else is
Mainstream is approaching people in crypto
Thinks that this will change drastically when price turns negative
His current thinking when entering new relationships is to differentiate the opportunists from those who see something special and want to build over a long time horizon
Wants to be the person of influence supporting people who are committed to a long term vision
Favourite Thing In His Wallet
NFT made by Fvckrender. Was the first major NFT purchase that he made. At that time, he was on the fence about it as it cost 10 ETH
Made an impact on Fvckrender/Fred's life by buying that asset
"It's this really beautiful animated flower and a crystal on it. It represents self-growth and self-love. And so there's a lot of levels that when I think of that NFT I like to tell myself, I'm saving it to give to my wife or something like that in the future. And so I think that there's just layers to it, where it's like, you're making an investment in your future, you're making an investment in the artist, and it just feels really, really special to me." - Cooper Turley
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