Talking Crypto #70 - Jonathan Hillis
Primer: Need to recharge in nature with like-minded creators? Take a trip down to Cabin DAO, a community of remote cabins just outside Austin, Texas. Come and listen to Jon Hillis. Learn about the inspiration behind Cabin DAO, life at the Cabins, and their plans for the future.
Background
One of the founders of Cabin DAO
Cabin DAO/Creator Cabins is a community of remote cabins for independent online creators
Based in the Texas Hill Country, which is 45 minutes outside of Austin
It is run as a residency program that is structured as a DAO
Been following crypto since 2012/2013. Was a senior in college and his roommate explained Bitcoin to him
"I've gotten more involved through each of the sort of hype waves and follow the evolution of this space. But it was really only in the last year that it felt to me like crypto had reached this tipping point where you could actually do stuff with it." - Jon Hillis
Got interested and bought a little Bitcoin from a speculative perspective while trying to understand it from a technological perspective
Watched DAO governance structures and tools emerging from DeFi summer
Was the director of product at Instacart - a platform for people to shop and deliver groceries
Thought of the gig economy and realized that the biggest change in the world happening right now is declining transaction costs
As transaction cost goes down, more people will work independently online. One version of this is the gig economy. The other version is the creator economy, which has less commoditized labour
The creator economy led him to build these cabins and inviting a bunch of internet friends and online creators. They had a campfire one night and that led to the formation of Cabin DAO
Businesses And Transaction Cost
In the 70s, Ronald Coase wrote a paper titled Nature of the Firm on economic theory that companies shouldn't exist
His conclusion was that companies exist because there is friction and cost to doing deals/transactions in the real world
Companies exist to pool people together. It is used to create an environment where contracts do not have to be renegotiated for every single thing that needs to be done
This structure has worked well for the last century
At this current moment, our technology has gotten good enough where people can collaborate, interact, and describe complex units of work in ways that have low transaction cost
Gig economy is the first example of this. Now we can see this applied more broadly in the creator economy and in crypto
"We actually are living in this sort of idealized economic world that Ronald Coase was describing where individuals can just interact directly with other individuals. And they don't need these sort of pools, intermediaries of companies in the same way anymore." - Jon Hillis
How Does This Apply To Cabin DAO?
Still exploring this. No one knows exactly what it's going to look like
Traditional work agreement —> Gig economy —> Creator economy
Compared to traditional work, there is less friction in the gig economy. People can just open an app, see a unit of work, and choose to accept or reject it
Knowledge work is harder to describe
The creator economy is showing us that these declining transaction costs are now moving up the value chain into more valuable and interesting types of labor
"People can say, look, here's who I am, here's what I can contribute to the world. And they can still have the reduced transaction costs of the internet, but maintain a lot of the personal autonomy of doing their own unique work." - Jon Hillis
Crypto is accelerating this trend. Not only can you be an independent online creator, but you can also be a part of a DAO of independent online creators that work together to achieve some type of scale
Gabriel's Experience Of Cabin DAO
Drove 45 minutes out of Austin into the hill country
Pass by a wrought iron gate and saw Creator Cabins
Got a structure built out of shipping containers. There were 3 of them there, in an H type of layout
It was beautifully renovated right in the middle of the forest
Cabin DAO
In 2019, he experienced burnt out at his job
At that point, his boss told him to drop everything and go on a vacation for a month
The following week, he left for Thailand. He explored a series of remote islands off the southwestern coast of Thailand
Found some wonderful cabins on these islands, where he stayed for a month
Wanted to bring together 3 of his favourite things together:
Interest in architecture
Online community
College experience of staying with like-minded, exciting, and interesting people
Eventually left his job at Instacart. Wanted to build a cabin in the woods and bring interesting people from internet communities to the cabin to spend time together
Built the cabin and invited the first group of people that started the DAO
Decided to pool money and bring out independent online creators. Experienced huge growth in the community
Did not start as a crypto project, but ended up finding crypto as the perfect tech stack for the use case they are building
"And I like to joke that now we're LARPing as a city state. We have cabin tokens, which is our local currency. We just released our first set of NFT passports and we're working on new digital passports as well. These passports are NFTs that anyone can buy to come out and spend time out at the cabins that helped fund our residency program." - Jon Hillis
What Does Crypto Bring To The Table?
Was very skeptical of this at first
Their community originally started as a cooperative of independent online creators
Over time, the cooperative evolved into a DAO
What changed his mind was understanding how tokens can be used to bootstrap an economy and a governance system
Crowdfunded a token sale to allow them to run a residency program. People were making a donation to help support online creators
"What impressed me the most is that you're doing something that pushes the limits of what crypto is. You don't see many physical crypto projects." - Gabriel Haines
In exchange for the donation, they were given actual governance capabilities in selecting which creators will be staying at the cabins
Business Model Of Cabin DAO
Was not originally planned to be a money-making enterprise. Was structured with the intention of providing time and space for independent creators
Community has grown and they are interested in creating a sustainable structure for the DAO and the community
Currently exploring revenue sources. The most immediate way is through the sales of NFT passports
People can pick up a season 2 passport and come out and spend a week with them at the Cabins
Those funds go to the DAO and help them to fund more residencies
Token Utility
Doesn't think too much about token prices
Main goal is to build a strong community and a strong internal medium of exchange and governance
Was supposed to be a single-use coin to fund the residency for season 1
Turns out the community wanted to keep it going and they are now preparing the passports for season 2
Have a number of people quitting their jobs to join Cabin DAO
Uses internal bounties to:
Build content to help people understand how to build and get involved in DAOs
Produce products that are to be used within their DAO and to be shared with the broader DAO community
Contributors are compensated in Cabin tokens
Fun Experiments At Cabin DAO
2 of them are spending all their time on Cabin
Others are doing bounties with Cabin but are also involved with other DAO communities such as Forefront
Done some fun experiments
Buried an actual treasure chest with an NFT wallet in Texas Hill country.
People regularly add tokens or NFTs to the wallet. Anyone can go and find the actual treasure chest and obtain the wallet within
Fractionalized the first animal on-chain. It is a long-horned steer called DH-Esteereum
People bought portions of it with the original intention to do a meat-share program
Those who owned the fractions decided to save the cow instead. Now he lives at a ranch about an hour from them
"We think there's just a tremendous amount of opportunity for these sort of on-chain to offline projects. And we want to keep pushing the envelope there with real estate and with other assets that we can represent and think about at that intersection of online and offline." - Jon Hillis
His Understanding Of "What Is A City"
Have been reading a lot about the history of cities and trying to understand that question
No clear answers
"Cities at their core are, in a sense, machines or structures for human coordination and collective action." - Jon Hillis
A technical legal answer is that, in the state of Texas, a group of 500 people can come together and incorporate a city or a town
In the history of cities, cities emerge from river valleys because they were good areas for agriculture
Each city has its own culture and ambition. Paul Graham wrote an essay about how different cities have their own ambitions
Day-To-Day Life At The Cabins
Kept it open-ended for season 1 as well as for the future
For season 1, they had 3 cohorts of people who had stayed at the cabins
Currently hosting cohort 3 now
Incredibly diverse group of creators working on a wide range of projects from TikTokers and YouTubers to engineers, painters, and playwrights
Their Property
Have a shipping container cabin
Bunch of infrastructures (e.g. several wells, miniature city-grade septic system, 80-foot internet tower)
Most pressing need is for more space for people to sleep and live
Foreseeing bigger groups in the future
Recently read The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Inspired by her architectural thinking around how cities are built. Will be using these principles to build Cabin DAO
The Death And Life Of Great American Cities
During her time, Jane Jacobs was not fully appreciated by her contemporaries, but she has now come around as a hero of urban planning
Robert Moses, who built a lot of New York City, and Le Corbusier, a French guy who had a lot of ideas around early urban planning, had their ideas built around big monumental structures — Radiant Cities with big skyscrapers and big open areas
Their models look great in architectural renderings, but it doesn't meet the needs of what humans want in terms of density and diversity
Any Cities Built Using Jane Jacobs' Principles?
Not a lot in the US
Most of the cities in the US were built in the context of the emergence of cars; have very car-centric cities
Smaller European villages and cities would be a better representative of her principles
Technological Revolutions And Financial Capital
A book by Carlota Perez
Discusses the 5 technological revolutions that have happened since the industrial revolution and the S-curve that describes them
Initial eruption of new technology —> Deployment phase where it becomes infrastructure and impacts human life
In the US, this can be mapped back to oil and automobiles
We are now reaching the deployment phase where we start to see the impact of the internet on our daily lives
Their "City"
Will not have cars
Is walkable in 15 minutes or less
There are walking trails and they are carving out some new trails
He talks to people every week from all over the world about how to get started on such projects
"I don't think that people think about actually designing their community. People design their house, you know, they build a house, they build their dream house. Nobody thinks like, I'm going to build my dream community." - Gabriel Haines
If There's A Big Billboard At The Entrance Of Cabin DAO, What Would It Say?
Only way to do it properly is to put it up to a governance vote
If he had to guess, it would be "Pay it forward"
What They Have Accomplished So Far
Their residency program
A lot of people who contributed to the residency program were independent online creators themselves who had an interest in the idea of online to offline communities
Members from previous cohorts returned to the DAO to contribute and help out with future cohorts
Best Way To Get Involved
Hop in to their Discord and say hello
Check out their Twitter at @creatorcabins
If you are interested in purchasing some Cabin tokens, they can be purchased off Uniswap
If you are interested in earning bounties, join the guild. There are links to help you get started
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