Travis Wyche

Maybe we can start with you describing how you transitioned to working into Web3 and what you were doing before?

Bau

I'm 23 years old. I graduated college at the end of 2019. That's right when COVID started, so I entered the job force at a really strange time. I was applying for a lot of traditional software companies in the Web2 space. I ended up getting a job at a company called Celsius network, which is basically a crypto bank. I worked there for about six months doing data analysis and I wrote the weekly company newsletters. I did a lot of different research and strategy things on top. I got to work on a cool project to get a virtual bank set up inside of Decentraland. At the end of my internship they told me what I had done was great, but they were really looking for someone who can work with Python and SQL.

I wasn't blindsided by that because I knew that's what they wanted eventually. Through my internship, they never gave me any training on how to learn those things!

Travis Wyche

What was your degree in?

Bau

I studied Econ and I minored in finance and politics. I also studied development, global poverty, international law, human rights, a lot of geopolitics, international security and the environment. There was a lot of cross disciplinary study too. I did a permaculture course my freshman year. I really wish I would have stuck with that because I find that a lot of those principles have stuck around throughout my life.

Travis Wyche

I could jam with you on that, for sure.

Bau

Finding my way to Web3 was strange, because I actually joined as a RaidGuild member in June of 2020. As you know I got hired as an intern by Celsius in August of 2020. Just around that time, I was about to write the August edition of the State of the Raid newsletter, but I didn't because I needed a full-time position at a company, or at least I thought I did. After that whole internship experience, after not being hired by Celsius, it was really strange. It made me realize that I had a really strong ability to engage with the community through Telegram chats and it was really natural for me to transition into RaidGuild. I was already playing this non-technical role in the crypto space and I was doing some data oriented stuff.

I'm really intrigued by DAOs and Web3 and these organizations that can operate irrespective of geography or even the kind of physical confines that a company can sometimes put on its employees, whether it's working in a particular region or having to visit an office once a week.

Travis Wyche

How did you find RaidGuild?

Bau

I found RaidGuild through Dekan, Ven and Sam. I met those guys at Wyoming hack in 2019 where we worked on a little DAOhaus hackathon project together. I didn't understand what DAOhaus was at that time and it was only after I got involved in RaidGuild that I got involved in DAOhaus.

Travis Wyche

Cool. What does an average workday look like for you these days?

Bau

Part of my work right now is going to different venues and trying to see if they would be willing to allow us to host events and community gatherings.

I'm starting to find that my work and normal life outside of work are starting to really bleed into each other. I think that's what DAOs are supposed to actually enable! For you to live the truest version of yourself and to genuinely want to contribute value in whatever way you can. Right?

If that's not what you want to do, then you don't have to be here! Nobody's holding you here. You're not in a contract. You can make it whatever you want. The difficulty is being able to put your foot on the brake and say, No, I need time for myself.

Travis Wyche

It's an interesting vetting of the community, because some people want that siloed lifestyle, they want to be able to work nine to five and know where the boundaries are.

Bau

There's no single model for this DAO work.

A lot of startups set their goal to raise a lot of money quickly and maybe get bought out by someone in the future. That is not at all the ethos of the DAO space.

Travis Wyche

Are you going on raids these days? Do you remember your first raid?

Bau

My first raid was Liquidy. I was a designer on that. When I joined the Guild, I really wanted to get into design. I was doing some low-fi wireframing and mockups. Unfortunately, that raid ended up with the client not paying. This was before we had the consultation process set up. I currently do more clericing, monking, and consultation.

Travis Wyche

What is the biggest challenge that you've faced since pivoting to Web3?

Bau

Oh , wow.

Travis Wyche

Is that too grandiose?

Bau

It's really big, but I think that's a good question.

Travis Wyche

Let me tack on another one. Related to the biggest challenge, have you experienced any a-ha moments while contributing to RaidGuild?

Bau

Coordination is hard. Coordination is really difficult.

You cannot come here thinking anything else, because if you do you put yourself at risk of burning out by spreading yourself too thin. It's not really an a-ha, but it's more about keeping your head straight.

Create some definition around what you're doing because if you don't it's going to be a scramble of different initiatives that won't progress how you'd like them to.

I like to make an example of myself, because I do see others dealing with similar questions in their own heads and their own minds about how to do what we are doing. Sometimes it's best to not be afraid to share what is on your mind and what projects you're working on that could use help, or even realizing when it's right for you to take a step away and take a break from these things. Being open to the community and to your own feelings is really important for anyone to be able to thrive. Reconcile the life you want to live with the life that you're living.

Travis Wyche

I think that's sound advice. If you could do it all over again, is there anything that you would do differently?

Bau

That's a really awesome question, too. I don't think so.

I would be single initiative driven and not allow myself to become so spread out. I think there's a balance there that needs to be considered.

When I was in the Web2 world it was easy to focus on several tasks. Now I find myself putting on these different hats and it's sometimes really difficult to figure out if the hat you're wearing, when you're wearing it, is the right hat! It's about being able to feel where you are in the different layers of social coordination and organization. If you're able to accomplish that it's kind of a superpower.

Travis Wyche

These are millennia old problems. Human coordination is the problem of civilization. It's the problem of democracy and politics. There is such an intense complexity there that necessitates an interpersonal extension beyond yourself. It makes the head spin.

Bau

The DAO space is a big blank canvas. We are here to make the space what we want it to be. It's daunting, but incredibly exciting! And you're right that it's an age-old question. Coordination is always going to be central to our ability to solve core problems to our existence.

What is particularly interesting about these DAOs is the lack of definition, the possibility for diversity, the possibility for complexity. Within that kind of framework, especially when it's completely networked, like we are, the effects can be really incredible and spread across borders, as we've seen, impacting lives in hundreds of countries.

The digital nation state has been forming and I think it's self regulated and we don't know what it's gonna turn into!

Travis Wyche

Do you have any final tips or tricks that you might offer to new RaidGuild cohorts to ensure their success?

Bau

Don't ever be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. It would also be super helpful for new members to document their process. Any kind of personal stories about coming into RaidGuild, such as describing your experience through the onboarding process, what it's like getting integrated into a team working on a project, what's it like to work on a RIP or a raid. All those things would be valuable.

Try new things! Don't get stuck on doing one thing. If you're finding that you are frustrated or stressed out at work or if you're finding that clericing or being an account manager isn't for you, then don't do it. Try something else. Be a writer or work on internal ops or focus on treasury stuff. There's so much freedom to participate and add value.

Travis Wyche

What is your main role?

Bau

My main role would probably be a scribe. I write newsletters and documentation for RaidGuild.

I love the feeling that when I'm contributing, I'm also learning.

Travis Wyche

What other DAOs do you contribute to?

Bau

I am part of maybe six or seven DAOs. For Uber Paladins, I am an orchestrator and facilitator, which includes putting together meeting agendas, making sure that we are making proposals to fund certain grants or certain initiatives on the DAOhaus platform. I really do a lot of the administration stuff. That's very different from my role in RaidGuild, where some work is operations focused, but honestly, RaidGuild is pretty self sufficient since a lot of the processes are already well defined.

I'm also in Rangers, which is a sub-DAO of Warcamp, the core contributor DAO for DAOhaus. In Rangers I'm a writer focused on newsletters, drafting tweets, doing some announcement posts, helping with some discord moderation, and helping with opinion pieces that have been written in collaboration with different media outlets.

I'm also a part of Boost Foundry, which is another DAO in the DAOhaus ecosystem that's strictly focused on building out boosts for the DAOhaus platform. Boosts are really just different apps that increase the functionality of your DAO, which is super cool.

Travis Wyche

How did you fall down the crypto rabbit hole?

Bau

I had heard about Bitcoin, not really sure where I heard about it. I was studying micro and macro economics, international law and human rights in my sophomore year of college. I was really fascinated by economics, international trade, monetary policy, foreign exchange markets, central banks, international organizations, and in understanding the different levels at which coordination is taking place on the global scale. Understanding money lending or how money is actually created through lending is basically what got me into understanding why Bitcoin's monetary policy was important. I got really interested in the idea of community currencies, like micro economies of scale. Interest based lending practices end up creating a lot of debt at the expense of the poor, which is really unfortunate. It really comes down to the cost of borrowing capital and who can access better rates in the market. If you have a lot of money, you are going to be able to borrow at a much lower rate. Growth in the capital market that we know today comes at the expense of the laborer because value is being extracted at a level that they don't have control over. That understanding allowed me to think about a different currency model that wasn't in the hands of a few groups or a few individuals.

Travis Wyche

So you pursued crypto as an alternative model?

Bau

Yeah. I'm still trying to reconcile a lot of my understanding with some of the traditional forms of economics and all the different kinds of social economic systems that exist that we don't really talk about. I don't think we've arrived at the model that is right for us yet.

Travis Wyche

Excellent. Well, from this very well-informed and intentional way of entering into crypto, what would you say constitutes a healthy DAO?

Bau

That's a really interesting question.

I would say what constitutes a healthy DAO is an ecosystem or community of individuals who are aligned by means that are economic or merit based to achieve a set of common goals together. What determines that success is participation, growth and engagement.

If you have participants dropping off or rage quitting or leaving your community, then your DAO is obviously not thriving.

Travis Wyche

How would you describe trust and loyalty in Web3?

Bau

I would say it's one of the most important aspects of the work that we're doing. I think the reason a lot of us got into the space was to disintermediate that trust and to make it easier to not have to trust each other.

A lot of the benefits of being in a DAO is the ability to create more intimacy and stronger relationships. It's not just a protocol where you and I are interacting with each other without trust. We're actually using this infrastructure to build value and trusting relationships with each other.

Travis Wyche

Yes, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. What does the future of coordination look like to you?

Bau

I expect to see a world where we are able to collaborate with each other in a permissioned fashion, where we are not forced to trust each other, where we can easily exit at any time without placing a major burden on any of the other individual members. Basically, it's this idea of self regulation. I think that's going to be a key piece to establishing these organizations in the future.

We have the ability to share and engage in ways that we never have been able to before. I think part of that possibility is ushering in a new way to innovate, to engage in community and building relationships with people from all over the globe, to learn from other cultures about what we are doing wrong, or how we could be doing things better. I think all of this diversity allows for a better world at the end of the day. I think it makes us all smarter and more engaged. I'm hoping to see a model that is even more inclusive and diverse.

Travis Wyche

That's a very optimistic outlook. I appreciate that. Hope punk, all the way! Thanks Bau.