Square 1 interviewed Magenta and Ori from DOrg to discuss a new public good funding system they created called DAO Drops. Hear more about their experience getting into web3 and working amongst DAOs in this episode!
We're excited to share a conversation with Sid Powell, CEO and Founder of Maple Finance. The team at Maple is tackling one of the most risk involved and challenging issues of Decentralized Finance, undercollateralized lending. Sid is a unique founder in the web3 space, as he comes with a background in banking, not software development. We hope you find plenty of interesting ideas to chew on throughout this conversation.
https://twitter.com/sidbpowell
This episode is another deep dive with an impressive builder of the ecosystem. James Prestwich has been involved in the ecosystem pre-Ethereum. He's a serial entrepreneur and developer, currently focused on cross chain interactions. Learn more about his experience in the links below!
https://prestwi.ch/about-me/
https://twitter.com/_prestwich
The podcast launch this week was recorded in February as Square 1 was just forming as a concept. We talk with Griff Green, who has been a crypto nomad for about a decade. Griff brings with him a wealth of stories and experiences describing some of the early events that shaped the crypto ecosystem (such as the DAO hack).
Learn about his experience, as well as his ongoing projects (links below).
https://tecommons.org/
https://twitter.com/Givethio
https://commonsstack.org/
This week we speak to the humble leader of Aave, a 5+ billion dollar lending protocol on Ethereum.
Santi comes from Argentina and began building Democracy Earth in a YC cohort. This project continues to evolve, and at the time of the podcast he had just launched an experiment in Universal Basic Income called Proof of Humanity. If you’d like to take a first step into the crypto ecosystem, this would be a very interesting experiment and community to participate in (and you get streamed money for doing so!).
In this episode we chat with two Australian Defi founders Sid and Kerman about their perspective on decentralized finance. We break Defi down into four primary functions: exchanges, lending services, derivatives, and insurance. This ~should~ be relatively encompassing of the different applications you can find in the ecosystem today.
This week we discuss the experience of Luke Duncan as a builder of the DAO space throughout the ecosystem. Luke started his work with Aragon, a generalized DAO framework that builds composable systems for voting and resource management. While at Aragon he was involved with developing a community called 1Hive. This is a group of builders that came together through a common token economy $HNY. Originally a valueless token used to represent contributions in the community, $HNY now has a $20 million dollar market cap. This path of tokenomic formation came in a very unique way and provides an interesting contrast to the typical flow of progressive decentralization.
Learn more by finding Luke and 1Hive below!
Luke: https://twitter.com/lkngtn
1Hive: https://twitter.com/1HiveOrg
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are one of the foundational concepts pioneered by those in the crypto ecosystem. The idea for these new forms of organizations have served as inspiration for idealists with visions of more equitable governance structures.
All decentralized protocols and cryptocurrency networks wrestle with the question of governance both on the technical and the human level. While DAOs today generally imply the use of governance of cryptocurrency systems, Zargham makes the point that this question of decentralized governance is as old as human coordination.
This is one of our favorite concepts to explore in this crazy world of magic Internet money. We're including a slew of links below.
Listen to the latest @Square1_pod as we talk to @paulgambill about the way crypto economics applies to the carbon removal market, and how @nori is pioneering a carbon negative economic system!
Cooper came from the music business and developed a passion for crypto as he traveled around the world creating content for artists at music festivals. He comes with a rich background in contributing to the ecosystem from a non-technical frame, focused on communication and human coordination. We discuss a broad swath of topics including yield farming, social tokens, NFTs, Defi summer, DAOs, and the collaborative nature of the environment facilitated by this technology.
Jordan Ellis is a very accomplished builder in the space. He transitioned from Microsoft game development to Ethereum in 2019 due to the promise decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) technology provided.
In traditional organizations, much of the work created dies. Only projects that make it to market become useful. In this open source ecosystem, this problem doesn't exist. The purpose of open source comes from sharing knowledge and information.
Further, DAO systems provide opportunities for new methods of resource management to exist. These structures contradict the traditional corporate hierarchy to form a more flexible, flat management system.
If you'd like to learn more about Jordan, find him here.
We hope you enjoy the latest episode of Square 1!
We’re back. This week we’ll release two intro episodes. We’ve been thinking deeply about the way to best orient listeners. There will be a variety of intro episodes as well as deep dives.
As you listen send feedback! We’d love to create the content you find most valuable.
Disclaimer: none of this is legal nor investment advice. Find an advisor.
This is the first episode of Square 1 season 1 where we talk to Andy Tudhope. Andy is a hacker-anthropologist and comes to the table with incredibly deep insights on the history of money, it's relevance to society, and how cryptocurrency continues to evolve this ancient form of communication.
Takeaways:
The moment language appeared in history is the singularity for humankind.
Money precedes written language.
The concept of money is fundamentally "the water in which we swim" and requires awareness (please see David Foster Wallaces speech).
Cryptocurrency is an evolution to the order of language, in order to push the boundaries of the infinite game.
Links:
Finite and Infinite Games - https://wtf.tw/ref/carse.pdf
This is Water - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CrOL-ydFMIDebt
The First 5000 Years - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZIINXhGDcs
Give a brief listen to gather a context for the significance of the Internet and how it uses protocols to transact data across servers around the globe.
This new system (only ~50 years young) is foundational to the way society coordinates today and into the future. It is also a fundamental concept needed to understand software and cryptocurrency.
Review this episode to listen to brief descriptions defining cryptocurrency, DAOs, Defi, and token economics.
Disclaimer! If you are new to these concepts, they will sound like a foreign language.
The goal for Square 1 is to provide content that provides a holistic overview of the systems available within cryptocurrency today. Most content we see either falls on the deeply academic and technical to the deeply speculative and financial. Square 1 will talk to people and teams to define the practical applications of the technology today, as well as bring users up to speed with relevant concepts.
Square I developed out of a curiosity to uncover the present day value and future consequence of cryptocurrency networks. Discussion here will focus on token economics, decentralized organizations (DAOs), and remote product development. At times, we might meander into other topics relevant to the guests we host.
Despite the nature of these deeply technical topics, I’d like to steer conversations in a way that anyone can engage with and learn from. I remember first learning about the crypto space in early 2017 and feeling completely overwhelmed with the noisy information provided by the variety of media efforts raising ICOs. Square I will aim to cut through this noise in order to uncover the ground floor of this technology today, for ourselves and our listeners.
This program is made possible by the Bloom Community Grants program. Bloom is sponsoring research and development grants to the crypto community to collaborate on some exciting new initiatives to benefit the crypto ecosystem. If you have an idea for something to explore in token economics, unsecured DeFi lending, or token utility, reach out to grants@bloom.co.