25: Montanoso, Village DAO’s, and Physical Land Governance // Andrew Hitchcock

For this CityDAO podcast episode, we have Andrew Hitchcock as our special guest. Andrew has a project called Montanoso wherein he bought 21 acres of land outside Austin, Texas in order to build a village DAO. We will talk to him about this awesome crypto co-operative project in the heart of Texas Hill Country. We will also know more about his plans for this village DAO, his views on physical land governance, and so much more.

Montanoso is an experiment in crypto governance. They are creating a traditional village surrounded by a managed ecosystem and they aim to promote crafts, arts, and intellectual development. The plan is to build a dense village on top of a hill, inspired by towns such as Monteriggioni. The buildings will be semi-traditional designs and made from long-lasting materials. They will experiment with generative design in collaboration with craftspeople and artisans. Currently, Andrew is looking for long-term residents who are aligned with the vision of building and living in a traditional town.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 1:37 Andrew describes Montanoso as a crypto co-op or on-chain co-op.
• 2:04 Eric (@memebrains) shares his experience on living in a shared space in California, which he describes as very unique.
• 3:07 Montanoso is more akin to an old traditional village but with modern amenities.
• 5:02 Andrew explains why he chose the traditional village concept.
• 6:17 Building better villages, towns, and cities has always been a passion for Andrew since high school.
• 7:33 Andrew shares his vision of a new better mega city, which involves self-driving cars, flying taxis, underground garbage disposals, and more.
• 9:47 Currently, Andrew is finding more people to get interested in his project and have them visit Montanoso and explore the land.
• 10:57 Long term plan on Montanoso is to have land ownership be on-chain owned by the DAO.
• 13:28 Andrew shares his view on how scaling up a decentralized city could happen.
• 16:57 DAOs can be inclusive of both decentralization and autonomous governance style, according to Andrew.
• 18:58 One of the main issues today for Andrew is to figure out who are going to be the first residents in the village.
• 20:22 Andrew talks more about his plans and ideas for the village project.
• 23:04 Some DAOs are open to a lot of people but Andrew is a firm believer of making a DAO more exclusive with a barrier of entry for people who want to be a part of the project.
• 27:04 There are checks and balances that Andrew plans to implement within his village project.
• 30:12 Andrew offers his explanation on how to tackle the issue of having the NFTs only in the hands of people residing within the village.
• 33:42 When there are people in the village project who are being destructive, antisocial, or breaking certain rules, Andrew plans to have a banishment or eviction process.
• 36:43 There are various reasons why Andrew chose Texas for his project.
• 38:59 Andrew tries to answer Eric’s question about the location of the treasure box from CabinDAO.

Key Points from the Interview:

1. “I’m a believer that like DAOs are inclusive of a whole bunch of governance styles, they don’t necessarily be decentralized or autonomous, sort of like, a little bit of each of them, you get a little bit of decentralization, you get a little bit autonomy.”
2. “I think a lot of DAOs though, like you’re saying, try to be very inclusive, they have open discord, they let everyone try to come in. You know there’s a lot of distractions there, I think that’s one way to run things. I’m sort of the opposite opinion where you want to be a little exclusive and you want some barrier of entry for people to be a part of the project.”

Resources Mentioned: