47: BanklessDAO, Educating the Masses, & DAO Sustainability // Links

Bankless DAO was founded by David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams on May 4th, 2021, when they airdropped 35,000 BANK tokens to each Bankless premium subscriber. Following the true ethos of decentralization, they stepped back and let the DAO take shape. While their media company, Bankless LLC, continues to operate as its own media node, the Bankless brand is propagated through the DAO and its sub-DAOs. Now, the Bankless ecosystem as a whole creates user-friendly onramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media and culture.

Their mission is to onboard 1 billion people to crypto. The nodes in their growing ecosystem collaborate to create user-friendly onramps for people to discover, use, learn, and enjoy the benefits of Web3.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

• 3:12 Links made some clarifications and added explanations about BanklessDAO.
• 4:05 Further explanation and elaboration of the origin of BanklessDAO.
• 6:10 Instead of direct democracy, BanklessDAO delegates authority to different places and entities within the DAO with the best information and is capable of making the crucial decisions. 
• 8:18 Links talks about the different networks, guilds, and departments within the BanklessDAO.
• 9:42 The mission of BanklessDAO is to create user-friendly on-ramps that will onboard a billion people to a bankless life. Links elaborates further on what this mission is all about. 
• 13:01 Links believes that the vision is owned by the community. 
• 14:29 DAO leadership, according to Links, are just people who are prominent and most trusted within the DAO.  
• 15:04 Bottom-up initiative is what they are doing in BanklessDAO.
• 16:34 Eric is talking about a situation wherein he became a centralized power that is trying to manipulate votes. 
• 18:08 For Links, centralization is not just merely all black and white, but it is a spectrum as well. 
• 21:53 Links is involved in Web2 startup and has been in this space for 13 years. 
• 22:18 Having problems with ownership in Web2 startups and wanting to build a truly sustainable organization, Links began getting involved in the DAO space. 
• 23:16 One of the biggest accomplishments of BanklessDAO is their guest pass. 
• 23:58 Another huge accomplishment of BanklessDAO is their constitution. 
• 25:07 The top priorities of BanklessDAO for the next 6 months.
• 26:50 BanklessDAO will have a legal entity twelve months from now.
• 27:50 Eric talks about DAO sustenance and sustainability.
• 31:53 The discussion shifts to building revenue models in the DAO space. The approach that Links made for getting revenues is creating the Bankless card. 
• 34:36 Links offers his own insight on what DAO is all about.
• 36:15 There is a difference between the token holders and the contributors in the DAO.
• 37:40 BanklessDAO needs two million dollars to get them to 15,000 users, which will allow them to become self-sovereign as a DAO. They are still figuring out how to get the $2 million.
• 39:29 Links enumerates the ways on how anyone can contribute to BanklessDAO. 
• 41:00 With everything that is going on in the bear market, Links believes that we will get out of this.

Key Points from this Interview:

1. “The promise of DAOs to me is to be able to align the change that you want to be in the world with making a living.” 
2. “This too shall pass, right? There have been bear markets, they’ve been worse than this, right? There have been more people in the ecosystem, there are more interesting projects going on, we have more technology, better technology than we did 3 years ago, so we will get out of this. And persistence is the key, and if you’re feeling like you have to take a step back, do it. Because I think that it’s really important that you take care of yourself first. The ecosystem will still be here, so I think it’s really important that people take care of themselves.”

Resources Mentioned: