Monolithic to Modular DAOs with Julz Rosenburg | Layer Zero

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but is composed by people, and each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been.

Today on Layer Zero, I'm talking to my friend Julia. And Julia works at Orca Protocol. And uh I without expecting it, get what's called, I guess, Orca pilled during the show as we talk about things like DAO governance and DAO structure and where DAOs are currently and where they are going to be. Now, I don't know if I'm behind the curve on this conversation or ahead of the curve on this conversation, but I think we just created a new meme on this podcast called the Modular DAO. DAOs being in their current form, monolithic DAOs. Just like how blockchains all started modul uh monolithic, uh, and some or blockchains have then progressed into becoming modular and modular DAO, modular blockchains becoming the new frontier level of crypto economic research. I think DAOs are in that same state where every single DAO right now is monolithic, as in there's token-weighted governance governing over every single decision and it's causing apathy. It's you can't the DAO can't go in all directions at once. And so some DAOs are on the T uh are flirting with the frontier of monolithic DAO structure. And that's really what Orca protocol is. Or uh Julia works at Oracle, uh, and they are pioneering on chain.

Compartmentalization of DAOs to have more like what they call pods, but like sub DAOs, or like an org chart of DAOs for for if you will. And so we talk about the current state of DAOs and their problems. We talk about uh organizational history both in TradFi traditional institution, org chart, and how that came about, but also its flaws. We talk about the United States of America as the original DAO and how DAOs need to adapt from this monolithic strategy into a modular strategy. And not just get completely pilled during this episode. You can literally hear the moment it happens about this whole uh podpilled or modular DAO strategy. So let's go ahead and get into this conversation with Julia Rosenberg of Orca Protocol and get you podpilled right after we listen to some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. What's up, Jules? How's it going?

Hi David.

Uh, this is a very rare opportunity of an in real life podcast.

I know.

I'm very blessed by your presence.

Welcome to Williamsburg finally.

Oh, i I'm having a fantastic time being here. Uh and very bullish on In Real Life Podcast. So we're gonna see how this goes. You're gonna be by my my first guinea pig.

Oh, I'm very excited to test this out.

So what are you here to do in crypto?

The ultimate question.

I think that

um

I am here in crypto to

figure out how we can use crypto and

uh Ethereum, the blockchain, to better scale human coordination and how we can actually use this trust layer of the blockchain to

um actually.

better scale the way better scale trust in organizations and DAOs.

Okay, and how do we do that?

How do we do that?

Can we skip to the end? Can you just like

show me the solution?

Magic pill.

Yes, right.

Um

well I think sadly it's a very iterative p process.

Um I have been using this sort of framework that um we created at Orca called trustware and social wear.

Okay.

We love new words.

And basically the idea is that

um socialware is a mechanism that creates assurant assurances through human coordination.

We have software.

Yes.

Software, hardware.

Cool.

These are different flavors.

So social wear is more of the social processes and policies of an organization.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas trustware is creating an assurance mechanism that minimizes the reliance on human coordination and human relationship.

Um, which is more of, you know, codifying the trust centers of an organization, which

We haven't really had the opportunity to do yet with traditional organizations because really traditional organizations use like digitization as a communications layer rather than a trust layer. And that's something that we're very familiar with in crypto is using

Ethereum, the blockchain as a trust layer for our interactions, whether that be financial, whether that be around NFTs, any all of these things.

And so trustware

is a new concept that we're able to use in DAOs to better scale human coordination using these sort of digitized trust centers of organizations.

Dig digitize trust centers of organizations. Okay, so

Yeah.

Like an example of trustworthy would be like the governor contract. Like that is a small primitive that was used to better scale decision making around different proposals. That doesn't allow

Correct.

the governor contract is the contract that is used um for token weighted voting. So

Okay.

it's something that Compound created a few years ago and is now kind of like the standard contract for pro uh token weighted voting.

So when people say we forked compound governance, that's what we're talking about.

Yeah, that's all that they're talking about is the governor contract, which is basically the state of all DAO governance today. Is this thing that was created like two years ago.

Sick.

I'm not sure if I should be bullish or bearish because it was

I mean it is kind of a an interesting state that like

the governor contract was created and people were like, we did it.

We figured it out. This is a centralized governance. Like token rated voting. That's all we need to do. And now we're in this phase of like

completely storming against DAOs and DAO processes and governance because we're like