The Autonomous Podcast B series explores the ideas of “fixing the world” through Grassroots movements and non-profits. In this episode, our host Nelson interviews Diana Morret, creator of Pandora Hub, Civic Hub, and other changemaking projects. Diana comes from rural Spanish roots. Her Father’s family was forced to abandon their village because of the miscalculation of a dam that was built next to the riverside. Diana’s history and the history of villages in Spain inspired her to start Pandora hub as a passion project. She wanted to rebuild rural villages by creating bridges between sophisticated technology and rural changemaking movements. In this episode Diana walks us through ins and outs of the programs offered by Pandora hub and Civic Hub. We explore the challenges and opportunities that arise from creating collaboration opportunities between experienced developers and rural villagers. Some of the topics Programs offered by Civic Hub and Pandora Hub Bridging the gap between local need and technology Connection and collaboration in times of COVID “Rural Shakers” leveraging local positive transformation Rural Co-living and Intentional Communities Diana and Nelson discuss some of the hurdles that must be overcome by radical-thinking social activists who really want to make a difference. Diana recognizes the laws that govern rural communities and the potential obstacles this creates for free-thinkers interested in regeneration. The solution? Diana believes in large-scale group collaboration: “A massive structural change needs to be done, and I believe collectivization is the way to do it.” Resources Pandora Hub Civic Hub Rural Shakers Holochain

Luxumbra is a manual-laborer-turned-developer-turned-cat-herder that found MetaGame initially as DAO newbie researching Bitcoin use cases. In his crypto research, he stumbled upon Aragon and communities powered by Aragon. From there it was a classic story of falling into the rabbit hole and falling in love with communities that are genuinely more interested in creating value than extracting value. In his past lives, Luxumbra has been a developer, a construction worker, an educator, a traveller, and an artist. Today, he is a Human of MetaGame. In this episode, Luxumbra and Peth discuss MetaGame and the world of DAOs: exploring Luxumbra’s personal history in tandem with an exploration of pros and cons of work life in the web3 space, opportunities for devs and non-devs alike and different perspectives of the cryptoverse. Some of the topics Meaningful web3 value creation The silent revolution in crypto happening beneath the profit-chasing surface Burnout and the importance of taking care of yourself Taking ownership of your work & self-direction The growth of MetaGame from its humble beginnings Luxumbra and Peth discuss the force that is MetaGame, recognizing the strength of a dedicated community to “pull off” amazing offerings like MetaFest. They forecast the steady forward movement of MetaGame that will persist up to and throughout the next bull market as well as the bear market. They chat excitedly about the upcoming gathering in Italy and the novelty of meeting pseudonymous, faceless coworkers who became close friends. The episode concludes with a very relatable discussion about the anxiety that often comes up for new folks in the DAO space trying to find their voice, and a heartfelt thank you from Luxumbra to the key Players that made MetaGame feel like home as well as a big thank you from peth to Luxumbra for all the support he has provided him & MetaGame. As for a final word of advice, to anyone interested in getting more involved: “Find something you align with and get DAO-ing it!” References Grandworks Aragon Powered by Aragon MetaCartel Creating Virtuous Cycles Opolis

Penguin slid into the MetaGame and out of his 9-5 thanks to a classic pandemic story including working-from-home and a covid layoff. He found the DAOspace originally by alpha-testing a text-based game called waterdeep. He learned about NFTs and started asking questions, the answers to which hurled him down the rabbit hole of discovery, finding MetaCartel, MetaGame and other online communities. He started as a developer, and never expected that he’d be playing an instrumental piece in building bridges, connecting communities, understanding novel technologies and engaging members. In this episode we explore Penguin’s entry into the world of DAOs and how that evolved into his participation in 14+ DAOs. We talk about his secrets for organization and success (hint: love and sticky notes play an integral part), web33 technology, democracy, and how to seize opportunities in the cryptospace (by contributing & not worrying about payments). Some of the topics: Connecting web3-aligned people with their optimal growth positions Equalizing opportunities rather than equalizing wealth 24hr days and rapid progress in the crypto space Community and social interaction in DAOs Skill Tree mapping Penguin and Peth discuss the freedom that results from taking ownership over the value you add to the DAOspace, and the collective empowerment created - the work of sovereign developers no longer belongs to their employers, but rather can be used to create value in multiple different networks. They further explore this freedom by acknowledging the opportunity that arises from a super interconnected community full of DM-able rockstars! The episode concludes with a comforting reminder that while financial gain is nice, having the right reasons to show up to work is everything. “Credit sleep and understand your own limitations. Balancing yourself and having friends you can connect to is just as important as creating the next project. It let’s you sustain and be a person, rather than a machine.” Resources Waterdeep Ethernal MetaCartel MetaFactory Steemit and Justin Sun Skill Forest Working Group DAOhaus

Santi Siri, founder of Democracy Earth Foundation, has been working with technologies attempting to advance democracy for over a decade. He began in Argentina with an internet-based political party that was proposing candidates committed to using their power according to the peoples’ interests online. With help from a grant in 2015 from Y Combinator, he started Democracy Earth Foundation, a non-profit building open source & censorship-resistant democracies that can be deployed anywhere with an internet connection. In their research, and out of the need to register voters with unique identities, the Proof of Humanity protocol was born. Proof of Humanity protocol uses facial registration (i.e. uploading a video/picture) to ensure unique user identity online, while protecting sensitive personal information. In this episode, Peth and Santi discuss the function and reasoning behind the Proof of Humanity protocol, and explore how this can be used as part of online democracy. Some of the topics Proof of Humanity using faces as public keys for unique human identification Kleros justice protocol for settling disputes Difference between Proof of Humanity and BrightID Universal Basic Income sustainability Democratic governance for DAOs Santi began deep in the world of politics and gained some valuable insights regarding the efficacy of creating change within traditional systems. “In order to become successful in [traditional systems] you have to play under their rules, and it is very likely that you will end up being changed by them. With technology, we can build a new model that makes the old system obsolete.” The episode concludes with an acknowledgement of the commitment required to make a real difference and quintessential advice for anyone working hard to bring their dreams to life: “Never give up”. Resources Democracy Earth Tedx Talk - The Future of Democracy Y Combinator Proof of Humanity Kleros BrightID Yearn Finance

Hammad is a human of MetaGame; a software engineer, a designer, a futurist & a DAOist. Contributor to MetaGame, MetaFactory, Sourcecred & MetaCartel. he began contributing to MetaGame in late 2019. He was our very first serious builder, bringing us Sourcecred, building the first landing page & setting the foundations of the MetaOS. Suffice to say, we owe him a lot. In this episode we explore Hammad’s personal history; from crafting & trading in Runescape, to turning down Microsoft & his journey into the cryptoverse - along with explorative commentary on how web3 is providing a wealth of opportunity to people worldwide. Some of the topics The welcoming nature of the crypto space to newbies Discord as the current tool for web3 communities NFTs beyond art Building “Squad wealth” Standing on the shoulders of giants & composability in Web3 Peth and Hammad discuss the ways in which crypto is revolutionizing financial systems, community wealth and coordination. They discuss the importance of good coordination and project management, as well as the rapid rate of evolution and the potential that is available because of that. “Collaborating is more effective as a business strategy than trying to build your own and compete. In web3, you have huge projects and communities that are so powerful because they are collaborating with each other and creating a network of value.” The episode concludes with a critical assessment of the degenerative side of web3; from gambling in the world’s biggest casino to chasing the “highs” of sourcecred, to buying and selling tokens to maximize profits while disregarding the communities behind them. Resources The Economy of Runescape Squad Wealth The Defiant - Insane production quality DeFi news House of Ethereum House of NFTs House of DAOs Ethhub

Durgadas is a self-proclaimed polymath. His background includes everything from professional bike racing, to website development, to a 5-year stretch learning about the internal self in monastaries. As a person on the autism spectrum, he says there is no “turning off the input”. He learned how to accept that and use it as a synesthetic ability to think about and imagine things in three dimensions. He has a diverse set of skills and life experience that come together in the crypto space, making him somewhat of a “crypto culture coach”. In this episode, we explore spiral dynamics and integral theory to consider human development, the way we express ourselves, and how this can be used by DAOs or DDOs to create “an immersive culture for continuous individual growth as a necessary means for achieving superior business results”. Some of the topics Spiral dynamics & integral theory and applications for DAOs Decolonizing the mind and developing autonomy and agency Harnessing the power of intrinsic motivation Decentralization as a response to too much centralization Virtuous cycles and aligning human cycles with organizational productivity We hear about how Durgadas got involved with the TEC and the Commons Stack, and his immediate resonance with the objective to support the development of community members. “Once we become decentralized, we need to not only include everybody, but also include the development of everybody. How can we recognize, incentivize, and give stability and mentorship to all the people so that they can develop from wherever they are to wherever they are going.” The episode concludes with the discussion of an upcoming workshop of virtuous cycles and periodization used by athletes & great for anyone hoping to avoid burnouts, and a tip-of-the hat to supportive tailwind that begets alignment between one’s own virtues and those of the collective. Resources The Deliberately Developmental Organizations Deliberately Developmental Organization video1 video2 Building An Everyone Culture with Robert Kegan Spiral Dynamics A Primer on Integral Theory Reinventing Organizations (book) Token Engineering Commons

In this episode Peth interviews Nadia Alvarez, who handles business development with Maker and has seen first-hand the power of crypto. In Latin America, people regularly deal with unstable national currencies. They need ways to store value because of crazy inflation, and DAI has given it to them. “There are many stories in Argentina and Venezuela, countries with the worst currencies in the region, that when they started to use DAI, their lives changed." They were able to save their money from extreme devaluation & start making plans for the future - we need to tell these stories, because  we are building all these amazing solutions, but there isn’t always visibility into the impact for normal people. Topics Importance of DAI and stablecoins in Latin America DAI as a crypto gateway Stepping outside of the crypto space for real adoption Stablecoin based local currencies Importance of usability and diversity in language and experience DAO coordination and MGD grant round success Latin America is not the only place DAI is being used - in Africa, its being used in an even more interesting way. The Grassroots Economics project is taking it to a whole new level; instead of using DAI directly, they are using it as reserve for their local currency. Whereas previously they had products & services, but not enough money to facilitate the exchange - now they can just mint more, as long as people aren't exiting their economy en-masse. “It makes sense to make an extra effort to translate the content, the applications - our standard in the crypto space is english, but if you want to get more users, you have to speak their language. If we do this extra effort and translate the content and create more user friendly tools, I think that’s the next step now - to go outside the crypto space and create real adoption.” Want to start making an impact but don't know where to start? Apply to join MetaGame. Resources Ethereum MakerDAO xDAI MetaGammaDelta Grassroots Economics

Peth sat down with Luke from 1Hive to see what drives him, exchange knowledge & discuss the points of alignment. The thing that really pulled Luke into the space was getting to experiment with community run organizations aka DAOs & decentralization in general. This led him to work at Aragon, building DAO infrastructure for a while before starting 1Hive - a decentralized collective of builders - continuing to do just that. “It’s as much a social thing as it is a technical thing - you can have the same protocol or the same technology, but if you don’t have the social side of things: the culture, the narrative, all of that stuff that really helps coordinate people and gets them to work together, the tech’s not going to get you anywhere. And that’s why Bitcoin is amazing and has this huge community, but all the forks of it are pretty much worthless - you don’t have that cultural history, you don’t have the norms that have built over time coupled with that technology.” Some of the topics Intricacies of decentralized organizing, cat-herding, and project management. Open vs invite only communities How market cycles and Lambo-dreamers help Points of decentralization & centralization Community organization and resiliency We’re starting to see a lot of these community-first organizations where everything else including investors, comes second. If the trend continues, it would be a really hopeful shift for both crypto and the wider world of startups. Luke & Peth talk about finding the balance between worker & speculator rewards, and more importantly - the sweet spots of decentralization in DAOs. “I don’t know if you can really go 100% decentralized. But the further you go along the vectors that make a big difference, I think is really critical for these things to actually succeed. The worst thing you can do is have two optimal points and then pick the point in the middle that is suboptimal on every vector.” Because of the way 1Hive is set up, there is higher decentralization at the edges, which allows the system to be resilient even if some swarms emerge or disappear. The barrier to entry to the community is very low which is great for new people, but also challenging because there can be waves of new people that are too large to appropriately onboard and integrate. Along they exchanged a lot of knowledge in how they are each solving all of these decentralized coordination challenges, and finally, discussed some bridge-building! So, join us for the 1Hive x MetaGame Meetup! 😱 Resources Luke 1Hive Lex Node on Decentralization Navigation Board Doughnut Economics MetaGame

In this second episode of the Autonomous B, Magenta sits down to chat with Nelson Melina. Nelson comes from the world of fintech & blockchains but is now focused on regenerative villages and how to use these new tools for new governance & business models. Not for-profit, not non-profit, but with-profit! Looking at the crypto graveyard, it becomes clear that it is not just about creating new things, but understanding what do people actually need. Maybe it’s actually about connecting existing economis, sharing information & creating a network of projects, not building isolated projects. The question then becomes, how can we enhance the existing grassroots projects, the fertile ground for enabling a new world? “If we start creating this circular economy, money that comes into the economy stays in it, circulates, and creates more value - and that’s how you become a force enough to have an impact on society. [At the same time], if we are to build the world of the 21st century, we definitely need to be people who are working on ourselves, working on our traumas, working on how to relate to each other, working on feeling good in our bodies and clear in our minds, not stressed or cluttered.”   Some of the topics include Importance of diversity of perspectives in community With-Profit models and B Corps Creating value in communities Augmented Bonding Curves The importance of self-reflective work Magenta and Nelson chat about the ways in which we can enable better community collaboration, how to create resilient projects, and new regenerative business models. More and more people are starting to realize there are major gaps in institutional finance that can’t plug into the grassroots and regenerative ways of doing things, which is why crypto is a logical partner to these communities.   Feeling inspired by what you heard? Well reach out to Nelson, Magenta of Bloom Network or us! :) Resources Transition To A New World by Nelson Melina Virtual Futures Salon: Beyond Bitcoin with Vinay Gupta BlockScience TokenEngineering cadCAD simulator Commons Stack

Vinay got his start in software engineering, then spent about half his career in defense and energy policy think tanks working on the big “save the world” questions - food, shelter, pandemics, and all the rest of the worst-case scenario planning stuff. Then he decided to get a “real job” and ended up managing the launch of Ethereum back in 2015. Finally, he went on his way to found Mattereum. The discussion kicks off around the problem of capitalism with being extractive at one end, and polluting at the other end. How do we produce higher quality of life on a massively reduced environmental footprint?  The 4 Steps of Capitalism Investment, Production, Consumption & Waste. The first three have been massively optimized, but we're still lacking good data & incentives to optimize the final step and loop it back into step 1. Which is where Mattereum comes into play, linking physical with digital & creating a data trail feeding back the product performance to producers. Other than closing Capitalism's feedback loop, Mattereum will make second hand markets orders of magnitude more efficient by tying code with law - the real world kind - and allowing the disputes arising in the digital sphere to be solved through insurance or escalated to real world courts. Armed with data & enabled by efficient second hand markets, we become custodians of assets rather consumers. Because you now expect to eventually sell the things you buy - you stop consuming things and start investing in things; buying higher quality goods & turning from a consumer to an investor. Some of the topics Issues with extractive capitalism Connecting Ethereum to legacy legal systems Permanent Investment economies Social Operating Systems Anarcho-syndicalism “Consumption is a thing that we cannot afford in a world with a billion starving people. But investment is how we take what we have and turn it into what we need. Everything that we buy ought to be something that generates wealth not just for us, but also for the world. And if we take this mindset of a permanent investment economy rather than a consumption economy, and if we hate losing money because our goods are degrading and being thrown away - pretty soon we won't be producing or buying "cheap" goods that break. Vinay and Peth then dig into MetaGame “I think you’ve done really really good work in terms of identifying this kind of a social operating system. You’ve got materials about values, ways of relating to other people, methodology, there’s all this layer, then there’s an economics layer, and the activities layer. So values, economic incentives, and activities layers - similar problem solving capacity to a conventional corporation, but run very strongly on internal markets and a different set of protocols. [If you say] you know, we’re building software to support anarcho-syndicalist economic democracies, there aren’t many people you can say that to and have their eyes light up, but that is actually what you’re doing and it’s super impressive, it’s really really good.” Resources: Simple Critical Infrastructure Maps Mattereum Fix The World Deck Mattereum LA Launchpad and the Space Yurt Mattereum Shop The Future of Stuff by Vinay Gupta