#11 Joe Urgo + district0x: The Emerging Blockchain Community
In podcast episode #11 of Creating a Humanist Blockchain Future (Youtube, Soundcloud, iTunes), we take our first dive into our new mini-series Leveraging the Crowd: How Blockchain Companies are Building Community. (Heavily influenced by the book Machine, Platform, Crowd.) We’ll look at how companies like Aragon, Status, ConsenSys, BoostVC, and others are building new kinds of blockchain communities.
In this first episode of the series, I dive into this subject with Joe Urgo, the co-founder of district0x (a blockchain company that has built an incredible community). My key takeaway is that many people in the blockchain ecosystem have a “rising tide lifts all boats” mindset (and financial incentive with ETH). This combines with a deep value for transparency to create a fascinating ecosystem where projects are collaborating heavily around an interoperable stack (district0x, Aragon, Decentraland), the best practices (Giveth’s MiniMe token), and new design patterns (Curation Markets, Token-Curated Registries).
My favorite quotes:
- “We want to harness the power of network effects for the users themselves.”
- “We can guarantee transparency first without being regulated to do it.”
- “Over time, we want to build up a great developer community and then distribute governance to the community.”
Topics include:
- DNT’s Utility Value, the first three districts (EthLance, NameBazaar, MemeFactory), the district proposal system, the district voting system, and Aragon governance.
- MetaX’s adChain token-curated registry pattern. (district0x usage, Mike Goldin’s overview.)
- Simon de la Rouviere’s Curation Markets easily explained with a reddit UX, memetic value,
- Best practices for engaging crypto communities
- Transparency (district0x, Aragon, and the new Project Transparency Initiative!)
- How the district0x Core should work with their Crowd: decision making, Aragon-based multi-sigs, vesting commitments, public commitments.
Thanks to Keith Klundt, John Desmond, Colin Wielga, Harry Lindmark, Joe Urgo, John Lindmark, Daniel Segal, Jacob Zax, Katie Powell, Jonathan Isaac, Ryan X Charles, Chris Edmonds, Ramsay Devereux, Ned Mills, Kenji Williams, Scott Levi, Peter Rodgers, Kenzie Jacobs, Jon Frechin, Nathan Schneider, and Kash Dhanda for supporting me on Patreon!
About Me: My name is Rhys Lindmark and I’m a social entrepreneur. I’m creating a humanist blockchain future by writing, speaking, and advising at the intersection of Effective Altruism, UBI, the Attention Economy, and Blockchain. I lead the Colorado chapter for Effective Altruism. I’m an alumnus of Techstars Boulder 2015 (Edify). Please reach out if you’d like to connect or have feedback! I’m curious about what you’re working on. You can support me on Patreon, follow me on Twitter, or connect on LinkedIn.
Disclaimer: I own less than $100 of any given cryptocurrency, so my monetary incentive is not directly aligned with Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
