YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew Wang

lines on the record: 73
first: 2021-12-07
most recent: 2021-12-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It started like all great things start on the internet as a meme There was an article about the Southey's auction for the US Constitution, and some crypto people were making jokes of, oh, what if a bunch of crypto people got together and bought the Constitution? Those jokes turned into being a little bit more serious. And there was then a Zoom call where half the people came in joking and the other half came in dead serious. And by the end of a Zoom call, it was kind of decided, all right, we're actually going to go after this thing. And there's precedent for crypto groups betting on auctions before. Please or DAO as one of the examples. They did a $4 million buy of a Wu Tang clan album. So we thought, all right, this is a significantly bigger number at the time we thought 20 million, but it's in the realm of possibility. So that's when we started planning and organizing. We got a Discord together, a website together. We started talking to museums. We started talking to vendors and literally.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I see. So part of this was just the speed at which we were moving. We wouldn't have been able to do this via traditional mechanisms in terms of payment processing. We had some very, very large payments come in. We had a donation of $4.5 million that came in overnight one night. Most payment processes are not going to handle that in the span of 15 seconds in the way that a blockchain will. So that was a big part of it. It's also significantly more difficult to get those voting rights into place using these traditional systems. It's not something that's very common outside of the financial world. And this is not a financial instrument. This is donation and control over a document. So that's why this technology was necessary because it gave you the ability to have that governance rights without the heavy-handedness of going through a lot of different really important processes and also guaranteed that the holders that were”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of lawyers would say the same things about how they read contracts. There's a lot of crossover between the ways lawyers work and the way software engineers work. There's a great Larry Lessig essay from ages ago called Code is Law, which is a value.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which is at the end of the day pretty light, and especially if you're reusing the same one over and over again, you can verify, oh, this is the same vesting contract that Google has used for 100,000 people, then I know that this is something secure that I can probably trust, as opposed to with a lot of legal documents, there's a lot of repetitiveness. When I'm reading, for example, my lease for my apartment in New York, I have the New York Fire Safety Code in there. And there's a lot of other things where it's unclear of what do I actually need to read here, where in software there's this idea of modularity, where I can just say, all right, well, I know that there's this fire safety code module in here, and I can move on.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, either you're a smart contract auditor or a firm that you trust. Actually, I have a really great example for you of a smart contract that you might find interesting. So a very common thing in the tech world for a tech employee is vesting, right? You join a company, you get stock options, and there's a one-year cliff as an example. It's a four-year vesting schedule. What you can do is essentially put that vesting into a smart contract. And what's really interesting about that is you can actually see the funds. They are sitting in that contract. You can pull them at any time. So it's not that you're getting your equity a month at a time, but rather you're able to pull that at any time, every block. It's almost a continuous stream of pulling out this equity from the contract. And it's significantly lighter weight. I've read some of these vesting contracts and they're, you know, two, three hundred lines of code.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think the point of why you can't do it on a centralized computer, why it's more difficult on a centralized commuter, is because you don't have the same guarantees that you do on a blockchain. So for example, you can directly audit the code and read the code of what the agreement is that you're interacting with, where that's much more difficult with a centralized service. And that's not important for something big like a JPMorgan, a highly regulated financial institution. It makes it a lot easier for an upstart to come in and to create a new service where someone can audit the code and say, hey, this does exactly what it does. Obviously, we can't expect individuals of all sorts to be audited in code. Most people don't know how to read code, but there's a very strong industry growing of smart contract auditors, and there's a lot of knowledgeable people that are growing in this space and doing a better job of understanding, you know, what are the best practices here, what outcomes do we want from these smart.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This into practice for me though. I went to law school. I spent years of my life. Learning contract law. I'm not sure I learned anything that I retained to this day, but that as a well established body of law. Hundreds of years of doctrine behind contract law, which is just agreements between people. What exactly can you put in a code that automates contract law?”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way that I like to think about this is in terms of the types of agreements that exist in the world. And there's two primary agreements that we're used to. One is the agreement between people and society. These are laws along the lines of don't steal, don't avoid taxes. A lot of things that are societal rules as a whole. The other part of that is agreements between individuals and agreements between entities. And what I think this does actually is it creates a much lighter weight framework for arbitration, for agreements between individuals. And so we can put as much as possible into the code as opposed into legal documents. And when it's in code, it's a lot easier to actually simulate what happens. It's a lot more difficult to interpret that in a way that was not intended. And you can put in those spots where you want human interpretability, but it creates a much more lightweight, efficient system.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Assumptions. One thing that I thought was really interesting, and I'm a little sad we didn't get to actually go into this area, but it's how do you make sure the physical document is actually governed according to the will of the token holders. So one of the ideas that we explored was moving it into a 501c3 where the bylaws of the 501c3 had the directors required to act in accordance to the will of the token holders.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you are 100% right. There was trust you had to put into the Constitution Dow Corps team. One place we actually pivoted is initially we had what's called a multi-sig. So it's basically a smart contract that would hold the funds that was controlled by 13 different signers. Seven of them had to sign to move the funds. Initially, for the safety of those signers, we had them anonymous because it was a lot of money and we were concerned about their personal safety. But we heard from the community, hey, we're not okay with this. Many people didn't want to contribute because of that. So we asked the signers to volunteer and say, if you're comfortable sharing with you who you are, let us know and we're going to put you up on the website and everyone decided to volunteer. So it was definitely an iterative learning process. The trust aspect is something that we definitely want to minimize in the long run. And I think what's really interesting here is how do you connect the physical world to the crypto world with these trusts?”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone that was involved with this project was very public. We had the signers on our multi-sig that were very public. We worked with an excellent nonprofit called Endowment who helps with on-chain giving to actually custody the documents and do our bid on behalf of subdivisions. So it was a lot of personal reputations on the line for getting us to this point of decentralization people that are trusted within the crypto community, within broader tech circles. So that's really what we were leaning on for the beginning of this process. And that's what happens with a lot of new technologies. Unfortunately, you can't do it perfectly the first time. We're still very, very early with the capabilities of DAOs and the capabilities of crypto. So we wanted to be able to move as fast as possible and get things done and have that promise that we are going to get there. And I felt very confident that had we won the document, we'd be getting there very quickly.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So there's a good concept called progressive decentralization, where it's really hard to actually start something fully decentralized. So you have to start with an initial team that builds something and then brings it to decentralization. Our plan with Constitution DAO is we're going to win this auction. And then once we win, we're going as fast as possible to becoming fully decentralized to the greatest extent possible.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had not figured out the governance model in the rush to be able to buy this document, there are a lot of details that we are going to figure out after we had won. So we were actually discussing Had we won. One of the big concerns is some of the large holders in the crypto world we call these whales would have outsized control over what happens with the documents. Our big message is this is a movement for the people, this is the people's document, we want to have it controlled by the people. So we were looking at different mechanisms. We were looking at the direct democracy voting, one token, one vote. We were also looking at what if it was just one wallet, one vote, which isn't an exact proxy for one person, but it's pretty close. There's also other mechanisms such as quadratic voting where essentially as you have more tokens, your voting power is actually diminished. So you don't have, you know, for every hundred extra tokens, 100 extra votes, but rather a smaller amount of votes as that number increases.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was going to be WTP We the People, or at least that was the leading idea. We really wanted to be a positive thing and we really listened to the community where people said they were uncomfortable with the name of the people token. That was something that was chosen very quickly and we wanted to adapt to what the community wanted.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You were buying a token. I think I read on the website when you contributed what you were fundamentally buying was a governance token. I believe it was called People Very funny. I appreciate it that you were buying people, which has a dark side and a light side. It was a very funny name.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Donation to Constitution Tao is essentially if we were to have succeeded at our bid, it would have been governance rights over the documents of the U.S. Constitution. So there are 13 remaining copies of this document. We were trying to bid and win this document. And there would have been votes on what do we do with it. So some examples are we had museums that were lined up that were going to give proposals on, hey, we should be the one to store and display this document. You would also be able to vote on what text should be displayed alongside of it. How should it be displayed? What message do we want to share with the world? Lastly, the thing that we would essentially have the ability to do is decide what do we do now? Say we won the Constitution, we displayed it in a museum, there probably would be funds left over, or a community that's really excited about doing things. And so setting the future direction was up to the token holders had we won that document.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it depends on the DAO. DAOs are really in their infancy today, very early in the structures that they have. What most of them do is it's a voting process. So essentially everyone that holds the token for a DAO will be able to vote and they'll say, hey, there's this proposal. Let's say we want to buy the Constitution. As an example, all the token holders get a vote. There are more complicated and interesting mechanisms being worked on in the DAO world right now. And one of the jokes in the crypto world, it started with DeFi where DeFi is speedrunning the history of finance. DAOs are kind of speedrunning the history of organizational structures. And right now, because they're so early, most of them operate on this very simple structure of direct democracy.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a really great question. The definition of a DAO is just a group of people that come together around a shared community and a shared resource. The most fun description I've heard is it's a group chat with a bank account. What a DAO lets you do is have this very lightweight organizational structure to be able to move around assets and interact with the world.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot to talk about with this. What happened with the bid, how the auction process actually went, what you're doing with the money you've raised so far. You've raised something like $47 million, although that's in Ethereum, so that number is kind of moving all the time. But I want to start with the very basics. Constitution doubt, that's decentralized, autonomous organization, DAO. What is a DAO?”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. What started as a joke on Twitter led to being a very real bid in an auction to buy a copy of the U.S. Constitution. So it was a really great experience to kind of see and flex the power of the internet in just a week of trying to make this happen.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the Constitution was if they'd won. And what happens to all the money now? There is a lot to the story that hasn't really been told yet. And I think it's a really useful look at the tension between the promise of crypto technologies like smart contracts and DAOs and the reality of getting a bunch of people together to do anything. We talk about decisions and management undecoder a lot. So as you listen to this conversation, think about where adding the worldwide decentralized computing system actually added value to this project. Why did they need this technology to achieve their goal? I think that's the big question for a lot of crypto right now, and I really appreciate Jonah coming on the show to talk it over with me. Okay, Jonah Ehrlich from Constitution Dow. Here we go.”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Around the world, the ability to donate to it using the Ethereum blockchain. In exchange, those people would get the right to vote on what to do with this copy of the Constitution and what the organization should do in the future. So no central service required, just the Ethereum cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. In their attempt to raise money this way was extremely successful. Constitution DAO raised something like $47 million. They verified enough money with Sutheese to participate in the auction, and eventually they bid $43 million for this copy of the Constitution. Now, that wasn't quite enough to win a hedge fund billionaire actually won, but it feels like a step. I'm just not entirely sure what that step means. So I asked Shona to come on and explain how Constitution Dow got started, what happened with the auction, what the actual plan to handle one of the 13 remaining copies”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hello and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilai Patel, editor in chief of the Verge and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today I'm talking to Jonah Ehrlich. He's one of the core members of a group called Constitution DAO that tried to raise money to buy one of the original copies of the United States Constitution at an auction held by the high-end auction house, Sethaby's. Now, raising money on the internet to do all kinds of things is a pretty familiar idea. There are crowdfunding campaigns for everything from new products to movies to scientific research to politics. But most of the crowdfunding we're used to happens through a central service, a Kickstarter or GoFundMe or Indiegogo, whatever. But the DAO in Constitution DAO is spelled D-A-O, which stands for decentralized autonomous organization. Jonah and around 30 other people form the DAO, then offered people a”
2021-12-07 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · From a meme to $47 million: ConstitutionDAO, crypto, and the future of crowdfunding · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT