An episode of We Them, the podcast Maceo started in college, where We Them Media began. It was published as audio only. This page carries its full transcript so the words can be read, searched and quoted. It is not a written piece. Listen to it where it was published.
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0:00Maceo: Hello everyone.
0:01Ashley Caines: Hi.
0:01Maceo: Ashley, thank you for being with me here today on The Weed and Niggas. Uh, today’s guest is Ashley Keynes. Is that how you say your last name?
0:08Ashley Caines: Keynes.
0:10Maceo: Keynes. Uh, we got connected through the Community Voice Club, one of the prominent social orgs in Web3 for those interested in tech, finance, and trends in the culture. Uh, a community which centers femme and gender non-binary identifying individuals. Ashley’s, uh, from the Bronx, New York, and graduated from the University of Penn. with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Government, which itself is very impressive. I definitely want to say that and acknowledge that right now. It’s not an easy school to get into, let alone to graduate, especially being a person of color, I assert, in an elite, predominantly white institution. I feel like there’s always stressors that come along with that that are challenging to articulate and really not things you’re prepared for going into college. So yeah, I’m really excited for you to be here with me today and kind of start to unpack Web3 from your perspective and how you got involved in the space. But yeah, I guess we can start with just how’s the day been going?
0:57Ashley Caines: I have been having an unusually phenomenal day. So just know that this recording is coming from the highest vibrations possible because it’s really just been that sort of day. Today started a new role in my organization, which we can get into later in the interview. I have been waiting for months this Mattel and Boss Beauties NFT drop that came out today. I randomly got $750 to my email inbox. Um, I had a conversation, yeah, with the head of policy at the Blockchain Association. Um, I’ve been trying to make inroads with like the crypto team of, um, a representative from the Bronx who is like very crypto-friendly as part of his platform, and they finally responded to my email today. Um, Yeah, it’s just been high vibes all day long, so that’s how my day’s going.
1:58Maceo: Things are happening. We love that. From the highest vibes possible, we’re starting this interview. Beautiful. And so, uh, so I guess you can tell us a bit about this, this NFT drop that’s happened. What is like this, uh, this NFT drop that’s happened today?
2:14Ashley Caines: Yeah, okay, so here’s what I know because it’s not much. Um, they announced this like 5 or 6 months ago. I believe they previously did a little capsule collection on OpenSea with Barbie a year or so back, but they announced that they were going to be doing this partnership to release -- it’s like an entrepreneur release. So all of the jobs that Barbie has ever represented in her many years of existence, they made like a PFP collection of all of these different sort of like Barbie and these different careers with different rarities. And so they dropped that collection. And then I believe the utility behind the collection is just sort of access to women entrepreneurship type of workshops and events and programming.
3:07Maceo: That’s pretty dope. And this is their second release in the space of Web3, you’re saying?
3:11Ashley Caines: This is Mattel’s. Well, Mattel may have done more, but for the Barbie brand, this is the second one.
3:18Maceo: And so what’s Mattel?
3:19Ashley Caines: Mattel is, um, the toy publisher that owns the Barbie brand.
3:25Maceo: Ah, I got that. So this is their second release? This is their first release, you’re saying?
3:29Ashley Caines: This is their first. This is Barbie’s first release, possibly not Mattel. Mattel also owns Hasbro, um, and sorry, not Hasbro, like NASCAR, um, and like Hot Wheels. Sorry, Hot Wheels. I’m thinking about the little like race cars. Um, a lot of toy brands like A lot of the toy brands that we know are owned by either, um, Mattel or Hasbro, which is another big game publisher, and they do like Monopoly and like Parker Brothers stuff.
4:00Maceo: I had that. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, when you said NASCAR, my brain was like, they own NASCAR? I was like, this is like, what a shift.
4:05Ashley Caines: No, that would be cool, right? I mean, they do a lot of licensing, so there are -- if you see NASCAR toys, they’re probably Mattel. They do a lot of licensing.
4:14Maceo: That would make sense. I was just like, whoa, it’s like you said, they own Hasbro and then the NBA as a whole. I was like, whoa.
4:23Ashley Caines: Exactly. The whole thing. Yeah. Big flex. Big flex.
4:27Maceo: I was like, oh, and they’re coming into Web3 hot. They’re ready. They’re like, this is where we start.
4:31Ashley Caines: Well, I mean, who really knows?
4:34Maceo: Yeah, that’s true. Everything’s in the air right now. I appreciate you kind of sharing a bit about that and sharing about how your day’s been started. I guess kind of backtracking, I’d love to take a few minutes to hear about like your experience like from like starting in college and like what that experience was like for you getting into Penn, being a student there and kind of how that shapes like, you know, where you are today and like what interests you have in the present.
4:56Ashley Caines: Yeah, I would go back even earlier than college. I would say -- Let’s do it. Yeah, I would say starting in like elementary school, middle school, my schooling kind of went in 2 different phases. The elementary school, middle school was me going to local schools in the Bronx. But in kindergarten, I tested for like a gifted program. And if you are from New York City or any like major city that has gifted programs, whatever, how it worked in the Bronx was that there was only one school in the entire borough that housed the gifted program. And that happened to be my local school anyway. And I was the only person in that class who was from the local community. And so I was always sort of playing this bridge role between the local community and the students that were bused in to come to school in my community specifically for this program. And I was really drawn to government. And so I always ran for like class president, school president. I was the girl who was like, as a 3rd grader, would knock on the principal’s office and be like, I have a question. Or like, can I make an announcement and borrow your PA system?
6:10Maceo: I like your announcement.
6:12Ashley Caines: And she would just let me. Like, eventually she was just like, yes, Ashley, do that. But that is where, like, my love of leadership and local government was, like, nurtured in that environment. I was also in, like, the story --
6:31Maceo: sorry. What kind of announcement would you make over the PA in, like, 3rd grade? I can’t even imagine myself, like, going to our school.
6:38Ashley Caines: No, this is a real thing.
6:39Maceo: I have things to say.
6:42Ashley Caines: I did have things to say, but this is what I had to say. So like, I had this best friend in my class that I rode the bus with every day. And his 2 little brothers had gotten like a car jumped the curb and hit these 2 little boys. And they were in the hospital for over a month. And I was like wrecked over this in 3rd grade. And so I went to the principal and I was like, can I make an announcement? And she’s like, sure. And I just got on the PA and I’m like, look, we’re collecting toys. Like, this is what happened to my friend’s little brothers. Oh my God. And I care about this. And if you or your younger siblings at home have toys you’re not playing with, like, let’s just like send them a care package to the hospital. And the whole school like started collecting these bags of like toys and gifts and cards and like canned goods and all this stuff. And we did like a care package to their family.
7:34Maceo: That’s amazing.
7:35Ashley Caines: Yeah.
7:37Maceo: At 9 years old, this is Ashley, Ashley Keynes.
7:40Ashley Caines: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s why I say it started before college. And then in middle school, I signed myself up to boarding school for high school. So my college experience really started at 13, where for most people it starts at like 17, 18. I was like living the Harry Potter lifestyle, living at my boarding school, living at my high school. And that is really where I first encountered the themes you were talking about earlier in the show of like just -- existing in those spaces. And I would say in boarding schools, even more so than Ivy League institutions, wealth is concentrated. Those institutions have more resources to be able to subsidize the education of smart people from wherever, whereas these schools have a much smaller budget for that. Families are paying 50 grand a year for their 12-year-old to study English or, you know, whatever. Um, so that was a huge culture shock for me. Um, and so then I went from like that fancy institution going to school with the Kennedys, literally like Ted Kennedy would show up, um, to our track meets because his niece was on my track team. Um, and then taking that over to Penn. By Penn, I -- it was second nature to me. It was a second in to be able to maneuver in those spaces. But yeah, it started earlier than that.
9:08Maceo: That makes sense. What boarding school did you go to?
9:10Ashley Caines: Milton Academy. It’s outside of Boston.
9:13Maceo: I think my friend Yemi went there as well. And I guess I didn’t meet her in Denver, but I encountered her in New York going to different crypto stuff. But I guess what was What were like some highlights of that experience? Like what were challenges of that experience being angled?
9:32Ashley Caines: All of it. Um, what were the highlights? I think, um, so highlights at the time were just like I was raised an only child. I have a half brother who was also raised as an only child, you know, in a different state. Um, so, but I came from a big family, like I knew other kids and stuff, but But I never lived with anyone else. I never had to share a room. Like, that was just my life story until I got to boarding school. Um, so living with 40 other teenage girls was so much fun, honestly. Um, so that, that was really like part of the highlights, even though there were laws or, you know, policies where we had to sign out on the weekends, things you wouldn’t have to do if you were in your own house. But overall, it was definitely a lot of fun. In hindsight, the highlights were the parts of me that got to flourish in those years and that I got to identify just having exposure to things that I would not have seen in the Bronx, exposure to sports that I would not have seen. And I did my junior year in Europe, actually, that we had like a school year abroad program for juniors and seniors if you were interested. So I was, I was interested in everything when I was younger. I was like, sign me up. up. And I moved to Spain for my whole junior year of high school.
10:58Maceo: Wow, your whole junior year in Spain. And so do you still have like friends from that experience you keep up with?
11:03Ashley Caines: No, I really should. I really should, but I don’t. I’m also off of Facebook, so that’s part of the reason. It’s not like any sort of personal beefs. Until I started working in Web3, I was very off the internet. And so that’s kind of how I lost touch with a lot of people.
11:24Maceo: That makes sense. And so I guess like, so you returned from Spain, you’re I guess applying for colleges like when you -- that fall when you returned, no? What was that process like for you? Like, and then like that transition I guess?
11:38Ashley Caines: I always knew where I wanted to go. That’s not true. I thought that I wanted to go to Georgetown for like the first 2 years of -- as soon as Georgetown came into my awareness again, I knew I had like a draw towards politics. policy. And this was kind of after Bill Clinton was president and after his second term the Clintons moved to New York State where Hillary became like really active in like the state politics to then become a senator. And so she was a very visible figure in my state politically and that was like part of the backdrop. Anyway, to answer your question, I knew going into senior fall that I wanted to go to Penn. I only applied to one school. I applied early decision. Everyone in And my high school knew I was obsessed with that school and we all waited on bated breath on early decision day to see if I got in, which would have been very embarrassing if I hadn’t.
12:37Maceo: Right. I can see that as well. But I think it’s neat that everybody was waiting with you. And so was what you were just saying about like Hillary Clinton, yeah? Was that kind of your like onboarding into like national politics? Like that setting in particular? I feel like different people kind of get engaged by national politics, global politics at different ages. Is that kind of like what facilitated that for you?
12:57Ashley Caines: That’s a great question. I guess so. I don’t know. I mean, I had to have some awareness to even like have a context for her, but I don’t -- I’m not really sure. Maybe it was like the Clinton scandal that brought it into my awareness and then I started following the family. I don’t know. Great question.
13:18Maceo: That’s okay. So then you get into Penn, you’re like, oh, this is my future now. Was your senior spring like reflective of like, I’m already in college? Were you one of those people? Were you still on your grind?
13:27Ashley Caines: Big time. Huge time. So at my school, at my school, we have what’s called senior projects and you can apply for like a full project, which means it’s like a full workload or 2 half projects or 1 half project and keep 2 classes. And so I applied for 2 half projects. One was Spanish cinema, which was just consisted of watching movies in Spanish and writing essays on them. And then I did a half project with 7 of my friends to learn belly dancing. And we hired a belly dancing coach and we danced 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for all of senior spring. And as soon as class was over, we would just get water guns and roller skates and play around campus while everyone else was in class.
14:16Maceo: That sounds surreal.
14:17Ashley Caines: Yeah, life was good then.
14:21Maceo: Yeah, it sounds like, it sounds like you were enjoying yourself. And so I guess then like transitioning into school, like what was that like for you academically? Did you feel prepared? Um, did you know what you were going to study going into it? Like, yeah.
14:35Ashley Caines: I did not know what I was going to study. Um, I was really interested in history. I guess I sort of came in with the intention of being a history major. Mm-hmm. And at Penn, or I’m sure most places within the history major, there are different concentrations. And so my specific concentration was the history of economies, which here we are now at Endowus. But for like personal reasons, I had a death in the family. I took a lot of time off of school. I couldn’t use classes towards my major, like blah, blah, blah. I actually had to like pivot and do the next best thing, which ended up being political science. I
15:15Maceo: got that. And so like after that pivot, like were you excited by this new major or was it more of like a thing you kind of felt like you were kind of forced to adopt inside of like these new circumstances you’re talking about?
15:28Ashley Caines: No, I definitely was excited. That same semester where I had to like declare this second choice major, the current sitting governor of the state of Pennsylvania was teaching a politics course at Penn. And I enrolled in his course and was accepted. So I was very, very excited to now like be on this path and be able to like be in class with the governor and sort of have access to Pennsylvania politics in that way. I
16:03Maceo: believe that.
16:03Ashley Caines: So yeah, I definitely didn’t feel like I was settling. And I also like ultimately did a DC semester program to like study there, so it worked out. It was great.
16:13Maceo: And what kind of extracurriculars were you involved in at Penn? Like, did you get involved in clubs? Like, uh, what that was like for you? Not particularly?
16:20Ashley Caines: Not that I -- not that I remember, to be honest. Um, that was kind of to go back to the experience of being like a person of color in those environments. The per -- the part of me that was hyperactive in elementary school and middle school really sort of died once I got to high school. There was so much culture shock to deal with. Like I did get exposure through like classes and stuff like that, but I just didn’t really like step into being a voice in the room again until my 20s.
16:57Maceo: I got that. Okay, so then what was that transition like for you out of school like into your 20s?
17:05Ashley Caines: Like, um, I started a full-time job less than a week after graduation. Um, I was very fortunate to have a job at graduation. Like, that’s, you know, most people don’t, so I was grateful. Um, but I didn’t really think about it. I had always worked summer jobs and internships, so that was the thing for me, like school and to go to work. Mm-hmm. But once September rolled around is really when it started to get like, oh, there is no like My internship is over and school is starting back. Like this just goes on forever. Uh, and I have to ration 2 to 3 weeks of vacation a year until my 60s. And so that was very, very, very, very difficult to deal with.
17:49Maceo: What was that first job for you?
17:51Ashley Caines: I was a paralegal for a big fancy law firm, um, doing litigation. stuff for big cases like SEC. Uh, we were repping American Express and like JP Morgan. Um, those are the types of clients that we had. So like huge cases that were fun to work on but also like very difficult.
18:16Maceo: I mean, I think that’s cool. I feel like a lot of people that I talk to about paralegal work like tell me it’s exhausting and like they feel like they’re overworked. And I feel like fun is not like in like the first 10 words they used to describe the experience. So
18:28Ashley Caines: I’ve got at least 10 years distance between the last -- between when I did it and now, so everything’s fine. That was so much fun. Like, at the time I was dying.
18:38Maceo: I got that. I got that. That’s funny.
18:41Ashley Caines: Yeah.
18:42Maceo: And yeah, I mean, I graduated college like, like last May, so just, I guess, exactly a year ago now, like next week. Um, yeah, people under me are graduating next week. So, and I like, I have not worked a full-time job at all since graduation. It’s been very much like me trying to figure out like, what do I want? for my rest of my life. Like, I want to be a rapper, I want to be a journalist, I want to be a podcaster, do community work, maybe social work. But like, how does it all fit together is like the big question. And if it doesn’t all fit together, I probably don’t want to do the thing that I’m going to be opting into doing.
19:10Ashley Caines: I love that for you. I love that for you.
19:13Maceo: Well, yeah, I appreciate that. And I wouldn’t have met you and so many other people I feel like this year if I hadn’t given myself the space to do that. I definitely owe my grandma a lot of thanks. The fall was definitely a lot of me on credit cards. spending money, and I still have to sort that out, honestly. But the spring has been -- she gave me money to buy a car in December. I haven’t bought a car. I’ve been living off money she gave me. We’re running out of money so that we’re hitting the red. But I definitely would not have been able to --
19:36Ashley Caines: It’s okay, we got it.
19:37Maceo: Yeah, but I wouldn’t have been able to explore and connect with people the way I have been able to if it weren’t for her generosity. So I definitely just have to say thank you. But yeah, I guess that brings us to Web3. That’s where you’re at now. So now you’re heavily involved in the world of DAOs. Can you say in your own words what a DAO is and what makes it a novel concept? Before we have more of a conversation about it?
19:56Ashley Caines: Sure. I mean, I will also say that I did not start in Web3 through DAOs. I started as a crypto trader about 7 or 8 years ago and happened upon DAOs maybe a year and a half ago. So I was always familiar with the token and the tokenomics aspect and stuff, but not like communities built on top of these tokens. So that kind of takes me into my functional definition. Of what a DAO is, it is literally -- it’s an acronym, so it stands for decentralized autonomous organization. And you can take each of those words separately and define, like, decentralized, meaning that it in theory doesn’t have a centralized power structure, a hierarchical power structure, although functionally many, if not all, of them still do. Autonomous, meaning that its core operations are automated. And again, some people define the autonomous part differently, but that. And then organization, a group of people ultimately. I mean, the term legally covers such a wide array of types of organizations. That definition of just like, is it decentralized? Is it autonomous? And is it an organization? Okay, cool. It’s a DAO. And you can kind of run the spectrum how you apply that model.
21:35Maceo: I got that. But you said you didn’t really end up in Web3 through DAOs. You ended up more through trading tokens. And so how did you find yourself in the world of tokens and finding the word tokenomics? I feel like tokenomics was like, what is this? When I learned my first tokenomics, I was like, oh, new economics in the whole different, like, Western world.
21:54Ashley Caines: So Twitter is the short answer. I saw that -- I’m forgetting who it was. Like, was it Ghostface? It was some rapper, but a rapper that I clearly, like, trusted was releasing a cryptocurrency. And I was like, well, what’s a cryptocurrency? Like, what is this? What are you talking about? And it was called Cream Coin. I’ll never forget. I
22:17Maceo: love that. Cash rules everything around me.
22:20Ashley Caines: Yeah, but it was like crypto rules everything around me. It was like a repurposing of it. It was wonderful. So I read their white paper. I should Google their white paper and pull this up so we can offer it below to everyone watching. Yeah, put it in the show notes. Yeah, exactly. Go read this. So that white paper is what originally made me curious about cryptocurrencies. And it was an ERC-20. So that for anyone who doesn’t have a familiarity trading, it means that it was sort of created off of the Ethereum blockchain. And so it meant that I needed to buy Ethereum if I wanted to be able to buy this coin. So I went and I bought Ethereum a couple of weeks before the coin was supposed to come out. Ultimately, it never released. But in the time that I was waiting for it to, my Ethereum bumped up. It was like part of the bull run of that year. And so my Ethereum went up 50%. And I was like, what is cryptocurrency? So that kind of -- that I was off to the races from that point.
23:23Maceo: That’s fire. Shout out to the rappers we trust onboarding the good people. I like that.
23:26Ashley Caines: Exactly, exactly.
23:28Maceo: Just in time for the bull run, no less. I think that’s a crazy story. I didn’t know that. I think that -- yeah, definitely send me that so I can put that in the show notes. And so, uh, like then, so that kind of gets you into Ethereum. Um, Ethereum is like the, the difference -- I continue to find the difference between Ethereum and Bitcoin for people as well.
23:47Ashley Caines: No, I mean, I can, right? Like, they’re different, um, from, from a token perspective. They’re 2 different tokens, and I think people understand them and have mostly heard of them in that way. Um, but they are also blockchains, 2 separate blockchains. And I think that that’s a concept that’s, um, not as popular, sort of like really talking about the technology that powers these things that we know as currencies. And so Ethereum has grown as a blockchain to become like a fundamental building block of many of the economies and organizations that have come into what we now call the Web3 space. Most tokens that we know of, at least until very recently, were ERC-20s, meaning that they’re built on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs are also mostly ERC assets built on the Ethereum blockchain and still predominantly in the DAO space. Those that are tokenized, their tokens have been minted as ERCs on the Ethereum blockchain. Vitalik Buterin, who is the founder of the Ethereum blockchain, is like the Michael Jackson of Web3. It’s become a cultural gold standard to people in the space. And so that’s why I continue to be bullish on it. But Bitcoin also, there are many, many, many Bitcoin maxis and it has its own huge cultural relevance, especially in the financial aspect of blockchain.
25:33Maceo: And so I feel like now that you kind of differentiated Bitcoin and Ethereum, which I feel like is really A huge distinction. So I really do appreciate you taking time to kind of break that down to your understanding. I think for me, I feel like I was like, oh, Bitcoin is this -- it’s like this internet currency. You can use it on these websites to buy illegal stuff. I can mine it on my computer if I really want to. I was like, me as a high school student, I saw it in this movie Dope. I was like, they’re using it here to sell drugs. Okay, this happens. And then my roommate was like, oh, Masayo, there’s DAOs and there’s Ethereum. And I was like, wait, what’s an Ethereum? And he’s like, they run like applications on it. And I was like, oh, he’s like, it’s an internet computer. And I’m like, oh, this is like dramatically different than Bitcoin. And so for me, I feel like that was like a big shift in perspective of understanding like what is possible with the technology, but also like what the technology fundamentally is like when we talk about like decentralization, not just of money, but just like computational power more broadly. And so yeah, I really appreciate you kind of walking us through that to understanding. And I guess we can just go from there right into how did you find yourself in the world of DAOs? You didn’t start with DAOs, but I feel like now it’s a fair place to get into.
26:42Ashley Caines: Yeah. So I was working at a media company, actually, as the executive assistant to one of its founders who was sort of gearing up to -- he had done some angel investing sort of on the side. And so he took a lot of meetings with people just in general. People kind of pitched him all the time. And someone had requested a meeting with him to sort of talk through a blockchain company that they were creating. And so he asked me to sit in on that meeting. And I was absolutely fascinated by everything that I was learning. And so that particular person who was in the pitch meeting was coming to town. At the time, I lived in Los Angeles. And I contacted him and was like, hey, let’s get lunch. And we ended up sitting at lunch for over 4 hours and just really taking me through his vision of what he was building at the time, which was very similar to something that I had sought to build years prior. So that was a really interesting connect. But he had started this DAO in Miami called Miami Tech Runs, and I was planning a move to Miami already. It was just of like all cosmically aligned. Um, and I understood it really still as a social club. Now we classify them as social DAOs, right? But it wasn’t any sort of like DeFi or anything like that. It was very much a social club. So for someone who was moving, planning a move to a new city, and was also like very familiar, was already tokenized, like very familiar with, uh, tokens, especially ERC-20s and loved the idea. It was a no-brainer. And so I became a token holder before I even moved to Miami. And then when I moved to Miami, I became a member of this DAO and I met all of the other people in the DAO and it was wonderful. And then at the time, the media company that I was working for was planning to put on a Web3 executive event in Miami. This took 2 months after I moved here. And so I got the opportunity to like produce and moderate a panel. And so I made this panel on DAOs. And so I took people from this Miami Tech Runs DAO that I was in, and I populated the panel with awesome members and really asked questions and got to the heart of the DAO model and why they were in it and sort of token implications and stuff. And so that was a pretty big stage, honestly, to have started in a new industry. But that was really sort of how I got thrust into doing it as a career path. I was just kind of swing trading at home and privately being a member of DAOs. It wasn’t like my job until it all of a sudden kind of was, and I ran with it.
29:53Maceo: And what was the media company you were working at?
29:56Ashley Caines: Blockdeep.
29:57Maceo: Okay. And, uh, do you feel like the questions you were asking on that panel are still like relevant questions to be asking about DAOs today?
30:06Ashley Caines: Yes, but I think that at the time, um, the predominant DAOs in the -- because this was still during the most recent bull run, so the predominant DAOs in the culture, in the like ecosystem, were like FWB, Friends with Benefits, right? Um, LynxDAO, TechRuns was of course very popular, and these are all social DAOs, the scope of use of DAOs, the scope of our understanding, at least my own personal understanding of the model has expanded. I probably would have asked more questions that covered like impact DAOs or investment DAOs. A little after that, we saw ConstitutionDAO raise like an insane amount of money in like an insane amount of time. So I would have widened the scope of the questions, but the questions themselves are definitely still relevant. Yeah.
31:02Maceo: I feel like that’s so wild, like, to think, like, like what you’re saying is like, like you’re talking about a timeline that’s less than like 2 years old realistically when you say like the last bull run. Like, oh yeah, like that was like summer 2021. That’s like, like spring 2021 is what you’re referring to. And in my mind, like that, it doesn’t -- it feels like that’s a lot longer ago than it actually was. Um, like Constitution Day.
31:20Ashley Caines: And I would say that’s when the bull run ended, was in spring of ’21. It was probably going like through -- because remember In 2020, right, like during the pandemic, we had the whole Dogecoin run. And so the bull was going for quite a while. But yeah, I would say it ended around last spring.
31:41Maceo: Yeah, I mean, I would say I was not at all familiar with meme coins, shitcoins, whatever you want to call them, when Dogecoin was really taking off in the fall of 2021. Yeah, I actually graduated college. spring 2022. Like, my roommate, he told me to buy my ENS. So I bought my ENS, wethemniggas.eth, and then I got like the airdrop and I was like, $8,000 clicking buttons. Like, how do I, how do I do this again? Like, where is the money coming from? And that was kind of like what sent me down the rabbit hole. Um, and ConstitutionDAO was like, all right, like, this seems like a good way to keep meeting people. I didn’t really do a lot of networking ConstitutionDAO, but I thought it was like a cool concept, you know, see people like trying to come together and buy something besides like a noun. I was like, this seems like way more like meaningful, like use of money and like community coordination. And so it’s funny that I had to hear you bring that up, but I feel like entering the bear market after that is kind of what helped me to focus a lot less on the money and more on the values of the space and what are people actually building and what’s meaningful about this space despite there being so many things to focus on. What do I actually want to focus on? That’s kind of what brought me into the world of media and Web3 and trying to understand the different DAOs and communities. And I guess like going from there, like now you were at the DAO camp recently. Yeah. I’m curious to hear about how that was. I know I read like your Mirror article that you published about it. And the quote that stood out to me was this one. What we all had in common is that the mission itself gave us purpose. We were passionate about equitable voices via governance models, about equitable ownership via token models, about ethical leadership via accountability models, and about bringing excellence to the execution of these models because we actually cared about each other. And I thought that’s just like, I really like that because I think like that we cared about each other specifically is that it really is about community at the end of the day. And I’m really curious about what that experience was like for you and like, like what things you took away from it that are like still like on your minds now.
33:32Ashley Caines: Yeah, I loved DAO Camp, let me say. So to basically explain what it was first, we I believe it was its second year. They did it last year in the middle of the summer. And Cabin Creators, I’m not sure if your audience is familiar with them, but they’re another DAO and they are ahead of the pack in terms of creating a network state, a network city. But that aside, they put together events, right? These sort of cabin-like camping-like events. And so they had the idea last year to put on like a DAO camp and invite 70 people who are either founders or otherwise builders, like core contributor groups of prominent DAOs, and just kind of get everyone together for what I understood to be like programming of just the wonky stuff that is unsexy, but we all really need to talk about. But when I got there, it was much more therapeutic. The programming was very -- we were encouraged early on, on the first day to go below the surface. We talked about deaths in our families that served as pivotal moments in our lives. We talked about like the different sort of societal masks that we wear and the environments that require that we wear these masks. And it was more like some of the programming was about DAOs, but it was really about getting to know the individuals. And that’s how I was able to even like arrive at insights like the one that you just read, because it was like the priority of the programming was to understand the other human beings, to humanize the space beyond the technology. And then once we’ve established that we care about each other, because I remember that Nicole’s sister does XYZ, blah, blah, now we can start to talk about regulation. Now we can start to talk about the things that are really fun to me because they’re mainly theoretical, right? Like, they’re not the stuff that people take the time to really ask themselves or work towards solutions on because there are more pressing things when you’re dealing with the nuts and bolts of actually operating these organizations. But to say things like, hey, should DAOs overall be compliant with regulators? Right? Like, I’m not saying we should all just be like, fuck the FCC, or like, you know, whatever. But what -- where do we fall on that spectrum? Where do we fall on the spectrum of whether or not social incentives are more or less powerful than financial incentives? Right? Like, what are the core drivers of the actions that you want to happen in your economy? Are you a DAO if you’re not tokenized? Are you a DAO if you don’t vote? vote on chain? Just asking really those questions and to understand how other people are doing things. We did a thought experiment at TechRuns of like, what if SBF, right? Like, what if Sam Bankman-Friedman, right, was a member of TechRuns? What would we do? Would we vote to expel him? And this is the founder of FTX, for anyone who doesn’t know. But would we vote to expel him? Or how would we deal with that as a community? And so I shared that thought experiment at DAO Camp and someone was like, well, I got one even better. We actually have kicked members out and this is what our process looked like when we did that. And here’s how we did it democratically and how we had that conversation out in the open. And yeah, it was just like the best 3 days of the year still, aside from today. Today’s been great, but yeah, up there.
37:30Maceo: No, I think that’s beautiful. So I didn’t -- oh, I feel like since you mentioned the network state, can you say a bit about what that actually means? I feel like that’s like a high-level DAO concept.
37:40Ashley Caines: Yeah, I think it really even is beyond the concept of DAOs. At its simplest, it’s just like, what makes a nation of people if not physical borders? And the global economy has become more of like a global economy, right? Like, we have these -- we have fiat currencies, currencies that are tied to local governments like the Chinese yen or the US dollar. Um, but then we also now have these currencies that cross borders. You can spend Bitcoin, you can spend ETH across the world. Um, and so now what does it look like to be a citizen of a nation that isn’t physically defined. And Afropolitan is doing like very good work on this front and building their own version. So I will put them up there with Cabin and doing this work. But it’s really just the concept of citizenship to something that doesn’t look like what we traditionally know it to be.
38:47Maceo: Hmm, I have that. And are you involved in Afropolitan?
38:53Ashley Caines: I’m not, but I follow them because I just, I think what they’re building is dope. But
38:58Maceo: yeah. Shout out Chica. Shout out Chica. Um, yeah, I, I think that the, the idea of like network states is exciting, um, but also just like how do we look at decentralizing like institutions? Like people talk about like more government involvement, less government involvement, and I feel like, is it really about like how involved government it is, or is it more about like -- for me, I feel like it’s more about like like, what is quality of life like and how are the institutions that are like public goods actually serving us as a public? And like, are they working effectively or not? Um, do you see like these notions of decentralization playing into like public goods in like meaningful ways? Um, what are your thoughts on like decentralized public goods as like a phenomenon, a conversation in Web3?
39:36Ashley Caines: I think first and foremost for me, right, first and foremost, the priority that we are all solving for in our own way is civic engagement. I think the United States or just like the world in general is solving for this, right? I don’t know what percentage of the population actually votes and then even an even smaller percentage casting an informed vote and DAOs suffer from the same thing. And a lot of DAOs have toyed with different models. Maybe you want a representative to vote on your behalf so that you don’t always have to be knowledgeable about things. Well, we do that in the US government too, right? This concept of like having an elected official who votes on your behalf of things so that you don’t have to be abreast of every single detail of things. Does that lead to an informed community? And if your community is not informed, but everyone has equal control over the treasury, or at least equitable, proportionate control over the treasury, then like -- not even so much the treasury, just how the organization operates. Right. I want to say that because as I bring it back to your question about decentralizing public goods, yes, but also we have to first figure out how to get people to engage fully with the concept of decentralization. Mm-hmm. Because unfortunately, I’ve learned that it’s a reality that people, more people want the experience of being an owner than they do the responsibility of being an owner. And so when you talk about decentralizing ownership, decentralizing goods that we all use and keeping them things that are beneficial to the vast majority of people, I think for those things to be successful, like the people that they serve have to be engaged in their maintenance.
41:41Maceo: I absolutely agree. And I feel like that’s kind of what does excite me about this notion of decentralized public goods. I feel like you were saying you feel like the hyperactive part of you maybe is not as accessible in spaces you might occupy now. And I feel like being in schools, being in a lot of spaces that I see as predominantly Black in terms of the patrons per se, but I feel like they’re not really administered by Black people. I worked at a summer camp last summer. And it’s like a summer camp through the Boys and Girls Club. And though it’s like a space which is predominantly like Black and brown kids, it’s not actually run by Black and brown people. And I feel like that impacts like the way people show up in this space, even if it’s not something that like those kids are able to articulate in like a meaningful way. There’s a power dynamic. There are like certain parts of culture that aren’t really celebrated in that space. There are things that are seen as not appropriate, quote unquote, and not even just like cursing or like music, but just like the ways people show up, the ways people talk It might not actually be --
42:33Ashley Caines: Well, yeah, I mean, you’re describing like ownership, right? Like it’s a different form. Like even if that kid isn’t holding a share of that YMCA or that whatever, there’s a different way that you show up when people who look like you own it. You walk into that space and you exist in that space as if a part of you owns it as well. So that’s even before you get to like the token aspect. aspect of anything. And so you’re absolutely right. Like, you have to get -- when people engage with owning something, they show up to it differently.
43:09Maceo: Yeah. And I guess that’s kind of what excites me is I feel like rather than like these institutions, like kind of hiring people to work inside them, like people that are already existing work there. It’s like the way I think about it is it’s more of like the people who are the patrons determining like who are gonna be the people servicing them. Like, who are the teachers that I have in my classroom? And like, how do we incentivize good teachers to be in my classroom? classrooms, as opposed to like the people that run the public schools in the city that I live in making all those choices on my behalf with me just kind of like, like whether I’m abreast or not, having little to no say.
43:37Ashley Caines: Right.
43:38Maceo: Um, right. But yeah, um, but I guess you have like, what questions are you asking about DAOs now? Like in the, yeah, involved at Decent? Um, you started a new role actually. You said you started a new role today as well.
43:51Ashley Caines: I did. I started a new role, um, and it is as we’re sort of calling it temporarily DAOification steward. I lead the DAOification of what was previously a centralized institution. And so I’m actually very bullish that is the future of DAOs in the next 2 to 5 years, 2 to 10 years, is that centralized organizations, as the grand experiment of DAOs becomes clearer, the learnings become more uniformly applied and the value that operating decentralized will bring to many industries, I think organizations that we see now as being centralized will progressively decentralize. So I’m really, really excited, one, that my DAO -- I work full-time professionally at a DAO. I’m very glad they have that at top of mind, and I’m even more glad that they hired Yeah, I
44:57Maceo: think that’s super dope. Yeah, I’ve definitely been thinking about, like, since I first discovered DAOs, like, what would it mean to have, like, We Them Niggas be a community-owned, community-driven kind of organization? Um, and hearing you say that, like, I’m applying for Seed Club right now. I know their application is due, like, next Wednesday. I’m trying to think about, like, how do I scale this as, like, a creator collective, a place where people can find community but also find people to share resources with, um, people to help them scale ideas like this. to really just scale them in reality in a reasonable timeline where they feel like they have the resources and access to labor and people to help them bring them to life in ways that align with their visions and in spaces that feel like they actually do have ownership, like you were saying. So I think it’s cool to hear you saying that it is about starting with a functional institution and then taking it from there to a decentralized state. Because I mean, how do you start with a million people? So I’m excited for you and I’ll be excited to keep up with how that’s going.
45:53Ashley Caines: Thank you.
45:54Maceo: Yeah, absolutely. And we can definitely wrap up now as well. I know your time is coming to a close. So thank you so much for your time today. It’s been a pleasure, absolute pleasure getting to learn from you. And I’m excited that my audience will get to hopefully develop a clearer picture on what a DAO is and what Web3 is and what it looks like in the present and what they can offer us in the future. out of the insights and experiences you’ve been able to share with us today. So thank you so much.
46:19Ashley Caines: Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I feel really fortunate to have done this. I know this is going to be amazing just because of the high vibes of today. Hopefully you were able to learn something new about DAOs or take away a new perspective. And I’m going to do a better job at sharing my learnings. I do through my Instagram, but not so much through Twitter. Um, so I’m going to be definitely more intentional about sharing DAO information on both of those platforms. Um, so you can follow me there at @ashmcai on both.
46:57Maceo: Oh yeah, and I’ll link that in the show notes so people can keep up with you. And yeah, and I’ll link -- I’ll put a link to Decent as well so people can kind of see what that organization is as well, um, and see like what it’s looking like as you guys unfold Um, so yeah, thanks for listening to another episode of We Them Niggas. I’ll catch you all next time. And as always, feel free to reach out to me via email or socials if I can be of any help to you. And until next time, this is We Them Niggas. Booyah!
