After being deep in Web3 for awhile now, I’ve been going back to basics and reflecting on areas I’m most excited about.

I got into crypto in the first place because I was concerned about the future of the US dollar as the world’s foremost reserve currency. I wanted to understand Bitcoin & Ethereum as assets and form my own viewpoint on whether they might be “digital gold”, as the meme goes - or even something more.

Fast-forward 2.5 years since my first real foray into crypto, and I’m convinced of two things:

• Blockchains will underpin the future of the internet

• Blockchains will do to money what the internet did to publishing

This is Part 3 in a three-part series. Find Part 1 here and Part 2 here.

As a result of my rapidly-accelerating crypto obsession, in the past couple months I’ve gone from a near-never Discord user to waking up every morning to an overwhelming left-hand sidebar with logos and notifications galore.

These are, of course, the logos of DAOs I’m following.

Since I’m teetering on the brink of being mostly a quiet DAO lurker to becoming a contributing member of these communities, I’d like to document my experience and learnings about DAOs as they are today in 2021.

This is Part 2 in a three-part series. Find Part 1 here.

As a result of my rapidly-accelerating crypto obsession, in the past couple months I’ve gone from a near-never Discord user to waking up every morning to an overwhelming left-hand sidebar with logos and notifications galore.

These are, of course, the logos of DAOs I’m following.

Since I’m teetering on the brink of being mostly a quiet DAO lurker to becoming a contributing member of these communities, I’d like to document my experience and learnings about DAOs as they are today in 2021.

As a result of my rapidly-accelerating crypto obsession, in the past couple months I’ve gone from a near-never Discord user to waking up every morning to an overwhelming left-hand sidebar with logos and notifications galore.

These are, of course, the logos of DAOs I’m following.

Since I’m teetering on the brink of being mostly a quiet DAO lurker to becoming a contributing member of these communities, I’d like to document my experience and learnings about DAOs as they are today in 2021. I think it’s important I do this before I get much deeper and become ‘one of them’ (“one of us… one of us…”), so that I can provide my best layman’s take for the 99% of the planet that isn’t DAO-native.

Today’s piece was cowritten with David Phelps. Two months in the works, it is about collectivizing finance, but it is also an experiment in collectivizing finance:

• Collectively commissioned by 14 backers through Ghost Knowledge
• Collectively written with contributions by Lila Shroff and Julia Lipton
• Collectively sold—we hope—through a PartyBid on Zora. Our hope is that a collective group will purchase it as a kind of meta-memento of this strange and wonderful era.
• Collectively splitting the proceeds as a donation, with 1) the original commission in USD going to All Raise & BLCK VC and 2) the NFT proceeds in ETH going to the patrons (40%), who have equity-of-a-kind in the piece, and to Mint Fund (60%), an initiative to support BIPOC and LBTQIA+ NFT creators

Want to play along? Contribute to the PartyBid here.

It’s worth noting that none of the tech that made this possible—Ghost Knowledge’s collective commissions, Party DAO’s collective purchases, or Mirror’s collective splits—existed a few months ago. That’s as good place as any, in fact, to start.

In crypto, everything moves so fast. With all the Tweets, Discords, and buzz to keep up with, it's hard to force oneself to take a step back and reflect.

So, this Friday afternoon - with my first post on Mirror (👋) - that's what I'm giving myself space to do.

I've only been deep into crypto for a little over a year now, but I can confidently say that nothing in my professional life has captivated me more than crypto has. What started as a light curiosity gradually became a proper hobby, and now I’d say I’m teetering the brink of obsession.

What pulls me in?