Creativity with Extinction Rebellion — Charlie Waterhouse

Charlie Waterhouse is a co-founder of the Art Group and Media team at Extinction Rebellion based in London. He’s Creative Director of This Ain’t Rock ’n’ Roll, and a director of the Brixton Pound. We talk about the origins of Extinction Rebellion, a global movement using non-violent direct action to persuade governments to take action on climate, and inspire public consciousness to the cause.

Ep.1 - WTF is Hydra?

Summary Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Hydra Podcast Series. Hydra Ventures DAO was summoned to invest in and incubate the next generation of community-first investment DAOs and to proliferate a landscape of organisational innovations in investing. We’re a DAO fund of funds composed of DAO operators, professional service providers, founders, and Web3 VCs with a mission to establish new market-standard practices for how investment DAOs are designed and operated. Join us to learn more about DAOs, investing and the new opportunities that the power of human coordination could unlock. In this episode of the Hydra Ventures Podcast, the hosts delve into the world of community-driven investment DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations), focusing on Hydra Ventures. The podcast explores its mission, challenges, strategies, and vision in the decentralised investment landscape. The episode begins with an explanation of Hydra Ventures as a "DAO of DAOs" that invests in various investment DAOs. The guests, founders, and key members of Hydra Ventures, discuss its formation and objectives. They highlight the organisation's core mission to iterate on the investment DAO model and create a dedicated capital pool for such ventures. The importance of community in DAOs is emphasised, noting that intrinsic motivation and collective learning drive member participation. The conversation shifts to discussing Hydra's diverse membership and their areas of expertise. The challenges faced by DAOs, such as governance and member engagement, are also addressed, highlighting the strategies Hydra employs to overcome these hurdles. One segment focuses on the relationship between Hydra Ventures and a Web3 Professional Services Agency. It's explained how they provide operational, strategic, and coordination support, essential for the DAO's efficiency and success. The podcast also covers the operational challenges in DAOs, specifically the importance of maintaining context and alignment among members. Hydra's governance approach, including incentive systems to encourage participation and avoid common DAO problems, is discussed in detail. An exploration of Hydra's incubation process for new DAOs is provided. The criteria for selecting communities for DAO formation and the support provided in legal, operational, and cultural aspects are outlined, emphasising the importance of a strong foundational structure for success. In a rapid-fire session, each guest shares their personal experiences in the crypto world, the projects that captivated them, and their perspectives on controversial topics within the crypto community. The episode concludes with a discussion on how to engage with Hydra Ventures and each guest's vision for its success. They express hope that Hydra will validate the community-driven investment model, expand DAO accessibility, and foster an ecosystem where DAOs are seen as a competitive option for collaborative investment and innovation. Show Notes 0:02 - Introduction to Hydra Ventures, a fund that specialises in investing in other investment funds. 1:49 - Overview of Hydra, a new investment platform emphasising a diverse membership of founders, VCs, and experts in Web3 with a unique governance system. 7:17 - Insight into Hydra's organisational structure and decision-making process, highlighting its decentralised nature and collaboration with Thing3. 10:11 - Discussion on Hydra's approach to professional services in Web3, focusing on governance, legal, and accounting support, and the integration of professional services with Web3 innovation. 16:34 - Examination of Web3's distributed organisations and value systems, including the transformation of traditional employment models and the introduction of a distributed professional platform in Web3. 20:31 - Exploration of leadership dynamics in decentralised investment groups, emphasising the necessity of leadership and coordination despite the absence of traditional hierarchical structures. 25:40 - Challenges faced by decentralised organisations in context dissemination, resource allocation, and the problem of free riding in DAOs. 29:15 - Description of Hydra’s incentive system, designed to reward members based on their contributions, with quarterly initiatives and audits to track engagement. 34:01 - Emphasis on the importance of community-driven organisations in investment, with insights into Hydras' unique incubation process and the simplification of investment DAO creation. 37:49 - Discussion on investment strategies in decentralised communities, focusing on community alignment, cost reduction, and leveraging natural patterns of community formation for collective investment. 44:47 - Scaling investment houses with a community focus, highlighting the role of Delaware LLCs, the importance of a flat hierarchy, and community engagement. 48:22 - Perspectives on the potential of investment DAOs, including capital deployment, community bonding, and the vision for Hydra as a pioneering platform in community-driven investing. 55:22 - Member’s reflections on the human aspect of crypto investment.

Yearn Founder Andre Cronje Says DeFi Comes With Responsibility

Andre Cronje is the developer of the yearn platform and YFI token. There’s this sort of mysticism around Andre. The solo genius builder who relentlessly releases code even if it hasn’t always been properly audited or tested. The DeFi wizard capable of turning a token which he himself claimed to be valueless to be worth thousands of dollars in a few days. He talks about the actual paralyzing fear that comes with building money protocol, the huge responsibility he feels, and how finger-pointing has caused him to quit the space before. But he says the drive to continue innovating has helped him overcome that fear and keep building.

Synthetix’s Kain Warwick Talks About What it Takes to Scale

This week, we sat with Kain Warwick, DeFi OG and founder of Synthetix. In some ways, last year wasn’t a great one for the synthetic assets protocol. As many DeFi projects boomed, SNX’s price and TVL dropped. Kain says he was too optimistic about how soon Synthetix would be able to scale with optimistic roll-ups. If he were to do things again, he would probably use Polygon first and move to Optimism once the solution was ready. But last year was also a time to build on a strong foundation. He’s looking forward to the months to come, when all of that effort hopefully comes to light, with the protocol fully live on Optimism, with perpetual swaps expected to be launched too. He’s a firm believer that Ethereum and its Layer 2 solutions will capture the most value being built in DeFi and web3.

Aave’s Stani Kulechov Talks About Building the Biggest DeFi Lender

Stani Kulechov the founder and CEO of Aave. When we spoke Aave was the second-largest DeFi protocol, but in the days after our conversation, it rose to overtake MakerDAO and become the DeFi platform with the most assets held in its smart contracts, at over $1B in digital assets. It’s been an exponential rise for Aave, which launched just eight months ago and in that short time was able to climb the famous Defi Pulse Total Value Locked ranking to the top. It’s done so pushing DeFi forward by driving innovation in interest-generating tokens, flash loans and delegated credit lines, which are all lowering the barriers of entry to users from all corners of the world to access financial applications. We also get into all the recent yield farming craziness, which he wishes was more restrained.

MakerDAO Founder Rune Christensen on DeFi’s Biggest Test Yet

In the first episode ever, we speak with Rune Christensen, the founder of MakerDAO, the largest lending platform by assets in decentralized finance and the issuer of the Dai stablecoin. Rune has been in crypto since 2011 and is no stranger to volatility and crazy market conditions. Still, last month was the most shocking for him yet. On March 12th 2020, MakerDAO’s mechanism to heal loans that become under-collateralized broke down amid the market crash, allowing one trader to run off with more than $4 million in free ether. He calls it Maker’s toughest test yet, and he believes the protocol passed it. Key things we talked about: • MakerDAO’s plan to hand control to its community and dissolve the Maker Foundation • MKR auction and token whales • The decision to add centralized collateral to back Dai • Whether Maker will add Bitcoin as collateral and create a euro-pegged Dai • Collateral holders who lost 100% of their funds in the March 12 crash • Rune’s long-term vision for DeFi and Maker, as an enabler for financial inclusion

Chainlink’s Sergey Nazarov Says Devs Neglect Oracle Risks

This interview is with Sergey Nazarov, the cofounder of oracle provider Chainlink. The way blockchain applications get their data has proven to be crucial, as failures in those systems have been at the core of many of the latest attacks in decentralized finance. He says developers are currently underestimating the complexities of building data aggregators and oracle systems and says, the only reason these dangerous patterns are not as discussed is because the losses have not been Mt. Gox level. In this conversation Nazarov makes the case on why the Chainlink platform is meant to help avoid those risks. We also talk about the main trends he’s seeing in the space, Chainlink’s plans for the coming months, and his vision for a more decentralized future.

Burner Wallets with Austin Griffith - Episode #7

We talk to Austin Griffith, an OG Etherean, in June 2019 about: - Tuning product abstractions with various user personas - The journey of the Burner Wallet from DevCon 4 to EthNewYork - Bottom-up identity systems that are now possible - The need for faster and tighter iteration cycles for web 3.0 This is a staple episode on Burner Wallet — a first-of-its-kind wallet that prioritized consumer onboarding and experience.

Axie Infinity with Jiho - Episode #10

We talk to Jiho from Axie Infinity in July 2019 about: - Using game worlds as integrated portals to DeFi and Web3 - How Axie built up its gamer and developer community - The importance of Axie’s discord community chat This is the first appearance from Jiho on any crypto podcasts.

SuperRare with John Crain - Episode #14

We talk to John Crain, Founder of SuperRare, in August 2019 about: - How NFTs and tokens are deepening contextual relationships - The weird and exciting paradigm of composable digital scarcity This is one of the earliest episodes with SuperRare, when the platform was still doing less than $10,000 in total monthly volume on digital art.

OpenSea with Devin Finzer - Episode #2

We talk to Devin Finzer of OpenSea in April 2019 about: - OpenSea’s first customers, platform power users, and NFT games using the marketplace - The marketplace's unique revenue share business model with NFT developers - Open game economies, DAO-ifying OpenSea and open game economies This is one of the earliest podcasts with Devin and OpenSea, well before NFTs had any recognition in the space.

The Metaverse with Jin from M3 - Episode #34

We talk to Jin, Founder of M3, in June 2020 about: - How cryptovoxels won over the hearts of the NFT crypto artist community - All things blockchain VR & metaverse and what’s exciting - Metaverse makers masterminding efforts to bridge the VR & Crypto Community This is an original episode about M3 and their mission to build a metaverse experience, before metaverses were in vogue.