The conversation between Balaji Srinivasan with Akshay BD and Tanmay Bhat on the Superteam DAO’s recent podcast painted a rationally optimistic picture about what the future in a decentralised world looks like for the working Indian and the Indian state at large.

This is a summary of the conversation along with a few of my notes and observations.

Bullish on Indians

Balaji’s recent thesis on being extremely bullish on Indians while being moderately bullish on India is an interesting outlook on what the future could look like.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1446411161742675969

His thesis is based on the fact that while the Indian state is doing good things with the advent of the IndiaStack, the initial Indians who have made their way into countries like the US, UK, Canada etc. have exceeded expectations at the global level.

The Indian being globally mobile, unlike the Chinese, therefore doesn’t need the Indian State’s continued execution to excel individually. Indian citizens are much more willing to move out from their homeland and set up in places that legally favour the domain they’re working in.

The age-old challenge of lack of mobility is no longer a problem and unlike a Chinese citizen who’s under a much more centralised regime, and would probably be less globally mobile, Indians are much more likely to be moving out to a jurisdiction that favours them.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1460530958080233475

This diaspora of Indians is also complemented by the regulatory flippening that is taking place in the US. The power and stronghold that regulations set by American institutions used to have is not the same anymore, and hence people are more encouraged than ever to move out instead and not care about the regulatory cube that was once the gold standard.

“Hence, the global founder today can do things that the American and Chinese can not”

By the logic of deduction, the Indian comes in third and has the opportunity to play that balancing role being much more mobile, English-speaking, and technologically eloquent.

“China plays the best home game, while India plays the best away game”

(This is obviously glaring if you are a cricket fan)

A Media Superpower

The Pseudonymous Economy

In the pseudonymous economy where it is possible to separate your speaking name, your earning name and your real name with multiple identities, Balaji believes that India becomes a Tech + Media Superpower, similar to how China became a Tech + Manufacturing Superpower.

This means a world where your CryptoPunk is the face of your tweets on Twitter, while your Bored Ape commits code on Github, and your real identity could be consulting a company/DAO remotely from halfway across the world. Crypto makes this pseudonymous economy not only possible but provides incentives to follow this approach.

Level Playing Field

Indians have proven to have the ability to be successful when it comes to media, whether it’s from in front of the camera or behind it, as well as through the written word with blogs, newsletters etc.

Indians becoming number one in everything digital does not mean Bollywood taking over Hollywood. It means globally competitive products ranging from Substack Articles to Memes, just produced by Indians working from their living rooms for the global market to consume at scale.

Indians have been successful in Tech because it is a field that is levelled out as a screen and a keyboard is all one needs to make it. The Internet now has brought this unique proposition to media which essentially gives the Indian who was previously restricted to his Homebase, a global market willing to consume his content. This is because the once extremely scarce mass media lives in people’s pockets today, powered by the Internet.

DAOs could especially be an integral part of this shift from physical constraints to digital mobility as people collaborate on projects/bounties across geographical boundaries to make content that is consumed by the global market.

Case in Point: The ad below was written and produced entirely by the members of the Superteam DAO who are from different corners of India and have only met each other on the DAO’s discord server.

https://twitter.com/SuperteamDAO/status/1468588869461286915?s=20

This is just one example of the various projects being undertaken across different DAOs and remote companies whose final product isn’t recognisably Indian, but the brains behind it are.

Crypto Creators

However, crypto comes into the picture with much more to offer and Indians can take maximal advantage by transitioning from being the “Influencer” to being a Crypto Creator. This is essential because of the advantages that come with producing content on-chain:

• Property rights over your content

• Ownership of audience

• Ownership of distribution

• No looming fear of censorship

The economic terms of the agreement change dramatically when crypto comes into the picture by not allowing institutions and big tech to have the ultimate power of being able to censor/deplatform someone even if they are the president of the United States.

Again, this rise of independent and sovereign production of media is complemented by the decline of the state of media in the US. The status of being the Exporter of Media it once held is no longer true with the declining quality of its corporations and the stories they publish.

This has in turn not just enabled but encouraged journalists like Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, Bari Weiss, Sagar Enjetti, Krystall Ball and many more to move to their Substacks and have an independent voice without the fear of censorship or manipulation of their content by any corporation.

Niches have been abandoned as a result, and the media consumer is more inclined every day to consume content from an individual instead of an institution. That individual could be anyone. Even the Indian who’s informed, speaks English and is willing to put his voice out there.

How India win-wins

“The Dormroom Founder is the Ascending World Founder”

Balaji makes the point that in the hierarchy that the world followed till now, the US used to be the model which China copied, which was then copied by India. The developing copying the developed.

However, in the ascending world, the goal is not to copy but to lead uniquely. This is his idea of how India can win-win. India currently leads the US in National Software Infrastructure with the rise of the IndiaStack and UPI.

The internet being cheaper and accessible to more people than ever in history provides Indians with the opportunity to ideologically leapfrog the US as well as their rival China. This means skipping past the problems of the developed world using technology and media while working with countries ranked from number four down to N. The Indian has the global economy wide open in front of him.

Crypto can power this shift as it provides for a global market with much better regulations and rights than the incumbent American institutions do and is now available to everybody. The value proposition to physically move to the US is much lower than what it used to be.

“If a million people got the H1-B Visa, 700 million will get the Crypto Visa” - Akshay BD

The Decentralised Movement

The world is in the middle of a shift at the moment. The US-led hierarchy is no longer suitable and the world wants to move away from it. But the alternative is a Chinese-led one which a lot of countries would not consider ideal.

What is the potential way out?

The Network State. A decentralised world where everyone is a peer at the table while being equally aligned economically. This offers a non-ideal but acceptable system in the power struggle for every country as it’s worse than gaining ultimate power but much better than losing it. One man’s lawful good is another man’s lawful evil. So lawful neutral may emerge as the solution.

When both the US as well as the Soviet Union possess nuclear arms, it results in a Cold War and the ultimate power is used by none and rests in the middle.

How does India win wins by forming this Network State?

Balaji believes that Indians can win-win by becoming champions of decentralisation for which they don’t need the state in the first place. Individual exporters of code and content will make interact with the global market, make these networks and leapfrog the fighting developed world. Since everyone is economically inclined, it makes for a better state where everyone gets a piece of the pie.

The Bootloader of the Free World

According to Balaji, the next world order will be based on National Networks and Global Crypto Protocols.

The networks that prevail today will likely be recognised by their respective nation-states, i.e. Chinese WeChat, American Instagram etc. and will enable an intra-nation network instead of a global one. On the other hand, International Networks like Bitcoin will be used for inter-nation transactions and communication.

He says that Indians don’t necessarily need to be the leader of this but help bootload this system. The Indian household dream of having an engineer in the family has now become a blessing in disguise as engineers and coders will ultimately end up making the networks. The leverage that Indians have of being good at software will keep increasing deep into the 21st century.

Code, however, needs to be supported by content and media. Indians producing media at the global stage is the last piece in the puzzle of enabling the Network State.

This way, in the words of Balaji, India provides the Bright Sun to the western Black Mirror.

Software Strategy

What should be India’s Software Strategy going forward and what should Indians be working at?

Healthcare

India becomes the doctor of the world.

The Indian diaspora can reinvent Western healthcare with the advent of telemedicine, medical tourism, generics, and cash payments. Although it is a very difficult sector to disrupt, Technology and the Remote Economy might make it possible for anyone and everyone to have access to Indian doctors.

This will be made possible when Indian Doctors who are globally competitive meet the Indians who’re good at Technology.

Robotic Autarky

India can use robotics to achieve self-sufficiency and then export robotic autarky in terms of Manufacturing, Farming and Retail.

Robotics is a way to take over Traditional Chinese Manufacturing through automation and a way to export it to the world as a product by the global Indian.

Astronomy

Turning India into the launchpad of the world.

US and China have military bases all around the world. India, led by ISRO on the other hand can lead in building launch sites. Indian founders should be encouraged to build space startups that come out from India

Political Order

Replace the US-controlled multilateral institutions with neutral protocols and NationStacks.

While India is currently looking in from the outside, a much more neutral future could be built by India advocating for an order that benefits all parties. This is how truly global liberal values of Free Speech and Rule of Law could be protected in the Network State. Winning and helping win.

Conclusion

The optimism in Balaji’s vision for India comes from rationality and the possibilities that the Internet provides to Indians.

We have all been witness to the shift that has taken place as soon as Indians found prestige in becoming founders instead of just good employees. Indians have already started exporting software and content to the world but with crypto, we are in for a future in which a lot of sovereign Indians will lay the foundation of a new world order in which everyone win-wins.

“The good news is that the Information Revolution will liberate individuals as never before. For the first time, those who can educate and motivate themselves will be almost entirely free to invent their own work and realize the full benefits of their own productivity. Genius will be unleashed, freed from both the oppression of government and the drags of racial and ethnic prejudice. In the information society, no one who is truly able will be detained by the ill-formed opinions of others. It will not matter what most of the people on earth might think of your race, your looks, your age, your sexual proclivities, or the way you wear your hair. In the cybereconomy, they will never see you. The ugly, the fat, the old, the disabled will vie with the young and beautiful on equal terms in utterly color-blind anonymity on the new frontiers of cyberspace.”― James Dale Davidson, The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age

Shoutout to the Superteam DAO’s OGs Akshay BD and Tanmay Bhat for their conversation with Balaji Srinivasan, and for inspiring the next generation of Indian builders to grow and ship products in the web3 ecosystem.

Let me know what you thought of this post and if you have more ideas around crypto, web3, DAOs or anything else that you feel is worth sharing, feel free to DM me at @paarugsethi on Twitter. Would love to chat and learn from any and every conversation.

Thank you for reading. Have a good one.

One such problem the Superteam DAO has set out to solve is how to onboard people working in web2 onto web3. This is what inspired the project Ground Zero, which is an attempt to provide a repository of resources and educational content to help convert the next generation of normies to full-time degens.

Education in Web3

A common mistake that’s very easy to make while thinking about this is to consider this shift as merely a technological upgrade. While partially true, the shift from web2 to web3 takes much more than that. It requires an update in our biological software as well - how we think about technology and the world at large.

A need for a shift in technology as well as our mental models around it results in a learning curve much steeper than one’s initial estimates. This was a common theme we found to be missing while researching about the education already out there.

Web3 is extremely well documented, but equally fragmented.

This is something we sought out to solve and the goal became to optimise for education but along with relevant context and not losing that human touch. The key here was to walk the fine line between “good understanding but not enough knowledge” and a complete “information overload”.

This led to the framework that we decided to follow for every domain we wanted to cover, courtesy of the brilliant Aditya Shetty, a fellow member at the Superteam DAO.

Setting up a framework

To start, the project had to be divided into a certain number of generalised domains relating to web3 allowing for following a top-down approach in the future when increasing the depth of information available.

Each topic/domain had to be covered through an arbitrary number of Buzzfeed-like questions that a normie (beginner) might ask while reading about that topic for the first time.

Since the North Star of any project is to optimise for shipping, we decided to limit the number of topics we cover for v1 of our project to three -

• Introduction to Web3

• NFTs

• DAOs

For every question (sub-topic) in each topic, the content was to be provided, and in a way limited to a short synopsis, a video, a blog/article and a tweet thread related to the sub-topic being discussed.

This served a couple of purposes:

1. Learning about web3 is intimidating. When learning a new and novel topic, information overload is the last thing a person wants. The goal here is not to let someone know every single detail there is about a certain topic. Instead, it is to show them a glimpse of the rabbit hole they can enter and make them want to take the red pill.

2. Curation > Creation. There’s a famous story in which a man, wanting to find a way to travel across the water, spent ten years learning how to walk on water. When he told Buddha about the great feat that he had achieved, the Buddha said, “Yeah, but the ferry only costs a nickel…". It is well-established that a lot of great content creators have provided all the material that someone would need to learn about web3. Curating it one place not only provides great content pieces but also introduces people to the leaders ideating in the space.

3. Everyone has a different way of learning. The option to watch a video, dive deep into an article, or go through a tweet thread makes space for all kinds of learners out there.

Getting to Work

Probably the best feature of working in a DAO is the instant availability of help from a concentrated pool of talented individuals.

The scarcity of people is not the challenge anymore. Motivating, managing and rewarding are.

While different DAOs follow different mechanisms, we worked on the framework that most of Superteam DAO’s projects work on, courtesy of its brilliant sherpa Kash Dhanda along with a couple of hyper-talented members who came up with the Reputation System for members of the DAO. Kash wrote a great piece on how they built it here.

To tell a long story, in short, the flow that we ended up following involved sharing the idea, communicating the help needed, incentivising people to come on board, and finally collaborating on the project while also keeping track of the contribution proportionately.

Sharing the idea

A simple target of a deliverable within a limited timeframe optimising for quality and shipping over quantity and delay.

Communicating the help needed

We broke down bigger tasks into identifiable micro-tasks so people could “claim” them according to their proficiency as well as bandwidth. Very much in line with how a DAO is supposed to be.

Incentivising people

Each task was also accompanied by a certain number of XP points proportionate to the relative importance of that task in the overall project.

These points add up to each individual’s XP Points according to which, they are positioned in the DAO’s contributor’s leaderboard.

Collaborating on the Project

While initially using Notion, we shifted the workspace to BIP.so which allowed for open collaboration for every member in the DAO and made easy work of tracking contribution.

Fellow Superteam member Krishna eventually stepped up and exported the final iteration of the docs onto the Gitbook site that went public, which also allows open contribution from anyone out there.

Takeaways

Along with the unparalleled feeling of shipping a product, this project was also vital for me to identify some key takeaways for the upcoming iterations of Ground Zero, as well as collaborative projects in general.

Open-ended tasks do not work. Having learnt this the hard way, it’s safe to say that you’re not going to get much help if the task you need help on is clearly defined and well-communicated with context to the project you’re building. Specific, measurable tasks are what the human mind is drawn towards.

Efficiency vs. Size of a working group is a positively skewed bell-shaped curve. While it’s pretty clear that five people working together is better than two, it’s not necessarily the case that 10 is better than five. While attempting to take help from the larger audience of the DAO as well, it suddenly became very clear that communicating ideas and demands as well as considering and recording contributions become Herculean tasks in their own right. The optimal number of people should ideally be identified before even beginning to think about the tasks to be carried out.

1.

Burning the boats makes things happen. The importance of setting a time frame for a project is one of the most underrated aspects of working on projects. A reasonable timeframe, if identified beforehand, drives a lot of action that would probably take a lot longer in the alternate scenario. We learnt this the hard way and had to bear the pain of late shipping as well.

This project has been an amazing learning experience for me and I hope to have it used by people to show it to their relatives so they can learn about this novel industry as well. We hope to make Ground Zero a much deeper, much more refined and much better-looking product than what it already is in the very near future.

A DAO is measured by its proof-of-shipping, amount of collaboration and the vibes in the community. Building products for the public to use is something that ticks all three of those boxes and therefore, with a robust reputation management framework in place, working at a DAO is most likely what the future of work, in general, is going to look like.

If you have any ideas around work, DAOs and web3 in general that you’d like to share and talk about, feel free to DM me at @paarugsethi on Twitter. Would love to chat and learn from any such conversation.

Also, a huge shoutout to the brilliant Kash, Aditya, Krishna, Raj, Naman, and other super talented members of the Superteam DAO that made shipping this project possible and will probably contribute to doing the same in the future as well.

Hope this was helpful. Thank you for reading. Until next time!

So let’s first consider what a DAO is

A DAO is often described as sort of a “Reddit community with a bank account.”

In an attempt to formalise this definition, we can say it’s an organisation structured in a way that the control and ownership of its decisions are decentralised and spread out amongst its members through some rules that are enforced on the blockchain.

In a DAO, the jobs that have to be carried out are determined by pre-written smart contracts.

The backbone of a DAO is its smart contract. The contract defines the rules of the organisation and holds the group’s treasury. Once the contract is live on Ethereum, no one can change the rules except by a vote. If anyone tries to do something that’s not covered by the rules and logic in the code, it will fail. And because the treasury is defined by the smart contract too that means no one can spend the money without the group’s approval either. (via ethereum.org))

This is a key element in the functioning as the pursuit of code being law is very much evident here at a micro and organisational level just like it is in the larger scheme of things with cryptocurrency and the DeFi industry as a whole.

Another key feature of how a DAO functions is the distribution of the decision making powers which are usually done proportionately to the amount of contribution each person makes to the DAO. This is a step up from the organisations of web2 as it not only goes away from the traditional corporate hierarchies but also gives each member a say over what moves should the organisation make next.

The most common example that people often use to explain the concept of a DAO is using Bitcoin.

• It has some pre-written set of rules applied on the blockchain.

• The shares (BTC) are shared amongst the community.

• Proof of Work (PoW) for the system (mining) is rewarded with token allocation.

• Has a lot of evangelists who proudly call themselves Bitcoin Maximalists.

What this could mean for the “corporate” world?

This intriguing concept could essentially bridge the gap between the standard employee and the freelancer by giving a person a proportionate say in decision making but also providing the freedom to be a free agent and not bound within a job. This means that the days when an employee is just a cog in the industrial machinery could be a thing of the past, and people will be able to contribute meaningfully as per their own skill sets and also have a say in the organisation.

On the employee side, this could be great for someone involved in creative or skill-based work because it allows them to “treat their careers as a jungle gym instead of a ladder”, as quoted by Sheryl Sandberg and Akshay BD.

On the organisational side, this could be great for getting work done by people interested in contributing to the project domains they’re proficient at and then having the community choose what’s best out of the options that come up. This will essentially help organisations bypass the headache of making people learn on the job, or working with someone who shouldn’t really be working in that position to directly reach the skilled people who have proof of work and in turn reward them with proof of stake as well.

Looking at the Future

Though the future of DAOs and their potential use cases are so many that they simply cannot be predicted with accuracy, here are some of the arenas in which people could organise themselves in a decentralised organisation.

• We could potentially have products being built in a “company” with a network of people working all around the world without even knowing each other. This has and could continue to bring the world closer, and quadruple the speed of creating communities with a specific goal and rules.

• We could also see certain communities create DAOs for themselves. Investor DAOs, Creator DAOs, Comedian DAOs, or basically any other domain you can think of. Since the eligibility to enter is not that high, we could have people from all around the world connect, establish certain guidelines and collaborate. The LAO is one great example of an Investor DAO.

• Protocol DAOs are another example that we already see around us. Protocols like AAVE and Compound let their members contribute and distribute rewards on the basis and quality of their contribution.

These are some of the examples that we see and can think about realistically happening in the future. But as we’ve seen in the past, these innovations tend to take turns that cannot be predicted linearly and hence, it should make us even more excited and curious about what turn this revolution could take.

Now, here’s something to think about

There are myriad companies in the world trying to thrive and make profits, but in that ocean of organisations, it is obvious that there are a few outliers, a few organisations, mostly spearheaded by few special individuals that pose to change the world for the better once and all. These companies, their products and the innovators behind them could come about because they had the freedom to operate on their terms and give the community what it needed but didn’t know how to get.

And that is what in my opinion, DAOs involved in innovation and creating a product will have to compete with. Ideas are executed by individuals and propagated by organisations, and in cases when the idea would be a little too crazy to be propagated by the group at that moment, it may end up failing without even being tried and tested. This would be even more exaggerated in the web3 scenario because every idea that’s floating around at the moment is a crazy one, and a lot of brilliant individuals have visions that not everyone will get.

If Steve Jobs wanted his Mac to say Hello, he made sure his Mac said Hello. If Elon Musk wants his Tesla to be able to dance, he’ll make sure his Tesla is able to dance. These examples might seem ludicrous and overboard, but they’re a key part of what makes these outliers great. Their audacity to aim a shot the community would think is impossible eventually leapfrogs the speed of innovation and powers the world ahead.

How can this be done when working in a flat organisational structure, is a question I don’t know the answer to. The web3 revolution has shown us how big of a role culture and community can play in building great products and their distribution, and that is where decentralised organisations will always thrive. But the creative and decision making power in the hands of the visionary that the traditional hierarchy enables is something that will need to be worked around.

While coming up with this blog initially, I was worried about this potential problem and didn't know how to deal with it. However, reading Packy McCormick’s amazing blog on DAOs helped me with how to think about the future of this idea and its potential. One of the lines he used was,

“DAOs don’t need to be better yet, just novel”

and that’s exactly what they are at the moment. Novel.

A lot of smart people involved in this space are working day in and day out building the future of how we will work in the future, and there are a lot of reasons to be optimistic that they will figure it out. The future of DAOs is uncertain for sure, but with an infinite upside.

If you want to learn more about DAOs, here’s a list of some very helpful resources I used while writing this.

• Packy McCormick’s The Dao of DAOs

• Linda Xie’s Beginner’s guide to Daos

• Louis Grx’s blog

• Kash Dhanda’s Twitter

• Ethereum.org’s blog on DAOs

• Superpumped’s podcast on DAOs with Jack Du Rose

Also, you can follow me here and on my Twitter for more content around crypto, life and the future.

Thank you for reading. Hope this helped :)