tl;dr The Bankless vision of billions experiencing financial independence is big, big enough to rally much of the broader Crypto community. Now is the time to ensure we continue to be inclusive of non-Ethereum ecosystem decentralized projects. The Bankless DAO can accomplish this through specific incentives, positions focusing on outreach, and encoding these goals into foundational documents.
Our community is removing long-standing obstacles in the path of financial independence. This theme has broad appeal and can positively impact the lives of billions of people. Maintaining a space that is inclusive for all who resonate with this theme regardless of preferred blockchain is important in achieving impact at this scale. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other blockchains can all be tools for people on this path and our community should continue to leave space for people to join us without having to choose sides.
This goal should be in our thoughts at the start of the Bankless DAO. The Bankless community has Bitcoin and Ethereum inclusion in its DNA. David Hoffman, a Bankless founder, also hosts the POV Crypto Podcast with Christian Keroles. This podcast is about breaking down the echo chambers and is an important connection point between the Bitcoin and Ethereum communities. Ethereum itself was born out of the Bitcoin community.
Bankless is uniquely poised to create additional bridges across the Ethereum-Bitcoin cultural divide by creating more connections with people in the Bitcoin space who are likely to be natural allies. An example of one potential advocate on the Bitcoin defi side is Muneeb Ali (@muneeb). Muneeb is the CEO of Hiro and the founder of Stacks. He regularly publishes encouragement to consider Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems as symbiotes. Full disclosure: I have STX in my bags. I hesitate to bring up Muneeb because of this but he and Stacks have so much overlap with our vision. I believe the Stacks community is an outlier within the broader Bitcoin community because it is characterized by concavity, to use Vitalik’s convex vs. concave dispositions concept, and it has an Etherean feel. There is little room for maximalism in a community dedicated to building out an infrastructure that does not yet exist.
Bankless DAO will create the future Crypto narrative. In a space that can seem dominated by maxi posturing, we can meme new narratives into existence. Our goals are bigger than which blockchain wins, so let’s rise above this with our meme game and rally unlikely allies around our cause. DAO incentives matter in this regard.
To help get a conversation started around real action items we could take, here are some examples of basic starting points we could pursue:
- Encode this goal in foundational documents (awesome to see Bitcoin mentioned in the proposed constitution).
- Create positions within the DAO to focus on outreach and counter the natural tendency to be Ethereum heavy in our focus.
- Feature non-Ethereum blockchain defi leaders like @muneeb and others on Bankless media.
- Incentivize memes which push the big vision narrative described above.
- Incentivize the discovery and pursuit of shared goals with communities and projects not well represented in the Bankless DAO.
In conclusion, the Bankless founders have done a fantastic job at creating a blockchain inclusive space for this community to form. The Bankless DAO should continue championing this inclusion by taking deliberate action early. The fast-paced development in Ethereum defi will obviously be a major part of Bankless DAO’s mission. Let’s also guard the space for other developing defi projects to come along with us.