A Revolution From the Basement of a Casino
The last two weeks have been filled with the catastrophic fallout from yet another crypto bank going under. We've been marveling at the insane greed and malicious ineptitude from a group of degens who managed to dupe millions into giving them billions through a centralized exchange – an exchange they then tanked.
To get through this, we have to take a step back and look at the big picture.
“It’s like trying to start a revolution from the basement of a casino,” said our co-founder, Eric Mack, in a frustrated Discord rant. Being associated with scams because of the labels 'crypto' and web3' ... all while we try to profoundly improve the foundations of media ... it's exhausting. FTX pooped in the crypto pool and now we all have to get out and wait until the contamination is cleared.
Most pertinent at this moment for JournoDAO is our ability to become watchdogs of the media and how they cover this story. We’re already seeing a wide range of diversity in coverage on such an event. From the straightforward and fairly accurate reporting on Axios, to the softball reputation laundering that the NYT produced over the weekend, to the Wall Street Journal’s fairly accurate coverage of the series of events that brought us here.
And while the culmination of this event was tracked in real time on Twitter by analysts monitoring the blockchain, we are also entering a time where many people feel Twitter is no longer reputable, reliable, stable or even safe. To say it’s been a tumultuous few weeks since we last chatted is a drastic understatement.
All of that said, if you’d like to participate in such conversations or help our data analysts keep track of all the wild chaos happening on-chain as the ripples from the FTX collapse impact the entire ecosystem, please join our Discord.
The TL;DR
Conversations and Collabs
Yours truly, Crystal, was invited to a BanklessDAO Legal Guild podcast where we took a deep dive into web3, journalism and censorship. Topics that get me all fired up, so it was an absolute blast to do and I’m so grateful to Mike Rabinovici and the Legal Guild crew for bringing this to life. And a special shout out to the podcast wizard, Eureka John for producing it! Listen to the episode here!
Our very own Clinamenic hopped into the DAOLens community and recorded a podcast episode about creating a healthier media landscape through web3. The recording will be out soon— stay tuned!
And don’t forget our Town Halls! They’ve been packed with good stuff the last few weeks as we’re exploring lots of opportunities for growth in our ecosystem. Listen to November 2nd’s Town Hall here. And check out November 9th’s Town Hall here.
Given the state of the Twitters, the unreliable and insecure nature of the platform now and the exodus of users to Mastodon, we’ve decided to suspend Spaces for now. We will be producing a monthly podcast and are in the pre-production phases of bringing that to life. Our Town Halls will be the main vehicle for public conversations and connection until we find another outlet where people are gathering for conversations.
That said, Keith is deep into the Mastodon ecosystem and exploring options for creating our own or collaborative servers to create a web3 friendly ecosystem for us all. Keith’s Twitter to Mastodon bridge is getting some serious use as Twitter implodes in real time and we're slowly migrating our community to Mastodon. Stay tuned for that fabulous little evolution.
Fund Raising and Grants
We're exploring fundraising options now so we can bring stability to the founding members as we embark on this lofty mission to repair the media industry.
We had a recent meeting with a smaller, more “human-centric” VC fund just to get feelers on our approach and how VCs feel about funding public goods in the Impact DAO space. We created a comprehensive fundraising wiki on Notion to use as a foundation for our fundraising and grant proposal strategies. And if you happen to be an Angel investor or just know someone who would love to fund this little DAO, please pass that along or reach out to us.
We’re also elevating our grant game. We'll be submitting multiple grants in the coming months to help grow our treasury, support our members and strengthen the journalism landscape through decentralization. And EltonJock is helping us swim through the weeds in combing through large lists of fundraising opportunities and adding additional research to the list.
Work on our Ocean Grant has commenced and we set up a bounty platform on Wonderverse. We’ll be releasing several small bounties to our community to help bring this to life, so please visit that link and join our server if you’d like to participate. Eric and Crystal will be leading the project, but will definitely need some helpers, so please reach out!
Around the Interwebs
Eric Mack is working hard on the writing front for Forbes and CNET at the moment. He is feverishly compiling a long-form story on the FTX debacle and we have an active thread in our server posting links and research about the entire saga.
— Michel Torres (@Micheltorres91) November 11, 2022
He also published this little gem this week on Forbes about the global population reaching 8 Billion (yikes!) and the implications for climate crisis and possible solutions to explore.
Onward and Upward!
Thanks so much for supporting our mission and please share this update on the Twitters and in your community! And if you haven’t already, please submit the form below and join our mission!
Please share this update with your community and apply to join our DAO using this link. We’d love to see you in the Discord!
And please don’t forget to gather that ETH and DON’T collect our Founders NFT!