RadicalxChange Foundation

Glen Weyl, RadicalxChange Foundation founder and political economist & social technologist at Microsoft Special Projects, and Puja Ohlhaver, strategist at Flashbots, discuss “soulbound tokens” and their implications for collaboration and social organization in a variety of spaces. Topics covered include: how Glen got involved in crypto, wrote a book, and came to co-write a paper with Vitalik Buterin  how Puja studied economics and got in touch with Glen in pursuit of a middle ground between left and right politics what soulbound NFTs are and how they work how Vitalik’s paper articulated how the concept of the soulbound token could advance decentralized collaboration in web3 how decentralized reputation can enable larger networks of coordination how identity can be understood through the lens of community participation how the name ‘soulbound token’ came about how these tokens could provide a technology for those who value scarcity but disdain speculation how identity-dedicated tokens could work on a technical level (including recovery) what is DeSoc and why is it important? how non-transferable tokens can improve DAO organization, including resolving issues with quadratic funding how identity-locked tokens can be protected from bots and AI abuse how these tokens could support community privacy and responsible information disclosure   Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021  Beefy Finance: https://beefy.finance/    Related Reading Decentralized Society: Finding Web3’s Soul (Weyl, Ohlhaver, and Buterin; 2022) https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4105763  Georg Simmel, German neo-Kantian who laid groundwork for antipositivism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Simmel  How Blockchains Can Help Create Little Democracies Everywhere https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-blockchains-can-help-create-little-democracies-everywhere/    Soulbound Tokens Vitalik on Soulbound tokens https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/01/26/soulbound.html TL;DR written by Glen https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/05/11/after-defi-desoc-finding-web-3s-soul/ Other write-ups https://nftnow.com/guides/soulbound-tokens-sbts-meet-the-tokens-that-may-change-your-life/ https://www.radicalxchange.org/concepts/soulbound-tokens/ https://fortune.com/2022/05/26/what-are-soulbound-tokens-web3-buterin/ https://thedefiant.io/vitalik-soulbound-tokens/   Projects Mentioned Ceramic https://ceramic.network/  Verifiable Credentials Data Model (w3) https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/#abstract  Optimism https://optimism.io/  Gitcoin https://gitcoin.co/  Glen Weyl Personal Website https://glenweyl.com/  Twitter (@glenweyl) https://twitter.com/glenweyl/    Puja Ohlhaver LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/puja-ohlhaver-b44b878  Twitter https://mobile.twitter.com/pujaohlhaver  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Glen Weyl

Founder and Political Economist

RadicalxChange FoundationMicrosoft Research

Puja Ohlhaver

Strategist

Flashbots

Glen Weyl, a political economist and social technologist, the coauthor of Radical Markets and a principal researcher at Microsoft, and Santiago Siri, the founder of Democracy Earth, discuss how blockchains can be used to create borderless democracies that can reach any citizen on earth and can be used not just by nation-states but in all kinds of communities such as the workplace, church or a social network like Facebook. We cover concepts such as quadratic finance and quadratic voting, and look at how forcing voters to have a budget for their votes changes voting behavior. We also dive into what needs to be put in place for blockchain-based voting systems to work, why identity solutions are crucial but also so hard to get right, and how we can prevent token-based governance systems from becoming plutocracies. Plus, we surmise that blockchain-based governance might be the 21st century political experiment and that someday, we may all be citizens of multiple communities. Thank you to our sponsors! CipherTrace: http://ciphertrace.com/unchained Microsoft: https://twitter.com/MSFTBlockchain and https://aka.ms/unchained Episode links: Democracy Earth:  https://www.democracy.earth Santiago Siri: https://twitter.com/santisiri Radical Xchange: https://twitter.com/RadxChange Glen Weyl: https://twitter.com/glenweyl Radical Xchange conference in March: radicalxchange.org Radical Markets: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11222.html Democracy Earth white paper: https://www.dropbox.com/s/sifogl4zimwkkei/Democracy%20Earth%20-%20Social%20Smart%20Contract%20-%20Paper%20v0.2.pdf?dl=0 Democracy Earth cofounder Pia Mancini on early work with digital democracy: https://www.ted.com/talks/pia_mancini_how_to_upgrade_democracy_for_the_internet_era?language=en Santi on how blockchains could revolutionize democracy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UajbQTHnTfM Wired article on Democracy Earth: https://www.wired.com/story/santiago-siri-radical-plan-for-blockchain-voting/ CoinDesk feature on Glen Weyl: https://www.coindesk.com/coindesk-most-influential-blockchain-2018-glen-weyl Vitalik Buterin blog post on Radical Markets: https://vitalik.ca/general/2018/04/20/radical_markets.html Paper by Vitalik, Zoe Hitzig and Glen on quadratic financing: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3243656 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Glen Weyl

Founder and Political Economist

RadicalxChange FoundationMicrosoft Research

Santiago Siri

Co-Founder

Proof of HumanityDemocracy Earth