Hello everyone.
Welcome back Sandow podcast number 50.
We have officially reached 50 episodes of the Sandow podcast and we've been at this
about about five, five and a half months, five months.
So that's a lot of episodes.
And mostly because this the content keep coming kept coming for the sandboxed out and that
nothing has made me happier.
There's been highs and lows been a little bit of a rocky road, but only because the
Dow was fresh.
We're all learning we're all iterating and trying to mesh together to figure out what
is this this thing, this grand experiment that we have that we have started down.
The scope of today's talk is a reaction video.
It's a reaction video with some commentary, and it's mostly reaction video to the first
episode that was that was published from digging in the sand with Bobby Kunta.
And it was awesome.
It was so good.
So I am very happy spoiler alert where it ended in terms of the transparency that it
brought to the table, hence the reaction with the transparency nice little green checkmark
and a thumbnail.
So let's get to the disclaimer.
I do not represent the sandbox game or the sandboxed out foundation.
I'm not your financial legal advisor and nothing I say is to be taken as financial or legal
advice.
When we say the word SIP talking about sandbox improvement proposals, when I say Dow, I'm
talking about decentralized autonomous organization.
When I say the word SanFam talking about the sandbox community, those who participate in
the people, product and purpose of the ecosystem.
That ecosystem looks a little bit like this or into my opinion and how I put together
the different sectors of the people, everything from everyone from gamers to the sandbox team,
the product, everything from the game client to the Dow and the purpose, not just the original
white paper set off in 2020 about play, create own government and earn, but also the things
that are talked about by the co-founders Sebastian Bourget and Arthur Madrid and also Yetsoo,
chairman of Animoca Brands, where they talk about the sandbox becoming the cultural capital
of the metaverse and empowering creators.
All that together equals a thriving and vibrant ecosystem that we all talk about in the sandbox.
This episode is about the sandbox team and about the Dow specifically about a podcast
episode for the scoreboard and checkbook.
They haven't moved mostly because the sandbox Dow admin team is hard at work making sure
the delegation starts off that hitch.
I just finished, I just finished interviewing 10 of the 12 delegates.
So you can check all the previous episodes right up to episode podcast 50 where we, the
remaining two Mo and Roxy Miguel will, as soon as I'm able to schedule with them, I'll
finish those two delegate introductions.
I'm Lancer, your podcast host for the Sandow podcast, an unofficial podcast, not an official
one.
And I'm also president of MetaWorlds where we have two experiences.
One is Floor Droppers, which is currently in Alpha season four at zero zero.
And the second one is a game maker fund 2023 called Lava Defense.
How do we get here?
Why is this podcast episode happening?
May 28th, things were announced.
The Dow was announced via medium article, SIPs one, two, and three became available to vote.
And then it kicked off a series of AMAs and SIPs that were voted on and ultimately passed.
Many AMAs, many different town halls that happened along the way and all culminating
in the Dow admin team announcing the new communications manager, Kunta on October 14th.
And then November 17th, about a month later, the first Digging in the Sand podcast episode
was released.
It was a dual both discussion with Cyril, the Dow administrator, and also survey results.
It was a bombshell of an episode.
It was so good in terms of revealing and disclosing the inner workings of Sandbox Dow.
So the Sandbox official podcast launched the same time as Bobby Kunta was brought on.
And as you can see, those first couple of videos were introducing Bobby Kunta.
I've done a couple podcast episodes on that already.
And you can check out episode 32 in order to see my reaction to...
Here we go.
Episode 32 was my reaction to Bobby Kunta's appointment and a very big, big sigh of relief,
breath of fresh air.
So that official podcast was launched at the same time.
And some things that preceded this episode, his first episode, was some things I highlighted.
The Dow Medium article that talked about progressive decentralization, SIPs, and the TSB Dow.
It was launched here as a medium article.
And I did an extensive podcast on this one.
And let's just say, up until this point, sentiment was not overly positive about the transparency,
the perception of the Sandbox Dow and the transparency.
And I did not mince my words at all when it came to this sort of stuff.
I was sometimes a bit harsh and my words reflected that.
Overall, I mean, we came a long way from episode one, talking to the community, different voices
in the community, where we spoke to Hoddle Hill and Andy Ritchie and the Vision X and
Crafter, some really, really well-known pickaxe master, really well-known names in the Sand
Fam community, and we talked about what we thought about the Sandbox Dow.
Most people were just confused.
What was a Dow to begin with?
What are we supposed to be doing in this Dow?
How do we participate?
And that persisted for quite a while as we were trying to grapple with this new entity
that most of us didn't even know what it was until May 28th.
And so that was me right there.
Episode number one, back on June 16th.
So about a couple weeks after the Sandbox Dow release, I started the podcast to try
and make sense of what the Dow was and what we were supposed to do.
And since then, we're now at 50 episodes on November 23rd, and transparency was tough
to come by.
And this podcast episode, episode number one of the official podcast, did wonders, did
so much in helping to bridge the gap that there was.
And just to give you an idea of how much I did not mince my words, let's just set the
stage for what is now.
The circumstances were a bit different back then, didn't have all the answers that I was
looking for.
And so here's what I thought, even up until recently.
Yeah, so here's setting the stage.
Freeds, that said, we heard the community's feedback and understand the concerns that
the current council members are not necessarily from, quote unquote, SanFam, creators or players
of the sandbox game, but reflect more institutional players.
And my note here was that in the beginning of the paragraph, it said, we've heard the
community's feedback.
And I wondered, where does the Dow admin team publish the feedback it acts upon?
I haven't seen that.
So the Dow admin team has received a lot of significant impact from the community.
And it'll be really helpful to see some communication from the Dow admin team on what feedback it's
implemented.
So there's questions there from that article from October 7th of where is that feedback?
The Dow admin team received a lot of feedback.
There's a whole thing you can watch episode 33.
And I was a little bit harsh because at that point I was just frustrated.
I was frustrated at what I wasn't feeling like questions were being answered and transparency
being given.
Then came episode 31, the birth of the sandbox Dow, and that was a major excavation, let's
call it, of what I thought was going on.
I did all sorts of revealing maps and connections and things that I was trying to figure out
what was going on and was important to me and important to others.
I won't speak for others, but from what I've been hearing of the other community, this
was an important thing to figure out.
Well, I'll play a couple clips from this episode and trying to figure out what is going on.
What are the connections?
Who are the players?
How do they relate to each other?
Not everything has been answered at this point, but quite a bit has been answered.
So the main part comes after doing the relationship map, whether or not the judging of a conspiracy
is happening.
If you're Web3 and you probably know what I'm talking about, like the secret cabal,
the Illuminati, all these things, and whether or not that was happening in the sandbox,
because at the time we didn't really have much information about how things were happening.
So I had to figure it out myself, as did others, and a lot of frustration had been built in
the meantime.
So here's a section of that part of episode 31.
So if you looked at this situation, you'd be forgiven if you thought that some weird,
funky, suspicious things are going on.
But on the balance of things, when I sat down and started listing out, what was the balance
of judging whether or not a conspiracy is afoot here?
I don't think so.
I don't think that's what's happening.
So even then, and this was not that long ago, October 21, episode 34, even then, when I
was weighing the balance of, is there a conspiracy going on?
Is funky things happening?
Or is this something that reasonable people would do?
And then I judged it weighed heavier that there are reasonable things happening.
But what you couldn't ignore was the downsides and some of the things that we felt was not
happening in line with transparency and the sort of things that we would expect of a DAO
that is community centered.
So the next part was explaining and the position of those who believe there was a conspiracy,
whether or not there was, and I didn't believe there was, but it was right to give credit
and the devil its due.
So here's one of the top two things that I listed as to on the balance of things was
something bad happening.
And things that I've heard the community say.
A number one is there was no transparency in what happened.
All right.
The DAO just emerged out of nowhere.
I didn't even know what a DAO was until May 28th when it was suddenly announced through
AMA's and articles and it was just thrust upon everyone.
All right.
So there was no transparency and even in the AMA's there was.
So we went over that there were some AMA's on the DAO, the road to the DAO, but even
then it was still, it still wasn't clear what was happening, why people were involved, who
they were.
And it seemed, not just myself, I'm not the only one who said this, it seemed more like
a press tour.
And Sarah acknowledges this in episode one, which is so many reasons why I love that episode.
We're going to go through it as a reaction.
But just to set the stage, at the time it seemed like a press tour, seemed like a big
grand rollout to everyone except for the San Fam.
The people who were voting expected to participate.
And Sarah explains this.
And one of the many reasons why I love that episode.
So that was one thing, that one big, one big negative thing that was hanging since May
28th when the DAO was announced.
And here's the second thing.
The second thing is just as important as the first one.
And arguably, I hear more complaints and more people angry about this one than the first
one is that there was an excessive urgency to vote and rush everything into existence.
Alright, here's what I mean.
So I go into the details of what that perspective is and why people were so angry about that
excessive urgency.
Cyril talks about that as well here in this coming podcast.
So we're not going to get into those details.
We'll just get into, you can go back to episode 31, the timestamp is one hour and four minutes
in.
So that's kind of what we're talking about.
The groundswell of confusion, anger, frustration.
All of this was addressed in Digging in the Sand episode 1.
And that's why this episode that you're listening to right now is called Transparency Has Come.
A reaction to Sandell Podcast episode 1.
So that would be this one, this one right here.
Let's get into that.
And all the wonderful things.
I'm smiling as I could be listening to this podcast episode.
So that was the stage setting into it.
Me walking into that episode, all those things that I had podcasted on before.
Most of them were, most of the 50 episodes you're listening to right now, most of them
are interviews with SIPP authors.
Most of them are news updates.
Some of the later ones, starting about episode 30-ish, is when I start commenting on the
rules and the lack of transparency, what I perceived to be the lack of transparency.
But here we are, Digging in the Sand, published November 17th.
So really just four or five days ago?
Yeah, five days ago.
Bobby Kunta, the new communications manager, he does this Digging in the Sand episode 1
with Cyril and addresses the elephant in the room and tackles the tough issues head on.
I loved it.
Absolutely loved it.
Let's get into the reaction portion.
You ready?
Oh man, that's exciting.
All right, Sand Fam, what's up?
We're going to jump right into the fun with this one.
Welcome to episode 1 of the official Sandbox DAO podcast.
I'm your host, Bobby Kunta.
We'll be Digging in the Sand every week, so this is just the start.
Let's address the elephant.
That's cool.
Digging in the Sand every week.
Awesome.
NPC Avatar in the room first.
This is indeed a recorded closed format episode.
They certainly won't all be like this.
I know folks want more direct access to the DAO's admin team, including myself, but we've
got a lot of spicy topics to work through.
So when he first said that, like, this is a closed format, I really appreciated that
he came out and said that, and truth be told, I was rolling my eyes like, oh no, not another
press tour release.
Please Bobby, can we please address the tough issues?
And then the next sentence he says, we got to be like this.
It certainly won't all be like this.
I know folks want more direct access to the DAO's admin team, including myself, but we've
got a lot of spicy topics to work through.
We have a lot of spicy topics to work through.
And I'm like, hmm, okay.
Okay, let's see where this goes.
Bobby and I had spoken before, and we have had our own discussions between ourselves
about what I really wanted to see and what was possible.
And so we weren't strangers to each other talking through tough topics.
And now here he is about to go into an episode where he's saying up front, this is going
to be spicy.
So we want it to be closed because we just, as he says,
And for nothing else other than just the sake of time for this podcast, we just can't take
more questions this week.
Okay, and at that point, I'm like, all right, all right, let's give this a chance.
Let's give this a chance.
That's mostly all we're going to be doing anyways, is addressing questions.
So this episode is going to introduce myself a little bit, Sarah a little bit.
We're going to review what the DAO's mission is.
We're going to review also the real heart of this is the results from our recent community
poll.
We had 371 participants.
371 participants?
That's a good, good data set.
I would love to get my hands on that original data file so I can do things myself.
But I was able to, because he showed things, I was able to start my own kind of data on
that.
That'll be for another episode.
But this one is just strictly reaction to the transparency portion of episode one.
Now, some of them were people just trying to farm that sand reward there, but we'll
get into that.
We'll look at the raw results.
I love that he calls this out.
I do.
I really do.
Together, we'll also look at a summary of it.
And we'll start addressing some questions fielded from the community.
Surprisingly, we got quite a few of them.
I think maybe people feel like they got their thoughts out in that poll because there was
a lot of answers in there.
Boy, did they ever.
If you go to this episode one and then you go to the results portion, you'll see he
shows, he screen shares the actual results and it is harsh.
It is so harsh.
And I appreciated that.
I knew we were onto something big when he started showing that in terms of Bobby being
transparent and following through with what he said when he came through in the first
episode or his introduction video.
And I said earlier that was episode 32 where I do a reaction to his announcement.
And he said, I'm going to be I'm going to be more transparent.
I'm going to bring out that stuff.
I'm going to be building relationships and repairing in some cases.
There's some some really thoughtful ones that we'll go over together.
So future episodes of this podcast before we even get to introducing ourselves, I want
to let you guys even know what the heck this is all about.
Why are we doing?
We're going to be doing sand every week.
That's just it's not all going to be like us.
Cyril and I are just me running through recorded questions.
We want to have more open format AMA's.
We're going to have conversational co-hosted topics.
These can be topics that you guys, the SanFam community raise as things that you want to
hear us discussing.
We can have panel discussions.
I know folks want to have more access to the advisory board, the special counsel, maybe
bring in some.
Yes, absolutely.
Have the conversations that people want to hear.
There's going to be more interviews with various ecosystem stakeholders, including those folks,
maybe some of our new delegates, some ambassadors.
You know, we're just rolling out delegation.
We're going to talk quick about the delegation and the new submission guideline here today
as well.
We've got lots to get through.
So we're just going to get right into it.
You know, this is going to be your official home for sandbox Dow updates.
We'll keep it all as succinct, informative and transparent as possible.
We are all in this together.
You know, this is a grand experiment of progressive decentralization.
So if you're listening this far in, you're like three minutes into my rambling already.
You know, you probably share a common goal here.
That's okay.
This rambling is setting an important stage and already I can tell this episode is going
to be different than what I've seen in the past.
And I know the Dow admin team has been hard at work.
I submitted SIPs myself so I know they've been engaging.
There just wasn't that transparency that I was looking for to what in the world's going
on.
And this episode delivered on that.
So what I'm going to be doing is this first portion here talks about introductions and
then and then later on, Kunta talks about the original vision or the original vision
with zero.
Then they get into the SIP guidelines, which we're not going to go over this episode, nor
we're going to go over the poll survey results that I'll probably do another episode on.
But then we're going to fast forward to the conversation with Cyril and really stick to
the transparency piece of this of this episode.
Here I'm trying to build a long term sustain system for everybody.
So now it's up to all of us to build that foundation of trust and communication soon.
We're going to be welcoming anticipation.
So we're excited for the months and years ahead.
This is really this is just the start.
So let's just jump back into this before we get to the community poll and the questions.
I want to take a few minutes to chat with my friend, colleague, fellow admin manager
zero.
Hey, Bobby, how's it going?
Happy to be here.
Yeah, I've been looking for quite some time for this first episode, to be honest.
So I'm very excited about shooting this first episode together.
I guess a few words about myself.
So I'm zero.
I've been working for the last 16, 17 years.
I've started my engineer at heart in telecommunication and electronics in general.
So nothing really destined me to working in Dow or most of the previous job.
I got to be honest and already you can tell if you've seen the AMA's before this is different
serial and his previous podcasts with other podcast hosts outside of the sandbox network
like NFC Lisbon and others that he he podcasted with.
You could you could tell that he was it seemed like he was more in advertising the Dow mode.
He was talking about what the why the Dow came to be.
But it was always from a perspective of like, like more of a public relations thing, not
really something that a SanFam person needed to hear, not the the inner workings for why
is it here in SanFam now with these people?
He didn't really go into that portion more of progressive decentralization and kind of
the buzzwords that you hear.
But this episode right now, he's already talking about himself relative to sandbox ecosystem.
And I'm already loving it.
I'm already learning things about him.
I knew he was an engineer, but you know, kind of how it weaves together into his his present
day circumstances that he's you're already starting to see that happen right here.
I've been 10 years in banking.
I was HSBC.
I was a product manager and then I had a product management team.
So you're not really building apps for the clients and you know, the staff as well.
And then I moved over to the insurance industry, so seeing financial services, I worked for
IOS partner for four years.
I was an exec there and I constructed and headed up their product team as well.
Start doubling in crypto as a hobby first, like four years ago.
Cool.
That told me exactly what I needed to know.
First off, how long have you been in crypto?
Zero.
So four years.
Okay.
Cool.
And I've done some pro bono works for a collective of freelance called fleet and the fleet collective.
Oh, right, right, right.
Fleet collective.
So in my in my episode 31 was 31 that the birth of the sandbox style.
Yeah, 31.
Yeah, birth the sandbox.
I did a relationship map and it was it was here and then I revealed this during the course
of the episode.
And I think I don't think I got all of it right.
I asked the admin team to help me out a little bit where I got it wrong.
They weren't able to answer all the questions I needed in time for the episode.
So I think I misrepresented the or miscalculated the the role that fleet collective had in
it.
I wasn't really sure.
And I noted that that I wasn't exactly sure their role.
And so Cartan group, I did know their role.
I did find their connection to eight point Dow.
I'm pretty sure I got this portion right with the Maples group and Travers Thorbell Berga
and ICSL and IPAL IP and a I'm pretty sure I got them right.
But I wasn't quite sure about fleet collective.
So here he talks about how his how he did work for fleet collective.
I didn't know that actually.
So I think I got that portion wrong.
I look forward to updating it so that it is accurate in the future.
And then, you know, then I can feel satisfied that I know who the players are and how they
work together.
Because in our world, the SIP author world and the business world of San Fam, we need
to know who we're doing business with when you know how these players come together.
Because when I write SIPs and I'm writing about, you know, revenue options, I have some
of the top consulting firms in the world waiting for partnerships on these SIPs if they get
approved.
And there's a lot more that needs to know than just a DAO admin team.
There's got to be more discovery there in order for a relationship to exist in the way
that I need it to to be successful for the SIP that I'm authoring.
And I'm not the only one who's in that position where we we need to know who we're doing business
with.
We need to KYC in reverse, KYB in reverse.
And that's just necessary for some of these these complex and impactful SIPs to be successful.
And so that wasn't known.
And I had to spend, you know, six, 72 hours Google searching to figure it out.
And I still got it wrong.
But I was able to get at least some of it right.
And so hearing Cyril here talk about his background and the connections that to that episode that
I did.
And it was very helpful for me to try and to take a step back to say, okay, okay, I
think I got some of it wrong.
I want to fix it.
But also I can kind of unwind my own frustrations of having to figure this out myself instead
of it being presented to me as hey, here is what the DAO is made of.
What I've done for them is working on DAO and paying attention to the subject of progressive
decentralization.
Then what happened?
I got fed up with my job and decided to...
I love that.
He got fed up with his job.
Such, such good.
This is a different Cyril.
I don't mean that in a negative way.
It's just here he's he's conversing.
He's just talking.
He's discussing.
He's he's being our DAO admin.
He's not being the DAO admin to the external world, you know, talking on a stage.
He's our DAO admin right now.
I can feel that.
I can feel that he's talking to me.
It's cool, man.
It's so cool.
We start my own company, Arsakio, which is the admin of this DAO that we all love.
And basically, a specialized...
And we do love this.
I love this DAO.
...myself into, you know, building, designing and then administering DAO from the ground
up.
And then we have a DAO that we brought into the sandbox like a year and a half ago to
start as a head of decentralization to start working on the principles.
A year and a half ago.
All right.
So I guess that one, I judge that one.
Okay.
...you know, what a DAO could be, right?
So the DAO has been announced in end of May this year.
It's already, you know, a couple of months old already.
It feels like two years ago, but this is really a DAO.
And it almost, it kind of was when you hear later on how early he was brought into this.
...that is still in his infancy.
And my role really there is to interact with the sandbox and the liaison, if you want,
with the sandbox leadership team and the liaison with the council.
I'm also making sure the systems, you know, are running and we've got, you know, lights
on and grease and everything is running well and everybody is equipped to do their job
properly.
So...
That's not the first time he's explained what his job is, but it's the first time he's explained
it in a way that spoke to a SanFam DAO voter and a DAO member.
He's there to keep the lights on.
He's there to make sure that machine is well oiled, that all the parts are functioning,
the tech stack, the staff, to make sure that the ecosystem of the DAO is well run.
And I'm going to be doing an ecosystem of the DAO episode in the future, talking about
the inner mechanisms of how does the DAO go from step to step?
How do all of the different SanFam ecosystem people interact?
I'm so looking forward to that one.
It's going to be...
I'm going to love that.
I'm looking forward to it.
A few more episodes we have to do before I get to that though.
I'm really happy to be there and having the chance to answer most of the community's concerns
to the best of my abilities with you today, Bobby.
Yeah, excellent.
Yeah, thanks for sharing a little bit of your background there, Cyril.
I know people are eager and interested to get to know who's working on the admin team
here.
So the more chances we get to get out in front of people, the better.
So, I mean, if you're listening to this and you're interested in who I am, you're probably
watching this on YouTube.
And we are.
But Kunta already spoke to us as our communication manager in the introduction.
And in episode...
I think I mentioned this one earlier too.
In episode 32, right?
In episode 32, I commended Kunta for how open he was from the get-go in his introductory
video.
So the first video we posted is me introducing myself.
So you can go get that whole six minute ramble there.
But for a recap, I'll let folks know, I've been building communities actively for about
30 years now since 1995.
And if you'd like to hear his story and how he got to there, his DMs are open.
And he communicates with...
I mean, he's communication manager, but he really communicates.
And you can always hear his background.
And I won't spoil it, except for what he's revealed.
And it's really cool.
Very, very cool.
I started throwing punk rock shows and raves under bridges and warehouses in and around
New York City.
And really ever since then, it's been about bringing people together around some kind
of common causes or feelings or products.
And so I've worked in a lot of different industries across those decades.
But I've been in gaming and crypto for the last five years.
I was a sandbox ambassador for four years, a landholder, sandstaker, really bullish,
obviously, on all things Web3, especially metaverse and gaming.
I'm still like an old school gamer.
I love the Nintendo NES, the Super NES.
Honestly, we're talking games, even just playing chess, I share some tabletop games, even stuff
like that.
So a bit more old school, more retro.
But I love seeing those things like this, like a pixelated metaverse come to life where
there can be monetization and community building.
So I'm bullish on all things sandbox.
And I think that's pretty apparent from everything I've said about the sandbox.
So this is really cool to be here and sitting with Serral building the DAO together with
the folks that are all out there listening to this.
So if you know where to find me, I'm happy to meet with community members one to one,
too.
That's really what my role at the DAO is.
And he does.
We're kind of like traffic managers of some kind.
We have different areas of towards these common goals.
We kind of all have our hands in each of the two different degrees.
My focus is, you know, the social media community engagements and all things communications are.
So that's a bit about my background, what it is that I'm doing at the DAO.
You know, I think from here, what we want to discuss a bit is just what's the vision
that the sandbox originally had.
So here's that second portion.
The what's the original vision?
And what is the mission of the DAO?
So here we start getting into the meat of the transparency piece.
For the DAO, what the mission of the DAO is and then what the mission of Digging in the
Sand podcast is going to be just to kind of set the tone for the rest of this conversation
as well as just the rest of the series.
And so people know.
Yeah, thanks, Bobby.
I really love what you say about retro gaming as well.
It's a perfect segue with the sandbox, right?
The pixelated world about a vision, right?
Why does sandbox on this really?
Like if you listen to what Serral has been saying, and I've been lucky enough to see
him performing on stage, right?
I think he's referring to NSC Lisbon there.
The vision from the beginning of the sandbox was to empower the community, right?
It was huge.
So we talked about that in the ecosystem in the very beginning, how Sev is frequently
talking about empower creators and he wants the sandbox to be the cultural capital of
the metaverse.
User generated content from the start.
First of all, he started as let's build a video game where people we give people the
tools so they can be their own version of the video game, right?
So it was first of all a video game, then how we can transfer that to through game makers
of OXEDD that wasn't called that way at the time.
How we can give people the power to actually create their own experiences and be the master
of their own universe because getting into the video game industry is super hard.
Like you really have to work your way up and be able to actually work in the passion project
that you love.
And we all love video games, right?
But we know it's really hard to get into that.
So I think the original vision for that was to let's make it more accessible.
Let's make sure everybody gets a chance at creating video games.
So it really felt like the natural transition from that particular state was more empowerment
to the community.
And that's why I think the idea of the DAO came to fruition by empowering community
members to take participation into decision making more and more.
We're gradually transitioning from a regular company to something where now the community
has a bit more say, right?
Like we've seen it with a couple of SIPs.
We've seen it with this whole ambition of putting this DAO forward.
And really the DAO's mission now complement the sandbox mission by being an extension
and the idea of the betterment of the metaverse ecosystem by including more and more the community
in the decision making process.
So here is where now granted five days ago, I told you what the buildup was to all this,
the frustration, the anger, the resentment that the community felt that I felt.
And so I'm listening to Cyril talk about how the community is going to be involved.
And I'm sitting here thinking, have we been though?
We've been somewhat, but not to the extent that I would qualify that whole statement
of what you just said.
So this was me six days ago as I was listening to this and taking notes and preparing to
do a reaction video.
I already felt like he's talking to us.
Like I feel like this is the Cyril that this is the real Cyril, the Cyril that is SanFam's
DAO administrator.
And so I'm already kind of loosening up and there I think, man, but can we do more of
that please instead of feeling like the sandbox team is running the show, the sandbox DAO
team is running the DAO and not the voters.
So that's what I was thinking at that exact moment listening to this.
And my vision, excuse me, my perspective quickly gets turned around with the rest of this episode.
Yeah, excellent.
I think the formal mission of the DAO is, let me say, I'm going to read this one.
The sandbox DAO exists to put the future of the metaverse in the hands of the sandbox
game community fostering collaboration, creativity and economic opportunity.
So I think we're pulling it off pretty well so far.
It's just a matter of keeping the people engaged.
And I agree.
I think we are pulling it off really well so far.
There's always room for improvement.
You can always find nitpicky things to get at someone or throw a spear or whatever.
But ultimately, yes, that is happening.
And Sandow podcast 49 that we just finished with the SIP 12, the sandbox academy in the
Philippines, they just educated 90 students on GameMaker and VoxEdit.
That was a fully funded SIP to do six, five workshops in the Philippines to create an
academy to teach students about the sandbox, the DAO, how to become GameMaker and VoxEdit
to succeed in the sandbox.
He just finished educating 90 people and he's only halfway through, halfway through the
four day event.
That right there is impact.
It's the DAO helping the sandbox ecosystem.
Take a look at that.
Go watch episode 49 with Mark Bagow, who is the founder of Sandbox Academy.
And now it's starting to go international with Saudi Arabia and India and Ecuador.
Take a look.
It's awesome.
I'm bored here and we're going to have more of a conversation about really what that means.
That's part of what the mission of the Digging in the Sand podcast is now to segue to that.
We want to be able to bring the community, the most accurate and up to date information
regarding administrative and just operational happenings from the core team.
Administrative and operational happenings of the core team.
And I think that that's where Sandow podcast and the official Sandbox podcast might be
able to differentiate themselves.
We don't know yet.
Kuta and I are still talking through it.
What overlap should there be?
What shouldn't there be?
And it starts to look like he's more focused internal to the admin team and giving us updates,
the transparency piece.
And I'm more about the external.
You know, the talking to the SIPP authors and talking to different community members.
He's going to do the same thing.
We're both going to talk to community members, but I'm going to be focused for more of an
outside point of view.
Looking in, you can call it a fact checker, but it's not quite that intense anymore.
I don't feel if we keep going down this route where he is unleashing the transparency of
the inner workings of the Dell, I have no doubt that I'm just going to be simply augmenting
that from the external point of view and we're all building together.
And addressing the most pressing community topics, the things that you guys are raising.
This show, Digging in the Sand, will serve as a place for informal conversation for the
community at large.
And I already feel the informal part.
And I really appreciate that, Kuta.
I really appreciate how you brought that to life with Serial here.
You know, eventually just bringing some folks up to have some that open content podcast.
We're really doing this to advance that DAO's ultimate mission of just empowering the community
to improve the greater Sandbox ecosystem.
So that's actually right there is a great...
Love it.
So right here we get into the SIP guidelines updates.
I do a whole episode on SIP guideline updates and the old process in May versus a new process
that was just established in October.
And again, that was a little bit of a...
There was a little bit of frustration there in my voice, although I kept it as positive
as I possibly could.
And I think I achieved that portion where there's still a lot of questions as to how
it's going to be implemented.
But then again, in this episode, Serial also addresses that.
So when I do part two of this and I cover the mechanics of the SIP guideline updates
that Serial talks about and the Pulse Survey results, then that'll be a complete circle.
But for now, I'm going to skip to the conversation with Serial and the port that unleashes the
transparency that I've been looking for and that so many others have been looking for
since May 28th when the DAO was announced.
So it all begins 3221, or it continues in 3221.
We've already learned a bit about Serial, but here in 3221, they start talking about
the decisions that were made up until this part.
And just get ready.
It is fabulous.
Superb.
All right, but yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, in the way we selected...
Cheers.
All right, but yeah, I just wanted to say, you know, in the way we selected those questions,
as you would realize, we didn't select the questions that we wanted.
We really selected the question that we saw.
And the questions they're talking about are the questions they posed and the type form,
the survey.
And the questions were like...
I don't recall all the questions right now.
Actually, we can just see here.
What interests you in participating in the DAO?
How would you describe yourself?
What kind of role do you feel best suits you?
And then they had like an open question of different results of what do you think?
In your own words, what are your chief concerns about the DAO?
In your own words, what most interests you about participating in the DAO?
How do you see the long-term success of the DAO?
And as he goes through this, as he's going through this, you can just see the blunt answers
people are giving.
I don't feel heard.
Who is this?
I don't feel like the advisory council or the special council or the advisory board
is representing the community.
I don't feel heard.
There's lack of transparency.
Are we really decentralized?
Like all of these, they go through.
And now they're going to talk about with Cyril, what the perspective was of the DAO admin
team, which is what was missing this whole time.
We did not know what the DAO team believed.
We saw articles, we saw PR, public relations, marketing buzzwords.
We didn't hear from our DAO admin team about what was happening.
This solved that.
And it solved it well.
So in my opinion, it solved it well.
So let's get into that.
All right, but yeah, I just wanted to say, in the way we selected those questions, as
you would realize, we didn't select the questions that we wanted.
We really selected the question that we saw were the most, the comments, I mean, were
the most prominent in all the feedback we've got.
So some of these are hard questions, to be honest, and we don't shy away from them.
So I just wanted to point this out that we did not sugarcoat it and really selected the
easy ones.
We really selected the one.
And it was obvious by this point in time that that's exactly what happened.
They selected the hard questions and they went over those hard questions during the
results portion of this video.
I skipped over that.
I'll do a separate podcast on that because I have my own thoughts that I wanted to expand
separate from transparency.
One that we thought was the most important for the community based on numbers alone.
That's it.
And so what we distilled this down to is ultimately the bullet pointed list that you see on your
screen here.
I feel heard special counsel and advisory board selection and what their roles exactly
are, how they're compensated.
Those are in question.
There's a perceived lack of transparency, people feeling rushed, like especially the
first few sips were rushed.
You know, there's this progressive decentralization that's taking place.
We want to refer people to that medium article, but you know, we've got to discuss what that
really means, you know, what the grand experiment of rolling out a Dow slowly over years really
looks like.
And some of it we're not sure.
We're making this up as we go.
You know, we're learning from other case studies and we're doing the best thing.
I can't believe he just said that.
That's so cool.
We're making this up as we go.
And they're not literally just making up everything as they go.
They are planning.
The Dow admin team is planning and putting a thoughtful approach into this.
So it's not just like willy nilly, let's just see what happens.
They are, they are being responsible and planning the, so as a fellow program manager myself,
I can appreciate that.
Impossible to advance things as we can using the best strategy.
So the transparency and decision making.
I mean, that's sharing those decisions with you in the best way possible.
Striking a balance between that, that transparency and efficiency is also just a question.
Like when, when and how that has to happen.
You know, we can't, it doesn't even make sense to tell everybody everything, but even in
Sarah's weekly reports, you know, you have a behind the scene screen.
That was so cool when he started doing those weekly reports, the biweekly reports.
Now he was sharing the SIPQ.
He shared his actions that he was on his workload.
That was awesome.
And I was really appreciative of him doing that.
He started that, I think a couple months ago.
He didn't do it every week.
He didn't do it all biweekly.
Sometimes he took some weeks off.
So that was, that was my, my one source of real transparency was that.
And it helped, but it didn't answer the question.
What was going on?
What were they, what, what was their thought process?
How did they get to there?
What, what are their intentions?
Because there was a lot of mistrust, at least for me, I didn't trust the Dow admin team
from what I saw.
It was frustrating for me and I was trying to say as positive as possible because I love
the sandbox.
I love the Dow and I wanted to trust the Dow admin team, but I felt like that trust kept
on getting eaten away over time with the lack of transparency.
But this restored that by the end of this episode.
A shot of what our, our notion looks like.
You know, what, what we're discussing on our Slack channel.
So we're as transparent as we can be here.
Staking, you know, just.
I would love access to the notion channel, by the way, if we're allowed to have that
publicly releasable.
I just did a podcast episode with the Bankless Dow now called Black Flag Dow.
They have a notion website that is so, so here's what it looks like.
They have an, a public transition plan for their Dow and it is awesome.
Where is this thing?
There's a transition council.
Where is the, there, this, they've got themselves integrated master schedule.
Showing all the stuff that they intend to carry out in order to, to transition in their
Dow from one, one branding to another.
And this is cool, man.
If Sandbox has something like this, please consider releasing it.
It would solve most of my problems.
It would solve most of my, my concerns.
And a lot of them are solved already just by this episode.
As long as we keep doing it, then we'll have achieved everything I need to know to be a
functioning member and really just focus on SIPs and building and podcasting news updates
instead of podcasting confusion.
Discussing what that really means, how people can use their state sand and what the future
of stating is for, for the Dow, what that means.
The Dow operating in a gray area landscape.
So unpacking just what, what people think by those kinds of comments.
So we're talking regulation.
We're talking the uncertainty of, of regulatory agencies and their view on crypto.
And if you Google search, you know, you'll find all sorts of stuff about that.
Not just the United States government, but many other governance governments and their
stance toward crypto and by extension, DOWs and blockchain entities.
So the, the, the Dow admin team is, is carefully been considering the risks and implications
of that.
So as we found out, as I found out through this podcast and another comments in the forums
that that that's a concern and they want to ensure that they are stepping carefully through
what is the reality of how the world views crypto and blockchain.
And I get that.
I can, I can understand that.
I just, I just want more transparency.
I just want more.
And, and this podcast episode did a long, long ways to get there.
You know, questioning the Dow's operations again, like Sarah led, you know, like Sarah
said, we're not shying away from these, these challenging topics.
So hopefully that's appreciated by the Sanfam out.
It is Kunta and Cyril and the rest of the Dow admin team.
I'm not going to dox their names.
I know that they've been talked about before openly, but for the rest of the Dow admin
team, Cyril, Kunta, this is appreciated so much.
Oh my gosh.
So much is this appreciated.
The language barrier problem is very real.
We've got to address it.
Low participation.
We discovered that when we did the Dow delegate interviews just this past week.
We had one from Korea, one from China, one from Indonesia.
The language barrier is, is a thing.
And Sendo podcast 50 or 47, I think with Erve.
They, he has a delegate that wants to focus on bridging the divide between East and West
and that language barrier is something that, that Erve talked about quite a bit.
So these are things are being addressed and they're being worked on by the Sanfam community.
And you know, we're, it's one of the reasons why we're, one of the things we're trying
to tackle as, as a Sanfam.
So patient rates, you know, not just in the forum, but SIP submissions and what that looks
like.
The idea that everybody just wants money.
We didn't just raise that concern.
The community raised that concern.
And that's been a Dow, any Dow you go to, you're probably to hear that.
I've been, I'm part of nine Dows at this point.
I'm active in about four or five of them.
And yeah, that's not just a Sanfam or a sandboxed out thing.
Of themselves, which is a great, you know, self-actualization.
So addressing that head on the ability for an author to revise their SIP and take feedback
into account.
So just what, just the SIP submission process and clarifying that for maximum efficiency
with the community.
So these are some of the things that we want to take the time to, to unpack here just in
the next, geez, we're not even going to get to them on this episode.
I want to say that we're going to have to like come back and do something like this
again.
And maybe just.
Good.
Thank you for recognizing that.
And I'm really glad you didn't rush the episode.
Cyril and I record another conversation here sometime in the near future, just talking
about these things so that you guys can hear our thought process, how it, how it's coming
out of our minds on this end.
And then that might be a part of the future steps towards the transparency that people
It absolutely is.
And I'm so willing.
I'm so grateful that y'all are willing to, to take those steps.
You Cyril and the rest of the team want.
All right.
So with that in mind, I mean, let's just, you know, give a minute to each of these people
not feeling hurt.
Yeah.
So I guess people not feeling heard.
I think he said the word hurt, but people not feeling heard.
That was the, that was the question and the, the short list that he showed toward the end
of the results.
That's one of the reasons I guess you're joining the team, Bobby.
Yes.
To be that liaison and acknowledge the fact that when we started this whole endeavor, to
be honest, I'm not a professional, you know, community manager.
Also it's kind of cool the way he pronounces liaison.
I think it's a French word to begin with.
So to hear a French speaker, which Cyril is a French speaker, to speak the word that,
you know, as an American, I grew up saying liaison and here is liaison.
That was cool.
I just, uh, this little stuff like that.
It's cool.
And I, um, I don't necessarily know how to address the community properly or do that
kind of thing.
So maybe that's this, where this perception came from in the first place.
Like, like, we don't know how to reach out to you guys.
Cause I've never been like facing a community of the thousands and being able to answer
to everything they say.
And I'm like, I'm not a silent builder type, but that's just me.
And I, and I know the rest of the team is probably of the same, um, uh, character.
All right.
Here was, if you, if you could judge like the pillars of this episode and what revealed
transparency, this is, this is the case in point right here.
I don't want to, I don't want to dismiss or downplay anything he just said that what he
just said, that sentence, I'm going to play it again.
All right.
So I want you to understand just how important it was that he said this.
Yeah.
So I guess that's one of the reasons I guess you're joining the team, Bobby, uh, to be
that liaison and acknowledge the fact that when we started this whole endeavor, to be
honest, I'm not a professional community manager and I, um, I don't necessarily know how to
address the community properly or do that kind of thing.
So maybe that's this, where this perception, um, came from in the first place.
Like, like we don't know how to reach out to you guys.
Cause I've never been like facing a community of the thousands and being able to answer
to everything they say.
I'm more like a silent builder type.
Yeah.
Phil, I wish you had said this at the beginning.
If you had said this at the beginning, I would not have been, I would not have been near
as intense and my questions on the forums.
I would not been near as intense.
In some of my podcasts, episodes and my remarks.
Dude, this makes complete sense.
Okay.
I didn't know any of this.
None of us knew any of this, that you were the silent builder type, that you didn't know
how to address the community, that you're not a professional community manager so why
would we expect you to be?
Like that is the transparency that I'm talking about when I say transparency.
The approach, the rationale, the mindset, the mind of our Tao administrator.
This is what turned it around for me.
And that if you look at the forums, I make an apology to the Tao admin team.
And let's I'm going to find that is I apologize to Tao admin team after watching this episode
in full.
But this was the primary reason why I did it.
This this 20 second repeat that I just did.
And let me find it because it is it is worth showing.
Here it is.
Okay.
So Cyril made his bi weekly post not long ago.
Here it is.
So this post right here.
Five days ago, you know, he talks about how the delegations live talks about the first
podcast is live and been trying to tackle some difficult community questions and lacks
some time to discuss all of them in the end.
That's fine.
That's no problem.
New episode will follow soon.
Awesome.
So I look at that.
I watched that episode and then I feel all that's left after watching the end of this
episode is is what was left was me wanting to apologize.
And so I did that because I have been intense on the forums.
I asked questions of the wazoo.
I questioned everything because I felt that there was no there was not the answer that
that I felt that a Tao community should know.
And so I start off in my response back to Cyril was nine days left to gather VP before
sips resume that that nine days now will happen next Wednesday on the 27th.
So I like, yeah, that's that's awesome.
And then and then Sarah also revealed that only two submissions were received for the
UTC website request for proposal.
If you think you can build a UTC website, the Tao admin team wants to hear from you.
So please take a look at that.
And that was really valuable knowing that there's two and let me tell you why I'm a
builder.
I'm also a business person.
So I'm not the best at developing a UTC website, but I can hire a team that is I know how to
put together a team and program manage my way through it, but I'm not going to do that
if other people who are better that UTC websites and I am are put their name in the mix.
I'm a program manager, I can I can programize my way through it.
And with a request for proposal, I can build a necessary team, but I'm not going to do
that if there are people who are who are good at that already submitting.
So two people is a low number and they want more diversity in submissions.
So I've been considering submitting for it.
I just haven't had the time because of all these episodes I did in the past seven days
to interview the delegates.
So I'm the deadline has been extended by a month.
I think that means by the end of this month, because I believe the deadline was at the
beginning of this November.
All right.
So anyways, zero asked in his episode, tell me how the episode went, because it's impossible
for me to watch myself.
This is Sarah's words.
I'm just quoting it and I this is where I went into it worked out and as me talk, quoting
myself here, my response to him was it worked out really well.
This episode shared a lot of great things that helped me understand where your thoughts
were.
It was really good to hear your background at length and see those raw results from the
survey.
And at 3553 timestamp, when you talked about being the silent builder type, and you talked
about how you aren't a professional community manager, and you don't know how to address
community properly, and how you wanted to launch the Dow in an awesome way at NSC Lisbon
after eight months of thoughtful planning.
My friend, that's the kind of thing I wanted to hear and understand from the beginning.
What you said makes complete sense.
And when I heard you say it, I felt my anger, mistrust and resentment start to fade away.
And what I was left with was wanting to apologize to you for how intense I've been towards you
and the Dow admin team.
So I'm apologizing now.
Dear Cyril and the admin team,
Je suis désolé.
I am so sorry I did not give you more trust and the benefit of the Dow.
I'm sorry I rushed to conclusions about your motives.
And I'm sorry I didn't try harder to understand your point of view.
Si t'es pas libre, pardonnez-moi.
I'm so sorry I budgeted that French.
I hope you can forgive me.
I want to repair what can be repaired, build with you, and work toward a positive future.
So that was my apology post back to Cyril after he asked to tell me how it is.
It's impossible for me to watch myself.
I completely understand that, by the way.
I really dislike hearing myself.
But it...
Yeah.
I came away from this feeling like I needed to apologize because I heard the transparency
I was looking for when Cyril talked about how he wasn't a professional at community
management.
That's real.
That's a real...
That's being my Dow admin manager in the sandbox Dow.
I can live with that.
That makes sense.
Not everyone can be everything.
And so Cyril responded, don't worry about it, it's okay.
I know you want what's best for the Dow and you don't trust easy.
I understand.
I'm the same.
And kudos on the effort with the French.
I'm sorry I butchered it.
Now let's build some cool stuff together.
Boom.
So I felt like that flipped the switch in me.
Hearing him expand upon how he's a silent builder type.
He didn't know how to do this job.
And that's why Bobby came on and Bobby is crushing it.
And so where Bobby talked about they each have their specialization.
Cyril's been thoughtfully planning the Dow and we're about to get into his thoughts on
that.
And that was the second pillar of this episode that really addressed the transparency gap
that I've been searching for this whole time.
And how intense my questions have been because I didn't have that sort of stuff.
I didn't know where they're coming from.
I didn't trust his motives.
Why was he here?
How was it that he's been working on it all this time and we did not know.
So he addresses that head on.
So let's continue.
Thank you Cyril.
Thank you for being real and vulnerable about that.
That was that went a long way with me.
And I feel it will with the rest of the community.
But that's just me and I know the rest of the team is probably of the same character.
So yeah, one of the one of the things we did is brought a talented person like yourself
Bobby to try to be that he is all in somebody that
is all
is, you know, used to addressing community that knows how to conduct themselves in a
community scape landscape.
So that's what we did.
And we're hoping with this podcast with the forum to be more and more accessible to the
community while still trying to do our job in the you know, in the background because
and I can tell you that as I see this more transparency, I'm going to back off a lot
more on being so intense, because I'm going to feel the trust I'm going to I know, I have
faith that the Dow admin team is working toward that end goal, that same end goal that I'm
trying to work toward, and that nothing else squirrely is going on.
And now we have a communications manager who's able to bridge that gap and help provide that
rationale.
Now we're cooking with fire, for fire and all cylinders.
There's a lot to be done in the background.
So we can't spend all day on the Twitter on the forum on whatever doing those things,
right?
So that's our and I understand that.
I get it.
They can't spend all day answering all my questions.
They can't spend all day on Twitter.
They have a job to do.
They're trying to figure out how to run a Dow and plan for the progressive decentralization
over the next five years.
10th on bridging those gaps.
Yeah, excellent.
Thank you.
Well, I'm excited to be here.
And that was one of the first things I recognized as well.
So you know, continuing that spirit of transparency with everybody who's still listening like
a half hour into this podcast.
And we are.
I'm still listening.
I like this long form stuff.
I know not everyone does.
But this is this is what matters when it comes to running the Dow, its relationship, its
trust, its its faith and and action and delivering on product.
And in order for this ecosystem to be vibrant with business people, with gamers, with designers,
with speculators, with traders, brokers, you need to know who you're doing business with.
I need to know who this Dow admin team is so that I myself, because I have more than
just a podcast, I've got a life, I've got other interests, business interests, I have
a full time job.
And there are certain rules and expectations that are that I have to abide by.
And part of it is knowing who I do business with outside of my job.
I have full time job.
So these things matter.
And it's unlocking my potential.
I feel like this episode is unlocking my potential to be more than just suspicious, confused.
And all these things being barriers to what I want to do, which is build.
I want to build organizations and structures and make it easier for San Fam and SIP authors
to do what they do best.
And some of my steps reflect that I want to be spending my time on the steps.
I want to be spending my time educating on transparency and showing and making it easier
for people to interact.
Not like an internal thing where Serial Seam is doing, but make it to where kind of what
CoonT is doing, but on the other side, on the community side, bridging the gap between
communities, bridging the gap between voters.
That interdelegate panel that now we're probably going to do with the delegates that we figured
out that they want to do too.
That's the sort of stuff I want to do.
I want to build relationships between the community.
Whereas CoonT's main job is to build relationships between the Dow admin team, the sandbox, and
the community.
I want to be building relationships within the community.
Making that fire in all cylinders, making that efficient and effective where we have
things where we can communicate between ourselves so that when we do interact, we know what
we're doing.
Because we have a responsibility as well to ensure that we are good community members.
And I want to contribute to that mission.
Serial is contributing to the mission of making sure that Dow is run well and the tech stack
is functioning.
CoonT is contributing to the mission of ensuring that the transparency, that the Dow is being
messaged properly, and that they're fulfilling their obligations for communication to the
community.
I want to be in the community.
Because my last number of podcast episodes before I interviewed the Dow delegates, I
had to focus my attention on the Dow because there was so little that was known about it.
So I had got to the point where I had to do episode 31 because I couldn't wait any longer
for the Dow admin team to tell me how it was being run.
It is what it is.
And I did that episode, the frustration shown through there, and the anger and the resentment
and the mistrust.
And this episode turned that around.
This episode that we're watching right now with the digging in the sand.
Yes.
You know, when I first joined the team, I said, here's the first, at least three months
of my mission is going to just be repairing relationships and opening communication channels,
making sure that we're
And you, Aboon, doing great.
CoonT, please keep going.
Please.
They're on the same page with the community that we're working for, working with.
And so
Exactly.
Working for and working with.
I think that's the right mindset.
It's both.
That's it.
I mean, not just one or the other.
It's not it's not you're working for the community.
You're working with it and we're working with you.
We've been trying to grow the Dow.
We need to have this solid foundation where we're on the same page with everybody out there.
That's mainly why this podcast came to be.
If you go back to episode one, why I started it two or three weeks after, it's because
there were so few answers I had.
I had to try.
I had to figure it out with the community.
We didn't even know what a Dow was, most of us.
And when you watch the first two episodes, you're just going to see that mass confusion.
What is this thing?
I'm Google searching the Dow as I'm doing podcast episodes to try and figure it out.
And this podcast has largely happened because of that confusion and that that lack of transparency
that we thought at the time.
So if Bobby had been here from the start, I don't think Sandow podcast would be what
it is.
I don't think it would have started the same way.
I don't think it would have had the same episodes.
I think it would have been a lot different.
And that's not a dig.
It's not that's not anything bad against the Dow admin team.
Like Sarah said, he did what he did in order to get the biggest impacts first, the things
that were most important to the Dallas survival.
And unfortunately, communicating with the individual members wasn't as high on the list
as making sure the tech stack function is making sure delegations were unleashed as
making sure that the process was being iterated on.
And I get it.
I get it.
When he explains it, I get it.
I just wish you would explained it earlier, just earlier.
That's all.
That's the only the only criticism I have of this podcast episode is if it's been done
on May 29, instead of instead of five days ago, November 17.
I don't think there would be near the backlash.
And Sarah's about to get into that.
And everybody across the globe, no matter what language they're speaking, whether they're
for or against any particular sip or whatever.
So that's what we're working on right now.
Everybody is listening to this.
I invite you to be a part of it.
You know, like, well, let's work to construct to build, let's work positively towards building
something awesome.
So the perceived lack of transparency that that feeling rushed, it's related to people
not feeling heard.
You know, it's that same that same element, but the rushed first few sips.
Can you remark on that?
Yeah, yeah, it's a good point.
And I've heard it's heard this quite a few times, to be honest.
So it's painful to me when I hear this, because I've been working for like many, many months,
you know, to before the doubt can be released.
So saying that I've rushed it, we rushed it.
It's a bit harsh.
But I but I get it.
I get where this is coming from.
And I'm appreciative that you acknowledge that that you get where we're coming from.
And, and now it's time for me to eat some humble pie as I listen to Cyril talk about
the thought that went into this many months ahead of time, and how it wasn't just a secret
cabal of people pulling the strings behind the scenes.
I don't think so.
I don't think that's what's happening.
And I think Cyril really reassures and explains the path to how we got to here.
And it makes sense.
It's very reasonable.
From it is on the first few sips and the way that they were pushed very quickly, which
frankly, what has been the poor communication.
So thank you for acknowledging that.
It leaves me room to where all I need have to do left is apologize, because I was intense.
I was intense about that perceived lack of communication.
And the rush tips, just like the rest of the community was.
And some of those community members were much harsher than I was, like, just in straight
up insulting.
And I didn't want to devolve into that I wanted to keep pushing forward.
And I'm glad that Cyril and Kunta, they're meeting us.
They're meeting us where we are.
And we can repair, rebuild, and then just keep building.
I mean, designing this whole foundation, the rules for voting, the rules for proposing
a sip, what's the website to support all of that, that took time.
And I don't believe that was rush.
That was the fruit of many, many weeks and months of looking at other DAOs and how we
can make the best one possible based on what the others have been doing and what's our
vision for this one.
And I appreciate that he said that.
I think that was good to hear.
I needed to hear that, that he didn't believe it was rushed and that he put a lot of thought
and time into it.
And as we actually learned with just podcast 48, I believe, with Hervé, he also played
a part in the formation of the DAO.
He said that he helped write one of the first drafts of the Sandbox DAO when he was brought
on to help consult a little bit with his company.
This was, I think, before even Cyril got involved.
So I didn't even know that Hervé and his company was involved before Cyril was.
And so that was fascinating.
That was fascinating.
So it makes sense that when it was mentioned in the white paper in 2020, that it wasn't
just a mention.
There was considerable thought put into figuring out how are we going to roll this DAO out
that we put in the white paper.
So to hear Cyril say that it hurt, that it hurt to hear us call his work rushed and
corrupt, and all these different words that were used by different community members.
I understand.
I can understand why he would feel hurt by that.
And like I said, man, I'm sorry that I was so intense about that.
I'm sorry.
But what was rushed is probably the way we've announced it.
Yep.
And in episode 31, I cover that.
If you look earlier in this episode, Sandel's Podcast 50, where I went into episode 31 with
the balance of the cabal and all that sort of thing, you go back to there, I talk about
the timeline that felt so rushed.
I go through the timeline of it was announced on May 28th.
Three sips were immediately thrust on us.
Two more sips like a week later.
So five sips within a month we had to vote on and we didn't even know what a DAO was.
So that kind of rushing of the announcement and the, all right, here's a sip, now go vote,
even though we don't know what a sip is and we don't know what a DAO is.
And so that's the rushing of the announcement that he's talking about.
But that second pillar is about to come into play of how and why they went about it that
way.
And I get it.
I get it.
And the way the first few sips got brought to people's attention because we wanted to
start somewhere.
And I don't feel we could have designed.
I mean, I've been working on many, many projects.
Like as soon as you get more than five people in the room, it becomes impossible to get
an agreement on anything when you design a product, right?
Whether it's a website or an app or anything, right?
So it's easier to go fast when you're a small team.
So can you imagine designing a project with a thousand members?
That's not possible, right?
I disagree just a little bit, but I don't discount what he's saying.
It is harder to get to a consensus or an agreement with thousands of people.
I run a couple product teams of about 15 to 20 people each as a program manager.
And I have an extended team of about 25 more.
So anywhere from 35 to 50 extended team members, so functionals, advisors.
And it's hard to when I bring them in, regardless, and I make my meetings open to them and so
that they can come in, it's like a revolving door and it makes it harder, it makes it tougher.
But in the end, it makes it more complete.
And we aren't surprised very often.
And we get consensus pretty easy nowadays.
So I only disagree in the sense that I see what he's saying.
I don't discount what he's saying.
I think it's true.
It doesn't have to be done that way.
And for what it's worth, he chose that way because that's what he felt that he wanted
to do.
He was given the authority to be the DAO administrator, not me, not Lancer.
Lancer is a community member.
This is the DAO administrator who is doing this whole time.
So I can appreciate that that's the decision he came to.
Right.
So there's an idea that was that we need a small team to put down the foundation, no
pun intended, of all of this principle and then propose them to the broad community.
But still, the way that we've announced it, we were in Lisbon, we say it was a whole coordinated
event in our mind.
It was like, oh, we're going to announce it on stage, Seb is going to go on stage.
At the same time, he goes on stage.
The website, it goes live on production.
The three steps are pushed on snapshots.
And there's like a tweet or two mentioning this and an article, I think, on Medium.
In our mind, that was like also marketing, you know, rollout plan.
But then we quickly realized that it didn't give the community enough time to reflect
on this DAO and learn what it is, why it exists, what is objective.
And they were already being asked to vote on stuff, select a council, approve the constitution,
do all kinds of stuff.
And I felt like they should have got...
There it is.
Summarized right there.
Episode 31, summarized right there.
I completely agree and support that interpretation, Cyril.
So let's hear that one more time because that to me is the second major pillar in this video.
So the first was...
Look at the note, right?
So the first was, I'm not a professional community manager.
And the second was...
And then that's why Bobby was hired.
Oh, it was...
We didn't know how to address the community.
Right?
But that's real.
Okay.
So learning Cyril's road to the DAO.
Right?
So we learned about Cyril and his road to the DAO in the beginning.
And then we heard Cyril admit and be vulnerable that he's not a professional community manager
and he didn't know how to address the community properly.
Okay?
Makes sense.
I can't do everything either.
And I mess up all the time.
You know, I'm a silent builder type.
And we heard him say he's an engineer background too.
So all right.
And then later on he says, let's go through what he says again.
You know, looking at foundation, there's rush.
We can make the best one possible based on what the others have been doing and what's
our vision for this one.
But what was rushed is probably the way we've announced it and the way the first few CIFS
got brought to people's attention because we wanted to start somewhere.
And I don't feel we could have designed...
I mean, I've been working on many, many projects.
Like as soon as you get more than five people in the room, it becomes impossible to get
an agreement on anything when you design a product, right?
Whether it's a website or an app or anything.
Right?
So it's easier to go fast when you're a small team.
So can you imagine designing a project with a thousand members?
That's not possible.
Right?
So there's an idea that was that we need a small team to put down the foundation, no
pun intended, of all of this principle and then propose them to the broad community.
But still, the way that we've announced it, we were in Lisbon, we say it was a whole coordinated
event in our mind.
Right?
It was like, oh, we're going to announce it on stage, Seb is going to go on stage.
At the same time, he goes on stage.
The website, it goes live on production.
The three CIFS are pushed on snapshots.
And there's like a tweet or two mentioning this and an article, I think, on Medium.
In our mind, that was like awesome marketing, you know, rollout plan.
But then we quickly realized that it didn't give the community enough time to reflect
on this DAO and learn what it is, why it exists, what is objective.
And they were already being asked to vote on stuff, select the council.
Yep.
Approve the constitution and do what?
All this thing happened at once, May 28.
And all this stuff we were requested to do and fulfill as a responsibility of being a
SanFam voter in the DAO.
And we didn't know the heck that was, man.
Didn't even know what it was.
You just articulated, Cyril, the frustration.
And I get why you did it the other way.
The big grand opening.
It makes total sense, man.
If I was in your shoes, I might have even done the same thing.
Yeah, that makes total sense.
The grand opening, the big, the big ribbon cutting ceremony to where you have the press
and then with the press comes the attention and then new DAO members and new SanFam members
and new gamers in the SanFam ecosystem and just blowing it up because yet again, SanFam,
sandbox is making the news and we're doing big things and people want to be a part of
those big things.
I get it.
I totally get it.
Whereas had he not done that, had he, you know, piece it meal along the way when that
final ribbon cutting ceremony might have happened at NSC Lisbon, then it might've just been
just a little pop.
A little pop where people say, oh yeah, yeah, we knew about that a long time ago.
And so it wasn't, it wouldn't be as big a deal.
Well, I get it.
I get why he decided to do it that way.
And thank you for explaining this.
This is what I wanted to hear from the beginning.
But I get also why he didn't do that in the beginning and why he didn't explain it because
he's not a professional community manager and he didn't know how to address the community
and it took them some time to realize that this is how we were reacting and not like
it comes out in the open and we're like, oh yay, Grant, thank you so much for this.
This is awesome.
And that's not how the community responded in SanFam at all.
So him acknowledging this second pillar and knocking away any mistrust and resentment
that I had, it just eaten it up so that it doesn't exist anymore.
All kinds of stuff, right?
And I felt like they should have got better, should have been involved earlier.
But like I said, we have to start somewhere.
So there was this, this real balance of, you know, efficiency, we need to start somewhere,
how to involve the community.
But now in retrospect, I definitely feel like we could have done a better job at communicating
this, explaining this, teasing this maybe in advance before announcing everything at
the same time.
That's for sure.
Cool.
And to me, I believe that's where the rush sentiment comes from.
That is exactly where the rush sentiment comes from, Cyril.
It is exactly where you put your finger on it.
And to me, after you've acknowledged it this way, after you've talked about your rationale
for why you went the opposite direction, the big grand event approach and everything all
at once.
After you've acknowledged it, you've acknowledged why you didn't communicate up until this point
in the way that you have.
And that the AMA felt like a press tour and because they were and the NFC Lisbon was a
press tour because it was by design to make that big bang, that big splash in the Dow
ecosystem.
Now that you've said all these things, I consider the matter closed.
I may not agree.
I don't have to because you're the Dow administrator.
You have the authority to do this.
I consider the matter closed on my end.
I can't guarantee I won't bring it up again in the future.
But what I can guarantee is that I don't look at it with mistrust and anger and frustration
anymore.
Let's build together.
I understand.
So it's time to start looking forward and not looking backward.
We're not going that way anymore.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
I mean, I even felt like the votes on the first few sips they took place before I even
really had a chance to wrap my head around what was going on.
I think that's also just a product of our all being in Web3.
I mean, like how many discords want us to stay active every day?
Oh, man.
It's like there's just so many communities and places to pop into and stay hip to like
what is my other token doing?
Do I got to restake this?
Do I got to?
I mean, there's a lot to stay.
I mean, I've got calendar items reminding me of the craziest things.
So I couldn't agree more, Kunta.
I couldn't agree more.
Even on top of that.
What far is it really to further for the community to expect of itself, you know, that so many
different things are going on in Web3.
And I get it.
Even if we had known like what what was the expectation there really?
I completely agree.
I mean, I didn't even get to vote, you know, I didn't know what they were.
Another remark I wanted to make on that is, you know, I've been having one to one conversations.
I invite the community, you know, reach out to me and the DMs on one of them was with
me on the sandbox, down socials or personally, if you know me, somebody you do, you know,
talking about this stuff.
And he asked me like, why?
Why didn't the Dow just start with the community writing the Constitution?
I will self ID and say I was one of those people saying that together.
And on a second, like that is one, you know, that's a possible way to roll out a doubt
would be really hard to do, though, because like every line would have to be debated.
And so that's fair.
And we're in you hear that episode 48 47, the Dow lessons with bankless Dow, how difficult
it was and how challenging it is for a transition team to restructure a Dow to rebrand to decide
what the Dow wants to be now that it has divested itself from bankless Dow to now black flag
Dow and it's trying to reimagine itself.
And the Transition Council had to had to be elected in order to be more efficient with
the path forward from everyone wanting to input on everything now to a smaller team,
given the authority to decide and figure it out.
And having been elected, there we go.
The only difference between them and us in this regard is that we didn't elect the Dow
admin team.
We didn't elect the Transition Council.
The Dow admin team was appointed and the special council members were nominated.
We couldn't nominate them ourselves.
They weren't from the community.
Well, that's not not the right thing to say that they weren't as involved in the community
as other community members who want to nominate themselves like me.
I want to be on the special council and and that or the advisory board, but mainly I'm
going to be going for the special council.
So yeah, that frustration.
But I agree, it would have been really, really hard to do, Kunta.
I completely agree.
And at some point you would have to have a decision maker to say, all right, we've taken
in the input, here's what the output and that's the way we're moving.
We will iterate on that success, which is basically what they're describing in this
podcast episode.
You know, there's no right or wrong way to do this.
This is the way it was done.
We have to acknowledge some of the mistakes learned from them, grow from them.
If you don't know the word Kaizen, go look it up.
It's a spirit that I know Cyril maintains from product development.
Kaizen is just iterative, continuous improvement.
Carry over as well as constant little bit of improvement every day, always thinking about
how to make it better.
And that's what we're doing.
That's what we need the community for as well.
So and that feedback loop, right?
Is equally important, like the small iteration and start small, then build upon it, but also
integrate that feedback loop is, I believe, important and constant, you know, improvement
integrating with your own ideas and feedback from your customer.
You know, we don't have customer, but like people that use your product really.
That's ultimately what it is, right?
We're creating a product of sort.
So I mean, these are the kinds of analogies that were and that's, that's why I put it
in the product section of the ecosystem.
Right, right here under products.
The DAO because it is a technical solution to the need, the dilemma of community.
How does the community resolve its differences?
How does the community act on its vision?
How does it implement its goals?
You use the tech stack of the DAO, the discourse to communicate the snapshot to vote the wallets
to spend the elections to a point.
It's a product.
We're drawing on our, on our side, hopefully through future podcasts like this, you know,
people who are interested in the DAO can understand our lines of reasoning, the way that we're
thinking over time, your thoughts, your suggestion.
You have no idea how hugely helpful it was to hear the lines of reasoning.
I get why some people may believe that it wasn't important to, to understand the reasoning,
but it solved the pro dilemma for me on multiple fronts, not just as a, as a San Fam gamer,
but also a business person running a business and, and trying to align business interests
within my own team and my own partnerships to try and bring those partnerships into the
sandbox.
The sandbox is, the sandbox is gaming, right?
It's got different products.
The sandbox DAO is where gaming, community, business, and leadership all intersect.
And I'll be covering this in the, the ecosystem in the DAO podcast episode that I'm so looking
forward to doing in the future.
But that is the intersection of those things, which is why I'm so invested in this, which
is why I love being here in the DAO because I love every single one of those things.
I just, I was just got off a podcast a couple of days ago, NFT Now.
They just interviewed me for an article and, and yeah, I talked about, and I also did a
podcast on Forbes Web 3, I also did a podcast on Tech Talk and, and I've sounded like a
walking advertisement for sandbox sometimes.
And I have to kind of check myself to be like, all right, I need to make my disclosures.
I need to do, I need to make sure that I comment on not the bad, but the improvements so I
don't sound like I'm just an untrustworthy billboard of getting undisclosed payments,
which I'm not, by the way, I'm not getting paid for this at all to do any of this.
And, and, and yeah, yeah, I sound like a walking advertisement for sandbox sometimes.
And it's, it's important to know that my reputation is on the line, just like other people's are
when it comes to convincing business partners, some of which are some of the top consulting
firms in the world that I've met and networked with over the years.
And this, these, some of these sips requires me to be successful with them.
And I cannot hope to bring them into this if I have confusion or, or uncertainty about
the business environment that I'm asking them to partner with.
I've got to know, they've got to know there, there's too many, too much brand reputation
at stake to not know.
And so this is helping with that.
Your feedback, your comments are all integrated, assimilated into the way that we're thinking
we're taking these feedbacks from polls like this one that we did future polls.
And we're doing this together.
We're all on the same team here.
I think that's the real spirit to be taken out of this.
Even if some of us get rushed through a certain point, it's like taking a big hike together.
Like some of us are more tired on parts of the trails than others.
And we've just got to like keep each other moving.
Some Sam fam have been Sam fam since 2018, 2020.
They're already tired.
And then they get this Dow rushed on them and they're like, what the what, what come
on man.
And so they, you know, they're, they're pissed.
They are mad.
And you heard that on both the podcasts, the, the Sam box discord, the sandbox style forums.
It was so obvious.
Some of them were not kind in their, in their perspective.
And along.
So that's the real spirit that I want to inject into this is that like we are the sand fam,
all of us, whether you're working for one of the brands that's that's building in the
sandbox, whether you're the gamer who's out there, whether you're somebody who's just
milking 50 sands off the polls that we're posting, all of them are part of our community.
And so I love that he gives those people their due, even though, you know, they, they, I
don't think they should be doing that.
And it, it kind of hurts us.
The fact that we acknowledge that, yeah, they're doing it.
They're here, they're present.
They exist and not ignoring them.
I think that's, that's, that's cool.
That's the right move to make.
And that's, that's the real acknowledging existence without endorsing or accepting that
they're, that they should be doing that.
I mean, I feel tingles when I just say that kind of stuff out loud, because it's exciting
and we're building something awesome together.
And you and I agree on that.
It's exciting.
I feel the same sort of tingles, especially.
And I felt that when Cyril talked through his perspective, I felt that same little tingle
to me.
I mean, this is cool.
This is exciting because it unlocks potential and unlocks people's involvement and, and,
and kind of fades away with their fear or their fear.
It fades away mistrust, at least mine does.
And that's what we want to share here the most.
So we're going to move on through some of these other bullet points here in the discussion
with you.
Okay.
So really we want to take a minute to get back even into progressive decentralization.
We could give it another two minutes or so here.
And I mean, we've got nine bullets to get through and hopefully not too much longer
been at this 45 minutes, but all of these deserve more unpacking and we'll get it.
I've been at this two hours.
So this is just us beginning to address these with everybody.
So I mean, let's go back to progressive decentralization for a minute.
Now we refer to the article in Medium.
Can you speak to this for a second more?
Yeah, of course.
I guess I'd invite everybody to read the article that's been posted quite some time ago.
We shed some light on what we made.
And that was the, the Medium article that I did a podcast episode on.
It was episode number 33.
Take a look, episode number 33.
And again, that's for, that's from the perspective of someone who did not hear this episode.
I didn't hear this episode until now when it just got published five days ago.
This article was published in October 7th.
So I was a little bit harsh and you can see all those questions I had and intensity that
I brought because I needed to figure out things that weren't being, that weren't obvious to
me or anyone else that I could, that I asked and like, Hey, what does this mean that there?
I don't know.
We're all, we're all just sitting around the campfire going, I have no idea.
Meant by progressive decentralization.
But at the core of our strategy was to do the handholding with the community, right?
We've seen many DAOs failed.
I mean, the DAO was a, was a first, very first catastrophic, unfortunately, example.
And what we wanted to do is to allocate trust on a progressive basis and making sure only
certain proposal that we know are really aligned with the sandbox value get to pass or having
a strong curation process that I know sometimes can be frustrating.
I know that.
But it's here for to help eventually the community, right?
That is not necessarily professional in evaluating what's a good proposal versus what's a bad
proposal that some more often than not the author are professional, but not everybody's
a professional at project management or software delivery or whatever it could be.
Right?
So I know sometimes can be frustrating, but that's really what we're trying to do here
with this whole curation process is to making sure the proposal that are, that have been
vetted and have been decomposed as being possibly understood by the majority.
This is what we really, what we're trying to achieve.
I'm going to give quite a quick anecdote.
Two weeks ago.
By the way, if you're watching this, I love your anecdotes.
I think when you started doing those anecdotes in the, your form responses to me the past
month, you did a couple of quick examples and quick stories that really helped me start
to peer into who you are.
And some of those, those really, really fascinating things that helped me piece together what
was happening.
That's really where the started of the unwinding of my mistrust started was when you started
giving us stories and anecdotes of situations that you had, you'd faced and some of them
were very applicable to the Dow and I'm like, Oh, I get, I get that.
I get that.
So the fact that you keep doing these anecdotes, I think helps me understand better you and
your decision making.
French company that is doing potato chips, ran a poll on Twitter about what should be
done next labor, right?
That could be a Dow experiment as well.
You know what we should, you're good.
Sure could.
And that the two, more than two, 2.5 million people voted.
Right.
So it was a huge success.
But the flavor that got voted the most was gasoline.
That's true.
That is one thing you have to watch out for as taking in too much of the community input
is the flavor that got voted the most was gasoline.
Nope.
Can't do that.
So the potato chips company had to do a very awkward call back.
Oh no, actually we didn't meant that really was just for fun.
See, that's where I disagree with community with companies nowadays doing that sort of
thing.
The play isn't to be like, oh no, we didn't really mean it.
No, you meant it when you published it.
You just you got a response you weren't expecting.
So what instead you I think my personal opinion when it comes to transparency is acknowledge
that yeah, we did post this.
However, we got a response we weren't expecting and we clearly cannot offer gasoline flavored
potato chips.
And you just say that.
Then the rest of the world is me like, yeah, we know.
No one's going to seriously be like, no, no, you should definitely do gasoline potato chips.
Now that's that's not that's not a realistic option.
So I take zeroes point where he's going with this analogy is taken too far.
Community involvement can be a negative thing can be a detriment.
I agree.
Taken too far it can.
That's why we have a DAO administrator with the authority to make a decision.
Because at a certain point, the feedback has been given.
The inputs have been taken from the community.
It's time to make a decision and move forward.
And then we do the same thing next time.
We process we iterate community.
There was the intern who's decided to make that poll and it was not really their attention.
So you see how this stuff could derail.
Another experiment was in 2016.
The Royal Navy UK went out and published a poll about naming the next.
I remember this and the name was want was Boaty McBoatface.
Boaty McBoatface.
Again, as a joke, Boaty McBoatface.
The Royal Navy wanted to name a ship.
They posted a poll out and the poll that got this made the news.
This made international news.
And the answer that was most voted on was Boaty McBoatface.
Now that was a little bit less serious than gasoline on potato chips.
But it is part of the Royal Navy's military image.
So did they name their big vessel, I think it was a destroyer or cruiser, a Boaty McBoatface?
No, they didn't.
But they did handle it pretty well.
And Cyril talks about this.
But you know, and they had to make sense out of it.
I think they decided to name a skip that was inside the boat, like a smaller one.
They actually named it that way.
And they keep the whole boat with the Boat Series name.
So I guess my point.
Yeah.
The reality was they named it the HMS something normal military.
But they named one of the smaller vessels inside the ship Boaty McBoatface.
So they still found a way to honor the intent, the spirit of what was asked.
But they couldn't they didn't feel like it was reasonable to name the entire vessel a
military vessel made for war, Boaty McBoatface.
So that's just funny.
Like how do you deal with the reality of the situation?
Not what you wanted to happen, not what should have happened, but what did happen.
You put out a poll for potato chips and ask people what they want.
The people say they want gasoline.
Clearly you're not going to give them gasoline potato chips.
So what do you do?
What I don't think you should do is like, oh, no, no, we were just kidding.
You weren't kidding.
You weren't kidding when you asked the question.
But now that you got an answer that you have to make sense out of that doesn't make sense
to you.
Acknowledge that it happened.
Okay, don't don't backtrack because then you look like you don't look like you're in a
good place.
But the military, the British Royal Navy saying, yeah, we're not going to name it HMS, whatever.
But HMS Boaty McBoatface, you know, a ship that's firing salvos at the enemy.
But we're going to name one of our smaller vessels that something a little bit less serious,
maybe.
Yeah, that is acknowledging the reality.
What did happen?
Not what should have or could have happened.
One is those stuff can derail pretty fast and trolls are a universal constant, I would
say in this world.
Sure.
And that's maybe what we're trying to do with the progressive decentralization, like trying
to be a bit of hand holding.
And this is a transition and we will, as the community, you know, show the good proposal
and we trust them more and more.
We really wish some of that control.
So here's where, yeah, they, let's go back a couple seconds.
It seems like they weren't really doing progressive decentralization.
It seemed like there was more centralization happening, especially now that we went from
a anyone can submit a SIP to the Dow team to now the Dow team has to invite you to do
that.
So that seemed like a reversal of decentralization after the Dow wasn't launched.
So it didn't seem like things were trending in the right direction.
It seemed like there was more power being held by the Dow admin team.
And so this hand holding seemed like it was too much hand holding.
And because we looked at the Dow article and it just didn't make sense of it, it was too
many questions.
It was too against what we were expecting.
That's where the mistrust and the anger grew more and more and more until this episode
where he explains his rationale and intent.
And we will, as the community, you know, show the good proposal and we trust them more and
more.
We really wish some of that control.
And right there, I went on the word some.
So he said some of the control.
But if not even, but interesting thing to me is that I've been keeping track of what
Seb has been saying about decentralization.
And he's mentioned no less than three or four times on different podcasts.
And the latest one was with me about was that he intends Seb, his vision is that the SanFam
community takes over part of product development, part of running the sandbox company.
And he even said more recently than that, I can't recall which podcast it was at this
point.
But he even said more recently in that outright that he hopes that in five years, in some
number of years, that the community, the Dow is running the sandbox game company.
Now, whether or not that that's a founder's dream and goal versus the realistic plan of
what will happen remains to be seen.
But Seb has been not, he has been very clear about that goal multiple times, even from
the early AMAs.
So I believe him that that's what he wants to happen.
Whether or not that can happen.
We'll see.
And let's see.
I know I had the one with Mia Bao here, where they did the AMA and I did an AMA reaction
to it where I talked about that.
It was if you want to if you want to hear that specifically.
We interviewed Mia Bao and it was August 23rd when Mia posts a broadcast with Seb on Twitter.
And he said it was about two thirds of the way through.
They will be building Dungeon Game, Vampire Survival Game, and we're already talking with
a lot of other studios.
So progressively you're going to see proven gameplay from mobile, from PC, where you can
start enjoying sandbox, be on the game maker.
Okay, it was that 17 minutes is where it was.
Instead of always coming to the sandbox and ultimately to me in a very vertical structure
where like some of the team members will ask finally for an approval, we will encourage
them to know to do that.
It's amazing what you want to do, but ultimately it shouldn't be us as sandbox to decide what's
best for the platform.
It should be the community itself.
You should use their voting power through the sand and the land to decide if they think
like you're suggesting that what you propose is going to drive an impact.
What kind of impact can it drive?
Can it bring more users, more creators, more awareness?
Can it help the product to become better by deciding on features of the roadmap, by supporting
the development of custom tools that make the life of the creator easier?
That was one of the steps before.
To drive initiative like participating at a conference around the world like DEFCON
that's coming or Token 2049 in a matter of a few weeks.
How much reward should be distributed during the value season and events and so on?
Ultimately, all of those decisions that we're making internally as a sandbox team will be
progressively allocated and handed over to the community to decide.
That's the Dow.
So Seb has said that no less than four or five times openly.
And I believe him.
I believe that that's what he wants to do.
We'll see.
I don't want to hold him to that specific goal because that's a pretty intense thing.
That's a pretty bold thing to say that.
And I believe he said that on my podcast too.
It was Sandow podcast eight, I believe with my interview with Seb, where handing over
the entire product team to a Dow, that's bold goal.
I am cautiously optimistic about that.
So we'll see.
But in any case, Seb has not been unclear about that.
He's been very clear.
So where Cyril just said some of the control, I wondered at that word.
Is that like a scaling back of Seb's original intent?
Or is it just, it's going to be some over time and then more full?
That'd be like my follow on question for all this.
But it's not something to kick up a ton of dust over right now.
Like I would have if I had not heard the rest of this episode.
If I just heard that part and be like, all right, I still be intense about, well, why
did you just say some?
When Seb, your boss, maybe I don't even know what the relationship is, but Seb, the founder
says I want to give it to the Dow and you're here.
You are the Dow admin who's supposed to work for the community and with us saying that
we're going to get some over.
Like, who are you to say that?
But if now that I've taken in the whole episode and I've seen this, I get, I think I don't
need to, I didn't need to blow up like that.
This is a conversation.
It's an iteration we're building together.
So while they are interested, Cyril just said he's interested in making sure we, we do this
progressively that we give more and more trust and control.
Okay.
Let's start with that.
And then we can talk about the spectrum of whether or not it should be some or more full
or what.
It's always been all intense with this, right?
That was really good.
Those are some great remarks.
I hope people are the meaning behind their drawing that parallel.
It's really easy for everything to go awry with what could even be a seemingly innocent
joke and we're talking about building the future of a gaming ecosystem, right?
It's like building that billion dollar warship or something.
It's right into the process a little bit as well.
You know, like the challenges with the complexity of sometimes this curation process and, you
know, this one impacts me specifically because I have submitted I think six sips.
I'm sure I've submitted six.
I've put 10.
See where, wait, there we are.
So I put 10 on the sandbox ideas forum.
So Windows resizing roadmap of releases, end game inventory filter, Dow revenue option
study, Sandex, the Sandow podcast, builders challenge working group, sandbox governance
working group, reduce Dow voting quorum requirement, establishing sandbox wallet voting criteria.
I put those 10 on the SIP ideas forum.
I submitted six of them to the process before it changed last month.
So I'm being grandfathered into continuing that to vote.
So this impacts me big time.
And all of these were sourced from some sort of problem statement in the community that
was left unresolved.
The windows resizing and end game filter was things that we've been asking for for years
in the sandbox community.
SIP releases is just trying to figure out what the world is coming to us on these products
because most of us, most of these studios, when we try to build an experience, we have
to build to not only what is now, but also what is going to happen in the future.
I just built floor droppers and builders challenge one, which was February this year.
By May, it was already obsolete and things were breaking.
And so that, and if you noticed in the beginning of floor droppers, when it was released with
Alpha season four, there were bugs.
That was because the new release of Game Maker broke some of the mechanics that were working
perfectly the day before.
It was so frustrating to have to try and fix that.
So knowing the roadmap of releases of what is going to come out in these products is
hugely helpful to a business person and to a studio like myself and MetaWorlds.
As it is with Touche, as it is with Sandrush, so many of us have commented on that SIP as
wanting it.
We need it.
If you want us to make good business decisions, we need to know what is coming down the pike
for capability and tooling.
And I'm going to be going over that episode, the sandbox ecosystem and the business of
game making as a separate podcast in the future.
Dow revenue option study.
This was a lesson learned from eight point Dow.
It is running out of money and it's running out of money fast.
And instead of colliding with time and not doing anything until the end, I want to fix
that thing now.
I have some very professional, very well educated and expert teams that I have partnerships
waiting to be turned on with them.
And top consulting firms in the world to help us identify revenue streams of revenue that
we can put into place now so that we start to accrue revenue and be self-sufficient as
a Dow so that one day if the sandbox team isn't able to give us that fifteen point five
million sand every year, then we're still self-sufficient.
We can still decide for ourselves what we want to do with our budget because we still
have money coming in.
And this is going to be stuff that's organic, things that we don't have to do that contrived
things like selling, I don't know, having a bake sale or selling parts of the IP.
Like none of that.
We're talking things that are organic and inherent to Web3 and the sandbox community.
Things that it's not going to take away from us, but we'll add to.
I built a team that's ready to do that.
It's just going through the review of the Dow admin team to get to vote.
And that podcast is this one to expand it so that I can have a people do things that
I'm not very good at.
And so I can turn out better podcasts, faster and better quality.
Yeah.
Reach more audience.
Builders challenge working group, sandbox governance working group.
That's because of the sandbox special counsel and advisory board not being really in the
community very much right now.
So Apecoin has working groups as do other other DOWs and they seem to work.
Elected people who help manage more day to day stuff for the community.
And yeah, Sandex was, I thought was a great idea at the time, but it's basically like
a phone book of major landowners because Quorum used to be a huge issue.
Almost half of the SIPs that have been gone to vote have failed because of Quorum.
And so the Sandex was one way to go about combating that.
Might not be needed now that delegates is out with 24 million voting power combined
with all 12 to voting million power each.
And then reducing Dow voting Quorum, that one got a lot of positive feedback from the
community may not be needed anymore because of the delegates and the voting power they
now have separately.
But I was, I got a lot of feedback on reducing it at least by 25%, maybe even half.
But maybe we don't need to anymore.
We'll see.
We'll see how the delegate system works.
And then last but not least will be sandbox voting wallet criteria, which was all about
establishing different criteria for when the sandbox could use its 27 million voting power
because it sometimes it used it and sometimes it didn't.
It wasn't obvious why it used it.
And it wasn't clear, especially when Seb said early on that they were going to resist using
it.
But they have been using it in some cases.
So I want to establish criteria to make that make that a thing.
But that might be that might no longer be needed with the sandbox remains to be seen
if the 24 million voting power given to the delegates came from that 27 million wallet.
If it did, we probably don't need to anymore.
Probably but we'll see.
27 minus 24, still a 3 million voting power.
That's quite a bit.
What that might turn into though, that I'm thinking about that right now is that the
sandbox wallet becomes a voice of itself.
And it's on it's on par with the other 12 delegates.
That is brilliant.
Oh my gosh, if that was the plan all along, that's brilliant.
Because then then it's reasonable for the sandbox wallet, which is the company to be
its own voice, its own mini delegation, almost don't delegate.
So instead of 12 delegates, we have 13 at 13 delegate is the sandbox company.
advocating for itself.
I have no problem with them voting however they want to after that, because it makes
sense.
You have the different delegates that have parity, then you have the game company has
a little bit more than the other delegates, which is fine.
It's the company it owns the product, and it can vote its own choice.
Make sense.
The company has a voice too.
It is part of the ecosystem.
Right there.
See sandbox team, I consider part of the ecosystem.
Cool, cool, cool.
So I mean, that can you remark a little bit further on that?
So I think we touched a bit on that when we mentioned six guidelines previously.
But basically, our idea is the objective is to fall to have like the highest possible
quality in terms of the proposal, and the way they're written, not judging the content
itself, but the way in the way that presented to the community, right, we want to have stuff
that can be understood by most that has all of the right boxes being checked being, for
example, budget timeline milestone, why you're trying to achieve why December should be doing
this basically, and that's all the most important things in the proposal itself.
So making sure these are thoroughly, you know, completed and made available to the public.
As for the process itself, it is not perfect.
This is not perfect.
There's no perfect process.
This is still discovering the best way to do that right like today I would qualify.
I'm so glad you said that it wasn't obvious to me that that was their perspective.
When they sent the Dow medium article, declaring the new way, it felt like a declaration like
you will do it this way.
And it's some of it felt like a jab at the community.
Maybe even me, please.
That's how I took it.
I don't I don't think that's how the Dow team meant it.
And hearing this, I definitely don't think that the Dow team meant it like that.
So but it wasn't clear that this is a process.
It came out heavy handed, like thou shalt do it this way, because we know what's best.
And that's why I was so intense with my response in my podcast on that one.
I think that's episode 33.
This is where I might differ with Cyril.
I think that the Dow operations budget should be used to bring on more people to have a
higher bigger pipeline for sips so that those sips can be considered.
I think people should be able to be able to submit for recognition for for vote and not
be gated through an invite system.
I think that's just a disagreement or a difference in opinion between Cyril and myself.
I respect that he has the the right and the authority to do what he's doing.
And after he explained himself like this, and I understand his rationale, I don't have
a problem anymore.
I don't feel so intense about it.
We will figure it out together.
We will build this together.
This is a process.
And I don't feel like they're declaring that we are right.
We know what's going on.
You don't, which is what the article felt like.
That's what the Dow admin article felt like.
Every single idea.
So there's no hard science behind this.
How do we select the best proposal?
It's a combination of community interests, some judgments made by human beings that are
machine that have their own judgment as well.
There's no like automated process from idea to like separation to vote.
This would be another mini pillar that I would note is him saying that, look, we're human,
right?
That, you know, we are humans.
We are not machines.
I feel like that's that's a plea of acknowledgement that, look, look, we're just trying to figure
this out.
Like you all are like San Fam.
The Dow admin team is not like this end all be all omnipresent omniscient thing.
We're just trying to figure it out too.
And I respect that.
I respect that it alleviates my anger at feeling like the Dow admin team thinks that it knows
everything and that it knows San Fam when some of some of the Dow admin team has not
been San Fam that long.
So how do they possibly know what San Fam believes?
Some of us do.
Some of us have a good pulse on the community.
Kuta, I think, has a good pulse.
I think he took a break for a little while as an ambassador, but it feels like he has
a good pulse in the community.
Does Cyril have a good pulse?
I didn't think so.
I didn't think that the Dow admin team had a good pulse.
They really understood what San Fam was all about.
And that's what was why I was so intense and frustrated.
But what I hear Cyril saying is, please get please give me some time to figure this out.
We're just people trying to figure it out like you.
Okay.
That makes sense.
I feel my mistrust start to fade away as I'm listening to this.
Manual is done by human beings, right?
So how do we go about that?
Maybe it's not perfect, but we're trying our best to monitor the forum, look at the
ideas, assess what we think is good, assess what we think has great momentum.
And then we start a conversation with the author of this proposal.
And throughout this conversation that goes by having new guidelines being published,
it used to be a template now and they had that pros and cons.
And now we moved to a type form.
And the type form has pros and cons too.
I noted that in my thread back to the DAO admin team, some recommendations where the
form has a pretty intense con about the way you can communicate your plan.
And some things didn't align with the number of milestones you had to have with the tier
that you were submitting for.
So just little things like that.
But ultimately it feels like a step in the right direction.
Although I just don't know how this is going to play out over time.
A question where you answer some questions and you feel a database directly for us.
So it's more streamlined on our side and we believe it guides even more the author.
It's more streamlined on your side, but doesn't exactly feel more streamlined on our side
because it went from having about five steps to eight steps in order to do this new process.
So it did make things a little bit more complicated for us in the way that it was described in
the article and then on the forum post.
So I'm not convinced yet, but I give you all the benefit of the doubt now.
And let's just see how it works out.
Maybe it really is better.
It just looks like it's more complicated.
But having a, where I have to submit a step idea and then wait for an invitation, which
I have no idea if or when it's going to come or what you're basing it on.
It's more confusion is what that one was.
But after hearing the rationale, let's give it a try.
I'll be less intense about it.
Hopefully, you know, reduce frustrations on the way as well.
You talking about it right now is reducing my frustration.
And I think it will reduce many other frustrations.
Excellent.
This is really all such great information for people in the community who are interested
about how this is all happening, how what's going on, like quote unquote behind the scenes.
I know you've done a lot to reveal that through the weekly updates and the screenshots of
And again, I love that you've been doing that, Cyril.
I think it's been awesome that you've been showing that it's helped me out as a SIP author,
a business person, a community member to help me on many fronts.
And then you explaining your rationale here is really the final piece of the puzzle set
together.
Our notion.
Just please keep doing it.
Page and as much as your schedule allows my channel just to show everybody what's going
on.
So, I mean, that's great segue to the next bullet point here is, you know, just transparency
in decision making.
And, you know, this is a great start to things, just letting people meet the meet the Dow
team more personally.
Yes, it is.
You know, see behind your behind your thoughts, you know, what's what's driving and motivating
us and this is great.
So tell me more how we can how we can be transparent in decision making right now.
What are we doing already?
What can we do better?
And I also wanted to remark, if you're listening to this drop comments or if you've got open
channels with us, tell us, you know, when we ask these questions of each other, you're
part of the fam.
Tell us what's up.
Yeah, for sure.
We touched on this a little bit at the beginning.
This is like a great territory.
There's no perfect way to go about, you know, putting it out together and then administering
about right.
So we're making a conscious effort.
That's for sure to be transparent as possible.
I don't know to like I feel like you are now.
It didn't feel like that up until this episode and Bobby Kunta came into the mix.
Like you said earlier, you you are really focused on doing the big stuff first and the
transparency unfortunately took a backseat in many ways.
It has been getting better.
And now I say it's much better.
We have the transparency page.
So I want to give you kudos and props for doing that.
Thank you.
On the on the on the dashboard on the website itself is called the dashboard and everybody
gets to see and see how much money is being spent.
There's been some challenge with this page, by the way, technical challenges.
But that's a conversation.
Yeah, we did notice.
I tend to use snapshot now because the technical difficulties and challenges on the proposal
website on the Dow, it doesn't it doesn't load properly all the time.
And then sometimes it misreports the percentage of the yes, no vote for another day.
But basically, when the community goes in there, you've got all of the smart wallets
that are associated to each of the budget and you get to see the expenses that are made.
We do have another dashboard that is more internal when you get to see forecasts, like
when you see it gets accepted, you know, payment gets relinquished in about my son's completion.
So I'm tracking like how much we already paid and that's visible to the community.
Just accessing the transparency page on the on the dashboard.
It's not it's not transparent which wallets which sips are getting paid out, because all
it shows is well, I'll show you all it shows is the wallets.
And you can't really tell which wallet is being paid out to what I mean, you might be
able to figure out based on the category that the sip was in which sip it is.
So for instance, the staking, the staking sip, you can probably tell that the staking
sip is this one.
Right, I think, but I can't I don't know.
All I can do is click poly scan and look at the wallet and see the transactions go to
different anonymous addresses.
I have no idea what that is, how to read this.
So the operations budget we know now is strictly for the DAO admin team, it wasn't always known
that that's what it was for.
Like there was upon a time when you could submit a sip under operations, I didn't know
was only claimed by the DAO admin team until like a month ago, when Cyril mentioned it
in a forum post in response to one of my q&a.
The intense q&a.
Thanks again, by the way, Cyril.
But you could submit for all of these.
And so it wasn't clear.
You know, they still show in many ways, I think they show incorrectly how much is left.
So I'm not I'm not exactly sure how this is helping me, except that I can kind of tell
maybe what sips fall in which buckets.
Maybe I haven't been able to figure it out yet.
So I've been relying on my own sheet.
It's what's what I call the DAO checkbook here.
I've been doing it myself, which which budget is it coming out of?
And yeah.
So like this one, there are game content has four sips that are in it.
You know, so does San initiatives.
So it's hard to figure that one out.
But I like that you're trying and you're trying to create a technical solution there.
I can see the wallets, which is awesome.
The wallets are hugely important to know, because that is that's like the final page
in quality assurance where I can check to see the numbers myself.
I just now need to know who who they've been paid to.
And maybe I don't need to know that.
But it's helpful to know how it's being paid out.
At least one of us needs to track it, you or us.
But there's also the forecast one.
And we're thinking about how that's also visible to the please make the forecast one visible.
Because I've had to create this thing is but this is a forecast mostly.
As soon as it gets approved, I record the expense and it tells me how much of the budget
loops, how much stop that, how much the budget is, how much has been spent per sip, how much
of the budget remains.
But what I don't know is how much is being spent along the way, because it's a fluid
tracking that I can't.
And I don't have the time right now to do so I don't have a solution in place.
Maybe if my sip passes, though.
If my sip passes for Sandow podcast, I might have the time to do it.
And at least have a teammate that can do it and expand, expand that.
It's all about notion.
And it's all, you know, a bit of manual work, plus, you know, a bit of feeling there.
And how to make that visible to the community, I think would be great as well.
So you've got six completion, you've got how many milestones been achieved and you got
how many?
If the notions are available on other dials, I would like to see this notion, same style
as notion.
I think it would, it would make a lot of things a lot of transparency issues go away.
How much money has been transferred to the other and how much will be transferred to
the other upon success.
That would be awesome.
Projections in our bills, you know, that we're regularly paying and all of that kind of stuff
that just we're just working towards sharing as much as we can.
But not everybody can be done overnight.
So this is this is a process and it takes time and it takes resources to get there.
I have the weekly, semi weekly, not so weekly operational updates.
See, I like that he recognizes that he didn't, he wasn't posting it every week, like he originally
said, then he went to bi weekly, but then he wasn't posting every bi weekly either.
I like that he acknowledges it and it's okay.
You acknowledge it.
All right.
I get it.
You've got a workload.
So do I.
I try to do every Monday.
I guess I haven't done these in a while.
I've been busy with delegations, but this is also an opportunity where I just screen,
I take screen grab of our Notion page and try to share some thoughts about what has
been our priority recently and what are we doing.
This is also another example of trying to be more transparent as well with the community.
And now we do, but I guess people will get the more direct connection and the ability
to interact more frequently.
And it's been great seeing that those Notion screenshots, that's, that was a big step forward.
And it helped.
It started to help unwind my frustrations about transparency to where leading today
to where most of them are gone now after watching this episode.
And as long as Kunta and Cyril are still doing these sorts of things, then most of my concerns
about transparency are gone.
There's a few left, but the vast majority of them are gone.
With us, like you mentioned at the beginning, in a couple of episodes, it will become the
more live conversation.
So I'm also looking forward to that.
Me too.
And I'm glad, now I am kind of glad you did it closed format to where I could see this
because it changed.
If I had been live while this was happening, I think I would have asked, not an insulting
question, but I would have asked a pointed question.
I would have asked, you know, where's the transparency?
What can we do to ensure that it's given?
But here you are explaining it.
And all I had to do was watch a podcast episode to figure it out.
Also an effort to be more transparent.
I'm not sure there's many guys that are doing this way, but this is what we're trying to
do.
Some do.
Some do it way more.
Some do it way less.
But yeah, many do transparency.
Like I said, I'm a part of Nine Dows officially, a membership of, but I'm really active in
like four or five.
Right.
So hopefully people dig all of this, you know, to get to meet us.
I think the more people even hear our conversations and how we're coming at this, the more that
and it's such an important word, the more that trust can be built, you know, because
Yes, Kunta hits it on the head.
The more that trust can be built, rebuilt, relative repaired.
Yes.
I did not trust the Dow admin team.
I did not.
I felt like they lost my trust early on and I hadn't yet to see it be rebuilt.
And I'm sorry that I was so quick to judge that.
And I apologize to the Dow admin team via that forum post that I showed a little bit
earlier.
And I think Kunta hit it.
It trust.
That's, that's, I think a big part of what's missing right now is there are people that
are questioning what's going on.
I agree.
And I was one of them.
Because they're not seeing the process.
They don't understand it.
And, you know, they're not sure what even are the intentions of the Dow admin team.
When he says that, I'll just self ID.
He's talking about me.
I'm the one that said I don't trust the intentions.
I'm not seeing what I need to see to believe that the Dow admin team is, is really on our
side on San Fam's side.
I wasn't seeing what I expected to see in order to make that obvious to me.
And so I questioned the intentions of the Dow admin team.
And Kunta listened and took that in.
And I can see now he really did.
He really did understand and take that in.
He really is repairing relationships.
He's crushing it, man.
Absolutely crushing it.
And I appreciate, I appreciate how he handled it.
I appreciate that he did handle it.
And he is now handling it continuously, not just with me, but with other San Fam, because
I'm not the community.
I am part of the community.
I don't speak for the community.
I speak for myself.
I'm just journaling out in the opening.
And I just, a lot of people come and they do send me messages about stuff.
So I do get to hear different community members talk about their perspectives.
I don't speak for them.
All I can do is just advocate when they're not here.
That's all I can do.
And speak on behalf of myself, my own opinion.
Team R. Like, so to make all of this clear in the context of our shared mission together,
this is really valuable.
So it's so much to get together.
Very valuable.
We're trying to keep this under an hour, but it's not looking good, y'all.
So special counsel and advisory board selection and their roles and how they're compensated.
I mean, can speak to that for a moment.
And again, a reminder to everybody, we're going to try and unpack all of this deeper,
maybe in just like little short clip episodes of Sarah and I talking about things more so
you guys can get our thoughts.
But talk to me, Sarah.
Starting with special counsel, back to the sentiment about the first few SIPs being rushed.
We had to start somewhere and it was always our intention not to do an election process
about special counsel because we wanted this to start with the special counsel so we can
start processing SIPs as quickly as possible.
It was an intentional decision.
Maybe it was a design flaw.
Maybe it was a mistake, but it was definitely intentional.
Because we wanted to start somewhere and we'll start squeaking back.
So at 5615, he talks about special counsel and advisory board being appointed was an
intentional decision.
And then he adds, maybe it was a design flaw, which I think is self-actualization.
It might not have been a real design flaw in real life, but the fact that he's willing
to consider it, that Cyril is willing to consider that it was a design flaw, that meets the
intent of transparency and understanding the rationale.
The fact that you consider, Cyril, the fact that you consider that it could have been
a design flaw.
Maybe you messed up there.
Maybe you didn't.
And time will tell.
But we iterate on success as we see success.
So considering that to me is a mark of the sort of rationale that I want to see to trust
your intentions, to trust the Dow admin team, that you are taking into account different
points of view in your decision making and that you're not convinced of your own rightness.
And I'm seeing evidence right here that you are thoughtful in your approach and you're
considering different points of view and that you could be wrong.
And I think that's great.
I think that's wisdom.
To find that balance between efficiency and being as democratic as possible, finding that
right balance.
The way these guys have been selected, they're brilliant people.
They're captain of industry.
Like Yat and Seb, obviously, Seb's in the front of the sandbox.
Yat being the chairman of Animoca makes sense.
We've got Shannon Snow from World of Women.
We've got Félix Montagnon, very successful entrepreneur behind Aya Ni.
We have Jean-Michel Bayonne, that is an ex-executive at Ledger.
And I was running his own, I guess, fund about art and stuff.
These are all brilliant people.
And I think when you started an enterprise like a DAO, like it was an experiment, that's
what I wanted to say.
When you started an experiment like a DAO, you want to be surrounded by as many smart
people as you can.
And these people were friendly of us.
They wanted to help.
They volunteered to help.
They would come through many interviews to make sure they were appropriately motivated
and what they can bring to the table, et cetera, et cetera.
So I get the disappointment and the comment that these guys are not necessarily from the
community.
But I would argue that they are still SanFam.
They are SanFam because we talk about them regularly and they care about them.
I agree that they are SanFam.
I don't think some people might dispute that, but I don't think most people would dispute
that they are SanFam.
Most of them own different things that have been a part of SanFam for a long time, like
rural women that had their own experience, had their own avatars.
Hard to argue that the person who helps run the operations is not SanFam at that point.
I agree that they are SanFam.
I also agree with the next part that he's about to, comma, caveat.
They care about the sandbox and they care about this doubt.
So as long as they care about this doubt, it's sandbox.
They are SanFam, like any of us.
Right?
So not because they're not tweeting every day doesn't mean that's useless.
I just want to...
I agree and I acknowledge that point, Cyril.
They don't have to be tweeting every day to be considered useful or a part of SanFam.
Drive that point home.
They're very, very useful.
And I got regular interaction with them and I'm learning so much from these guys that
are frankly brilliant.
But I get the comment that they're not necessarily the closest to the game itself or the community
or they don't necessarily show up on the Discord channel and interact directly with the community.
Yep.
That's it.
That's acknowledging the elephant in the room, that the special counsel and the advisory
board, almost all of them.
There are some that have shown up since that have been on this podcast and I've reached
out to every single one of them, except for one who I can't figure out how to contact.
I can't find an email.
I can't find a Twitter account.
I can't find anything.
But I've reached out to every single advisory board and special council member asking for
an interview.
And I've prepared the questions I have.
I've watched tens, almost every single one of them.
I've watched at least 10 hours of interviews.
There's a couple that I couldn't find anything on, except maybe a few interviews, like maybe
four or five hours worth.
But we had Sue, I think I've watched 20 hours of interviews.
Seb before I interviewed him, I think I watched 15 hours of interviews.
I've really, I've dug deep to try and understand our special counsel and advisory board.
And then I developed the questions to tailor to what is their involvement?
What do they want to achieve before reelection?
But I've only been able to interview one special council member and two advisory board members.
So Mia Bao and Dr. Loretta Chen, I loved interviewing both of them.
It's clear what their mission is.
It's very clear their contributions.
And then I interviewed Seb, which needs no explanation of what his contribution is.
We all know.
But I wasn't able to and haven't been able to schedule an interview with other special
counsel and advisory board members.
Some of them have just declined.
Some of them didn't give me a reason why they declined.
They just said they couldn't.
Others didn't respond.
And others I exchange a couple of messages with waiting on the answer of what if they
will agree to go on the podcast.
So it's kind of a wide range of I'm sorry I'm not available.
I'm sorry I can't.
And not answering me at all, or answering me to say, hey, I got your message, but not
really answering if they will come on the podcast.
And so that it's been a little bit of frustration.
I understand they're all captains of industry, but every single one of them agreed to this
position.
And every single one of these positions has a part to play in our DAO.
So it is very important to us.
And I can't help that that they have full time jobs.
I can't help that.
They accepted the position and there's a responsibility there to help us through and lead in the position.
So that's the part where I'm kind of struggling with.
I don't want to poke and prod them too much on it.
I've largely left it alone.
I've reached out like I think twice per person.
And if they didn't respond at all, then I've kind of resigned myself to the fact that they're
not responding.
I really, really want to interview each person and understand their perspective.
Even if it's 30 minutes, I'd really love to interview every person.
And I've reached out to all of them and I have huge sections of notes talking about
them, talking about their perspective, their background so that we're not rehashing stuff
that they've done elsewhere.
And we're really centered on sandbox.
What are they here to do in a DAO?
How are they contributing?
And what can we do as a family?
How can we support them?
Like it's a two way street, not just a one way them serving us.
So that's what I hope to get out of all of it.
But if Bobby is able to do it instead, if Kunta is able to do it on his podcast, I consider
it a win.
Because to me, I can trust that Kunta is going to have the conversation.
Not confronting them, but talking to them like people and then talking to us.
Like there are advisory board and special council members, not some outside publicity
tour.
And I guess that's what our intent to have a second body, that is the advisory board.
And these guys, they are much more closer to the game.
They have studios, they publish games, they are much closer to the sandbox.
And that was our idea is to have the council is maybe this type of person and the advisory
board is people that are really being more connected deeply with the sandbox game itself
and balance these two bodies out will bring ultimately more value to the table.
And I wondered how that's going, how he believes that's going.
That's the only thing he didn't expound on here was the advisory board.
I've interviewed two advisory board members, love them.
They are great.
And I don't feel like the advisory board is all that present in the discourse right now.
I think I want to try and change that with a panel of some kind.
But they haven't seen them much.
I've seen Loretta Chen, I've seen Mia Bao, she's been, they've been tweeting and doing
different things involvement in the sandbox.
I haven't seen the others as much.
And I wonder about that.
I wonder, are they supposed to be more involved?
Because it sounds like what Cyril just said is that they should.
But I reserve judgment on that.
I'm trying to understand better trying to ask questions more before I before I make
any judgment at all.
Because maybe there's a really good reason for why we don't see panels of advisory board
members talking about the sandbox.
I mean, they're not being paid.
They are they are paid zero sand, whereas special counsel is paid 150,000 sand per year.
So yeah, with that comes some measure of their time.
But as Cyril is about to point out, it's not quite like that.
They're not paid to be public.
It sounds like they're paid to give advice informally to Cyril so that he can improve
the doubt.
He's about to get into that.
That was on time.
Yep, that all makes perfect sense.
And another comments regarding related to that is the conflict of interest comment,
you know, that that's yet and said, I mean, there's it could be seen from either perspective.
It's like flip sides of a coin.
They're intimately connected and have a better understanding about the ecosystem, more unique
and more like attached in many ways than most people in the world.
But the other side is that it's a conflict of interest in making decisions towards decentralization.
You know, so it's that pull that it's a healthy push and pull in both directions to decentralize
and to to, you know, hold hands, as you put it up for a longer period of time.
So yeah, but I would give kudos to them like I would do the sandbox that would never have
happened.
I would I would give kudos to them as well.
It wasn't for the first of all, said from the sandbox with his co-founder, so if without
these two person, there wouldn't be no sandbox and no doubt.
So they want to doubt the six.
Like they teased about it four years ago in the white paper.
There was always an incentive to centralize and the whole question was when and how right.
And we made it happen.
And so conflict of interest, I would say they are very much they want the doubt to succeed
because they have no obligation to do a doubt.
Right.
This is their company.
They do whatever they want.
And the fact that they've, you know, ask the question, like, what can we do better?
What can we do differently?
How we can engage with the community in a different way and actually makes a lot of
sense with the sandbox.
Back to what I was saying at the beginning with the empowering creators and now empowering
the communities and gradually transferring more and more power makes a lot of sense.
But nobody asked them to do that.
Right.
And yet is obviously from from Animoca cares a lot about the success of the sandbox as
well.
So they're just pushing for us to get has outright said in a recent interview that sandbox
is a key strategic initiative of Animoca brands.
I have that here.
There it is.
This podcast with Camila Russo.
In 2019.
Camila, Camila Russo.
So it's about 10 minutes.
What you are, what products, what games you're building now?
Well, I mean, I think, you know, obviously sandbox continues to be a key strategic initiative,
but otherwise, you know, that was only three months ago.
So for for yet to sandbox and continues to be a key strategic initiative.
So that that's one of the things that Cyril is alluding to.
And then the utter support that Seb has given and Arthur, both co-founders of the sandbox
to make it a reality of what it is today.
That's to be understand.
Nobody asked that to, but they're here.
What can we say about compensation?
That is a concern for some people in the community.
I have a much different viewpoint on on compensation being unfair.
I don't think it's unfair at all, especially when you look at special counsels and other
DALs.
Some of the other DALs are being paid way more than one hundred twenty five thousand
sand.
Oh, and I meant to do that calculation for people to see like eight point DAL is being
paid one hundred twenty five thousand U.S. dollars.
So I'll do that conversion here while they're talking.
I think compensation is always questioned with regards to perceived value.
I completely agree with Cyril's viewpoint here on perceived value.
Everybody's like, oh, you're getting too much to pay too much for this particular job versus
I'm not being paid enough with regards to the value I'm bringing to the table.
It's always a matter of perceived value.
The council is being has a salary.
But they bring a lot to the table as well.
It's not perceived value like these people, they're not paid on the number of tweets they
send.
They're not like ambassadors or such.
They paid by their thought process, the connections they bring to the table, the fact that they're
thinking.
I mean, if these guys are so successful in day to day lives and in their own personal
endeavors, that's because they know stuff or they see stuff that nobody else sees.
This has a lot of values.
And I guarantee that the conversation I'm having with some of them are sometimes very
lengthy and very deep.
And they give us the time.
They really take the time to be there for the DAL and really think about stuff and make
introduction or help or whatever they can bring to the table.
They're just not measured in the interacting with the community or sending tweets or being
present on the forum.
That's just not who they are.
And that's frankly not why they've been chosen, but they bring a lot of value to the table.
Then if you judge the number on pure absolute value, look at other DAL and look at, for
example, how much people were paid at the beginning of Apecoin DAL.
And you would see that they actually...
Apecoin DAL, people were paid $20,000 a month, a month, $20,000.
It was later reduced down in a later AIP, I think a year ago, down to $9,000.
So a little bit over 50% pay cut, but they were paid at Apecoin DAL, right?
Special counsel.
And that was basically...
The story goes that the original special counsel was StarLade, like the co-founder of Reddit,
the Yatsu and Emoco brands.
So Star Studded, just like ours is right now.
And so it warranted a high salary.
But then the elections started happening, the re-elections, and then community members
started getting in.
And so then community members who were not captains of industry in the same way that
Yatsu is, now were being paid $20,000 a month, which is what?
$250,000?
$240,000 a year, right?
So the original was $250,000.
So $250,000 in sand is $593,000 sand.
All right, that's the conversion.
So that was in 2022, I think.
And then Apecoin DAL special counsel in 2024 is now $125,000 per year.
So what is that?
$296,000 sand.
So this is what he's talking about when he says that special counsels elsewhere are being
paid much, much more than $125,000 sand.
$125,000 sand is $52,000.
That's fair.
That's a fair amount.
That's, that's a good amount.
Is it a livable wage?
Somewhat, are you not?
Depend on what country you live in.
It could be for sure.
But sandbox is being paid $52,000 compared to Apecoin DAL's $296,000 sand, which is $125,000.
Right?
So that's a big difference.
It's a big difference.
That's like Apecoin DAL special counsel right now are being paid twice the amount that the
sandbox special counsel is.
So there you go.
The salary that I've been presented here are fairly reasonable.
I agree.
And yeah, that's all I have to say about this really.
It's always about what's your worth.
And everybody can judge what somebody's worth, but actually, you know, people are worth,
I think, definitely the money we're paying them.
I agree.
You have some major key figures right now in the special counsel.
I mean, one of them is chairman of the board of a company that owns 500 other companies,
Anamoga Brands.
And you're, we're paying them $50,000 to be on a board.
That's where he's talking about perceived value.
More than enough said, in my opinion, anybody that's got any more comments, questions, concerns
really about anything we're discussing, drop the comments on the video here, or, you know,
you know, where to find us elsewhere.
We've got a few more topics to get through.
Staking like, can let's expand on just what the staking concerns were that were raised
in the poll and how they're being addressed.
One of them is like not voting with sand that is staked and just how that's behind the scenes
now.
It was a conscious design decision not to include staking from the get go.
Can you think of I can understand the the anger behind this one.
I never really, it never really bothered me.
I do stake sand, but it never really bothered me in the same way.
Even though, you know, my voting power is definitely going to be helped by that happening.
But yeah, okay.
I mean, they're a bigger fish to fry than than staking sand as voting power.
But okay, alluded to that on one of the answers I've made on the phone.
You want to go with the lower hanging fruit first.
You want to go with the quick win.
Like what's the cheapest, most effective, most impactful thing I can do first.
Staking was not one of them.
But I get the frustration because some of our community members had a lot of sand being
stacked and they were hoping to get a better voting power judging by the amount that I've
staked.
Staked, not stacked, staked.
And they were disappointed by this.
I get it.
100%.
And this is why now the team is studying, you know, how to bring it back.
I can tell you it's not easy.
It's definitely not easy.
Then this is something now it's time for us to look at and see how we can make it happen.
And it wasn't the time, it wasn't the right time to do it at the beginning of this step.
And it was really, like I said, a conscious decision.
But we've listened to the community.
And to be honest, this is also a tough one because we've listened to the community complain
about staking now being included.
But there was also some people that said, why should be included?
I'm an American.
I'm not allowed to use staking.
Why should I?
That's a fair point.
You know, doubly have twice the pain because now I can't even stake for myself and get
rewards.
And now I don't even get the voting power boost that everybody else is going to get.
So that's a bummer.
And these guys, they came to me when I was in NFC Lisbon, we announced the DAO.
I've been there for a couple of days and talked to as many people as I can.
There was a lot of American people and they took the opportunity to raise that concerns.
And that's the feedback I've got.
Obviously, it was a few people, but it's direct feedback that people spontaneously gave me.
So I had to take this into account as well.
And that's why I confronted my decision that, OK, it was maybe not the right time.
And we need to think more deeply about staking, whether it's a good or bad idea.
And now looking back at this, and now that the DAO is more up and running and then standing
on its two legs and stuff, we do have a little bit more time to look after this and really
ask ourselves whether stacking is a good idea.
And we believe it is.
But now let's make it happen.
And it's not that easy, but we're working towards making it happen together with the
sandbox, to be honest.
And the admin team is not the only one equipped to deal with this.
And the sandbox is helping us understanding how the current staking protocol works on
the sandbox and how to make it work and including it into our voting power.
Yeah, excellent.
These are really such important conversations.
Yeah, I had no comments here.
I agree, understood, makes sense, acknowledged.
Conversations on just building that trust.
So man, everything here deserves the time that it's got to get.
We've got a few bullet points to get through here that I don't think we're just going
to have the time to get through.
And I don't want everybody out there listening to feel like this is rushed.
So why don't you and I just meet and we're going to have to tackle some of these in the
weeks ahead and dive a little deeper into them.
How the DAO is operating.
I can address them some pretty quick here too.
I mean, DAO operating in a gray area, a landscape.
Gosh, I mean, there's so much to unpack and just that sentiment that was shared in the
poll.
But we've got to talk more about that.
We have already kind of embedded in the other topics, the language barrier.
The website is currently in seven languages.
This poll we looked at before, we've got to figure out a little bit more what some of
those Asian languages are that we can reach new community members with.
So if you're listening to this and there is a language barrier, just tell us your native
country, what language you speak, how we can be translating more of the material we're
putting out.
Because the goal is to get these, even these podcasts, we can have the transcripts at least,
if not the captions and the languages that are most important for our community.
And if there's other languages that need the translation, maybe we can even get somebody
translating it.
I bet you, I just thought this on the wind, but I bet you there's an AI tool that does
this sign language, has an AI sign language bot that we can put onto videos too.
There is.
Accessibility is a really important topic for universally.
So it has to be important here.
So participation is the next bullet here.
I mean, that's anybody who's listening to this, that's part of your responsibility
too, not just ours, is to get more people participating, right?
So whether I agree, I agree with Kuntu on this.
That means delegating your voting power, getting more people you know who hold, stand and land.
That's what I was talking about earlier, where I want to tackle that problem.
I want to be that in the podcast.
I want to encourage that sort of inner dialogue within the SanFam community itself.
Whereas Kuntu can only take that so far as being the communications manager for the DAO
admin team.
His role is to ensure that the DAO admin team is communicating and do what he can to facilitate
communication.
But it's not really his role.
And I would not expect him to make that the focus of his job.
I would expect that of me as a community member and others as community members.
To get active, whatever it is, let's all do it.
We're in this together.
Everybody just wants money is the bottom bullet point.
I mean, I mean, sure, sure, true.
But also, I mean, that's that's everywhere.
I think we're both laughing because everybody wants money.
And I agree.
It's just, you know, balancing that and striking the right balance between needs and greeds
and building a community that we can all work with.
So we're going to talk about that too in the future here.
So we got a few questions from the community.
We can just hit them really quick here.
What benefit does this DAO get?
I'll get by going to a SIP invite only system.
Cyril, you had a quick response to that.
I can't tell.
But this might have been one of mine.
One of my questions, because I also responded in the poll.
Sounds like it might have been.
I'm not sure.
Maybe.
I think it would back to what we discussed about the the C process itself.
SIP invite only.
Like I said, creation takes community resources and by community resources, I mean people
from the admin team being allocated into creating a particular SIP that takes money in time.
So not everything deserves to be curated, unfortunately.
And that's why we have this little filter where only the stuff that we judge as human
being, right, not robot, not machine, not algorithm, as human being, also looking at
community reactions and how people like the idea or not.
This is how idea gets picked up to start this creation process.
And that's why for now it's still by invite only.
I like that he said for now.
That to me, assuaged my fear, my resentment that I had, because I had many more SIPs.
Like I have 18 different SIPs that I have planned out with my team in MetaWorlds.
Different stuff, different problems we want to tackle, different things that we've seen
over the years.
They're all different points of view.
And it saddens me to think that I have to wait an unknown amount of time to be invited
to give a SIP.
Now Kunja is about to say something about the semantics of it.
I do not agree with him on this one, because anyone could always put something out on the
ideas forum.
Like I said, I put out 10 already in the ideas sub forum.
You could always do that.
But you could always up until the new process, you could always submit your SIP to the team,
the DAO admin team, to undergo the voting process, to get reviewed and then go to the
council and then put a voting.
This new process, as of October 2024, removes that openness and is now invite only.
You cannot submit a SIP to the DAO admin team without them inviting you to submit it to
the forums as a SIP idea.
You could always do that.
That was always the case.
Now it's mandatory you do it and you can't proceed past that until you're invited.
Yeah, I mean, that's also kind of semantics that might be a bit inaccurate.
It's not really invite only.
Anybody can propose a SIP.
It's just that only some are then selected for curation.
That to me is a semantics.
Anyone can propose a SIP, but not all of you are going to get there.
Not all of you to be considered.
That was different.
That's the change from May of 2024 SIP process to October 2024 SIP process from a open system
to a invite only system.
So invite only semantics, okay, maybe, but it's not untrue to say that you cannot proceed
through that process in October 2024 in the same open way that you could back in May.
It's different, but I like that Cyril said it's different for now.
That gives me hope and it gives me the assurance that they're looking at this to see if it's
going to work or not.
Does this improve on the goals that they're trying to reach for the semantics down?
Okay, I get that.
I really, really hope it really is for now, but maybe in the end I won't have a problem
with it.
It's this way for now.
The advanced version.
It might not be how other DAOs are doing it, but hopefully people can appreciate the opportunity
that's in front of us all.
And I do.
Now, I think you and I agree on that.
I can appreciate the opportunity.
The other one, is it possible for SANFAM to listen in on advisory board and special council
meetings if and when they're held?
I think the simple answer is yes.
This one might have been my question too.
Again, I can't tell.
I don't remember if I asked that specific question.
I have asked that before elsewhere.
So maybe this isn't just a question that he's drawing from the poll, because I have asked
that in the forums before and I don't think I got a response.
I think it was part of the DAO Medium article thread that I posted and did a podcast episode
too.
These two questions that I'm very interested in, and the answers.
SANFAM to listen in on advisory board and special council meetings if and when they
are held.
So something that I'm no longer quite as adamant about it right now, because I understand what
Cyril is saying about advisory board and special council, how he's doing these informal
one on ones, and they're being paid to really give that informal kind of aside.
And there's discretion there.
There's discretion about that advice.
However, in the future, when community members are becoming special council members, I will
push for open meetings.
I think that will be important.
But as of right now, based on what Cyril has revealed.
Okay.
I think I think it can make sense.
I just think that, you know, I'll reserve to the very end till they're done talking
about it.
There's really just no because they're not, they're not times they're, you know, trying
to find the five or 10 minutes that people have when they're on the go here.
And that makes sense.
That makes sense.
They're on the go.
They're discrete topics sometimes like sensitivity.
It requires a little bit of where people need to feel open to talk.
Whereas in a recorded session, maybe they won't.
Okay, makes sense.
And they're not being paid to necessarily be the most out in front person of the Dow.
Like I thought, and like the rest of the community thought they were.
We definitely thought that that's what they were being paid to do.
For there to connect over some discrete topics.
And so just no is the quick.
No is the short answer.
And I would add to that that we don't have a board, right?
These are not board meeting because the Dow is not a company.
And having board meeting implies having leadership that is eventually accountable.
And that's not the case in this this Dow.
I don't know what zero means by that because as I learned that the Dow Foundation is a
company, it's a foundation company in the Cayman Islands.
It does have board meetings.
So I'm confused about what he means here.
And so I'd like to ask because earlier in this, he does mention that he that the Dow
has a legal wrapper.
So I'm wondering what the difference is.
I don't think I fully understand this.
So there's no formal meeting that the community could listen to.
Like I said, there's a more informal conversation about future of the Dow, what three news,
what can we do better, what these guys have learned and sometimes questions about the
city itself.
But I know like actual board meeting happening.
I think there you go.
So quick answer is just kind of now.
Well, gift cards sold at box retail stores to load sand into accounts.
I thought that was an awesome question.
Like we're thinking like, you know, big game style.
And the answer there is hopefully like one day, let's all just keep building here.
That's certainly not next week, though.
Yeah.
All right.
So look, I mean, you know, it's to be continued.
You know, dot dot dot kind of like any good cliffhanger, not even in just one episode.
This is like a to be continued, like in perpetuity, because we're going to keep building with
you.
So that's it.
I mean, it's basically a wrap for episode one.
Thank you so much for joining us, Cheryl.
This is awesome to have you back.
Have more of that special council and advisory board that we talked about other stakeholders,
even community members up here and join in on the conversation.
So if we didn't address the topic that you want to hear more about that form, it's fielding
questions that we only got those last three from that will remain open.
I'll share that link here on the screen.
A few of the most important topics that I'm going to address in the next few months are,
you know, repairing these relationships with the community that still want to be involved,
providing as much as providing as much transparency as we can.
So what we're doing, you know, how we're doing it and why working as closely as possible
with community members won't help with what we see as one of the most important challenges
facing the doubt, which is attracting new participants so we can reach forum and just
keep building here.
So bring your friends.
Let's do this.
Keep doing it.
Subscribe to YouTube, drop some comments, share this with a friend, follow the exit
count, engage it, share some of our posts.
And that's it.
Enjoy Alpha season four.
Stay in touch with us.
Any any final thoughts?
You got a few seconds, Cheryl.
Keep playing the sandbox.
That's it.
Love y'all.
Sam, Sam.
I'll be content.
Ciao guys.
We've been going for three hours, so I'm not going to do the normal out and about, but
my only thoughts left were Bravo.
Bravo.
This was this was the episode I needed to hear.
For my mistrust, my resentment to get past my anger, all the fear about who's running
the Dow and do they have their best intentions at heart.
This was the episode I needed to hear for that.
So I consider it behind me now.
I'm looking forward to what we're building together.
Sam Fam, Dow, admin team, sandbox team, and I now feel more comfortable bringing in outside
business interests to help support my SIPs to make them successful.
And I feel way more certain and confident about those business relationships, the things
that are going to be necessary for some of these SIPs to succeed, at least for me.
And that's a powerful thing, because some of these business relationships are very powerful.
And they're important.
They bring experts to the table, which would not be available to us in Web3 had we not
made these disclosures.
And I can disclose to them now what sort of the intent is behind some of this stuff.
And so they don't really feel like they're under the gun of regulation or like they're
just waiting for an axe to fall on them because they're involved now in Web3 and they have
to for their business development or whatever.
We can now assuage those fears and help onboard them at a much faster pace and with more confidence
that their risk is being mitigated appropriately.
I'm talking very program manager like, talking very entrepreneurial and business like, but
that's what goes down here.
And when you have a Dow that where the business, the gaming, the community and leadership all
intersect together, if you want to be playing in that sort of field as a Dow, you've got
to you've got to come at it in a way that can facilitate others' contributions.
So I'm looking forward to it.
I think this is the right move.
Thank you for for doing this zero and Kunta and look forward to the many others.
So that'll do it for today.
Today's podcast was a reaction video to Sandel podcast official episode one with Cyril and
and Kunta focusing on the transparency piece that alleviated much of my concerns, my fear,
my anger, my resentment that had been building since May 28th when the Dow was announced
and we didn't get the the reaction, the explanation, the rationale and the transparency that we
were expecting.
Let's turn that around and I no longer feel the same way I did before listening to it.
Thank you, Kunta and Cyril.
Thank you so much for for being vulnerable, for being open.
And I really encourage you to keep doing that.
And I think it will pay dividends back to the Dow.
All right, Sam fam.
Bye.