DAOs or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are now revolutionizing the ways in which we can build community. There are so many people, especially women, who are stuck on a path they’d like to escape, in search of greater empowerment. Listen in to hear how DAOs bring like-minded people together to envision and achieve something better.
Join Edge Of NFT co-host Eathan Janney as he talks to some really talented women in Web3 and learns what they are creating through DOAs and NFTs. This episode is adapted from a special NFTLA Twitter Spaces event featuring panelists Nicole Buffett, NFT Gigi, Melanie Plaza & Amy Soon speaking about women’s empowerment using the latest tools. Learn how they each are helping women in their own way, whether it’s by promoting their art or by teaching them to build new skills and support systems.
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Women In Web3 Unite Through DAOs And NFTs Feat. Nicole Buffett, NFT Gigi, Melanie Plaza & Amy Soon (NFT LA Twitter Spaces)
We’ve assembled an incredible panel of awesome achievers to talk about the fascinating things that are happening in DAOs and NFTs, especially looking at how women are finding interesting leverage points within the space, ways to come together, create new things, and empower themselves and everyone else. I’m going to get into some intros to our guests, which I’m very excited to have all of you. It’s a privilege to have such wonderful folks on. I’ll give an intro to everybody first, and then I’ll give them a chance to say hello and introduce themselves a little bit, and then we’ll move on into the conversation.
Let’s start with Nicole Buffett. She is an NFT influencer, a philanthropist and creator. She’s a former Board Member of the San Francisco Art Institute as well as participating at the San Francisco Art Institute. She’s an artist in residence. She has been at JB Blunck, Djerassi and Infinite Acres. She has also been a speaker in several major media outlets, including NPR, Oprah, and Fortune Magazine. She has participated in some lecturing at educational institutions as well. She is committed to the healing aspects of art and the intersection of regenerative agriculture, community and art. She happens to be CryptoPunk #8771. I’m sure we’re all jealous of that achievement.
Next is NFT Gigi. She’s the Founder, Creative Director, and Lead Engineer of Crypto Tech Women. She’s also a full stack developer with expertise in lots of platforms like React JS, JavaScript and TypeScript. State Management, using platforms like Redux. She has backend, Node.js, Express.js and MongoDB. She’s inspired by clever solutions to complex problems and creative implementations of everyday tools. You could find her on GitHub @GigiScarlet.
Melanie Plaza is also active in coding and tech leadership. She’s at AE Studio, which happens to be a partner of the show. You could find out more about our partnership at EdgeOfAE.com. We’re helping people build projects in Web3 and NFTs. She is the CTO at AE Studio, leading product and technical strategy, and building cool stuff for startups and enterprises. She’s a former Co-Founder of ELIX and Founder of Token Runners and Instill. She’s passionate to make impactful web, blockchain and AI products.
Finally, let’s introduce Amy Soon. She is the Founder of Blu3 DAO. She’s an author and an actuary. She’s on a mission to empower women to be financially free with a little bit of crypto power and metamorphosis magic. She’s a management consultant. She grew from analyzing pension plans to managing HR and M&A deals. She has been a manager at PWC and a former consultant at Deloitte. She’s a skilled developer of people programs and culture.
We have great folks on the panel here. I want to check in with each one of you and give you a chance to say a few words or something from your introduction we might have missed because it’s new or maybe not as well-known. Let’s kick it over to Gigi. It’s great to have you here.
Women In Web3: Blue DAO is here to empower women to achieve financial freedom in the Web3 space. Their mandate milestone is to onboard 1000 women scholars around the world.
How is everyone doing?
Very good. Anything else you want to add about the latest in your world or did we cover it?
I’m fully focused on Crypto Tech Women. I’m still coding full-time with Crypto Tech Women, but I’m developing a Web3 educational platform that token holders of Crypto Tech Women will have exclusive access to. In this Web3 educational platform, we’re going to be covering coding topics because as a software engineer, I think there’s so much opportunity in Web3.
For us, there are a lot of educational platforms that are niched only for coding. I do realize we have so many different members in our community with different interests. We are going into more of a generalist direction where we will also have marketing topics and not only traditional coding topics. We’ve also been doing masterclasses for our community and those are also ranged from crypto to NFTs to art. Those will also be included within our platform. I’m super excited about that.
That’s great stuff. It’s a common trail. Although it’s changing that developers need to be more connected to things like marketing so they know that they’re making the right products for the right people or be able to connect with the creative side of things. I love that breadth of what you’re working on. Nicole, I know you’ve got a lot of interesting things cooking these days. Do you want to mention what’s going on at the moment?
I’m so happy to be here. I do have a lot cooking. The most closely coming up is an exhibition of 32 new animated Spirit Coins. I was connected to an amazing new IRL NFT gallery space here in Venice Beach, Los Angeles, right on Abbott Kinney called The Gallery or The Collective. The super organic way I met them was when I was at NFT LA, I was bringing some Spirit Coins to get framed by my framer here in LA and someone from the gallery was in there. It happened completely organically. It is very fun that this space is super weaving into real life. It’s very natural and spontaneous, but it’s all synergistic. I love that.
There's so much opportunity in Web3 when it comes to coding and education. Click To Tweet
That’s happening on June 3rd, 2022 from 7:00 PM to 11:00 PM. I’m getting ready for that. I’m producing my first-ever line of textiles, all locally made in Los Angeles, with a meditation throw of the Spirit Coin on them. I’m super excited to be expanding my content and how I’m weaving the physical in with the digital asset. Please come. There is going to be a bar and all kinds of amazing things going on that night. Beyond that, I am still finishing up preparing projects that are going to be dropped on Quantum Art in July.
I loved how you incidentally used the word weaving after saying that you’re launching a textile project. You’re weaving things together metaphorically and literally. Let’s hop on over and check in with Amy. We’ve known each other as well as some of the other ladies on the panel, but I’d love to dive in a little bit deeper on what you’re up to right now.
I’m here in Malaysia. This is the great part about being in Web3. You can be anywhere. My latest update is I moved out of my apartment from New York City after living there for eight years. Now I am decentralized living and working in a DAO, which is pretty exciting. There’s a lot going on at Blu3 DAO. We launched a few months ago and we brought 50 women scholars to Denver. We brought 40 to Rio in Brazil. We won the first prize hackathon there.
We also went to ETHAmsterdam. We brought three all-women hack teams and we even made history because we were the only all-women hackathon team that won first prize. We’re very proud of our hacker girls. Now, we have a team hacking in Activate Miami. I can’t believe we’re not even three months old. It’s been going well in Blu3 DAO. We’re here to empower women to achieve financial freedom in the Web3 space.
Our mandate milestone is to onboard 1,000 women scholars around the world. We have launched Blue3 LatAm in Latin America, Blu3 Europe, and now we have Blue3 New York, LA and Miami. That’s the beauty of having a DAO. It’s decentralized and they explode from there. We are also launching 1,000 women-led DAOs and other social tokens.
It has been exciting to be putting our minds together to think of DAO structure and everything good with DAO. We have two hackathon teams that won in ETHAmsterdam and now they are starting their startup. We are building our very own Blu3 DAOverse to onboard more women into the space in the Metaverse. That’s super exciting and I also own a project management tool with the DAO app.
Women In Web3: CryptoZombies is a solidity game development course. You build a game where you have CryptoKitties and zombies start eating it and you’re building it with an ERC-721 token.
Great stuff. You have lots going on and we’ll be diving even deeper into that stuff. I’m very excited. This is going to be a great conversation. I loved knowing about the wonderful synchronistic connection that Nicole made through NFT LA. Part of our intention was to create an event where things like that can happen. Melanie, I would love to check in with you. What’s the latest in your world. Is there anything with you or with AE Studio that you’d like to share?
We’re working on a lot of cool web stuff. I’m focusing on a lot of crossover utility into the space. We’re focusing on making it easy and accessible. The thing that we were working on with you guys is a concrete example of something like that. There’s a blockchain NFT application, but it’s also has a very user-friendly interface and people can see the value in that.
We’re working on some other projects like the RPC game also, which has NFT. I’m also working on some other projects with blockchain technology stuff with other companies that are building identity solutions in blockchain, which is exciting. Another app, I’m finishing that we’ve made for token owners, which is the way we will platform our own custom-branded NFT drops, so it’s pretty exciting. I decided to do that and other things because it was pretty fun and to be able to deliver value to the space. It’s pretty fun.
It comes out when you chat more with folks at AE Studio, but there are these little few words that are a theme of what you guys do and that’s about increasing human agency. I love that as a theme within a business as building software to make people’s lives better and help them do more wonderful things. I would like to get into a warm-up question. It doesn’t have to be a super long answer, but I want to get deeper into your world and understand the evolution of your thinking and involvement in Web3.
I want to start with Gigi. You’re a programmer as we established and you seem naturally drawn to tech. I want to know as much detail about the moment that made you dive so deep into NFTs and Web3. If there wasn’t a moment, tell us about that gradual process of noticing you were in the water as it came to a boil. Tell us how you got involved.
I’ve been involved with crypto since 2017. I did not know anything about NFTs back then. I was surface-level involved with crypto and that was before the crash. Afterwards, it’s continuing my life and coding. It wasn’t until 2021, I heard Gary talking about it. I’ve been a follower of him. He mentioned NFTs in a podcast, but I also know I saw the news about a twelve-year-old kid who did an NFT project about some whale. He was able to sell it out. It was fascinating to me because that article talks about coding and that was the first way in.
DAOs are decentralized. That's the beauty of it. They just explode from there. Click To Tweet
I worked at a startup. I didn’t have a lot of time outside of fully focused on project building. I would listen to podcasts here and there. I did tell my best friend about NFTs. I sent him the podcast and the articles I read and he did his own research. He came back to me later and was like, “Do you remember that thing you sent me? I’m trying to build a game.”
He’s not an engineer. He found this thing called CryptoZombies which a lot of people are familiar with. If you’re not, it’s a Solidity game development course. You build a game where you have crypto kitties and the zombies start eating them. You’re building it with an ERC721 token. It’s pretty cool and it’s free. If you haven’t, you can check it out at CryptoZombies.io. He sent me this and he’s like, “Let’s see who can do it faster,” because he wanted to understand if that was for non-dev that wanted to be devs or if someone who’s an engineer can go faster. We’re very competitive with each other, so that was the beginning of it.
I was like, “Let’s do it,” and then as I was going through it which is a very long intensive course. For me, it was easier because I have a lot of background in coding. There were so many languages that I’ve worked with that made Solidity easy to understand for me. Going through it, I was like, “I liked this,” because I love gamified learning. Eventually, I finished it and then I started building my own thing. That was my beginning into Web3.
It’s fascinating how these kinds of beginner projects can reignite or ignite a flame even in someone who’s experienced or has some things under their belt. That’s a fun story. I want to go over to Nicole and ask you a different question. You’re a different personality than Gigi. You’re not a programmer. I don’t even know if you might consider yourself a general tech enthusiast, even though you’re quite involved. You and I spent some time together.
We’ve been hiking in nature. We talk about digging in the dirt and making real art objects out of dirt, a very organic person from my perspective. I want to know how and why you might think the world of organic creative expression in the natural world might have any connection at all with this tech and Web3 stuff. How do you see that?
What Ethan is saying is I’m the big hippie in this space. It’s true. I love making dirtballs. I’m about to focus on that project with Ethan which involves lots of dirtballs and they will be translated into NFTs. Everything that I do in Web3 starts in the physical space. All of my NFTs begin as painting. I came into this space early in 2021. I didn’t know when I was going to have another art show. I’m a traditional painter and mixed media artist. I was already into exploring all different mediums with art. That same spirit of curiosity and commitment to art in every single way that can be expressed is what drives me in my life.
Women In Web3: Explore all the different mediums of art. Having curiosity and commitment to art in every single way it can be expressed is really what drives an artist in life.
The digital medium has given so many more legs to my work. As far as dirt and Web3 go, the source of the work starts in the physical. I like attaching a physical to the digital asset because integration here is super important for different reasons. It’s not necessary for every aspect or space, but I enjoyed it because it grounds the way in which we can utilize it and the utility of what we’re doing, and the multifaceted nature of this space and Web3.
You’re not the only hippie, I would consider. I want to kick it over to Amy. I love bringing the topic of DAOs into this. All of us here in some way are connected to some DAO projects. Amy, Blu3 DAO has been a big part of what you’re doing. When did you know that that was going to go from an idea that was being kicked around into a real thing?
I’m laughing because I feel like in Web3 space, things move so fast. There’s not a lot of time for thinking, but more doing. I don’t know if there was exactly one moment that I saw what Blu3 DAO was because I have to be honest, I didn’t. It’s a great story because I had been investing in crypto for a few years. I have a group of women and we learn about investing in crypto, stock, options and all that good stuff.
One time, my friend was visiting in town and he was going through this Terra happy hour. At that time, they were going to the moon. He was like, “Would you like to join us at this happy hour?” I’m like, “Of course, I’ve been investing in crypto. I would love to meet the genius minds behind it. When I showed up, I remember feeling intimidated because they were all brilliant. There were all these founders of different DeFi protocols and all that stuff.
I thought I knew crypto, but in that happy hour, I realized I knew not a lot. At that moment, when I met people in the space, everybody was so inclusive. They were all intelligent and creative, but there was so much passion and humility. I fell in love with the space. One thing I noticed in that venue, and there was a second party that I went to, was there were not a lot of women. I had met the Head of VP for Cosmo, Shelley. She was welcoming me with open arms.
There was this moment where we were at the bar and she’s like, “Amy, we are here to represent women and show up for other women. We need to support and protect each other.” I had that sister moment with her. Going from there, I started meeting a lot of the Harmony guys. They had the campaign for Create Wealth in Harmony and I wrote the book for them.
I wrote my book in three weeks because, Stephen, the Founder of Harmony, told me that if I didn’t finish my book in three weeks, I would’ve missed ETHDenver and if I didn’t make it to ETHDenver, my book would be irrelevant in six months, which crazily that is true because one of my chapters is about the Anchor Protocol. We all know what happened to Terra. It’s so crazy how fast the space moves.
When I was writing my book, I wanted to recreate that experience I had, which was my first crypto conference, that magical moment of learning about the Web3 space, and how vast the space was. I wanted to recreate that experience for other women to come into the space. That gave birth to bringing women scholars to ETHDenver.
When we went to ETHDenver, we were not a DAO. We were just 50 women scholars that wanted to go to our first crypto conference in Denver. It was that supportive community. There was magic and love in the air. It was like we were made of the same DNA and we were all there excited to learn. I call ourselves the crypto baby. They’re also the big sister and little sister where people had more experience and we’re all sharing with each other. That gave birth to Blu3 DAO.
It’s very organic in coming together with a word that came up before here. I love hearing about how it’s sort of magical or those words that you used. I’ve seen that come up a lot on our show and Web3. The idea of things being magical and coming together. Nicole mentioned that too. It’s not always going to be an easy road. We’re all very hard workers, but it’s that knowing when the opportunity knocks and how to take advantage of it and take action. It sounds like that’s what’s going on.
I want to kick it over to Melanie. I want to ask you, since you’ve been a founder and a leader in tech, outside of Web3, the things that are similar and different between being a general tech founder and making things happen at Web3. Do you see a difference? If not, how do you see Web3 as a natural extension of tech evolution? If you do see a difference, what would be the differences between the Web3 space and being a tech founder and leader in general?
That’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I like to think of a blockchain and then all the other different things in technology and treat it like that for a long time in my mind. The difference is this is not a new iPhone upgrade that you’re getting after people use Postmates or something like that. I don’t think it’s something that’s almost like an entire paradigm shift. Blockchain is like the gaslight and then they were switching to electric. People were like, “What if houses installed a slating? Is it worth it?” People thought, “This light bulb is stupid.”
Women In Web3: REBELLICA attaches these amazing poetry poems with her work and that’s just really authentic sharing. The more artists express themselves in their work, the more value it adds.
That’s the difference with blockchain technology. It’s very fundamental. It’s similar in certain ways but it fires a lot of people right out the gate. It’s very different. You’re building and setting things up. There are a lot of different scripts for users. There’s more owning and controlling the way in which they can interact with things. It requires more responsibility. It also requires building and putting things up in a vastly different way. I think we’ll continue to see greater adoption because people do crave it. It’s cool to see powerful elements of all the Web3 with the fact that the technology is decentralized and gives individual users power or agency.
I thought that might be a go-to. It makes a lot of sense to think of it in both ways. I’m thinking, it takes certain psychology, openness or adaptability to take on these things. I love how you brought in the analogy of the light bulb and people’s resistance to it and how ubiquitous it is now. It’s interesting that I’ve seen these patterns of people that are on the cutting edge of things. They’re often up to things that always seem a little bit weird and then in 5 or 10 years, it’s not weird at all.
When I was a kid, I’ll give a shout-out to my mom here. She had a health food store and stocked, vitamins and all these nutritional products and stuff like this, and this was back in the ’80s. That stuff is just picking up. I’m always amazed at how people would be like, “This vitamin C stuff doesn’t do anything.” These various supplements are ubiquitous. You get them anywhere and it’s pretty commonly recommended. Take your vitamin D and stuff like that. I do remember that there was a resistance to that in a lot of folks. They didn’t quite understand it. That’s a good analogy.
This has been informative so far. I’m reaffirmed by this thought. We have some impressive thinkers and doers here. I do want to open up the conversation to some more general questions that we can all tackle and get different perspectives on the same question. For any audience, if you have questions hold on to them. We’ll open things up towards the end of our hour. Be prepared to be invited on stage if you want to chat with the folks on the panel. That would be great. Make note of what you have to comment or question about and we’ll bring you on.
Make sure to share the session. It looks like we’re picking up a lot of steam along with us. Many more people are with us than when we started, but if you want to share it. Invite your friends to come and join us. I’ll also mention we’re going to do a couple of giveaways at the end of the session. We’ll have a pull-up and a white list opportunity for you to take advantage of so stick around. We’ll let you know more about the details on that.
Let’s get into some more of this curated conversation. We are officially focusing on DAOs and NFTs as a means for women in Web3 to come together and support one another. I would love to find out from each of you a little bit on that topic, but also as an entry point, do you own or admire any NFTs in particular that you think empower and support women or bring women together. You can give a little bit about what attracts you to them. I’ll start with Nicole and see if you have anything to say on this matter.
When I first met you on NFT LA, I was at the Praise Party a few years ago. This space has been such a crazy journey for me of getting on Twitter and exploring these different platforms. Being up late at night, scrolling, looking, and trying to find new interesting artists, and someone I found early on is Rebellicca. She’s an NFT creator. What I like about her work is that she attaches these amazing poetry or poems with her work and that’s authentic sharing. It’s bringing in the art aspect of it. The more generously we expressed our work, it adds more value to the work. I collected a few of her pieces.
I was on a Twitter Spaces with Shira Lazar and we were talking about women in Web3. It was inspiring and exciting. I ended up collecting The Flower Girls, Women Rise, Sad Girls, and then an Amber Vittoria’s work which I love because like me, she’s a printmaker and painter. I love seeing that translation into the digital from someone who’s based in tradition. On my list is Post Wook. She is an LA-based artist and she spoke at NFT LA. I love her collage work. It’s cool and it reads beautifully in digital.
I’m realizing by asking this question, we’re getting some alpha here. There are some interesting projects that folks might not have known about that we can bring to the forefront in this session. The question was about NFTs you either admire or own that might bring women together in some special way. Gigi, let’s hear what you got to say.
I have one. It was a gift from a friend it’s a crypto coven, but I love it so much. It’s very interesting because their community is very different from even the community that I’m building. The community is based more on a story. There’s a lore to it. Honestly, I’m very proud to be part of the community because I see so many amazing founders in Web3 that all have a crypto coven. I see them in the chat. When I say it’s very different, it definitely is from all the other communities that I’m part of.
It’s so exciting to me to see that most of the women that are in crypto coven are out there building. Every time there’s a real-life event, they all want to get together. That’s one community besides my own that I love being part of and that I’m inspired by. Also, their art is cute. Check them out. I love that that part of the community created an initiative to create cats for the witches.
Next, I want to hear from Melanie. It’s fascinating too that we all are doing our different things in NFTs but we can come together. It’s one of the themes of these NFT collections. No matter what things you do in the Web3 space, you are interested in or participating in some type of things. Melanie, what about you?
Women In Web3: Growing up in Asia, specifically in Malaysia and Singapore, it is not recommended to be an artist. Asian culture and a lot of parents want their children to be either lawyers or doctors.
There’s this project for awesome women, the First Apes Wives Club, that I am super excited about it. A lot of people ask me about apes and things like that, but its falls to the wall. It’s cool to see that too. It’s women but it’s fun and cool, and everything else that the boys in the space can do.
Good to know about that. Amy, any particular NFT projects that you admire or own that you think help support the community of women?
When we were launching our own Blu3 to Fly NFT at ETHDenver, we were looking for artists and we happened to stumble upon this project called Gendora NFT project. They’re based out of Singapore. They’re two sisters. What I love about their project is the fact that the founders themselves are the artists. For Malaysia and Singapore, being an artist is not complimented. In fact, it is not recommended because, in a lot of Asian cultures, our parents want us to be lawyers, doctors, businessmen or all of these technical and high paying jobs.
The fact that the founders themselves decided to pursue being an NFT artist was one of those ethos that we also talk about a lot at Blu3 DAO which is to eliminate limiting beliefs and cultural expectations of what you should be, coming out of your cocoon and then being free to be who you are meant to be. I love the founder’s story and the project. They have different girls and are very cute. Each girl represents a different career for a woman.
On their website, they talked about how growing up in traditional Chinese society, where females often tend to play submissive roles. The Gendora girls are all heroes for this village. I love what it stands for, but it also has utility because, through the NFTs, they bring women together to learn about the Web3 space and NFT.
Limiting beliefs are a big deal. I’ve seen folks around me struggle with them and myself struggle with them. I’ve always been very interested in the ability to change our mindsets and become empowered by changing the way that we think. I’m glad that you brought that into the conversation. Given that we just talked to you, Amy, it’s a good switch to talk about DAOs in general and what role they can play in women’s empowerment as well as in Web3.
We’re seeing that DAOs are a platform that is a new tool that can be a lever to all different spaces. At the same time, because DAOs are in this Web3 world and it’s a bit of a smaller community, there’s a place for DAOs to be focused on that community. Let’s start with you, Amy. We’ve heard a little bit about how things came together for you and what you’re up to, but maybe talk about the wider world of why you have this 1,000 DAOs project? Why do you think more DAOs should be created? What leverage points do they have?
DAO is truly a beautiful thing to restructure organizations. I used to consult Fortune 500 companies and CHROs on people and organizations. When I learned about DAOs, I see that as the next evolution of human society. Essentially, how can we come together in a decentralized manner? When you think about empowering women, DAOs are a perfect way to exhibit that.
What does it mean to be empowered? It means that you have this sense of heart-centered mission that’s coming from within and that draws you. We talked about agency, but that draws you into your mission or outward, but a DAO doesn’t need permission to participate. Anybody can participate in a DAO. You can contribute to any DAO that calls to you. That’s what I love most about DAOs.
It is now enabling anyone to pursue what you love doing and what calls out to you, which is very different from what we’re used to in the Web2 space that is centralized. You have all these gates to go through interviews and work your way up this ladder, take tasks, and so on and so forth. Whereas in a DAOs, it’s not. It’s a group of people who are passionate about a mission. They come together and put their collective brains together to achieve this mission. I do have to add that there’s a lot of DAO tooling that needs to be created and structures that need to be understood for us to be fully automated or autonomous. We are working in that direction.
It’s about co-creation and doing things. Going back to that theme of the limiting beliefs, there’s this huge misnomer that mistakes are something to be frowned upon, so get out there. The faster you can make mistakes and break things, the faster you can fix them and come up with better answers. Let’s get out and create stuff. Gigi, how about you? Where have you seen an interesting role of DAOs within the world of women?
DAOs are extremely interesting. I can’t say I’m part of a DAO or know a lot about them. I have seen successful DAOs that have launched and looked into the structure, especially because I have other members of our community that are trying to build projects, and they often reach out for help. I love that I’ve seen some that are successful in the way that they do it. It’s a collective understanding of how a company should be run. I do see the potential not only for women, but anyone out there to have more of an equal point of leadership in a company.
Women In Web3: DAOs are the next evolution of human society. It gives the ability to come together in a decentralized manner. And, when it comes to empowering women, DAOs are the perfect way to exhibit that.
I don’t want to say anything that’s wrong in that regard. I do think any company that allows all of its members to have an equal voice, it’s something that intrigues me because not everyone is going to be a specialist in marketing, but it doesn’t mean that because you’re not a specialist, your opinion is worth less than others. Everyone has their own unique point of view that adds to the whole. That’s the part that I love about DAOs.
I appreciate that. I’m going to kick it over to Melanie. What has been your experience with DAOs? As Amy said, we’re all putting this stuff together. We’re building the parachute as we jump off the cliff into the DAO world. I’m sure you’ve run into a lot of requests for consults or even helping to create DAOs At AE Studio. What has been your experience there?
Everybody loves DAOs. I love it, but I do think that they are super powerful. They’re almost too powerful now, especially that we see some bigger players trying to get into the space and are interested in the concept of DAO, but are not ready yet. They might get fired as a CEO. There might be an intermediary thing too that we started to see where it’s limited DAOs or maybe isn’t fully DAO. We might also see that as an intermediary, but I also like full DAOs.
I’m looking into it right now and this would a little bit where we can get honest feedback and decision-making on certain things. We also have an equity program. We take equity in our internal projects and use that for different projects. I’m excited about it. Also, the equity program is like a legal half of the DAO. It seems like it offers a lot.
You’re spot on that. DAOs can be complicated and a lot of thought needs to go into creating them. I liked the idea of taking a little bit more bite-sized chunks. Let’s kick it over to Nicole to address this question about DAOs and if you’ve seen anything interesting about what’s going on with women in DAOs. What are your thoughts and experiences with DAOs, particularly for women?
The first thing about a DAO is that it’s a big responsibility to get involved in a DAO. I was early on invited and I’m a member of the Unicorn DAO. I’m finding in general that I do vote on some things, but I’m not as involved as I would like to be. I liked the idea of baby DAOs. It’s leveling the playing field. We don’t want to repeat patterns in the old paradigm world and in this world. We want to be careful.
What I do like about DAOs is this re-imagining of the democratic system that has been torn apart via the Trump era. We’re all rebuilding our trust in systems and that’s one of the most beautiful things about Web3. What’s happening now is that we’re creating these new systems, collectives and teams. Most importantly, the thing I have to say about DAOs and Web3, in general, is the partnership culture and the ethos that’s being created right now with women and everyone, and men who are supporting women. Eathan, you’re a perfect example. Josh Kriger is another example and the Edge of NFT guys supporting and having serious respect and appreciation. People coming together is the key.
It’s good to know about the certain nitty-gritty of it from your experience. I don’t necessarily see anybody with a question and that’s fine because we are pretty close to the end of the hour. If you have the urge, feel free to jump in and request to come on as a speaker and I’ll try to fit you in. Since we don’t have a lot of time left. I’ll start to walk us out. I’ll make sure that I share a way to participate in some of the stuff we’re giving away. Write down a link where you can pick up a white list spot to our Living Tree NFT Project, as well as a pull up that we’ll be creating for people who’ve been on this session. You’re going to want to go to EdgeOfNFT.com/spaces. I’ve got two requests. Let’s hit Julie first and I’m going to bring Corey in after Julie. Julie, go ahead. What do you have?
A quick shout-out to Amy and what a wonderful job you’re doing with Blu3 DAO. It’s a wonderful thing for those of us who are getting started on our journey to Web3 and looking to mentor other young ladies. I have a small group of young ladies from Africa in Kenya that I’m starting to mentor and introduce into the Web3 space and get them on their journey to financial freedom. Blu3 DAO is helpful in that area. A quick question for Gigi, you mentioned a little game that you played when you were getting started. I didn’t quite get the name and I thought it might be interesting to start my ladies on if you don’t mind. Thanks.
It’s called CryptoZombies.io. You can find that online and do it on your computer. Maybe it’s also phone accessible and it’s free. It also has other ones. It has Solidity and Libra, which is the token for Meta. They have added other ones too. It does give a very comprehensive view of blockchain. It’s pretty cool.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for volunteering to chat. What do you got for us, Corey?
Women In Web3: Every member of a company needs to have an equal voice. Just because you’re not a specialist in marketing doesn’t mean that your opinion is worth less than others. Everyone has their own unique point of view.
I’m with Maker DAO. We’re a pretty big organization with 120 people. Back to the last question or the women in DAOs and so on, our team within the DAO have a very good female to male ratio. Our team lead and facilitator is a woman and she’s doing an amazing job. All the women, I’ve met at Maker have done a good job.
On the topic of equality and equal opportunity, I honestly think from experience that DAOs give a lot of job opportunities and opportunities to speak, to get a higher role instead of a lower role in contrast with a regular company. That’s my opinion. They’re trying to also give the same opportunity to women in higher positions. The DAO structure is such a flat hierarchy and it’s so public that it gives so much better access to girls and nonbinary. Honestly, it doesn’t matter who you are, you have a much better chance of getting into a DAO and doing your work.
Thanks for sharing. It’s much appreciated. That was well said and I appreciate you participating. We’re going to a moment now where we can let the panelists share their info and how people can reach out to them. Maybe we’ll take some stuff offline. Let’s check in with each of our participants and make sure they can share where readers can go to find out more about them and what they’re up to, websites, social handles and so forth. Why don’t we start with you, Gigi?
Thank you so much for the opportunity. It’s so nice to see Nicole again and get to meet everyone else on this panel. For anyone out there who wants to follow me, please go ahead. You will find a lot of tweets about things that I find as a founder or events happening in real life. If you’re looking to get started in NFTs or someone who’s in NFTs, I have to plug myself in and check out Crypto Tech Women. We are building our educational platform and we do masterclasses too.
That project seems to be going great. I’m happy about that. Nicole, where can people find out more about what you’re up to?
On Twitter, @BuffettNicole, and then on Instagram @NicoleBuffettArt. I’m always posting stuff. I’m having a show this coming June 3rd, 2022 if your guys are in the Los Angeles area at a place called The Gallery on Abbot Kinney. Please come check it out. It’s a new set of animated Spirit Coins. Come and visit me.
Melanie will have no excuse because she works on Abbot Kinney. Let’s kick it over to you, Melanie, where can people go to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
You can go to Melanie@AE.Studio. I’m happy to talk to anyone.
I remembered about our Spirit Seeds Project, Nicole. People can go to SpiritSeeds.XYZ to find out about that, but it’s another piece of intel. NFT NYC, there will be this incredible augmented reality gallery experience in SoHo that will span across five different spaces. It will be a very exclusive VIP invite-only event. It’s open to VIP ticket holders of NFT NYC, but also our Spirits Seed holders. We will be able to be giving them a pass to enter that event. You can go to that website to find out more about that project. Amy, let’s hear from you and where people can go to find out more about you and what you’re up to.
Thank you, Eathan. It was such an honor. My personal Twitter and Instagram are @AmyTheSoon.You can also follow us @Blu3DAO. We sponsor women scholars at crypto conferences around the world and a lot more exciting things to come. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram for more information.
We’ll have to get you sponsoring some folks to NFT LA 2023 that should be fun. It has been a wonderful conversation. Before I officially walk us out, a couple of special gifts for our audience. Take out a paper and pencil or write this down on your computer notepad, a special link and it is EdgeOfNFT.com/spaces. When you visit that, you’ll be taken to a form where you can add your email address as well as your Metamask or similar wallet address. That will allow you to get on the green list or traditionally called a white list for our Living Tree NFT project, which will be minting sometime in the near future.
The art for which will be featured during our trip to Davos as well as at NFT NYC during that gallery event I mentioned. For that project, we will be planting 25 real trees for every one of those NFTs that’s minted. There will be a ton of other great perks, so make sure and get on that green list. When you fill out that form, you’re entering your email wallets, so we can follow up with details on how to get a special pull-up that we’re creating for this session. It’s not finished yet, but it’s very close. We’ll ship it out and let you guys know about it.
We reached the outer limit at the edge of NFTs. Thanks for joining us. We’ve got space for more adventures on that starship. Invite your friends and recruit cool strangers that will make this journey all so much better. You can go to Spotify or iTunes and rate the show or say something awesome there. Go to EdgeOfNFT.com to dive further down the rabbit hole. You can also go to EdgeOfNFT.com/Discord and that will get you deeper into our community of incredible folks in Web3 and NFTs. Make sure to keep tuning in for more great NFT and Web3 content. Thanks, everyone, for sharing this time with us.
Important Links
- Nicole Buffett
- JB Blunck
- Djerassi
- Infinite Acres
- Crypto Tech Women
- AE Studio
- EdgeOfAE.com
- Token Runners
- Blu3 DAO
- ETHAmsterdam
- CryptoZombies
- Gendora
- @BuffettNicole – Twitter
- @NicoleBuffettArt – Instagram
- Melanie@AE.Studio
- SpiritSeeds.XYZ
- Twitter – Amy Soon
- @AmyTheSoon – Instagram
- @Blu3DAO – Instagram
- Twitter – Blu3 DAO
- EdgeOfNFT.com/spaces
- EdgeOfNFT.com
- EdgeOfNFT.com/Discord
- Spotify – Edge Of NFT
- iTunes – Edge Of NFT
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