The Next Frontier of NFTs: Art, Sustainability, DAOs and Coliving with Miki Elson

Are you ready to decode the buzz around NFTs, and explore their potential to revolutionise our living spaces? This episode of ColivingDAO Insights features our special guest Miki "Rishi" Elson, a recognised authority in the NFT space, who will walk us through this fascinating terrain. From his early days in the advertising industry to setting up an immersive NFT gallery and a DAO-based coliving space, Miki will unravel the intriguing adoption of NFT technology by big brands and governments, and even challenge the often-heard myth that NFTs are dead.

Painting a vivid picture of the intersection of art, sustainability, and blockchain technology, we take a deep dive into Miki’s travel impressions from spiritual and yoga camps. We'll explore how these experiences influenced his work with NFTs and offer an insightful perspective on the rising popularity of digital Renaissance movements. Beyond the world of art, we also delve into the critical issue of environmental impact of NFTs, and how blockchain technology could be a potential solution for sustainable living, comparable to the advent of email technologies. 

As we further unmask the world of decentralized governance and community building, prepare to delve deep into the concept of anti-fragility, which Nicholas Nassim Taleb presents as an intriguing paradox where negative shocks can actually strengthen systems. With examples from Miki's extensive experience, we explore how this concept could apply to coliving communities and decentralised networks using blockchain technology. Our conversation concludes on the note of how NFTs and blockchain technology can foster thriving communities, making this episode a must-hear for anyone intrigued by the NFT space and the future of coliving.

Transcript

Daniel: 0:11

Welcome everyone. Good day everyone. We are here on ColivingDAO Insights. This is Daniel, and I'm joined today by my co-host, Gareth, as well as our special guest of the day, Miki Rishi. Miki is an authority in the NFT space, especially when it comes to art, DAOs and co living. Welcome everyone.

Miki: 0:35

Thank you very much for having me really excited to be on the podcast.

Gareth: 0:39

Great thanks, Dan. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the next edition.

Daniel: 0:43

Awesome. Yeah, so it's a great honor and great pleasure to have Miki here today with us. Miki, just so you know, we've spoken a few times, but I'd really love just to start this conversation to find out how did you end up with all the things you could possibly do in the world? How did you end up in the art NFT space, as well as the douse space, which is extremely interesting right now? But how did it all start?

Miki: 1:14

So the NFT gallery was a very interesting one. I was working at my advertising agency, which I was working for for a while, and I had quite good control of what we were producing and creating for clients. I was heading up the tech department creating what is the name for it now? Oh yeah, programmatic. So programmatic targeting and ad targeting desks and then started to learn about NFTs from 2017, I was really excited and then 2021 very early or I think.

Miki: 1:51

Actually I was asking my boss in 2020 that we should be setting up an immersive NFT gallery space for clients, so an activation space using the Metaverse, vr and screens and it was actually for clients that I came up with the idea for an advertising agency. And then I was asking my boss I was like we need to set this immersive venue up in London and he was like no wait, wait a year or two, like it's finished, a programmatic desk. And I was upset about that because I thought cookies were gonna die and the NFTs and blockchain was going to be the next leading thing. So that led me to leave my job and set up the NFT gallery in 2021 and carry out that immersive NFT gallery, and then I'd already set up the co-living DAO previously, one year before. So, we set up the first venture into co-living. That was YogaBox, focused on the amount of travelers, and then from there that led into setting up the NFC gallery as a DAO.

Daniel: 3:06

Awesome. That's really inspiring, and sometimes we forget that the space is still relatively new. You mentioned 2020, 2021. Obviously you've been in the space since 2017, but it's interesting to see how quickly things can progress and things can move, and the intersection between NFTs, daos and co-living is something we'll definitely discuss today. But just before we do that, let's address one of the elephants in the room, something that I've been hearing a lot recently. A lot of people have been saying things like NFTs were fat, nfts are dead. Now how would you address that?

Miki: 3:46

Yeah, I think, like in terms of crypto jargon or trending jargon those terms might be dead. So if you look at the adoption rate, everyone always picks up a piece of jargon or a full run and then kind of adopts it, runs with it, hopes it, so hopefully lots of that is dead from the NFTC. Definitely monetarily it is since the big hype. But I think the actual technology the way we use to vote, the way we're going to use it on the blockchain and the way communities can interact on there and have ownership I think that's all growing and continuing at a good adoption rate. It's going to be a lot slower than the hype. So we definitely feel the technology it's being adopted by big brands, the government and communities for engagement and then some of the more consumer and price point elements have gone for now and it's probably a good thing, to be honest.

Daniel: 4:52

Yeah, miki, I completely agree. In fact, this is following pretty much a proven path. We've seen very similar circumstances when different technologies were to arise, for example, with the dot-com and other technologies as well. So there's a great technology and a lot of hype and a lot of use cases that probably aren't the main use cases for certain technology, a lot of speculation and so on, and then at some point, the speculation is no longer supported by fundamentals and, just like you say, it's a very good thing. The underlying technology is fantastic. It's here to stay. It solves a lot of problems, and that's exactly what I'd love to talk about. When it comes to NFTs or, more in general, web3 technologies let's say cryptographic tokens as well how can they be incorporated in a co-living so that the co-living becomes enhanced by this technology? Definitely yeah.

Miki: 5:44

So one of my other inspirations for setting it up was actually WeWorks. So I used to work in WeWorks in London. I was like these are kind of brilliant, but the main thing that's what I was learning about DAOs is that one guy runs this company and he makes the whole decisions for WeWork across all of the locations in the whole world. And wouldn't it be nice if each one of the locations in the whole world? And wouldn't it be nice if each location had control over itself? So I was already thinking about that localised nature at that time. And then, equally, in East London lots of us live in the warehouses. So I was involved with that kind of architectural takeover industrial scene, so artists refitting different warehouses for living purposes, so got an understanding of space ownership and collaboration there and then really thought that NFTs would be the perfect decentralized ticket to activate this network. So again, the same as WeWork or Airbnb. If we could have an app but we can just flip between these locations ourselves at any point, that would be ideal use of this technology.

Daniel: 7:10

That's great to hear. In fact, I love to see a lot of great minds coming to some realisations and then also making sure they come to fruition as well, because one thing is to have an idea and then obviously we know execution is in this space. But if we take it just one step back, let's assume we're speaking with a complete layman here, someone who doesn't know too much about crypto, web 3 tokens and so on, maybe someone who's familiar with a rudimental or, let's say, traditional form of co-living purely rental, traditional imbalance between landlords and tenants and so on. How would you explain in layman terms how really blockchain technology enhances co-living?

Miki: 7:56

Yeah.

Miki: 7:57

So I think it would be decentralized entry into that network, which essentially means using your NFT or your token, you'd be able to control your own access to these networks.

Miki: 8:12

So, again, using Airbnb, we work, for example, sort of applying to those different buildings or applying to the landlord, these holders, and then paying your money to Airbnb and transferring around to different locations in this DAO network. You'd be able to use your NFT as access across that platform. So, whether that's the physical property uploading on the marketplace or if you were just transversing a building, you could use that NFT. That would be trackable and secure. So it would nullify any of the security points that people usually have on real estate. But then it gives the consumer or the audience the chance to vote and interact and have freedom within that securitized system as well. So I suppose decentralization for us. We're saying keep everything secure on the chain, so it's on the public ledger being looked after by all of us, but then we have security, ownership and guidance of that NFT or this token, this kind of ticket, across the blockchain system.

Daniel: 9:25

Those are great points.

Daniel: 9:26

In fact, security and decentralization are two of the key reasons why, here at ColivingDAO, we're using blockchain technology as well and, just like we said before, we want to move away from the idea that NFTs are things that we need to buy and hold and hope that the value goes up and speculate on and so on.

Daniel: 9:47

That's not really what the technology is for. It's a lot of amazing use cases, and this is exactly one. Imagine having a community where access is regulated by having tokens, and this makes the community a lot more secure for a number of reasons. It's backed by cryptography, it's backed by a distributed ledger, just like your St Mickey, so that we know that the reason, one central point of failure, the reason the opportunity for one bet actor to destroy the entire system or to take advantage of everyone else because of the centralization element, thanks to the decentralized nature of the ledger in this case, we have the ability to enhance security and also make access easier in many ways. There's so many things that can be done with NFTs or tokens in general, and so on. Gareth, do you want to add some thoughts here?

Gareth: 10:45

Yes. So, mickey, I'm really fascinated with your crossover, the fact that you've got two hats on, you've got your ArtSect DAO, which is your art NFTs, and you have a property DAO, and I'm really fascinated by that crossover zone and I'm a big fan of art myself, and particularly rebellious art that really sends out a message of what are the things in society that can be fixed social and environmental problems, how can they be fixed? And artists are quite often the first to raise these issues and say look, this is something we should be paying attention to by creating art to get attention to those topics. So that's a long-winded, roundabout way. But I'm going to ask you quite a simple question and I'll start with a quote from Oscar Wilde, who says all art is quite useless. So what's your views on the role of art in co-living?

Miki: 11:50

Yeah, well, I'll venture into a few answers, but the first is the first, anonymous nurse, was just that I set up the co-living concepts or experiments under my passion because I was going to be in them and living them and hanging out with these people. So the order of me setting them up was actually yoga box for nomadic travellers, and then media box, because we all worked in media and we're doing VR coding, blockchain style stuff. And then art box was the next one, which was ArtSect Gallery, which kind of took its own community growth quite strongly and took its own brand. But they were really all just in my passions and where I'd like to start experimenting with property first, and then we're going to do plant box next, which is vertical farming and co-living. But I think it was very much inspired by Kaboopsies and when I was travelling around spiritual camps and yoga camps in my 20s and how they operate is quite interesting. So some of them, especially Kaboopsies, have which are the kind of communes in Israel that people produce. Those villages produce products. Lots of them produce olive oil in Israel and they're kind of mini utopias. They sell their product, keep it as a village or a kibbutz. It's not a very English concept so it's hard for us to get, but that village owns all the output and then they put it into their schools, the community etc. And they seem to be like strange utopias. There's no crime, all the houses around these like nice fields and everyone knows each other and the community is really centred around and propped up by this kind of economy that they hold together. So took that concept and was like, okay, if we do yoga, media arts, vertical farming, we can keep these tight niches within the communities so they can produce and become economically profitable. And then, due to my A inclination, what I liked, what I wanted to set up first, and then B, where I thought innovation was. So people are increasingly becoming digital nomads or operating within nomadism and vertical farming.

Miki: 14:24

3d, virtual arts and spirituality are all in kind of a growth curve and people are adopting and finding them trendy. So I thought it would be a really good place to put that intersection of experimentation on the blockchain and art. And then, just as an extra-extra intersection to that, I find that blockchain people kind of. If you look back at the last Renaissance, lots of the things that happened there it looks like we're kind of doing it again like a digital version. So in the gallery we always call it a new digital Renaissance. But I think lots of those creative artistic philosophical ideas now again metaverse design, avatar design, 3d fashion that, as you said, artists create useless practical things, but very much of painting what's going on in the world around us and what could be the future. So I think that intersection is really exciting and innovative and will probably help the world the most, a lot more than selling metaverse plots will. So, yeah, fantastic.

Gareth: 15:41

Yeah, and I just to paraphrase you, you're going where the energy is and where the excitement is, and art is interesting. It's exciting, it's an expression of new forms and new ways of living and that's where it's relevant for co-living. And, of course, the Oscar Wilde quote. Oscar Wilde was very much saying that in tongue and cheek, for our Oscar Wilde was everything and this was his way of identifying the paradoxical view of art being a useless thing. It's actually incredibly useful and it's the start of, it's the origin of, many great movements like the Renaissance amazing. Thank you so much for the answer.

Daniel: 16:26

Miki, you mentioned a few concepts that can be described as regenerative, just such as vertical farming and and so on, and sustainability is a big element of this conversation as well, and it's probably a good time to address another big elephant in the room that we have. We know a lot of people are very concerned about the environmental impact of NFDs, and this opinion is based on a number of factors. How would you address that?

Miki: 17:00

yeah, I think moving straight to layer twos as in addition to any layer ones that we're using, would reduce that consumption impact that we're looking at when people see that blockchain is not environmentally friendly. So definitely not. We're not trying to like advise people to mint on Ethereum so probably polygon or any other suitable layer to and then even accepting that to get like. If we look at a metaverse and if we want to make multi-layered NFT transactions on or across there, then we're going to need a really sustainable token to be able to pull that off. Ethereum just wouldn't be able to work for multi-level transactions within a game. It would be far too expensive.

Miki: 17:55

So I think really the sustainability argument rests on the development of those layer 2s and the ZK proofs and the different kind of nodes and staking layers there. Hopefully, I trust the tech people, as they always do, to build those layers nicely and I think that really the current balancing point is decentralization versus efficiency or carbon neutrality. So we can get very efficient tokens like XRP or something the governments are coming up with in the CBDC realm, but they are not traditionally decentralized and providing that security that we look for there, and then these cryptographic protocols that have that traditional Bitcoin-esque security have that sustainability problem because you've got to turn the whole blockchain key mechanism to access that information. So it really rests on that point. But I think, as we've got the governments making their versions, and then different institutions or corporates making their institutions, and then DeFi and more decentralized protocols, they'll probably fit together in a sensible way that will make it more usable. So there'll be an element of decentralization and then there'll be an element of localization, and I suppose not decentralization but speed and ease of use.

Daniel: 19:37

Yeah, and this reminds me, if I can make an analogy here, on the first email technologies. So the first email took a few days to actually be received and the hardware needed was considerably more significant than the hardware we need right now, which means it was very likely not as sustainable as sending an email right now. But what this means is that the technology had the potential to actually reduce a lot of consumption. Imagine how much paper nowadays we're saving by not sending emails. Imagine how much gas as well we save in terms of transports by not having to effectively send physical mail anymore, at least not to the same extent that we used to. So it's a great opportunity to really identify a technology that has the potential to be a lot more sustainable and regenerative than the old technology.

Daniel: 20:36

And in the beginning, just like you mentioned the first layer once or the first blockchains, they were probably not very sustainable and some of them are still around. Some of them have moved, let's say, from proof of work to proof of stake in an attempt to reduce consumption. But the idea is that with more and more layer tools, with better technology in general, we're reducing that and the impact of not having to print a lot of things, the impact of using technology to solve problems that right now are still solved with physical products effectively is definitely going to be in favor of sustainability and regeneration. Gareth.

Gareth: 21:18

Yeah, great points maybe, and just to add to that. So Mickey pointed to the fact that efficiency is getting better on the blockchain and will continue to get better, and Dan, you're saying that of course, the new technologies are actually replacing old technologies and those old technologies are also unsustainable. So, for example, the current financial system uses a lot of energy and is not sustainable if it's coming from fossil fuel resources, and so the trend towards using more renewable energy, which people in the blockchain space are keen on, and tech companies are keen on to utilize more and more clean energy, then the new technology becomes even more sustainable with the use of renewable energy as well. Just to throw that point in there.

Daniel: 22:03

Absolutely, and I like also this considerations that you made about blockchains being fully decentralized from having some elements of either centralization or localization as well. Certainly a lot of things to consider, but the bottom line is, yes, we do have an opportunity now to utilize decentralization not only to our advantage, but to the environment's advantage as well. And yes, some protocols like proof of work protocols, for example, inevitably they require more energy. The advantage is having more security. But we do see technologies that are effectively looking to solve this issue of proof of stake. It's been more and more adopted. Just like we mentioned before, many of these technologies are still in their infancy, which means that there's so much room for improvement. The direction is already very, very clear. I see improvement in this sense more and more. Therefore, by adopting these technologies early, we can definitely feel that we're all going towards the direction of sustainability and regeneration, especially when we move away from an old system that is maxed out. I don't see any way to make the old system work or improve as much as this new system can. So, once we understand the trend, once we understand the benefits of the new system over the old system, it's definitely no brainer, if you ask me. So we spoke about art, we spoke about dhowers and coal living.

Daniel: 23:37

Let's talk a little bit more about dhowers, because right now we hear a lot about decentralized governance. There's been a lot of examples of dhowers that have tried to do something and then it failed. A lot of dhowers. They claimed to be decentralized and then it turned out either they were not so decentralized after all or the actual decentralization in many cases proved to be a bit of a liability because effectively opened up for some security risk or simply some exploitation mechanisms. So the lack of essentialized security which, as we said, having essentialized security guarantees security to an extent, but it's also essential point of failure, on the other hand. But a lot of dhowers have tried to find security in a fully decentralized way and then they've been exploited. So what are your thoughts about dhow security and, more in general, shared decision making?

Miki: 24:37

Yeah, definitely. I mean I love and advocate dhowers very much, but very much upset at the previous dows that maybe left us in the lurch, the same as some of the NFT brands with those bad mechanics. So, yeah, really, really sad. I suppose that lots of other people in the ecosystem have misused the technology or abused the technology and they're not great. But I suppose there are lots of good examples of shining dows that are trying and those are brilliant. So TerraZero they decentralized a trust that owns a forest and then allows that to self-sustain itself. Obviously unicorn dow attached to Nadia from Pussy Riot. So I think there's lots of brilliant attempts at dows out there and there's still more to be done, more governance experiments to do. And then, as you said, there are some bad examples of dows in the past or different misuses of treasury, which is equally terrible and does need to be studied as well, just so we don't make those same mistakes again. I suppose they are early lessons into what we mean by centralization or decentralization.

Daniel: 26:10

Yeah, that's a great point. We can learn a lot from these examples on what to do differently, what to repeat, what not to do and so on. And, yes, the idea of looking at elements of decentralization, elements of decentralization and finding what's best for everyone is definitely a good lens to see reality through. And what I wanted to add is what we're doing here at Kulivindow and I'm sure Gareth can say a lot more about this as well in a second. What we're doing is we really identified an opportunity to give dows a legal wrapper with the fair shares commons incorporation. Effectively, the dow becomes legally recognized because, from a technological and practical standpoint, creating a dow, a Kulivindow, are potentially serious dows that can interact together in a decentralized way as well while at the same time, have everything backed by law because the type of incorporation is legally recognized. And this can add a lot of benefits when it comes to the way decisions are made and aligning short-term incentives with long-term incentives for all the stakeholders as well. Gareth, you want to add something?

Gareth: 27:22

Yes, you beat me to it, dan, but just to make it clear for our listeners as well, so that the dows, or decentralized autonomous organizations, are by definition, a decentralized digital organization, right, but the way that some dows are set up, they have a centralized point of failure, so the people who originally set them up still have an outsized share in the power within the dow. For example, not having a legal company attached to the dow or having a legal company attached to the dow, actually, if you are the founder of that legal company, that then owns the dow. That company, if it's wound up by the people who control it, can effectively wind up the dow, and they can do it unilaterally without asking the dow members if they want that to happen or not. So having a centralized point of failure in a dow, which is supposed to be a decentralized entity, is a really big problem and it's the source of some of the frauds that we've seen recently.

Gareth: 28:26

And so what we're doing at ColivingDAO is using the fair shares commons, as you mentioned, dan, as a legal wrapper, which is a legally incorporated company that is also decentralized. So all the stakeholders have power in that entity. The founders do have a bit more power at the beginning, but that is in order to set the seed of the organization in the right direction, and then power is then distributed to all the other stakeholders as quickly as possible. So what you have is a dow, a digital organization aligned with a digital legal incorporation to make it much stronger, to make it truly decentralized. So that's one of the major benefits of the structure that we're using. For a bit of background there.

Miki: 29:14

I think that is going to be key. Obviously, NFTs in themselves, they have the cryptography, but they just don't have that legal wrapper or recognition yet. So really amazing people like yourselves are working to put those legal wrappers and different paradigms for entrepreneurs and communities on chain with that token and decentralized element too. Really exciting. Well done us on creating the UX.

Gareth: 29:45

Yeah, 100%. And on that note, you mentioned community building, Miki. What do you see? We're really big on community building. At Coal Living Dow, we want to see communities thrive where people live, so they can build better social connections and be more resilient to the hardships and the challenges that come along in life. That's one of the major advantages of having a strong community. So what do you see are the advantage of using NFTs or, in general, blockchain technology for community building and creating thriving communities from your experience?

Miki: 30:25

Yeah, I think this is yet to be played out properly by anyone except Board of HIPAA for some reason, which I was never the hugest fan of personally. But they've done very well with the mechanics and, I think, evolution. So communities want little milestones and they want to develop and get better and see progress. So the evolution in NFTs of that kind of holding the community journey Annoyingly again. So I'm not a huge fan of monkey NFTs but the way that UGLABS did the launch, so they created their first 10,000 and then put those on the market and people received those and then they created the mutant gift. So they gave the people who already own the NFTs another NFT that could evolve their first monkey using this mutant stuff. And then that allowed the community or the holders of these apes to then sell the other ones and create lots of hype.

Miki: 31:35

So they doubled. The community essentially gave them free stuff, allowed them to sell it. Now the communities double the size and was bigger and happier. Those guys or the price went up, so they were even more happy. And then there were several more drops down under this kind of development lens, like a few more characters, some land and then the token thing for the eight queen down, whatever it's called. Those mechanics were actually really clever. If you were to apply them in a more mature way, across something a bit more tangible, then I think that would have worked really well because if the communities Developing say you applied that to a land based mechanism, so as you're building, creating and kind of making stuff in person, that your character, your avatar, your set of NFTs or medals or rewards have you want to look at them would be involved in and taking part in that journey and then representing it to the rest of the community too.

Daniel: 32:44

Yeah, definitely an example to learn from, and I love the idea also of combining physical assets with digital assets as well, because that's really where the power can be unlocked, so that now everything stays on the metaverse metaverse only, but there is a tangible counterpart as well in the physical world, where we can really make the physical world a better place as well.

Daniel: 33:11

So that's a great space to be in, and that's also why, here at co-living now, we are launching our NFTs, in fact, for anyone who's interested in fact, for anyone who's interested, you can find more information on the website as an opportunity right now, as we are a building community at co-living now, to get involved at early stage, which can be very, very attractive. We've adopted this approach for the very reasons we've discussed today, so we see a lot of advantages in using NFTs, especially with the intersection of co-living. Now we'll have a fungible token as well. We found ways to make sure that shares can be tokenized as well, and so on. So there's a lot of interesting moving parts that are really paying the picture that the system is a system. The way we're building it is antifragile. So, gareth, do you want to talk a little bit more about how we're using blockchain not just NFT but blockchain in general to ensure the antifragility of the system and make you can share some thoughts on the antifragility as well.

Gareth: 34:25

Yeah, sure, dan. So I think in general, you know anti fragilities kind of sounds like a really complex term, but if you take it back to the, what is? What does it mean? People talk about resilience, and resilience is the ability to resist negative shocks. So when something bad happens, instead of breaking, which is being fragile, resilient means you can resist the shock and still stay intact.

Gareth: 34:50

Anti fragility is a bit more of a newer concept coined by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, and it means negative shocks that actually make something stronger. So, in the context of what we're doing at co living Dal by using blockchain and by using the fair shares commons, the communities are thriving and resilient. But they're actually more than resilient. They're anti fragile as well, because they're decentralized, because Pyrene wealth is distributed. If one part of a community suffers a negative shock, or maybe one community in a network of community suffers a negative shock, it can actually absorb the negative shock and the whole entity grows stronger as a result. Now that one part might be affected temporarily by a negative shock, you know we're not. This is not a utopian dream, it's not an impossibility. So it may be that one community really suffers over some local hardship, but as a whole, because they're able to share resources by using the blockchain technology in the form of tokens and shares, and also standard resource sharing like social capital and financial capital. The community that undergoes a real challenge is supported and could be given resources by the decentralized network and whatever shape is needed, and so it can survive the negative shock and the resources come in and it can bounce back stronger over time because it then has adapted to that negative shock. So that's anti fragility in a nutshell and that's what we see and being one of the real advantages of the way this works. And if this spreads to wider society, it means that negative shocks don't have such a bad impact on society as well.

Gareth: 36:43

As these concepts grow and really you know, I love to bring it back to the concept of a resident. So imagine you're a resident in a co living community, in a co living dial community, and rental prices in your city suddenly shoot up because of a local economic challenge in the country. In a typical situation, your rental would go up because the landlords need to cover the increased costs of the prices, whatever the source of those prices going up is. But in this situation, the landlord of the community is tapped into the resources of all the other co living dial communities around the country or even around the world, and they can then put the signal out and say guys, we need help, we're. You know we're struggling, there's a big challenge here, but we don't want to put prices up, we want to protect our community, and so they bring in financial resources through the network or social resources as well.

Gareth: 37:45

That might be the part of the solution, and it actually could keep the price for the residents in that community exactly the same, and the rental doesn't go up in response to a negative shock. So this is it in the real world. This is how how anti fragility plays out in the real world. Does that help, dan? Is that? Is that clear? Or is there anything I want to add to that, mickey?

Miki: 38:08

Yeah, I think I mean I love all the behavioral economics guys, but sometimes I do think whether like they wrote, like Nassim Talab is very like, was he an X trader? And they're like these very capitalist mindset and he almost can't get out of writing that into his behavioral mechanisms. Which? But if you look as an extra thing because one thing I do philosophically think about as an extra in web three, in web two, it's very competitive. So you have your company or your business and everyone else is essentially the enemy and you're trying to win market share and destroy each other and the final answer in kind of capitalist versions of behavioral economics is I have all the money and you don't, and this is a win. So his version of anti fragility is like how do I keep all the gold and ensure everyone else doesn't have the gold? That's kind of like running in the back of his mind.

Miki: 39:16

And then in web three, if you look at forking, it's really interesting because the founders and people who set things up would tell you forking is terrible, and isn't it horrible? But actually as a community, having that expression mechanism is very good. So if art sector one of our dowels was to keep growing and eventually be fought into a different community or another community for a whole bunch of social reasons or creative reasons. Is that a good thing and is that considered so? At what point do we consider like disbora or flat fractal activity or like side groups going into side quest and creating new things? Is that a win or a loss?

Miki: 40:06

Like under which lens? And which would you see that? Where would you put the fragility or anti fragility? Because you could say the system has anti fragility because it can respond and evolve and create these forks so it doesn't have to be held by anyone's old dogma, like the different BSV things or various stories in those forks and then so that is good for communities, maybe not so good for original team members etc. And just thinking how that sits in, like forking and new mechanisms, sits into that version of anti fragility, whether it's super fragile or it's in a different location because he's thinking about it slightly different.

Gareth: 40:55

That's a really good point and I think the real advantage of Web 3 potentially is you're taking that anti fragility rather than having a like super competitor who takes all the resources because they're anti fragile, as you said, and it enables not only that entity to compete and become stronger but it also influences and gives a net positive benefit to all the communities it touches.

Gareth: 41:24

So a good example to bring it back into real terms again is a co-living dial community that becomes anti fragile and survive shocks and become stronger. Obviously it's a competitor to other co-living companies potentially, or even the local neighborhood, but actually by having that community become stronger, local neighborhood suppliers and partners are going to strengthen as well and then the local neighborhood economy is going to become stronger or even the social fabric will become stronger. We're not just talking about the pure capitalist money side of things, but multi capital approaches where the social side, the environmental side, is really taking care of as well. So that's our intent for the model that we've created and it's an interesting point. I never thought about it that way before.

Miki: 42:13

Yeah, we can think it more because I suppose it's where it sits, Like the anti fragility sat with BlackRock and they just kept having more and more property. I think they own like a quarter of America or something and a quarter of the world. So if they had the anti fragility, then it would be us a loss as a residents of the planet because they would just arbitrage and charge us up, Whereas if in your example, this co-living Dow and Dow's networks they held the audience of those held the anti fragility, then we'd be more focused on like wellbeing and other nice things that you point to.

Daniel: 42:57

Absolutely, and this is something we also discussed in our previous podcast a little bit more in depth as well. This is possible because, in the first place, we're really moving away from this old view of capitalism as a one dimensional entity. In fact, right now we're looking at capitalism in a completely different way than we realize that we don't only have one type of capital. There's multiple types of capitals, and some capitals effectively can be accumulated. Some can truly be accumulated in the way financial capital is accumulated. What this means is that once we start valuing and recognizing different types of capital, it becomes not only more difficult to accumulate all the types of capital in one single entity but, more importantly, it might not even be advantageous as well. Even with one type of capital, you could think if one entity owned all the money in the world, that money would be worthless. So all of a sudden it's not worthy anymore. The problem is when they own a significant amount and that's the only type of capital that is recognized. So when we factor in human capital, social capital, when we factor in nature as a capital as well, and different types of capital and so on, we see how it becomes possible to achieve this multi-stakeholder win where we don't have to even have a dualism between competition and cooperation.

Daniel: 44:32

In fact, we discussed this on the previous podcast as well. We can find a sweet spot where there's competition in place and there's also cooperation and at the end of the day, it's possible for every stakeholder to be better off. When we look at that in a multi-capital way, every stakeholder can be better off compared to having this single-capital way of seeing capitalism where, sure, one player can accumulate more resources, but does this really translate into them being better off in the long term? And what happens if they lose their resources and so on. So once we have this new paradigm, then it's possible to create, and that's exactly what we're doing here. So it's great to be able to share these thoughts.

Daniel: 45:22

Miki, any final thoughts before we wrap up the conversation today? It's been really great to discuss several topics. In fact, I feel this conversation could go ahead forever because there's really so much to unpack, but I think we gave the audience a pretty clear picture of advantages of taking this approach to potential division and I hope people are now a little bit more aware of what we're really doing in this new space, with this new technologies and so on. Any final thoughts, miki?

Miki: 45:58

No, just what you're doing sounds really brilliant as well, and we really need that in the scene and the ability to have more legal wrappers wrapped into the Coliving DAO. And yeah, can't wait for people to find out and play with all of our ideas and there's any way we can link up on anything fun in the future, some kind of partnership. We should do it for the sake of our communities.

Daniel: 46:25

Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for being here as well, Gareth. Any final thoughts?

Gareth: 46:31

Brilliant. I know I loved it Thank you very much, Miki and it really touched on a lot of my passions environmentalism, art and community building, and our passions at ColivingDAO to really make some of these future concepts a reality today. So, yeah, absolutely, let's do some fun stuff together. That'd be great.

Daniel: 46:52

Thank you, thank you. Thank you so much for being here and thanks everyone for listening. If you haven't done it yet, make sure you subscribe to this podcast and I'm going to be seeing all of you in the next episode. Thank you so much for being here. Bye everyone.