"Stop Worshipping Tokens - Build Better DAOs",- Auryn Macmillan, Founder of Gnosis Guild

Thu, Oct 2, 2025, 12:00 AM

Auryn Macmillan (Founder, Gnosis Guild) on the long road to DAOs, why modular on-chain organizations need to evolve over time, and how privacy safeguards integrity, not just secrecy. We talk basketball - Bitcoin - Ethereum road, early DAO lessons, building Conditional Tokens at Gnosis, founding Gnosis Guild, and the Zodiac standard for modular accounts and “progressive decentralization.” Auryn introduces Enclave, a cryptographic alternative to TEEs that blends ZK proofs, FHE, and MPC for collaborative confidential compute (think: secret ballots and sealed-bid auctions). Plus: what’s actually working in DAOs today (Aave, Lido, Gnosis, Nouns), useful tooling (Hats Protocol, Metal X), the case for practical pluralism, how to start coding from a non-traditional background, and practical privacy tips (VPN/Proton, Signal/Session, Brave). Timecodes 00:00 – Intro: who Auryn is; DAOs, privacy & autonomy 01:21 – From pro basketball to Bitcoin/Ethereum; first DAO rabbit holes 04:00 – Early forums, Vitalik’s posts, 2016 “The DAO,” and fallout 05:57 – Community to product to engineering: closing the feedback loop 08:15 – Roles at Gnosis; Conditional Tokens & prediction markets 09:44 – Founding Gnosis Guild; building for the Gnosis DAO to Zodiac 11:58 – Why modular accounts & progressive decentralization matter 13:55 – Spinning out Gnosis Guild; venture-studio path 14:44 – Enclave: ZK + FHE + MPC for encrypted, verifiable aggregation 16:55 – Secret ballots beyond paper; distributing trust (coordinator) 18:58 – From voting to a broader class of privacy-preserving computations 20:03 – Sports lessons: work ethic, team dynamics, process & failure 21:56 – Breaking the “I’m non-technical” ceiling; learning to code 23:52 – Practical on-ramp: understanding code like a new language 25:55 – Book tip: Algorithms to Live By (CS ideas → daily life) 27:01 – DAOs today: protocol vs. firm-like; what’s working 28:35 – Examples: Aave DAO, Lido DAO, Gnosis DAO, Nouns (mechanism design) 30:46 – Tools to watch: Hats Protocol (roles/structure), Metal X 32:43 – Privacy’s role: integrity of systems & reducing data liability 35:04 – Two buckets: 1 integrity (votes, auctions) 2 access/liability 37:25 – Practical pluralism: client diversity & multi-frontend resilience 41:22 – Future vision: locally autonomous “watersheds” (sci-fi: A Half-Built Garden) 44:20 – Starter privacy kit: VPN/Proton, Signal or Session, Brave 46:05 – Cultural recs & close: Algorithms to Live By ... This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews – a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom. Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info/p/interviews A W3PN Media House production. Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey Let privacy be with you!