Humans of Crypto - Under the hood of MakerDAO with Lenka Hudakova

hello everyone and welcome to the humans of crypto podcast tonight I had the honor the pleasure of welcoming lenkia hudakova to the show we talked about her path in crypto her history working with maker Dao from it being a foundation to now the distillation of the foundation working with one of the unit the core units to the end game which is the latest phase we are now in we talked about her inspiration in crypto what motivates her her talkative connect her documentary just a lot of things so I hope you enjoyed tonight's show and there's a little surprise for those that listen till the end to everyone out there Stay Free [Music] welcome everyone to Today's Show [Music] foreign welcome hi Elena thanks for having me of course of course how are you I'm great um I'm actually feeling quite good today yeah just uh found out that one of the biggest fraudsters in our industry has been arrested so oh my God you want to start the podcast with this oh it feels good because it just felt too upset that he was not getting arrested or or there was no consequences for such an obvious yeah mismanagement yes what do you think happened there like from your perspective from you know I know that we always like see all these crazies in crypto but like for you what's your take on this whole FTX SPF yes I don't really have strong opinions on this either way but of course crypto Twitter is entertaining and yeah um well maybe it was the the money to bribe people and to buy their site has uh run out so it has a lot of money yes the behavior was just unacceptable to tolerate any longer and the pressures were too strong so the wheels had to move on yeah do you were you ever an a user of that platform no and uh I also don't like to be the person who says I told you so but I think SPF game came up into the crypto space after the sushi uh situation and I was like I don't know who's this new person and should we trust him so yeah a couple years later this this year were you affected At All by any of the the big let's say C5 crashes from Celsius or was were you all good were you safe there so uh Celsius I remember I was still managing events at maker foundation and I got this offer for roon to speak at the event right and the topic was seriously C5 versus D5 and there was this guy from Celsius claiming that he actually is a defy uh person and he was like no no and uh it was very clear to me from the beginning a little too fast um yeah and it turned out to be one big mess up I know I know when you organize meetups uh do you what do you recommend to people like when people ask you like you know where do I start like what do you recommend to people so in terms of meetups uh like for people to organize them no I mean like you know you have beginners coming to your Meetup sometimes and they're like I don't know what to do like it's always I always find that difficult like what what do you recommend so the first thing is actually persuading these people to RSVP and then actually showing up and I think sometimes it takes a lot of tries uh you might have friends who invite you many times and then at some point you're gonna make it um you often need to deal with the argument like okay but I'm not really that kind of person I don't know much about it I I don't want to go somewhere I don't understand like if you're curious if you're open-minded if you want to learn this is a perfect opportunity for you so and bringing someone who is your friend uh is always making this space a more friendly and familiar yeah and and there often are people who are maybe a bit more um introverted or shy that uh a lot of their interactions happen online and they actually might need some time to build up the courage to show up at the events yeah um so you might be actually like super nerdy crypto Enthusiast and it might take you years to actually show up true true many people don't show up even though they've been in space much much longer than us but sorry my question was more like because we had FTX we had Celsius all that stuff and I feel like a lot of beginners when they get in they well they gravitate towards those Solutions sometimes because convenience Fiat you know onboarding all that good stuff it's I find it always tricky you know I'm always like yes you're a beginner but on your coins and you know private Key Management like it's sometimes it's a bit but the first step is hard so when people actually show up and then they kind of like are looking for advice I always steer away if it's a Meetup to build a community I always steer away from like vouching for a specific products unless it kind of holds the values I'm I'm trying to educate them so I always give people options but if they need a couple of recommendations I can like give them options to explore because I haven't found anything wrong about them or I feel like they hold up to the values of the space that I feel like I belong to um but I'm also a co-host of our local Copenhagen ethereum Meetup Community yeah and you know the covet it hit us too and we had a longer break and I also had to manage events at makers so I had very little time aside to focus on this but as we as the kovid was backing off I only have after a longer break and as we wanted to revive the community you know it takes uh it takes a long time to build a community that has been dormant for a long time yeah and you have that longevity you have that amazing longevity as well yeah we the group has like 1 300 members but if you want to re revive the community and the habit of having meetups you might start with six people in one of those meetups to begin with um and I've met across like different social situations people who claim that they're like in crypto and then just finding out that the encrypt doesn't engineering and this is like Marsh I'm speaking to them and all they did is they bought funds on a centralized exchange and they don't have a wallet they don't have any of this so um after we gathered them couple times to kind of like socialize and get to know each other we started to educate them on basics how to set up a wallet uh how to store your private Keys best practices for this and that so one thing we want to avoid is saying hey here's this uh representative from this business or service they're trying to sell you their solution it's no like maybe they're experts in a specific area and they're going to educate you on that but it's all about showing their products and we should always steer away from that it's more about education definitely it's it's a it's a I always find that it's such a hard line uh We've we've haven't had any content per se well except what we did at devconnect but our meetups this year were just drinks so there was no like speakers but as of January we were starting with our first privacy Meetup and we have speakers but I am trying to be super conscious of what speakers what privacy were you talking about and of course it's to bring attention to everything that's happening at expertise and the tornado cash situation yeah so that's why we're doing this but um like you said the moment as an organizer you have a stage you also have a responsibility to who you put on stage and what you're showcasing and uh what are we learning here together as a group you know so yeah and you know I'm not against sponsors like you need to fund the Meetup somehow you might need to find a sponsor for the drinks but you should be very transparent about what you're doing and who is the sponsor here yeah and uh who is the expert here or like what is the takeaway from this um the way we did it a couple years back when we had the meetup groups that were quite bigger we call them townhouse we actually created a section to give one minute each uh to projects that are local and they literally had one slide and one minute to speak about their project it was very clearly uh disclosed that these are the local projects you can learn more about afterwards and we gave them the stage but we never really you know kind of sneaked in some promotion we wanted to give them opportunity can I Nick that idea I love I love trying to always that's that's really cool I we had that doing well during devconnect as well we had like an open stage at some point for people to just Go on stage do your pitch and and get off so yeah it's current Community Round Pitch but town hall is kind of cute I like the I like the name and you're right it's all about defining it like sort of be you know at your own risk and and be careful and uh yeah yeah crazy times do you remember when you when well you've been hosting events for like a super long time but uh I'll always remember the first time I chased you down a rainy Amsterdam uh Street for to get a Live Free or Die t-shirt uh I was uh looking at those pictures from from that wonderful article from your documentary and seeing all the merch uh you know that we have from all these events and stuff like how important do you think is crypto lifestyle I I'm putting air quotes here because I don't know exactly what I'm talking about like is there for you like something as like a culture around crypto like what what is it is it the merge that we wear like what's yeah I I think like what you mentioned before uh just uh take back to the previous thing you mentioned like how most of the people come across these big ads and big sponsorships for like more traditional looking uh crypto companies like the centralized one uh that's their style uh expensive Super Bowl ads um celebrate the endorsement Etc whereas in crypto uh the culture is like marketing is very tricky you really need to do a marketing that is honest and that is thought through and that has community in mind that doesn't have just like a hard sell at mine um and I think like a couple things that are very specific to cryptoculture is that memes are amazing medium and merge is also very popular so so yeah it's a it's a highly viewable and very merchable uh Community yeah it's funny how we yeah how we start collecting those items and how how they I don't know I guess we're still early so it's also like it's a little thing that can give us good feelings about a certain project or something we really like and we like to wear afterwards so yeah super cool it's great but you know like uh when there's uh when there's a extreme growth of crypto popularity then some people even say like I'm not gonna wear those t-shirts anymore like teacher stop me and ask me about crypto so it's kind of funny like sometimes you feel like oh this is getting too popular maybe I should stop wearing those weird things there or I would like to be a little bit more ain't on and it's a bit a bit too much a Big E thing on my front of my t-shirt but but it's a great thing like you for sure have your favorite slack I think the live freed I had one is a legendary one from making the legendary they're just couple uh more that I would name but uh yeah that one is definitely my favorite let's jump maybe because I I realized like tell me like what does a day for you look like right now like tell us about like what's a normal day what are your responsibilities right now so right now I'm in a little transition I'm taking a little breather and a break and winding down for the year but uh let's say until December my everyday looked like um so I did a couple of career transitions different roles and the latest one was product management project management so I was basically being a PM for a software project that was built specifically to the needs of our Dow um and in there you basically use the same skills as you use when you organize things you need to be detailed structured you need to plan you need to follow up you need to coordinate you need to facilitate you need to document and you know like all these things so I don't think it has changed as much but it kind of followed a bit more software development structures and I've been also learning a lot in that way um so yeah so lately it's been working on monthly releases and pushing those releases coordinating with the team internally doing planning calls uh overseeing kanban tasks following up uh etc etc so are you saying that working in a Dao is the same thing as working in a normal traditional structure I wouldn't say that of course the work is remote and after covet many more organizations outside of crypto have experienced this we had it quite more native but I also think that there are a lot of things that the Dow structures uh can burrow when it comes to best practices uh we shouldn't always just like try to reinvent the wheel because we can crash on those details um but there definitely are differences in traditional companies and the Dells and working in the dial is definitely not boring boring so what's what's the good part of working in a down what's like the less fun part of working in a Dell because I think for a lot of people this is a completely new way of working you know working for a decentralized autonomous organization how does it work how do you get paid how do you get hired how how does that work I think a lot of people have no clue about what it's like to work for this they might have heard of the word dab then it's it's kind of a mystery yeah and we also like don't have a great definition what though is so true you know to begin with uh because it's even the younger than the crypto space yeah um so there are definitely some big advantages when it comes to working for Adele but there are also some disadvantages uh and I also believe that working for though is not for everyone and when you communicate about this it's very important to be clear because some people might kind of get um lured in and then uh possibly ending up in making a decision that actually doesn't really suit them well and doesn't really suit that project and therefore it's very important to kind of be upfront about the risks uh and uh and options one has and the safety net that might be more restricted or limited for instance people who have a great financial responsibilities I wouldn't advise them to quit their traditional job and join the space or for people who really just enjoy taking their salary check every month and just work nine to five and then forget everything it might not be the best fit um because you can really get invested in this work and you can really get like absorbed with it so it's really really hard to be that person who can just like switch off and not care completely um so there are some types that don't really fit but then there's some really awesome advantages such as that if you just look for a job just to pay your bills your motivation your um satisfaction from your contribution and your feeling of uh making a difference is so much different because um because there needs to be a lot more uh pull from the contributors to join a product than in other other organizations so you actually often feel that you are value aligned with the project you want to work for and you also feel motivated to come up with like improvements and achieving some success and you feel like your impact is much greater than elsewhere so it can be very satisfactory from this point of view considering we work so many hours of our life um equally it's super new Innovative space where the different streams different uh Sciences different areas different Industries merge so you can always always learn something new um so it's great way to iterate experiment and test your hypothesis um but yeah it's it also goes with responsibilities right because you don't have this safety net and guarantees and you actually have to help build this project that is successful in order to secure your future in this space so there's also a lot of responsibility so do you feel like your personal goals are aligned with your job uh in a doubt yeah I don't want to say Never Say Never but I cannot see myself working at a bank but I can see myself working for a D5 protocol or for a crypto project because it has some values that I I align myself with and the way I complain about centralized uh centralized exchanges and institutions it's going wrong is exactly the same issues uh repeating themselves as we know them from the traditional space um so I hate abuse of power and Corruption and all these things and that's something that I personally feel super repelled by and I do not want to contribute in that space so for me it's quite ideological and I also believe that people who joined this space really need to be um like on the mission they need to know why they're in the space because it can get hard at the time yeah no for sure I I definitely did an amazing presentation about how to start working in crypto and web 3 and it was a very popular talk a lot of people uh came to me afterwards and said how happy they were with that presentation that it inspired them so much um could you give us like the tldr on it or like because you mentioned now your your job and I feel like that presentation like was an eye-opener for many people well first off thank you so much for having me there I'm not really a native uh speaker and I'm not that comfortable on the stage but I felt like there are not that many people who have gone through this period of uh getting to know the space and kind of going through like finding out what my next thing is but also hiring and also like sharing with people and helping people to get to the space um so I felt like instead of always giving one-on-one advice I can just try to put it together and help them with like some starting points they can get inspired by so I'm really happy it had an impact and I also had the great conversations uh towards the end uh well yeah one of the things I mentioned is that working in this space it's not for everyone uh kind of try to align the expectations what one can expect I kind of wanted to make it clear how different it is uh from looking for a job because the job often is not the job listing you come across that's just the tip of the iceberg so it's very much about proactive search and proactive um um things one can do such as like following the projects figuring out uh which one they feel uh good about and then starting to like ask questions and interacting with the community and then basically building up credibility by possibly in the end being someone who is asked okay we like you as a Our superactive Community member would you consider being like more uh more of a contributor in this project within this role would feature so basically kind of like shaping your own career here which is very very difficult to come and try to like persuade the tech company that you're the one you really need a very different credentials so you can actually make yourself up as the best candidate for the job that you are burning for for the contributions you want to make um there are a lot of things people do not know so just being curious and open-minded and motivated is really good and you know we always keep saying we're so early and then some people think oh I'm so late you're never late the longer you wait the more miserable you get in your current situation current role the more ready you are so I don't think it's ever late like their advantages and disadvantages when the market is crashing um you can focus more on building when the market is camping you get distracted by a lot of things that are unnecessary a lot of noise so you know if you're here for the good reason the chances are you're gonna find the right project of course the the funds might be more tight and might be a little bit more challenging but you know if you really are passionate about something and you're appreciated this is what you want to do then there's no one stopping you no good one so to anybody listening so far and who wants to get in just just jump in jump into your favorite project Discord or channels and just start somewhere just get to know people and attend events I would say is also a really good tip to oh yes you have to put a face on on the contributors that of a of a giant Discord sometimes it's a bit difficult but starting remote is also it's also fine joining your local Meetup uh taking the time you need um no wonder they call it rabbit hole Yeah if it sucks you in you're in it's really hard to come back yeah no definitely and that's when you were being on stage you had like three cameras pointing at you so you were one of the only speakers that had its own like media crew uh what was going on what I mean it was It was kind of intense they were like okay she's talking we're here yeah it was it was quite funny again a very new experience to me so around January I had this guy reach out to me saying that they work for a Dr which is Danish radio and television I live in Copenhagen by the way so that's uh that's the explanation um and they were basically saying that there they got a project to do a documentary for like a younger audience for the national radio television and it's gonna follow like a couple of stories of a couple people in this space and I was like awesome I can give you some really good tips on who you can do this with and I can give you feedback and I can support you in like uh checking if the definitions or whatever uh if you don't feel confident about it and somehow I just got talked into being one of them and I was like okay so I'm gonna do this for awareness sake and um I decided that the angle I want to show and that doesn't get a lot of Spotlight is the community I'm part of and how important the community is um so how can I better show them the community with them taking them to Amsterdam actually showing them their comment are you do you think that this is the type of stories actually that can once again inspire people to join the space and get curious and I really hope so but of course there'll be people who'll be just chasing number go up and you know there's nothing I can do about it but with my story I try to contribute with this angle so people just don't think it's all about trading and like jumping on the bandwagon Etc but it is also about like some greater set inspection than just getting your salary check so what was it for you how did you start how what what what made you join crypto um this story is quite funny so um I had really hard time I think since kindergarten I hated that question like what do you want to do when you grow up apparently apparently enough and then came the college right so what do I want to study and then I was thinking okay I want to do something creative let's study marketing or like advertisement before I even started my bachelor's in marketing I worked like a summer job at the advertisement agency and I was like oh my God I never want to work in this industry okay good on you for doing the internship before throwing yourself into studies very good oh so I finished it was like kind of like media studies journalism marketing uh stuff like that um and then I had this opportunity to go study for my Master's abroad and I always wanted to do that so I'm from Slovakia and I ended up in Denmark and they had this crazy uh long master's degree called culture communication and globalization and it had like a stream within called Market communication and consumption so I just like went all crazy wait say it again culture communication and globalization right yes specialization in Market consumption no Market Market communication and consumer studies so basically imagine anywhere that you have the overlap of the three areas of the culture communication and thanks to globalization so it's like basically anything instead of going deeper into that field I just like went all over and that helped me to explore the different uh things like uh consumption upside down like presumption consumers that actually producers or ethical consumption uh fair trade etc etc and you know because I was always like going against the street I just want people to persuade and to buy more products so I was kind of looking at like what else is out there um and I think like this word open really has it for me so open innovation okay uh how can you innovate without doing it behind closed door in in the team within your organization how can you crowdsource some new ideas for products Etc and of course came to open source and the interest in open source then went to with my friend to open Thursdays nice and learned about like Bitcoin torching and you know all these like uh DIY 3D printer people etc etc um so yeah and I heard about that and then it was time for me to find a job after I graduated so I was I was trying different things and then I came across this internship at the Bitcoin starter and I was like oh yeah Bitcoin so it's been three days just Googling oh I could do about Bitcoin and then I just went for That interview wow wow and that was your first job in crypto that was my first grown-up job yes I did like internship but it was for public sector and it was like it was a limited time they just take a new intern so it was just to like get a little experience so this was my first internship when then I just continued working there and I've been there for four years wow so you yeah yeah fell into it never looked back yeah and I literally came there and said look um I am not technical not a developer but I have this other assets that you need because it's exact opposite of what we have right now so hire me that's a good sale that's a good sales like I am not so again crypto is not just filled with technical people there's also I would say a bunch of people like us that are Educators people focus gatherers we digest information we can organize things um so very very very important skills actually very informative as well very intimate you need those developers because it's very uh technical space but you need someone to Market you need to someone to do a partnership you need someone to educate you need someone to build a community and many projects don't don't think about it in the beginning but as the space evolves there's more need for a more specialized talents to joining what about then your so you have this internship and then and then what and then what was the next step after that first crypto internship Bitcoin internship so it was basically a startup that did two things uh one was Payment Processing for merchants so it was B2B and the second one was basically a brokerage platform so customers could send a bank transfer and get crypto or send crypto and get the uh or they could also use credit card um and that was a merger of two companies and I joined there to do online marketing um for that startup and I've been there for a long time I've did uh Pia I did social media I built the blog I rated the website I've been doing like all these comms um but you know we went through a couple of the ups and downs in terms of prices and I could just see like the the digital money of Bitcoin the promise it just never got fulfilled and of course uh while I was at this company I was also very interested to you know like seek out events that have something to do and I also been doing events for that uh organizing people to come to speakers okay but also just like local meetups and learning about projects and with my boyfriend we went to uh Copenhagen ethereum Meetup and he was like oh there's this guy he came from China he just got some funds and he's gonna present this project and there was room talking about maker and I remember I was so kissed after that Meetup because I did not understand the thing wow that was like so frustrated like I mean this place quite a long time and I'm still not getting this and I think it was around summer 17. and it was a sigh that was like the Proto version of Thai that they were just beginning with uh so so yeah I remember I was like super frustrated like how could this be I felt so stupid sitting there like I didn't get a thing um but yeah year after that I was already organizing meetups for Baker in the same group wow he said something very interesting he said that by working at that startup you felt like uh Bitcoin had failed uh can you expect some money yeah and here's the table coin that's decentralized that's opening an office and that's why I decided to join maker was Community lead was it due to the high fees on the Bitcoin Network like well what did you think of it or the volatility which stable current solve uh it was like Merchants were not willing to sell something that when they have to do their accounting monthly they might lose money on it and they were not trusting it and uh people who uh hold Bitcoin if they felt like oh it's gonna have more value I don't want to spend it on the beers right now it's okay so you know it just kind of felt that promise of becoming money it just became an Assad you want to hold everyone investing um so so I could see just payments not really working out and I could see the the case for stable coins so that's also why I decided to join wow do you use cryptocurrencies as a user to use them for payments yeah I think my favorite one is Bitcoin grounds sorry is keep going grounds oh get coin grants yeah because I can also like try different types of uh checkout experiences I think that's a really cool one yeah so I have to ask what do you think of uh the shift that you've been through at maker um you were part of the early days when maker still was a foundation and then you are now in a core unit make your SCS and what do you think of all of those different steps and now also the future of maker with endgame okay I'm happy because that one as well because it's like an evolution yeah what do you call the end game as well because yeah let's see what's gonna I mean you've seen a lot you will have seen a lot so like let's maybe first like first chunk let's say Foundation days how is that how was the early days of working at maker and doing events and yeah how was that um so I actually joined joined around the time that they were just forming the foundation and just starting the Danish office it was summer 18. um and it was really great because I got to sit at the office with other people who are like-minded um and uh Gustav he was doing BD with me and he studied around that time so we traveled a lot to a lot of events it was crazy it was like a lot of events yeah um so that was really exciting meeting the ethereum community around the globe yeah it really exploded sometimes I wasn't really at the office because I was all the time traveling so there was a great experience but all in all Foundation you know had like teams had like bit more streamlined ways of doing things um had like head of this head of that so you can always go to a person but then after some time the project was evolving towards that full decentralization it was always talking about we delivered multicolateral dye we we delivered the infrastructure that was needed for Community to be able to control the project and steer it to the Future so um like the decentralized governance the map framework and other tools so it was just about the time that we developed the foundation and we let the community to decide how they want this to function and so came the framework of core units which are basically themes that propose themselves to do a specific work for the doll for a given budget and again I joined someone that I felt that uh I will both have a really good collaboration with contributing to I like the idea I like the impact I could make um that's uh that's basically Walter who came up with the idea for SCS it stands for sustainable ecosystem scaling and being able to be part of the team that actually solves the problem for us to scale effectively that was a great opportunity I also kind of switched from doing the markham's the community building and the events and marketing stuff to do this project management thing so that was also quite a big transition and I'm happy I made that we did a really exciting project about the decentralized workforce research and that's also some of the outcomes of that what I share with people when it comes to advising them on a career because I had an opportunity to be involved in the project that researched this um and currently it's the software project that I was talking about it's basically a transparency dashboard that helps everyone in the but also the public but right now probably it's mostly relevant for for different delegates and mkr token voters but equally for the core units themselves to be able to communicate transparently and Report their expenses Etc but it's a it's evolving towards becoming like more of a operational platform for the entire dial um so that's the current thing and as we are working on this um on monthly iterations and deployments we are transitioning into a new development of makerdale the end game and the metabows are sceptiles or how do we call them right yeah meta what is it it was MIP for those who before you said MIP for those who don't know I'll put sometimes I put some text and stuff but like maker and improvement improvement proposals um yeah so the idea yeah sorry no yeah yeah exactly it's like an EIP yeah for the that's the a similar semantics that we we use in the space for those that don't know what was it a couple of months ago roon the founder or one of the early co-founders that you mentioned that you saw presenting in Copenhagen way back um well you can maybe explain it like what what's what is end game in your opinion like what what is this what is this 3.0 phase for maker right now oh I wish I had the best tldr uh actually I think we're still figuring out how to exactly communicate this but it's a transition from the core unit as we knew them into having some sort of a smaller Core theme that is tied to protocol like some essential functions of the protocol and then having um other sub-dials which can provide some services and then you can also have ecosystem actor which could be a company that Services other dials or other companies providing a specific service does that mean that make your SES becomes one of the meta dows that is one Theory there so it's not implemented ecosystem actor the the vote to transition to this has been um has been voted in or passed uh but the actual transition it's being figured out yeah because the vote was was pretty tricky that's from what I've seen it's like it was there was a bit of controversy there about well um something something of only 15 of maker were used to vote and two-third of those were actually ruins or his delegates so it's basically ruined coming up with a new roadmap for maker and then voting himself for his project and passing it that way I mean did that frustrate you did you feel like or what or were you just like oh no this is how it's supposed to happen like how did you feel about it I think that I'm one of these people that actually don't have like 100 insight into everything endgame because I was really just heads down making sure we uh we keep up with the promises we make to the things we deliver so I don't think I'm like the best informed person I understand there is always a frustration to how things happen um but nevertheless um since this is the winning uh proposal and it is something that is a long-term um kind of visionary thing I understand that the issue of executing this is actually like breaking it down into smaller parts and discussing how can this be done and I think that's a that's a big advantage of the people that are in my team that actually can think like technically how this can be executed and how can we implement it into the new versions of this dashboard we're working on so that we can support that transition so yeah somehow now the dashboard is really needed like how like you mentioned that you worked on a transparency dashboard like to enable you core units to work maybe those core units become metadoos they might have their own committee their own token their own strategies so they'll need even more communication yeah uh yeah so you can only see that tool being very very very needed in comparison to the to the foundation where you could stay with one website one social media channel one blog Etc now you meet like so many different platforms for this so many different actors to communicate but if you provide them with like an operational platform where they can just use the same structure and push the information itself relevant to them to the people that uh that we need to know this information in a in a simplified environment then that can really help them it can also help them to communicate their progress on the transition and it can also help them to gain the the trust of the voters that vote for their proposals um one way we uh to reconfigure how the work is being done is instead of focusing on one team delivering a specific specific work to focus on a project that more different actors within the ecosystem can team up on and to propose to do so project-based budgeting is one of the things but also transition to metadals or sub-dials or what we end up calling them is another thing that we can Implement in the next iterations of the dashboard to begin with the dashboard has been really strictly focusing on the situation we were in um when the in the bear Market hit and we really need to be uh well informed about our spending and our economies so it was very focused on financial reporting yeah but now it's becoming much more of a collaboration and transition too so for you moving forward uh I I just saw this new semantics of our there's there's three types of birds you can be right now have you thought of it are you like more of a pigeon are you more of an eagle or are you more of a phoenix do you know what I'm talking about do you know what I'm talking about I know that's gonna sound really weird for maybe people that are not familiar yeah so uh I think uh of the birds that you just mentioned you just have to think of it like graduation stages yeah so you start as a pigeon then you become an eagle and then you first in the place something like that and uh but there were other two birds uh pre uh end game discussions and that was whether you're a Duff or your Hawk whether you want to invest in growth or whether you want to cut down the costs and be very simplistic I can't wait the dove was investing growth and the hawk was cut or was it the opposite yeah I hope I'm not messing it up but yeah in the game so you could have a different approaches because you could see like their different outcomes involting on the budgets for different core units in the past etc etc so now which bird do you feel that which bird are you right now or do you would you want to be or do you uh do you do you identify the most with uh I think it was just to exemplify the different stages one has to go through so in order to be Phoenix you need to start as a pigeon okay I see Oh I thought it was like moving okay so just for those who don't know what we're talking about pigeon is like low regulatory risk um with some exposure to real world acid as collateral for dye um but that the the peg for diet I.E one dollar one die would remain over the 2.

5 next year so again end game is like a big road map and there's different phases and then Eagle I think is die with a completely flee free sorry free floating rate so no more like fixed pack um with negative negative Target rate so to ensure more stability and the Phoenix stage is like zero exposure to real world asset and the collateral um with therefore achieving supposedly or according to the narrative achieving at that point maximum censorship resistance for die am I do do you agree with the yeah the tldr of the pigeon much better than mine so if I must say like it's so hard to keep track of all the projects you can't like anybody that's out it's really hard to keep up with every organization and then what's happening in the organ the drama and the politics of each of these um but yeah how do you feel about maker and die moving forward at least like you've you've seen it all this is not that you're you're still like you're you're not saying okay this is it like 16 or I don't know eight metadats no I'm not getting into that you're thinking let's see let's see what maker and I becomes yeah I I think also just like transition into core unit could have been like uh anxiety kind of uh triggering but uh I'm happy I did that jump and yeah you know some of the best things that happen for me is me pushing out myself out of the comfort zone so I'm not saying everything's gonna be pink and smooth but I'm really excited to see where it comes and you know it's really hard for maker to look elsewhere for inspiration because they're really not other examples that have been through this before we shall not mention the let's say two other I don't know there's been many different iterations on decentralized stable coins in the crypto exercise some have burnt into flames earlier this year yeah but um but thinking of like dolls and transitioning and and growing pains and addressing those Growing Pains I remember that when we switched to core units that we actually had a lot of calls with other projects that want to do this transition and were asking us for input we are talking with shapeshift we were talking we could find we were talking with many other ones and we always try to inspire them like how we do this um so I always feel like maker is more like passing on the knowledge and learnings whereas we're not going and asking people okay so how should we do this because there hasn't been really many people that went through this that could advise us or give us some knowledge sharing in that sense so I feel like everything we do it's with a certain level of risk and we might be smarter afterwards but it's really hard to foresee future uh just yet and a lot of decisions that have been made um have been to foot further decentralized the protocol to remove the risks so that's do you feel like this year when we saw everything that happened with tornado cash and and ofac and and flashbots and you know certain East transactions getting all not censored but at least three layers uh not wanting to to pass certain transactions you think that sort of um motivated Rune maybe or or just did that do you think did that have an influence on end game and wanting to move away from centralized back stable coins I don't know I'm just that this is like pure like I'm just like throwing spaghetti at the wall right now just like I'm just trying to imagine you know I don't know I think it would be more surprising if there would be zero reaction or response to that kind of development in the space and I also feel like generally uh the D5 developers are already like quite more conscious about their privacy and stuff like that so even if things are evolving in the direction that you don't agree with and you don't think it's right you need to somehow um come up with solutions that can bring you a little bit more uh Security in terms of what you're doing or like ensure the longevity of the project your partner so I would not say that it had nothing to do with it it definitely must have had an influence but maybe there were also other practical reasons um for this um this proposal to be brought up because as I'm saying we cannot always figure out everything from the first try it's still very nice in the environment there are a lot of developments that become presidents because it hasn't happened before and um and yeah I I really hope that you know although many people from the outside from the mainstream saying that this is just um this is just space that's crawling with scams and hex and everything that they also understand that they're growing pains and if there are a lot of hacks in D5 early on then we learn from it and when we're very significant and scaled largely to the to the mainstream levels of Visa Etc we already have come through those pains and we figured out the the weaknesses we have so I still consider a lot of these things as as being early and having to go through this growing pains and figuring out how we can become more resilient definitely and if it's not the the bad press that we get from horrible fraudsters out there we obviously have like you just mentioned growing pains and it's it's painful and difficult um did you personally like uh voted on this proposal on this map how how often do you vote on these myths like do you yeah how much do you vote like how do you vote at all I don't know I don't if you don't again I feel like that's a very personal question I realize now like it's like asking me if I vote on every like Swiss elections and sometimes I skip one like it's like or sometimes I abstain if I don't know about something or do you try to follow all the myths like how how do you interact with the voting proposal yeah I must admit I haven't voted on this one and that is also because I didn't feel like I have enough insights to everything but I also feel that in our team we have people who have been um really diving deep into it and it was really helpful to to make sure that there is some sort of uh maybe not through the governments but through like trying to influence how this project if it becomes successful becomes executed and that will be done the best possible way we can support then that was important for me um yeah yeah I didn't I mean again from an outsider perspective it's it's always interesting to see basically the proposal going through but actually the execution of it is still to be decided on and to be defined it's not it's more like we vote on this general idea strategy but then the details are still up to people like you that are doing the day-to-day groundwork uh I don't know yeah it was uh around I think it was uh one month ago around eight personal eight Gathering yeah in Barcelona yeah that uh some of my teammates they've been actually hosting um shout out to tattoo into that conference I heard a lot of good things about each so uh so there was actually a meta dial an end game off-site where more different actors from the space including delegates including a coordinate facilitators etc etc I have met up together to discuss uh to figure out the questions the big question marks and discuss like how this could go forward so there is definitely a progress going on and um and things are solidifying and that's really great to see people showing the interest and people putting the time and work to figuring out how to get this uh executed successfully yeah my it's going to be a a new a new era for maker and for die moving forward it's really and and it's interesting and I've and we'll see we can only just stick around and and see what's going to happen how the market reacts how the Dao reacts as well to all of this so a lot of crazy things also upcoming I can see from maker what are you excited about for for next year hmm next year I'm gonna take a a little break okay I think it's the first one since I joined the space I never took sabbatical or anything so it's gonna be interesting for me to observe um observe the space uh from an outsider point of view keeping up with what's happening but not being like day to day involved with the the actual work uh so yeah I'm excited about that and I am starting my maternity leave this week so that's gonna be congratulations congratulations and hey we don't we don't have maternity leave right in crypto like how how is that oh there was a also quite interesting to arrange um it took only five months oh my God yeah there are not many cases of this so I hope I can be beings that contributes to it in fact I haven't mentioned this group uh of really sweet people that I'm also part of called people of skilled which are uh people who work in different towns and crypto projects to do the centralized HR and to do contributor experience and are in one way or another involved with this and this is also one of the topics which I think could make a big difference to is upon the anxiety anxiety levels for for women young women to consider joining this space and actually feeling uh somehow safe in this space and then yeah that would be a big game changer because I think if there's something that makes a difference then this could be the one thing so I would love to dive into this bit more this might be an interesting next talk for 2025. oh yes you know post everything and explaining the yeah how do you work for a down and and also get a maternity leave and and and through a difficult decision if you're like workaholic and if you're really dedicated to your project it's also like emotional rupture between the two things you want to do and how to combine the two so it's also figuring out uh how to where do you set the line indeed indeed and it's I or I think we're a similar age we're we're close we are in similar moments I think in life where we think about these things and um I thought it was beautiful and difficult to see so many children actually there was a lot of people that brought their kids and I thought that's amazing you know it's not it's not just you know the top top notch contributors but it's also the extended family that's there and involved and learning and I can only see myself grabbing our children and dragging them or to to everything that we do basically to meetups to conferences so I look forward to to seeing your your little ones as well thank you yeah I think it's really great to also consider this when you register to some crypto events nowadays you also get that kind of question and if it's possible they try to um see what the interest is in terms of helping with child care Etc and fulfill that or support that so it's really nice to see how were you asked what was it like I think uh Defcon had it and I'm sure that if Denver has it um I think it's just like yes no question like are you considering to bring uh children to the events would you be interested in child care or any I'm putting it down I'm trying to get the best practices out there okay then I have another tip for you okay what's another tip that I need to implement papiru a puppy room yes that's not a thing it is a room where they had puppies from shelter and you could go and you could put them I never made the line when I was going there but I think that's such a it's better than the Zen room foreign Ty the puppy room we're already using all this space to make sure that hackers have enough space to hack and they need the hacking but another animal that I saw was at ECC Paris this year and there was just like a horse someone had a horse in the center or like sorry not a horse like a pony it's like a small pony that was just parked in front of of ECC he couldn't touch it though so it's not a proper like petting situation but there was an animal that was kind of cute um oh my God a puppy room I can't believe it yeah they're from shelter they get some attention people get some Ender fins I'm writing it down but I can't guarantee it like that that one's like far that's that's that's an insane I keep I keep pitching it to everyone like eat them for headache fine I guess they are they have said the bar really high trip or something fancy you know like well now we're gonna do the I think what so you know Maria and Mateo are organizing uh spaghettis right after uh Ethan so we're promoting this and talking about it as like a crypto European summer basically you start in an Amsterdam you do the hackathon and then we all go to Naples together and I think that'd be super fun to like something going on in Italy I think the rest of the team is pretty pumped about checking out Naples and maybe there's something fun there we'll see but oh my God puffy room that's like oh my God okay anything else other than a puppy room which is an insane thing to have but for events yeah um I know I'm gonna go into this uh event organizer strict mode yeah I think it's always nice if you do event to think about what the takeaway is for the person what can they bring home with them that's always like the biggest thing so I love that people were giving like I think it definitely could mean to various nfts and various uh layer twos and mainnet I love giving Pops to people that come to the event because it's their first NFD and you know I I don't have understanding for all nft use cases but I love this one yeah me too Pop's awesome yeah shout out to you yeah hey Patricia so yeah I I think like have something that people come home with not just like just another t-shirt but also have something meaningful that can unlock that aha moment in them yeah I like that yeah for those who don't know perhaps are proof of attendance protocol they're nfts but they don't they they have an emotional value they don't have a price on them and I think that's what makes them truly unique I actually meant them for every well yeah for every Meetup we've had for the last year I've been minting pull-ups and I think it's it's like a nice something it's it's crypto but it's not it's not insane and it's on a layer two so it doesn't have the high fees so it's like it's it's a good onboarding tool I think uh for many people and app is easy to manage and stuff like that so I have a pro tip for co-ops yeah um in terms of looking for uh the best job for you in in the space this could be your crypto passport this is how OG how involved in community you are if you share your purpose um okay uh then we're just yes I think you mean like to use pull-ups to sort of do proof of attendance or for people to get in is that what you mean like you have to show a certain pull up to be able to get into the conference what I'm saying is amazing Memorial from going to event is your pop but it's also like your OG passport in crypto for sure how many pull-ups you have and if you're trying to get the job in the crypto I think it's much more helpful to show off your pull-ups than is to show off your CV so there's a pro tip right there oh interesting so using your perhaps as your CV yeah that that makes sense that makes sense that makes sense so make sure to collect your pop to whatever conference you attend to prove that you were there to prove your attendance to something yeah very nice so now we that we've talked about our favorite pull-ups and the importance of them maybe you'd like to share something special of yourself something that we can remember you by okay there are many things so I just picked this random one this is my useless machine I like to have it on my desk it's basically that's a pretty no you know just on and off yeah and you can do this forever and do it again finger that pops out the finger and I like the sound it makes yeah and uh yeah uh I I got it at open Thursdays I had to assemble it myself and I had a lot of fun showing it to people and I have it on my desk and I need to remember take breaks or I need to make a mental uh stop pause between the things so just try to turn on the machine oh that's lovely and yeah maybe easy button is easier in some situations but you know crypto can feel like this sometimes yeah you just keep you just have to keep on pushing the on button wow until people get it I love it what's your what's your way of keeping actually a good healthy balance in crypto I think that's something we should talk a bit more as well that's like the sort of the the longevity of being in crypto like how did you manage to balance not having a 925 job working in a dow going through price up and downs like what's what's the key to your happiness and and balance yeah you know this meme of like uh people going on this uh fun ride on this crazy roller coaster and they're like meeting the the zombie looking the the skeleton looking ones uh yes how long you've been in this space you know and it's the same one with the train ride where you have the the people looking one way being very optimistic and then the other way of being very gloomy and thinking about the same thing I think it just comes with time um I was also terrible at first I started working at startup and I was working weekends and I was taking on things on things on things and I was just overworking myself and I had to learn with them how to take care of myself and unfortunately often it just comes that way unless you have someone who can tell you the warning sites signs earlier so unfortunately mental health is often overlooked especially if you don't have an office you share with your colleagues and if you don't have like set working hours so you just literally need to learn to take care of yourself and to realize like you can't do everything and not everything can be perfect so you know sometimes you just need to take a bit more easy give yourself a break look at it from the distance um I realized that you know it's not always about like working working but sometimes saving up enough vacation time and actually spending like two or three weeks by absolutely taking a break can really help you recharge and reset your mind um because sometimes you just get like into this impulsive checking Twitter and checking birthday on checking everything and you just need to learn how to control yourself and you just need to learn how to use your free time for the quality time that you want to have so it just comes with experience I'm sorry to say or it comes with a good friend with a good advice it's hard yeah in short it's hard and and if anybody is struggling out there just don't hesitate once again to I know it's hard when you're struggling to reach out really to let your your friends know let the people you're working with know and communicate it and and don't just suffer alone because we're actually all in this together we really are um and some people are better than others at managing massive stress and 16 platforms and DOW drama and crypto Twitter while doing a podcast and it's just sometimes it just it gets a bit much not trying to turn off people from getting into crypto but it is um it is difficult you need the discipline yeah yeah especially for remote work and I don't know if you're a kind of person like me then you really enjoy from time to time to go into events with real people in the same old situations that you actually get to like relax and also just talk about something else for a change or like kind of be on the same page uh it really recharges me when I'm at the conference with my crowd so so that is a one way and we're not just the crazy people dressed up in a unicorn overalls drinking expensive parties uh we also need to let this team know somehow so it's important I agree do you have any last words to share about your experience and you as one of the humans of crypto to our audience well there's nothing extremely special about me and look at me my first grown-up job is in crypto I pay my bills from earning it in crypto I haven't cheated anyone yet it's possible to go the honest point and it is possible to actually always contribute something extra than just benefiting your own project and you get a lot of in exchange for it so as long as you know I get the the motivation from this I get what I'm getting back I'll keep contributing to the space so I'm really happy I had the opportunity to share with others uh how I'm enjoying this space and hopefully it will motivate the others and I'm always happy to help you out to figure out that question that's in the way for you to figuring out if this is for you or not amazing link yes thank you so so much for being here for being so open and for sharing your story I look forward to one day seeing your community in Copenhagen seeing your next step into this and and just thank you thank you for your time and for sharing I'll make sure to put all your links to documentaries past talks people lost guilds um down there in the description so that people can can go and learn more and and can get to know you more as well well thank you so much for having me Eleanor um it's an honor that someone wants to listen to this story while there's so much information overload out there uh if any of the links are relevant I'm happy to elaborate on those uh and thank you so much for the work you're doing because it's really awesome and when in Copenhagen we need to have you as a speaker so that would be fun I just thought of it for people who have been listening till the end The Crazy Ones make them a pull-up so forth okay let's think of a code right now and then they can like DM us on like Twitter or like Telegram and I'll make sure to Mint them up for having listened although this is so fun there's only a few people will be but this will be nice to me to put up for those people make a special humans of crypto link Edition useless machine perfect DM me on Twitter useless machine for listening all the way yeah bye bye