The Scribe's Quill | February 14, 2022
Dearest Pupils, Scribblers, and Scribes,
Scaling and growth is presenting challenges of coordination and governance across the DAO, and due to the nature of historic employment and educational practices, we have too few individuals primed to tackle the issues that are arising. As a result, we are left with no guidance on how to approach concerns surrounding compensation, organization, and revenue. Because of this deficit, we are moving forward with shaping our processes as they will best serve us here in the Guild, with the hope that what we build may be used as a framework by others to provide the guidance lacking in bDAO has a whole.
As you dive into the updates provided by your coordination team and project leads, consider how this fits in the greater picture of the Guild at large.
Welcome to The Scribe’s Quill.
This is the official newsletter of the BanklessDAO Writers Guild. If you would like to receive this newsletter in your inbox, please tap or click on that subscribe button below.
Writers Guild in Bites
The Council of Writers Weekly, Monday at 6:30pm UTC
Writers Workshop, Wednesday at 6pm UTC
Weekly Newsletter Team Sync, Thursday at 5:00pm UTC
Weekly Editorial and Publishing Arm (EPA) Meeting, Thursday at 10:00pm UTC
EPA Alternate Time Zone Meeting, Thursday at 2pm UTC
Submit a Blog post
DAO Editorial backlog
Meeting Notes
Council of Writers, February 7, 2022
Newsletter Team Sync, February 10, 2022
Editors Circle (EPA), February 10, 2022
Announcements
Congratulations to Jake and Stake, recently elected as the Guild’s Governance Coordinator!
Team Updates
Newsletter Team, siddhearta | Coordinator
📈 Newsletter Stats
Subscribers: 10,470
Latest TOTAL page views:
Weekly Rollup: 7,779
Decentralized Arts: 6.931
State of the DAOs: 9,056
Decentralized Law: 9,925
Gearing Up: 7,329
We got rugged last week by Substack! You may notice that our views are down significantly from where they were in previous weeks. It turns out Substack had an error in their system that was counting multiple views from a single user, and thus our page views have been inflated the past two months. The good news: people are reading our newsletters more than one time! We will take that for the W🏆.
🗞 Weekly Rollup
What happened this week in BanklessDAO
Editorial: How to talk to your family about crypto by Cheetah
Front End: teeLEROO
Back End: Jake and Stake
EthHunter, teeLEROO, and theconfusedcoin are working on putting together a checklist for the Front End and Back End roles of the Weekly Rollup. If you would like to get involved with our newsletters, this is a great place to get plugged in.
☯️ State of the DAOs
We are looking for more DAO editorials. If you have an idea or have something to submit, add it to the DAO editorial backlog.
EPA, Samanthaj | Coordinator
Hey everyone! I was AFK for a bit at the end of this week for some family time. If you need me urgently for something, DM me again because your message might’ve gotten lost in the sauce.
I’m feeling really amped about our March for Words coming up. You’ll get a document from me outlining the exact details of this month of writing. To gear up, I recommend attending our Writers Workshops on Wednesdays. Last week we talked about how to make time for writing and self-manage yourself to writing greatness. Catch up by reading this short presentation!
Upcoming in the EPA is:
March for Words, starting February 21
More discussion around IP and what being a publishing house in the ownership economy means
See ya around!
From Your Coordination Team
Ap0ll0517🏴 | Secretary
Not many updates from the Secretary’s office. Our treasury is the same as it was last week. The only change to the multi-sig is the change in value. Price action has negatively impacted BANK and PERP tokens. Below is breakdown of our treasury’s assets including the change from last week.
BANK $25,139.31 → $21,671.82 = −$3,467.49 (-13.79%)
DAI $1,260.73 → $1,260.99 = +$0.26 (+0.02%)
PERP $297.52 → $275.87 = -$21.65 (−7.28%)
USDC $149.79 → $149.96 = +$0.17 (+0.11%)
This past Friday, Ap0ll0517🏴 held open office hours and answered questions about remunerations. Those who joined were able to see how Writers Guild bounties are recorded and used with spreadsheets to ensure all members are properly remunerated. Every Friday, Ap0ll0517🏴 will be in the Writers room to demonstrate secretarial tasks and answer questions about the position. This will happen immediately after the Weekly Community Call. Until then, happy writing!
nonsense 🏴 | Coordinator
If we loosely describe socialism in terms of the range and scope of collectivized controls over individual liberty of actions, then “socialism” will survive and be extended. This result will emerge not because collectivization is judged to be more efficient, in some meaningful economic sense, or even because collectivization more adequately meets agreed upon criteria for distributive justice, but rather because only under the aegis of collective control, under “the state”, can individuals escape, evade and even deny personal responsibilities.
—James M. Buchanan, Afraid to be free: Dependency as desideratum
Governance is everyone’s responsibility. However, most choose to offload that responsibility by delegating it to representatives and leaders. As a result, we have seen time and time again the trend of open democracies and republics devolve into autocracies, supplanted by them, or conquered by them. When you, as an individual, give up your power of autonomy to another, you are making the conscious decision to be led by that person or group, no matter where they may lead. Autonomy and sovereignty go right out the window, whether you accept this fact or not.
Because so many in the DAO are giving up their responsibility in governance, and declining to—or, in some cases, outright refusing to—engage with the bigger issues, we’re seeing a massive failure in coordination in the DAO at large.
Now listen, I get it: the DAO is large, with very large problems, which can be entirely overwhelming to consider. And while we will eventually need to all come together to address those problems, taking on those problems without any real idea of how to do so will feel impossible.
This is why you start local. You start by being engaged in the governance processes of the Guild. This is manageable. You have a voice. You know the mediums in use by which to make your voice heard. Show up in the Guild channels with your ideas. Weigh in on the bigger issues in the Guild threads. Speak up during Council of Writers calls, Office Hours, and team syncs. Contribute to commentary on governance docs and educational materials. This isn’t easy work, but it’s necessary. What is easy is to passively listen and watch and acquiesce without any serious involvement. However, in the words of Frank Herbert, “the safe path leads ever into stagnation.”
Safe is easy. But safe will also get you stuck. Shake off the easy; engage with the work.
You didn’t come to BanklessDAO because you wanted something easier. You came to BanklessDAO because you wanted something better. Guess what? Better takes work. Big work. Work that you are capable of doing. As we continue to work out the details of the next iteration of the Guild and what it will become, make the conscious decision to take your autonomy into your own hands, to take part in the processes that will shape how you work in the near and far futures.
Governance is as much your responsibility as it is mine. If you’re willing to do the work with me, together we can build a Guild that we will enjoy for years to come.
But it’s going to take work.
So let’s do the work.
In service to you, the Guild, and the DAO,
nonsense 🏴