Season One has come to a close. And for most of us, this doesn’t really mean anything because the work goes right on into Season Two. And we want it that way, because this means we're not limited by anything but our own productivity; days, months, or seasons fail to cap our accomplishments. This is what we came here for, is it not? To build, to design, to write, to develop, to organize, and to really feel a part of what we are creating together. Community organization is the key that underlies all of the collective value we bring to the table. And so, though we wrote and edited to our hearts’ collective content, Season One was very much about organizing ourselves in order to operate with greater clarity. Let’s talk about what we’re building, because it’s only going to get bigger from here.
Welcome to The Scribe’s Quill.
Authors: BanklessDAO Writers Guild Governance staff and team leads, nonsense 🏴, Ap0ll0517, Samanthaj, siddhearta, and Frank America.
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.
What’s On the Agenda?
This week saw few talking points, namely T-Shirts, the Writers Guild Mastermind Group, and the Governance Framework.
T-Shirts
Suggestions for shirt designs are open, and a poll will go up on Wednesday to pick the best slogan for our shirts. If you have ideas for shirt slogans and designs, drop them in the T-Shirt Discussion under the writers-general channel.
The Writers Guild Mastermind Group
We have soft consensus on getting the Writers Guild Mastermind Group started! It was decided that the Guild Mastermind Group will meet every other week, beginning the week of November 1st at 6:30pm UTC in the writers room voice channel. If you are interested in taking part, be sure to show up and participate. If you are unclear on what the Guild’s Mastermind Group will entail, siddhearta has drawn up a proposal with some very basic ideas. You can read it here.
Governance
The big topic up for discussion in this week’s Governance call was addressing what constitutes a member of the Guild. Understanding membership is a vital part of recognizing the talent available in our Guild, how best to organize that talent, and how best to compensate it. And membership is no easy undertaking to define. It’s no wonder, then, that it took an entire hour to work through this singular topic; one that will affect other areas of governance as we continue to establish the guidelines by which we will operate.
I want to extend here a friendly reminder that governance is everyone’s job. As openly anarchist organizations, DAOs thrive on community consensus. We work better when everyone has a voice, and everyone makes their voice heard. If you missed the governance call this week, join in on the next one, which will be Monday at 7pm UTC in the writers room. And if you’re unable to join in the meetings, you can still make your voice heard by contributing to the conversation in the newly created Governance Framework thread, found beneath the writers-general channel. You can review the Guild’s Governance Framework here.
Get Involved
Writers Guild Weekly Meeting: Mondays at 5:30pm UTC in the writers room.
Writers Guild Governance Sprints: Mondays at 7:00pm UTC in the writers room.
All meetings are held in the writers room voice channel in the Writers Guild on Discord. Feel free to drop in and learn where you can get plugged in. Or come in and listen if you want to get a feel for the space. Everyone is welcome.
Team Updates
The Newsletter Team, siddhearta | Organizer
Newsletter Team Sync: Thursdays at 4:00pm UTC in the writers room.
It is incredible to witness how much the Writers Guild has evolved and grown over the last season. In the beginning of Season One we had a core group of contributors who were shipping all of the content for the Writers Guild, whether it was the Weekly Rollup or high profile releases on Mirror. In Season One, we formed the Newsletter Team with the intention of opening more channels into the cryptosphere and expanding our focus to encompass the whole ecosystem.
As we enter Season Two, the Newsletter Team is currently overseeing the production of three newsletters:
1. Weekly Rollup: our weekly update on what happened in the BanklessDAO.
2. Decentralized Arts: our weekly NFT and cryptoart newsletter.
3. State of the DAOs: our high-signal newsletter focusing on the DAO ecosystem and tools.
WEEKLY ROLLUP
The Weekly Rollup has been a great place to start contributing on a regular basis with the Guild. BcEthHunter just joined the DAO in August and has stepped up week after week to curate the weekly content for the Rollup. He is well on his way to earning his DAO membership through bounties. Editing has also been a great place to get plugged in for new members. Editing the Rollup allows you to gain a better understanding of the collaborative writing process as well as to get a feel for the overall style of the content.
Every week, The Rollup features an editorial piece that is meant to educate and level up members on what is happening in the BanklessDAO. Previous editorials have included focus pieces on the BED Index, how to use Coordinape, the promotion of crypto culture with MetaFactory, and more. If you have a topic that you think would be beneficial for DAO members, drop it in the Weekly Rollup Editorial backlog, or if you want to write an editorial, put your name down for one of the open editorials.
DECENTRALIZED ARTS
Grendel and Kouros have been shipping our weekly NFT and cryptoart newsletter since mid-August. The focus of Decentralized Arts has been on the stories behind the artists, highlighting significant news in the NFT space, and doing interviews with the prime movers of cryptoart. As we move into Season Two, the team is welcoming Tam Gryn as a regular contributor for editorials, as well as introducing more alpha content and curating more significant news in the NFT space. Blackwhite is going to step up this season and play more of a role in curating news stories, and we are going to be encouraging members to drop their favorite stories in the #decentralized-arts channel.
Each week, Decentralized Arts features a couple editorial pieces. If you would like to write on a topic, add it to the NFT Editorial backlog or claim a topic by putting your name down.
STATE OF THE DAOs
State of the DAOs is our newest newsletter, shipping our first issue for the start of Season Two. The focus is on curating high quality content from prominent DAOs for understanding and getting a handle on the DAO ecosystem. Our goal with this bi-weekly newsletter is to move the reader from a newbie to an active, engaged member of a DAO. Scottyk has been leading this initiative and has put together a Project Scope for the coming seasons. As we move into Season Two we will be refining our process and directing our energy to make this the premium DAO newsletter of the cryptosphere.
We currently have the DAO editorial pieces scheduled through the end of Season Two, but if there is a topic that interests you please add it to the backlog and we will get a date assigned.
COMING IN SEASON TWO
What is next for the Newsletter Team in Season Two? We are just getting started and we need more contributors who are willing to show up regularly and produce high-quality content. There are more newsletters coming down the pipeline as well. The Legal Guild is going to be shipping Decentralized Law in the next few weeks, and we might even start our own internal-facing Project Updates newsletter to stay on top of all the projects within bDAO.
Do you want to get involved? Come to the weekly Writers Guild or Newsletter Team Sync. Show up regularly, share your ideas, raise your hand, and pretty soon you'll find there is no place that you'd rather be. Come join us!
If you are interested in contributing to any of our weekly newsletters, join our weekly Newsletter Team Sync.
The EPA, nonsense 🏴 | Organizer
The EPA Weekly: Thursdays at 9:00pm UTC in the writers room.
The EPA, abbreviated from the Editorial and Publishing Arm of the Writers Guild, serves the DAO in providing quality control for articles, submissions, and announcements that get published to official BanklessDAO written channels, namely Medium and Mirror. In Season One, we were busy getting established, working to understand and define our roles in the process of editing and publishing content. The EPA was borne out of a need for improved organization and quality control. In Season Two, our priorities are three-fold: establish a regular posting schedule and execute on it week over week, refine our processes for screening writers, editors, and submissions, and to work to develop our writers and editors to become the very best the DAO has to offer.
Come hang out with us in our meetings to learn our processes, get involved, or figure out how else you want to contribute.
Submissions are open for potential publishing to Medium, Mirror and for the upcoming DAO blog. Any topic is welcome as long as it remains within the realm of the DAO (organization, governance, etc) or cryptocurrency in general.
Membership in the Writers Guild is not a requirement for submission. All submissions are subject to the EPA’s editorial process to ensure the content is in alignment with Bankless DAO’s mission and principles. As author, you have final say in whether the final edited product is published, provided that it is not time-sensitive and that an editor is available to review the article with you. You can submit an article here.
We look forward to your submissions and thank you for your contributions!
From Your Governance Staff
Samanthaj, Talent Scout
The Guild is feeling more and more like a tight-knit, yet ever-expanding, community of passionate scribes who have many feelings about the use of i.e. vs. e.g. Our new members are already getting to work, writing long-form content, editing articles, and contributing to our lively Discord channels.
An onslaught of new editors have shown their impressive skills with the red ink. Congratulations to JakeandStake, Trewkat, hirokennelly.eth, funkyculley, and JoshuaKayce for passing their editing tests and becoming keepers of commas and crypto colloquialisms for our creative curators of content. We’re headed West armed with past participles and proper punctuation; if anyone else wants to take up the mantle of merciless mark-ups, DM me, Samanthaj, to take the test.
Upcoming in the Talent Scout world is weekly office hours. Synchronous communication is precious, so I will be holding weekly (or twice-weekly, if necessary) office hours on Tuesdays during my lunch break. Drop into the writers room from 11-12 PDT to chat about:
How to get started in the Writer’s Guild
Article ideas
Your editing test
The editing kanban board/where your article is now
Tricky latin phrases
Hope to see you in the writers room on Tuesdays at 11:00am PDT!
Ap0ll057.eth, Secretary
The current state of our Treasury:
98,984 BANK ~ $20K USD
14 DAI ~ $14 USD
During Season One, the Writers Guild received 384,615 BANK from the Grants Committee. These funds were used as incentive rewards to encourage members to contribute to Writers Guild (the Guild) Projects. Throughout the entire season, three remuneration transactions, each encapsulating a number of payments, were made for a total of 185,631 BANK. We also allocated 100,000 BANK to our guild's Coordinape round. As Season One came to a close, we had just shy of 99,000 BANK left in the treasury.
We also received our first contracting gig. Argent paid the Guild 140 DAI to edit four blog articles. Each article went through the (at the time) soon to be established EPA and had two editors review each of them. The primary editor of each blog received 60% of the payout while the secondary editor received 20%. Both the Guild Treasury and the DAO Treasury received 10% of all proceeds, and thus Client Services was born!
Since that first payment from Argent, we've been invited to write for iTrust Capital, Perpetual Protocol, and even Bankless LLC! The bounties are increasing, as well. For example, Perpetual Protocol is paying $2K in PERP tokens for each article written by the Guild. The payments are split as follows: 50% to the writer, 20% to the editor, 10% to the Guild Treasury, 10% to DAO Treasury, and 10% to our Client Services Liaison - Frank America.
nonsense 🏴, Guild Coordinator
Season One was an incredible excursion into what it meant to be a part of the Writers Guild and how we all found our places in it. The amount of shifts and changes that occurred were … well, numerous … but what else is to be expected in a DAO? What we do, from one day to the next, is a great big social experiment in organization and legislation. This is the highest ideal in human values at work. No one (literally, no one) knew what we were doing when we began, but those of us who had our heads down and were active in building something great simply worked to do exactly that. And those of you not actively building were perfectly content to fill in the gaps.
And together, this is how we have become as viable, relevant, and profitable as we have: it’s a team effort. It’s community organization. It’s anarchy at its finest. And you’re a part of it.
This coming Season will see a number of changes in terms of governance and operations. But that’s a given, as we are open, communicative, and decentralized. Everybody’s voice counts, and as such, our collective voices will take our Guild into realms beyond what we, individually, can imagine.
Keep showing up. You’re as much a part of this movement—and as important to it—as anyone else involved in this space. Thank you for being a member of the Guild.
Writers Guild in Bites
What’s Coming Up?
The Council of Writers Weekly, Monday at 5:30pm UTC.
Weekly Newsletter Team Sync, Thursday at 4:00pm UTC
Weekly Editorial and Publishing Arm (EPA) Meeting, Thursday at 9:00pm UTC
Meeting Notes
Council of Writers, October 11, 2021
Newsletter Team Sync, October 7, 2021
Editors Circle (EPA), October 7, 2021
Building a DAO
Welcome to the DAO. There are a few notes you should be aware of before you get started:
There are no rules. There is only consensus.
You create your own reality. If what you want doesn’t exist, build it. If someone’s building it and you feel strongly about it, contribute to it.
And that’s it! Here are the keys to your proverbial kingdom, the sovereignty of yourself. You get to decide how involved you want to be. You get to decide how hands-off you want to be. You get to decide on what projects you would like to contribute. You get to decide what makes sense for you to build. You are autonomous, and you are capable, and you are free to choose to spend your capable autonomy wherever you care to do so.
And so, think clearly about how you will participate. Or don’t. It really doesn’t matter. If you don’t have a plan, one will begin to coalesce across conversations and brainstorming. If you do have a plan, it’s simply a matter of executing it; others who share your vision will be along shortly. And if you have a plan, but then change that plan, know that this is allowed as well.
You can do anything you want, so long as you have consensus. Or as long as there is no consensus in stopping you. Sometimes, you must begin to build the thing before anyone realizes that building the thing is actually worthwhile and valuable. We are, after all, degenerates. And degenerates will build degenerate things. And degenerate things change the world.
DAOs are a degenerate thing, built by collectives of degenerates. And they’re taking the world by storm. We are tired of attempting to live and thrive within the bounds of broken systems that routinely fail us. And so we are organizing in ways that strike at the heart of the issue: we want to build something that works for everyone. To quote that wise poet, Zack De La Rocha, in a song penned with the rock band Rage Against the Machine: “We’ve gotta take the power back!” Furthermore, I leave you with these words from the talented Ursula K. Le Guin:
We have nothing but our freedom. We have nothing to give you but your own freedom. We have no law but the single principle of mutual aid between individuals. We have no government but the single principle of free association. We have no states, no nations, no presidents, no premiers, no chiefs, no generals, no bosses, no bankers, no landlords, no wages, no charity, no police, no soldiers, no wars. ... We are sharers, not owners. … You cannot take what you have not given, and you must give yourself. You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed
Welcome to the Evolution of the Revolution. Welcome to the DAO. We hope you enjoy your stay.
In service to you, the Guild, and the DAO,
nonsense 🏴