Welcome to the Boardroom Governance Podcast. I’m your host, Evan Epstein. In this episode, I talk with Santiago Siri, Founder of Democracy Earth Foundation, a non-profit organization backed by Y Combinator that built Universal Basic Income (UBI) on Ethereum and launched the Proof of Humanity DAO, where he serves as a Mission Board Member. Santi is an expert on all things crypto and has spent significant time on the governance side of blockchain and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). In this podcast, we talk about his personal and professional background, the evolution of crypto and the governance of DAOs. We also discuss founder control and leadership styles, including Vitalik Buterin’s in Ethereum, and how Blockchain could solve the problem of digital identity and voting. Finally, we address the cryptocurrency market downturn including the cases of Terra & Luna, Celsius and Three Arrows Capital. If you like this show, please consider subscribing, leaving a review or sharing this podcast on social media. You can find all the show notes on the website boardroom-governance.com and please feel free to subscribe to the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at evanepstein.substack.com
0:00 -- Intro.
1:30 -- Start of interview.
3:32 -- Santi's "origin story". He was born and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "The year 1983 was a symbolic year in Argentina because it's the year that democracy came back to the country." "My generation was tainted by two events: the hyperinflation of 1989 and the collapse of 2001 (peso devaluation and bank deposit freezes)."
5:11 -- Argentina's strange political case.
7:24 -- Santi's professional background going from gaming, to founding "Partido de la Red" (the "Net Party") in 2012 - a political party in Argentina (inspired by Giorgio Jackson), and his pivot to crypto.
14:04 -- His endeavors with Democracy Earth Foundation and UBI (Universal Basic Income through the Ethereum blockchain). The impact of Bitcoin and the new generation of builders in Argentina, with global leaders such as Decentraland. The strong adoption of crypto in countries like Argentina, Venezuela and Cuba: "There is a real need for crypto in countries that need an alternative."
16:12 -- The connection of crypto with corporate governance. His interest on voting "we realized that whoever controls the registry of voters can decide the outcome of elections." The concept of Proof of Humanity ("the protocol got activated in March 2021 and it has had 50 proposals since then." How voting works in this DAO. "You see how contested the positions are to the extent of how people are willing to cheat in order to win."
23:19 -- Explaining DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations). Different DAO applications. Token voting. On The DAO hack (2016).
25:59 -- On the evolution of DAOs. On Vitalik Buterin (co-founder of Ethereum): "I think he's today's most inspiring leader in technology, by far. In the same rank as Elon Musk, and many other great ones." "A lot of the [crypto] community looks up to him as a role model who really understands what it means to lead through the process of creation of a decentralized network." "It's a very counter-intuitive exercise in leadership because you actually need to reject being in control, in order to gain legitimacy." "The role that founders play in these networks I think is a determinant factor in the outcome of how projects evolve over time." "Nothing ever begins decentralized, it needs to be progressively decentralized throughout time." "Building institutionality in cyberspace I think has tremendous power for coordination of humans and capital in a global, more legitimate way."
28:46 -- On the role of founders, contrast between 'traditional' founder-controlled startups and new decentralized crypto projects. On Vitalik's founder's take in a reply to Balaji Sirinivasan's book the Network State. Santi has personally dealt with some of these founder debates, he's currently a Mission Board Member at Proof of Humanity, elected by the community.
32:32 -- On the contrast of "corporate governance" and "crypto or DAO governance". "One of the most interesting projects in the space right now, I think is a project called Kleros, a decentralized arbitration service for disputes of the new economy." "They work as oracles that bring into the blockchain human judgment, based on a drafted policy or guideline." This is very important for enforcement, and to audit the decision process. On-chain governance vs Off-chain governance. The cases of Aragon and Moloch DAO (founded by Ameen Soleimani). "In Proof of Humanity, we don't want voting to be on-chain, because it makes it expensive to vote. The purpose of voting is to be an alternative to economic incentives. So voting needs to happen off-chain for voting to remain free [and] a right." Snapshot as the off-chain voting mechanism. Kleros' Governor solution.
42:18 -- On Proof of Humanity (~16,630 profiles), its DAO, and UBI. "Argentina and Brazil are two of the leading adopters of UBI right now." Proof of Integrity DAO (promoting technological inclusion).
47:44 -- On the current "crypto crash", the cases of Terra/Luna, Celsius. "You can see the ripples of Terra going down throughout the industry, it led to the Celsius and 3AC collapse... you can see the dominoes falling in a very clear way."
55:12 -- On the advantage of understanding how to code. [reference to Vitalik's visit to Buenos Aires in his podcast "Por Qué No Te Habré Hecho Caso" (a leading crypto podcast in Spanish]
57:10 - Some of the books that have greatly influenced his life:
59:44 - Who were your mentors, and what did you learn from them?
Emiliano Kargieman, now CEO and founder of Satellogic.
*story of Vitalik Buterin's visit to Buenos Aires in Dec of 2021.
*on El Salvador's Bitcoin adoption by President Nayib Bukele.
01:08:22 - Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?
"Sic transit gloria [Mundi]" (Latin for "Glory Fades" or "thus passes the glory of the world") *he first heard about it in Wes Anderson's movie Rushmore (1998).
01:09:23 - An unusual habit or an absurd thing that he loves: Iglesia Maradoniana!
01:10:31 - The living person he most admires: his brother Liniers, a famous Argentinean cartoonist. "It was like growing up with Walt Disney."
Santi Siri is the Founder of Democracy Earth Foundation, a non-profit organization backed by Y Combinator that built Universal Basic Income (UBI) on Ethereum and launched Proof of Humanity, where he serves as a Mission Board Member. He was the founder of "Partido de la Red" (the "Net Party") in Argentina, and is the currently the host of the podcast "Por Qué No Te Habré Hecho Caso", focusing on crypto (in Spanish). He has been featured on Wired, Time and many other media outlets.
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You can follow Santi on social media at:
Twitter: @santisiri
UBI token: @ubidoteth
Proof of Humanity DAO: @PoHDAO
Democracy Earth: @DemocracyEarth
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You can follow Evan on social media at:
Twitter: @evanepstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/
Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/
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Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License