Yield Guild Games Twitter Spaces: The Importance of Web3 and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations

In this Twitter Spaces event, former U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang joins Gabby Dizon, Jeffrey "Jiho" Zirlin and Leah Callon-Butler to discuss P2E, Web3 and DAOs.

YGG’s first-ever Twitter Spaces event welcomed a very special guest.

Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, non-profit leader, and former US presidential and NYC mayoral candidate. With a vision to rewrite the rules of the US economy through a “Freedom Dividend” of $1,000 a month for every American adult, Andrew’s movement around Universal Basic Income (UBI) and Cash Relief became one of the most exciting stories in the 2020 race.

Andrew recently founded Lobby3, a new advocacy organization to inform Washington DC of Web3’s ability to eradicate poverty. In this discussion, Andrew joins Gabby Dizon, co-founder of YGG, and Jeffrey “Jiho” Zirlin, co-founder of Axie Infinity, to discuss how Web3 has the power to achieve radical wealth redistribution, foster economic mobility, and make inclusion goals more attainable than ever before.

The trio also talk about the challenges in implementing a UBI and how play-to-earn gaming could offer an alternative. The conversation was moderated by Leah Callon-Butler of Emfarsis. 

The following is an excerpt from Twitter Spaces event. Listen to the full discussion here.

Andrew Yang, Yield Guild & Axie Infinity discuss Play-to-earn & Web3 – Yield Guild Games Twitter Spaces

Leah (38:00): Play-to-earn is more than a game. It does more than just providing income. And through the concept of a DAO, a decentralized autonomous organization, it's allowing participants to become financially empowered part-owners of this community. So, Andrew, I just want to come back to you here because these themes of digital ownership, I think a lot of people struggle to get their head around it, but it really is at the core of all these Web3 values. In all this talk about play-to-earn and DAOs, what do you think, Andrew, is the defining factor in these digital economies? Is it digital ownership, and why is that so important to you?

Andrew (38:39): It's one reason I'm so excited about Web3. You have the opportunity to build, genuinely, ground-up social economies as opposed to having a megacorp as the primary determinant of a lot of your interactions or what happens to your data but also the primary beneficiary of the economic value. So, a DAO is, in my mind, the equivalent in terms of governance. Most megacorps tend to have very top-down structures, whereas a DAO community member can have input, own it and control the course of it. 

One reason why Lobby3 is structured as a DAO is because we want to build a popular movement and a voice for members of the Web3 community to be able to make a positive case for the life-altering nature of these technologies, in a way that frankly stabs off the possibility or likelihood of overly onerous regulations coming out of Washington, D.C., that end up treating certain things as securities that shouldn't be and that can interfere with a lot of the dynamics of these organic economies that have been built using these tools. 

So it's an extraordinary opportunity to improve the human condition. I've been on the record saying, I think that Web3 is the biggest, biggest weapon against poverty that we have. My fear and concern is that lawmakers and policymakers don't appreciate the magnitude of the opportunity there, and unfortunately, the risks are being magnified every day by headlines that stress some of the uncertainty around Web3 as opposed to the positive change. 

Leah (40:52): Let's jump to Lobby3. I'd love to talk a bit more about that. Can you give us a bit of an overview? Why do you think a DAO structure would be so effective at lobbying and what other organization formats or structures have existed before? Why do you think the DAO is better? 

Andrew (41:19): There is an inside and outside game to trying to positively influence the regulatory environment in Washington, D.C., and a DAO is a perfect fit because one of the things that we're going to need to demonstrate is that there are real people who are deeply invested in these technologies and are having their lives altered, and they actually are also constituents. 

They might live in a part of the country where there's a member of Congress who is being asked to weigh in on what the future regulatory environment should be. Right now, they have a narrow misconception as to who is using these technologies. If you have a DAO, people will be able to not just provide their ideas, energy, creativity and input into what approaches to take, but also will feel that sense of ownership and say, “Look, we actually can do traditional political activities. We can do digital online campaigns and we can meet these people where they are.” Because a lot of the regulators and lawmakers frankly are not on this Twitter Space right now, but they're not familiar or proficient at all.

The average US senator is 64 years old. The average member of Congress is 58. And it's not a knock. Those are just numbers. But the primary emotions that people feel in D.C. is confusion and skepticism. So if we have people lead movements as embodied in the DAO, I think that's the best way to both make a positive case but also use the tools of Web3 to demonstrate even what the future of democracy could look like. 

Leah (44:04): I'd love to hear Gabby and Jihoz’s response to that. Gabby, how does that make you feel that we could potentially have a DAO on Capitol Hill, fighting for the rights of Web3?

Gabby (44:20): As a non-American here, I can probably speak for what we are doing in the Philippines. We're doing a lot of educational initiatives for people from our player base. We’ve actually done workshops with different government agencies.

So if you think about the government, I'm sure people like Andrew know this more than anyone else. There's a lot of stakeholders in the government that need to understand what you're doing. From the lawmakers to the SEC to the tax department to the different people, the mayors and the senators. We're doing a broad educational initiative for different stakeholders so they understand what crypto and Web3 is.

I think this is something that will be an ongoing thing for the next few years. There's a lot of skepticism on crypto and Web3 especially because if you're only looking at the headlines, people see crypto as a very scary place. We want to go out and have our voices heard and say, “Hey, we're trying to do something here that is good for people that is long-term.”

Leah (45:42): Jihoz, do you want to add to that?

Jihoz (45:48): So what we're starting to see is these grassroots bottom-up internet communities are starting to have a real impact on the world. I actually think that this Twitter Space, for me at least, is kind of like an indicator that we're starting our movement. This movement is gathering momentum, and the things that we dreamed about in 2018 are really finally starting to come to pass. But there's difficult work that remains to be done and a lot of education. 

But the good news is that I see Web3 as facilitating these hyper-scalable global borderless organizations to be the boots on the ground. In many ways, I do see this as a very political movement that needs to get its message out through simplifying and honing the message over time, constant education, like having these mottos and slogans that almost become memes. It's happening, but we just have to keep pushing forward every day and write the message. It just needs to be hammered in and repeated even to a single person. Something doesn't click until they hear something like 12 times and then multiply that by the fact that you need to explain this to millions of people. So there’s so much work that needs to be done.

You can listen to the full discussion on Twitter.

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Check out Andrew, Gabby, Jihoz and Leah’s Twitter to know more about their projects. 

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