Meet Callum: The DAOcumenter
As MetaCartel continues to scout new members, it’s no surprise that some of the industry’s brightest talents are joining one of the ecosystem’s most innovative working groups to date.
Perhaps the most exciting aspect of web3 is the ability to thrive while being self-taught. As someone who started a career in the industry through countless hours of research and passive observation, there’s no doubt that Ethereum favors those with an innate desire to cultivate value.
In our latest MetaCartel spotlight, we took some time to chat with Callum Gladstone — a rising researcher at Axia Labs with a strong focus on economic design and emerging business models.
As one of the newest members of MetaCartel, we took this article to cover topics such as:
- The early days of Axia Labs
- How tokenomics have evolved
- Product strategy
- The importance of well-designed governance
- ETHDenver’s magic
- Being young in a nascent industry
- MetaCartel initiatives
Let’s dive right in!
Tell us a bit about your background!
I was attending university here in New Zealand studying commerce and economics. Roughly halfway through my degree, my long time friend James Waugh tapped me to get familiar with the web3 ecosystem.
In the middle of 2017, I started to dive into the Ethereum whitepaper. When it clicked that this technology could be used to put a native value layer into the internet, the possibilities seemed endless.
And how did you get involved with Axia Labs?
After beginning to travel to conferences and events around the world, it became apparent that the knowledge James had collected since 2015 was more valuable than he thought and we needed an entity to put the work he was doing through.
I was lucky to be involved in the ideation and conceptualization process from the beginning and subsequently dropped out of Uni to give Axia Labs and blockchain my full attention.
And what was it about you that James found valuable?
Well, me and another friend who joined the team had a prior venture doing eco-friendly tents for music festivals. While a lot of people around us wanted a more structured plan for their lives, we were eager to explore unique opportunities.
At the time, I was about a year and a half into Uni so it was a pretty easy decision to drop out. Here in New Zealand, it’s super easy to jump in and out of school. I wasn’t too spooked about losing out on much value and my parents were very supportive of the decision which helped out a ton.
What did the timeline look like in the early days of Axia Labs?
Straight out of the gate James had a stack of people that were interested in our work. These early clients were generally token projects as well as a few enterprise type clients — engagements in which we were tasked with translating what was going on in this crazy new industry and helping these companies understand and examine the potential of blockchain & crypto as a business solution.
On these early projects, James would take point in a client-facing role, whilst I would help develop research and documentation.
Let’s get more creative — How have you seen tokenomics change since you first started working with Axia?
Back in early-mid 2018, most token models we’d see were a lot more simplistic and a whole lot less pure. We were working on a lot of revenue and profit-driven structures which appealed to the market at the time.
Nowadays, it’s evident that we’re seeing more pure, utility-driven tokens. Specifically, in the case of governance — we’re seeing much more tangible implementation of this than ever before. While most projects did have governance elements in their initial roadmap, it wasn’t until the last year or so that there was actually something to govern. Governance in my mind is about tying all of the utility of an ecosystem together and allowing the participants to have control over how things are run.
Similarly, staking is now a real thing. It introduces a way for people holding the token to have skin in the game and have more of a say in the direction of a project & ecosystem outside of spamming the team in Telegram groups and hoping for changes to be made.
Let’s talk about product strategy — What are some of the most effective tactics you’ve seen in recent months?
While it might sound obvious, the best thing to do is to gain traction and utility first. The value of tokenization really comes in when you try to decentralize a project. Trying to build something from an idealistic decentralized base is extremely difficult. Getting people to actually vote and take interest in governance is also fairly difficult.
Instead, looking for ways to create a strong foundation and gradually decentralizing the developing company’s influence on the product or service is the way we’re seeing a lot of projects evolve more recently.
How can we improve governance in these economies?
Well, it’s important to make sure that people are correctly incentivized. That doesn’t necessarily mean just giving them money to vote. Directly paying people to participate does incentivize participation but it doesn’t incentivize the right kind of participation.
Unless you build the value and the community first, it’s easy to fall into that trap. The incentives to participate should be value-driven, rather than purely profit-driven.
James told me that you “saw the light” regarding MetaCartel at ETHDenver — What was that like?
Prior to ETHDenver, most events and conferences I’d attended had been with just James and I, or by myself. Spending the week in Denver with the MetaCartel crew really opened my eyes to the difference it makes when you’re living, working and hanging out with a larger group of talented and like-minded people.
The amount of ‘cross-pollination’ of projects that people are working on was amazing, everyone was constantly throwing ideas around, helping each other out and I saw it like one massive team working on a bunch of different initiatives.
For me, coming into MetaCartel did initially seem somewhat intimidating but it was really spending time in person and interacting with the crew that helped me feel super comfortable. At the end of the day, it’s just a group of cool people trying to build cool shit. It’s incredibly inclusive. Regardless of your skillset, there is room for you.
Taking this a step further, the initiative to make stuff happen is personal. No one is going to hold your hand but once you have that drive it’s easy to find where your particular value lies and start contributing.
I’ve noticed that MetaCartel has a lot of young members in it — what do you think this does for us?
The fact that the summoner of the DAO & community is 20 years old is a huge inspiration for youth. For the first time, we can lead charges in a crazy new industry — especially the DAO space — without needing to have a first-class degree, or a decade of experience just to get your foot in the door.
It’s cool to see that the position and respect you can gain has nothing to do with your age, gender, ethnicity, etc. It’s all value-based.
Both within MetaCartel and in the wider ecosystem, the fact that we’ve grown up with technology and the internet is super powerful. Having information poured on us from all angles allowed our brains to be wired differently.
Specifically for us ages 20–25, we now have the opportunity to inspire that next generation. We need to make it known that you don’t have to take a traditional path. Wherever you find happiness and value, you can go and do that — and receive value back — through new mechanisms like play to earn games, gig economies and freelancing.
One thing I like to note on this front is the power of being tapped in to emerging platforms like TikTok — what’re your thoughts there?
Growing up ‘social media native’ is incredibly powerful. Our generation uses social media for almost all communication and content. The younger age brackets are even more connected.
When it comes to apps like TikTok and Youtube, it’s easy to see how unique they are in the way we can interact with one another. Media is truly so permissionless now and we have a lot to learn from that. Anyone can consume a mass of different content. Anyone can create whatever they want and push it out to the public. It’s up to us to make sure that this content is driving value creation in a productive way.
This ties in really well to some of the coming MetaCartel initiatives like MetaMedia and the Dragon Quest Hackathon — What’s the goal there?
With MetaMedia, we really want to leverage the ability to grab the attention of young people and leverage crypto to the youth in a digestible fashion. The biggest stars that young people look up to these days are on Youtube or TikTok. There is an opportunity for us to leverage this shift in media consumption to build awareness of crypto in the markets that will matter most going forward.
With the Dragon Quest — MetaCartel’s first virtual hackathon — we believe that the online coordination of development and ideation is only going to ramp up. Within MetaCartel it’s already really good. Mass coordination online from different backgrounds is dope, and we need things like virtual hackathons & conferences to take it from inside the Cartel to the wider ecosystem.
https://medium.com/metacartel/metacartel-ecosystem-update-2020-90713dbf8f01
What skills do you bring to the table?
Ensuring that value and effort are being pushed to the right places at the right times. There’s so much work to be done and we need efficiency in that process.
In my mind, I’m really focused on ensuring that work is happening effectively and the correct systems are in place to enable this. Taking this to a wider scale, designing systems which incentivise collaboration over competition is something I’m super passionate about!
Seeing as economics & mechanism design are massively integral to the wider ecosystem, it’s those 2–5AM jam sessions, diving down game-theoretical rabbit holes which keep me inspired.
It’s my belief that having more Economic wizards, Design wizards, Comms wizards and more alongside the Dev wizards who started this whole industry gives a refreshing perspective for us to deliver killer products. This is something we’ve seen really come into play over the past year as products have been built and now it’s time to push those products out into the real world.
Do you have any closing thoughts about the state of the industry in general?
Well, conversations about crypto, outside of crypto are happening more and more frequently. ‘Normal’ people are gaining more of an understanding of what’s going on and that’s definitely worth noting.
Our meetups here in NZ are still quite small but the diversity is growing. We’ve got everyone from traditional business people to retirees to university students and even high school students. The fact that we get people from all different walks of life coming to learn about this technology is super exciting.
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To those who have been keeping up with the MetaCartel spotlight, we hope this article can show why wizards like Callum are so jazzed about what we’re up to.
One of the biggest comments I get is — I want to join MetaCartel but don’t know how?
Perhaps the biggest takeaways from the past month of travelling with the crew was recognizing that there is no playbook.
If you have an idea that you see will add value — go and do it.
It’s not only about throwing 10ETH into the grant pool. What we’re creating is a shared collective of value creation from all different backgrounds. If you can add to that talent pool, we’d love to have you.
In the coming months, we’re stoked to use this time to further ramp up all the initiatives within the wider MetaCartel ecosystem.
If you or your business are eager to get involved, please feel free to reach out with your thoughts and ideas!
Until then, be sure to keep up on everything we’re up to by following us on Twitter.
