Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Alex Vergara. He is leading EarthFund’s community team which is responsible for growing an engaged global community of people that wants to help fund big ideas with the potential to change the world.
EarthFund is doing phenomenal work in the space of decentralized philanthropy. There’s quite a conversation covering EarthFund’s future endeavors and what is happening with the token, the native token that they have there, the utility of that token and just the Web3 space in general. So can’t wait for you guys to hear this.
Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Alex, thank you so much for taking out the time to speak to us. How are you doing today? Hey Tarusha, everything’s good thankfully.
I’m really excited to have this podcast today. Likewise, I’m really looking forward to hearing from you and what you’re doing with EarthFund. So tell us a little about EarthFund, a little about you, how you got into the Web3 space.
Yeah, so EarthFund is a DAO out-of-a-box platform for any cause that’s meant to do good for the world. So that’s going to make the world a better place. A quick example of that would be we have the Never Alone cause which is for mental health and wellness.
We have the Carbon Commons cause which is for reforestation and just really working towards a more green planet. And we have also a female empowerment cause which just was started recently to help women that have been through abuse and neglect to get over it and to get stronger going through conferences and working with therapy. So it’s really, those are the three first causes, but really it’s for anything that’s making the world a better place and it’s all the tools that any community would need to start a DAO to have support for the DAO and to grow it.
So that’s a little bit of a background on EarthFund. Well, that sounds brilliant. That’s so inspirational.
So how did you decide to start something like this and how did you get into the Web3 space? Yeah, so I’ve had a particular desire to be within philanthropy and just really community building and doing better for the world for the past five years or so. So I started getting actively involved within community at a local level, but fast forward a little bit to the past two years, I started learning a little bit more about DeFi. It was actually during that whole SafeMoon growth cycle, right? Where they exploded to like a multi-billion dollar market cap.
And that I was actually in a friend’s garage and we were talking a little bit about how cryptocurrency worked, how swapping tokens worked, all that stuff. And I taught him how to use PancakeSwap in order to get SafeMoon. So we kind of talked about it for a couple of weeks.
We got it. We started seeing some investments grow. Then both of us got into this project that was actually token to help military veterans, right? With mental health, with wellness.
And we both were seed investors and we saw the company go to a $70 million market cap within like 10 days or seven days. So my very small investment of $30, all of a sudden became $170,000 within a week’s time. Yeah, he invested like about $2,000 and all of a sudden he sees a $6 million investment.
So that’s not what we realized. It’s not what we actually took out of the market. But at that moment, both of us were kind of like, wait a second, this cryptocurrency really has the power not only to crowdfund, but to really bring in a lot of money for a company in order to build a very nice product, a nice platform, good technology.
So that person that I’m talking about is actually Adam Bolt. And he’s who I would consider the architect of the EarthFund platform. And he’s really the spine.
He’s really the architect. He’s the one that’s brought everything together and keeps moving the project forward. So shout out to Adam if he’s listening.
Wow. Wow, that’s amazing. That’s so great that things kind of just got together and everything worked out.
And you guys created something that’s going to change the world, at least make the world a better place. So do you feel that decentralized decision making is important? You know, especially now with the geopolitical scenarios that play out, and you know, they have like a repercussion everywhere in every part of the world, repercussions of the Fed, you know, with the Feds making decisions or with the ongoing war, everybody is facing the brunt of it. So how important do you think decentralized decision making? I think decentralized decision making is extremely important, at the very least, as an option.
So if you kind of look at the big picture during the COVID restrictions and lockdowns and times, there was a big pull to centralized government, right, to centralized decision making. And it just so happened at the time, decentralized decision making also started pulling the other way. And I think that the answer lies somewhere in the middle, right? It’s given people the ability to have a voice.
It’s given people the ability to have the software and tools that they need to make decisions. And I think that that’s extremely important. I think as we move closer to, you know, as we start inching towards this technology driven future, even further, I think it’s going to be extremely important.
Oh, yeah, I think, you know, it’s all about balance. And what you said that, you know, it has to be, that’s the future, that is what you’re aspiring to, you know, get to, but it is a process and just meeting in the middle would help as well. Yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, the interesting thing is, and one of the biggest reasons I got into the world of Web3 is it’s a blank canvas. So every single day I’m learning something and everybody that I’m working with, they’re learning something new. And, you know, there’s going to be bumps along the road.
There’s going to be places where you have to pivot to create the right product and platform and technology, but in that sense, we’re pioneers. And as we’ve said early on in the company, you could tell who the pioneers are by the arrows in their backs. You know, when you’re going into on your own land, right, that’s the way to tell.
And that’s something that me and the entire team is very proud of saying that we’re trying to accomplish and we have accomplished. Wow, that’s wonderful. How large is your team? It depends, you know, sometimes it’s gotten all the way up to like 60 people.
And the interesting part of that is that it’s an international team. So you have people that are involved there in Canada, the US, South Korea, Japan, UAE. At some point we had people in Ukraine as well.
We had some people within Russia as well. We’ve had people in from the Netherlands. So, you know, it’s the UK.
So it’s really a global project. Right now, as we’re kind of shifting focus from building a product to creating support for a product, I would say we’re a core team of about 15 people, give or take. So, you know, there’s been a lot of movement within the project itself.
But honestly, seeing all the different countries come together is really motivation for me and for the team to just keep pushing and creating the best thing possible. Wow, that’s great. I think, you know, in any fledgling startup or any new idea, when you’re trying to build it, there is a lot of movement in the team.
And that is like, that’s expected. But as long as everybody is aligned and working towards the common goal, I think, you know, great things can happen. Yeah, absolutely.
And I mean, if you look at like the global crypto market, too, that, you know, for people that were building, maybe some people got unmotivated during this whole FTX and crypto winter debacle. So it’s very interesting to see the overall mood of the builders change a bit. But you know, our team knows like this, this is this is part of a cycle we’re going to keep building because we’re potentially building infrastructure for the future, you know? Absolutely.
I think, you know, the ethos of decentralization have come to the fore again, especially when the FTX thing happened, because it touched on so many people. And then people were saying that, okay, the crypto market was a scam and is a scam. And you know, it’s probably going to be it’s now dead.
But, you know, I felt very differently about the whole thing. I thought that this entire FTX debacle or any centralized entity failing for that matter, it reinforces why Web3 exists. I think decentralization is one of the main ethos of Web3.
And when you know, you’re putting your trust in centralized entities, and then they’re failing, then again, nothing better than the existing system that we had. So you know, there was a need to change that. And that is why Web3 came in.
But if you’re still putting your trust in the centralized entities, then you know, it’s a bit against the ethos of Web3 in general. That’s an excellent point. And it always brings you back to the same phrase, not your keys, not your crypto, right? Not your coin.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you’re not, if you’re not taking control of your crypto, at least for the ones you’re planning for long term, it’s not yours.
And the whole FTX thing, and, and, you know, many instances in the past couple months and years, have shown people that you stop making the same mistakes, you know? Yeah, it’s all it’s about time, right? I think this is like the FTX debacle was so bad on so many levels with so many people. And it’s horrible. But, you know, on a macro level for the industry, I feel that this is just driving out those bad business practices.
And, you know, really reinforcing that decentralization is the way to go. Absolutely. Absolutely.
So do you feel this, that decentralization is also the way to go for philanthropy? You know, the future of philanthropy is perhaps the bedrock is decentralization. You know, it’s, it’s interesting to think that philanthropy has grown so much in the past couple years, let’s say the past decade. And that’s without having true transparency, right? That’s without, that’s true.
Having democratization, that’s without making the small person believe that what they’re doing can have a large impact on someone across the world, or even in their in their own town. I believe that decentralization and the types of platform like what we’re building really is the future for philanthropy, because, again, it shows transparency, you know, if I donate x amount of money, or I contribute x amount, where’s that money going? It’s so important to know that, right? You only get that sense of satisfaction when you actually see there will be some work is being done with your money. Absolutely, absolutely.
And, you know, seeing how much percent goes to where, right? Like, how much is a fee? How much is this that that’s, that’s once you know, that’s, that’s one of the reasons why we worked on it, we wanted to turn the giving economy on its head. Once that’s complete, you know, once people start accepting that as the norm and, and demanding it, I think that people will be more incentivized for giving for philanthropy. Another thing here in the US, there’s tax credits when you give money.
So we’re working on a GYC process to, to allow people to give crypto donations, and there’ll be tax, you know, deductible. So that’s another incentive, you know, another reason to incentivize people into donating. And also, we’re looking at a younger generation coming in, you know, Gen Z millennials, that they’re looking at the world from a different scope, you know, they’re demanding more power within their jobs, they’re demanding to have access to hybrid or stay at home offices.
So with with a generation like that coming in, it’s it’s pretty clear to see that the giving side of things, the giving economy is also going to start shifting a bit. And as those that generation starts aging, they’re going to expect the same things from the organizations that they’re contributing to, they want more power within decision making, again, they’re going to want more transparency. So seeing all these things is one of the factors that really drove us to build this out of a box platform and really change the giving economy.
Yeah, I think that is like a wonderful point. I feel like the new generation so much more aware about what they want, they’re getting more and more clear about, you know, what they will not accept and what is acceptable to them. And for that, I think, you know, that was become very important, like not just with philanthropy, but with other aspects as well.
But just for our listeners, would you mind explaining what is the DAO? And how do how does somebody go about launching the DAO? Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll tell all the listeners that the DAO is kind of in its early teenager stage, or it doesn’t really know what it wants to be, let’s say. But I’ll do my best to outline what a DAO is.
So a DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization. And what this decentralized autonomous organization does best very shortly is it uses software in order for people to vote on proposals. So a group of like minded individuals come in together into let’s let’s just say, a podcast sharing group, just to make it something that we’re doing right now, they come together and they can propose which episode will be next.
And everybody that’s within the DAO can vote whether they want that proposal to happen or not, whether they want to hire people to come on to that group or not. And depending on which DAO it is that, you know, it goes way down into the rabbit hole of how what’s the decisions people are making. But basically, the benefits of that is you can see long term all the proposals and who voted which way.
But more importantly, you can start creating these international groups of people that you know, they’re communities that come together, they work together, and they can band together and in our case, raise funds from money across the world to make the world a better place. Wow, that’s, that’s, that’s great. I think that was a wonderful explanation that you had put out there.
So let’s go back to EarthFund. I think it’s wonderful when people can explain things simply, you know, that that is something that I really feel is very important in this era where there is so much information, right? You go online, there is so much information about Web3, DAOs, it can be really overwhelming. And you know, you summed it up very beautifully.
Thank you. And you know, a lot of people use all this jargon, you know, we kind of talked a little bit before the end of the jargon. And really, I encourage people who are listening that know about the world of Web3, make the language simple.
Because we want mass adoption. So make the simple as possible, please. Absolutely, I think that is so important.
I think, you know, especially, you know, my perspective has always been this has been in the deep tech space for like nearly 12 years now. And I came when I initially started, I was a student of humanities. Okay, so I was a self taught techie.
And initially, whenever I was like looking up things, everything was so jargon filled. And it was so difficult for me to get around things. And then I kind of automatically because I learned everything on my own by reading and drawing analogies.
So now I try to give the simplest analogy, because I feel that you know, that is the best way to get people around to understand what you’re building. Because you know, you really, as you said, we want adoption, you’re not going to get an adoption if you are talking in your own echo chamber with the words that, you know, few of us know. And that’s not going to help make this discourse become, you know, more messy.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I studied nutrition and dietetics and in the world of fitness. And I went really deep into how to explain things.
And one of the best ways to explain it, it’s you hit it on the head, it’s using similes and metaphors that are simple. So people can visualize what you’re talking about. And more particular, you know, and more specifically, if you can use something that relates to the person, or you can make them laugh about it, they’ll never forget it, they’ll remember it for a very long time.
So I mean, that’s scientifically backed. And you know, people that are listening, again, that are trying to explain it to their grandmother, mom, try to put it in their perspective, right, like, let their minds, I see why you see value in these products, or why you see it being the future, you know, they may not be interested. But at least if you have a clear explanation, you’ll get them closer to, you know, have may perhaps be a little bit more interested.
So, you know, Alex, you talked about how giving metaphors and similes is very important to get the information and make it perhaps, you know, more assimilable for everybody, even people who are perhaps not from this space. So keeping this in mind, who are some people in this space, and especially in the web three space or in the philanthropy space, who are doing it right, who you think, you know, are really putting out information or content, which is easily digestible, so to say, for everyone, I wish I had, I mean, I’d have to say, first and foremost, you know, I have to have to plug earth fund, we’ve really done a great job, I have to say, you know, I have biased opinion, but we’ve done a great job of really trying to explain who we are and what we’re doing at a very simple level. You know, as far as all the information on the website, as far as the copy, the way we display things, the tooling that we have the user experience, it’s always been the priority to make sure you know, that grandma can use it.
That’s literally the time that we’ve since the beginning. But you know, that I’m aware of people that are releasing video content that explain clearly what crypto is, is very few and far between that I have seen, I don’t want anybody listening that’s doing a good job of doing that to say, hey, like, you know, you’re dissing me. I just I haven’t really, I haven’t dug deep to see who’s doing it.
But you know, what one resource that I like to use the Ethereum website, they have a really good blog, where you can go into like the 101 of Ethereum and what they’re doing. I’ve seen I’ve used the Coinbase University before and they do a pretty decent job of explaining things. Yeah, but it’s difficult, right? It’s very difficult.
Maybe that’s something that I should start doing. But it’s very difficult, because the world of web three, like I said earlier, is a teenager. And it’s, it’s hasn’t really fully identified as what it is yet, like, you know, what it’s going to be when it grows up, let’s say.
So the best advice that I could give to people is one that takes time right now. And it really is invest in learning invest in trying to understand the simple part of cryptocurrency. So and blockchain and web three, literally, what I do, sometimes, I will go back to the basics.
And I will look up what is Bitcoin? How does Bitcoin? Yeah, what is Ethereum? Like, I’ve looked these things up, I don’t know, 10s to 100s of times, but it’s always good to go back and refresh it. Because this is a very fast changing world. Yeah.
And, and you’d be surprised how one update can change how everything works, right? Absolutely. It’s very dynamic. You know, I feel like I get up every day and you learn something new, because there’s so much happening.
Yeah. And one other piece of advice that I’ll give that we kind of started early with the project is don’t shape don’t chase shiny objects. Yeah.
Yeah, stick to the fundamentals, stick to the basics, stick to the things that, that, you know, they seem like they’re going to work. Because if you start chasing shiny objects in this world, you’re good, you’re just going to get overwhelmed. And you I don’t think you’ll really go anywhere.
Try to stick to something that you like, if you like philanthropy, stick to that and try to learn quite a bit of that. If you want to learn more about Bitcoin and how it started in the momentum, learn about Bitcoin, that’s a really good place to start, learn about Ethereum, and what smart contracts and how they work and how, you know, potentially the future of business will all be done through smart contracts and taxes and all these things. So, you know, I wish I could give you a better resource, but really, we’re in a really young world that not many people that I’ve come across can clearly explain a lot of these things.
Yeah, absolutely. I think the resources that you’ve mentioned are really good, because, you know, they are extensive. And it’s easy to, as I said, it’s easy to get drowned by all the information that is there online, right? When you’re looking up just a single concept.
So it’s good to go to the, you know, OD places and get your information, which you know, would be verified and correct. But again, it’s very important to keep going and just, you know, get a new refresher every now and then, because this is a very, very dynamic space. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And, you know, I’m a big fan of history. Yeah, I love history. You know, they say those that forget history are doomed to repeat it, right? Yeah, we keep doing that as human beings, I think, you know, enough of us are interested in history, and we keep going through the same cycles.
Exactly, precisely. So, you know, I would encourage people listening, learn about Mount Gox, right? Learn about the Dow, the original Dow of 2017. Learn about the downfalls of each one and why they happened, you know, learn a little bit more about what’s happened with FTX, you know, really learning about those things, for me, are the most exciting.
And I know that sounds a little bit chaotic, let’s say, but you know, I like learning and analyzing and seeing the psychological factors between each one of those. And there’s just so much information there, you know, why what happened with Mount Gox? What, you know, what was the big deal about it? What happened with the Dow of 2017? And, and their investment money? And why did it happen? So it’s good to learn those things. So they don’t happen to you.
But it’s also good to learn it from a from a perspective of someone who wants to get more into Web3. Absolutely. I think I completely concur there.
I think, you know, the more you read about these things, the more informed you become. And moreover, mostly, I think everything comes down to human emotions. So that is, again, a very good argument as to why decentralization is the way to go.
So that at least there is consensus in the chaos. So, you know, again, all good pieces of advice. Now coming to again, circling back to our time, because I feel so intrigued by what you guys are doing.
So what is like the process? Can anybody go and create like a cause? Or is it causes that you specifically like choose? Because you mentioned that there are three that you know, you guys are focusing on. And then how does that really work? How does the Dow work? If you could just lay out the flow for me? Yeah, of course. So right now, we have about 3000 people that want to create causes and Dows.
So if anybody wants to go, they can just go on the website and check it out. Right now, anybody can go there and become a part of the Dow. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just want to know.
Yeah, so so right now, the platform is in the soft launch stage. Everything’s getting better. Okay.
And you know, we’re testing, but you can go on and you can actually start joining Dows. And you can, you know, put to create a Dow. It won’t go live just yet.
But yeah, it’s available for anybody to join in and check out. And really, you know, community has a big part of which Dows and causes will remain on the platform and which ones get featured. But it has to be aligned with the vision, which is making the world a better place.
Now, it’s purposely a broad term. But you know, we don’t want let’s say, you know, the bank Dow coming in. I don’t know if that’s a real Dow.
It might be a real Dow. But let’s just say a financial bank Dow coming in and using the platform. As of now, we want people that are, you know, trying to, you know, again, reforest Ghana.
That’s one of the projects that we did. We want people coming in that are really trying to do something that’s to make the world a better place. But yeah, and as far as our Dow is concerned, our Dow has had a couple of votes already, one of which was delaying the vesting schedule.
So everybody within the private and seed round voted yes. The first vote was everyone voted for it. And basically, it just made everybody that was a seed and private round investor have to wait longer to get their investment back.
So they waited an entire year, the next vote was actually setting it back another year. Because, you know, we have a group of investors and a team really that believes that this is a long term project, you know, this is something that is going to bring it, God willing, it’ll outlive all of us, you know, and hopefully, live to our grandchildren and great grandchildren. And then we had another vote in the Dow to restructure the way the company works.
And you know, if you go into our snapshot, you could read all about it in specifics. And then now the Dow votes on which causes will get featured. Also, it has control of some assets of the parent company.
So it’ll be able to decide if the Dow is going to do token buybacks, or if it’s going to fund specific projects and causes. So you know, the Dow has a good amount of power over what’s going to happen and what the potential of the platform is in the future. Okay, well, that’s wonderful.
So this is basically like a bit of an inception for Dow. It’s like, you know, there’s a larger Dow that you, you know, which can you direct where Earth Fund will head, but also the direction of the platform and then users can create their own Dow as well. Yeah.
And just to make it simple for the listener, think of as each one of these Dows has a ticket to get into, right? So if you want to be part of the mother Dow, let’s say you have the ticket, the mother Dow ticket, they’re actually tokens, but we’ll call them mother Dow ticket, you go in and you can vote on those. So now let’s say you’re interested in the mental health and wellness, you get a ticket for that one, and then you can go in there and vote on those projects. But if you want to participate in all of them, you’re able to.
We really wanted to create a place where people of all political alignments of all mentalities and thoughts and ethnicities to have a place where they can go in and do something that they care about, so that we can all work together in different facets of the world and different facets of philanthropy and community building to really bring everyone together. Because sometimes it feels like we’re in a pretty divisive world, the way that you see the future and what you believe is the right path for the future may be different from mine, and that’s okay. We can agree to disagree, right? Yeah, we can agree to disagree.
I think the best ideas come from there. Yeah, and as long as we can work to make it a little bit better in whichever way we believe, that’s what our platform really wants to promote. So you can get your ticket or tokens into each one of these DOWs to really vote on what projects get funding, and the interesting thing about it is you get rewarded for it.
So you get rewarded in stablecoin and USDT for every project that gets funding. So let’s say that the first project we had was the Never Alone Cause with Deepak Chopra and the Chopra Foundation, and they created artificial intelligence for people who were having thoughts of suicide and depression. So that project raised $100,000.
That $100,000, seven percent goes out to the community. So everybody that was the token holder, like I said, the ticket holder, that $7,000 was divided between all the token holders, and they received USDT in their wallet. So you actually get paid to do the right thing.
Exactly. So you’re getting paid to vote and vet on these projects and to promote them across social media platforms and tell people, hey, this project needs funding. If you’re looking for a place to donate, this might be right for you.
So again, we wanted to turn the world of giving on its head and really make sure that these non-profits and these foundations are being transparent and that people participating in them are also receiving rewards. That’s wonderful. It’s such a cool concept, and I think this will incentivize people to do a little more as well, to give back perhaps.
Tell me a little about what are your future plans right now? What are you looking at from the perspective of funds? What are you the next big thing or the next big milestone on your roadmap? So the hard launch and starting to onboard these 3,000 non-profits and philanthropists and influencers that are interested in starting causes and DAOs on our platform, definitely the main focus right now. Also, we just changed the structure of the company to allow larger investments to come in to really keep funding the growth of the platform. So that’s something that we’re pretty excited about.
We’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from large investors. But really, it’s about scaling, giving good customer support, helping DAOs, giving DAO support for the new ones coming in. For me, I want to see this platform, like I said, have thousands of causes and have billions of dollars going through it to really know that, guys, we’ve done a lot.
Currently, we’ve funded, with the help of everybody coming in and contributing financially, $170,000, $174,000, if I’m not mistaken, worth of causes and projects. And we haven’t really officially launched yet. So that goes into that.
Helping people, helping veterans, helping people that were considering suicide in mental health and wellness, reforesting in Ghana. And I think it was Mozambique was the other one. I might get that one wrong.
And then, like I said, the Female Empowerment Fund, bringing four women that had been abused into learning centers to really get over their past trauma and their abuse in a good way. So I’m especially proud of that. The team is really proud of that.
And we haven’t even really had our hard launch yet. So I see that growing tremendously, scaling that, having the community also be incentivized and to be rewarded for continuing to vet these projects and comment on them and get on them. And man, seeing a million users on the platform, that’s when I close my eyes.
That’s really what I’d like to see. Absolutely. I think which founder doesn’t like that, to have more adoption for their product.
So speaking a little more about this, you mentioned that you gave the analogy of the mother ticket to that particular DAO. So you guys have your native token as well? Yes. So our native token is OneEarth.
We’re listed on KuCoin and Gate.io. And it was very interesting. The past couple of days, we saw… I don’t normally talk about token pricing. Again, I’m more into history and seeing statistics.
But in the past couple of days, the token just went completely viral. And on KuCoin, we had more trading volume than Ethereum. Wow, that’s brilliant.
More people are willing to look no good. That’s brilliant. I’m so happy to hear that.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
So that was a huge milestone. We were right under Bitcoin in 24-hour trading volume. We were like the top five most searched coin on KuCoin.
And with that, obviously, there was a huge increase in price as well. But just for me, people going onto the website, I see all the background analytics for the website. And just seeing all those people that are visiting something we’ve worked so hard on, and something that we believe in, and something that we’ve been building through winter, through the crypto bull run, through all of these things, it really puts a big smile on my face and on the team’s face to know, hey, guys, we’re pushing in the right direction.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s like reassurance from your community that people really are aligned with what you guys are building. Yeah, precisely.
And something that we’re really proud of, we rebuild our Twitter and our Telegram channels. So we had, at some point, there was 50,000 Twitter members and 100,000 Telegram channel members. And one day, a couple months ago, we’re like, how do we know that these are real people? And we said, you know what, the best way to know that these are real people, we’re restarting both of them.
So we restarted our Twitter account and we restarted our Telegram account. And we have lower numbers on Telegram now than all these other people that are talking about, they’re like, why are the numbers so low? But we’re guaranteeing, we’re making sure that we are bot-free, we’re making sure that as close to bot-free as possible, that’s where we want to be. Same thing in Twitter.
Yeah, we want to know. You’re trying to be authentic, right? And there’s more power to you guys for doing something like that, because that’s incredibly brave. Yeah, and it was kind of, it was scary when we first happened, but we knew it was the right thing to do.
And, you know, we started getting a really engaged community and something that we’re proud of. You know, we want to see real people in the platform. We want to see real people across all of our social media platforms.
So, you know, hop in, hop into the Telegram channel, hop into our Twitter space and Twitter itself, because, you know, if this is something that interests you, hearing your voice on those platforms really helps us out and really helps out the community. Awesome. So now, because we’re, you know, kind of running short on time, I’m going to put two questions in one.
So one is the utility of your token, one is, you know, apart from voting, do you have any other utility associated with the token? That’s one question. And the other is, do you have like a specific date in mind to, you know, go public with the launch? So the question, the first question was about governance on the token, correct? Yeah. So the governance of the token and, you know, what is the utility apart from voting for different projects? Is there any other utility? And the second is when do you go live? Yeah.
So those are great questions. I’m sorry. I re-asked your question with my answer.
So definitely the main utility of the token is governance on the platform. We also experimented with using the tokens in order to create new DAOs. So people would have to have a minimum amount of OneEarth tokens in order to create their new DAOs.
But really the biggest thing as a DAO should be governance, right? And the importance of governance. Yeah. It’s good to be focused, right? With your, even with your token utility, it’s good to be focused.
Otherwise it’s scattered and then, you know, you have another thing to worry about. Yeah. And, you know, I’ve dealt with a lot of different software companies in the past and the ones that focus on a lot of features, none of them are good.
They’re all decent. Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. Exactly. And the answer for the launch, we’re finalizing the final touches for everything for the hard launch.
You know, like I said, the platform is, and the website are mostly ready to go. Everything’s ready to go. You can go on and have the full experience.
But really we just wanted to have our community and people check out and feel the platform, feel it out, let us know about bugs so we can resolve anything. Because what’s really interesting that I’ve learned in my time within this world is we want to launch things when they’re perfect, but that’s not the way it works. You want to launch things when they’re good and ready.
And then you want your community to get involved and really, you know, say, Hey, check this out. Hey, start reporting bugs. And you see that even within the largest companies with Google, with Netflix, with Zoom, they always ask you, you know, how was your call? Was the communication good? They want you to give a thumbs up or thumbs down, give them a reason why.
And that’s because, you know, the software always evolves, right? So, you know, we encourage it. Absolutely. I think, you know, that is the only way to do it right.
You can’t wait for it to be perfect because then you’ll be waiting forever. You need to ship as soon as it’s like it works and then iterate, iterate, iterate. Yeah.
And anybody listening that’s thinking about launching a business or a company or whatever, launch it, just do it. You know, it’s never going to be perfect. And if you wait for it to be perfect, you’re never going to launch it, get it out the way.
Then, you know, version 2.0, version 3.0, version 1.5, whatever it is, make it better every single day. So, you know, be brave about that and just get it out into the world. Absolutely.
So that’s really very important. So now, you know, because as I mentioned, we’re running short of time, I would like to come to, you know, the last question, and this is a question that I ask everybody who comes on the show. If somebody is peering in from the outside, like from web 2.0 and they are looking into web 3.0, what would be your advice for them to start living on blockchain? What would be their advice? You know, I would say dive in, just do it.
The world of web 3.0 is getting closer to mass adoption because people that are UX developers, so user experience developers, UI developers, marketers, all of these different professions are now starting to come in and starting to make things look cleaner and be more web 2.0 friendly. Just dive in, learn about it, start a small project, you know, get involved with a small one so you can kind of have a firsthand feel for it. But again, what I always say is if you’re going to invest anything, invest your time, time in learning, time in feeling products, and, you know, hop into the Earth Fun Telegram channel, ask those questions, you know, send me a Twitter DM or to add me on Twitter and anything you want to learn, if I know about it, I’ll try to communicate the best I can.
Right, I think that’s really good advice. I think that’s the advice that I give people as well, that, you know, it’s not good enough that, you know, you’re just sitting on the side of the spectator and just going through whatever information, like that’s all theoretical, it’s time, you know, the best way to learn in web 3.0 is to actually get your hands dirty. So, you know, get involved with the project, get involved in the community and see whether this is for you.
There are so many opportunities in the web 3.0 space and, you know, anybody who’s not trying to learn more is doing themselves a disservice, I think. Yeah, for the most part, people are really friendly in web 3.0 because they were in your same shoes not too long ago. So, don’t feel like, you know, I’m overwhelmed by all this, like no, a lot of people started becoming experts about a year ago.
So, make sure, you know, ask the questions. There’s a lot of people in the community, there’s a lot of scammers and fraudsters like everywhere, but there are a lot of people that are willing to answer and give you some type of guidance and advice to it. So, definitely hop in, learn as much as you can.
I honestly believe this is the future and everything we touch in the future will be blockchain, so don’t get left behind. Absolutely, absolutely. Those are words of the wise.
So, before we wrap this up, Alex, any kind of parting words? Yeah, so reach out to me, please. Check out our website earthfund.io, you know, check out my Twitter, of course. I always try to post friendly things and things that bring inspiration, but also good information on web 3. My Twitter is at the Alex Vergara, you know, keep listening to the show.
I’ve had a great time on this show and, you know, promote it to your friends that people outside of it know about it. And yeah, just get involved in web 3, learn and be happy. You know, life is very short.
Make sure that you’re enjoying every moment and you’re present with your family and your friends. Wow, that’s good advice. That’s really good advice.
That’s the most important. Absolutely, that’s the most important thing. And you know, I had checked out your site and it’s a beautifully made site and I can’t wait to explore it further.
Thank you so much, Alex, really for doing the work that you’re doing, because I think it’s wonderful. It’s so inspirational. And, you know, thank you for taking out the time to speak to me today.
Thank you so much, Tarusha. I really appreciate being on the show and I’ve had a great time. I hope you have an awesome day today, okay? Yeah, likewise.
Thank you.