 Hi everybody, my name is Theo. I'm the governance working stewards at Vita Dow We've been around for a year pretty much exactly. We are just now celebrating our anniversary and I would like to really share today some in-depth looks look at this sort of D side out So diving into the operations and and the details how we work and present some challenges We faced and some lessons learned and really conclude with a call to action to to use these Experiences that decide and impact those make These days and and help new ones emerge and learn from you know previous mistakes made so first About Vita Dow really briefly so that you understand the context Vita Dow is really a Collective of individuals funding longevity research and yeah, what is new of course is the community aspect and the token-rated governance and How this really works in the ecosystem context is that our DOW members our community members at the top They hold Vita governance tokens which entitle them to really decide what the organization does The organization then collaborates with labs Universities and in private industry around the world to conduct research on behalf of Rita Dow and Usually there is an IP NFT involved Which is the the technical mechanism for Vita Dow as an on-chain entity to to capture and own The IP involved because Vita Dow is currently not registered anywhere in a legal entity this IP NFT concept has been explained by James earlier today Shout out to James so I would really recommend you to watch that talk this morning or Check it out on YouTube. I assume it will be uploaded Really briefly for the context of this talk, I'll just say that The IP NFT framework is Really this mechanism for this on-chain entity like Vita Dow to make use of IP and it combines a really clever combination of layers including A data storage and encrypted storage with federated access control for the owner of the IP NFT to access it And also some some legal framework that allows the on-chain entity Even without having a legal entity to make use of the IP of the of the protection so How we operate financially is that we raised funds initially By auctioning of the Vita governance token that was done through a fair auction, which means Anyone could place a bid on an amount of tokens and in the end Of the batch anyone was paying the same price So if you bid a lot You would all you would even end up paying less than that and you would pay the minimum amount that was that passed the threshold And and that is what what is considered a fair launch there was also no pre-sale involved with venture capital organizations or other pre-allocations and We we believe we had a clean start with this Community launch and then from there took it with proposals to the community that would then decide which budgets would be allocated to which working groups and Now we use these funds to to fund longevity research, of course We'll have we'll probably have for the raises in the future. We're also currently working on a strategic race with con with strategic contributors that will be announced soon and In the medium to longer term, of course The idea is that the IP NFTs that the dow holds will return Revenue in any of these ways so that could involve Licensing that could could set could include a sale of IP and other formats So why crypto and longevity what is what makes this niche of longevity research really appealing and what what was the reason for we did our really to to become into place and What's interesting here is the parallel between crypto as this new Means of Inside finance as opposed to traditional finance Rending longevity is really seen as this niche in health and Farmer that is arguably not getting enough attention and and underrated so they are both having both both fields are having this sort of outlier characterization and on top of that What's also really interesting here is the third point that a lot of crypto OG's a lot of crypto community members appear to be personally interested in longevity, so and then of course we have the fact that a lot of Existing systems across the world health systems and how the farmer businesses operate They are usually designed around incentive systems and mechanisms that Prefer treating disease over over preventing disease and aging funding research on aging and providing products and services around Aging is usually complicated to achieve through these existing systems Nevertheless, of course, there is a high demand. There's a lot of interest among individuals and researchers Which is why we saw really filled this gap and in this way The longevity niche out of all possible Decentralized science applications was really sort of a low-hanging fruit to get started to validate the concept of a decentralized science now and Yeah, I'm going to come back later to some best practices for hopefully many many other decide I was to emerge So about these I I'm sure you've heard the term a lot of times before today, and I'm probably not the first one defining this But I just want to make sure we are on the same page here. So And this is also I should say just my own take. I don't think there is a commonly accepted definition of these I yet, which is also a really good point because there is a lot of debate on what these I is what it should be and My take is really and they're these two perspectives. So the first one Really coined by communities like blockchain for science and and other others sees decentralized science To care about the scientific method So it's sort of a continuation of the open science movement specifically leveraging decentralized technologies like blockchain for the purpose of Well advancing the scientific method like publishing and reputation systems And then the other perspective is much more focused on the application layer like Vita Dow Is looking specifically at longevity research applications or other emerging Taoist looking at rare diseases They would really apply a research and make use of decentralized technologies to provide goods and services to have some sort of fundraising involved some coordination mechanisms that are decentralized some distribution mechanisms So of course, there's also the intersection at the overlap of both and the So so these I could also be both, but I'm curious to see what really turns out to be the major Focus of these I in a few years So how we work at Vita Dow is firstly We have a three-phase process. This court is really the core part You're probably aware of it is it's a chat app on desktop and mobile and That is usually not too complicated people are used to it even though it is yet another tool here you would have to use and then similarly and and this is also where we have all of our working groups Communicating they are usually open at least read access is available to everyone except for some sensitive channels like legal and then we continue to the conversation on a discourse forum where we also have some sort of soft governance involved and Yeah, that is also quite quite standard and then the slightly more complicated part is perhaps snapshot where you need your Your own wallet you need to connect MetaMask where you have to veto Vita governance tokens Where you then vote on proposals which have previously gone through discord and discourse and are then eventually Voted on on snapshot through a token rated vote So I'm this three-step process. I believe it's really A good compromise for today. I would say so personally I'm really not a fan of token rated voting even though it is probably the best thing We currently have that really works in practice. I know there's a lot of research going on here around alternatives And I'm also really curious About many of these concepts, however Currently, we are still using token rated voting in the last phase, but we compliment that in the second phase with sort of in one person one vote Decision on discord with a focus on the qualitative Conversation comments and feedback that is incorporated in the second phase and in the first phase initially very importantly We have a longevity research group a working group evaluating proposals and they are Of course highly qualified. They have credentials. They have other other means of proving their expertise Anyone can apply but there is some sort of selection mechanism Which was really results in the fact that the first phase comes up with a proposal that is usually of extremely high quality and Then in the in the next second phase, it would be it could be refined Slightly and in the third phase. It is just a binary yes. No vote. So ultimately yes token holders have the say but it is really the yes No vote to this Extensive work that has to be done previously in the first phase by by PhDs and experts in the longevity working group and These this is just a list of proposals. We have already funded and Currently there is one and phase three voting and a couple of more Proposals in phase two being discussed and I would encourage everyone to check out the discourse governance forum at gov.beaterdow.com But yeah, let me come really to the point of this conversation and The conversation I would like to initiate to is the challenges we faced and the lessons learned We believe we have but really more so which open questions. They're still so first onboarding and This is really a huge challenge to to many doubts and especially I believe in the these high space when the target audience is really Usually not crypto savvy or web-free native or how you would call that So what really helped here is is first of all having a clear system of knowing who you need because If it turns out that your doubt becomes somewhat popular you get a lot of interested people and Ideally you would take all of them But you need to coordinate that and just have had the system of what is currently needed So that requires of course the doubt to be aware Of the strategy it has perhaps using an OCR system And then also translating that into some sort of a bounty board or a Place where you collect open tasks so you can easily match applications with open roles or tasks and That is best done through a team that is really solely responsible for onboarding Of course, you also need extensive documentation and that is probably Goes without saying but it doesn't write itself and no one really likes doing it So so it's really important to point out and we are using a one-stop shop in a notion website I also noticed that it's really important to reach out to the Less loud voices make sure the introverts Are heard and and really include the expertise Yeah, and then the second big point here is That of course a doubt aspires to be flat and fluid But it also needs to be productive and efficient and that's a really hard balance to strike So we are using a core team for efficiency And we have some checks and balances involved some governance mechanisms some reoccurring wrote but that always needs to improve more So I believe you should have Individuals and core teams but always make sure that the governance of the context the underlying governance make sure That there are no silos emerging or no permanent positions and that the Tao community really has a say And has an affective say about the who takes these core roles and Then second big point would be about culture and Really this remote first setting when most stars are usually exclusively working online Having never been in an office because obviously it helps a lot when you have at least a kickoff workshop in person And then you work online for a year that is even much better than starting off online and never meeting a person So when meeting in when meeting in person is possible You should totally do that and we're doing that at off-sites around conferences for example But if not, of course one-on-ones are really important and usually not done as often as they should And then we're also using tools like gathered town or such just some casual Online video calls to try to at least have some casual conversations Yeah, and then another big point is resolving conflicts Yeah, we realized you need to expect them to happen at some point and You better have at least some sort of process in place or someone who's who's qualified to to help out with these to mediate and Whatever you do how no matter how more formal on or less formal you do you do that? You do need some sort of process because if you have nothing in place It just takes up all the energy and time of the core team and Could even end up destroying the Dow and then The two last points I'd like to make is firstly about the tokenomics dimension of Involving contributors with Vita governance tokens for voting with stable coins as payouts with Tokens as payouts and rewards or bounties and all of that of course It requires, you know new people being onboarded to rep 3 Expanding what a private key is how to manage that securely Not to fall for scams which frequently occur in our discord or telegram So that's a really tricky one and also we recently had an incident where someone sent us to see to coin base And apparently it got lost even though they used the official Account given on coin base that was not not cleared out yet. It's in the process But there are so many details that could go wrong and Overwhelm a contributor when really the point is we should make use of everyone's knowledge and The technology should be enabling it should not really be a barrier But it of course often is so while while the UX is still not great Provide extensive information and step-by-step guides and just really take the time to talk one-on-one on with anyone who has questions And and last but not least Also the coordination processes the governance which includes voting And on-chain voting of course, so we started out with a mollock Dow adaptation on main net with 50 dollars of gas fees for each single vote at times and of course we realized that is really not practical It may work in some, you know, collected hours where some trypto OG's collect NFD's and Bugs of ether and don't care about gas, but it surely does not work for the usual d-side Oh, and it would discriminate against a lot of high potential Individuals so you really need to not see the technology as a given but also and incorporate the The needs of your community and find some middle ground and I'm a strong believer in the idea of Incremental decentralization So walking towards the goal of becoming with perfectly decentralized eventually But while the UX is still a major downside To compromise and in our case we are using snapshot, which is somewhat secure But it's super easy to use it's it's free to use you use your governance tokens to just sign the message instead of paying for some such action so that's just one example we're taking for the a specific example we're doing in this in the short term, but in the long term and That's also a conversation. I would like to have afterwards is the step-by-step process over the next years How do you start out as a DAO that makes sure that contributors can effectively participate? so what tools are specifically Appropriate for that and then also have this roadmap and timeline in mind where do where do we want to be in a couple of Years to be really decentralized and what are the preparations we should do today? so yeah, that's really my call to this Whole room and would love to continue the conversation on the whole After the next talk because that's Niklas from laptop, which you shouldn't miss either So really to work. Let us all work on templates for new decide-offs to emerge like Vita DAO being around for a year laptop just growing up now Side our emerging soon and really let us share this knowledge to provide newcomers With templates on governance and economics so that these newcomers can focus on the science Thanks very much