During Bitcoin SV’s (BSV) recent token explosion a new Twetch account appeared announcing the Gorilla Decentralized Autonomous Organization. The account already has over 130 followers only 5 days after creation and 100 members in its DAO. To become a member with voting power, one can /pay the account at least $1 or buy tokens via the quickly launched transaction page.
I am happy for the opportunity to conduct a written interview with the founder and community manager of the Gorilla DAO, CoinGeek’s very own Patrick Thompson.
What was your motivation for launching the Gorilla DAO?
What inspired me to launch the DAO was that I wanted to push the boundaries of BSV.
The Bitcoin community is always saying, “Oh, Bitcoin SV can do everything Ethereum can do but better,” but we do not have much to show for it really. So, I figured that it was time to make that a reality and launch a DAO—a concept that originated on Ethereum—but to do it better on BSV.”
What role did the recent ability to create tokens play in forming the DAO?
Tokens play a critical role in the Gorilla DAO. For starters, owning the Ape Token gives you membership and voting rights in the Gorilla DAO, so the Ape Token acted as the launchpad to the DAO being profitable from day one—which it was.
There are a ton of innovative things you can do on token protocols like RUN, which you will see the Gorilla DAO doing in the very near future, but none of it would have been possible without the ability to create tokens to begin with.
Did/do you have any trepidation about the predominant LAWR narrative in BSV in starting this organization?
Yes and No.
I have a lot of respect for the law and I am always law abiding so I was not worried in that regard. The Gorilla DAO is a legitimate and honest business with good intentions, and I would like to see it exist until the end of time, continuing to launch profitable products and services that benefit the blockchain industry, the DAO’s members, and the DAO.
But at the same time, a DAO has never been launched on BSV, so there was not necessarily guidance to follow other than looking at DAOs on other chains that I believed did it right.
Regardless, I chose to tread lightly. The DAO is leaderless, and I am the Gorilla DAO community manager. I have decided to reveal myself as founder only recently because:
- People want more transparency into the DAO
- Some of the entities the gorilla DAO wanted to do business with had a ton of questions regarding who founded it (which makes sense, they do not want to do business with anons or illicit actors)
- Honestly, if you are tech savvy enough you can see who minted the Ape Tokens and they came from my MoneyButton address.
Can you talk about the excitement and frankly rapid community support around this project?
The Gorilla DAO is less than a week old and has a ton of gravity already.
I think it really caught traction for several reasons; a big one is because everyone can play a role in the Gorilla DAO. The Gorilla DAO creates enterprise solutions too, but it is not like the enterprise solutions we have seen to date where all we can do is wait for them to come out and hope that they are putting transactions on chain. In the Gorilla DAO, you can play a critical role in creating and have insight into the creation from start to finish. The Gorilla DAO really does allow you to be your own soon™.
I had a great talk with a member of the Fabriik team last week and was told by the team member that, “One of Fabriik’s missions as a company is to kind of unlock the tools that rich people have to everyone else.” The Gorilla DAO embodies that and the Gorillas (also known as ape token holders) saw that from the jump and have been eager to do all that they can to get the Gorilla DAO in motion.
How much money has been raised thus far?
As of March 2nd, 9:36 am EST there are roughly 80 BSV in the Gorilla Treasury.
Why did you not attempt this DAO on BSC or other chains?
I believe the Gorilla DAO can add the most value to BSV compared to another chain. There have already been proposals to create crucial infrastructure that BSV is missing. Beyond that, the BSV network is the most practical chain to launch any sort of business or product that lives on chain. The transaction fees made it almost costless to launch, and we know the blockchain can scale, so it will be able to handle the amount of transactions that we will be putting on chain.
I am also not convinced that BSC builders and Ethereum developers are building for the long-term. I know that the BSV community typically takes a macro prospective and that has the most synergy with the Gorilla DAO’s goal of being around until the end of time.
I have noticed that the DAO has already voted to convert their tokens from Money Button’s to the Run protocol—why?
The technical gorilla’s in the DAO made it clear to the other Apes that there were a number of benefits to operating on Run protocol, including decentralization.
What the technical gorillas have made clear is that our voting system can operate through the Run protocol and that it paves the way for a lot of the infrastructure the apes will bring to BSV.
Naturally, there is some skepticism in the trust and viability of such a project (especially in the BSV space) – how do you address those concerns?
Everything is on chain, any observer can look at the chain and know exactly how much is in the Gorilla Treasury, know exactly where the ape tokens were sent, etc. The Apes are also building an on-chain voting system as I type this out. I think the fact that everything is on-chain should give everyone some peace of mind.
But ‘Ape don’t kill ape’, I would never execute any actions that the DAO did not pass a proposal on.
The skepticism is another reason that I wanted to just go ahead and tell others that I am the founder of Gorilla DAO. Although it was fun while it was anonymous and was a bit reminiscent of Satoshi creating Bitcoin so there needs to be that degree of credibility when doing legitimate business. Typically, only anons want to work with other anons; where the Gorilla DAO is heading, it will be beneficial to be able to tie a real identity to the project.
Can you discuss how important creativity and opportunity are necessary in contributing to increasing the demand for BSV transactions?
“I’ll start with opportunity—from what I know, there are a ton of gaps that need to be filled in the Bitcoin ecosystem. If you can fill those gaps, and have a palatable solution, your business should pick up traction. The Gorilla DAO is moving in a direction where we will be filling some of those gaps, and I believe you will see the DAO launch those solutions shortly after its first two products—which are already in the works.
When it comes to creativity, I think a lot of BSV holders, developers, builders, participants, etc. really want to see something new, and beyond that, something they can play a role in. It is easy to say, be your own bull market, or be your own soon™ but the truth is, a lot of BSV holders cannot accomplish those things by themselves—the Gorilla DAO solves that.
BSV is one of the only blockchains that really can handle enterprise solutions at scale, but that approach kind of misses out or does not incorporate what I would call blockchain or digital currency culture.
Digital currency owners want to participate and have some fun too. You really see the culture in trending concepts in the overall blockchain ecosystem, like NFTs and decentralized exchanges, those are things digital currency holders can participate in and add value to. They can’t typically participate and add value to the enterprise solutions being built.
Why haven’t we seen ideas like this tried on BSV before this February 2021?
I think this (partially) comes back to tokens to be honest, tokens are typically a cornerstone to a DAO and its voting system. But beyond that, I think it is because the BSV economy is very engineer driven and the founder of most BSV businesses is a very technical engineer and I am not an engineer.
One of my favorite quotes is “genius engineers tend to build things that only other genius engineers would want to use.”
Although I truly believe BSV has some of the smartest people in the world working on it, there are a lot of regular, non-technical people in the ecosystem too. Beyond that, if we want our ideas and solutions to permeate BSV and beyond, I think more people need to create things that everyone can understand, play a role in, and use immediately.
I think some of the genius engineer ideas and solutions are great, but those aren’t things that my non-technical/know-nothing about blockchain or digital currency neighbors are going to understand or want to use.
What are you looking most forward to in your role as the Gorilla DAO community manager?
I look forward to the challenges that are ahead and the problems that the Apes have set out to solve. The Gorillas are here to advance BSV at a faster rate while creating products and services the ecosystem is in dire need of.
I am really just the community manager until the training wheels can come off. Right now, I am manually doing a lot of the things that the Apes will automate in the future.
What has you most excited about the DAO / Ape culture thus far?
The Gorillas are serious, ambitious, and committed to making the Gorilla DAO as successful as could possibly be. I love the energy; I give the Gorilla DAO my time and energy 7 days a week around the clock because I love what has been created and the ideas/proposals that the Apes have put out there and what they have voted on building. It energizes me to see it all coming to fruition and I know this is just the beginning (literally, it is not even a week old yet).
Ape Together Strong.
Thank you, Patrick for taking the time to answer my questions and I hope this interview was informative to the readers. If you have any additional questions please reach out to @cryptoamerican on Twitter, @34859 on Twetch and/or become a member of the DAO at https://ape.capital/transact/ !
This article was lightly edited for clarity purposes.
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