Researching DAOs and Digital Democracy at the University of Zurich
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Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) are a – if not the most – groundbreaking innovation that blockchain technology enabled. With my background in information systems, innovation studies and organisational theory, I have been researching DAOs since 2017 when I described the nature of DAOs as "decentralising power, competence and incentives" in my master's thesis.
Currently, I work as a researcher for the project "Decentralised Decision-Making in DAOs: Learnings for Digital Democracy" at the University of Zurich's Center for Democracy Studies Aarau (ZDA). As part of my work, I am closely following and highly appreciating the work of professional communities and research organisations such as Metagov, BlockchainGov, BlockScience (all for governance research) as well as the European Crypto Initiative and Bundesblock (both for advocacy).
Previously, as Governance Coordination Lead at Safe in 2022/2023, I accompanied the Safe community to becoming a DAO since Safe spun out of Gnosis in early 2022. In 2021/2022, I led the governance working group at VitaDAO and worked with other impact DAOs in Decentralised Science (DeSci) and Regenerative Finance (ReFi), such as LabDAO, PsyDAO, AthenaDAO and Valhalla Network DAO. I also worked on the Colony DAO framework, was involved in DAOstack's Genesis DAO around 2018-2020 and took part in The DAO in 2016. Before joining the DAO space full-time, I explored use cases of blockchain governance in the context of international cooperation at the GIZ Blockchain Lab on behalf of the German government.
Whether you are a researcher, practitioner, user, policymaker, journalist or otherwise interested in the subject and having a conversation with me, I am looking forward to hearing from you (contact at the top).
Volunteer at ETHBerlin (Berlin, 2018), Roundtable Moderator at Revision (Berlin, 2018), DAOcast podcast (2018), Workshop at Web3 Summit (Berlin, 2018), Science Slam talk at Berlin Science Week (Berlin, 2018), Poster presentation at Blockchain for Science Con (Berlin, 2018), Poster presentation at Blockchain Agora (Paris, 2018), How To DAO workshop #3 (Berlin, 2018), Lightning Talk at DGOV Council (Berlin, 2019), Breakout Session at Uncrypt3d (Vienna, 2019), Talk at a law school (Hamburg, 2019), Presentation at Bushwick Generator Meetup (New York, 2019), Talk at Blockchain for Science STEPS Conference (Barcelona, 2019), Mentor at ETHBerlinZwei (Berlin, 2019), Talk and Panel moderation at Blockchain for Social Good (Berlin, 2019), Roundtable moderation at Web3 Summit (Berlin, 2019), Blockchain စက ားဝ ိုင ား (Yangon, 2019; remote contribution), ETHTurin (remote contribution, 2020), The DAOist (Lisbon, 2021), VitaDAO presentation (2021a), VitaDAO presentation (2021b), Cabin podcast (2022), MetaGame community call (2022), VitaDAO presentation (2022), DAO NYC (New York, 2022), Tally podcast (2022), Stanford DAO Workshop (Stanford, 2022), Panel at Through the DAO Prism (Berlin, 2022), Mentor at ETHBerlin3 (Berlin, 2022), Sponsor via Safe at ETHLisbon (Lisbon, 2022), Panel at DAO Evening (Lisbon, 2022), Sponsor via Safe at ETHIndia (Bangalore, 2022), Workshop, Panel and Talk at What's Governing Web3? (Melbourne, 2022), Talk and Q&A with DAO Governance Collective (2023), Panels at Building Blocks and DAOVOZ during ETHTelAviv, Mentor at ETHDenver (Denver, 2023), Panel at Opolis' Future of Work Mini-Summit (Denver, 2023), Panel at Tally's DAOs at Denver (Denver, 2023), Workshop at Metagov House (Denver, 2023).