If you’re a Regen, and find yourself spending much time thinking about and building solutions to enhance the state of social coordination powered by crypto, Kevin Owocki is someone you are likely already familiarized with. Kevin is the Founder of Supermodular, who have created or-public projects including Gitcoin, Kernel, Buidlbox, and the Green Pill Podcast. in this conversation we dive into Kevin’s crypto journey, his relentless passion for building pro-social crypto-levered software and where the future of public goods ecosystems is heading.
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Every time I record a new Odisea show, I’m continously impressed by the quality of the guests who are joining us on our collective journey towards infinite gardens. And this conversation with Kevin was certainly not the exception. One of the key takeaways for the listeners is the notion that “regen is a vibe” - keep that in mind as you listen to this podcast.
After Kevin shared his crypto journey with us, we dove straight into the Greenpill Network and the movement that is being built around that community. Emerging from the work of his book, Greenpill, Kevin has now looked to broaden the horizon of the work he’s doing by building local Greenpill chapters that are focusing on deploying local solutions that lever global technological advancements, such as cryptography and blockchain.
One of the things we double-clicked on in this conversation is what it means to “build a movement” - after all, movement-building is at the crux of what we can do if we look to coordinate towards better societies that offer us an alternative lifestyle. After all, if we are to genuinely bring a regenerative future forth, it must go much farther beyond simply keyboard optimism and towards visceral and IRL movements. And this is what I find most exciting about what Kevin is up to - he’s built a number of successful projects in the ecosystem, built an audience around his work, and is now leveraging those relationships to build a movement.
A core pillar of movement-building is creating a strong coalition of values-aligned partners who are willing to go to bat for you and your values. In this instance, it’s leveraging distributed systems to build pro-social, pro-environmental, plural gardens of growth and freedom that allow us to thrive collectively. We dive into a number of the players in the crypto community that are nurturing the frontier of these new movements including: Giveth, Optimism, DoinGud, DAO Drops, among others.
Ensuring that we are creating cross-pollinating public goods networks is what will ultimately allow us to multiply the impact that each of these players would otherwise achieve independently. The notion that 1+1=3 is what Kevin reference to the value of supermodularity - meaning that by collaborating, we can create optimal outcomes for all other players of a particular game. It’s with this same vision that Kevin has gone on to found Supermodular - a venture studio building a regenerative digital frontier.
Lastly, Kevin leaves the audience with some insights for regen-focused builders who are sticking around through the bear. He emphasizes that we must continue to collaborate and create positive-sum games that provide optimal outcomes for all of the participants within the ecosystem (and far, far beyond our little bubble, I’ll add). Let’s focus on high leverage opportunities that allow us to add substantial value to the ecosystem and of course, don’t be afraid to fail (Gitcoin was Kevin’s 6th startup - so keep going!)
Remember, you’ve still got time to mint your Odisea Community Collectible below. The collectible is available on the Optimism network, which we have intentionally chosen thanks to their commitment to support public goods, largely through their Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) mechanism, which allocates the fees paid by users of the network and then distributes them retroactively to public goods in the ecosystem. Mint yours below and support public goods :)
If you’d like to connect to discuss the episode and explore ways we can collaborate to build a better future leveraging crypto, let’s chat on Twitter or you can join the Telegram community as well!
Odisea is produced with the support of Safe and Ambire Wallet.
Safe (previously Gnosis Safe) is a decentralized custody protocol, securing ~$60 Billion in assets today. It is establishing a universal standard for secure custody of digital assets, data, and identity.
Ambire Wallet is an account abstraction-based, self-custodial gateway to Web3 that introduces a range of impressive features like transaction batching, a pre-payment mechanism, and the ability to pay gas fees in stablecoins. By being accessible on both mobile and desktop devices, with a browser extension version on the horizon, Ambire Wallet aims at streamlining the user experience and ensure convenience across different platforms.