SNAX · Pizza DAO

[0:05]Um, we're back with another Zo Yaps with, uh, snacks from pizza. D how you doing today? Snacks. I'm doing great. I am vibing so hard right now with these AI tools. I can't keep me away from my prop box. No, I totally get that. I'm sure it's, uh, I mean, it's just the nuts how fast the technology's progressing nowadays.

[0:31]Um, yeah. I don't know if you wanna share a little bit of what you're doing right now, or if you wanna start by getting us a, a little bit of a background on snacks, you know, tell us a little bit more about yourself and, uh, and how you kind of came into the Web3 space. Yeah, so I'm Dred Pizza Roberts at Pizza dw.

[0:48]We're a global pizza co-op that throws a global pizza party every year on Bitcoin Pizza Day. We did it last year in 420 cities across 105 countries, but over 15,000 people came. She had her pizza together all over the world same day. And that was our fifth. So we're about to do our sixth global pizza party on May 22nd.

[1:09]This year. It's Friday. Super excited. Uh, and we've spent over a million on pizza. We're just getting started. So, yeah, it's, it's the, uh, number one food in the known universe and it's a great way to bring the world together. But I came into this space, uh, long ago. Not as early as when Laslow bought his two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin in 2010, but maybe like a year later in 2011, and I've been here ever since.

[1:42]I love it. Do you wanna share more about that? Like getting into pizza do, starting that six year long, you know, annual, this being the sixth year long annual kind of event. I know I was blessed enough to have an opportunity to just rock out one out here, very small one for the first time out here in Maine, which was really fun.

[2:00]Um, we did it at a library where honestly. Um, half of the participants, there were some of the librarians there that, that came down and, and wanted to learn more. But it was awesome 'cause we chatted about blockchain, we chatted about, like you said, Laslo and the big coin pizzas, and it was just a good learning opportunity.

[2:15]It got me another opportunity to network there. So, yeah, no, I think there's a lot of fun kind of pieces and cultural moments that that creates. But do you wanna give us more of that kind of creation and starting point and ideation of all that? Yeah, so pizza Do came outta Clubhouse. Clubhouse was the seed I would say of the NFT scene in late 2020, early 2021 when the pandemic was happening and everyone was inside.

[2:43]A lot of people got on Clubhouse and I was on there. I got on in I think, uh, November, I wanna say of of 2020. And there was this rich community of people who were really curious about NFTs. And about DAOs and just about crypto, and I was there educating, and I'm, and like, you know, bored Apes came from, from that clubhouse scene, uh, almost every NFT project you can imagine, like all the PFPs came out of that scene.

[3:14]Um, so all like, I would say like the, um, the. We, the tapestry of the space was woven on Clubhouse, and that was where Pizza Dow launched and Pizza Dow came about because I was watching my neighborhood and I run this big Facebook group, it has 20,000 members in South Philly, and I was watching the businesses struggle during the pandemic and thinking like, how can the neighborhood support these businesses in a way.

[3:43]That they wouldn't close when people appreciate them so much and here they are struggling through the pandemic and thinking about how value just didn't really, you couldn't demonstrate how much you value your neighborhood, right? Yeah. You can buy Apple stock, you can buy Amazon stock, right? You can buy some.

[4:02]Big companies on the stock exchange, but you can't actually buy in like community capital. You can't like put a number on that. You can't like it's intangible and you can't even buy in. Like you couldn't be like, there is no real obvious easy way, like how would you actually support a local business? You have to make a strong relationship with the owner.

[4:22]You have to figure out some sort of terms, you know? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess that's a good point. Yeah. So, and I would talk about how we needed. Blockchain accounting systems that were transparent so we could, uh, satisfy disclosure regulations and issue tokens and all this nonsense. And people would be like, yeah, okay, whatever.

[4:41]And so I pivoted a little bit and started talking about doing that for pizzeria. Okay. I see. So that's where the kind of seed and the idea came from. That's awesome. No, I, I love, um, I love that kind of like community starting point. That's kind of where, where you build that seed for that idea and like that kind of regenerative movement of blockchain and concept of like being, being able to actually have that.

[5:08]One-to-one relationship with your consumer or on the other end, your, you know, your patron, the person you wanna spend money on, you wanna know that if you spend a dollar, $5, $10, that money is a getting to them. And that'd be be potentially being good put to good use. So, um, I think that's such a great way to kind of lean into those.

[5:29]Um, local places, especially during the pandemic, when it just like is a supply and demand thing where there's just no supply and no one supporting, uh, those businesses in that capacity. So, no, that's awesome. Do you wanna, do you wanna share more of the kind of then from the beginning of Pizza Dow and then how you got to, you know, doing five years of pizza parties, um, you know, and maybe did you start with that idea of that May 22nd on that first day?

[5:56]On the first year? So, yeah, the first year was May 22nd. So there was this strong community on Clubhouse, and I had this idea about, you know, a Dow around pizza, and then hash masks launched and they were like a generative art piece. And so we set out to make a generative pizza and sign up 314 artists. To each contribute topics to the pizza.

[6:24]Yeah. And we then we launched them about a month later, we sold the pizza boxes and we raised our initial treasury and then we went from, so it was pretty crazy. We lo we started the community on in February. On February 18th. Yeah. Then we launched our first n ft. March 15th. Then we threw our first global pizza party on May 22nd.

[6:48]Wow. So in three months we went from clubhouse to, you know, 300 some pizzerias, because the first year we did a little differently. We didn't do parties, we just went direct to pizzerias and helped them distribute pizza to their community where they thought that it would be appreciated. Make a difference, you know?

[7:09]Yeah. No, that's awesome. I think, uh. There's so many cool pieces to that, right? Because in the span of you, like you said, two months, you came from an idea manifested from people's brains into something that was like real in reality. And that's kind of cool that crypto enables that ability to move money that seamlessly where that something like that is possible, right?

[7:33]Moving three months, it was three months. To be fair. But, but yeah. I mean, and I, I think, I mean, it's still amazing though. Yeah. And, and I like to think about kind of, uh, if we, if we get a little philosophical about it Right. We can think about how, uh, Laslow turned Bitcoin into pizza. Right. And, and Bitcoin had previously not been turned into anything.

[7:56]Yeah. Uh, really anything legal, right? Like, well, no, even, like, people weren't necessarily even buying drugs with it at this point. You know? This was 10,000 Bitcoin for. Two pizzas, right? Yeah. I mean that was, I guess that's fair. That's more than, you know, half a billion dollars. So, um. That moment though of being able to exchange some, you know, bitcoin from the metaverse and then turn it into real pizza.

[8:21]Right. That's a big moment. Yeah. And I think that we fit into that history kind of pizza dow, because we were a moment that a Dao turned energy into, you know, human energy into uh, real pizza party. Yeah, no, definitely the first. That's cool. Just, just like thinking about how, you know, we are building these Yeah.

[8:43]Uh, these concepts, these communities in the metaverse right around like this idea of Bitcoin and then they come into the tangible world. Yeah. Right. The Dow dream, you know, is that you have an idea and you put it up into the metaverse and then boom, it exists, becomes something. Yeah. Depending on the, the will of the person put putting it up.

[9:06]That's cool. No, I think that's a such a great moment because you're right, it's that like. That was one of those first, the, I guess the first digital transaction from something that's, you know, intangible to, to pizza. So it's cool to kind of like then be that, uh, that continuation of that model. Right. And, uh, yeah, no, I'm, I'm curious to see what this year comes with, with, um, you know, the sixth year.

[9:33]'cause you said some awesome stats for, for last year. Do you wanna, do you wanna just repeat because I heard, I think you said 420 different pizza parties. Yeah. And this year we're, we're planning to do 500. Hell yeah. So 500 cities, we're going for 20,000 people. That's awesome. So you gotta invite your friends, you know, I know in Maine you're gonna drag our average down a little bit.

[9:54]Right? We're going for 40 people a party. Look, if you can hit 20, I would be really impressed. Amazing. We'll definitely rock that this year. That'd be a nice, you know, a little, A little under a two x, so we could definitely make that happen. Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, I mean, that's, look, we have high hopes. No, I think, uh, I think there's a lot of opportunity to educate individuals out here.

[10:15]I'm actually starting to organize a event out here for kind of, we have a main artist week and, uh, and kind of doing a music and uh, uh, music event kind of tied with that, that we can kind of bring some of those Web3 sponsors and individuals involved. So we should definitely chat more about that later.

[10:33]But I think there's so many pieces of the. Crypto and blockchain space that is like bringing some of these moments that are virtual and connections that are virtual. IRL, I mean technically we met first time IRL, which was really cool. Um, someone had mentioned you like literally that earlier that day in some conversation.

[10:53]Um, and then meeting you in person, I was like, okay, this is dope. And then learning more about you and just, uh, meeting you a couple more times in New York at Far Con was awesome. And it was just a pleasure to kind of then learn more about pizza Dao I've been super interested in, in DAOs and how we can leverage, um, social capital to bring about like, and, and, and kind of quantize that, right?

[11:13]So, um, I think there's so many cool things that haven't been demonstrated yet with DAOs. Like, even like that. What you said, like, uh, people getting involved in their local communities at a different scale than known before hasn't been able to be like created because it's like everyone's thinking about like, how do we scale?

[11:32]How do we do this? How do we do that? But there's like a part of that, like their localism movement, right? That's like very focused on how can we like create harmony for this like ecosystem that's here. Yeah, absolutely. You know, like we. Are throwing a pizza party for the whole world, right? So we're, so we're thinking about all of these communities and how, like pizzerias, uh, at least you know, where I grew up.

[12:05]And I think, and it, it actually varies from region to region, but, um, they're like community centers. So when we do this party, it's about building this community center for. For crypto and then, you know, for, and it's gonna grow in different ways, in different places. And we're building a trust network fundamentally.

[12:27]So you can go anywhere on earth and, you know, look up your local pizza down chapter and, and meet up, you know, have a slice, get shown around, you know, it's a, it's an amazing resource. No, a hundred percent. I think that that's super cool. I think, like you said during, uh, the COVID everything, right? Like there's so many pieces to that that that kind of was challenging at that point.

[12:51]Third places were kind of like diminishing places, like pizzerias and other places that work, community centers, people, places people could go to. And then also people's works were diminishing and um, and you know, you were kind of locked in on your one, one place, your home, doing everything from there. So I think anything that.

[13:08]Kind of supports bringing that out. I mean, I feel like even in 2026 today, we still haven't recovered from that kind of challenge in spike of, you know, businesses having to, to be shut down in that period of time. And if it happened again, you know, like who knows how many businesses would, you know, after six years still not necessarily be as prepared, um, for it.

[13:28]I mean, we're all doing digital things in some capacity, but there's so many, like in-person businesses that would just be super challenged. So, um, I think there's so many. Cool benefits to, to blockchain and you guys creating the global pizza party is one of those kind of, like you said pieces, allure, that's reshaping the future of how.

[13:48]New people, you know, interact with this technology. I'm sure that there's, I, I actually went to the uh, the fourth one as well in Portland in Oregon where um, I kind of dove into the, um, the crypto scene and I got a lot of my like learnings from going in person meeting. A lot of the people, they were very heavy on the Dow side as well in the regen community.

[14:09]So it was really interesting 'cause that's kind of the community that brought me into the space. I had a lot better of a time of kind of. Being able to navigate. It was lucky enough I came in in 2022, kind of a couple months after the bottom of the bear of the NFT market. So, you know, not a lot of people there, people that were still there were like people that were pretty passionate about the technology 'cause the price wasn't that hot at that time.

[14:30]So it's, it was really cool 'cause it was just like the perfect time to get my, my, my feet wet. Especially in just like how the communities were shaped, how. Um, these DAOs had been used in different ways and what different potentials there were that hadn't been tried out yet. Because I think that's kind of the beauty of blockchain is, especially with ai, is it's an ever so changing, um, space and it's like experimental so you can kind of build whatever you want.

[14:58]Like you said, manifesting, like we're talking about manifesting some idea that you have in your brain and actually kind of. Bringing that to fruition, that time is getting shorter and shorter, which is really cool. And I think one of the things that really got me way more into the space as a whole emerging tech and AI was leveraging AI to even write code.

[15:20]Because like I, I got my electric engineering degree, but I hated coding. I like the syntax portion of it. And like looking for 30 minutes for a semicolon, you forgot. To me that doesn't make. A good use of money. No, I never wanted to do that either. So like then realizing that there were more ways to kind of leverage that same thought process that goes behind the conceptual side of coding, um, but not have to worry about as much of the syntax and it really.

[15:48]Made for such a better, um, way of interacting with code from changing it from, you know, any specific language, X, Y, z learning it, um, from beginning to end and how, how it interacts with different things and going to more natural language input to infinite outputs. Right. So I think it's, it's such a cool time that we're in.

[16:11]Um, I'm curious, like, what do you wanna say about like that? 'cause I know that's like we, we've talked about the past now, kinda like the present, you know, the, the sixth party coming up here in three months. And, uh, what about, what about the future? Where, where, where are your predictions? How are you feeling about, you know, I like, I know you said at the beginning you're, you're really excited about being able to just keep on diving in and, and, and.

[16:37]And creating more code and manifesting more things. So I'd love to know your kind of, your take. We've, in the last, I dunno what month, uh, progressed a lot, but in the last year as well and just like when I kind of joined. I guess now two and a half years ago, um, chat, GBT was kind of like announced. That's where I started like playing around with it all more.

[16:56]And I think that was like one of those emerging moments as well where they're having a really interesting challenge right now where like, AI companies are struggling in this AI. Kind of bubble in some sense, right? Um, where all the other companies that have legacy business models and revenue streams can just be okay with cutting parts of their r and d department, where kinda like open AI is, is, is most of that.

[17:19]So I'd love to know kinda like, where do you see us going in the future? Especially AI coding and like for non-technical individuals, right? Like in three months from now are you guys gonna do like, and have different intro to vibe coding, how to bring like computers bring like raspberry pies. Literally anything you can bring to like teach someone how to vibe, code and create their own app on that day.

[17:42]I think that could be pretty cool. So we'd love to kind of know where you're thinking in this future realm of everything going. So we are very actively teaching every pizza DW member how to use AI tools. Uh, every, almost every one of our crew calls is using a AI tools. We're talking about it on our community call.

[18:00]We had a training session today for vibe coding almost every day at Pizza. DW right now is a vibe coding training session, and that's because we have a huge amount of ideas and we have a huge amount of people with passion. We haven't always had the resources or the skillset to turn all of those ideas into software, and suddenly we do.

[18:23]Yeah. So, uh, I, it's crazy that now our, I feel like, you know, when I'm trying to, to help channel the community's energy. It's now like taking all the ideas and the energy and like fire hosing it into Claude. Yeah. It's like a really weird, weird topic. Yeah. It's an LLM for your ideas. Right, and the like raw input of this like, like you said, community energy and then having people to test the stuff that comes out the other end also.

[18:57]Yeah. Is, that's huge. Such a huge, huge asset for us. And then having people who will use it. Once we're done, um, we launched our RSVP tool, RSV Pizza actually yesterday. Uh, it's taking RSVPs for our EAT Denver event. It's as full featured as Luma Plus it has a bunch of extra features that we like, makes donations super easy.

[19:20]It makes an NFT on our, our event partner Monads Chain. 'cause we can just min on whatever chain we want. 'cause we're building it ourselves. We um. It actually gets every guest pizza preferences and then sums them together as a pizza order. Huh? And then calls the pizzeria and places the order. That's interesting.

[19:44]And, and all sorts of other little, that's crazy. There are some Easter eggs. If you press C or enter on the RSVP page, you'll see these, uh, it's. So that's our first big launch of a tool. And then our other one actually that we, we launched already, um, is pizza dow.org. And that's another big one for us. And, and that's just everything Pizza do.

[20:09]So we've had this whole schematic of our organization live in Google Sheets for, uh, more than a year, I think almost two years now. And, and has just an immense amount of data, but it's not that easy for the average person who's curious about what we're doing to just mm-hmm. Hop in and say, oh, what's, you know, they have to navigate a bunch of spreadsheets.

[20:30]It's not obvious. It's not user friendly. Yeah. But, but now, uh, with pizza do.org, using actually our existing Google Sheets data just as the source, it is way easier to navigate. So someone can go to pizza do.org onboard to the community. Join working in groups, see all the tasks that are ongoing and contribute a million percent.

[20:55]I love it. I think, uh, I was able to, here, let me share my screen here. I was able to do this earlier, so I don't know what it'll look like, but I haven't logged in. So, so when you go to pizza dow.org, uh, you gotta go to join Pizza Doo put in your favorite pizza topping and your favorite mafia show. So, um.

[21:19]I am pepperoni tucker because I'm not a a mafia movie person, so I gave my other favorite movie. Um, so we gotta generate three names and since that's taken, um, we'll go to, wait. You wanna be pepperoni tucker? Like, like Chris Tucker? Yeah. Then you should do rush hour. Well, yeah, so select So I do the whole.

[21:42]Type in rush hour. So the whole movie is what? And press generate. Oh, okay.

[21:52]Again, regenerate. I'm sure it'll come up. The Brody Jan is hilarious. Close. There you go. Oh, you missed it. Oh, no. I don't know, but it won't show it to you again. You're gonna have to refresh. Uh, that's funny. Maybe that's a bug for us. That's hilarious. But, uh, I guess, well, let's just, so funny, uh, we'll just pick one and then maybe pepperoni pea your, um, bar Harbor.

[22:19]And then you gotta pick, uh, what role you wanna play. Super simple, nice and easy. And, uh, and then you member ID and what different crews. So it's uh, really nice and self-explanatory. You can see that on mobile, this would be awesome as well. So I'm excited to kinda play around with this a little bit more.

[22:41]I know you were talking a little bit about, uh, how this is, uh, more on the open source side and you want different. Individuals and peds it out to be able to leverage some of those kind of little code automations, um, to kind of build on top of them. 'cause I think that's a big part of my methodology where I think there's so many cool things, like you said, that taking that raw input and turning that into positive energy, there's also a.

[23:03]Like the side of being able to do that, like straight on a code level of like taking people's collective energy and turning that into something special as well. Whether that's someone building on top of someone else or simultaneously with someone else. Right? But then when you do simultaneously with someone else, that communication thing becomes a huge component, right?

[23:24]So yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm excited to see where we go. Um, and yeah, do you wanna rock out and share where we can, uh, either what your guys' community meetings are of where we can meet you a little bit more, where we can check out Pizza dow a little bit more on the social medias? Yeah, so pizza underscore Dow on I think all platforms and discord.pizza doo.xyz to join where we.

[23:55]Talk about basically everything that we're doing in the dao. We have our community calls at 1:00 PM Eastern on Sundays in the Discord, and then we have crew calls, which are like our working groups on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So Monday, Tuesday we do it two to 5:00 PM Eastern, and then Wednesday, 11 to two.

[24:13]And those are, Monday is ops, tech, and comms. Tuesday is creative. Uh, and events, I believe. And we might have one other one. Oh yeah, here we go. It's all on here. Actually here. I can even show everyone If you go to pizza.org/cruise Yeah, that'll have our crew schedule and that's a great place to just go and see everything we're working on.

[24:41]Uh, so there you are. Amazing. Yeah. Creative and events on Tuesdays. And then we have the, uh, Africa call on Wednesdays in the morning, but then education and biz dev in the afternoon. Amazing. I love it. You guys are cooking. Killing it. It's uh, good to check this out. Good to see all the things you've built.

[24:59]I'm excited to like cap. Catch your attention and like, capture, capture a little bit more about our, uh, pizza party here, coming up in, in on the, for the sixth annual one here in on May 22nd. Um, and just maybe chatting after that and seeing, seeing where we're at with everything. Nevermind, you know, everything Pizza D's doing.

[25:21]Yeah, man. Thanks for having me on And yeah, it's a, it's a crazy time. So, you know, we're, we're just. We're having a lot of fun, honestly. Exactly. That's the best way to do it. Right? And, and the education piece, right. And continuing to, like, that's the best thing, doubling down on that, like you said. So, um, you know, if you're, if you're out there, make sure you're, you're supporting that education piece.

[25:42]So, um, thanks for, for popping on snacks. Uh, it was great to have you excited to, you know, chat more about this upcoming pizza party. Cheers. Let's go. Peace.

[25:54]We say you free, decentralized, let's.