Tridog just put the entire Doge community on a leash and almost no one noticed
As the Doge meme stands ready to burst back into the public consciousness one man has just put the entire worldwide Doge community to work for him and his DAO, whether they like it or not.
TL;DR: By surreptitiously acquiring the exclusive license to the Doge IP, Tridog, through his DAO Own The Doge, has now forced the entire worldwide DOGE community into a parasitic business relationship; hoping to parlay the past and future work of the many Doge communities - done for free, in the spirit of goodness, silliness and fun - into financial benefit for his DAO and his crypto-token under the guise of spreading our ‘Dogely values’ out into the world. And that's not even touching on the truly dark shit.
Who am I?
Hi, I’m GoodShibe. I’ve been in the Dogecoin community pretty much from the start.
This is Day 1 of my ‘Of Wolves and Weasels’ daily post series, this is Day 800. I am the Creator of the Dogecoin Defense Force. This is me as one of the moderators of Dogecoin Scam Watch. This is me as one of the organizers of The Dogecoin Foundation version 2.0.
My personal motto - and the motto of my Dogecoin Defense Force - is, and has long been, "Communitas Prae Lucro". Community Before Profit.
This is me talking to Tridog directly about my concerns.
This is him asking to have a private conversation with me about my concerns.
And this me responding that I want it all out in the open as a long-form public community discussion, in text and searchable.
You’ll notice that last one didn’t get a reply. That request for a community discussion was on April 24th of this year.
Instead, Tridog and Gary Lachance (someone I both like and respect) held a Space on the X platform to discuss 'concerns' from the community. But it did not assuage my concerns. In fact, the more I think about this, the more questions I have and the angrier I get.
And, yes, I'm aware that, in some messed up way, by even sounding the alarm on this I'm helping to pump their bags. I've struggled with this a lot over the last week but, ultimately, I decided that I find this whole thing so abhorrent and repulsive that I cannot in good conscience remain silent.
First, let’s get you caught up:
The Dogecoin cryptocurrency and its community started on December 8th, 2013, inspired by the Doge meme that was popular in that year. In 2021 an NFT of the photo that inspired the Doge meme was sold at a charity auction to PleasrDAO for $4 million in Ethereum. That NFT was then taken and fractionalized so that people could, ultimately, 'buy' individual pixels of it. That fractionalized NFT was worth, at one point, over $220 million USD. Not a bad ROI, huh,? Doesn't take much business sense to see that this is a valuable brand.
Tridog, the prime mover behind Own The Doge DAO, to his credit, organized charity auctions and fun events like Doge Day and helped to fundraise (other people's money) and erect a Doge statue in Japan. At the time it appeared that he did these things purely for the love of Doge and the community. What we didn’t really know was that, most importantly: he grew close with Atsuko Sato, the 60-year-old Japanese kindergarten teacher and pet-blogger who took the original photo that inspired the meme — and thus is the owner of the actual ‘Doge IP’. He says he now talks to her weekly. He also says that a portion of all of WowbyDoge’s sales (the DAO’s now “official” Doge store) and, ostensibly, money raised from corporate licensing sponsorships will go to her, to charity and back into the community through his own ERC-20 token (DOG).
Tridog points to his past good works as proof that he's a good guy, a builder, with good intentions. He specifically points to how he has always done what he said he was going to do. But then he went and broke his own pattern. On April 19th, Tridog announced on the X platform, with no warning: “We Own The Doge IP!” sharing that Own The Doge had acquired, as it was later clarified, not ownership but an exclusive license to the ‘Doge IP’ from Atsuko herself. Within the same celebratory post he went on to say:
“Our goal is to utilize this newfound copyright clarity to bring Doge to places she’s never been like new unique products and big brand partnerships.
Imagine a McDonald’s kids meal toy, a Disney short film, Doge crocs… the possibilities are endless and open with this renewed focus around the usage rights.”
And, yes, he went on to say how much he wants to do good works for the community and wants to fund Doge projects but it didn't matter because, frankly, I lost my shit.
Because what Tridog had, essentially, just announced to the entire world is that if you are in the Doge community, making Doge things, promoting Doge at all… you work for him now.
As the holder of the exclusive license to the Doge IP, he is now firmly attached to the root of all of it.
In other words: Tridog, with this exclusive license, has now forced the entire worldwide DOGE community - Doge/Dog/Dogecoin and more - into a parasitic business relationship where the free work done by millions of people over the last decade to build 'Doge lore' ('Do Only Good Everyday', the fun, silliness, etc associated with the meme) now directly, financially benefits his DAO and, importantly, his DOG token.
So of course he is actively encouraging all of us to unify under his banner, to keep spreading the meme and keep doing good works: it is now to his direct financial benefit to help Doge become part of the public consciousness again so that he can sign lucrative licensing deals with large corporations.
Any ‘good vibes’ and ‘good works' that get spread along the way are just brand-building-bonuses, things that he can point to when selling the large, active, wholesome community that comes attached with his brand. A community that just loves seeing our Doge attached to products and will happily buy them. Are you starting to see why I'm angry?
Oh, it gets better.
Not only does this revelation color all of his past good works, it now makes it seem like this was his goal all along:
Do good work, earn the trust of Atsuko Sato, get the exclusive license to a massively undervalued IP.
And for what cost? A few of years of friendly off-and-on contact to build the relationship, a handful of charity auctions and events and a Doge statue that other people paid for? Not a bad investment of time and money to get an exclusive license to what is likely the next billion dollar IP — don’t scoff, there’s a reason that I say this, and it’s the single direct reason that I’ve moved past outrage into fury.
Kabosu, the dog that inspired the meme, is dying. She's 18 years old now and had a cancer scare last year. There is a Doge documentary coming out about her life. We don't know exactly when but it started production in April of last year. Importantly, Tridog did not have an exclusive license in hand for any of the good works that he had done before. There’s no actual rush to get an exclusive license, to get corporate sponsorships. Unless there is.
Like, really, why now? Why the secrecy? Why announce it so suddenly and without warning?
When Kabosu dies the Doge meme is going to be thrust directly back into the public consciousness in a major way. It’s going to be everywhere. People will be making memes, sending good vibes and it will definitely be in the news. I'm sure the DAO will solemnly promote their upcoming documentary and, of course, Doge Day 2024… also ask about sponsors.
This whole thing stinks to high heaven to me as a disgusting, opportunistic effort to profiteer off of the dying icon of the Doge community while harnessing the good and kind work of decent people, telling them that they're going to change the world with smiles and happiness while actually envisioning lucrative licensing deals with McDonalds, Disney and Crocs.
Want to hear the kicker? I actually confronted him about it here.
And his response? He merely pointed me to a tweet he’d sent out earlier with a point stating that all profits would go back into the community.
Here's another fact: He’s under no legal obligation to give any of that money to anyone, ever. He says money raised will go back to the origin (Atsuko), charity and the Doge community. He won’t say how much or for how long or if that will change over time. I asked him directly. He says they’ll continue to fund Doge projects “when it makes sense.” (scroll down to 24:36 in the discussion for that one).
The only real ‘defense’ that Tridog and the DAO will point back to is that Atsuko has retained the right to revoke their license at any time. But even that brings up more questions because, apparently, the license granted has no sunset clause and thus runs into perpetuity. And what is Atsuko's right to know about various contracts, especially if Tridog signs a confidentiality agreement beforehand?
Would this polite, gentle 60-year-old school teacher actually slam the brakes on this thing? What if it was already in motion? What if her good buddy Tridog pleaded with her that pulling the ripcord on this thing that was already in progress would ruin him and his family, plunging him into lawsuits, etc?
I don't know. There's so much I don't know.
Am I in the wrong for pointing this out and potentially ruining what, even with this parasitic relationship, might end up being something truly special for Doge fans everywhere? Or would people rather make an informed decision as to what they're getting into? Maybe they didn't know, maybe they didn't care but at the end of the day, as someone who has tried to look out for my community - who found my community thanks to that smiling Shiba Inu… I chose to give them the option.
To that end, I am so convinced that this is worth your time that I have spent about 40-plus hours over the last week transcribing the conversation between Tridog and Gary because I believe that anyone involved with the Doge and Dogecoin communities needs to take a really hard look at what's in here.
And I mean look critically, past the flowery words and positivity and see what he’s actually saying… and how differently the calls for unity et al hit now that anything we make promoting his brand directly benefits him and his stakeholders first.
To be clear: I am not telling you what to do. It's your time, it's your money and I firmly believe in both financial freedom and personal choice/responsibility... but, at the same time, I am going to tell you what I see, as someone who has been here from the start and why I am both legitimately outraged and fucking furious over this development.
It is my personal belief that if you truly care about Doge or Dogecoin and not just getting rich then you should also be outraged at what I see as, at best, parasitic profiteering and, worst, the long-conning of Atsuko Sato - by all accounts, a wonderful, sweet being of light.
Am I massively overreacting about a silly Dog meme? Am I just an old, cynical Shibe who doesn't know better to than to look a gift horse in the mouth? Maybe, but that's for you to decide.
For context, you should also know that cryptocurrency in general but especially Dogecoin's decade-long history, is riddled with con artists, scammers, thieves and worse. Unscrupulous people seem to be especially drawn to our community and have used our own kind and fun and compassionate nature against us in order reap profits for themselves. We OG Shibes, here in the Dogecoin community, well, we have seen some shit.
I have inserted my thoughts below, in bold, in direct reaction to the points made by Tridog and Gary in this transcript - which I have done my best to ensure is as accurate as possible, leaving out 'ums' and 'ahs' but keeping in things like 'like' and 'you know' to most-accurately represent the speaker. Yes, some of my questions may be entirely inappropriate but at this point I don't really care.
My Process:
I used Otter.ai to get a transcript of the Spaces audio file that I downloaded from X using Lychee.so. The transcripts were... not accurate. The 40 plus hours I have spent on this transcript have been my specific efforts to try and make it as accurate as possible. Obviously with things like grammar and the free flow of speech, some of that is going to be subjective but I have tried to be as fair as possible with the ultimate intention of relaying the accuracy of the speaker to the reader. If, in the going over this transcript you find that I have been significantly inaccurate somewhere, please let me know the timecode and the specific inaccuracy so that I can fix it. I will look for a place to release the raw files and the audio file of the Space itself since I cannot include them in this posting.
Burning questions:
Tridog says he believes in transparency and desires unity across all Doge brands. To that end, here are some questions I would like him to answer:
1. I am concerned that Tridog has his own agenda and is hiding behind his DAO and the illusion of 'community support' to do what he wants. Will you show us the discussions that you had with the DOG and/or Doge/Dogecoin communities before you went and secured the Doge IP? Will you show us the vote that you had from the DAO where members agreed to and authorized you to go out and secure the Doge IP?
2. Will you release the actual, full contract, removing only sensitive personal information, to the community so that we can all read for ourselves what it entails? As of yet, all you have said is that you have secured it and released Atsuko's message of support. People have been asking for specific details since you announced it.
The full transcription of a 1-hour-and-37-minute-long discussion begins below:
______________________
Gary 4:18
Hello, do you copy?
Tridog 4:20
I copy, I copy. Hi, Gary. I started it out, I'm like, I was like, like I was telling you, half the team is asleep so, I, like, I'm on the-- I brought the main account to just for visibility and (laughs) got major feedback.
Gary 4:33
No more of that.
Tridog 4:36
I'll try my best. I'll try my best.
Gary 4:39
Appreciate it. Should we let a few more people arrive before we start, do you think, or...?
Tridog 4:46
Yeah, yeah. I think we can kind of just have casual chatter as we let people roll in. Just one minute past, you know, so if anyone's like, like me, generally running from one thing to the next, you know, it would give you a few minutes and let people roll in at the beginning of the convo. But we'll also be recording this so-- or naturally it'll record, so we'll be able to use this as a reference and we'll also work on creat-- whipping together a little FAQ based on some of the questions and stuff today, so... hopefully that'll give a little bit more easy, like, jumping-off points for people that are curious about it and want to get like the full scope.
Gary 5:33
For sure. I mean, since it's recorded I guess we could just...
Tridog 5:42
Get on it.
Gary 5:44
Anyone can re-listen if they want to. Maybe... one more minute.
Tridog 5:56
Uno minuito. I mean, in the short term, I see a lot of great, great faces here in-- from the X-sphere, can't really say Twittersphere anymore, still can't totally shake that terminology, but... What's up Sal? Chuckrato, Hydro, Julia, Whitney. Ultron. (Laughing) I see someone very cat-- catwith, very eager. Hi, hi Cat! Very eager. Already wants to talk on the spaces, already interested in talk on spaces. (Laughing)
Gary 6:38
Cats and dogs, coexisting.
Tridog 6:40
Well, you know, we-- yeah, you know, we like the dogs, we like the cats, all animals really. Syncronicity--
Gary 6:47
Dogs and cats living together! (Laughs)
Tridog 6:49
Yeah, with all, you know, very, very-much-liking vibes.
Gary 6:55
I feel it.
Tridog 6:59
Well, Gary, do you want to, like, lay, like, the kind of, the foundation, I guess, to like, of like, you know, how this kind-- this space came to be? And then we can kind of, like, take it from there?
Gary 7:10
For sure. Yeah, I've written out the questions. And the intro here. I wanted to give for context and... yeah, the hope was that this can be kind of a standalone piece of media anyone can listen to without much prior knowledge of this situation to, hopefully, understand most of it just by listening. So yeah, some backstory about myself and my own motivations.
Gary 7:45
My entry into the open source world was as a filmmaker way back in 1990s. And I was always very frustrated that I couldn't use music in my films freely. This was, like, before YouTube, or anything, I had no money and I just wanted to create, and it was always super frustrating. Just wondered why the world had to be this way. And then the modern Internet arose, I saw the Wikipedia, that was super-inspiring, seeing everyone coming together to create this open ecosystem of knowledge. And then that led me to realize, one day, I remember, I was landscaping and just thinking, this thought came to me that maybe everything in the world could be open source, and everything would be shared and in the public commons. Very excited about that.
Gary 8:40
And then first saw Bitcoin and blockchain tech in 2011 and I knew that that was the key to building a world like that. And I've been devoted to that ever since by the Decentralized Dance Party and other open source advocacy. And also believing that fun, silliness and good vibes will be essential for such a revolution to succeed. And the open source meme that is Doge and the seemingly divinely-ordained "Dohggy coin", as we initially called it, felt like fundamental keys to building that new world.
Gary 9:18
So I've been championing these since 2013, to the best of my ability. Some of that includes Camp Dogecoin at Burning Man in 2014, Doge-Con 2018, Million Doge Disco, where we dropped dancing Doge NFTS and Dogecoin all over the world in this augmented reality party game, which probably led some listeners here. Helped to reestablish the Dogecoin foundation in 2021. Julia and I were a big part of the Doge Statue project. Just giving out 1000s of stickers, videos, constant proselytization of Doge and helping wrap the Dogeclaren for Julia, traveling in that.
Gary 10:05
And, yeah, 10 solid, devoted years to Doge and was very shocked to see the news last week that the IP had been... Initially I thought it had been transferred and I was just kind of operating under the assumption that Atsuko sort of just let the photo be shared with the world to use freely. And yeah, the announcement didn't have a whole lot of details.
Gary 10:32
So I reached out to you, Tridog, just trying to get some clarity and booked a call to discuss. Made my first post on X stating my concerns but also my hopes that this new situation could hopefully lead to positive outcomes for everyone. And part of my inspiration for the public posts was to apply a bit of pressure to encourage things to be as transparent as possible. Because I knew that was the only way to win over and unify the community would be to give reassurance that they would still have the same things and everyone would hopefully benefit... benefit from this, not just the IP holder.
Gary 11:16
I wrote: "I believe that the people behind Own The Doge realize that the true value of the meme lies in the fact that all who resonate are free to share her image to uplift each other in the world. With that in mind, I hope they will be a responsible stewards of the meme/image. A lot is riding on this and I can promise that I will be following the situation closely and doing all I can to ensure that the future of Doge is brighter than ever. And the spirit of Atsuko and Kabosu shines forever forward as the brightest beacon of hope in the known universe."
Gary 11:53
Then, a quick 20-minute call with Tridog, that Julia also joined, as she had also reached out, wanted to chat with him. We shared the concerns that we in the community had about things, learned a bit more about the license and agreed that a Spaces would likely be the best next step. Then I made a second post, asked the community to share their questions and concerns. And yeah, I took those, prepared a list of questions to go through today. And I see this space as a great opportunity for Tridog to earn the trust of the community. But it will have to be earned.
Gary 12:35
And I do appreciate your openness to have this conversation, live, and all the things that you've done for Doge over the past two or three years. Within the Doge community, there's been a lot of discord, broken promises, betrayal and self-interest within the online community over the years and I think it's normal for people to view any developments like this with suspicion.
Gary 13:03
We feel that Doge is the people's meme and any attempts to control it will always be subject to extreme scrutiny. So the ethos of decentralization is "verify, don't trust," and the only way to verify is to have transparency and I think this is a great step towards that. And although we are friends, I am here as a community liaison, asking questions only on behalf of the community and serving only the Doge. Although we've hung out at events, I still don't know you super-well and look forward to learning more about the character who is Tridog and his mission and motivations and hopefully, deepening trust here, today.
Gary 13:54
And I wanted to end with a quote, adapted from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, there's that scene where, I think, it's the Knight of the Round Table says: "Why do you seek the Grail? Is it for God's glory or your own?" So I got inspired to adapt that. And this is a question not just for Tridog but everyone in the space: ask yourself "Why do you seek the Doge? Is it for her glory or for your own?"
-- This final question of his is, ultimately, of far more importance than perhaps even Gary first thought.
Gary 14:26
And, without further ado, thank you for listening to that. Tridog, are you still there?
Tridog 14:34
Wow, what a legendary, legendary intro. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything less, knowing Gary. Maybe I'll share a quick story of-- how Gary and I-- I think we met when you were working on the Foundation, the Dogecoin Foundation, and I was, obviously, still working on Own The Doge. And then we've also been able to see each other IRL, quite a few times, in Japan, around the pilgrimage, or on Doge Day last year.
Tridog 15:02
So it's been really cool. I think, I would recommend, I mean-- I guess now that I'm just thinking of this and how powerful that experience was for *me* to, like, make the pilgrimage to Japan, actually, and meet Atsuko and Kabosu-- and, in particular, just understand Atsuko better and how I feel, like, she's very values-aligned with the community. I encourage, like, everyone to, like, you know, we're gonna put on another community event at Doge Day at the statue, November 2nd, this year. So I think it's, like, I mean, honestly, I feel like so many-- it was so cool to see, you know, obviously, Gary and Julia always bringing, you know, Decentralized Dance Party vibes of so much color and flavor and just, like, really, like, embody the Doge spirit better than anyone else I've ever-- I've ever seen and ever met.
Tridog 15:49
But it's so cool to, like, spend that time in person with everyone and see, like, there's, like, the Japanese Kabosu fans and there's, like, the Doge meme fans and there's the Dogecoinners and there's, like, the Own The Doge folks, and, like, just the greater Doge community and all the eras of nearly two decades of history gather in one place, once a year, it's just very, very cool to see that happen. And, you know, it's not accessible to everyone, being so far away, but I think, you know, they usually do like live streams and things like that, too. So that'll be I don't know, just a little plug, I guess, for a way for us all to get together.
-- Of course he wants to unify and bring the Doge community together, now, with the exclusive license, he and OTD are siphoning off of the root directly and stand to profit massively from a "unified force" making memes any efforts to strengthen the Doge meme in the public consciousness. They *need* it to go viral again in order to make money. It won't move without an honest spark of life from the community.
Tridog 16:22
Because I think the whole point of this space, and I probably should have put this in the title, is unification, right? Like, I-- we truly believe, and me, personally, that, like, you know, I want to, you know, unify, spread joy, use Doge as a force for good and bring the Doge community together and I think if we-- the people that truly care about Doge, and what it stands for: "Do Only Good Everyday," spread it-- make, you know, 'funny-little-yellow-dog' making people smile. And, you know, and then also being able to have tangible impacts, like, giving back to charity. I think that is like what really matters.
Tridog 16:22
And if we can unite the Doge community around those-- that-- those ideals, the people who truly care about those things, that's what really always been kind of our goal from the beginning. Because like, no matter what happens on this journey, if we are able to unite around that, and leave a positive-- net positive impact in our wake, then, like, it was worth it. Right? No matter where this goes and what happens, like, that-- we're having, we are actually having that 'Do Only Good' impact, every day. So, it's a value that, you know, I mean, it's something that literally I'll talk-- I'll say this to, like, our contributors and team like, you know, every day every week, at least.
Gary 17:36
Absolutely, yeah. The goal, I think it says it on my Twitter profile is "A life dedicated to freedom and unification" or something. So (Snaps fingers) that's what I'm trying to do with Doge and today, with this. So hopefully, we can get there. And yeah, I think it's all about learning more and deepening trust, and then seeing how we, as the community, feel but my first question, if you could answer - five minutes or less, who is Tridog?
Tridog 18:15
Umm, yeah, Tridog. Tridog was my first user name, ever and so somehow it still lasted to this day. I'm much, much, older than that, than that, than that point in my life, where I met some guy on AIM, and he was like, "Yeah, you know, this is-- coming up with nicknames." And so, I mean, I'm a, I'm a, I guess what I-- maybe the best way and shortest way to describe me was what I've said to you before, is like, I'm a builder, not a politician. (Laughing) I mean, I think I-- I was in this weird Venn Diagram of when I came a part-- became a part of Pleasr to, like, help-- help push this Doge project forward.
Tridog 18:57
Where I'm, like, this weird dog-lover-combinate combined with, like, a start-up-founder with-- combined with, like, someone who's, like, actually built, kind of, like, art communities. And, and so it's some-- for some reason that all kind of aligned and Doge was sitting at the center of it. And like many people, I guess I found Doge through Dogecoin but I was like, you know, I definitely was truly, truly like Doge-pilled, like, when I met Atsuko, and I was like, "Wow," this is, like, so cool to see these disparate timelines that came back together. And like, the Doge community-- the Doge community and Atsuko, actually, like, think the same thing. It was so wild just to experience that.
-- So this comes across to me like a businessman who stumbled upon a lucrative business opportunity and met some really nice people along the way.
Tridog 19:37
But yeah, that's, that's pretty much me in a nutshell. I mean, I've been working on Own The Doge, since near almost the beginning. And have been basically pushing forth those-- the idea that we can use Doge as a force for good, we can bring Doge to places she's never been. And that's, that's kind of the general, the general mission that we've, we've embodied for these past two and a half years of trying, you know-- working with the Doge and Dogecoin community to bring the statue-- to build a bronze statue to, like, work on this Doge documentary, to, you know, create an official holiday called International Doge Day on Kabosu's birthday.
-- And you did all of that stuff without needing an exclusive license.
Tridog 20:17
You know, I think all that has been to spread Doge culture and it kind of came out of Pleasr, being kind of like considering themselves like the 'elute'-- the 'Louvre of the internet' and, you know, Doge was like one of the-- one of the few big pieces they acquired, including the, you know, the Wu album, The Wu Tang album that, you know, previously was-- that was confiscated from Martin Shkreli. (Chuckling)
Tridog 20:42
And, and a DAO bought it from the gover-- the US government, which is kind of crazy. As well as, like, the only Edward Snowden NFT and things like that. And it's like, Doge kind of came out of this idea of like, hey, let's do, let's do, let's help create internet culture. Let's acquire it. Let's spin out interesting projects around it and let's always have like some social impact tied back into it. Like, the Edward Snowden NFT 100% of that went to freedom of the press. And so we've always been very aligned with Pleasr and then as of, like, last year, we kind of spun out and now we're a completely independent DAO from, from Pleasr, and we've, like, significantly decentralized the holder ship. We're over a million holders now and have continued to try to distribute DOG, our token, the fractionalized version of the Doge NFT, to as many people as possible, you know, with that idea that anyone can 'Own The Doge,' you know, whether that's through fun, funky products, were dropping or holding DOG, etc.
-- “Let's acquire it.”… hmm. So, Own The Doge is now spun off from PleasrDAO, how did that work? The holdership is more decentralized… but in any way that truly matters? PleasrDAO held 55%, did the 50+% just get ‘decentralized' to a core group of friends? How much power does the general DAO membership really have? Are there any unbreakable rules about when they must be brought in for votes or is that at Tridog's discretion when something gets pushed forward?
Gary 21:45
Appreciate it. Umm... yeah, I was curious to ask about the history of Own The Doge. I know, initially, it was called the Doge NFT I believe, but, um, yeah, you're on the exact history. Like it started when Pleasr bought the NFT in the auction that Atsuko did, is that correct?
Tridog 22:10
Yeah, exactly. So yeah, like, what is it? In September of-- or maybe it was August, actually... summer of 2021, basically. We-- Pleasr, before I joined Pleasr, they purchased the Doge image from the Atsuko auction where, you know, it's kind of last bull market where everyone was selling their memes. And a lot of creators or subjects of memes had never, ever, like, you know, made any money on this, like, popularization of their image. And so, like, a lot of people were selling their NFTS, and, you know, it was very, like, new and kind of innovative ideas. And then the second part of that was after the auction and then Pleasr had acquired the original Doge image.
Tridog 22:55
Then it was-- they fractionalized-- they thought, "Okay, what's the most entertaining thing we could do?" They fractionalized it into DOG. So it's like, literally, if you could own a piece of the Mona Lisa, you know, we call it-- we call Doge "The Mona Lisa of the Internet" and so it's like DOG basically became one of the few, like, provenance coins or backed memes or memed-- memed or coined memes, however you want to call it.
-- Profit is entertaining. This feels to me like a money grab that was way more successful that anyone originally imagined and inspired the move to ultimately get the IP.
Tridog 23:18
Where it's actually tied to the the meme, the art, the photo that it represents. So I think that's pretty cool. In, like, the art world 'provenance' is like a very, you know, popular term, but it's very an important term. And I think what's cool about it is, like, Atsuko was able to, you know, actually finally have the-- have a tie back into the crypto world. And she was also able to give a bunch of charity through it, kids and don-- she donated a lot to kids and dogs and then also it allowed this, like, connection of Doge super-fans to be like, 'Oh, cool! I can actually participate in, like, the future of Doge now, through this DAO-- new DAO structure.' And that's kind of how like, the Doge, Doge DAO or Own The Doge kind of came about. And--
Gary 24:03
So...
Tridog 24:04
We kind of-- ju-- or just to do a line on the different terminology, I guess, quickly. The Doge NFT is the image, right, fractionalized into DOG, the token. Own The Doge is kind of the umbrella, it's like, it oversee-- it's like, the overseeing thing of stewarding the image as well as stewarding the community through the DAO.
Gary 24:25
So Pleasr bought the image and then was Own The Doge or the Doge NFT, like, a Pleasr DAO thing or was that a separate entity?
Tridog 24:36
Yeah, it started out, it started out like that. And, and basically, Pleasr put a lot of, you know, behind-the-scenes time and effort and money into this, so that we, you know, could continue to build, build, build a small team and like, spin up all these things like the DAO and, you know, and the Bark Tank where we give grants for, basically, people to build Doge cultural things. And, and so that's kind of the cool part of the DAO structure is like, we're basically propagating public goods through a grant program and, you know, empowering the community to be able to build things when, when it makes sense and then, like, at end of last year, we actually, finally spun out to our own, like, we're completely separate from Pleasr. Pleasr also held 55%, in the beginning of DOG, which was, you know, a significant amount; with the thought that me-- like, that control, like, it allowed-- it made it so no one could un-fraction or, like, change the reserve price, and un-fractionalize the meme. But now it's not really a problem, because basically, Pleasr only holds like 10% and it's all locked for, I think, five-plus years.
-- “When it makes sense?!” - so, to be clear, they are gatekeeping the funds and the entire direction of the community. They win either way: you go to them to do a thing, they give you money and they get to say ‘look, we did a thing!’. If you do a thing for free and it takes off, they still benefit from you promoting their brand.
Tridog 24:36
So now, now the, you know, the majority holder is the DAO and will continue-- and we did, you know, we've done a bit of-- did a big airdrop at the beginning of the year. And we'll continue to do things like airdrops and disbursements and grants and things like that to, you know, again, proliferate the doge meme and create more public goods. And, you know, continue this, this cycle of creating Doge culture and public goods that then like feed back into the DAO if there's ever a revenue component. So we're kind of, constantly, just by creating more and-- creating more, and we're kind of always funneling back into more Doge culture and more, more grants and things like that.
-- “…if there's ever a revenue component” as they actively seek revenue components. The whole point of doing this was to onboard corporate licensing. Grants, again, benefit their brand.
Gary 26:25
Yeah, I'm sure we could talk for a long time just about the details and intricacies of the DAO. But, for today, I think, really gotta focus primarily on the IP stuff. So we don't go for-- I mean, I could talk about this for hours, I know you're on some sort of a limited timeline.
Tridog 26:46
Yeah, it's, you know, it's-- at some point it's baby time, daddy duty, but-- but no, I think, I think it's good to have the foundation. And you know, we can always circle back on other questions or things around that at some point. It's good to know that like, I guess, maybe just in terms of like, I know, Dogecoin is one of the big values is decentralization. And I think, you know, for a protocol makes perfect sense, like, and it's a really cool innovation. And I think for organizing humans, the challenge is still, you know, the DAO stands for a Decentralized Autonomous Organization and I guess the fact of the matter is, it's they're only partly decentralized, and they're not completely not very autonomous.
-- “And I think for organizing humans, the challenge is still, you know, the DAO stands for a Decentralized Autonomous Organization and I guess the fact of the matter is, it's they're only partly decentralized, and they're not completely not very autonomous.” So he is well-aware of the weaknesses and limitations of the structure that he's operating within.
Tridog 27:27
And so part of that--
Gary 27:30
It's always been a bit of a misnomer.
Tridog 27:27
(Laughing) Yes, exactly.
Gary 27:32
In the community.
Tridog 27:34
So I think, like, that's, like, I guess-- but I do think it is a step forward. Like, it is, like, okay, we're trying, we're trying an innovation on, like, a corporate structure to try to allow a voice to the community and allow funds to flow to the community. So that building around-- centered around our values can happen. And it's, you know, I think a lot of very cool projects have come through, you know, our first Doge Day was funded and we-- I think we have Salad-- SaladPingers on the call, you know, like that was funded through a proposal. So like, we've we've funded, funded a lot of big projects through--
Gary 28:06
That was a... that was a proposal thing?
Tridog 28:11
Yeah, that was the proposal to, like, hosted-- host Doge Day on November 2, last year. And, and so that was like, yeah, he put a very good-- a very thorough proposal together. And, and it was funded, you know, through the DAO. So, yeah... it's cool, it's cool, I think it's one step--
Gary 28:22
So just out of curiosity, like, could you walk through that process in one minute?
Tridog 28:28
Yeah. Yeah. So and it was-- Yeah, great. It's a good question because, I think, one thing-- a call to action I want to mention at the end, at least, was was like, anyone can come, you know, we're not, we're not, we-- it's not token-gated to DOG holders. Anyone can come to dao.ownthedoge.com and they can submit ideas or proposals and they're reviewed and you know, we give feedback and you know, so it's like you want to build some crazy doge thing? I mean, it's a great place to like get your-- throw an idea out against the wall. And you know, like I've-- like, for example, I've been wanting someone to pick up and get us into like the-- make Doge in the-- as a Macy's Day Parade balloon, you know, or like, you know, we thought about how do we, how do we make the biggest Doge art in the world? And this guy for an-- on a beach in Ireland made, like, this huge thing and did a cool drone video.
-- Macy's Day Parade balloon.
Tridog 29:19
So it's, like, all these things, basically, there's, there's all the information you need at that website dao.ownthedoge.com and there's, like, templates on, like, information you could include and, you know, but I-- we're open to raw ideas, you know, I think it helps to have a lot information, enough information so we can assess it; how much it costs, what is it exactly? Why is it helpful for the Doge community, etc. But yeah, that's like a great-- that's a great outlet for someone who wants to really build or, you know, do productive things to further Doge in the space.
-- What I hear is: “We don't have original ideas so we're expecting the community to help us come up with ways to help promote and monetize our brand for us!”
Gary 29:49
Yeah. Yeah, I've been meaning to-- didn't really know exactly how it worked, but I knew there was a Bark Tank and a way to propose stuff. Been meaning to propose things but...
Tridog 30:00
Yeah, it's pretty raw.
Gary 30:01
Just been too busy.
Tridog 30:02
Anyone can come by and, you kno-- and I think one thing, actually, too, I mean, I think Gary and I will probably do this separately as well, after, but like, I would love ideas around how we can integrate the two projects because -- Dogecoin and Own The Doge -- because I think we'd have in a few senses, you know, like turned on currency, turned on donations. But yeah, be cool to figure out other ways that we can bring the communities closer together. Because I think like, I get the skepticism, most meme coins out there are very scammy spammy, you know, greedy, they're not really-- there's no tie back to the meme or the creator, or the, or the thing that they represent. And it's-- so it is rare, I think. We-- I think we sit in this 1% of like, the whole provenance coin or backed meme thing that, like, you know, and there's, like, NFD, Elon, RWA, and us, you know, (Laughing) like that, like actually have, like, Smiminem, I think, maybe has something but, like, there's very few projects that are like actually--
Gary 31:00
I'd invest in Smiminem.
Tridog 31:02
(Laughing) Smiminem, shout out.
Gary 31:04
Shout out.
Tridog 31:05
The boy who saved crypto. (Gary laughing) But yeah, there's, I think it's, like, that's kind of what-- how I differentiate Own The Doge, it's like we want to-- we care about the entirety of Doge and we want to just fun things that, that make-- keep Doge fun and interesting. And, and keep within the ethos, and if it ever makes money, which, guess what? So you know, sometimes things make money, there's revenue, it just, it just funnels back into, usually, Atsuko, Kabosu, charity and back into creating more Doge culture for us. So it's not, like, it's not, like, we're, like, sitting on, like, these cash bags. I mean, it's the DAO, it's completely transparent. You can go to ownthedoge.eth, you can see our-- all our assets, you can find the LP, I mean, everything is pretty transparent. And so it's, there's nothing that-- I mean, it's a very cool cycle, right? Because it only propagates Doge more, which, I think, is good for any Doge project. The more you see Doge, the more you get excited about it, especially if it's used in the right way.
-- OwnTheDoge.eth is not a valid web address. Is this on the Ethereum platform? I don't use Ethereum.
Gary 32:04
For sure, just being mindful of time. Probably good to keep moving forward learning more about the IP situation.
Tridog 32:14
Yeah, yeah. Let's jump into it.
Gary 32:17
Let's do some rapid fire answers there. So, um, first question was: What is the history of the photo IP? Ownership? What does that look like? Since 2010? or whenever it was taken?
Tridog 32:14
Yeah.
Gary 32:36
If you don't...?
Tridog 32:37
Yeah, I think, well, what I can always just share what I know and I'll just say, look, like, I'm not an attorney. So I mean, I'm, again, I'm like a builder. That's, you know, works, works, has been working on this for a bit, and just has my own kind of ideals and vision around it. But I think, you know, what you just heard a little bit of, but yeah, I'm not-- I'm not an attorney. But here's what-- and I don't, I definitely don't know everything. But we've tried to chronicle as much of the history as possible. And we've really, like, really do consider ourselves like a Doge museum, or like Cultural Institute of Doge, or like a Doge historian. And, like, we're constantly trying to get that right and as accurate as possible. But, as far as I know, Atsuko has always told-- I mean, what-- Atsuko has always held the copyright, I guess, is maybe let's start there. Like she's always had the possibility to do whatever a copyright holder could do. And then I think for a hot minute, back in the day, this company called UltraPro, had like a license with her. And they didn't do anything with it. We actually, like, went through them at a point to get Doge into this, like, famous NFT book. And they needed to see, you know, what is the first of many examples, they needed to see legal clarity, right? They needed to see legal clarity, they literally wouldn't put Doge in this book. With even though it's probably one of the most famous images that was probably in the entire book, without that clarity. So, so we basically went through Ultra Pro at first.
-- When was this? What was the name of that book? What specific legal clarity did UltraPro need to see and why?
Tridog 34:08
And then, and then that was, like, early on. Then, over the years, right? Like, almost three years now, I kind of made it a mission to like get back in touch with Atsuko and start building a relationship with her and figure out, like, what would she want? What is, what would-- How does she think about Kabosu? You know, let's, let's interview her, right, like, let's, let's, let's get back to the origins, because we care so much about the provenance of the image and, like, the fact that we bought it from her but that e-- when I joined Pleasr, there was, really wasn't a direct connection with Atsuko. And I was like, I wanted to, like--
-- So he wanted to build that relationship with Atsuko.
Gary 34:38
Question there.
Tridog 34:39
Yeah. Mmm-hmm?
Gary 34:40
Did buying the NFT image confer any copyright or IP?
Tridog 34:46
No.
Gary 34:47
Anything? Okay.
Tridog 34:48
No. Yeah, the interesting thing, right, in the NFT world, right? No IP comes with NFTs. I think we've seen cool examples of that but I shout out PudgyPenguins because pudgy, you know, like, they had an IP built into like their individual NFT PFPs. And like if you-- they use that in, like, the real world or like through projects and it was your NFT, you'd get like a kickback for that. That's kind of a cool, novel way that, like, crypto has, like, innovated on IP. And so I-- my hope is, I guess, is with, this, with starting this conversation and then making the announcement about the IP, we can kind of find interesting novel ways to, like, bring IP ownership forward, and like, you know, that fall in line with, like, our, the values of the Doge community.
Gary 35:33
Yeah, and I know that it's a crazy landscape to navigate with archaic IP laws, and they're different in every country around the world. So...
Tridog 35:44
Oh, for sure. I mean, I definitely--
Gary 35:46
Crazy.
Tridog 35:47
Not necessa-- you know, sorry, lawyers that I know, but, like, I'm not a big fan of lawyers, to be honest. Right? Like, I'm like, I want to just, like, do fun things, have a positive impact, and, you know, not have to, like, literally 'don't say this, don't say that, we got to sign a contract!' Right? And that's one of the things that drew me to, like, the crypto space because people just cared about that a little bit less. But I guess the reality of it was, what, what-- and to finish, I guess, that question was we, you know, we originally built this relation with Atsuko no thought really went to like, IP ownership at the moment, right? Like, we were kind of just, like, this is really cool. Like, no one-- it felt like no one had really come back and built a relationship with Atsuko and Kabuso even though so many millions of people love Doge.
-- #Opportunity.
Tridog 36:30
And we're like, what if we can, like, open up that, open up that, you know, build that bridge and work with her on projects and like, do fundraisers together and auction off the literal Doge couch from the image that was still sitting in her home, on chain. And (Laughing) and for Ethereum and (Laughing) and give it the money to charity, which actually happened. So, so I think it kind of, like, that's how our relationship was built was like, you know, doing these project with her like working-- She worked very closely on the Doge statue. I don't know if most people know that but we were talking to her (Gary chuckling) she was going-- she went to the foundry, like, you know, like, we project managed it. But like, she was like very involved. She's was, like, you know, 'how big can it be?' She wanted a more life-size Doge, you know, we were like, we were like, 'oh, we should put the couches, the plinth underneath it!' And she was like, 'that's cool'. She's like, 'we should put my cats in it.' You know, and I don't know if most people know that, like, once you see it in Japan, like, there's-- she has, she has (Gary chuckling) three cats and the cats are there, too.
Gary 37:31
I remember one day in the group chat it was just like 'Atsuko wants three cats in the statute too!' (Chuckling) We're like, 'Okay, that's gonna (Tridog chuckling) change things.
Tridog 37:41
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah.
Gary 37:42
But it turned out good.
Tridog 37:44
And, yeah, Gary you, like, totally, you helped a ton with like, moderating the statue situation where, like, you know, Own The Doge, Dogecoin Foundation, Doge Pound, um, NFD. (Gary, unclear) We kind of united a bunch of the Doge community and Doge projects around it, which was really cool, with, with the statue, and, and, a big part for Gary, because you, you've always, like, been, again, like, with that 'I have unification'. So that's why I, like, trust you so much. And, you know, again, wanted to do these spaces, because I'm like, you know, if anyone has the best intentions for bringing Doge people toge-- Doge is stronger together, it's you. (Gary laughing)
Gary 38:22
Doing my best. Umm, so I started talking to--
Tridog 38:28
I don't know if I finished the question but the end of it is that we ran into, and I think we've mentioned this, I've mentioned a few times on on X already. We run it-- we ran into situations, one was actually do-- in a partnership with the Dogecoin Foundation, where not having clear IP ownership stop-- was like a dead-end for bringing some cool opportunities back to the community.
-- What were they? What was the stated reason that they were a dead-end?
Tridog 38:54
You know, we, we basically are constantly looking again, like how, where can we bring Doge that-- where she hasn't been before? You know, what would be like, kind of innovative, but also like, wacky and fun and, and values-aligned? And, like, yeah, like, we ran into multiple occasions where there's like, 'Yeah, we don't, the lawyers won't really let you do this,' you know, and, you know, like, they're not, they don't, that's not enough, it's not good enough for us. And so we kept running into those things on our own and with Dogecoin foundation and like, are like, Yeah, we need to like figure this out. Because, otherwise, like, we're not, we're gonna start getting blocked at, like, the things we can do and the new places we can bring Doge and, and so that's what led to the conversation with Atsuko.
Tridog 39:35
I mean, honestly, Atsuko and I probably talk like once a week, like, is this definitely-- I mean, we've always said, like, Own The Doge is probably the closest you can get to the origins of Doge, you know, and it's like, you know, it's, I think it's, it's, it's very true, it's like, we-- I'll literally just text her and just be like, 'Hey, we're, you know, thinking about doing this or-- is that cool?' You know, I mean, I'm still, I still think the funniest thing-- I mean, it's not the craziest thing I've ever asked her but the funniest thing was like, the couch auction, right?
Tridog 40:02
I'm literally like, 'Will you sell your couch on blockchain?' It's literally the couch you use every day still, you know? And it's like, she was like, 'oh, okay,' like, you know, and then we're like, well, 'We'll do it for charity, let's do it for charity.' And, like, she was, like, 'Yeah, yeah, okay.' So, like, we've-- and then she did an interview on that, that was on Pleasr House and, and the kind of live crypto talk show and an auction house and like, that's, like, she actually came on and gave an interview on as well. So it's, I think, like, all that stuff kind of got to a head where we had built a strong relationship, we had worked on all these projects together. And so she trusted us, and she's met me in person a bunch of times. And, and then we were like, 'Well, look,' I think-- you know, well, actually it started, I guess this is actually good part to have.
Tridog 40:46
It started with-- that when we, when we talked about it within Own The Doge, in the DAO. We wanted, we said, Let's-- we should probably, like, how do we unblock this stuff? Do we try to get a license? Or do we try to do a Creative Commons? CCO, and, and we decided to actually ask her about the CCO. And, and Atsuko was a little bit, she knew what giving up the copyright meant. And she was a little bit concerned that if, without any oversight at all, even though she doesn't, she hasn't really taken action, that like if there was a very negative use, or someone co-opted Doge in a really bad way, she wouldn't have any recourse. So that was kind of where we, like, we knew that would be best for the Doge community and, and we tried to pursue that first, because they thought that could also bring, like, you know, allow for even more usage of Doge in you know, corporate brand environments, you know, places where that was getting blocked. And it just it wasn't she wasn't comfortable with it. And so yeah, so that's kind of, we, like, the the audible was, let's do it at license. And let's, you know, let's move forward, you know, let's empower the DAO to be able to, to use that license in new and novel ways and unlock some of these doors that were-- we had experienced ourselves that were being closed on us because of the unclear-ness of what the current situation was.
Gary 42:18
And then the way she wanted to move forward was, I guess, it's referred to as an exclusive license with Own The Doge.
Tridog 42:32
Correct. Yeah.
Gary 42:35
Yeah, I'm just curious. I'm still not really clear on what that means. How it works.
Tridog 42:42
Yeah, basically just means, like, you know, anything related to the Kabosu, Doge, anything like that kind of sits with, you know, to the photo, right? Like, you can't, you can't, like, license a dog as a, you know, like an entity as a, as, like, a, like, you know, a species-- dog species or, like, a person, like, you can't, you can't license, like, a Shiba Inu, I guess is what I'm saying. But for as far as it's related to Doge, I think, you know, she wasn't interested in, like, dealing with all this, like, many different avenues and angles, like, she was just, like, I trust you guys. Like, we can go through with this, she ended, she ended the license that hadn't really went anywhere and they hadn't done anything, through UltraPro. And then just was, like, here. You guys, I trust you guys to bring this to me. I, you know, we had worked on all these projects and, like, she knew she knew me, personally. And so that's kind of how that went down to this, like, exclusive license where we can, can take the-- take that and run with it as an organization, which hadn't really happened before. Or at least hadn't happened in, like, an exclusive way and hadn't happened in a way that we were, there were, so, like, so much more tapped into the Doge community than UltraPro, which kind of just does, like, they're not necessarily Doge community, right? They do like their own types of, like, gaming and collectible things.
-- When you say "You guys" who is that exactly?
Gary 44:03
Mm-hmm. So Own The Doge has this exclusive license, and you can sublicense or whatever the term is to other organizations or people or how does that work?
Tridog 44:20
Yeah, yeah. I think sublicense, I think, you know, again, not an attorney here, sublicense, I believe, is, like, you're licensing it out so that people can then license it out further. Think more, so, it's, like, we can just license it out. I think that would be what had the terminology. We can license it out to, you know, whoever, whoever would be interested in using it, I think and then, generally, I know the question has been concern of, like, are we going to try to, like, stop people from using Doge? And the answer is absolutely not. And I'll keep saying that. Absolutely not. We know the sensitivity of like the Doge community around being open source or decentralized or being able to use this meme, feeling this meme is their own. That was never the intention, right?
Tridog 45:02
And I think through all of-- you know, we, you know, through our, our space that we have our community call, we have a community call every week where we talked about this and kind of did a Q&A. We did, you know, we did multiple anno-- we did announcements, I followed up on it just to make it even clearer, but, like, we're never trying to close anyone's door trying to stop people from doing things. That's very much in line with what Atsuko has done. You can imagine if there was something really, really bad, like, okay, sure, we'll, we'll look into it. If Atsuko was really concerned about something, yeah, like, we're gonna have to look into it.
Tridog 45:35
But that's not the-- that's not the intention, right? The intention is-- people are doing, are doing good with Doge and spreading it and using that as, like, something to Doge-pill more people to make the, you know, make the world more joyful and happy. And, you know, like, that's, you know, that's, that's what we want to see. And we've always wanted to see that, we want to be part of that, leaders of-- leaders in that, you know, be the best at it. And, and that's what we've tried to do over the last two and a half years. So when it comes to, like, when does a license apply? I think it applies in situations, like, people have been sharing, 'Oh, like this has happened before, right?' Like, like, Axe body spray did a limited edition Doge run, well, who-- who, did any-- did any of that go back to the Doge community? Did any of it go to charity? Did any go to Atsuko/Kabosu? I don't think so. You know, so like, I think like that, that, those are examples where we could definitely do very cool, fun products that, that will fund back into Doge culture, Atsuko, Kabosu and, and charity because literally, we've-- anything we've made revenue on, we've added a charity component, like, I think, since the beginning, since the very beginning, since the NFT auction, there's always been a charity component, and Save the Children has been kind of our preferred charity as well. So and we've also donated to dog charities, but Save The Children's been really great. And we're actually, we're actually the largest donor to save the children.
-- Save The Children donations are tax deductible. If the DAO is their largest crypto donor, is it or anyone using those donations as tax write-offs? (Hidden benefit?)
Tridog 46:53
They have, like, a leaderboard running and we're the largest crypto donor that Save The Children's ever had. So I think it's working, right? Like, I think our, this model of, like, being able to create public goods, Doge culture, you know, if there's a revenue component, then it goes back into Own The Doge, we distribute to the peo-- the origins, we distribute to charity, and then we just literally make more Doge culture. It's a pretty cool cycle and I don't know if that's always, I don't know-- I think we've done a great job at explaining those internal-- that and how this, how, internally, it works but I know because people are sensitive about, like, profiteering off of Doge and profiteering off of Kabosu or Atsuko and it's, like, I'm here... I'm here today to say 100% not the-- 169% not the case, right? Like we've-- we actually have a very close relationship with them. And we want and we are using this money in a very smart, very Doge-value sort of way.
-- But it's also in to your direct financial benefit to do all of this, especially to talk up thought-terminator like “charity” that make people feel good and stop there. How much, for how long? And that's just the top-level stuff. How transparent do you want to be, really?
Gary 47:45
Yeah, it's great to be here today and learning this stuff because even though I've known you guys for years, I didn't really fully understand exactly how things worked. And I think it's great too if, like, the stress on Atsuko can be offloaded through this 'cause Julie and I, we had a very special day on my birthday, she invited us to come to her house, and we had a beautiful time. And she voiced her concern that she was worried about negative usages of the Doge meme. And I'm sure the last thing she wants to be doing is, like, any sort of dealing with these things, so if you guys are able to assist if there are negative usages or I think those would just serve as a deterrent against it, too. So never really been enforced before this but now if bad actors know that if they're doing something negative, there could be consequences and that's a positive.
-- How many negative 'uses' of the Doge meme have there been over the last decade and how could you have stopped them with the license? I wonder if you may have, as a friend, of course, amplified or put the fear of this into her - problem, reaction, solution - preying on her concern about negative uses of the meme... which, you wouldn't have been able to stop anyway.
-- All of this talk is nice and all but the vast majority of DOG holders aren't going to be making Doge projects, just buying DOG to hold it, ride it up and cash it in. Especially after you just gave away $15 million in free tokens. You're not encouraging 'Do Only Good Everyday', you're encouraging greed and you will attract those people to the project.
Tridog 48:48
Yeah, I just, I hope we keep Doge wholesome. I hope we 'Do Only Good Everyday'. I hope, I hope that, you know, like, yeah, we'd use Doge as these-- one of these few memes that has like, has such longevity and has spread happiness and the silliness that-- and this, like, 'don't take yourself so seriously' sort of vibe. Like, yeah, I hope, I think we've done a great job with that as a community and I think we need to continue to really, really uphold that because, yeah, I mean if we can use this image, this funny yellow dog (chuckling) looking at me sideways to spread joy. Like, that's-- Atsuko is-- that's what Atsuko feels too, Right? Like she is. That's, that, what's been so special for this journey for her is that--
Gary 49:26
Yeah.
Tridog 49:27
--she's seen that and, like, you-- I cannot wait for the documentary to come out. That's going to cover every aspect of Doge history. You know, it's gonna, you're gonna hear so much from Atsuko. You know, we have a lot of-- more filming to do. So it's gonna take some time, but it's gonna be really cool. And I think that those are the sorts of things that, like, we're not doing a documentary about Own The Doge, right? We're doing a documentary about Doge. Like, a dog that is over 18 years old, that lives in Japan, that has influenced the world and today and is owned by a sixty-year-old kindergarten teacher who also wants to just use Doge as, like, as a thing that can influence the world to be happier and more silly.
-- You didn't need an exclusive license to do any of the good work you had done in the past. Did you get an exclusive license now because you're about to go on a big marketing blitz for the documentary? Interesting that you're also given out millions of dollars in free (promotional?) DOG tokens... and Kabuso isn't getting any younger.
Tridog 50:09
So it's, it's what a cool story. It is just it's, it's such a, it's an honor to really like work for a dog photograph (chuckles) in this way.
Gary 50:18
Shout out to John Lynn, documentary filmmaker.
-- Documentary first announced on April 10, 2023.
Tridog 50:20
Yeah.
Gary 50:22
And, yeah, I've always been amazed, like, people have brought up in the past, like, what if Doge gets co-opted or, like, used by horrible people? It was, like, I think the meme is just kind of, like, so-- like, it is this wholesome, fun thing. I think it's just intrinsically resistant to that kind of stuff. So I've never really been worried about that happening but I think it would be great-- if there was, like, corporate usage, the funds do go back to the community. So definitely... interesting... new Chapter.
Gary 51:01
I was wondering, too, with my first concern was that-- I thought the copyright or the IP had been given. But... given that it's just a license, you said Atsuko if she doesn't like the way Own The Doge is using it, she can revoke the license, is that correct?
Tridog 51:19
Yeah. Yep. Atsuko retains control, complete control of the copyright, right? So... this-- they know, the long and short of it, pretty standard license agreement. And she, you know, can always choose to not, you know, to not continue, and... yeah, and I think that's, you know, that's part of, I mean, there's always checks and balances with these things. But, you know, I think, I don't know, I think we have a very good track record. I'm not, I think we were gonna, like, very much, like, make this very, very easy for her. And it's, she's going to be really hyped and, you know, come meet her November 2 Doge Day, second, second Doge Day in Japan.
-- Then why did you announce it as "We own the Doge IP!"? How does Atsuko retain control? What's the process for her to pull back the license? What would happen if she decided to do so after you have so much riding on this?
Gary 52:02
Is there any duration for the license? Or it's just like, as long as she says it's...?
Tridog 52:09
Yep, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it's-- it's all in her control. So, you know, she, she could revoke at any time, really. I mean, it-- regardless of what the legality says, I mean, if she wasn't, if she had a change of heart about something or, like, didn't want to do something, I wouldn't do it, you know? I don't think we-- we respect her very much and she's said things that she wasn't comfortable in doing and we, you know, we're not going to push on that, right? We're not going to try to do something that she's not interested in.
-- But even if she could, would she revoke it? There are so many questions here, especially now that you've ingratiated yourself with her as a friend that you talk to weekly.
Gary 52:36
Mm-hmm. Because, yeah, that was one of the questions when we had our initial call to, like, what if Own The Doge gets co-opted or taken over or whatever but it's nice that Atsuko has a switch to turn things off if she wants to.
Tridog 52:55
Yeah. Yeah. And I think we're very, we're a very secure organization. I saw, like, people in the community, like, discussing, like, 'What's the organizational structure of Own The Doge?' And I can assure you, we are very secure, we have probably, you know, we're in the top 1% of, like, compliance and security for Dallas. Like, we're, you know, there's, there's nothing weird going on. And that we're trying to, to do. It's, we're very much in line with, like, the best way to do these things and, on the legal front, lit-- literally, the person I talked to about IP stuff is Kobe Bryant's, like, friend and ex-attorney, IP attorney. So, you know, and he, I met him through Pleasr, he had worked with Pleasr as their GC and that's like, who we work with now.
Tridog 53:43
And so it's like, we're definitely not trying to do-- we're very, very buttoned up and making it-- you know, if there was-- I don't-- very, very unlikely that there would be some sort of, you know-- I think we see this in crypto all the time, right? Like, people try to do backend attacks into DAOs and, you know, or like, Nouns DAO splitting into two because people just wanted to cash out. It's like, we have checks and balances that prevent that sort of thing from happening.
-- Give us some examples of what they are and how they prevent it.
Gary 54:11
Yeah. Definitely reassuring to hear. Is there more that you're able to share about the license? Any other specifics of it?
Tridog 54:27
Yeah, I mean, I just reiterate like, you know, this is just, like, a standard license agreement for a photo-- photograph. And, you know, it's, like, that's, I think, and it's only going to be used in circumstances to open doors, where there's, you know, commercialization that would potentially have the usage. It could be the usage without money. It also could be the usage with a revenue component and then that where that revenue go and we go back into that Atsuko's hands back into charity, and it would go back into Doge culture via the DAO. So that's the, you know, I don't think there's anything to be concerned about there. And, you know, and I think generally, like, right, like, then I think that people like, well, I don't know you, I don't know Own The Doge. But if you look at our track record, you know, check out our website, scroll to the bottom, look at all the projects that we funded. Our link tree like, you know, all these, all these avenues, like, have, like, all, like, we have literally done everything we've said for two and a half years.
-- How do we know it's a standard agreement? All of those projects were funded without an exclusive license. Also: You said you'd do something in the past but you got the license without warning, without telling anyone. You broke the pattern of good faith and now it looks like all of those good works were just business investments toward getting you what you really wanted out of Atsuko: an exclusive license.
Tridog 55:30
I don't think anyone has a cleaner track record in crypto, to be honest. You know, we're like, if we're gonna, if we say we're going to do something, we're going to do it. If we say we're going to uphold like Doge ethos and values, we're going to do it, like, if we say we're going to create a bronze statue of the Doge in Japan, in partnership with G-- Atsuko, we're going to do it, you know, like, and we have done it. And so I think it's, I just, I just want to reassure people, like, we are one of the most upfront, like, studious, DAOs, out there. And it's great, because we're tied into Doge and Doge has this huge potential and impact in the world. And we just want to be a part of that.
-- Okay, if you're upfront, release the actual contract to the community. Also: Of course you want to be a part of that, you stand to make a whole lot of money off of everyone else's free work in the community.
Gary 56:11
Yeah, definitely been great to be able to meet almost everyone, IRL. In a world where a lot of people are just anonymous avatars. So, wondering about the license, it applies, do you know if it applies worldwide? Or how that works?
Tridog 56:30
Yeah, again, probably can't go super specific on the license because I'm not an attorney but as far as I'm concerned, anytime there's that usage, right? Like, I mean, obviously, I can't go country by country (Laughing), and say, what is their-- how do they apply to, like, a license? And, you know, how do they apply-- you know, how do they affect a pho-- license of a photograph in their own specific regulations, but, like, you know, I think it's safe to assume, right? Like, we, you know, if there's, if that's commercialization, or like someone's trying to, like, use Doge in that way, in a way that's aligned, right, like we would, that's where we can have this conversation now. And make sure that it kind of falls in line with what the community wants. And I'm sure there'll be moments where, you know, we can even bring this back to the DAO, right, or, like, you know, to our-- to the community, and just say, hey, like, what-- here's a poll, or here's, like, an idea, or here's a snapshot vote for them-- from the DAO for DOG holders, like, what do you want-- what do you think we should do in this situation? Right? Where do you want to donate, like, money from the store? Where we're creating, you know, very unique Doge products on, like, where do you want to see that money go to-- which charity? You know? Or, like, what do you want to name the Doge documentary?
-- Did the DAO vote on having you acquire the exclusive license? Did they know about it? How often are you holding community votes for decisions that actually matters? What was the last big vote that you held? Are you hiding behind your DAO to justify the things that you want to do by giving them the illusion of community consent without actually voting on things that matter?
Tridog 57:42
These are, like, the fun things, I think we can use a DAO for-- a Doge DAO for and, and, you know, so I want to, you know, continue trying to push some of that engagement, and then, then DAO governance and, like, fun ways like that, like, so I don't know, exactly, you know, not everything-- a lot of this has to be written, right? Like, I think that's why it's, like, we're not gonna have super-clear answers on every aspect of this. Because, let's see, right? Like, a lot of it's, like, here's the high-level strategy, but, like, let's see how this plays out, you know? And when we can involve the community, if we can get ideas from the community, if we can have, you know, pitches on how to integrate Dogecoin if we, you know, how novel ways like Pudgy Penguins, how to use the IP, that's what I think we're, that's the stage we're at right now. Right? Send us, you know, we want to, we want to have these discussions and ideas and send us these ide-- send us your thoughts, you know, because, like, we want to have a, we want to see what we can do to, you know, continue innovating in, like, the fun Dogely way that we have been.
Gary 58:38
Mm-hmm. I see Randy there with your hand up. Hopefully, we can do some questions at the end but just want to be sure we get through the questions here today. Before we run out of time. Another question I had was, do you have? Have you decided, like, what the threshold would be for a license that should be paid, like, the size of the corporation or the entity or whatever, when it's felt that licensing fees should come into play? Because I know you've said individuals, small-sellers absolutely nothing to worry about. But do you have a threshold yet? For...?
Tridog 59:26
Yeah, I think, it's I think it's something that we need to kind of figure out. I think, generally, what this does is again, brings that clarity. So if someone's trying to do some big-time commercialization of Doge and they, like, they need that-- they, their, like, their legal-- they have a legal department. (Chuckling) Probably that's a good, a good indicator. Do they have a legal department that is telling them they can't do this without getting a sign off on it? And like, that's where we could then basically, I don't know, I mean, I don't want to say, like, Robinhood but like, you know, we can take-- we can make sure that money gets directed back into more Doge culture back to the origins, back to charity, right? Everything gets in line, right?
-- Of course. Small fish who are helping to promote the Doge brand are helping your DAO and DOG holders and making it more attractive to larger advertisers. It's the large corporate advertisers that you actually want. Again: what percentages go to Atsuko? What percentages are going to Charity? Is it 25%/25% and the DAO keeps 50% of profits? Is it 20%/20% and the DAO keeps 60%? If you're going to tell people that money is going to them and you want to be "upfront" how much are they going to be receiving for the community's efforts?
Tridog 1:00:01
So, like, that's-- I think that's kind of roughly when it will happen right? There-- people are going to come asking to use it if, like, we continue to do our job as the Doge community, right? And trying to, you know, popularize Doge and use this as, like, a force for good, then more and more, like, companies are going to want to say, 'Hey, you know, we want to do this, we're gonna do that.' And then as we have those conversations, you know, we can, yeah, try to bring-- include the doge community, make sure that the fund-- if there's revenue funds from it, then like, we can send that to the right places. You know, that's, like--
-- "try to include the Doge community." Not "will". "Try".
Gary 1:00:27
I think that's cool too because you'll be able to, like, if corporations reach out, you can onboard them to Doge culture, so they, really--
-- "Onboard them to Doge culture?" I’m sorry, and this isn't directed at you Gary, but let’s all be honest: Corporations don't care about our culture, only how much effort they have to put in in order to extract the most amount of money out of it. They only want to know that these Doge people will spend money and that it's profitable to advertise to them.
Tridog 1:00:41
Exactly, exactly. It's not--
Gary 1:00:42
--what they're working with. They're not just like, 'Oh, here, it's on Axe deodorant.' But--
Tridog 1:00:47
Exactly, yeah. It's-- it's not just them slapping the Doge face on thing-- on stupid products that, like, don't make any sense and, like, there's no money that goes to charity, and nothing comes back into like, you know, like, because-- like, I guess when I talk about 'public goods' and 'Doge culture,' I'm, like, maybe we could make that Macy's Day pulloon-- balloon Doge, Macy's Day balloon, Macy's Day Parade balloon happen, right? You know, as we like, if like, you know, Axe paid us X amount of money, and then we brought X amount of money into that. And then, you know, combine that with DAO funds or, you know, whatever, you know, and then we have the community vote on it. And like, you know, that's how that sort of stuff could play out--
Gary 1:01:23
Yeah.
Tridog 1:01:24
--if this is successful.
Gary 1:01:25
Another question that I'm seeing a lot of is, people in the Dogecoin community are worried that this will restrict Dogecoin related endeavors. Can you speak to any of that?
Tridog 1:01:43
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I mean, 100% not right. We-- we've, we've worked closely with the Dogecoin community and the Dogecoin Foundation, including when, Gary, you were on it, like, from the beginning, and, like, we continue to extend olive branches and find ways and, like, literally, today, we, like, integrated Dogecoin as as a currency onto the store that, that we run and wow-- wowbydoge.com. We're selling, we're selling, we're selling-- you can, you can have your very own Doge statue, exact dimensions of Kabosu. (Laughing)
Tridog 1:02:18
But, yeah, like, I-- I think, like, we're literally trying to integrate Dogecoin into as much things we can do. We, you know, we integrated into the fundraising campaign for the statue, we integrated into the fundraiser around the couch auction, and now it's on the store. And we've, we've discussed, like, doing it-- how to, like, it's-- it's, the complicated part is, like, we're an ERC-20 token, right? DOG is. And so that means it's built on Ethereum, right, where a lot of the building happens and, you know, so, like, figuring out the cross-chain function into Dogecoin has-- that really has been the hard problem.
Gary 1:02:50
It's really sad that-- I wish the wrapped Doge token had stuck around because then--
Tridog 1:02:56
Yeah, yeah.
Gary 1:02:58
--used or, hopefully, it comes back. I mean, that could even be a project that's funded.
Tridog 1:03:02
Yeah.
Gary 1:03:03
Resurrecting it, because then, yeah, you can have Dogecoin integrated cross-chain and all these things. And...
Tridog 1:03:10
Yeah, that would have been amazing. Yeah, we tried to support the wrapped Doge creators and, like, you know, we're like, 'maybe this will be a cool way we can kind of, you know, connect.' I think it was bad timing on the launch because it was kind of launched within the bear and middle of the bear and, you know, maybe wasn't the best timing.
Gary 1:03:28
Shout out to Oscar for doing his best!
Tridog 1:03:29
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I always support the builders, right? And sometimes things pay off and sometimes they don't, and, you know, projects fail but that's okay, like, that happens. And, yeah, we gotta keep doing more building, right? Like crypto is all about building and, and trying to further and trying new things and, and like being okay with failure and, and, like, you know, it's a, it's a very cool culture, right? It's like, I spent time in, like, web two startups and now being in, in web three, I'm just, like, I love it. Like, people are so down to earth, they're quirky, they're creative, they're innovating on the bleeding edge. It's a very cool culture to be a part of, and, yeah, I'm sure we'll find-- we'll find more ways, like, we want-- I mean, wrapped Doge, or, you know, we've been looking, like, you know, people who hold Dogecoin on Coinbase, because we're, you know, we're, like, the large-- largest meme token, maybe the, maybe the largest on Base, Coinbase's chain because we bridged over there early in the year. And so, you know, we have, like, their ear, and we're just, like, well, how do we, you know, would there be a way to, like, find holders of Doge-- Dogecoin, like, you know, and like, be able to airdrop them or something? So, I don't know, you know, it's, like, these are, like, all kind of just, like, ideas that we're trying to think about and figure out but, like, yeah, we'd love to come up with ways to integrate Dogecoin into more things that we're doing.
-- You “have their ear”? Huh. I wonder if you're not the only person smelling some money to be made here?
Gary 1:04:49
Yeah, that was something I suggested in one of my posts was be awesome if there was corporate licensee who was aligned and he said, 'This is okay, but you're gonna have to pay in Doge!' (Tridog chuckling) and then, ideally-- if the Doge was wrapped then you could watch it go into the DAO and then be portioned back to the people and projects. I mean, you could do it with Dogecoin on the blockchain, but--
Tridog 1:05:16
Yeah, I-- I mean-- (Laughing)
Gary 1:05:16
--would be super-cool to see the where-- where all the Doge blending.
Tridog 1:05:18
I don't-- I don't know the-- I don't know the feasibility for some of it. For, you know, it really depends on who the partner would be but, you know, I-- I wouldn't mind bringing it up, see, you know, see, see if they do it, you know? (Laughing)
Gary 1:05:32
Yeah, to me, that's, like, the biggest... one of the biggest upgrades, moving from corporations to DAOs is it can, potentially, everything can be transparent, like all the money flows, all the voting, all the decision making. And if you have full transparency, that's the ultimate way to have trust. And... the whole phrase, "Don't trust verify" is, I mean, you're verifying and trusting, and it's all, just, there. So, hoping that there can be maximal transparency with this to make the community feel hyped and just keep amplifying what's going on here.
-- For some of maximum transparency: Tridog should show us the vote where he asked the DAO users if he should pursue the Exclusive License. Or the discussion about it with the Doge or DOG community before he did it. As I have said before, all of his previous 'good works' now seem to be colored because he broke the pattern of telling people what he was going to be doing and then doing it. It now looks like getting close to Atsuko so that he could get an exclusive license for the Doge IP was his intention the entire time. To me, listening to this interview, it seems like he got close to Atsuko by showering her with attention and doing 'good' charity work and making her feel good and now that he's got the license his vision for the Doge brand is McDonalds, Disney, Crocs and Macy's Day balloons.
Gary 1:06:19
I was wondering too, when the corporate stuff started happening, like, Axe and I think Slim Jim made Slim Jims, I don't know if that actually happened, but I was looking at it and I was, like, not sure how to feel about this. Like, I, like, seeing Doge on things, I like the message spreading. But... I've always kind of had an aversion to the corporate structure, like, have you ever seen the movie The Corporation?
Tridog 1:06:52
Uhhh... I don't-- not-- not as clear memory of it.
Gary 1:06:54
Really cool documentary from Canada. My friend actually created it about 20 years ago and it's based on this book called The Corporation where it does, like, a psychoanalysis because, you know, there's corporate personhood. Basically, a corporation is regarded as a person by the law. So the book takes that and it says, "If a corporation is a person, what kind of person would it be?" And it goes through and checks off every box of a psychopath. (Tridog chuckling) It gets driven only by profit, no soul, no, like conscience. So watching that was very interesting, because you see that corporations dominate the world so you have these institutions that are basically psychopathic, that are running everything and colluding with governments and this is, like, absolute centralization. So... but we're forced into this because the corporate structure is kind of the one that has to be used by businesses around the world. And the DAO is, like, the only thing I've seen that really presents a way to transition and we're in this interesting transitional period, where potentially working with corporations is, could be in the benefit of a better future. And would be great to be a purist and never touch any of that world but we're kind of forced into it with like, IP laws, and this and that so finding that middle path, I think, is really what we're trying to do. And yeah, it's just interesting--
-- I mean, respect to you, Gary. I know you’re someone who's been in the community as long as I have and I can feel you struggling with this as you speak. At the same time you’re a positive person and you believe in Doge and that the goodness will ultimately will shine on through. Your attempt to look at it as a middle path is a valid one... but, at the same time, because it is so 'persuasive' we absolutely need to take this thing apart brick by brick and evaluate every one of its pieces because this feels off to me. You voice your concerns about Doge 'selling out' but Tridog's very first post was asking us to imagine "McDonalds, Disney and Doge Crocs". I mean, the really real reality is that the deal appears to be done. If he does have the exclusive license he doesn't have to listen to anyone and this is all theatre to get us all rowing in the same direction towards profit for him and his DAO.
Tridog 1:08:38
Yeah, definitely.
Gary 1:08:39
--situation and how to navigate it. And I think it'll be great. Like, this could be the coolest case study ever in, like, how you navigate that and how you don't lose the values and how Doge doesn't sell out. And I think everyone has a different interpretation of this what, quote, unquote, selling out is, or what is a bad corporation to work with or not, like, personally, I'm, I don't like the junk food industry. I don't like foods that make people unhealthy and I wouldn't like to see Doge aligning with companies that do that. But it's a very interesting place to be and for us to hopefully work together and figure this out. So--
Tridog 1:09:27
Yeah.
Gary 1:09:28
--curious about your thoughts on all that?
Tridog 1:09:29
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that-- Well, I don't-- I think, you know, absolutes are usually, you know, untrue, right? So I don't think all, like, 100% of corporations are evil. I think, you know, it, you know, and with the right motivation from the people, like, different things can happen, right? I think we've been looking at, like, you know, in environmental climate initiatives from big corporates, like, some of them are the most innovative out there, right, even more advanced then, then, like, governments have figured it out, right? To, like, save our-- basically keep our planet healthy.
-- What I'm hearing along these lines is that you really want the freedom to go where the money is. Ideally it'll line up with “Doge” values, I'm sure - don't want to damage the brand - but money talks.
Tridog 1:10:01
And, you know, and our wildlife, our animals, you know, our dogs and, and so I think, like, there's examples out there where corporations, big corporate's actually more innovative, you know? Maybe they come from, like, that kind of, that culture, but, you know, that, like, technology, you know? I mean, I don't wanna use the term 'techno optimist' too much because I feel, like, it's got its own implications but, like, you know, I do believe that, like, there is an-- it's not an 'end-all-be-all' technology but it is a way that, you know, some of these big tech companies have been more innovative have pushed organizational culture or tried new things. Like, what Holacracy, or, I'm probably butchering the name, but, like, you know, like Medium, the, you know, the blog company just kind of spun out from some of the Twitter founders, they tried, like, a very flat organizational structure.
Tridog 1:10:51
You know, so I think there's, like, new ideas and innovations that come out of, like, these kind of, like, tech companies. More, I think, maybe it's, like, your standard big corporate interviews where it's a bit more boring and bland and it's, like, you know, that's where you got to be a little more careful that, like, they actually get it. But yeah, again, I think, I think we would make sure that they get it and we would make sure that, like, the money goes to the right places. So, yeah, I mean, generally, I think, I think one thing he's, like, 'We got to bring that up on the on the talk' was, like, I also don't think like Capitalism is, like, an 'end-all-be-all,' I think we will go through a transition of, like-- the problem is money first--
Tridog 1:11:29
Money-first community is, like, I don't know, it has its incentives but it has its flaw-- big flaws, right? And it's, like, you know, a lot of times that stuff comes first, right? I think that's what leads into like maxi-ism around, you know, there's only one token or one option, or like, you know, 'I only like gold and nothing else, and I hate everything else.' And, you know, so I think, like, I think a world where we put humans first or animals first, or just, like, our planet first is, like, that's the ideal situation. And how do we get there? I don't, you know, I don't know, I mean, go out on a wild limb, like, maybe when we can automate everything and, again, maybe technology actually brings us to a place where people have more time to, you know, they don't have to work two jobs and, and, and, and take care of their family.
Tridog 1:12:13
And, and, and, and like they don't have time to like, think about how to grow as a human being and like, take, you know, treat help people in their community and things like that, and maybe a little downtime for humans actually would be a really great thing, if we didn't always have to be worried about the bottom line and money and, etc. And so, I think, I'm hopeful that there's a world like that to come. And, and I think part of that is why I care about Doge, like, I do think Doge is this opportunity to make people take things a little less seriously, make-- think a little bit less, obviously, there's a financial component in this right? There is a financial component in Dogecoin, there's a financial component in, in DOG, right? They're-- they are these tokenized things.
Tridog 1:12:57
But we're trying to take that and use it for good, right? I think Dogecoin the core group of people, of the 'Do Only Good'-ers and Dogecoin, just like our project, are, like, trying to utilize Doge in that way and be this force for good, that changes the world that, like, you know, makes-- it's funny, but also, like, has tangible outcomes where we can implement in all these different places and like, kind of like unite, unite, but only way we can do that is if we unite.
-- You want Doge to change the world... especially now that you have gotten your hands on the Exclusive license to the DOGE IP.
Tridog 1:13:23
And I think a lot of, like, the-- I get the concerns and everything from the community are, like-- and I, and I just, like, I hope this, you know, this Space brings clarity and, and, and, you know, at least people get to know me and, and, and a little bit about Own The Doge because we are stronger together, a hundred percent. If you care about Doge, you care about, and you-- and you-- and you have a heart and you care about trying to do the right thing and make the world better.
Tridog 1:13:49
Like that's, that's, that's, what we're trying to do and we want to do that with the Doge community and we think we have, like, a big, powerful-- millions of people in this Doge community that, you know, if we-- if we, if there's, if we can stop, you know, any sort of infighting and conjoin together and come up with the ideas to like, bring-- move this to the next stage, you know, whether that's, you know, you know, getting the, you know, doing things like Doge Day to, like, get everyone together in the same place at the same time to understand each other better.
Tridog 1:14:20
You know, from the Kabosu fans to the Doge meme fans to the cryptocurrency fans, like, I think, like, we have, we have a big, big community to try to do these things, right? You think about, like, things, like, Game-- Game Stop, you know, and, like, the community uniting around this and I think we have that pata-- potential to do that over and over again in the right ways. And, I just, I just, yeah, I just hope we can trust each other and like, yeah, like lead with curiosity, and, and kindness and, you know, just, you know, understand, like, yeah, I get it. It's like people are doing the wrong things, like, you know, we don't want to lean into that. We don't want to, we don-- you know, we, we, we want to uphold-- we-- we've always tried to be leaders, I guess and, like, not try to, like, talk down to people, try to educate, try to, you know, do the right things, like, literally, like, said everything-- if we ever made money, it always goes to charity. There's always a part that goes to charity, part of it goes to the DAO.
Tridog 1:15:17
You know, we try to really walk the walk and not just talk the talk. And I get it, there's a lot to be 'sus' of a lot to skeptical of online; in cryptocurrency, a lot of scammers. A lot of just, you know, vaporware things that, like, people say have all this meaning and really they don't care and they just want to get rich, I get it. But I think the, the-- we really have an opportunity here to unite. Doge is stronger together and continue to push Doge into the next, the next decade, right? I want to see this last for a century, right? Like, I want to see the-- most companies barely last 10 years, much less a century. And if we can, if we can keep-- stick together and, like, trust each other, you know, trust the right people just enough to like, make that happen.
Tridog 1:16:04
I'm telling you, like, I'm, I'm a believer, right? I'm a very, I'm an optimist and I think we can really do some big things. And we're very open to having the discussions, I'm happy to have calls or brainstorms with anyone in the community, find ways to, like, integrate Dogecoin and DOG, find ways to like, fund those projects. You know, I think there's a lot-- a lot of potential.
Gary 1:16:33
Greatly appreciate all the sentiments expressed there. And yeah, I think this call has been really great, so far, gotten a lot more clarity, and feel a lot better about everything. And, yeah, I definitely believe it's not apparent at first but... the reason I've been here 10 years and the reason I've put so much effort, the last week into working towards this conversation is, yeah, I think that Doge feels like the ultimate mechanism to move us from the old, centralized, hierarchical force-based world to the new. And, yeah, I don't know who else would step up at this point to manage this IP and make a structure that could work towards that goal.
Gary 1:17:34
So I'm very hopeful that you guys will do a good job of this and be good stewards. And I trust that Atsuko will revoke that license if you don't do a good job. And I trust the community to keep an eye on things and hopefully be patient. Because I know, there was a lot of concern at the start. And I was like, I don't think they've figured out like every single detail of what they're going to do with this IP. And that seems to be accurate, right? Things are still being figured out.
-- Define 'patient'. How long does it take to figure this out? Why isn't it an open DOG/Doge/Dogecoin community discussion? If he wants to unite everyone and he believes in transparency, why hasn't he been doing all of this out in the open form the start? What I see is a business man who bought a thing and he’s going to tell people how it's going to be. Again, in short: We all work for him now. He wants us to laugh and play and pump his meme so he can reap the profits into his DAO and for his DOG token, some of which, maybe, he’ll give back to the community and Atsuko and charity at whim.
Tridog 1:18:17
Yeah, definitely. I think, yeah, totally. I think, yeah, you're spot on. I think we, we, we wanted to announce it to the community so that the community knew and that we could start that next stage of, like, ideation, on like, what that could be. And, you know, obviously, it's, like, it wasn't just, like, we didn't just rip it, right? Like, we always mentioned license from the very first announcement, like, we never-- we, I think we tried to bring that clarity on the intentions. We want to open doors not close them. It's a license, Atsuko's always had the copyright, and like we, we want to take that and we've been blocked by things and now we want to take it to, like, these new places, do we-- know, no.
Tridog 1:18:55
I mean, we haven't really been, you know, reaching out before. Like, we actually had it and we're comfortable talking about it. So we're, not we're, not kind of, like, you know, trying to do our own selling of vaporware, right? We believe in tangible outcomes and tangible things and so now it's, like, now's that-- that time, right? Like, now's the time to have the conversation and that's why, you know, I, I, you know, trust Gary, trust, trust you, like, appreciate you wanting to set this up and, like, be proactive with it-- with the community and, like, we'll work on that-- we'll work on a FAQ. Hopefully-- this call is recorded so, hopefully, people can, like, come back and listen to it.
-- You keep saying 'we'. Who is 'we'? And, yes, now's the time to have the conversation after it's already done. You already have the license so the conversation is arbitrary, at best. It's certainly non-binding.
Tridog 1:19:28
And, yeah, there's more clarity, things that are, like, helpful for people that, like, want to f-- yeah, want to figure out ways we can integrate Dogecoin into Own The Doge or things that we're doing or, like, find other ways to unite the greater Doge community or to, like, want to build or other innovative ways to use the IP, like, yeah, like, we need the brainpower of the space, right? Like, it's, like, the none of this stuff gets done without organizing humans and, like, that's kind of, like, the 'end-all-be-all' is, like, we need people like, like, Gary, or, like, people-- I got, like, our team.
Tridog 1:19:59
Or people in the community that want to contribute and like, share these ideas, spend time thinking about them, like, bring up stuff, you know, we-- we're stronger together. Like I said, like, you know, more and more brain power is better than-- you know, many brains better than one. And so, like, you know, with that, with that positive outlook, hopefully this can kind of settle, like, hey, we have positive intent here and we have a track record to back that up. Now, can we, like, start the conversation around how to use this, this IP, use, like, Doge? Like, how do we make this a, you know, a hundred-year meme? You know, it's-- we've been through 12, 13 years, you know, 18 plus going back to Kabosu, as is, like, an early dog influencer? And like, how do we, how do we, how do we, take this into the next thing, I think, you know, we also have like, younger generations growing up that, like, don't make-- don't totally know Doge yet.
Tridog 1:20:46
And I think so there's ways to kind of build relevancy and, and an interest, while then, set-- channeling that into the things that we think are good, like Dogecoin being, like, this widespread currency. Like Doge, you know, uniting people around true values of like wholesomeness, 'Do Only Good', be-- not taking things so seriously, spreading joy and happiness. Like, you know, I think that's, like, how we can use this as a true force for good. And, and, you know, it's, like, all these things need to work together and I think any proliferation of Doge is good for all. So, like, anything, like, you know, doing a statue, doing, it's like, it's not, like, we're trying to take credit for it all. We're just trying to move quick, build these things, keep pushing Doge into the forefront and, you know, that's kind of-- that's like, that's our backgrounds, right?
Tridog 1:21:37
We're like, we're like builders, and, you know, we, we care about continuing to work, and work and put the time in to make these things happen. So if we can continue proliferating Doge then those values and, like, that mission continues on a lot further than maybe even our lives. And, and so, like, that's what I think, really my, my call to action, right? It's like, come to dao.ownthedoge.com and (Laughing) send some ideas over, or DM me or, you know, I'm happy to take, take calls anytime and, and brainstorm on these things and, like, figure stuff out, because like, yeah, I mean, we have very small team, very limited headspace to work on everything. That's why we have a DAO structure, we can give Bark Tank grants and you can submit proposals and ideas. Yeah, at the Bark Tank at that, at that URL I mentioned. So it's, you know, there's the possibility here for us to like, really support people in the Doge community that want to build, like, want to be a part of, like, what happens next.
Gary 1:22:37
All very exciting. I appreciate all your hard work on this and in the face of a lot of challenges.
Tridog 1:22:47
I love you, Gary.
Gary 1:22:48
Love in return.
Tridog 1:22:50
It's-- It's only appropriate we end on 4:20, right? We have, like, one, one minute 'til 4:20 and we end on, right on the dot. (Giggling)
Gary 1:22:57
Hmm. Do you have time for a couple more... quick ones? Or do you have to get out of here?
Tridog 1:23:02
Yeah, I got to kind of get back to daddy duty over here. But, yeah, I mean, like, let's, I think this is just the beginning of the conversation and we should keep talking, right? The only way we build trust and we come up with new ideas is to keep the conversation flowing. And I'll, I'll do my best to do that, individually but, you know, yeah, we have a whole-- a whole bunch of contributors and community members in Own The Doge and I know there's a whole bunch of people building on the Dogecoin side and Doge-- and other Doge projects in general and NFD, Feisty DAO and Doge Pound and there's a bunch of great people in this space. So, I think, I think, let's, let's... maybe we just create more, more spaces, more places where people can come together and talk about ideas and dream about the future, right? And, you know, I think we'll continue to try to do that, you know, IRL and online.
Gary 1:23:52
Sorry, I was muted there. Appreciate that and, yeah, I feel like this has been a great first conversation. I was going into this prepared to be disappointed but-- not expecting to be but prepared to be because I've been let down a lot of times by people in the past. But I feel really good about this and, hopefully, myself and Julia, whoever else, we can guide this to a beautiful place. Julia Love has requested a question. Are you willing to entertain her question?
Tridog 1:24:32
Anything for Julia.
Julia 1:24:34
Thank you. So the topic of IP is kind of you know, I am a anarchist at heart, unfortunately, for most normal people, but my biggest concern would be around the sub-licenses. So it would go out and what power that those would pertain. So can you speak a little bit on the ability of your own license to revoke sub-licenses that are let out as far as how those would go out to-- like, say you sub-license to some corporation and that corporation decides that these people can't do Doge things because we're doing Doge things and we paid for the license. Is that going to be an issue in the future?
Tridog 1:25:23
Hard questions to answer for me, I think this has anything I would run by an attorney, an IP attorney. I think sub-licenses are like, you know, again, like, we license, right, we have the license so we can license it out. I think sub-license are more like, almost, you have a mini-license and you can license it out even further, versus just like, it's on a product that you got the license to do and, like, there was structure around that. So I don't, I don't foresee, like, doing a lot of like, sub-licenses and I-- but I don't, I don't really know, I don't really know. I think a lot of these specific license questions are hard to answer at, like right now because we're kind of waiting to see like, what interest, what interest comes of this, you know? And what sort of opportunities would come up?
-- What corporation is going to sign a licensing agreement if someone else can just come along and do the same thing? I mean, realistically?
Tridog 1:26:03
And then from there, it's like, then we have like, a concrete example to like, figure out what are we cool with, what are we not? But, otherwise, it's a little bit, you know, up in the air, as far as like, what, what, what specifically could happen, because anything could happen, right? Anything, anything could happen. So it's like, hard for me to like, speak to, I guess, examples, or without tangibles, at this point.
Julia 1:26:27
One hundred percent and it's just like something to put on your radar as, like, you know, this, this is... you have a really great thing right now. And it's, it's a little bit of power. And... weird, you know, I know you as a person but it is requiring trust in a trustless system. So I think that's where a lot of the concerns are coming from and the more that we, like, explore these little, like, you know, corners of a cabinet, I think, the better everyone will feel about everything.
Tridog 1:27:05
Yeah. Yeah, I think let's keep the conversation going, you know? I think, I think it'd be cool to find ways to-- find ways to organize around when these, when these things come up, how to, how to work with them, you know? Include community leaders. Yeah, I mean... I guarantee there's going to be cool stuff that will come to this, if anything, as ever, like, we're, like, 'Mmm, I don't know about this, whatever.' Like, you know, as long as we're not on, like, some sort of confidentiality agreement, like, I think we can bring some of these things back to the community and be like, are we cool with this?
-- As long as there's not a confidentiality agreement they're cool with bringing things back to the community to discuss. Which community? The ones that can vote in his DAO? Again: This is his business. He bought a thing, he owns a product. The community is useful when it needs the illusion of choice and support... or when the decision ultimately doesn't matter. He doesn't 'need' to be talking to us but he is because it financially benefits him and his interests to get the community on side.
Tridog 1:27:40
Like, you know, so I think I-- I, you know, I think, like, there-- and it's gonna be subjective, right? It's gonna, there's gonna be things that maybe some people, like, some people don't. You know, you probably heard, like, the cliche that, like, 'if things make people feel, like, binary, like, yes or no on them, they're, like, often, like, maybe really interesting things.' But, yeah I know-- I definitely know there's going to be a lot of hot debate on maybe some of these things but I also think there's going to be things that are going to be really, really cool, everyone's going to be into, you know? At least majority of people are going to be into. So, I think we-- you know, I think one of the, you know, it's like, stuff that I want to talk about but it's, like, we're still kind of, you know, it's like, needs to ha-- I think some stuff kind of needs to happen before it can happen or, like, before we can talk about it.
Tridog 1:28:22
But I think there'll be like, basically other public goods. You know, it's not just corporations, right, there'll be other public goods or, like, innovative kind of, like, things on-chain that we could bring back to the community that's, like, allows for, like, deeper functionality in the community. And, and, you know, that ties back to Doge in, like, a really cool way that, that also could happen. So I think there's, there's like, you know, infinite possibilities, but I'm, I'm, at least what I've seen thus far I don't think it's going to be too, too divisive and I think if something was really divisive, I think that's something that again, one, I'd talk to Atsuko about it and two, you know, we can take those-- we could consider, like how to take these things back to like, yeah, like a-- I don't know, you know, different, like, we have a council, overseeing council, right?
Tridog 1:29:08
We debate everything in there and then we can also use that, you know, do-- create something maybe outside of just Own The Doge that, like, you know, hey, we discuss some of these things, whenever there's, like, something that's, like, you know, comes up that could be, you know, we want to make sure we do this in the right way. But yeah, I think part of that is, like, once these things start to become a little more concrete, then, like, we can-- that's when it's like, let's bring some more people in the room and see what, see what, see that what's the best way to do this.
Gary 1:29:37
Greatly appreciated. And yeah, I think the way forward, my advice is to be as transparent as possible, every possible aspect of this thing, like percentages that are going to charity and this and that and I think if you do that, then there isn't a whole lot that can be faulted. Like, as far as I know, Atsuko did all this voluntarily, she still has control, I don't know how we could be in a more pure situation than that, unless there's something I'm missing. So, as an open source purist, someone who believes in transparency, I feel like we're positioned well and I feel good about today and this and always here to do what I can to support this process for us and humanity as we transition from centralized to decentralized ego-systems to ecosystems and, yeah, I appreciate you being here today and nothing was off-limits and, yeah, look forward to more conversations and hopefully the community appreciates this and... we'll keep figuring this out. Together.
-- Everything hinges on Atsuko being the person to pull the plug on this thing. We all care about her so let's show some actual care here: How does 'pulling the license' actually work in a real-world scenario? Especially after Own The Doge has then struck lucrative licensing deals? Atsuko is a nice, polite, kind Japanese lady who likes her pets and wants to contribute to charity with her good fortune. But how much is she really going to be in the know once things start moving? Will she be able to slam her foot on the brakes once something's already in motion? Especially if her good, close friend Tridog that she's grown to like and trust starts talking about how doing so will ruin him and his little kiddos? If the DAO signs a confidentiality agreement does that also keep Atsuko in the dark -- like, legally, do they have to let her know that they've even signed one? This is why we need to see the actual contract. Also, again, there doesn't appear to be a sunset clause, the license just moves forward in perpetuity. There's just so much here that has been skipped over.
Tridog 1:31:03
Let's do it! LFG, as we like to say. But, yeah, major, major love for you-- for-- obviously you, Gary, like, you know, I-- I-- I think we, we need more unifiers in the space, those are the people I really look up to. I think it's not an easy job, on the Internet, of unifi-- of unification. Doge is, uh, Doge is one of the few, the proud, of-- of, of memes that has survived. Even, you know, Pepe's been co-opted in all these weird ways and, you know, we need, we need community leaders like you, Gary, like you, Julia to continue to push this in the direction-- lead by example, push this into the direction of, like, how Doge can really have a positive impact on everyone and will be, will be-- continue to keep, steward this in the right way. So, huge, huge props, huge love for both of you guys and for putting this together. Thank you for getting me on here, talking a little bit, lot of times I'm just heads-down. Whether-- (Chuckling) whether it's daddy duty or it's building, building on, on all these, like, random Doge things that, you know, we're trying to bring out to the world, so... thank you and thanks for everyone, for listening. I-- I hope this, I hope this helps to hear and, you know, again, like, DMs are open. You know, we have the-- we have a DAO forum, we are... we have discourse and Telegram and we're happy to, myself, as well as the whole team, is always happy to, like, come up-- talk-- talk, chat, ideas, brainstorm, ideate on, like, where-- what we can do together and what we can do to make sure we uphold, like, the values that we hold dear and the Doge that we know and love.
Gary 1:32:43
Very well said and, yeah, shout-out to Atsuko for embodying the spirit of Doge and herself being an amazing steward all these years.
Tridog 1:32:57
She-- she is truly a saint, honestly. If you like, I don't-- and I'm not, like, just plug her-- plug things that we've-- we're planning but, you know, it was such a cool-- such a cool gathering, Doge Day, last year and, like I said, every era of, of, Doge fans, it was so, so awesome to have, like, everyone together and meeting Atsuko is, like, she is just, like, she is a saint. She is, she is a-- she is a, you know, sixty-year-old kindergarten teacher who saved a dog (Chuckling) and, you know, loved that dog so much that she just put all of her photos of this dog online and then people saw the same thing in this, in this photo and it just kept going. And it's, like we-- all we want to do is see that keep going, right? And, like, it's-- it wouldn't have been possible without her, right?
Tridog 1:32:45
It would not have been possible without her, it's like, yes, Kabuso is the Doge IRL but, like, Atsuko is, like, the-- that love and that kindness and that, like, she really encompasses those Doge values, like, if you really, you know, analyze this thing like we-- we have, you know? Like, art-- art critics, you know, and we're just, like, oh my god, like, so cool, so cool to meet her in person. So, yeah, if-- if-- yeah, if anyone's curious about that or-- and obviously we'll, on X or in-- in, you know, any community social we have, you know, we'll talk about other gatherings we'll do or we-- we're thinking about trying to do something else on the US-side, well, alongside Pleasr and at some point here, maybe later in the summer. So, yeah, just, like, you know, and-- and also we can support with anyone else having gatherings, right? I think we-- we want people to meet up, hang out with each other, support each other IRL as much as they do online.
Gary 1:34:41
Absolutely. And, yeah, just to add to that, it was interesting when John was interviewing us, me and Julia for the documentary it was like, "What was it like to meet the Doge?" and I was like, "The Doge was okay but, like, Atsuko is, like, she is the Doge. It's crazy." So, yeah, hopefully as many people as possible get to meet her. Julia, did you have anything you'd like to say before we conclude?
Julia 1:35:10
No, I think you guys did a great job. Yeah, Atsuko is really the spirit of the Doge. She's so sweet and wonderful and she did actually voice some of the concerns that have been said by Tridog and by Gary. I was there so I know, know these concerns were voiced by her as it's pretty overwhelming to have a picture that you took of your dog become, like, a multi-billion-dollar (Gary laughing) currency and, like, a multi-million-dollar piece of art. It's wild! So she's been on this, like, crazy ride as well, so, yeah, when you come at these people with critiques maybe consider coming at them with questions, instead, as a good approach and suggestions, instead, is a good approach. And these people are willing to work with you but if you come at them just, you know, brute force, every time-- just like any negotiation, it's likely not going to work out. So my, my best advice for the community is, like, let's work together to make what we have right now as good as it could possibly be and to build something that works for all of us, so, I hope that that is the future that we work towards.
Gary 1:36:35
Let's do it!
Tridog 1:36:37
LFG! Couldn't have said it better.
Gary 1:36:42
Alright, thanks everyone. See you in the future.
Tridog 1:36:44
Thank you. Woof, woof! (Laughing) See you in the future!
Thank you for doing this article. Much appreciated. I read it quickly and there's a lot to unpack, reread and get back to for further research.
One fundamental question people need to ask themselves is this : who really owns PleasrDao? Is it really decentralized? Who is funding this? When you have the answers to these questions, almost all the other questions related to Own The Doge answers themselves.