Contributor Series: The Relationship Maven

He’s an artist

Before he was known as "NF Thinker," Chris worked as a photographer. When the pandemic hit, work dried up.

He discovered stocks & crypto

Sitting at home in London, he started reading up on the stock market and decided to try trading. But it was nerve-racking, especially when he got into crytpo, with its volatility and 24-hour trading day.

Crypto led to DAOs

Still, researching crypto introduced him to DAOs, which offered a way to grow his crypto holdings by supporting a community, instead of by playing the market. Plus DAOs allowed him to do something he was good at: connect with people. And there’s something addictive about being on Discord, with its never-ending opportunity to meet people he could help or who could help change his life.

He started growing BanklessDAO

He jumped into BanklessDAO because he got its BANK token through a subscription to the Bankless podcast, which promotes Web3. He started by joining the design guild. Then governance. He hosted AMAs, which increased community engagement. He posted his AMAs on YouTube, which brought new people the DAO.

He brought revenue and relationships

His connections started to help grow the DAO. Since BanklessDAO earns revenue through design services, when he met someone who needed design work, he recommended they work with BanklessDAO. Since his content had a following, he helped generated sponsorship revenue from it.

He taught members

He also helped many people in the DAO, like IsraelRex, a product designer and frontend developer. Chris onboarded him to BanklessDAO. He showed him how to contribute. How to work with other DAOs. In an appropriate passing of the baton, IsraelRex took over Chris’s position as talent coordinator in the design gild.

He burned out

Help like that is fulfilling, but all the work involved in DAOs can lead to burnout, and Chris says he’s experienced that. When it happens, he learned to step back. The benefit of working on a DAO is that there are so many community members and projects, that there’s always someone to take over and most projects can wait.

He found his mission

So why does he do it? He believes in BanklessDAO’s mission of broadening the understanding of Web3. A helpful upside is that the tokens he’s earning for his contributions could be tremendously valuable one day. But perhaps the biggest benefit of all: He keeps meeting people who could change his life.

Credit: Big thanks to Jaris James for suggesting Chris.

Want to suggest a DAO member? Tell me, here: Andrew@joinOrigami.com