Bankless Partner David Burning Man Exploration – Unstoppable DAO Experiment and the World’s Largest Networked Nation

Bankless Partner David explores Burning Man and the Unstoppable DAO Experiment

This article is a live note from Burning Man written by Bankless general partner David Hoffman, who feels a connection between the cryptocurrency community and burners at Burning Man. Becoming one can also lead to becoming the other. Likewise.

I’ve just returned from the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, where thousands of people gather every year for the annual “Burning Man” event.

After working in the cryptocurrency field for more than 6 years, I’ve noticed a connection between the cryptocurrency community and burners at Burning Man. Becoming one can also lead to becoming the other. Likewise. Through these connections, I’ve been told that there are strong similarities between crypto people and burners, but I’ve never fully understood the reasons behind it.

So, for the past ten years, even my “burner father” told me, “David, you have to go to Burning Man.” Later, I built relationships with many cryptocurrency citizens who also said the same thing to me. This year, I decided to go and see what it’s all about.

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Bankless Nation – just like cryptocurrency, Burning Man is a rabbit hole.

Just like cryptocurrency, when you enter the world of Burning Man, you leave the old world behind. You take on a new role… you choose a new role. You explore new territories. These things are connected! The connection between Burning Man and cryptocurrency is not just a metaphor. Burning Man and cryptocurrency are parallel movements with shared goals and values.

Therefore, for all the cryptocurrency enthusiasts reading this article, please be as open-minded about cryptocurrency as you would ask others to be. For the burners who are encountering Bankless for the first time, welcome! I don’t expect us to be the same group of people, but I hope we can understand each other, because if one of our actions succeeds, it makes it easier for the other to do the same.

This article is long – there’s a lot to say! To set up the powerful punchline I want to present here, we’ll start with Burning Man 101 to introduce the themes and concepts frequently used in the Bankless universe. By the end, you’ll notice the focus shifting towards commonalities…

In a Bankless Nation, we know that cryptocurrency is the taste of the future. You’re here to get ahead of the curve – to prepare for the strange, quirky future that we all know is inevitable. The same goes for Burning Man. Its culture and values may clash with your life at some point, and your life may already be in conflict in many ways. If you continue reading, you’ll be prepared. You’ll know how to recognize it and hopefully embrace it for what it truly is: an optimistic social movement that wants to change the world.

Burning Man 101

First, some groundwork.

Burning Man is an annual event held in the middle of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, USA. It is the largest event held on public land in the United States and its scale expands every year. The event initially had only a few hundred participants in 1987, but gradually grew to about 75,000 people attending last year.

“Black Rock City” is a legally recognized city (*with a post office!) that appears in the middle of the Black Rock Desert for only one week each year and is quickly dismantled. It should be noted that Black Rock City is not close to any towns surrounding the desert. The nearest international airport is in Reno, which is a 3-hour drive from the event.

Black Rock City is laid out in a radial pattern, with the “Man” located at the absolute center of the circle. The innermost street, Street A, has a diameter of about 2 miles and leaves a vast expanse of flat, dusty desert for the residents of Black Rock City to gather on. The streets run like a clock, with a procession every 30 minutes and a 15-degree turn. You can communicate your location to other citizens of Black Rock City by saying “I’m at 8:30 and C”. This organizational structure is very conducive to the emerging features of Burning Man, which I will discuss later.

A 100-foot-tall wooden sculpture called “The Man” stands in the center of the clock-like beach. As you may have guessed, the burning of the Man marks the end of each year’s Burning Man event.

“Why do you burn this man?” “So we can build him again!”

It should also be noted that the central planning of Black Rock City dispels the notion that Burning Man is a state of anarchy. While some may see Burning Man as a reflection of a lawless society, this is far from the truth. Burning Man is a highly coordinated phenomenon driven by over 200 full-time staff, thousands of volunteers, and a set of minimum viable principles that reflect the culture and promote peace.

During the event, the staff of Burning Man plays a subtle but important role in repositioning the “camps” of Burning Man to help maintain and expand the power of the event and prepare for its growth in the following year. I will further describe this point.

Camps, also known as DAO

The “camps” of Burning Man are established and have a group of people who come to the event regularly each year. With over 1,500 established camps, the consistency of this dedicated community lays the foundation and stability for the development of the Burners movement.

Each camp is unique with its own origin story, camp members, and what it brings to the playa. While camp members and camp leaders may come and go, the camp itself remains. Like all living organisms, camps adapt over time. They grow, shrink, change, and respond to the environment. Camps vary in size and can have significant, elaborate structures for living and entertainment, or they can be a circle of RVs.

As the camp develops to a certain scale, centralized resource sharing becomes crucial and cost-effective. Larger camps have physical assets maintained throughout the year, waiting for the next burn – generators, refrigerators, freezers, stoves, ovens, showers, and umbrellas are all physical items that medium and large camps often have and operate, allowing camp members to use challenging logistics in exchange for annual camp fees.

Camps usually start off centralized, typically with an enthusiastic leader gathering their friends and family to “come to Burning Man once,” and as the camp grows and expands, their leadership team also grows and expands. Typically, camp leaders leave, and the camp extends its own life. Even with turnover in camp leadership, the camp’s assets are maintained by ever-changing camp members.

Anyone involved in a DAO should be familiar with this fact: a small fraction of DAO workers hold the entire organization together, and camp fees are often charged to all participating members to help maintain the integrity and resources of the camp.

This grassroots organization in the land of Burners is one of its greatest strengths. Each camp is an autonomous management area. Each camp can freely manage its internal operations, social contracts, codes of conduct, and membership. Camps can choose to pay or not to pay salaries. They can evict disrespectful members or not. Camps can do whatever they want, and this freedom allows camps to grow, improve, and adapt over time. Every personal improvement a camp makes contributes to the net total energy of Burning Man each year and is one of the core drivers of the exponential growth of the Burning Man movement.

Camps provide services and entertainment

Not every camp, but most camps offer some reason for Burners in Black Rock City to visit. What each camp brings is completely open. This is one of the most prominent and interesting parts of Burning Man – walking from one camp to another, discovering what they offer, who you can meet, and what you can do. It is a core component of the Burning Man experience.

A typical camp has a bar where any Burner can walk up and have a drink, but it only gets weirder from there.

1. I attended a wine tasting camp where a sommelier guided me and my friends through tasting three different types of Greek wines.

2. There was a grilled cheese camp where you could sit at a table and enjoy three different types of grilled cheese sandwiches.

3. There was a “cereal thriller” camp, which was a bar you could sit inside that offered about 20 different breakfast cereals while you ate and listened to Michael Jackson’s Thriller and background music.

4. Taco stands, pickles and pickle juice, oil wrestling, clubs, music venues, mini-golf, yoga, educational lectures, trampolines, bike repair… camps can offer anything.

The Burning Man Camp offers you an experience in the middle of the Black Rock Desert. There are too many camps at Burning Man and it is impossible to experience them all – let me emphasize again, there are over 1,500 camps!

Camp Reorganization

This is where things get interesting. Every year during Burning Man, the Burning Man staff walks around and visits camps, witnessing firsthand the services offered by each camp and evaluating the positioning of the camps within Black Rock City.

Just like in any city, real estate in Black Rock Desert has its good and bad. Aspiring camps want the most foot traffic. Who wouldn’t want to have the best party? The innermost streets and the center of the radial streets are the busiest thoroughfares at Burning Man, while the farther streets are more remote suburbs.

Based on the quality of the camp, the value and nature of the services provided, and the overall atmosphere, the Burning Man organization either “approves” or “disapproves” the positioning of your camp.

Did you promise to participate in a series of social activities coordinated by the camp within a week, but only completed half of them? Next year is expected to be further delayed. Do you host popular events or provide valuable services every week? You will be promoted! Do you not provide any services at all, or are you not even a camp? It’s okay! You will live on the outskirts and let the established camps move towards the center.

In addition to some common-sense balancing (such as placing music venues in the suburbs, setting up bike repair camps, etc.), the annual camp reorganization also allows Burning Man to continuously optimize and adapt to its conditions, making it a highly adaptable and flexible organism that can respond to its environment. This simple agreement, combined with the complexity of organic growth of each camp, allows a natural chaos organization to emerge and strengthen over time.

A Resilient DAO of DAOs

The growth of camps is the reason why Burning Man grows by 5-10% each year. This attribute gives the structure of Burning Man a natural elasticity.

Camps may disappear and be replaced. Large camps may split into smaller, more harmonious social groups. Camps with strong leadership, coordination, and complexity can develop as they wish. The largest camps can minimize camp costs and provide more infrastructure for their residents, while also improving services for the ordinary people of Black Rock.

Workers leverage this emerging asset of Burning Man, rewarding more powerful camps with better Burning Man real estate and thanking them for their services by providing them with more exposure.

But we have to ask: Why do camps want exposure? What motivates them to provide services? Is more foot traffic really an incentive?

One extremely important rule and principle of Burning Man is no money, no commercialization. At Burning Man, money is only useful for ice. You can buy ice to keep cool and prevent food from spoiling. Other than that, if you want something, you must barter for it. And if you want something, people might give it to you. Of course, within reason.

Perhaps incentivizing the public to consume your food, alcohol, and products is not the rational motivation of TradSociety, but Burning Man is not TradSociety. Burning Man follows the principles of dedication and service. Of course, not everyone is willing to spend resources for others, but the fact that Burning Man has grown to a scale of over 70,000 people indicates that there are enough people willing to provide adequate value and service to support 70,000 people for 7 days, even when it is economically irrational to do so.

This element of Burning Man gives it such powerful force. From an economic and capitalist perspective, Burning Man makes no sense. Everyone leaves Burning Man with less money and resources than when they arrived. Burning Man is unsustainable. But it is effective. More people come back every year. Each time, they provide more and better services. The city is growing!

So, if Burning Man is not built on economic rationality, but is a constantly developing and functioning city, what supports it? What is the foundation of Burning Man? The energy of Burning Man is growing, but why? If it is not capitalism, what is the basis of Burning Man?

I cannot answer this question for you. This answer comes in the form of the experiences people gain from participating in the event. I have mine, but you need to get yours. That’s why everyone you know who has attended Burning Man might tell you, “You need to go at least once.”

Burning Man at Night

Out of the 51 weeks in a year, the Black Rock Desert is a dark place, with stars being the brightest source of light. But during a certain week of the year, millions of LED lights are installed on people’s bodies, bikes, camps, and art cars, bringing the beach to life.

After dinner, as the sun sets, the residents of Burning Man grab their LED bikes, turn on their art cars, and head to the playa – the arena of Burning Man.

While these players are present during the day as well, it is at night when the whole playa becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Burning Man art cars are mobile art installations built around the chassis of cars. They are drivable, rideable, and illuminated works of art, each one as unique as the last. Some can only accommodate a driver, like the roaming Roomba art car I saw this year, while others can fit an entire stage where people dance behind DJs and perform for the surrounding environment.

Artists come to Burning Man and erect fixed art structures for all burners to enjoy. If these art installations do not have built-in lighting and LEDs, they have external floodlights directed at them to ensure no one crashes into them in the pitch-black night.

Every sculpture is lit up in some way.

Some artists choose to burn their creations at Burning Man, spending months creating an artwork only to deconstruct it, transport it to the beach, rebuild it for Burning Man, and then set it on fire.

I’m not quite sure why, but I guess it’s easier than taking it home.

Everyone at Burning Man has a bike. Everyone. The playa is too big to experience on foot!

Everyone decorates their bikes with LED lights! In fact, it’s very dangerous not to. While this is primarily for safety, it is not the only reason for this social protocol. Amazing things happen when thousands of people are wearing LED costumes, riding LED bikes, parading on the Black Rock Beach, dodging LED-decorated art cars, and stopping to watch shiny LED art installations.

LED is the way to go. One of the principles of Burning Man is participation, and wearing LED lights and dancing on the beach at night is one of the most basic and simple forms of participation. Just by wearing LED costumes and participating in this festival, you contribute to the light festival held in the playa.

Greater than the sum of its parts

When over 10,000 agents run around an open desert beach with other friendly and open-minded humans, with LED, live music, and interesting art, some kind of magic happens.

Time is forgotten. The here and now is elevated. Friendships are forged, even if only for a few hours or minutes. Nowhere else in the world can you navigate through an endless forest of LED lights while being far away from the concept of work, chores, or errands as you do at Burning Man. You are allowed to be present and are in the perfect environment to do so.

This backdrop happens both at night and during the day, as everything at Burning Man is a Sherwood Point.

Burning Man is not forced. You are not compelled to do anything. While one of the principles of Burning Man is “participation,” meaning you should do something, what that something is entirely up to you. Whether you ride your bike at night in the playa, looking for art installations to catch your eye, or wander through the city during the day, looking for a camp to do something in, everything at Burning Man is vying for your attention.

Everyone at Burning Man is a moth and a flame.

Where and how the moths of Burning Man gather depends on the fate of the universe and how the experience of Burning Man itself is manifested.

Since you are not forced to do anything, the activities and behaviors that occur at Burning Man are all voluntary. The importance of people and things at Burning Man depends on the attractiveness of each thing. As the central point of Burning Man’s strongest Shilin slightly adjusts each year, the total brightness of Burning Man increases every year, and its significance also increases. The purpose and goals of the Burning Man movement have found their helm organically.

House of Commons Festival

When I first experienced LED lights on the beach, I thought of Andreas Antonopolous’s concept of “commons festival,” which is in contrast to the tragedy of the commons.

Burning Man is a public place, and like all public places, it needs attention and care. But because Burning Man is not based on capitalism, its common nature is expressed differently. Although the public resources of TradSociety need government protection from exploitation, the public resources of Burning Man naturally find themselves growing every year without any forced protection from armies. The principles and social agreements that guide Burning Man society are conducive to Andreas Antonopolous’s “commons festival,” and the more people participate, the natural growth and improvement of the commons’ quality and supply.

When day turns into night, just visiting the beach under the LED lights contributes to the large-scale light festival held in the city center. Seeing thousands of LED objects moving randomly in the desert is a spectacular sight, and by being there, you contribute to it all.

By developing your camp from a group of tents into a structure with a bar or activities, you can increase the total value of the services offered by Burning Man.

In my opinion, this is the most significant overlap between cryptocurrencies and Burning Man. A minimal viable set of rules that allow for unpredictable behavior and activities that naturally and organically point towards the same direction of expanding the quantity and quality of the foundation supporting the movement.

New Social Structures

Burning Man is not a society.

Burning Man is a portal. You walk in, and then you come out the other side. You enter a new plane of existence where the economy is irrational, organizations are emerging, and expressiveness is infinite. The restrictions that modern society imposes on ordinary people cannot be found at Burning Man.

Just like cryptocurrencies, Burning Man is the Wild West.

When you enter the world of cryptocurrencies, you choose a new life. You choose a new role. You settle in a new landscape. When you enter Black Rock City, you do the same.

Burning Man is an alternative society, and its new culture is based on specific principles that help expand the values it establishes. When the restraints and pressures of society are released, who will you become? How will you choose to act? What will you do?

There are more things to do at Burning Man than a person can experience in a lifetime, which is perhaps why so many burners come back year after year, like clockwork, and why many choose to continue living with other burners in the remaining time of the year, either among or around other burners.

An Unstoppable Movement

So far, Burning Man is the largest virtual nation in the world. I use the definition of virtual state very broadly here, but since it has not been formally defined yet, I believe I am fully within the rules here.

The main center of Burning Man is the event held in the Black Rock Desert in the last week of August, which can accommodate 70,000 people. However, due to the hundreds of regional derivative events held around the world, the Burning Man movement can take place at a time and place chosen by citizens. The nation of burners is borderless and is one of the fastest-growing emerging markets…

People gather together to create camps. Camps come together to form streets, and streets in Black Rock City merge together to form Burning Man. But now, various Burning Man derivatives have become part of a larger, decentralized social movement whose foundation is to expand the culture and values of Burning Man.

The geometric growth of Burning Man cannot be underestimated. In cryptocurrencies, we are fortunate to only have to worry about moving bits. Cryptocurrencies exist on the internet, and the success of cryptocurrencies has nothing to do with atomic states. This is one of the most optimistic things about cryptocurrencies: bits are easier to manipulate than atoms.

Burning Man is a movement of atoms. It is a difficult mode movement, but it has still succeeded. The Burning Man movement persuades hundreds of thousands of people every year to spend resources, move their bodies, cars, and lives, and participate in a set of alternative rules of society, and it does work.

It is currently unclear how large the Burning Man movement can become, but after at least 10% year-on-year growth over 36 years, Burning Man has yet to find its limit. Ultimately, whether you know it or not, Burning Man is likely to find its way into your life. In many ways, it may already have.

In cryptocurrencies, we say, “There is something for everyone here,” and the same is true at Burning Man. Like cryptocurrencies, the early days of Burning Man were defined by social radicals who did not fit into tradsociety. Like cryptocurrencies, Burning Man is becoming more mainstream. Cryptocurrencies and Burning Man are both adapting to become more gentle, and society is also growing… A little wild?

Like cryptocurrencies, Burning Man is also an experiment of the future. Future schisms will be normalized, aging institutions will be ignored. Burning Man and cryptocurrencies both say, “Let’s rebuild society from scratch and see what happens.” We are both organic, antifragile, decentralized experiments in social structures and coordination. Burning Man and cryptocurrencies are unstoppable movements beyond nation-states. We are all ideas. We are all genies in a bottle. Our society embodies the values we believe in and is composed of proactive doers who will die in the process of striving to live by the principles we uphold.

Conclusion

I’m not sure if I’ll be a lifelong Burner. While attending Burning Man 2023 was an eye-opening and life-changing experience, I’m not sure if it’s suitable for me every year. But now I understand why everyone says “you need to go at least once,” especially my own father, who finally convinced me to go with him this year.

But I do know that the purpose of writing this article is to share the magic of Burning Man with my friends. I’m not saying “guys, trust me… we need to go,” but rather writing this article to help convince them that they need to go to Burning Man… at least once.

For those friends who agree, I will voluntarily take on the role of camp coordinator to organize our camp. Perhaps this is just the beginning of everything.

See you at Burning Man 2024.

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