Marlene Ronstedt on Creating a Successful DAO

The HackerNoon editorial team has launched this interview series with women in tech to celebrate their achievements and share their struggles. We need more women in technology, and by sharing stories, we can encourage many girls to follow their dreams. Share your story today!

Marlene, I met you at one of the blockchain conferences this year. Please, tell me more about yourself. What was your interest in Web3?

I am very interested in the field, and among many other things I’m the co-founder of the Data Union DAO. The mission of the DAO is to give people like you and me back ownership over our data. How? We offer a technical framework for builders to integrate with existing applications - think your sports app that collects data about your personal fitness - with our framework integrated, data producers like you and I can sell our data.

Why did you choose this field in the first place?

There are two major events and one minor event that got me eventually interested in crypto. The first one was when Wikileaks could no longer accept donations via credit card but still managed to stay afloat through bitcoin donations. The second event was when in 2013 Edward Snoweden revealed that the NSA had been spying on us all over the internet and that essentially the only way out of this surveillance state was better and more encryption. And the third event was an interview I did with the artist Harm van der Dorpel on the rooftop of Soho House Berlin about how he is putting digital art on the blockchain. That was in 2016 and NFTs weren’t really a thing yet, but that was when I wrote my first article about crypto.  

What are you most excited/passionate about right now and why?

I’m most excited about the growing zero knowledge proof space. There are new programming languages being released that will make it a lot easier for the average dev to implement ZK technology and I’m quite excited to see what kind of services they might be building with that. It could be also interesting for us at the Data Union DAO to eventually make use of ZKPs in a way that users wouldn’t even have to share their data anymore for selling it, but keeping it hidden by using specific ZKP applications. The easiest way to start out with that would be for concealing demographic characteristics like gender, age and income and only sharing access to that information without sharing the information itself.  

What are you most worried about right now and why?

I don't really trust pseudo decentralized applications. The whole purpose of crypto is to be permissionless and censorship resistant. But if L1s like BSC or Solana can just be halted for maintenance or reversing major hacks then I don’t quite see the point of using a blockchain in the first place. A lot of web3 applications are a decentralization theater where a mySQL database with a “Login-with-Google '' button could have equally been used to allow people live out their gambling addictions. But that’s not the worst part. When we look at the recent OFAC sanctions against Tornado Cash and how the centralization of presumably decentralized applications means that protocols and dApps have to obediently follow what US regulators are prescribing, then the whole point of crypto is being lost IMHO.  

What are your hobbies and interests outside of tech?

More tech. Techno. I used to be a techno DJ. But I decided that lifestyle was a little bit too unhealthy for me so now I only go properly clubbing like once a year and DJ in front of five people at crypto company parties. 

I also enjoy writing. I wrote a novel during the lockdown and am now working on the second one whenever I’ve time in an airport lounge or in a conference free week. 

Let's talk about breaking the glass ceiling. What were the biggest challenges you faced as a woman in tech, and how did you deal with them?

It’s not necessarily disadvantageous that there are only that many of us out there. That’s all I’ll say on this. 

Any questionable misogynistic story/situation you faced/handled, and you want to share with the HackerNoon Fam?

It happens. And: *uck them. 

What was the biggest setback/failure that you faced, and how did you manage it?

Maybe more of a regret, together with a couple of friends we started an art collective in late 2018 around fractionalized art ownership via NFTs. We did some art auctions at conferences and events and played around with how a decentralized art collection could look like. People were intrigued by the concept, but I personally didn’t really believe in it enough and neither did the rest of my crew so we eventually stopped the project. Now looking at how NFTs have taken off I sometimes have regrets about not sticking to it. So yea, it’s all about the right timing. 

In your opinion, why do we see this huge gender gap in the tech industry, and how can we reduce it?

Maybe it’s a question of personal interests. Right after highschool I did an internship with ELLE, the fashion magazine, the gender ratio was just as at any crypto company just that the majority was female and the two males in the office were both gay. The place was one massive cliche, we got tons of free makeup and there was always something to gossip about in the office. And at least back then in the fashion nobody seemed to really care about the gender gap.  

Who is your tech idol? Why?

A couple of years ago I was really idolizing this lady who worked for a big tech NGO. Eventually I got to meet her in person and work with her on a project and that’s when I realized that our values were after all really not aligned. Since then I’ve avoided idealizing people since all of us can very easily share great ideas on stages or on Twitter, whereas it’s much harder to actually implement these ideas. 

Do you have any advice for aspiring girls who want to join the field?

Try stuff out. I was with a security token project back in 2018 and our CEO told to us that “you can’t work on a farm without knowing how to milk a cow” before she handed a ledger to each one of us equipped with some testnet eth and had us play around for half a day pretending we’d all be all gazillionaires.