“Juicebox in the words of” is a series that highlights JB community members in interview form. Learn about members’ roles at JB and what makes them tick.
Matthewbrooks.eth is 1/2 of the Juicecast, and 1/1 a perfect gentlemen who wears many hats at JB. Between tracking payouts and creating governance recaps on a weekly basis, he also fashions a short-form newsletter for JB along with his other half, Brileigh.eth. This unassuming and kind contributor joined me for a talk about all things JB. The only downside of this article is that the written words strips Matthew of his silky smooth voice, which has been known to melt hearts and ears alike. Read to the end for a big surprise ; )
So tell me your Juicebox origin story and what appealed to you about JB?
Basically, as usual it was a nicholas origin story, as it always seems to be. I knew nicholas several years ago, before crypto, and I was following him on twitter Then maybe a year and a half ago I got into the space. Nicholas was involved with Juicebox at that time and I saw him tweeting about it. I bought a tiny bit of JBX but I was a bit too green to really be involved with a DAO or contribute for one, so I was mostly a spectator.
Then Briliegh and I started working for DAOs in like Feb/March of this year, and we noticed that nicholas was no longer running the JB podcast. We thought it would be fun to pick up the mantle, ie take the baton of the JB podcast relay race, so we did a test episode and did some trial payouts, and now we’re doing that full time, and writing on the blog, and doing the newsletter.
You’re also getting into some record keeping work, between the gov recaps, payouts tables, etc. Not the same skillset as podcasting at all, and you’re crushing it. Where did that come from?
Hmm.. I have to say, gulan and twodam are doing the heavy lifting on that stuff. I’m a very small cog in that machine. In terms of where it came from, when we stated working for RawDAO in March, we did bookkeeping, which was way less complicated than what JB does. Over there we were just managing a spreadsheet. One day aeolian posted that it would be helpful to have a notion table of all contributors currently being paid with a link to snapshot/discord handles etc., and we started doing that just to help out.
The governance recap I feel like is kind of a selfish thing. I just found that I needed a one-stop shop summary of all the proposals. I was gonna do it anyway, since I needed to vote, so I figured if I was doing that for my own purposes, then I might as well just tweet that out as a useful thing that I could do for the community. It’s a small gesture but I enjoy doing it!
It’s much appreciated! Regarding your personal projects, I know you’ve got an extensive background in photography. What are you working on, if anything at the moment?
Yeah, I studied photography and got a degree in it, and right now I teach photography at university, but to be honest I don’t want to keep doing it. I signed a contract and will finish it out, but I’m not passionate about it anymore.
Both me and Brileigh have backgrounds as practicing artists/fine art photographers. We’ve both made projects and minted NFTs (which we’ll continue doing), but I think our relationship to photography used to be one where we did photography for a living, and I think we both got frustrated working in an art context for many different reasons. One is the type of people who work in art and culture, and one is, to put it bluntly, the type of money you can make in those fields as well.
So we’re both kind of moving on from that as a sector that we want to work in. But we’re still gonna keep making work that we wanna make. We’re just gonna do other things for work, which is why we’re trying to get more involved with JB. We’re also both learning to code and hope to take on more technical roles over time.
In terms of a project I’m working on, while I’m not actively working on a project at the moment, I do have a lot of things I need to scan from my archive, like I have a lot of negatives that I have to scan before my tenure is over at the Uni. So I look forward to releasing some of the work I’ve made over the past few years before the pandemic as I get to scanning it.
Gotta make the most out of that lab access. Are they tracking your scans or can you just go to town while you’re there.
The way uni’s work, you either have access or you don’t, and right now fortunately I have access, so I gotta make the most of it. So yeah, we’ve been drum scanning all of our film. Basically it would cost 100 bucks per scan otherwise.
One scan is one image?
Yes.
Jesus, that’s insane.
Yeah, no way to do it on our own with that kind of cost. So we’re just trying to jump on it before I lose my access when the term ends.
With universities it’s almost like a breakup. I used to work in a lab and it was the same way. Full access, no questions asked, then the second my term ended, it was like the lab and I were perfect strangers. Are there any things you’re looking forward to photographing after you’re done with all your scans?
I have a couple projects I’d like to do. I want to photograph quantum computers. They look like these really crazy scifi gizmos—
Gizmos is a technical term, right? Trying to remember it’s latin counterpart.
Gizmodus.
Gizmodus, haha, of course. How could I forgot. So what’s the deal with these quantum computers?
They’re really unique looking, like a prop made for a sci-fi movie or something. They have these weird fucking tubes everywhere. There’s a quantum computing research program happening a few hours from where I live and I think the images would be an interesting mix of documentary and fiction.
Very cool. Which JB contributor would you want to do a portrait of?
Like a photography portrait?
Yes. If you had to Anne Leibowitz the shit outta somebody at JB, who would it be?
I’ll give multiple answers. I think tankbottoms for sure because… well, I love tank, I wanna be tank when I grow up. I would love to have a beautiful portrait of tank in natural light, like a Vermeer painting.
What about tank in the clamshell, Venus De Milo style?
That could work too, definitely.
What other contributors do you think you’d zero in on?
Hmm… That’s a tough one. After meeting so many in NYC—
You were uninspired?
No I was very inspired! A lot of people were dressed differently than you might have imagined. I’m thinking of jango and his flip flops... this guy doing all this smart contract development, very technical, and just so laid back in flip flops hanging out. So maybe a super serious Rineke Dijkstra style portrait of jango in his flip flops and tank top is one I’d love to do.
Amazing. Who’s your favorite contributor and why is it jigglyjams?
Oh jigglyjams, he’s awesome. The nance bot, all that shit, is so good. I have a ton of respect for jigglyjams, he has a good vibe. Every time he talks he has such a pleasant voice. All that automation he’s working on is incredibly important for JB. Big shotout to jigglyjams and nance for sure.
What should we keep an eye on about you? What’s on the horizon?
You mean like at JB?
Not even just JB. We can get personal. Wedding? Kids? This is a safe space to share.
I have… okay, I’ll just say it, we have actually discussed this. It would be very cool for there to be a JB wedding at some point. I think it would be a wonderful get together that could be very weird. So def stay tuned for that.
Whoa! That’s a huge thing to say. For real?
Yeah, for real, stay tuned! Also I do think that using JB as a wedding registry would be an amazing use case. Like a 2-in-1 way to use JB and also throw a banny themed wedding.
You’re giving me the scoop here man, this is big news. It would be bonkers to have a JB wedding.
I think it would be amazing, I know at least for us the NFTNYC event was something very special, and I think linking up the discord and twitter PFPs with the people was a particularly bizarre experience, but very good. We could take that one step further and introduce a lot more alcohol and speeches and formal dress.
That’s awesome. As far as I know wedding registry project has never happened?
I don’t think so, but I think it makes a lot of sense. Even just the wedding itself could be a JB project.
Thinking out loud, I like the idea of the redemption rate changing the longer the marriage is successful, like a wild kind of way to reward contributors who staked in your relationship success longer.
Haha, yeah that would be wild. Who knows?
Oh man, well this is super exciting. Thank you for the time Matthew and I’m def down for a JB wedding!
For sure, take care!