“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.
Zeugh is a contributor to the JB space as a community manager and a straight up OG. He has all the trappings of a proverbial hype-man, and a knack for bringing a party and good vibes wherever he goes. He’s upbeat with an excellent sense of humor, and his sarcasm game is through the roof. He works tirelessly to help bring the JB community together, and to bring those JB vibes to every corner of the globe. Read on to learn a bit more about this sarcastic human teddy bear.
How'd you get started with JB, and how has it changed since you've been here?
I started at JB around Aug/June 2021. DAOs amazed me and i had my eyes on crypto for a while… but when I found out DAOs existed I was very excited to work with them. I joined a discord server and got involved with Tiles DAO, and eventually just explored more. I wasn’t in JB way at the beginning, but I did join in the first week after release. When the question came up that a community manager was needed, I put my name out there. I had never been a comm manager per se, but had been doing comm management for other products I was helping release and so I figured I’d take it on, got voted in, and hit the ground running. I started
So you’re an OG.
I joined in week 1 of JB, back at FC1. Although regarding crypto as a whole, I’m pretty much a newbie. JB was the first project I really got involved in and put my hands on.
Wow, that’s nuts— you’ve seen the evolution of JB from start to right now. Would you say it’s unrecognizable?
From the beginning? I wouldn’t say unrecognizable because I think some of the core values of transparency, building out in the open, and great vibes have been around since day one. The core values have not changed, and that’s beautiful.
I think of it like a sapling and tree, just as they are different, they are also the same.
How would you describe your role at JB?
A confusing one, firstly, but also a very interesting one. Rarely are two days the same. There is a lot of time spent online in chats and severs, whether the Chinese chats to try to understand community issues, or in other servers to learn new tools they’re using, practices they have, and how they engage/reward/manage a sustainable growth.
Lately we’ve pushed hard on trying to automate governance with guys like filipv, Phytann, jigglyjamz, lazervike and others, and Canu has been heavily involved in this as well.
What has it been like working with the Chinese community, and their role at JB?
It’s one of the better things that happened to JB ever, but at the same time definitely one of the biggest challenges. Bringing our Chinese members together in a governance process where we all get the power to decide what we do is a complex thing, but it’s exactly what makes us so critical and diverse in what we build. We have to do good stuff– not sensibly good to my taste or American or European tastes, or to Chinese tastes, but it has to be good stuff across the board. That’s very challenging to pull off, but at the same time we’re all a part of the community.
When the community first came, I remember I would jump in there with google translate to try to make sense of the chats going on in discord. Man, it was so suddenly so many new members, and we had to try to reach out and make those connections. It was an exiting and also exhausting time, especially since google translate can only do so much. I do have to say one of the members who has been a killer and God in moderating the Chinese community, getting them informed and engaged, is twodam. That guy is a beast and I appreciate him so much.
The idea of you sitting in Discord with google translate and trying to understand Chinese is absolutely hilarious to me.
Let me tell you— now we have the translate bot. It automatically translates. But that day when we got that huge influx of members, it was 3am and my phone starting beeping, beeping, beeping, and I was like ok, silent mode, I’m not working tonight, this is my one night off.
But it didn’t stop! So I got back to my comp and there were more than 1k new members, all of them Mandarin speakers, and all were over every channel– and up to that day we didn’t have a single Mandarin channel, so I spent the whole night with google translate writing FAQs, basic guides on how to solve the most common questions, translated hundreds of Q’s and ranked them with what were the most relevant answers, and I think it was nicholas and someone else who was in the twitter spaces that joined and were able to pitch in and help. Shout out to those guys and everyone who helped early on with that, it was such a huge task and everyone stepped up. Eventually we even found some university students from the US that we knew who were Chinese and we asked them to translate asap, and that helped a lot too. Now we have really amazing translator teams, the of course the amazing twodam who kills it every day, and so we’ve found a good stride.
Twodam is amazing, I can’t say enough good things. He ended up in this position of managing the greatest share of governance (by population) and is doing it incredibly well. I’m about convinced that twdam is a team– not a guy, a whole team– because the guy does contracts, community, translates, I mean he’s absolutely incredible.
Where are all the assholes at JB?
That’s a very good question, actually. The main thing on that that fascinates me is that I’ve spent countless hours crunching analytics data on our conversations, running our bots, and so far I haven’t found them either. Idk why, but they are just not around I guess. The funny thing is we’re in the crypto space— people being obnoxious is like breakfast, but somehow at JB we don’t attract these kinds of people.
What’s something somebody would be surprised to learn about you?
I was a comp sci undergrad for 3 years, that’s when I first heard about crypto, and even so it took me 5 years to ever engage in my first transaction (which was in bitcoin!) to actually get into crypto because I was completely against burning the amazon. I was a very critical person of crypto for a good while. I was misinformed.
I get addicted to hobbies; 2 years ago I was living in a small house in the middle of the woods. I spent about one year living there, talking to my cats or the monkeys who would come to try to steal my food. I was developing digital products and tending to the gardens since I love gardening. I loved the nature, the no-plastic environment, just me and plants, no eating meat. That passed now, I’m back to the animal eating part of life and living around big buildings and concrete and using plastic bags, but that was definitely a life-changing part of my last few years.
So what changed? The amazon can just burn to the ground?
I stopped listening to the news and started reading some articles. After you read the numbers/data you understand that that’s not what’s happening. I was living in the middle of nature trying to find out how possible it was for someone living in society to have the smallest impact in nature– that was the goal of going there– to see how simple/non-violent towards nature I could live without leaving behind civilization and a modern world. I started reading everything I could in every area, so I learned a huge amount and cleared up a lot of misconceptions.
Fascinating. Who’s your fav contributor, and why is it Zom_Bae?
Haha. I think this gets me into a tight spot here. Although Zom_Bae is terrific, I don’t think I can give her the prize without sharing it with filipv and twodam. I will not even include jango in this one just because that is obvious.
I can’t choose man, I have the blessing of a very amazing team to work with. If I had to pick, I would share my favorite contributor in four people– Filip, Jango, Twodam, and Zom_Bae. If I had to pick one, I’d go with Zom_Bae. She’s amazing. And the red rocket banny pfp! Zom_Bae does wonders in lots of micro areas around JB community - I would not trust anyone more than her nowadays to be the one who receives and onboards both partners and community members, contributor-wannabes, and everyone in between who needs guidance to navigate our complex environment.
jango has always been a steward for good culture, has always been bringing some perspectives of open criticism/honest debate since the beginning.
Filip is a monster– a complete gigabrain going from governance to some automation here and there and finding good minds to help every single area he touches– there’s not an issue I don’t se him going around. Twodam I’ve talked about more than anyone in this inteveriew– it’s well deserved. Bridging two different communities while also building data queries to better observe community trends, and making it look effortless, it’s just amazing…
But then there’s Mieos and Sage with WAGMI studios and all the vibes– Sage is definitely underrated! A huge shout-out to her and the vibes that we get from Banny and that we get from all the juicy fruits that she brings to life with her art. Banny’s something else.
Nicholas, filipv, unicorn and 0xSTVG are fucking rocking it, doing amazing at governance issues, really taking the helm on things.
And how about that awesome guy who writes the Banny histories, huh?
But he’s just in the house, I mean he’s around here and there... I’ll mention him maybe in the next one. Haha.
Okay, no hard feelings. Besides feeding wild monkeys do you have any other interesting hobbies?
I roller blade; I’m not especially good in most tricks, but I can do some tricks, some downhill stuff, but by no means an expert in any of those.
This is starting to go like a job interview, so I’m just gonna go in hard. What’s your greatest weakness?
My total lack of concentration. I am the apex of ADHD in a human being. That’s why I tend to work in the night because everyone else is sleeping and that’s less things to get distracted with. I’m kind of a workaholic; I engage a good part of my hobbies like they’re work. I played (semi-professionaly) League of Legends for a while. Very low-tier stuff though.
I love gardening. I used to have an ant farm; I would catch ant queens in mating season and I started my own ant farm. I raised some ants.
My hobby is changing hobbies– I have 3-month sprints where I have hyper-focus in something, study a lot and research a lot, get super nerdy, and then I move on to the next thing. I’ve been through organic chemistry– making my own hygiene products. Star wars– reading all I could in the expanded universe. Wicca magic. Cocktails. Making events (very close to community management)! And more to come = )
That’s awesome. What’s the favorite thing you’re looking forward to?
I’ll have to split the answer in two. The first - watching how crypto changes the world. I’m gonna play a part and I want to play the best part I can. I used to say in my twitter, “I am here to make sure the next big social network is not owned by a corporation, but is co-owned”. I want to see the power of open data, public ledgers, collective ownership over the digital assets that currently rule over people’s days most of the time, and so much more. I want to watch as that unfolds and try to play a part, and I think it will happen in a massive way.
As for myself, I’m really really keen to creating those bridges between people building stuff and people that need stuff built. I’ll be going nomad for a while and traveling to try to find a way to get a local communities to organize and find solutions through the tech they’re creating. Local communities are powerful and we’re finally at a point where digital communities are also hitting that kind of strength. If we can merge local and digital communities we can really change things. When the people making products, the politicians making promises, etc., are also the people who are living in a community, they can’t just say they’ll do things and not do them. Suddenly there is accountability, and things get better. I want to build a solar-punk future. It sounds crazy, but I used to say, “I’m not crazy, I’m just hopeful.”