David Phelps is the co-founder of JokeRace, an on-chain social contest protocol. He is also a prolific writer on the intersection of culture, economics, and technology, authoring a Substack newsletter where he has developed influential theories on the future of web3 applications and social coordination. ^{[1] [2]}​

Education

Phelps has a background in the humanities, which heavily informs his analysis of digital economies and online communities as complex social and narrative systems. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in English from Yale University and holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from Columbia University in the City of New York. ^[1] Prior to his Ph.D., he also took post-baccalaureate classes in Arabic Language and Literature at Hunter College between 2011 and 2013. ^[3]

Career

Phelps's career spans academia, journalism, and entrepreneurship. While pursuing his doctorate at Yale University, he worked as a graduate instructor from approximately 2011 to 2017. He later served as an associate editor at The Joseph Campbell Foundation from roughly 2018 to 2020. During this period, he also wrote about technology and culture for publications including Forbes, The Ringer, and The Awl. ^{[4] [1]}​

His entry into the cryptocurrency industry was influenced by his experience running a high-end tutoring firm, FORUM EDUCATION LIMITED, where frustration with high credit card processing fees from services like Stripe and American Express led him to explore the potential of smart contracts for permissionless transactions. ^[2] He first encountered crypto before the 2017 bull run but became more deeply involved around that time. ^[2]​

From approximately January 2020 to December 2022, Phelps was a co-founder of Eco, a digital currency and payments application. ^[1] He also served as Head of Ecosystem at the venture capital firm RockawayX, advising portfolio companies on tokenomics, governance, and community strategy. ^[5] In January 2023, drawing on his research into DAO governance and community engagement, he co-founded his current primary project, JokeRace. ^[4] He resides in Berlin, Germany. ^[6]​

JokeRace

JokeRace is an on-chain social contest protocol co-founded by David Phelps, Siobhán (@siobh_eth) as CTO, and Kelvin Fichter. ^{[2] [1]} The project was conceptualized as a solution to low participation and voter apathy in Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) and other online communities. The platform's philosophy is to make crypto participation and governance more fun, accessible, and rewarding by turning coordination into a game. Phelps has referred to it as a "governance toy." ^[4]​

The small team also includes front-end developer zho (@bKrespo) and marketer Tavvi (@pagliachita). Phelps's role is primarily focused on the project's vision, public-facing communications, business development, and UI/UX design, for which he sketches layouts in Figma. ^[2]​

Technology and Mechanics

JokeRace is a protocol built on EVM-compatible blockchains such as Ethereum and Layer 2 networks like Optimism and Base. ^[4] Its core "Vote & Earn" mechanism functions as a practical implementation of Phelps's Persuasion Market theory.

The process works as follows:

1. Contest Creation: A user or organization creates a contest with a specific prompt (e.g., "design a new mascot").
2. Submissions: Participants submit entries to the contest on-chain.
3. Voting: Users vote for their favorite submissions by purchasing votes with cryptocurrency. Votes are often priced on a bonding curve, making earlier votes cheaper. This process funds a collective reward pool.
4. Reward Distribution: At the contest's conclusion, the accumulated funds are distributed. A portion goes to the creator of the winning entry, while another significant portion is redistributed to the voters who backed that winner. This creates a financial incentive to correctly identify and support what the community will collectively value. ^[2]

This model is designed to reward conviction, as earlier and more confident voters stand to earn a larger share of the rewards. It turns voting from a passive chore into an active, speculative, and potentially profitable game of incentivized curation. ^[8]​

Adoption and Use Cases

JokeRace is positioned as a lightweight coordination tool for various community activities. It has been used for DAO governance, electing council members, funding public goods, running demo days, and hosting design contests. ^[8] Prominent organizations such as the Ethereum Foundation, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Polygon have utilized the platform. ^[8]​

The platform has demonstrated significant on-chain activity. In its first two months, the "Vote & Earn" mechanism drove 1.5 million in rewards, with voters in one semifinal contest earning nearly $50,000. In another instance, a JokeRace contest to name the mascot for Kraken's Ink Layer 2 resulted in the winning name inspiring a meme coin that saw a significant increase in value. ^[2]​

Writing and Philosophy

Phelps is a prominent writer and thought leader in the web3 space, primarily through his Substack newsletter (formerly "The David Phelps Show," later "Three quarks" and "Divine Economy"). His work critiques the crypto industry's focus on financialization and proposes new models for social coordination and value creation. ^[7]​

The Social App Thesis

Published in June 2024, "The Social App Thesis" argues that "every winning onchain app will be social." Phelps posits that for most people, social incentives will always trump purely financial ones. He criticizes early web3 social applications for mistakenly believing that token rewards could build sustainable communities, arguing that such an approach attracts disloyal "mercenaries" and repels genuine culture-builders because true social status cannot be bought. While financial incentives are insufficient on their own, he argues they play a crucial role when integrated properly to support, rather than supplant, the formation of social capital. ^[7]​

The Fat App Thesis

As a direct counter-argument to Joel Monegro's "Fat Protocol Thesis," Phelps published "The Fat App Thesis" in December 2024. He contends that in the coming years, value will accrue more to applications than to their underlying protocols (or "chains"). He criticizes what he sees as the market's irrationality in overvaluing protocols that lack user activity and viable applications. He argues that while protocols once had a defensible moat through liquidity, the new moat is held by applications through their users and communities, noting that attempts to fork successful apps have largely failed to siphon away their established user bases. ^[7]​

Persuasion Markets

In a July 2025 manifesto, Phelps formally defined the concept of "Persuasion Markets," which forms the theoretical basis for his project, JokeRace. He defines a persuasion market as "a market where you can get paid for registering your opinion—so that you’re incentivized to persuade others of your case for them to back you." He argues that crypto's core function is to allow communities to "turn fiction into reality by deciding what is legitimate." ^[7]​

Persuasion Markets are designed for subjective outcomes (e.g., choosing the best design in a contest) and are distinct from prediction markets, which deal with objective outcomes (e.g., the result of an election). Key differences include:

• Self-Resolving: Persuasion Markets are self-resolving on-chain and do not require external oracles to report outcomes.
• Self-Funded: The prize pool can be funded by the participants themselves as they buy into the contest (e.g., by purchasing votes).
• Permissionless Creation: Because they do not require oracles or significant upfront capital, they can be created permissionlessly by any user. ^[7]

Interviews

PMF, Incentives, and Onchain Governance #01

In an interview published on June 17, 2025, on the YouTube channel of Austin Griffith, David Phelps outlined his professional background and discussed his views on product market fit, incentive structures, and governance mechanisms in crypto native environments.

Phelps described his early experience building a tutoring business that used financial technology infrastructure, including Stripe Connect, to manage payments between tutors and clients. According to his account, this model reduced reliance on traditional intermediaries and altered existing revenue distributions within the tutoring market. He identified this period as influential in developing his interest in systems that use automation to coordinate economic activity.

He explained that his later focus on blockchain based systems emerged from an assessment of Ethereum’s programmable smart contracts, which he contrasted with Bitcoin’s more limited scripting capabilities. From his perspective, Ethereum enabled automated coordination and enforcement mechanisms that could be applied to collective decision making. This interest led to his involvement in decentralized organizational experiments and the co founding of JokeRace, a project centered on voting processes and incentive driven participation.

According to Phelps, many decentralized autonomous organizations encounter structural limitations due to governance models that emphasize broad consensus. He stated that alternative structures, including smaller subgroups and competitive dynamics, may sustain participation more effectively. In this context, he characterized JokeRace as a platform used to observe how competition, voting mechanisms, and incentives influence user behavior within onchain governance systems.

Phelps also addressed product development considerations, particularly the balance between addressing the needs of highly engaged users and maintaining accessibility for broader audiences. He noted that prioritizing advanced user feedback can increase complexity, while insufficient attention to usability can restrict adoption. He cited public feedback environments, such as Crypto Twitter, and rapid prototyping tools as methods for evaluating assumptions and iterating on product scope.

In discussing artificial intelligence, Phelps expressed reservations about its application in developing high risk software, including smart contracts, due to the potential for errors. He distinguished this from lower risk uses, such as content drafting and exploratory feedback, which he viewed as more appropriate applications of AI tools.

He also commented on the role of the Ethereum Foundation, stating that greater emphasis on application level visibility and distribution could influence developer adoption. He suggested that more explicit support for application development could affect how products reach users, without altering the foundation’s focus on protocol level work.

The interview presents Phelps perspectives on how incentive design, governance structures, and iterative product development relate to the creation and evaluation of crypto native applications. ^[10]

Building On-Chain Reputation #02

This interview was published on February 21, 2024, on the Flywheel DeFi YouTube channel. In episode #92 of the Flywheel podcast, hosted by DeFi Dave, David Phelps, founder of Joke Race, discusses the concept of on-chain reputation and its role within Web3, presenting his perspective on how reputation systems can be structured using blockchain data.

During the conversation, Phelps describes blockchains as systems that extend beyond transactional use cases, incorporating social and organizational interactions. He explains on-chain reputation as an aggregation of observable actions recorded on public ledgers, including participation, submissions, and interactions across protocols. According to his view, the availability of shared data allows reputation to be constructed in a portable manner rather than confined to isolated platforms.

Phelps outlines how Joke Race operates as an on-chain contest framework, where governance processes rely on submissions and participation instead of conventional token-weighted voting. He describes this approach as an alternative mechanism for organizing collective decision-making, using smart contracts to record contributions and outcomes. In his account, these structures rely on composable contracts and interoperable data rather than closed governance systems.

The interview also covers limitations affecting broader participation in Web3. Phelps identifies wallet management, private key custody, and security risks as ongoing issues, noting that concerns around phishing and asset loss influence user behavior. He indicates that changes in wallet architecture and custody solutions are necessary components for reducing friction in blockchain-based applications.

At the protocol level, Phelps comments on the expansion of rollups and Layer 2 networks. He states that the presence of similar technical infrastructures requires differentiation through non-technical factors, such as economic models and network identity. Within this context, he presents reputation systems as tools for distinguishing user activity based on recorded behavior rather than speculative participation.

The interview reflects Phelps’s interpretation of Web3 as an ecosystem where governance, coordination, and reputation are shaped by transparent and composable data structures. His statements focus on how recorded on-chain activity can be used to organize participation and decision-making across decentralized systems. ^[11]