Pirates Parley
Pirates Parley
July 2, 2026·56:48

Inside mtnDAO: from a 6-bed Airbnb to Solana's hacker house

Barrett, co-founder of mtnDAO, joins Pirates Parley to tell the story of Solana's most notorious hacker house: how it went from 25 people crammed in a 6-bedroom Airbnb to a month-long builder summit that has produced 30 hackathon winners and over $30 million in raises. Barrett got into Solana almost by accident. He was building a pre-IPO markets company on Ethereum, found it too slow, and an Ethereum dev who didn't like him pushed him toward Solana out of spite. He and Edgar Pavlovsky started mtnDAO in Salt Lake City in 2021. In this episode:

How an Ethereum dev pushed Barrett into Solana out of spite, and it became a golden match The first mtnDAO, 25 people sleeping across 6 bedrooms in an Airbnb 200 applications for the second one, and how it went biannual 30 global hackathon winners and $30M+ raised by alumni What makes a hacker house work: community and a first-in, last-out culture The tweet that captures it: work 14 hours, leave at 8 pm, feel like you left at lunch Why mtnDAO runs a month instead of the Foundation's flash-in-the-pan model The first production Solana Pay, and Metaplex's core standard, both born at mtnDAO Salt Lake as an outdoor Mecca, and the work-hard get-outside culture The one hard rule, and why there isn't really a DAO The 10th edition, August 1, free to attend

Triton One: triton.one/pricing mtnDAO: x.com/mtndao

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Steve (Happy Pirate)

Inside mtnDAO: from a 6-bed Airbnb to Solana's hacker house

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