This is Epicentre episode 533 with guest left Harris
Carpetzers of Rocky. Welcome to Epicentre, the show
which talks about the technologies, projects, and
people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution.
I'm Frederica Anne and today I'm speaking with Left Harris, who
is a true crypto OG and the founder of Rodkey.
Rodkey is an open source tool for accounting and portfolio
tracking and management that focuses very much on privacy.
Before I chat with Lev Harris, let me tell you about our
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Hey, left Harris, it's good to have you on.
Hey hey Federici, nice to nice to be here.
We had you on incidentally for the first time on the 10 year
Epicenter episode because kind of we talked about kind of whom
would you we like to kind of have on who's the true OG, who's
been here forever And your name was very much at the top of the
list and kind of we reached out to you and he said you're super
happy to come on, but it's a little bit weird because you've
never been been on before. So here we are to make up for
that left heart. You've you've been in this
ecosystem literally since since the very beginning.
Tell me about your background and how you first entered the
space. Yeah, so indeed I've been here
for quite a while. I entered the the crypto space
first, like by mining some Bitcoin back when it started,
but I lost it. Oh no.
Hard drive? Yeah, it's well, it happened.
And like for real though, I I I got interested when I was in
Berlin looking for a job because I I had I had a job at Oracle
Game Behar, which is the the the big American Oracle the the the
giant. And it was really boring and I
just wanted to do something fun. And then I saw an ad by Gavin
Wood for the Berlin Etherium office that was just starting to
work on on on this thing called Etherium and I was like OK that
sounds interesting, let's go. And so in 2014 I joined the F
Dev so the foundation's development army in Berlin, and
started working on what was it mostly.
Mostly on Solidity, basically because I was really interested
in compilers. I had even written one.
It's still in GitHub and of an early version of Rust.
But before Rust existed. Yeah, I started working on
Solidity and then later a bit on the C++ client, which
unfortunately doesn't exist anymore.
And yeah, this is how I started the the trip into Ethereum.
And this was literally before, before the genesis block, right?
So you started at the end of 2014 and Ethereum went live like
July of 2015, right? Yes, that is, that is correct.
What was it like back then? Because kind of if you kind of
look into the Ethereum space now and I mean we we say this all
the time, it's still early and so on, but back then kind of it
was like literally very, very early.
How did you guys kind of see Ethereum and kind of how did you
feel about the prospect and the chances of Ethereum making it?
Yeah, that's a good question. So I thought the game back in
the beginning, I was like literally thinking, it's just a
fun game, Let's see how it will work out.
We were playing in the test net and I remember like double spend
bugs or suddenly money appearing in some account and said that it
wasn't just fun and games. I I didn't really realize the
scope of what we were building until maybe Devcon one because
that's when I actually saw the interest by outside people
because as you know so there was in in like so I started like
either third or fourth quarter of 2014 and we have Con Zero in
November so Q 4/20/14 and that was in Berlin in the the very
first office that that was in van der Masjase and then there
were only 2530 people all just geeks were you on Ethereum And I
was like OK this is like a meet up and it really was just like a
meet up The only outsiders that I can remember was probably
Gollum some people from from the Golden foundation well then it
was not a foundation with us you know project and to this people
talking about how awesome a series and what what what what
we are doing. But other than that there was no
it was very difficult to actually see how this would be
applied in in the real world later because there was no other
developed smart contact platform back back then as I said.
So this slowly started changing from the release and until
Defcon one, because you started people seeing you, you you start
see people use it like deploy smart contracts, make first dabs
and yeah that got really interesting slowly.
Yeah. So DEFCON one was then in London
about 3/4 of a year or so later, right?
Yeah, probably November again in 2016, yeah.
That was shortly after Ethereum had gone live in July.
And then kind of you, you stayed at the Ethereum Foundation until
the end of the year and then you move to slock it and you only
you only spend like 8 months there or something.
But I mean, now we remember Slackett mostly for the Dow,
almost exclusively for the Dow. Tell me about what?
Why, why you decided to move over to Slackett and kind of
what the promise was. Well, I mean, so the reality
with with Slackett is that back in there was a lot of drama in
in the Film Foundation back in Defcon one because they were
running out of money. They had spent already too much
of the money that was raised and the so Ethan wasn't doing that
well, or at least they were spending more than they had.
And so the F dev leadership basically decided at the moment
to just fire everybody. And so everybody was fired back
then. And this is how I ended up in in
Slokit. I just was waiting for another
job for the firing. It got undone afterwards and
there was a change of leadership and people actually ended up
staying. But I had already accepted an
offer to go to Slokid and and went there.
So what was slogid supposed to be?
So Christophe Yent, one of the three founders of Slokid, he was
advertising in Devcon, even in Devcon one like this Ethereum
computer that will be this kind of hardware that we would build.
And this is what I really liked, the connection between hardware
and the software world where you would have it in your in your
home and you could control various things via blocks and
transactions. And the the famous or infamous
thing right now that also gave it its name, the slow kit, it
was this smart lock, right. And they have this demo and we
we also saw it later in some other events where there is this
lock that you do a transaction on mainnet even because it was a
bit cheaper back then and the transaction gets mined and then
the Ethereum computer sees it and unlocks them.
The lock, the idea was you know you would do a Airbnb kind of
style of renting an apartment and it will all be on the block
scene and verifiable and all that.
And I got really interested in working on this Ethereum
computer because I'm still a bit, but back then I was a lot
more interested in in very low level back end, back end stuff.
So it was supposed to be eaten in C and all that.
But what they ended up getting famous for is how to fund this.
I think, which they announced also since devconwal, that they
will fund it through what they call the DAO.
And it's not like what they do right now, like everybody makes
a DAO that just airdrops people tokens and they have a
foundation somewhere in the Cayman Islands, and then they
have the lion's shade of the token.
It was a really pure and maybe naive idea that you would create
this Dow that would be an investment vehicle that would
invest in many product, yeah, projects, products, including
the theme computer that Slogit would make.
But it will be completely up to anybody who participates in the
Dow. So everybody who who puts money
in, in order to decide if they would ever end up funding
slogit. So this fundraise was actually
incredibly successful, right? Basically back then, there
wasn't actually all that much you could do on Ethereum.
And so like 15% or so of all ETH actually ended up in the Dow
sometime. I think kind of they started
their tokens there in April or so and then but by June the
contracts had been hacked and you were very much at the
forefront kind of when that happened, you and Griff and and
a couple of others, there's actually really good coverage of
this and also kind of like the Theorem Foundation situation
that you alluded to earlier in Laura Shin's book.
I think kind of you were one of the main sources for that book.
Do you think it's it's accurate? Yeah, yeah, it's very accurate.
At least for the stuff that I was that I was involved in, it
was very accurate for them. A theme foundation stuff in
Switzerland. I can't attest anything about
this because I I never went, actually never went to the Swiss
office. Oh, OK.
But all the drama that affected Berlin and all that, yeah.
OK, so tell us about the hack. What happened and kind of how
how did it go down? Kind of like from from a first
person perspective. So there is a lot of background
to the hack like the problems that were found with them idea
of of the DAO that it could split to other sub Daos and you
could exit the DAO essentially by saying OK I want to you know
like they have now in Molok DAO the rates quit you can just quit
and take your portion of the fans that you put in into a sub
like a tile DAO I think they called it and there were lots of
game theoretic problems that some people suggested and they
even had called the moratorium to the Dow so to stop it but you
can't you could not pause the the the dao it there was no
admin key there was no pause button it was impossible to stop
it. And so this fateful day I don't
remember exactly but somewhere in June in the morning I just
wake up to Griff's call telling me that the Dow is being drained
and like what what what good morning And yeah.
So what ended up happening was that there was an exploit that
was found that was a recursive call inside this exit of the
down. Like like you take your fans and
go, but you could essentially drain the the entire, the entire
amount. And yeah, so it happened that it
was being drained. We tried to understand what's
happening in the first hours. I think I managed to recreate it
in the test net, but at the same time they stopped.
So whoever did this stopped for whatever reason, we don't know.
And they drained something like 30% around I think of the down
and 70% was left. And then we were like wondering
what to do now because I had recreated on the test net and
had the contract to white hat hat kit.
But yeah, there were questions because was member of of slokid
back then. So should we do this as slokid,
do it as someone Anon? Should we not do it at all?
Is it legal? Is it OK?
And so we were really just not doing anything for the first
days and we're really scared about what with implications
was, What would that mean? Were you worried that someone
else would recreate this? So basically even if the kind of
the initial hacker, I mean they got, they got 30% of the DAO
ETH. But in I mean basically it, it
was clear that there was an exploit and kind of there were
probably not all that many but probably on the order of like 10
or 20 people who could have just recreated this.
Yeah, yeah. So this is exactly what worried
us that copycats would eventually pop up, right?
It's, I mean once you see what happened, even if so I get it
fast because I, I, I I had also written part of the contract,
right. But if I took a few hours,
someone can do it in like double the time or a day and it didn't
happen like a few days later there was the start of copycat
attacks and there was like two or three sub downs being created
it. They were kind of sloppy because
they probably didn't do something right and they were
they were starting draining very small amounts because it really
it was such a funny exploit because it really depended on
how you write the contract. You have to be very careful to
put some parameters correctly and also how much.
So you needed a capital to run it because you essentially are
running capital through the Dow to drain.
So the more you put in the more you could take out.
So in the end that some like a don't remember how many days
later but not too much later we decided to to act and we
weren't. So nobody said who we were
except for. So AVSA agreed to be the the
face of of this of this white hat attack because he didn't
want and he was writing that to so AVSA Alex Vander Vandersund
that he didn't want people to think, OK, that's another Black
Hat. So I don't remember he wrote the
Reddit post that the Dow is being safely drained or
something like this and people were saying what why should we
believe you? Who are you guys and and all
that. But we drained basically the
rest back then. And Alex back then was with the
Ethereum Foundation, right? I think so, yeah.
And he, I mean he later Co founded DNS, but yeah, so I
think he was at the ethereal foundation at the time and then
kind of the other people who were involved were Griff
obviously Christophe and his brother and Stefan Twil and
Jordy. So it it depends.
Like, like Stefan Twil, Christophe and Simon Yentz were
the three founders of of Slovid. Jordy helped with the He didn't
help so much with the first white heart attack, but later
then she was a lot of work and he he basically helped a lot in
this. In the aftermath of there was
quite a few more stuff that I said afterwards.
Super cool. I recently found some some DAO
ease and I kind of I I hung on to it kind of just as kind of
like a reminder for for for old time's sake.
Yeah, without talking there. Kind of a collector's
collector's edition. Absolutely fantastic.
So in the kind of the entire drama actually led to the split
of Ethereum and Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.
What did you think about this at the time?
Yeah, that's a hard question because I, I, I, I was much more
in the camp of let's do the DAO wars and the soft fork and let's
try to get it somehow through through counter hiking the
hacker, we had so many nice plans.
I even gave a talk about this in what was it like Lenuid to hack
in Disneyland Paris in July. Like I, I, I, I, I had like this
nice slice and all of them explaining what we can do
etcetera. But it turned out that the soft
fork was infeasible as an idea because you could we had the
idea of kind of making it so that all the miners agreed to
throw to the transactions that would be sent by the attacker.
Left Harris maybe let's let's kind of clear up the term soft
fork here so we we all know what a hard fork is where kind of the
network splits and in a software a software for kind of like some
transactions are censored right. Exactly, exactly.
So then the idea was that there would be some kind of agreement
with with the majority of the miners to send some transactions
that would be sent by the attacker and to favor ours.
But the problem with that is that it actually allows the
network to be D dosed. And there was one more problem
that I don't remember. And so it was infeasible as an
idea at the end and otherwise the Dow wars would just end up
in an infinite. Hiking and anti hiking thing,
allowing probably the the fans to never be recovered by the
guy, by by the attacker but also by anybody else and it didn't
make sense. So it was either at the end to
accept the loss or to do the the hard work that led to a film
classic. I assume if something similar
were to happen today, maybe the decision would would have been
made differently. But at the time, do you think
kind of with them the 2 remaining choices left?
So kind of either kind of just giving up the funds or kind of
doing the hard fork, do you think the right choice was made?
Looking at the aftermath, I hate what happened for the next year
or years with the Ethereum Classic and how the community
split this was. It was pretty bad at the time.
I felt that probably we shouldn't do the hard fork
because from a completely personal point of view, I only
had, I don't know, 100 or $200.00 on inside the Dow and I
I could just lose it. But also from the point of view
where you know, you felt responsible, like I I felt
responsible. And probably also the others in
in in Slokit and in in in the team felt responsible for for
the loss of funds. It was a relief because then you
wouldn't have to feel OK all these people lost money for us.
So I was really, I was really torn between those those two and
I still am ideologically I didn't like it that is that is
that is that's quite true. I didn't like it but it kind of
also proved that it's not all about the code but it's also
about the social consensus of Ethereum.
If something like that happened right now, I have no idea what
would happen with. We are getting the question
right now, right if. Lido get if if Lido gets hacked
or something. Yeah, no, this thing that is
right now in Twitter about the minority bug.
Hey, sorry, majority. The Super majority client bug.
I mean that could burn more, not 15 but 25.
Right now Percent. No wait, 25 is staked and if 84%
of the 25 is in gift, let's say that all of it would burn.
The worst case, it will be 20% of all ether.
What would happen in that case? Well, to be honest, I don't know
like as you said there weren't too many applications back then.
Right now there is so much and there is so much capital inside
the ecosystem to just burn 20% of the EFF.
That is also backing a lot of the LSDS and the DFI and what
that will do to the to the price of it, I really don't know if
that it would be acceptable let's say.
Let's let's hope we don't find out.
Yes, yes. So basically one of my, my, my,
my main things when I see the current situation is like like
we should not even have to question this, we we shouldn't
be in a place where a bank can actually get us to that.
Yeah, absolutely. So you spend probably the
longest eight months of of your life at Slackett.
I'm sure you kind of aged like by ten years or something.
And then kind of just after the hack, you actually moved to
Brain Bot, which was a company. So basically at the time you
were working on Raiden which was kind of posited as a payments
channel for for Etherium. So basically back then we kind
of distinguished between between state channels and yeah, so
basically, yeah, so basically it was meant to address kind of the
scaling slash interoperability space and Rainbow was very much
at the forefront of that, but then somehow completely missed
the boat later. So kind of when it actually took
took off, tell us about your time at at Brainbot who were
hugely involved in the space. Right.
So basically you guys developed one of the clients there were
kind of you guys were kind of involved deeply with the Theorem
Foundation. There were quite a number of
different projects you kind of did in house.
Yeah. So basically, tell us about your
time there and where you think kind of it it went wrong and
ultimately failed. Yeah sure.
So one question. I didn't go to brainbot after
the hack. I the longest period that I
spent and the worst was basically from the hack until
September because that was the the really complicated stuff
where there were attacks in the DAO after the the the the hot
fork because someone put money in the DAO after the hot fork by
mistake. And then the whole thing with
theorem Classic and the DAO was there because we were called to
help there because the the the hard work never happened and
that was basically the entire summer.
That's a very big story which you can read in Laura's Laura's
book. But after that indeed like in
September October I I joined brain board and I joined to help
with building building Dryden basically.
So Ryden was as you said, the payments under solution, right?
So what, what is payment channels, if anybody knows
lightning, the lightning network to Bitcoin is what riding is to
Ethereum. That is extremely simple that
you take stuff off chain and it's just for payment.
And you say like let's say I have a payment channel with with
you Frederica and I just sent you, we deposit in this payment
channel which is a contractor, I deposit 10 Neath, you deposit 10
Neath and then we can send those tennis to each other as much as
we want of chain and if ever there is a problem we just
settle it on chain. Yeah.
So basically you would actually have to sign each transaction.
We just wouldn't put it on chain.
And then basically if you kind of if you were to dupe me or
whatever, I could kind of prove this because I kind of had you
assigned transaction, right? Exactly.
And it's a network because it's not just between us two.
So this is what, a single payment salary and it's a
network because then you may have one with Martin and then
Martin has one with Christoph, let's say, and then I can send
directly to Christoph through all of your channel.
So we spent quite a bit of time developing.
Now why did it ultimately fail? I don't know.
I like that. I still like the idea of payment
standards, but not as an entire network to to be used as an A2
solution. Like it's it's a different, it's
a different thing. As we see now from the roll ups,
you want the the fully VM experience to be scalable so you
have the contracts, you have the D5.
This would be only for token transfers from to summer.
One of the reasons was that Brainbot was probably a a very
development oriented company and not at all user facing, so it
was mostly like some geeks just writing code.
So I I think that this had a lot because there was no contact
with with the actual community. Another is that it's actually a
lot more complicated than it sounds to develop this.
There is so many edge cases and so many problems that it it
becomes very difficult to actually make this production
ready. I I remember our issues probably
they're still open like half of them about every single edge
case that we hid or could think of.
And you know, like it's it's a very difficult technology to
actually to actually scale because of all these edge cases.
But I mean you, you guys as a collective had thought so much
about kind of the constraints and what had to go into it and
kind of you were there for kind of like all of the talk about
plasma and scaling and so on. So in principle, kind of like
when the L2 revolution came, you were in almost the ideal place
to kind of launch your own L2 and kind of make it big.
Why do you think that didn't happen?
I can't answer this. I really don't know because so I
wasn't in. So the problem with Brain Boot
is also that it wasn't, it was basically a top down
organization. So we had no say into what is
done. There was like the the
management decided and we I was just a developer there and we
just did what the management said.
I think that we missed the boat for as a project because it was
too slow to finish riding and then there was no pivot at all
even when stuff changed when it was obvious that there should be
a St. one for example at the same time like we had the plasma
as you said that popped up from the generic states analyst that
states analyst people which we also cooperated with had started
went from states analyst to plasma and then later to
basically I think it's this very big part of the same thing
that's evolved with optimism right now.
So they pivoted every time while well, Brainbow just stayed on on
right? And so for for this, I guess the
lack of of of of pivoting is what killed it.
You then kind of moved on to kind of start Rot Key, which was
your own baby. So as we said in the very
beginning kind of Rot Key is an accounting and portfolio
tracking and management software.
But why did you put? Why did you choose that niche
for for your own startup? Good question.
I don't like accounting. I hate it's.
I hate taxes. I hate accounting.
But I just needed to do them. So I didn't even want to make a
startup. I just wanted to do my taxes.
Well, that escalated. I, I, I never intended to start
a startup like it's just that I actually started this, as you
can see from the commits in 2017.
So two years before I left riding, it just was a side
project helping me submit my taxes to the bonanza.
In the beginning it was just a command line interface.
And the question came in 2017 when I first realized that we
have to actually, you know, submit taxes on all this stuff
back from 20/14/2015 etcetera. And I was thinking, so how can I
do this? I had no idea.
And I think back then the only thing that was available was
Bitcoin dot tax and I go there, you know, Bitcoin dot tax, what
is it? OK, website, you know upload CSV
or give me all of your addresses and I'm like, wait, why should
they give you their addresses? Can't they just download
something and calculate it all locally and then send it to an
accountant or to the finance on directly?
And the lack of such a tool existing is what pushed me to
create broad case of command line interface basically in the
beginning to just, you know, locally calculate everything and
not say it with I don't know someone else because then they
know you know it's. It's not like it's not like with
with banks, with crypticity a lot more sensitive because you
are setting your transactions and with them your addresses.
So everything you have and because everything is so public,
everything you will ever have in crypto.
Unless you use Tornado or you go through Kraken or Coinbase.
Because someone who actually really wants to follow you, they
can just take all this and then just monitor what you are doing
like years later while you wanted to do your tax reporting.
I don't know 2017 so that I consider it like extremely
sensitive data and I never wanted to say this so this is
how I started working on on on ROT key.
And there's now quite a suite of kind of competitors, right.
So basically there's most, most of those you actually use by
still inputting your addresses in a centralized framework and
they kind of calculate things for you, but and you are
definitely sharing your data with them.
Do you think kind of the space has professionalized in terms of
kind of like data security and data privacy or do you think
it's still as dire? It's it's it's a lot worse.
Like instead of having one way to suit yourself on the foot,
now there's a hundred ways to suit yourself on the foot.
It's it's it's really bad. I'm actually very sad that I so
I don't consider any of them actual competitors because they
nobody does what we do. I would also have a competitor
like a lot actually there is one called Ghost Folio.
I think it was shown by one of our users to us.
I think it's more more UK focused or something something
like that. But there was one that had
exactly the same ideas but written in a different language
or something. And but they had basically
exactly the same problem and same idea.
And I if I could say at anybody's competitor, it will be
someone who offers the same thing that we offer which is
basically privacy and keeping it, keeping it local.
Yeah. So I started like that, but I
never actually wanted to make a start up.
As I said, I don't know what happened.
It's just that after having to leave a brain boat, I just
thought, you know what? I so there were many problems.
I don't want to go into that. But after that I was like, I
would like to work for myself. So what do I have?
And I'm like, OK, I have roti and by then it had you know
quite a few like actual users and even paying users and I was
like wait, I have never made a startup so maybe I should try
that and just started it along with.
So even though he's not a Co founder, he was basically the
first dev cancel. So a friend of mine and quite a
good developer who is doing the front end in in.
I mean, he's not the only one doing the front end, but he's
the front end lead and lots of other stuff in in in rot key.
What are the main challenges behind running a tool like you
guys are? Wow, where can I start?
OK, there seem to be a lot of challenges.
Choose any choose anywhere you want.
Probably the biggest one would be the choice of being local and
privacy. Preserving actually limits you a
lot in the development processes.
So like while every other tool that offers similar solutions to
to a user, they can just have a website right?
And then in the website they just roll out an update and then
another update. You don't need to download
anything. You don't need to do anything,
you just auto update it. It is a problem both for our
users and for us. It's really really annoying that
when you make a local application you have to create
binaries, people have to download them.
And it's not just that you have to create binaries, you have to
create binaries for Windows. You have to create binaries for
Linux for many different distros then for Apple macro SX stuff.
Then later when the silicon stuff came this different binary
because completely different architecture.
So you need to have you know 2 binaries for for Apple.
So developing local software though it's I believe as a user
it has a lot of benefits as a developer it's a pain in the
behind right Because I like like it it it takes basically it
costs more money in the end because it more dev resources,
more time while you just make a website and you just update it.
So it this is probably one of the biggest challenges the other
would be, but this is something that everybody says.
So I have two talks with founders of of or developers of
other tools that are, you know, completely online when you want
to track crypto. I mean there is a new protocol
or a new primitive, completely new idea popping up every week
or so. And the users are extremely
demanding and they are also very entitling like they're like,
wait, why doesn't it track this protocol that only I know very
well. Why doesn't it do this?
So trying to keep up with with crypto and it's development in
this in this field is so fast that it's it's extremely
difficult. Yeah, I can.
I can see that you guys have a free tier and a pay tier.
So how does it work? Kind of what?
As a user, what can I do with the free tier and from which
point onwards do I actually have to pay?
Yeah, so the three tier, so this tiering will change because it's
unsustainable. The three tier is way too cheap.
It's 12, no, absolutely €10 per month plus VAT wherever you are.
Because for example, for Germany we have to start 19% VAT.
If you're in Portugal, a different one, if you're not in
the European zone, it's €10. We've got a feedback that you
can get a lot done with the free version and that we should
actually change that in order to get more money from users.
But the IT has limits. So it is limiting the amount of
events that you can process. So if you have more than I don't
know 1000 or something then or 500 I don't remember you will
see a notice saying OK we can't process more than this, please
upgrade to the to the premium version.
And there is some features that we have also in the premium
version like a staking I think. And another one is that we allow
and this one of the features that people really like for
premium we allow to up upload your database to our server and
then download it from another machine.
And this is completely private because the database to all of
the data in ROT keys encrypted using a password that you give.
So we we just see a BLOB of data.
We can't treat it. We just act as a cloud where you
upload the thing and then you download it somewhere else.
You also said that you don't just do accounting and portfolio
tracking, you will also start much doing much more portfolio
management. How does that look like?
So Rocky right now is is mostly a tracker, right, an accounting
tool. There is many ways that you can
take it, but we're a really small team.
So we are, we are resource constrained.
We can either try to do a lot more accounting, you know
there's so many jurisdictions. This is another from from the
another one of the problems. Because people say, OK, I want
to do accounting right, but I am in the Netherlands so I have
these rules. Please help me or I'm in the uki
have the bed and breakfast rule. What is that?
Oh here, read it. It's you know the ASRM website.
You know APDF of 100 pages. Please implement it.
I have a premium user. I'm paying €10 per month.
Please I want this implemented from you.
So it starts getting extremely difficult because there really
is every country has its own rules.
So we try to have generic accounting customizable bid as
an accounting solution approach. And we want to make it
configurable for users and users can make PRS even and add their
stuff. But for management side it's
including myself as a user and other users have told us.
So I open the road key. I see what I have in Kraken in
Coinbase or in in DFI. Why can't I actually manage it
from Rodkey? Rodkey has the Kraken API keys.
It has the Coinbase API keys. If I want to make a trade in
Kraken to sell F4 Euro, why can't I do it from Rodkey?
Why do I have to open Kraken, sign in, put my 2FA and not do
it from from from Rodkey? So the idea is to manage your
funds by making both on chain transactions and trading on the
exchanges from rot. Here this is not possible yet,
but this is the direction that we would like to take it towards
because it would make it more much more useful tool for for
everybody. Yeah, I I I can see that and I
think it's also something that a lot of portfolio trackers kind
of a path that they have taken also to kind of increase
monetization, right. That's that's true.
Like for other portfolio trackers, this is mostly for DFI
only because they are like DFI oriented.
But yes, indeed they they turn into wallets.
Yeah, absolutely. So since you started this, there
have been enormous developments in the privacy sphere, right?
So basically, back in 2017 when you kind of started this as a
CLI project, there was no CKPS and now kind of we're talking
about fully homomorphic encryption, right?
Do you think these cryptographic tools could help build something
that is easier to maintain but still fully private for the
user? Yeah, I'm I I'm not sure.
I don't know. I don't know the technical
details of the ZKEPS enough to to answer.
OK, what What are the plans for the future of Orotky?
Yeah. So the plans for the future is
to basically capitalize on on having a local tool by going
towards the management side. Because another thing is like
you you wouldn't sell your your API keys, active API keys with
with with an exchange with a centralized website.
People have done it once at these three commas think and if
you've read like the they had the stating API where you had a
what was it like some kind of website where it it aggregates
trades from different exchanges it's called 3 commas and they
got hacked because and they lost a lot of money from the
customers because they the database got hacked so active
API keys were leaked and boom while with rot it would all be
locally OK you someone can put a kilo there on your machine but
then it's it's it's your fault it's not someone leaking your
data and we did access to your funds.
So we really want to capitalize on on on this a lot keep
offering more accounting solutions because this is
probably one of the things that our current users want the most
and figure out a way to well allow for easier to capitalize
on the open source part, allow for easier contributions and
maybe also incentivize them somehow because if we as a as a
project do good, so maybe also our contributors could could
somehow profit. So we're thinking of ways that
we could we could achieve this and change the architecture of
of the tool again capitalizing on the local part so make it
multi processing we want to, we are working on different demons
underneath doing other things because it's I mean it's a it's
a back end and a front end and it's doing so many things, so
many calculations underneath that.
It's already the limits of the current process and it's slow in
many things. So we want to I basically go to
a multi service architecture and some services written in
different languages and we're looking at at trust right now in
order to well, I mean my computer has how many cores and
I ran Rocky on on the one Python back end.
I mean you know how Python is, is, is single process.
Though this is changing with newer versions of Python, still
we want to go to a multi service architecture to get rid of these
these limitations. Super.
Yeah. No, that's super, super.
Interesting to hear kind of what the plans for Rocky going
forward are, maybe that's that's kind of change gears a little
bit and talk about Ethereum culture and the general
ecosystem. So you have been in the
ecosystem for 10 years, you you kind of joined in 2014, now it's
2024. How has how has the culture
changed in your eyes? So we grew a lot, right?
So I don't know what to call Ethereum culture anymore.
It's so many people compared to how it was before.
It's so many new people and we have different subcultures right
now. Inside the theme, we have the
regions, the digens, the the, the, the traders, the gamblers.
I don't know like the builders and they, we have the builders
who are OK, you know we don't need open source.
So let's go closer So the way the Builders who are like like
me like open source, we others who are like OK maybe let's go
somewhere in between So there's there's it's so big as an
ecosystem right now and I'm very happy and proud of that.
But I can't really define what is what is a theorem culture
anymore. It's just a lot of subcultures.
Yeah, I I I think, I think that's, yeah, that's that's a
very sad point. So if you kind of think about
kind of like the Ethereum O GS from back then.
So I recently saw again the picture from Devcon 0 and as you
said as you said there were literally like 25 people there.
Of those there are very few leftover.
Do you think that's kind of like Natural Chan and people are just
doing something else now? Or do you think it's something
that's particular to to this ecosystem?
And is there anyone you miss in particular?
Anyone you you really wish would come back?
Yeah, yeah. Well from Demko 0, yeah.
I don't know. I like, I loved Jeffrey Jeffrey
Weekly the basically main, the first developer of of Keith.
He's a really good guy. If I were to say anybody from
from from that picture that I just just remembered As for the
term, it's. Completely out.
Out of the ecosystem, right? He doesn't.
Yeah. Completely unlike the only time
that I saw his name was when someone accused him of selling
if in order to find his. I think he's doing a game right
now like a software game and some because they tracked his
theorem address from but in genesis and they you know try to
name same him in Twitter for for selling if.
Busted kind of selling the East that legally belongs to him.
What maybe we were talking about maybe a year or two ago.
So yeah, there is definitely a natural turn.
I mean, people being 10 years older, if if you're now it's 40s
or 50s, I mean at some point you're like OK, you know middle
age crisis, some get married, some with kids.
The turn is is natural. On the other hand, there is also
something that most of the people there, if they actually
had even kept it, probably don't need to care about anything
anymore. So maybe this also shows who was
interested in it for just, you know, like, OK, let's just make
something cool but make money and then retire.
And who is still here and is just building because this is
something really interesting. And I mean this, this thing that
we're building is really interesting and the people who
still are here in one way or another, I I, I find it really,
really nice. Yeah, no, it's it's it's always
good to kind of run into old faces.
Yeah. You're a very active Twitter on
Twitter and the things kind of you cover a lot are kind of like
things like privacy and free speech kind of tornado style
kind of project, but also security.
You're also pretty big in the Ethereum public goods and
protocol governance scene. So you're one of the largest
delegates for a number of projects.
How? How do you choose which issues
to get involved in, and what makes you passionate about them?
Yeah, That's a good question. I I never plan to actually
become a, as they call it, our politician or governance
politician or. I have no idea how that's
happened. Really.
I I I really have no idea. For example, it turns out that
I'm the biggest delegate in Diva.
And they do a distributed staking validation protocol,
right? Exactly.
I have no idea how. Like someone told me, hey, do
you know what you're delegating? Diva.
I said, yeah, remember that. I said, OK, if anybody wants to
delegate to me, do that. And then someone tells me, hey,
can you come to this telegram? We need you to vote because
you're the biggest delegate and I'm like, wait, what?
But everyone knows you, right, because you're so active on
Twitter and kind of you seem, I know I've delegated to you in
the past because kind of you you you seem to kind of think think
things out well and you know I I don't have bandwidth to kind of
look into all of these things and I know they're kind of if if
you kind of looked into it I would probably end up agreeing
with you. So kind of, I think this is
these are the reasons for which people delegate, right?
Probably. Probably, yeah.
It started probably with ENS and Gitcoin.
I guess because Gitcoin is something that I really love.
I I stopped actually being a delegate there because of issues
with the governance. I just said OK, I don't want
anymore, I'm just too tired. But things that try to change
the world like like Gitcoin, because I I find it amazing that
it can basically it has so many flaws.
I have criticized it as many times as I have said that I love
it. But it's amazing that you have
this idea where OK, you gather people from all around the world
and you fund projects and then there is a matching port and
these projects get more funding from from the port.
And we have funded with this even things outside of crypto
like I treated the other day about your Lib 3 which is a very
basic library in Python. So it's it's really amazing to
see how these primitives that we have created in in, in, in
crypto can help people build amazing stuff and fund them.
So I guess that's how I got into it, Just wanted to influence its
its direction. How much time does it take up
for you? Because kind of like following
like other forums, I'm involved in way fewer projects and even I
struggle to kind of keep up. I don't follow forums as as much
as people probably think. If if if government relies on
needing to follow forums I probably don't like or or like
step step step away from that particular project So actively,
actively I think I'm mostly in optimism in ENS.
This is probably the most active ones that I, I, I I am
activating right now And one really cool thing that I have
asked of every doubt that I'm involved in I'm also involved in
hope a bit etcetera is is to get delegates having a mailing list.
So like what happened like weekly sum up this is beautiful
because I can just go through it and say OK that's it good good
info. It's it's, it's it's it's a game
changer are. These published somewhere.
Yeah, I think, I think everybody can.
Just like with a mailing list, right?
You can subscribe and then you you get it.
I think so. It's.
Definitely no, no, no. No, no.
It's like the governance weekly or something like that.
It's it's pretty it's pretty helpful if you're a delegate
because then you actually can know what's happening without
having to be on the forums every time.
And then you see OK so this particular proposal is something
that I should look at but it it it does take time and
unfortunately some things take a lot more time than they should
like so ENS for example it's it's pretty smooth like it's
they have this sub groups or working groups they're the most
they're mostly running the Dow and then they're asking the
delegates to to vote on staff. And when there's a big vote
that's when a lot of thinking needs to happen like there was
now with the service providers. But mostly it's hands off
optimism is so much work I I don't know what the heck I'm
doing there. It's like so much work.
Are delegates compensated for their for their time?
No. And this is another problem that
so ENSI mean it's too little, it's it's not too much work but
like there is the best of work. Optimism is, is really a lot of
work. They say that they don't want to
so for optimism they don't want to compensate but maybe there
will be retro PDF. So there's this kind of bait of
sorts to get people more interested in governance.
But for me it would be much better if it was like, OK, so
this is the outside put and this is how much I get compensated.
Not like a little PCF because it's it's a different, I think
they're they're completely different things This this
shouldn't work like this because it really takes a lot of time.
Optimism is I find really cool and annoying at the same time
because so optimism has the foundation behind it and it's
not hands off. It's very hands on.
So this is what I don't like it. Some.
A lot of the times it feels like the centralization theatre as
opposed to like actual governance.
They are taking feedback well and they're changing it.
They're really trying. They have voting cycles.
They have seasons and every time it gets better and better still
hands on. The question will be if Optimism
Foundation wasn't actually guiding this, wouldn't would it
be chaos? Maybe it's better this way.
I, I, I, I, I don't know. Optimism does it in an
interesting way. The most cool thing about
optimism, and I find that I find really interesting, is that they
have a by camera or by chamber governance.
So they call it the token house and the citizen house.
The token house is the use on delegates.
It will delegate up to someone, and these are the token house
delegates. Then there's the citizen house,
which is supposed to fight them plutocracy by having recognized
citizens as one person, one vote.
Right now there's 125 people I think, and they in the beginning
only voted in the retro PCF, so all retro PDF rounds were
actually voted only by the bot holders.
So the citizens. But right now from this season,
they start to have a voice in the actual governance too and
they can basically veto almost everything.
So they tried to have to experiment with this idea of of
two different chambers of governance so that there is no
power of plutocracy completely on the on on the on the token
holders and that cannot be captured or if it gets captured
so that it can be saved by by the citizen house.
It's really interesting approach I I I find it unique and I
really want to see how, how, how it goes.
Yeah, I think governance is it's going to, they're going to be so
many. If this is to work.
There's going to be so many upgrades.
So kind of like this, this one person one vote and then kind of
the delegates and kind of it's kind of it's it's too easy to
break and to spam and it's yeah. So I'm super curious to see how
that will go in the future. What makes you hopeful for the
road ahead for Ethereum and what worries you?
So hopefully, hopefully I guess all the cool stuff like we're
really building really cool stuff as like I saw a tweet by
Peter and I I kind of agreed with it.
Peter from from Gev C Laggy. Yeah I'm not going to try to
sorry, sorry if you what's this, Peter.
But like I also was a bit guessed the EIP 1559 because I
didn't think it would work or the, you know like it didn't
make sense to me. But you know, like, it's a
resounding success as an idea. And it's really.
So, yeah, P 1559 was the fee market, right?
Yes, yes, that's correct. Sorry.
I I yeah, I hate this when people do that and I shouldn't
have done this like these numbers, you know, like, you
know, 1547 and 4633 and I'm like, OK.
What? Yeah, I know.
Exactly. What is this?
Yeah, so the fee market one has worked amazingly.
So I think that it's probably this also goes back to the
people. So like the there's so many
smart people in this field. There's also many people smarter
than me, younger, talented and you know, hungry for for for
building beautiful stuff. I think this is the hope like
all this new new new generation that is inside this ecosystem
that we built back then. It's this is making me extremely
hopeful for the future. It's it's really beautiful to
see all those young people trying to build cool stuff and
also them. How generous people are about
helping good causes. Like now with a tornado, right?
You see how both back when it was just Alexei Persev's case.
But now with that, it's both cases with Persev and Roman in
the US, how everyone just, you know, opens up and says, OK,
yeah, let's donate, let's help defend open source and defend
privacy. So this kind of reactions and
this kind of people in the field really make me extremely hopeful
and proud to to be to be part of this ecosystem.
I love the way that you frame the kind of what makes you
hopeful, because I think kind of like young and smart people in
the ecosystem. I I think you're spot on.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's it's amazing.
It's it's really cool to. See.
And people who are still in it for the right reasons, right.
So basically, I mean intermittently, we always kind
of have these faces where there's a lot of money Bros.
But yeah, by and large, they're still they're still the people
who are in it because they just believe in the vision.
Yeah, yeah, that's true. For for for what worries me, I
guess a lot of things again, like super majority of of, of,
of gift, in in in stating this, this.
I had totally forgotten about it.
And now that it became a Twitter thing again, I'm like, oh wow,
that's really serious. That really worries me.
Like I the moment I realized that it's so bad, I I'm really
worried about this. So things like that.
Like they call it a Black Swan event, but it's not really a
Black Swan if you actually talk about it and expect that it may
happen if. You can see it coming.
Yeah, yeah, I I find it weird that you would call it a Black
Swan event. But also, you know, the other
thing would be the image that we have towards the outside.
This saddens me maybe more than worries me, but also worries me
because this image. So we we, we, we tend to have a
very negative image right outside of the crypto space.
They just somehow associate us only with crime or scams or
gambling, you know, very negative words.
While in reality it's it's not. It's not like that.
Although there is a lot of scams, a lot of bad stuff in in
crypto for sure. It's like the developers that
are just working in other non crypto fields seem to actually
hate developers work in crypto. Like there is a lot of actual
hate. I have been attacked in in let's
say issues in GitHub when they realized, so we are reporting a
a library issue somewhere and then they realize that they work
in crypto and they're extremely like unkind telling me to, you
know get off that they don't want to help me.
I have heard this will happen multiple times.
And I mean this. I find it extremely worrying
because this translates later into what we see in the
political scene in the US, because if many people associate
something with with crime, then they can push it to be banned or
to have, well, a lot of political consequences.
And this this actually really worries me because the
misinformation there can do a lot of damage to to to our
sector. And it's often strongest in
groups that should in principle be values aligned with us.
So kind of like the the people who kind of came out from the
original cypherpunk. So kind of like the CCC in in
Germany or the Electronic Frontier Foundation almost
everyone is extremely web three critical.
So yeah, I I I feel you. I also, I also find that very
worrying. Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
I and I don't know. You know, I normally don't worry
if I have a solution and I know, OK, let's go work towards that.
I don't know what to do here because I don't understand why
this is happening. OK.
No, I mean, I can understand why.
Yeah, I also understand why. So basically I think kind of
like being on the inside, there's a lot of scams that
we're not even Privy to. So basically that kind of like
regular people are the target audience for and we don't even
we'd never actually end up hearing about.
So there was like this Runaway hit podcast I think made by the
BBC last week last year the the Crypto Queen or something.
And I had. It was literally a project that
had. A parent lady, right?
Yeah, exactly. Had apparently raised billions
of dollars and I had literally never heard of her like zero
time. So I think kind of we're kind of
like we're very much in this bubble where there are largely
well-intentioned people and kind of like all of this scammy
underbelly of crypto, we're not Privy to it.
So I think probably for every legitimate project that we know
and love, there's 20 scam projects that we've never heard
of. And I think this is very much
kind of how this image of crypto actually rises.
And I think kind of the way to kind of dig ours, dig ourselves
out of this hole, I hope is by building genuinely useful
application for regular people. And I think kind of this is kind
of where we where as an ecosystem kind of we need to get
to, right? Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's
true. But I don't know how to get
there because even if we do like we have, we have, we have a lot
of stuff like, I mean, OK now I like advertising is something
that you guys work on in Gnosis, like the Gnosis pay, right.
Like this is amazing. This is going to be super cool,
based on Monarium, which I have actually also used, right?
And these are really like the payments, unlocking payments.
It's, it's. Yeah, but it's still, it's still
a promise, right. So basically it still hasn't
found. I mean it's so kind of, we're
very hard at work to kind of make it usable for anyone who's
kind of on a regular new bank account.
So maybe not for your grandmother, but kind of for for
kind of regular people our age who have no crypto background,
should be usable without them having to know kind of what is
heat phrases and so on. But we're not there yet.
So kind of if you kind of look at actually users in crypto,
kind of people who are there to kind of use the products because
they are legitimately better than the web.
Two equivalent. I would there's I think there's
literally zero. And I think kind of moving from
a place, I think I'm super hopeful we can we can get there
and we can get there maybe this year or next year.
Basically having real applications with real users who
are not in it because it's crypto and it's cool, but
because it's better than what they used to have, I think we
can get there. And I think this is, this will
have to be the way to kind of get out of this, you know,
public relations nightmare that we're in at the moment.
Yeah yeah, the we we need to find like well, not exactly find
PMF, but it would be nice to have a good good applications.
But I still think of the stuff that crypto does a lot better
than anything else right now, which is, I mean payments, it's
it's nothing can do this as well as crypto.
I like paying people in outside of the EU, paying people in
Africa. So we have some independent
contractors in the Rocky that work some hours for us, right?
And we pay them through through crypto.
If you try to pay Africa, sometimes Asia also, right?
Yeah, so we tried, even with I don't know what other solutions
are there like PayPal or or Wise transfer.
We tried wise. Oh my God, it's first of all so
slow, then expensive. The percentage on the amount and
the second payment that we tried to send, it took about a month
because it got somehow flagged. And then we had to talk with
support and. Look, you're you're preaching to
the choir here. I totally agree.
But I think kind of then kind of if you look at the other side,
the question is kind of like how do you off rampant, how do you,
how do you make the stables accessible so that you can
actually spend them for groceries and your rent And I
think this is still way too hard.
So I think kind of, yeah, I mean I think kind of it's potential
improvement is definitely there and I think we can get there.
But I think kind of making it more usable.
I think this kind of needs to be kind of like priority one for
now. Yeah, yeah for for countries
like for Asian countries from what I I I heard they just use
you know like exchanges like like I I do normally for for off
ramping in Africa. It's extremely interesting.
They use this like PP2P stuff. They they just do Crypto P2P
just like we used to do. Not so much anymore like Local
Bitcoins and Local. Yeah Local bitcoins there was
there was a fun time yeah cool left Harris it's been a it's
been an absolute pleasure to speak with you and have you on
this podcast for the first time for real after 10 years of kind
of working together where if people are interested in trying
out rough key or contributing where should where should we
send them. For for contributing it would be
a GitHub and Discord. So GitHub to see the code and
Discord to basically chat with us ask us any questions we are.
We're extremely welcome to contributors and to download it.
You can also download this from GitHub but we have it on our
website likeerotki.com. You can just go there and press
download. Depending on the IT will
probably detect your operating system and then download the
proper binary and just try it and then come to discord and
tell us what you think. Perfect.
Thank you so much for coming on Lev Harris and see you soon.
Yeah. Thank you so much.
Thank you for joining us on this week's episode.
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