1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,280 When I think about, say, cypherpunk, when I think about 2 00:00:02,280 --> 00:00:06,160 decentralization, I'm more focused nowadays on the chains 3 00:00:06,160 --> 00:00:09,800 themselves, the protocols that the, the, the real inelimitable 4 00:00:09,800 --> 00:00:12,840 core, as I like to think of it of, of cypherpunk is primarily 5 00:00:12,840 --> 00:00:15,440 to be found on the chains, and that's where it really matters. 6 00:00:15,760 --> 00:00:17,600 And then you're probably fighting a losing battle. 7 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:21,440 If you want every application, every doubt to have that same 8 00:00:21,440 --> 00:00:24,240 degree of commitment to these traditional values. 9 00:00:24,240 --> 00:00:26,880 I think those days might be coming to a close. 10 00:00:27,120 --> 00:00:32,800 How do we stop Web 3 from merely becoming an infrastructure 11 00:00:32,800 --> 00:00:35,040 upgrade for Wide St. I think we've seen a lot of 12 00:00:35,040 --> 00:00:36,560 this. I think that's already happened. 13 00:00:36,680 --> 00:00:40,680 If they understood more the level of micro targeting and 14 00:00:40,760 --> 00:00:43,280 corporate surveillance that's happening under the hood, I 15 00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:45,040 think people would be more worried about it. 16 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:52,360 Welcome to Epicenter, the show, which talks about the 17 00:00:52,360 --> 00:00:55,200 technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization 18 00:00:55,200 --> 00:00:58,000 and the blockchain revolution. I'm Frederica Adams, and today 19 00:00:58,000 --> 00:01:01,760 I'm speaking with Paul Dillon Ennis, who goes bipolar on 20 00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:05,400 Twitter, and Nick Almond, who's also super active on Twitter. 21 00:01:06,120 --> 00:01:10,880 Paul is an independent crypto philosopher and a lecturer at 22 00:01:10,880 --> 00:01:13,920 the College of Business at University College Dublin. 23 00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:17,520 And Nick thinks very deeply about governance and other 24 00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:22,720 aspects at the DITO Network as the head of governance there. 25 00:01:22,760 --> 00:01:27,360 And today we want to be having a conversation whether we might 26 00:01:27,360 --> 00:01:30,960 have to adjust our intro in due course. 27 00:01:31,160 --> 00:01:34,880 So is the blockchain revolution really still a blockchain 28 00:01:34,880 --> 00:01:38,760 revolution? Or is it becoming an upgrade for 29 00:01:38,760 --> 00:01:43,320 more legacy players? Before we dive into it, we'd 30 00:01:43,320 --> 00:01:45,080 like to tell you about our sponsors this week. 31 00:01:45,440 --> 00:01:48,280 This episode is brought to you by Nosis, building the open 32 00:01:48,280 --> 00:01:52,240 Internet one block at a time. Nosis was founded in 2015 and 33 00:01:52,240 --> 00:01:55,040 it's grown from 1 of Ethereum's earliest projects into a 34 00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:57,840 powerful ecosystem for open user owned finance. 35 00:01:58,280 --> 00:02:01,280 Nosis is also the team behind products that had become core to 36 00:02:01,280 --> 00:02:04,800 my business and that are so many others like Safe and Cow Swap. 37 00:02:05,360 --> 00:02:09,759 At the center is Nosis Chain. It's a low fee layer one with 0 38 00:02:09,759 --> 00:02:13,160 downtime in seven years and secured by over 300,000 39 00:02:13,160 --> 00:02:15,440 validators. It's the foundation for real 40 00:02:15,440 --> 00:02:18,480 world financial applications like Nosis Pay and Circles. 41 00:02:19,160 --> 00:02:22,360 All of this is governed by Nosis Dow, a community run 42 00:02:22,360 --> 00:02:26,240 organization where anyone with a GNO token can vote on updates, 43 00:02:26,440 --> 00:02:29,360 fund new projects, and even run a validator from home. 44 00:02:29,920 --> 00:02:32,880 So if you're building a Web 3 or you're just curious about what 45 00:02:32,880 --> 00:02:36,840 financial freedom can look like, start exploring at nosis dot IO. 46 00:02:37,680 --> 00:02:40,360 Hey, Paul and Nick, super nice to have both of you on. 47 00:02:41,200 --> 00:02:44,600 Hi, nice to be here. Good. 48 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:48,480 Maybe for everyone who doesn't know you kind of who doesn't 49 00:02:49,200 --> 00:02:51,600 spend as much time on Twitter as I do. 50 00:02:52,600 --> 00:02:56,680 Can we get brief backgrounds of who you are, why you are here, 51 00:02:56,880 --> 00:02:59,840 and what you came for? Yeah, OK, I'll go first. 52 00:03:00,720 --> 00:03:02,760 Yeah, so I'm, I'm a physicist by background. 53 00:03:02,760 --> 00:03:06,040 I was actually an academic for a good chunk of my career. 54 00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:10,200 I sort of sailed from physics through to learning theory and 55 00:03:10,200 --> 00:03:12,600 governance research over about a decade or so. 56 00:03:13,280 --> 00:03:17,120 And then in 2020, I jumped into crypto full time because I was 57 00:03:17,120 --> 00:03:21,400 obsessed on Dows and the what wonderful things this technology 58 00:03:21,400 --> 00:03:25,040 could do for the world. And I worked on prediction 59 00:03:25,040 --> 00:03:28,560 markets, Dow tooling, and now sort of govern a large Dow in 60 00:03:28,560 --> 00:03:31,360 the Solano ecosystem. Cool. 61 00:03:31,720 --> 00:03:34,080 Thank you, Nick. It's it's interesting to have a 62 00:03:34,080 --> 00:03:41,040 fellow physics physics PhD on on the show, just just mostly for 63 00:03:41,040 --> 00:03:43,200 my benefit. Tell me, tell me what you did 64 00:03:43,200 --> 00:03:46,960 research on. I ended up doing the PhD in 65 00:03:46,960 --> 00:03:50,160 biophysical surface science, so I was interested in. 66 00:03:50,720 --> 00:03:52,960 I was working on sort of photonic probes to try and 67 00:03:52,960 --> 00:03:57,040 understand how biological molecules and biological systems 68 00:03:57,040 --> 00:03:59,560 ordered at surfaces. So I was very interested in, 69 00:03:59,640 --> 00:04:04,440 yeah, the emergence around like how life started, how sort of 70 00:04:04,440 --> 00:04:07,680 self organized systems begin in biological systems, that kind of 71 00:04:07,680 --> 00:04:10,040 stuff. That's fascinating. 72 00:04:10,800 --> 00:04:15,640 It's also not that that much removed from governance and kind 73 00:04:15,640 --> 00:04:19,279 of. Like it is, I think I, yeah, I 74 00:04:19,279 --> 00:04:24,280 got very, very obsessed on complex systems and self 75 00:04:24,280 --> 00:04:27,080 organization. Yeah, for the last 20 years or 76 00:04:27,080 --> 00:04:29,640 so, it's been very much there. There's there's a lot of 77 00:04:29,640 --> 00:04:33,720 parallels. 100% So I did my PhD in low dimensional context 78 00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:35,920 quantum systems, which is actually by it's actually 79 00:04:35,920 --> 00:04:38,600 pretty, it's actually somewhat similar to what what you did. 80 00:04:38,840 --> 00:04:43,000 So kind of like, I mean work, work on surfaces and kind of I 81 00:04:43,000 --> 00:04:48,360 did, I mostly did carbon nanotubes and graphene and kind 82 00:04:48,360 --> 00:04:51,600 of like these sorts of systems. Yeah, so condensed condensed 83 00:04:51,600 --> 00:04:53,840 matter physics then basically, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I. 84 00:04:54,160 --> 00:04:58,960 Did simulation and experiments. So it's yeah lovely super cool 85 00:05:00,520 --> 00:05:03,720 pie. We we've kind of bypassed you so 86 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:09,680 far, but I'd also very much like a a, a short intro on you. 87 00:05:09,680 --> 00:05:15,200 I think many people will recognize you from from Twitter 88 00:05:15,520 --> 00:05:19,000 as post polar. Yeah, it's one of those 89 00:05:19,000 --> 00:05:23,920 situations where I've reached the point where that has become 90 00:05:23,920 --> 00:05:26,280 my name in real life, even at conferences. 91 00:05:27,600 --> 00:05:32,000 And by the way, Pol is Paul in Irish, so that that's where the 92 00:05:32,080 --> 00:05:36,040 the origin of the name. But yeah, so a similar 93 00:05:36,040 --> 00:05:39,480 situation, another academic. So my PhD is in philosophy. 94 00:05:39,480 --> 00:05:43,120 So I guess the other side of the, that spectrum. 95 00:05:43,120 --> 00:05:45,440 So if the the physics materialist, the philosopher 96 00:05:45,440 --> 00:05:47,480 who's maybe in the clouds a little bit. 97 00:05:48,560 --> 00:05:54,720 And then really I was interested in crypto before I got involved 98 00:05:54,720 --> 00:05:57,440 in it in terms of writing about it in an academic context, 99 00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:00,920 because I had friends who were involved in WikiLeaks early on 100 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:06,160 and they were telling me about, you know, Bitcoin, the embargo 101 00:06:06,480 --> 00:06:08,920 that made me curious. And then I heard about Silk Road 102 00:06:09,280 --> 00:06:12,840 and I've always had this attraction to counter cultures, 103 00:06:12,840 --> 00:06:15,960 subcultures, that kind of thing. And then I never thought about 104 00:06:15,960 --> 00:06:18,680 it of being something that I would actually write about in a 105 00:06:19,600 --> 00:06:23,160 academic context. And then just by chance, I saw a 106 00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:26,080 job ad while I was doing my bits and pieces of teaching across 107 00:06:26,080 --> 00:06:27,400 Dublin. So I was like teaching 108 00:06:27,400 --> 00:06:30,280 philosophy, interior and so on. There was a job ad for a 109 00:06:30,280 --> 00:06:32,760 blockchain researcher at the university I am now. 110 00:06:33,040 --> 00:06:36,280 This is 2015. And because nobody else in the 111 00:06:36,280 --> 00:06:41,280 country was really had a PhD and also an interest in crypto, I 112 00:06:41,280 --> 00:06:43,200 got the job. So. 113 00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:45,840 So it's just kind of lucky. And then since then I just said, 114 00:06:45,840 --> 00:06:47,840 OK, this is a unique opportunity. 115 00:06:47,840 --> 00:06:51,160 I'm looking at a research area where there is nobody else 116 00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:53,280 really working on it. Or you could count the amount of 117 00:06:53,280 --> 00:06:54,840 academics at that time on one hand. 118 00:06:56,280 --> 00:06:57,640 So yeah. And then just ended up writing 119 00:06:57,640 --> 00:07:00,320 op-ed articles and then accidentally my my Twitter 120 00:07:00,320 --> 00:07:02,760 account, which I don't really understand its popularity as 121 00:07:02,760 --> 00:07:07,600 such, kind of took off as a my student, one of my students 122 00:07:07,600 --> 00:07:11,040 called it a micro influencer, so which I quite like. 123 00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:14,560 I like that too. Maybe she got a T-shirt kind of 124 00:07:14,560 --> 00:07:19,520 like micro influencer. I think that's yeah, I think 125 00:07:19,520 --> 00:07:22,480 kind of like that. There's you already kind of let 126 00:07:22,480 --> 00:07:26,320 us into why we're having this episode. 127 00:07:26,480 --> 00:07:29,520 So you said kind of like you you are you were always interested 128 00:07:29,520 --> 00:07:33,240 in counterculture and kind of in a way kind of the crypto 129 00:07:33,280 --> 00:07:38,920 ecosystem is very much shifting out of that niche. 130 00:07:38,920 --> 00:07:44,400 I would argue that that segment of Web 3 is still there, but 131 00:07:44,560 --> 00:07:47,280 it's becoming increasingly marginalized. 132 00:07:47,480 --> 00:07:52,320 So if you look at a lot of the things that currently happen on 133 00:07:52,320 --> 00:07:58,880 Web 3, it's more or less kind of technology being appropriated by 134 00:07:58,880 --> 00:08:04,480 the incumbents to kind of increase their efficiency rather 135 00:08:04,480 --> 00:08:09,920 than kind of turning this agency and ownership narrative into a 136 00:08:09,920 --> 00:08:13,000 reality that a lot of us kind of came into the space for. 137 00:08:13,240 --> 00:08:16,560 And kind of I want to explore with you guys how you see that, 138 00:08:17,520 --> 00:08:21,560 how dire you think the situation is, whether it can be turned 139 00:08:21,560 --> 00:08:27,240 around and if so, how? Maybe I'll start with UNIC 140 00:08:27,240 --> 00:08:30,760 because kind of like you've, you've written about governance, 141 00:08:30,760 --> 00:08:36,360 which is your core focus as the soul of crypto, right? 142 00:08:37,720 --> 00:08:41,440 What values do you think it was meant to protect? 143 00:08:42,919 --> 00:08:47,800 Yeah, I think so. I was super obsessed on 144 00:08:47,800 --> 00:08:50,280 governance in my academic career. 145 00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:52,720 In fact, decentralized organization in particular. 146 00:08:54,000 --> 00:08:56,480 So I, I kind of built a decentralized organization 147 00:08:56,480 --> 00:09:00,720 inside a institution as a means to help the academics self 148 00:09:00,720 --> 00:09:04,680 organize around improving the university and kind of got 149 00:09:04,680 --> 00:09:07,320 pilled on that and realized that decentralization and 150 00:09:07,320 --> 00:09:11,720 decentralized organization was a was a powerful force for good in 151 00:09:11,720 --> 00:09:16,600 that it's sort of distributed power more evenly across systems 152 00:09:16,600 --> 00:09:20,600 at scale. And then when the sort of Dow 153 00:09:20,600 --> 00:09:24,240 happened, I realized that you could like really scale 154 00:09:24,480 --> 00:09:29,120 decentralized organization and it was a potential real force 155 00:09:29,120 --> 00:09:31,760 for good in the world. Because I, I see a lot of the 156 00:09:33,440 --> 00:09:37,480 frailties, if you like, if the conventional governance orders 157 00:09:37,480 --> 00:09:40,720 due to centralization, there's, you know, power concentrates 158 00:09:40,720 --> 00:09:44,520 around very small amount of people that limits decision 159 00:09:44,520 --> 00:09:47,720 making capability. Decision makers get increasingly 160 00:09:47,720 --> 00:09:50,840 divorced from reality and people that they're governing. 161 00:09:52,280 --> 00:09:56,360 And that was 20 years ago or 15 years ago, and it's way worse 162 00:09:56,360 --> 00:10:01,240 now. So I was kind of hoping the this 163 00:10:01,240 --> 00:10:03,200 would be a huge force for good in the world. 164 00:10:03,200 --> 00:10:08,440 Sadly, we haven't really focused on governance as an industry 165 00:10:08,440 --> 00:10:10,800 yet. I think it's one of the, it got 166 00:10:10,800 --> 00:10:14,000 very lonely in the bear market last time around. 167 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:17,280 Sort of still being a believer in Dows and decentralized 168 00:10:17,280 --> 00:10:20,200 governance. Bit sad that it's not really 169 00:10:20,200 --> 00:10:23,760 manifested as yet as a kind of broad influence on on 170 00:10:23,760 --> 00:10:27,840 conventional governance systems. My sort of belief was that, you 171 00:10:27,840 --> 00:10:35,040 know, crypto was almost by like osmosis influence the global 172 00:10:35,040 --> 00:10:39,360 ward world order by just like distributing decentralization 173 00:10:39,360 --> 00:10:42,200 around the world. And yeah, it's I've got both 174 00:10:42,200 --> 00:10:46,160 kind of optimistic and deeply pessimistic views of where 175 00:10:46,160 --> 00:10:49,560 things could go based on how things might play out. 176 00:10:51,120 --> 00:10:54,800 And yeah, both of them involve like crypto and blockchain as as 177 00:10:54,800 --> 00:10:58,040 like potential accelerators of that if you like. 178 00:10:59,160 --> 00:11:05,480 If you look at governance in particular, it is one area that 179 00:11:05,480 --> 00:11:10,280 kind of we were extremely optimistic about in the past 180 00:11:11,120 --> 00:11:15,040 kind of. And I mean we were we as Gnosis 181 00:11:15,040 --> 00:11:18,600 were up there with kind of the the the best of them and the 182 00:11:18,600 --> 00:11:21,040 earliest of them, right. If you look at DX style, for 183 00:11:21,040 --> 00:11:24,800 instance, which was possibly the one of the very early kind of 184 00:11:24,800 --> 00:11:30,640 actually Daos that actually kind of governed A protocol. 185 00:11:31,440 --> 00:11:35,480 And then you look at the DAO infrastructure that kind of 186 00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:38,040 we've seen over the years. So kind of in a way kind of I 187 00:11:38,040 --> 00:11:43,800 feel in 20/17/2018 thoughts on how DAO should work, we're 188 00:11:43,800 --> 00:11:46,680 actually way more advanced than they're, they're actually today. 189 00:11:46,680 --> 00:11:49,120 So kind of if you look at, for instance, the DAO stack 190 00:11:50,840 --> 00:11:54,520 protocol, kind of they kind of like, I mean, it was founded by 191 00:11:55,120 --> 00:11:56,880 two physicists. So of course I liked it, but 192 00:11:56,880 --> 00:12:00,040 kind of it was it kind of like it had very good mechanism 193 00:12:00,040 --> 00:12:04,680 design in terms of realizing that attention is really the 194 00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:07,760 scarce resource and kind of you, you need to make sure that you 195 00:12:07,760 --> 00:12:11,760 can't spam it down. Kind of like if you look at how 196 00:12:11,760 --> 00:12:16,400 governance plays out today for the large towers, it's mostly 197 00:12:16,400 --> 00:12:20,040 backroom Telegram groups that kind of where where kind of you 198 00:12:20,040 --> 00:12:24,600 don't really have access to if if you kind of just come in and 199 00:12:24,600 --> 00:12:27,680 you and then kind of like deals are negotiate there. 200 00:12:27,680 --> 00:12:31,920 And then kind of the, the, the, the, a lot of the votes are just 201 00:12:32,320 --> 00:12:34,600 kind of are full gone conclusions because kind of like 202 00:12:34,600 --> 00:12:39,440 that they've already kind of been negotiated in some backroom 203 00:12:39,440 --> 00:12:44,280 Telegram tenants, right? Yeah, I think so, yeah. 204 00:12:44,280 --> 00:12:48,160 We, I in many cases, both in things like token economics and 205 00:12:48,160 --> 00:12:53,440 governance, there was a much more advanced thinking or or 206 00:12:53,440 --> 00:12:56,880 rather the the thinking that was sort of deep and interesting was 207 00:12:56,880 --> 00:12:58,920 more prevalent in the space at that time. 208 00:12:58,920 --> 00:13:01,760 I think maybe an equivalent amount of it exists, it's just 209 00:13:01,760 --> 00:13:04,200 diluted by, you know, the rest of the industry. 210 00:13:04,880 --> 00:13:09,800 But also I think there's the reality of governance systems is 211 00:13:09,800 --> 00:13:13,560 exactly what you described is that we have this lovely public 212 00:13:13,640 --> 00:13:16,560 mechanism that we should be using, but the reality of it is 213 00:13:16,560 --> 00:13:19,200 people don't want to use it because it's public and they 214 00:13:19,200 --> 00:13:21,840 want to conduct things in backroom Telegram channels 215 00:13:21,840 --> 00:13:25,800 because it's easier. So yeah, there's the reality of 216 00:13:25,800 --> 00:13:27,880 the way humans interact with technology. 217 00:13:27,880 --> 00:13:29,800 They're kind of socio technical systems. 218 00:13:29,800 --> 00:13:34,160 So what how a technology is used is only really manifested as 219 00:13:34,160 --> 00:13:37,880 people start to use it. And that's the kind of reality. 220 00:13:39,040 --> 00:13:42,040 Humans don't tend to behave in the way that you want them to. 221 00:13:43,600 --> 00:13:46,720 And so we we kind of built these quite idealistic mechanisms, 222 00:13:46,720 --> 00:13:49,200 assuming everyone would like conform to the mechanism, when 223 00:13:49,200 --> 00:13:51,880 in fact you can just choose not to use the mechanism and work 224 00:13:51,880 --> 00:13:55,760 around it and people will. So, yeah, I think there was a, 225 00:13:57,640 --> 00:14:03,360 you know, and largely people at large just haven't done much 226 00:14:03,360 --> 00:14:07,000 governing, right? It's it's not, you only get into 227 00:14:07,000 --> 00:14:11,200 governance if you end up it's kind of super senior in a, in a 228 00:14:11,200 --> 00:14:15,280 large organization or you go into politics or something, 229 00:14:15,480 --> 00:14:18,400 right. And like 99% of people just are 230 00:14:18,400 --> 00:14:21,240 not in that position. So it's really quite an alien 231 00:14:22,160 --> 00:14:24,360 sort of thing to do. And I think that's been one of 232 00:14:24,360 --> 00:14:29,360 the really large challenges is the yeah, people just don't sort 233 00:14:29,360 --> 00:14:32,720 of tend to want or know how to govern stuff. 234 00:14:33,400 --> 00:14:37,120 So it's just a there's a big distance between people and the, 235 00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:41,880 and the tools, I think, but I'm still optimistic we'll close 236 00:14:41,880 --> 00:14:45,160 that gap. But it's it's it's it's it's 237 00:14:45,160 --> 00:14:48,080 definitely one of the most difficult things that you can 238 00:14:48,080 --> 00:14:51,840 work on. And just so the other thing is 239 00:14:51,840 --> 00:14:57,160 it's not easy to productize. So the kind of contemporary 240 00:14:57,160 --> 00:14:59,920 paradigm of technology as you kind of hyper focus on a very 241 00:14:59,920 --> 00:15:04,360 specific niche and then extract rents from it and build a very 242 00:15:04,520 --> 00:15:07,560 tight revenue model out of it. Whereas governance is completely 243 00:15:07,560 --> 00:15:10,320 context dependent. So you just can't build a really 244 00:15:10,320 --> 00:15:12,160 tight neat product out of these things. 245 00:15:12,160 --> 00:15:16,360 And it and it's that's just made it very uninvestable for the 246 00:15:16,360 --> 00:15:18,520 most part over the last sort of several years. 247 00:15:18,920 --> 00:15:20,520 So we we kind of got a bit stuck I think. 248 00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:25,040 It's uninvestable, but kind of like 4 Dows that actually have 249 00:15:25,040 --> 00:15:28,120 treasuries. It's also extremely important, 250 00:15:28,120 --> 00:15:29,360 right? So kind of like the principle, 251 00:15:29,360 --> 00:15:32,720 there should be funding for this because misallocation of funds 252 00:15:32,720 --> 00:15:35,800 is, is such a huge risk for these Dows. 253 00:15:36,200 --> 00:15:42,560 I, I would very much take the position that having some level 254 00:15:42,560 --> 00:15:48,680 of transparency and also the ability of new people with new 255 00:15:48,680 --> 00:15:53,800 ideas kind of enter into an ecosystem openly and being heard 256 00:15:53,800 --> 00:15:58,280 that that's really high value. But one belief that a lot of 257 00:15:58,280 --> 00:16:02,880 people, I think mistakenly hold in the space is that everyone's 258 00:16:02,880 --> 00:16:07,120 voice should count equally and kind of as as someone, I mean, 259 00:16:07,120 --> 00:16:09,880 maybe this is this is somewhat arrogant. 260 00:16:10,480 --> 00:16:14,400 But as someone kind of like who is build medium sized 261 00:16:14,400 --> 00:16:19,040 organisations before and kind of whose voice usually carries a 262 00:16:19,040 --> 00:16:24,000 lot of weight, having people come in and expect to kind of be 263 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:29,440 given the same amount of reverence or kind of attention. 264 00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:32,200 It's, it's, it's sometimes starring, right? 265 00:16:32,200 --> 00:16:36,600 Because kind of like I, I want to appreciate people who come in 266 00:16:36,600 --> 00:16:40,960 and kind of people who kind of bring opinions and and one to 267 00:16:40,960 --> 00:16:44,040 sit at the table because kind of obviously you need fresh blood, 268 00:16:44,160 --> 00:16:46,360 right? Kind of like this why you wander 269 00:16:46,360 --> 00:16:48,760 Dow. This is what kind of like what 270 00:16:48,800 --> 00:16:56,040 can elevate Dow's into kind of this paradigm shifting mode of 271 00:16:56,040 --> 00:17:00,720 organization, kind of akin to kind of like when we got joint 272 00:17:00,720 --> 00:17:02,240 stock companies or something, right? 273 00:17:02,840 --> 00:17:06,560 But at the same time, it not everyone in a DAO is created 274 00:17:06,560 --> 00:17:08,680 equally. And I think that's, that's, I 275 00:17:08,680 --> 00:17:12,160 mean, obviously you should, you should be able to kind of move 276 00:17:12,160 --> 00:17:16,480 within that framework freely, but it should it, it should be 277 00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:18,960 in my eyes, extremely meritocratic. 278 00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:22,319 Couldn't agree more. That's very much what I've been 279 00:17:22,319 --> 00:17:28,160 kind of chasing for many years is that paradigm like exactly 280 00:17:28,160 --> 00:17:33,360 how you can shape a consensus by by merit. 281 00:17:33,560 --> 00:17:40,640 So yeah, I think there's there's we came to this with these very 282 00:17:41,640 --> 00:17:45,160 idealistic framing. You know, there was a lot of the 283 00:17:45,280 --> 00:17:49,160 early Dow thinking was very flat org. 284 00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:51,800 You know, we want to get rid of hierarchy completely. 285 00:17:51,800 --> 00:17:56,360 We want massively open porous organizations, you know, and the 286 00:17:56,360 --> 00:17:58,160 reality of it is that's a terrible idea. 287 00:17:58,160 --> 00:18:02,000 There's, it's just, you can't, there's also a sort of feature I 288 00:18:02,000 --> 00:18:05,400 call the public governance trap, which is if you do everything 289 00:18:05,400 --> 00:18:09,720 completely open, there's always someone hanging around who's 290 00:18:09,720 --> 00:18:13,440 going to just nitpick on absolutely everything that 291 00:18:13,440 --> 00:18:18,760 you're doing in public. And it just creates, and I, I 292 00:18:18,760 --> 00:18:21,200 know this because I've done this for like over the last five 293 00:18:21,200 --> 00:18:24,000 years, right? When I used to do, we used to 294 00:18:24,000 --> 00:18:27,600 have team meetings like openly on Discord and everyone would 295 00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:30,320 just, you know, and you'd have like 20 people just sitting 296 00:18:30,320 --> 00:18:32,880 there watching you not saying anything. 297 00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:36,280 And it just, it changes the dynamic for how you make 298 00:18:36,280 --> 00:18:38,680 decisions, right? And, and this was a time when 299 00:18:39,040 --> 00:18:43,640 you like, you know, this was a quite risky thing to be doing. 300 00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:46,760 And in terms of like global regulatory sort of environment 301 00:18:46,760 --> 00:18:48,880 and things like that, you know, dynamics changed a little bit. 302 00:18:48,880 --> 00:18:53,040 Be like, who are these people? Makes you more guarded, you 303 00:18:53,040 --> 00:18:57,400 know, it's it's difficult to make good decisions in a 304 00:18:57,400 --> 00:18:59,600 radically open context like that. 305 00:19:00,280 --> 00:19:03,120 And then occasionally you get someone who's got nothing better 306 00:19:03,120 --> 00:19:05,920 to do who will just hassle you all day every day, but they're 307 00:19:05,920 --> 00:19:07,680 like don't know what they're talking about. 308 00:19:07,840 --> 00:19:11,280 And that's just not a tenable sort of system for for for 309 00:19:11,280 --> 00:19:14,520 governing sensibly. So there's a middle ground 310 00:19:14,520 --> 00:19:18,280 somewhere, right where you need to have decision making. 311 00:19:18,560 --> 00:19:22,760 You need to have a path that for people to walk into an 312 00:19:22,760 --> 00:19:25,760 organization and be elevated into a position of status and 313 00:19:25,760 --> 00:19:29,480 power if they are capable of doing it and have a material 314 00:19:29,480 --> 00:19:31,880 influence over the project an be rewarded for their 315 00:19:31,880 --> 00:19:35,080 participation. That sounds almost like a 316 00:19:35,080 --> 00:19:37,120 company. A company is kind of like an 317 00:19:37,200 --> 00:19:39,760 interpersonal fiction, right? Kind of like it's historically 318 00:19:39,760 --> 00:19:42,360 that kind of we as humans kind of tell themselves it's nothing 319 00:19:42,360 --> 00:19:44,920 you can kind of, it's nothing you can touch. 320 00:19:44,960 --> 00:19:47,160 It's nothing that's physically there. 321 00:19:47,400 --> 00:19:50,520 It's just kind of like a set of. Rules and abstractions. 322 00:19:50,920 --> 00:19:52,440 Exactly. That like a legal fiction. 323 00:19:52,720 --> 00:19:55,960 Exactly. It's a legal fiction, so and in 324 00:19:55,960 --> 00:20:01,520 some ways kind of it, it was it was created to kind of do a lot 325 00:20:01,520 --> 00:20:04,000 of the things that you just talked about, right? 326 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:06,480 Kind of like to to allow new people to kind of come into it 327 00:20:06,480 --> 00:20:08,720 and kind of like if they're useful, they can kind of rise 328 00:20:08,720 --> 00:20:11,280 within the structure kind of. But it's still seen as kind of 329 00:20:11,280 --> 00:20:15,760 like one large entity that kind of like acts as an entity and so 330 00:20:15,760 --> 00:20:17,600 on. How? 331 00:20:19,080 --> 00:20:23,000 Kind of like if, if you look at kind of like the kind of a, an 332 00:20:23,000 --> 00:20:28,200 idealized corporation, that kind of is that where there's no 333 00:20:28,200 --> 00:20:31,440 politics and there's kind of like it, it, it's purely 334 00:20:31,440 --> 00:20:35,440 meritocratic and kind of has a strong leadership and vision and 335 00:20:35,440 --> 00:20:37,120 kind of, but it's fully permeable. 336 00:20:37,360 --> 00:20:41,920 How would that differ from kind of your ideal vision of a DAO? 337 00:20:42,920 --> 00:20:45,360 I think there's a few sort of key differences. 338 00:20:46,760 --> 00:20:49,000 I mean, for one, these structures are very centralized, 339 00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:50,560 right? They're very centralized. 340 00:20:50,560 --> 00:20:55,040 They adopt this very sort of pyramidic structure of power and 341 00:20:55,040 --> 00:20:59,840 they start to degrade in effective function as they scale 342 00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:01,560 very big are. We talking about Dows or 343 00:21:01,560 --> 00:21:04,040 corporations here? Corporations, corporations, 344 00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:06,560 large, large, centralized. I mean, the same is sort of 345 00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:07,080 true. That's true. 346 00:21:07,360 --> 00:21:09,720 For that, I mean, it's kind of, it's kind of. 347 00:21:10,120 --> 00:21:15,240 That's so my theory on this is that largely we've projected the 348 00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:17,480 and I think this is back to your central point of this episode, 349 00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:20,040 right, which is largely we've projected the old world onto the 350 00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:23,040 new. So a lot of people rather than 351 00:21:23,040 --> 00:21:26,360 try to explore this new paradigm of decentralized organization, 352 00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:28,840 we've just effectively tried to rebuild centralized 353 00:21:28,840 --> 00:21:31,800 organizations in, in this new world, right. 354 00:21:31,800 --> 00:21:35,600 So like really, if you, if you look from a governance 355 00:21:35,600 --> 00:21:39,440 perspective, like like Max Weber's sort of bureaucracy 356 00:21:39,440 --> 00:21:43,280 theory of bureaucracy has like revolutionized the world's 357 00:21:43,280 --> 00:21:45,040 organizations of the last 200 years. 358 00:21:45,520 --> 00:21:49,560 And it's created these kind of like very hierarchical 359 00:21:49,560 --> 00:21:53,080 structures. And, and in reality, the, 360 00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:56,560 they're not that meritocratic in the end, right? 361 00:21:56,560 --> 00:22:00,160 The, the theory is that meritocratic, but actually the 362 00:22:00,160 --> 00:22:02,560 people that end up at the top of these organizations stay at the 363 00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,600 top of these organizations, whether they're should be there 364 00:22:05,600 --> 00:22:09,000 or not. Finances tend to be very 365 00:22:09,080 --> 00:22:11,520 untransparent, right? So the, the, the radical 366 00:22:11,520 --> 00:22:15,680 differences in Dow's is that we have this people can contribute 367 00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:21,800 to the organization and there's a degree of consent that spreads 368 00:22:21,800 --> 00:22:25,440 out across every participant, which is also not the case in, 369 00:22:25,440 --> 00:22:30,240 in conventional structures. So it's, it's somewhat subtle in 370 00:22:30,240 --> 00:22:33,880 a sense, but a, a decentralized organization is more about local 371 00:22:33,880 --> 00:22:38,600 autonomy. Centralized corps are more 372 00:22:39,440 --> 00:22:42,880 oppressive generally, right? The the systems of power in 373 00:22:42,880 --> 00:22:47,200 there with managers who enforce people to, you know, codes of 374 00:22:47,200 --> 00:22:49,320 conduct and and contractual form. 375 00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:54,240 And it's and it's trying to find a new organizational mode that 376 00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:57,200 deviates from that effectively more about radical local 377 00:22:57,200 --> 00:23:01,840 autonomy, distributed decision making where in theory people at 378 00:23:01,840 --> 00:23:04,640 the lowest levels of the organization could influence the 379 00:23:04,640 --> 00:23:08,960 global structure, which is tends to not happen in more democratic 380 00:23:08,960 --> 00:23:12,880 if you like. Yeah, I, I, I hear that Paula, 381 00:23:12,920 --> 00:23:17,200 you, you've been pretty vocal about crypto drifting towards 382 00:23:17,360 --> 00:23:24,040 corporate corporation. So kind of and would you apply 383 00:23:24,040 --> 00:23:28,880 that to kind of the DAO landscape of crypto native 384 00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:35,080 projects or would you apply that predominantly to kind of web two 385 00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:39,840 players kind of coming into crypto new? 386 00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:47,400 Yeah, So I think it's really a story about, it's actually an 387 00:23:47,400 --> 00:23:49,800 old story, you know, geeks, mops and psychopaths. 388 00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:53,880 As the the old article goes that you, you start off with this 389 00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:57,880 culture, which is at least when we think about Bitcoin, it's a 390 00:23:57,880 --> 00:24:01,800 combination of libertarianism and cypherpunk. 391 00:24:01,840 --> 00:24:04,480 So we we have these this very unique mix. 392 00:24:04,480 --> 00:24:06,640 That's actually really the story of why it kicks off. 393 00:24:06,640 --> 00:24:09,560 It's, it's the fact that it's cypherpunk and libertarian. 394 00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:14,640 And then over the years we, we drift into Ethereum land and 395 00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:16,960 Ethereum in the beginning actually isn't a cypherpunk, I 396 00:24:16,960 --> 00:24:21,680 think as people, you know, tend to talk about, but it like if, 397 00:24:22,000 --> 00:24:25,120 if Ethereum inherits anything, it inherits cypherpunk and 398 00:24:25,120 --> 00:24:27,760 basically drops the, the libertarianism, at least in the, 399 00:24:27,760 --> 00:24:30,680 the Bitcoin Goldberg kind of variation on that. 400 00:24:32,280 --> 00:24:35,560 And then there's a little bit of an issue when it comes to 401 00:24:35,600 --> 00:24:38,680 Ethereum culture, which is that it's not quite clear what 402 00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:41,120 Ethereum is for. So it's a big question mark in 403 00:24:41,120 --> 00:24:43,920 the middle. The, the white paper tells you 404 00:24:43,920 --> 00:24:48,560 that it's it's, you know, it's not like it's, it's going to be 405 00:24:48,560 --> 00:24:51,600 a general purpose blockchain so you can build whatever you want 406 00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:53,600 on it. So you know, essentially it's, 407 00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:55,720 it's for anything, which is great. 408 00:24:55,720 --> 00:24:58,840 That's a pluralist perspective. And then that's where we get all 409 00:24:58,840 --> 00:25:01,520 of our different narratives. They're actually really often 410 00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:05,320 technical narratives. Dows defy NFTS prediction 411 00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:09,080 markets, I guess might be the current version of this, but 412 00:25:09,080 --> 00:25:12,240 that question of say, what is Ethereum for has always been a 413 00:25:12,280 --> 00:25:16,920 little bit unclear. And then, OK, we maybe we could 414 00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,800 say things like decentralized acceleration, ISM network 415 00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:22,400 states. That's like the the attempt to 416 00:25:22,400 --> 00:25:25,480 answer the end game social question of like what the 417 00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:28,240 Ethereum society is for. And I think that that's worth 418 00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:29,920 mentioning because if you compare it to what the 419 00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:31,840 Bitcoiners believe, they know what they're for. 420 00:25:32,120 --> 00:25:34,840 We're going to transition over to hyper bitcoinization. 421 00:25:35,080 --> 00:25:36,800 The Fiat system's going to collapse. 422 00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:38,440 Then you're going to live in the citadel, right? 423 00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,360 That's, that's their vision for society. 424 00:25:41,920 --> 00:25:44,840 Whereas knowing what you end up with in the Ethereum is a little 425 00:25:44,840 --> 00:25:48,600 bit more, a little less clear. And I think over the years this 426 00:25:48,600 --> 00:25:52,600 has led to people becoming more pragmatic. 427 00:25:52,880 --> 00:25:54,880 So in Dow, as you can actually see this. 428 00:25:54,880 --> 00:26:00,560 So in Dow is so every decision is being made in the Dow before 429 00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:02,640 anybody votes. So that, that's something, I 430 00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:04,760 think that's something I always tell my, my students like 431 00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,680 there's never a decision made in a Dow that hasn't already been 432 00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:09,320 back roomed before you get to it. 433 00:26:10,040 --> 00:26:12,760 And there's a lot of insider dealing and pressure. 434 00:26:12,760 --> 00:26:15,960 It's a soft pressure, I would say, like a social pressure to 435 00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:17,720 kind of conform with the, the group. 436 00:26:18,240 --> 00:26:22,320 And then also the, the fact that foundations stick around so that 437 00:26:22,320 --> 00:26:25,360 like the, the, the company progressively decentralizes, but 438 00:26:25,360 --> 00:26:28,480 they're usually the, the foundation is kind of like the 439 00:26:28,480 --> 00:26:31,840 surveillance state of the, of the, the company in the form of 440 00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:34,520 the transition over to the community or something like 441 00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:36,320 this. And then you also have the, the 442 00:26:36,320 --> 00:26:38,840 founders themselves, the team having huge amounts of tokens. 443 00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:43,480 So the, and the, I mean this, this doesn't really surprise me 444 00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:47,560 in the sense that the, in terms of cultural evolution, because 445 00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:52,080 more and more if you look at what I call the CTVC podcast 446 00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:54,720 industrial complex, or sometimes I call it the block works 447 00:26:54,720 --> 00:26:57,880 extended universe. So this is, let's say people 448 00:26:57,880 --> 00:27:01,560 who've emerged into crypto, so they're emerging into say 449 00:27:01,560 --> 00:27:05,000 Ethereum culture or into Dow culture, but they're from the 450 00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,320 Business School so that they've got a Business School kind of 451 00:27:07,320 --> 00:27:09,280 mindset. They're primarily interested in 452 00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:14,800 markets and primarily primarily interested in like the like 453 00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:17,680 what's happening in the previous week, not what happened 10 years 454 00:27:17,680 --> 00:27:20,280 ago, what happened five years ago, umm, under their 455 00:27:20,280 --> 00:27:22,320 forward-looking as well, which can be quite good. 456 00:27:22,320 --> 00:27:25,720 Uh, but they are generally speaking post ideological. 457 00:27:25,720 --> 00:27:28,520 So one of the terms that I took from one of their podcasts. 458 00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,360 So this is a term that they use themselves, like, not as a 459 00:27:31,360 --> 00:27:34,280 critique that I'm giving post ideological pragmatism. 460 00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:37,840 And so effectively just looking at the, it's not really 461 00:27:37,840 --> 00:27:41,480 important whether Ethereum is more decentralized on Solana, 462 00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:45,160 It's whether people's perception of Ethereum being decentralized 463 00:27:45,160 --> 00:27:48,920 matters relative to whether it matters, uh, to say to someone 464 00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:50,920 in Solana that it's centralized or decentralized. 465 00:27:50,920 --> 00:27:54,440 Like it's, it, it becomes, uh, a part of the market discussion. 466 00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:57,080 It doesn't actually matter as a value or an ideology. 467 00:27:57,760 --> 00:28:02,800 So, umm, I think we're, we're, we're deep into this, like 468 00:28:02,800 --> 00:28:05,200 we're, we're maybe a lot of people haven't accepted this, 469 00:28:05,200 --> 00:28:07,000 that this, this transition has happened. 470 00:28:07,000 --> 00:28:10,160 And so cypherpunk and the values of cypherpunk like 471 00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:12,360 decentralization, permissionless, this credible 472 00:28:12,360 --> 00:28:15,520 neutrality, et cetera. This is a minority sport and it 473 00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:18,920 has its representatives, but actually the representatives 474 00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:22,960 have even themselves given way to A to a certain extent. 475 00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:24,800 So if we think about the transition that happened with 476 00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:27,800 the Ethereum Foundation, so there's a basically a populist 477 00:28:27,800 --> 00:28:30,800 revolt from, you know, people who want E to be the primary 478 00:28:30,800 --> 00:28:36,240 focus, who want the Etherium foundation to be more hands on. 479 00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:38,960 So not the Etherium foundation should subtract or disappear or 480 00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:42,000 be decentralized, but should take over should be like the the 481 00:28:42,000 --> 00:28:45,120 entity which directs Etherium going forward. 482 00:28:46,680 --> 00:28:50,320 The response to this was essentially to bring pragmatism 483 00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:54,600 front and center into Etherium in the form of like a a kind of 484 00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:58,520 jewel jewel approach where a dual power approach. 485 00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:00,600 So you've got Tomassism, dankratism. 486 00:29:00,600 --> 00:29:03,680 So I kind of think of it the the pragmatist approach and then say 487 00:29:03,680 --> 00:29:08,360 civil culture council, Vitalik D5 punk representing the OG 488 00:29:08,360 --> 00:29:09,880 part. But I think that was an 489 00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:14,960 admission that the culture is sort of this dual complicated 490 00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:17,400 situation and maybe it will work. 491 00:29:17,680 --> 00:29:20,760 So one way that I think it can work is that the pragmatists are 492 00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:22,880 probably the people who look at the the near term. 493 00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,280 So they're thinking in 2-3 years that can be a good focus. 494 00:29:26,560 --> 00:29:31,000 And then the cypherpunks are are thinking in like 10 year terms. 495 00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:35,320 And then the other question, yeah, is whether whether these 496 00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,480 values, I guess are supposed to be also found in the Dallas 497 00:29:38,480 --> 00:29:41,200 themselves. I'm not so sure. 498 00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:45,080 So I, I am more and more inclined toward when I think 499 00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:47,760 about say, cypherpunk, when I think about decentralization, 500 00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,800 I'm more focused nowadays on the the chains themselves, the 501 00:29:51,800 --> 00:29:56,360 protocols that the, the, the real inelimitable core, as I 502 00:29:56,360 --> 00:29:58,920 like to think of it, of, of cypherpunk is primarily to be 503 00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:00,840 found on the chains. And that's where it really 504 00:30:00,840 --> 00:30:02,400 matters. And then you're probably 505 00:30:02,400 --> 00:30:06,040 fighting a losing battle if you want every application, every 506 00:30:06,240 --> 00:30:11,600 Dow to actually look to, to have that same degree of commitment 507 00:30:11,600 --> 00:30:14,800 to these traditional values. I think those days might be 508 00:30:15,040 --> 00:30:21,520 coming to a close. I mean, decentralization, to me 509 00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:25,560 as someone who's been in this in this space for a really long 510 00:30:25,560 --> 00:30:30,320 time, decentralization itself is not a value. 511 00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:32,840 So to me, it's kind of like what it empowers. 512 00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,800 So kind of the, the fact that kind of you can have permission 513 00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,760 as innovation. So kind of say you're on base, 514 00:30:40,840 --> 00:30:45,960 kind of ultimately you are at the mercy of Coinbase, right? 515 00:30:45,960 --> 00:30:48,400 Kind of like, and this is kind of like they run the sequences 516 00:30:48,400 --> 00:30:52,520 so they can cut you out if and kind of like same goes kind of 517 00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:54,640 like if you build an application on that, right? 518 00:30:54,640 --> 00:30:59,680 So kind of, so kind of the fact usually kind of decentralization 519 00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:06,320 is not something that you need in an everyday situation. 520 00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:08,400 It's something that you need in a crisis. 521 00:31:08,400 --> 00:31:10,480 So kind of you don't need it until you need it. 522 00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:14,760 You don't need it until someone kind of shuts down your AWS 523 00:31:14,760 --> 00:31:19,480 server or kind of unbox you or kind of does whatever else kind 524 00:31:19,480 --> 00:31:23,640 of like centralized entities can do to you and your business 525 00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:26,360 offering. And kind of the, the 526 00:31:26,360 --> 00:31:33,160 decentralisation kind of kind of fosters the resilience that 527 00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,520 underlies that. At least that's kind of that's 528 00:31:35,520 --> 00:31:39,680 my take. And I think there's now kind of 529 00:31:39,680 --> 00:31:46,160 these kind of some of the the second group that you kind of 530 00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,440 talked about kind of within the theorem foundation, kind of 531 00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:58,360 there's a lot of people who kind of almost, kind of almost are in 532 00:31:58,360 --> 00:32:01,040 this as a cargo cut. So we're kind of kind of 533 00:32:01,160 --> 00:32:04,280 decentralization is kind of the the one thing that matters. 534 00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:09,040 And I would argue there is such a thing as decentralization 535 00:32:09,040 --> 00:32:12,040 decentralized enough. And kind of like how what level 536 00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:16,000 of decentralization that is very much depends on what it is 537 00:32:16,000 --> 00:32:17,840 you're doing. So kind of like if you're if you 538 00:32:17,840 --> 00:32:21,040 kind of have on chain Candy Crush probably don't need a lot 539 00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:23,120 of decentralization. If you have your identity on 540 00:32:23,120 --> 00:32:26,960 chain, your reputation and so on should probably be very 541 00:32:26,960 --> 00:32:29,320 decentralized. And I think it's a spectrum, 542 00:32:29,480 --> 00:32:32,600 right? And I think kind of having this 543 00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:42,760 almost purity trial like mindset where you say, oh, this is not 544 00:32:42,760 --> 00:32:45,600 decentralized. I mean, it, it kind of it 545 00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:47,080 depends what you're doing with it, right? 546 00:32:47,080 --> 00:32:53,960 Kind of like, it's just like I am adamant that my car has a 547 00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:58,440 better security than my bike does because kind of I typically 548 00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:00,720 drive my car faster than I ride my bike. 549 00:33:01,000 --> 00:33:05,400 And, and if I kind of don't wear a helmet and I kind of crash in 550 00:33:05,400 --> 00:33:10,120 the park on my bike, probably the, the, the, the, the kind of, 551 00:33:10,160 --> 00:33:15,800 the, the potential spectrum of outcomes is not nearly as bad as 552 00:33:15,800 --> 00:33:19,520 if I were to kind of crash my car at 180 kilometres an hour on 553 00:33:19,520 --> 00:33:22,360 the autobahn without wearing a seat belt, right? 554 00:33:26,960 --> 00:33:30,680 Joking that I think there's different lenses on 555 00:33:30,680 --> 00:33:33,960 decentralization. I think I think it's absolutely 556 00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:39,000 true that we've moved from A almost an extremist view of 557 00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:43,480 decentralization in the early sort of era of the I think, you 558 00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:46,120 know, the sort of first year of the industry was basically, you 559 00:33:46,120 --> 00:33:50,360 know, it was all Bitcoin and post Ethereum sort of second 560 00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:54,880 era, we, we hit this very ideological position of 561 00:33:54,880 --> 00:33:57,080 decentralization. And I saw people making, you 562 00:33:57,080 --> 00:34:01,960 know, completely Unchained to do lists, you know, and it was even 563 00:34:01,960 --> 00:34:05,600 with, you know, low gas fees, it was like 50 bucks to use, you 564 00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:09,320 know, make A to do. And we, we discovered that, 565 00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:11,639 yeah, with this kind of like on chain everything, 566 00:34:11,639 --> 00:34:16,719 decentralization, maximization sort of stuff, it just didn't 567 00:34:16,719 --> 00:34:21,159 work because it's completely unfeasible that everyday people 568 00:34:21,159 --> 00:34:24,840 would a pay for it and accept the UX pain points for it. 569 00:34:26,400 --> 00:34:28,120 And I think we're moving out of that now. 570 00:34:28,960 --> 00:34:32,159 I think there's a kind of pendulum swing like revolt 571 00:34:32,159 --> 00:34:35,199 against it where, you know, now we're starting to get people to 572 00:34:35,199 --> 00:34:38,480 say, you know, forget it all together. 573 00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:41,840 No one cares, right? And there's the problem is, is 574 00:34:41,840 --> 00:34:47,360 when you swing that way, the failure mode is the something 575 00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:49,760 disastrous happens, right? Where I think we saw this with 576 00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:54,679 like FTX where, you know, who cares about decentralization 577 00:34:54,679 --> 00:34:57,200 anymore? Let's just give all our money 578 00:34:57,200 --> 00:35:00,480 and put it in this black box and, and trust this guy. 579 00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:03,840 And, and we saw what happened very publicly when, when that 580 00:35:03,840 --> 00:35:05,400 happened. In fact, that whole sort of 581 00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:08,360 explosion in in the last cycle was largely just due to 582 00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,520 centralization. It was just due to poor trust 583 00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:14,520 models, people putting their money in centralized boxes. 584 00:35:15,040 --> 00:35:18,000 So I think we've, we've seen first hand why it matters, 585 00:35:18,000 --> 00:35:20,200 right? And why, why where it matters 586 00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:25,720 and there's there is a kind of philosophical dimension to it in 587 00:35:25,720 --> 00:35:27,360 the Dow world. We were talking earlier about 588 00:35:27,360 --> 00:35:29,760 what's the difference between corporations and Dows and it's 589 00:35:29,760 --> 00:35:32,680 largely it's about more bottom up approaches rather than top 590 00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:35,280 down. That's a philosophy and a value 591 00:35:35,480 --> 00:35:38,120 I think that does manifest in decentralization. 592 00:35:38,120 --> 00:35:41,640 It's just generally about distributing power more widely. 593 00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:46,680 I think the world needs that. But it is, as you say, is it's a 594 00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,280 just good enough kind of paradigm. 595 00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:51,320 Like one of the things I'm trying to push at the moment I 596 00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:55,240 call governance realism, which is like, let's use the things 597 00:35:55,240 --> 00:35:58,600 for what they're actually good at rather than presume this Dow 598 00:35:58,600 --> 00:36:03,000 can do this stuff that it can't. What is it actually good at? 599 00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:07,840 It's not necessarily good at making complex decisions, you 600 00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:10,160 know, is it basically a multi sig? 601 00:36:10,320 --> 00:36:14,560 You know, let's, let's, let's really look at brass tacks, what 602 00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:15,960 this thing is and what it's good at. 603 00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:19,720 So I think, yeah, I think it is that pragmatism. 604 00:36:19,760 --> 00:36:24,640 I think there's also, as Paula was saying about the sort of MBA 605 00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:27,920 efficacion of a lot of this stuff that we're starting to 606 00:36:27,920 --> 00:36:30,520 see. You know, the revenue narrative, 607 00:36:30,520 --> 00:36:33,440 revenue matter as people are calling it is, you know, picking 608 00:36:33,440 --> 00:36:37,120 up a lot of lot of steam. So I'm hoping we find a kind of 609 00:36:37,120 --> 00:36:40,560 sensible middle ground, rather than just this massive pen 610 00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:43,200 pendulum swing the other way and we just stop caring about 611 00:36:43,200 --> 00:36:48,200 decentralization altogether. Just on that, yes, So the reason 612 00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:51,360 why I think like considering a value is sort of important. 613 00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:53,520 So like political decentralization as opposed to 614 00:36:53,520 --> 00:36:57,200 say architectural is is because of that threat. 615 00:36:57,200 --> 00:36:58,560 There. There are people who quite 616 00:36:58,560 --> 00:37:01,960 clearly, and I've see you see this on Twitter in that NBA if 617 00:37:01,960 --> 00:37:06,200 occation kind of school of podcasting where like 618 00:37:06,200 --> 00:37:08,880 centralization or like decentralization itself is like 619 00:37:08,880 --> 00:37:11,040 up for debate as in like it's not that important. 620 00:37:11,520 --> 00:37:15,200 And I think the, this idea of realism is quite important 621 00:37:15,200 --> 00:37:19,000 because my, my, my thinking on decentralization is it's uh, to 622 00:37:19,000 --> 00:37:21,200 distribute power as widely as possible. 623 00:37:21,560 --> 00:37:24,840 So as, as much as you can is sort of the value or principle 624 00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:26,280 that the crypto community goes for. 625 00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:29,800 So when we're talking about a chain, we want it to be like 626 00:37:29,800 --> 00:37:33,320 truly Poly centric, right? We want Bitcoin and Ethereum to 627 00:37:33,320 --> 00:37:35,920 be multiple decision making centers that take each other 628 00:37:35,920 --> 00:37:39,160 into account where like no decision can actually be made 629 00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:42,560 without basically convincing all of those parties very slowly 630 00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:46,440 over the course of say months. We actually have an example of 631 00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:49,280 that in Bitcoin at the moment between Bitcoin core versus 632 00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:51,920 knots, which is actually a really nice example of populism 633 00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:57,640 versus expertise and so on. But I do think that's that's so 634 00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:00,160 like I would say like decentralization as much as 635 00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:04,840 possible begins then to kind of soften a little bit when you are 636 00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,200 talking about say applications that are built. 637 00:38:07,200 --> 00:38:10,360 So you want say file verse to be decentralized as much as 638 00:38:10,360 --> 00:38:13,360 possible, but I don't think people should be policing say, 639 00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,000 an application built on Ethereum as harshly. 640 00:38:16,000 --> 00:38:21,280 I say the the the consensus like on chain consensus itself, you 641 00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:23,680 know? Fibers actually does a really 642 00:38:23,680 --> 00:38:29,560 good job in kind of yeah, yeah, kind of having having almost web 643 00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:34,600 to like user experience and still being fully decentralized 644 00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:38,360 end end to end encrypted. So kind of I'm I'm a I'm a die 645 00:38:38,360 --> 00:38:41,040 hard fibers stun. Yeah, me too. 646 00:38:41,040 --> 00:38:44,880 We're all, we're all, yeah, we're, we're all on side there. 647 00:38:46,200 --> 00:38:47,720 Yeah. I mean, it, it shows you that a 648 00:38:47,720 --> 00:38:50,400 world of software like that can exist, right? 649 00:38:50,400 --> 00:38:55,000 It, it shows you that you can have this kind of stuff can be 650 00:38:55,000 --> 00:38:59,040 realized, you can make a good application that protects user 651 00:38:59,040 --> 00:39:02,920 privacy, data sovereignty, all of this sort of stuff. 652 00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:07,600 And I, I think we just need to see more practical real world 653 00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:11,160 use cases, land for people to really get why it's important. 654 00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:17,840 Do you think they'll get why it's important without anything 655 00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:20,880 terrible happen happening? So kind of like if you look at 656 00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:25,040 if you look for instance, kind of like add a web to example. 657 00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:31,280 So if I look at my non crypto friends, almost everyone uses 658 00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:35,040 Gmail, right? Despite the fact that ProtonMail 659 00:39:35,280 --> 00:39:38,440 is much better for you, it kind of it protects your, your, your 660 00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:41,520 data and your privacy. And it's kind of, it's 661 00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:45,880 functionally equivalent. So kind of there's no big kind 662 00:39:45,880 --> 00:39:51,400 of user experience drop off and still people don't mind being 663 00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:53,320 data farmed by Google. Right. 664 00:39:53,320 --> 00:39:56,040 Yeah, It's, it's crazy. I mean, like terrible things 665 00:39:56,040 --> 00:39:58,600 happen all the time. I mean, you know, the people. 666 00:39:59,240 --> 00:40:02,600 I think it's almost worse than that in that people are so used 667 00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:07,200 to having their information on the dark web and that they've 668 00:40:07,200 --> 00:40:09,000 just given up, you know, it's like. 669 00:40:10,440 --> 00:40:13,680 Almost everything that you, almost all data that's put 670 00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:17,040 online ends up being hacked. And I think we're almost post 671 00:40:17,040 --> 00:40:21,000 people caring about that anymore and they've sort of capitulated 672 00:40:21,000 --> 00:40:24,400 to it. I think the scary thing is we're 673 00:40:24,400 --> 00:40:26,240 kind of close to something terrible happening. 674 00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:29,160 Then to kind of just spread actors, right? 675 00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:33,160 Kind of like you're giving your data willingly to kind of the, 676 00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:37,680 the, the five corporations whom it's impossible to kind of 677 00:40:37,680 --> 00:40:40,360 bypass on the Internet. So kind of like if, if you kind 678 00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:42,920 of actually made it a challenge for yourself, how do I do 679 00:40:42,920 --> 00:40:46,280 anything on the on, on the Internet without accruing 680 00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:53,040 revenue to Google or Microsoft or, or AWS? 681 00:40:53,800 --> 00:40:55,240 It's impossible. You can't. 682 00:40:55,240 --> 00:40:56,120 You can't. You can't do. 683 00:40:56,120 --> 00:41:00,400 It, it's very difficult. I lost a year in a Dow a couple 684 00:41:00,400 --> 00:41:02,480 about 3 years ago trying to on Google. 685 00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:05,160 It's a nightmare. It's really, really difficult 686 00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:07,680 to, to separate yourself from these entities. 687 00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:12,320 And, and largely people just, I think if they understood more 688 00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:16,200 the level of micro targeting and corporate surveillance that's 689 00:41:16,200 --> 00:41:18,640 happening on the hood, under the hood, I think people will be 690 00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:21,160 more worried about it. But do you think people don't 691 00:41:21,160 --> 00:41:22,240 know? No, because kind of like, I 692 00:41:22,240 --> 00:41:24,520 think kind of, I mean, we've had kind of like the entire 693 00:41:24,520 --> 00:41:27,720 Cambridge Analytica kind of fiasco come out and I'm like, 694 00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,880 they were outraged about it for a hot minute and then they went 695 00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:32,880 right back to using Facebook. It's way worse now. 696 00:41:34,320 --> 00:41:36,280 There's a really nice Gigi quote. 697 00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:38,960 It's like they they know what is happening, but they're doing it 698 00:41:38,960 --> 00:41:40,680 anyway. So like that's that's modern 699 00:41:40,680 --> 00:41:42,440 ideology. Like you know exactly what's 700 00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,120 happening, but you just continue to practice is like the nature 701 00:41:45,120 --> 00:41:48,520 of contemporary ideological life. 702 00:41:50,360 --> 00:41:54,040 So how do we get people to care? How do how do we get people to 703 00:41:54,040 --> 00:42:01,480 kind of embrace the in my, in my eyes, incredibly appealing kind 704 00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:05,640 of cool tenets of Web 3 as kind of they emerge kind of like in 705 00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:11,920 in the early twenty 10s. I mean, it may need. 706 00:42:11,960 --> 00:42:18,040 I think we're starting to see, you know, fairly public revolt 707 00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:20,840 against things like CBDC's and digital ID. 708 00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:30,680 There's very coordinated global strategies converging on very 709 00:42:30,720 --> 00:42:32,920 like extreme surveillance practices. 710 00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:35,920 Kind of like, I mean, are you, are you guys in the loop with 711 00:42:36,080 --> 00:42:40,440 chat control kind of the EU, it's terrifying. 712 00:42:40,600 --> 00:42:43,800 And kind of they are voting on it next week or so on. 713 00:42:43,840 --> 00:42:46,160 So on October 14th. So kind of like by the time this 714 00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:50,920 episode has come out that the vote will be there. 715 00:42:51,440 --> 00:42:54,880 And as far as I know, kind of there are quite a number of of 716 00:42:55,600 --> 00:42:58,120 of states who already said they will vote in favour of it. 717 00:42:58,120 --> 00:43:00,800 And currently it kind of, it hinges on Germany, whether they 718 00:43:00,800 --> 00:43:04,760 kind of vote for against this. And I mean, basically what, what 719 00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:09,960 it entails is kind of it, it, it basically builds in a back door 720 00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:16,040 into every communication channel and, and kind of bestows axes to 721 00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:24,320 state actors on, on unencrypted, unencrypted messaging. 722 00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:26,120 And I mean, it's, it's, it's terrifying. 723 00:43:26,360 --> 00:43:29,200 It's terrifying. And there's you don't see a lot 724 00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:30,840 of it in the mainstream press at all. 725 00:43:31,640 --> 00:43:35,240 It's, I mean, we have the equivalent in the UK, the online 726 00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:40,440 safety Bill, which explicitly has a carve out for exactly chat 727 00:43:40,440 --> 00:43:45,440 control like functionality. The danger is they've been very 728 00:43:45,440 --> 00:43:51,520 over about what it's for. You know, it's the it'll, it 729 00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:55,320 will allow the intermediation of all communication by the state. 730 00:43:57,160 --> 00:44:01,440 And I think this might be the thing that that changes people's 731 00:44:01,440 --> 00:44:05,240 attitudes about the requirements of things like privacy and 732 00:44:05,240 --> 00:44:09,320 decentralization. The question is, is do does it 733 00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:13,840 need to be installed 1st and for people to be oppressed by it and 734 00:44:13,840 --> 00:44:19,200 for it to backfire and, you know, ordinary good people be 735 00:44:19,360 --> 00:44:24,480 targeted by the state through surveillance and by by mistake 736 00:44:24,480 --> 00:44:28,640 getting rounded up into, you know, for people to start 737 00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:30,360 getting seriously worried about it. 738 00:44:32,040 --> 00:44:33,920 Or will people realize beforehand? 739 00:44:33,960 --> 00:44:40,480 But eventually, you know what they will realize and it's just 740 00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:45,080 a question of like, will, can we do anything about it beforehand? 741 00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,120 I mean, I don't know, like this is that this is what's worrying. 742 00:44:48,720 --> 00:44:53,040 It's it's kind of scary. I've been, one of the things I 743 00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,800 realized after a few years of research into these technologies 744 00:44:57,800 --> 00:45:00,240 is that, oh, actually these could be used for really 745 00:45:00,240 --> 00:45:04,440 terrible things. And specifically in the realm of 746 00:45:04,440 --> 00:45:08,880 digital ID, you know, the convergence of that and block 747 00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:13,280 chain is like deeply scary. You can build very scary systems 748 00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:17,040 using this kind of stuff. The affordances we understand 749 00:45:17,040 --> 00:45:19,680 around token gating and permissioned access and things 750 00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:23,960 like that, that as it embeds into society is really, really 751 00:45:23,960 --> 00:45:29,040 scary and like. Social scoring on steroids. 752 00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:33,760 Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've, we've so 753 00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,640 certainly in the UK there's, there's actual policy emerging. 754 00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:41,200 There's a campaign that was launched by one of our MPs 755 00:45:41,200 --> 00:45:45,120 called We'll Take Away Things That You Love and it was 756 00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:49,200 explicitly talking about targeted sanctions on people 757 00:45:49,280 --> 00:45:52,440 such as like, we'll stop you from going to the pub or getting 758 00:45:52,440 --> 00:45:54,520 on a plane or going to the football match. 759 00:45:54,760 --> 00:45:57,560 It's a social credit system. That MP is now the Home 760 00:45:57,560 --> 00:46:00,040 secretary. And we've just announced that 761 00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:03,040 we're rolling out digital ID and in fact, we're forcing everyone 762 00:46:03,040 --> 00:46:07,720 in the UK to adopt it. So eventually revoking people's 763 00:46:07,720 --> 00:46:12,880 citizenship rights, the right to live and work, and unless they 764 00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:16,560 install, unless they participate in and adopt this technology, 765 00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:19,080 this is happening. I mean, we're, we're just there. 766 00:46:19,080 --> 00:46:21,520 This is the thing that we've been worried about. 767 00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:23,440 I was talking to Polar about this through the day. 768 00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:25,840 These are the things that we've been theoretically worried about 769 00:46:25,960 --> 00:46:30,480 in this industry for many years. But it's happening at a scary 770 00:46:30,480 --> 00:46:32,600 pace at the moment. I'm really quite worried about 771 00:46:32,600 --> 00:46:36,240 it. Yeah, it's kind of like the the 772 00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:39,400 the dark version of the it's happening kind of like Guy 773 00:46:39,400 --> 00:46:42,680 getting. Yeah, but yeah, just on this. 774 00:46:43,240 --> 00:46:46,080 I mean, this is one of those things I think is like really 775 00:46:46,120 --> 00:46:50,080 like the heart of what crypto culture is really about. 776 00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:52,560 It's I'm going back to that quote that I I mentioned there 777 00:46:52,560 --> 00:46:55,920 from she's like the the idea of they know what they're doing, 778 00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:57,680 but they they continue to do it anyway. 779 00:46:58,040 --> 00:47:01,040 I think that that's true of people in society. 780 00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:04,160 They, they, they, they know that these like the I think at this 781 00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:08,520 point even you're like not very technical mother or grandmother, 782 00:47:08,520 --> 00:47:10,680 maybe my grandmother, but your mother might have like even some 783 00:47:10,680 --> 00:47:12,480 sense that like the phone is spying on them, right? 784 00:47:12,480 --> 00:47:14,040 Like everybody kind of knows this. 785 00:47:14,040 --> 00:47:18,480 That's general knowledge. It's not so obscure privacy nerd 786 00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:21,760 thing that, you know, that people used to have. 787 00:47:22,560 --> 00:47:25,880 And there's there is a a sense in which I don't think you can 788 00:47:25,880 --> 00:47:29,320 really always one of the things that is maybe difficult for 789 00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:31,720 crypto people to accept is that, and this is something I've 790 00:47:31,720 --> 00:47:34,160 argued before, is cryptos A subculture that can't accept 791 00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:37,120 it's a subculture. So it it always has this idea 792 00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:38,800 that it can be the savior of everything. 793 00:47:38,800 --> 00:47:41,560 Like we're, we're going to solve XY and Z, like sometimes very 794 00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:45,160 dramatic, expansive areas of society that we're going to, you 795 00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,480 know, suddenly find. You don't think that's going to 796 00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:50,040 happen? No, no, no, I think we, we have 797 00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,400 a cap, you know, like, and I think, I think actually I'd say 798 00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:54,960 now we've kind of learned that lesson. 799 00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:57,080 Maybe like maybe this is the time that we've learned that 800 00:47:57,080 --> 00:47:59,160 lesson a little bit. And then there's also another 801 00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:02,000 part of this where it's like they know what they're doing, 802 00:48:02,000 --> 00:48:05,080 but they do it anyway, which is us, like we ourselves use web 803 00:48:05,080 --> 00:48:07,840 too. So we're on Google Docs instead 804 00:48:07,840 --> 00:48:10,720 of File Verse, we're on Twitter instead of Fire Caster. 805 00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:13,880 So like, why would anybody use our apps if we yourself don't 806 00:48:13,880 --> 00:48:15,520 use them? So like we're just as bad, you 807 00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:16,560 know, it's just at a different level. 808 00:48:16,560 --> 00:48:19,240 But we do use like kind of like sending and receiving assets and 809 00:48:19,720 --> 00:48:21,760 using perps. So I guess we are a bit more 810 00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:25,200 crypto, but not by much. So I think that that's a part of 811 00:48:25,200 --> 00:48:27,400 it. And there's a a quote that I 812 00:48:27,400 --> 00:48:30,000 like from Neil Postman. He says the clearest way to see 813 00:48:30,000 --> 00:48:32,440 through a culture is to see through its mode of 814 00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:34,560 communication. Like what medium does it use? 815 00:48:34,840 --> 00:48:37,240 And I think, you know, air obsession with like X, like 816 00:48:37,240 --> 00:48:40,840 reveals a lot about us, which is that ultimately we are just kind 817 00:48:40,840 --> 00:48:43,120 of like our ultimate desire is just to kind of communicate with 818 00:48:43,120 --> 00:48:46,840 like minded people about this very obscure technology. 819 00:48:48,360 --> 00:48:50,760 And then one of the things that I just wanted a couple of other 820 00:48:50,760 --> 00:48:52,960 things. One is the UK is the the crypto 821 00:48:52,960 --> 00:48:55,480 marketing department. So we we've been kind of rely on 822 00:48:55,480 --> 00:48:59,400 them with their increasing Bobby's turning up at your door. 823 00:48:59,960 --> 00:49:02,040 You can't have a beer if you say XY and Z. 824 00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:04,800 Like this is actually the thing that could radicalize normies. 825 00:49:04,920 --> 00:49:08,040 There's nothing we could do that could ever be a better 826 00:49:08,040 --> 00:49:10,760 propaganda than just allowing a government to become 827 00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:13,480 increasingly authoritarian. That's and we're going into that 828 00:49:13,480 --> 00:49:14,960 age. This is the dystopian, 829 00:49:14,960 --> 00:49:17,680 apocalyptic reading of crypto. I have, which is that the way 830 00:49:17,680 --> 00:49:21,480 crypto succeeds seeds is that essentially things go so bad 831 00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:24,960 that people suddenly realize the importance of like non state 832 00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:27,640 digital currency, etcetera. So in a way it's an 833 00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:29,920 accelerationist argument. Just allow the society to 834 00:49:29,920 --> 00:49:35,960 collapse and we'll be fine. Yeah, I, I, I hear that. 835 00:49:35,960 --> 00:49:38,880 I also think it's hilarious that apparently the worst thing you 836 00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:42,000 can threatening threaten an Englishman with his you We won't 837 00:49:42,000 --> 00:49:47,600 be able to go to the pub. I mean take away footy and pints 838 00:49:47,600 --> 00:49:50,280 is the is the thing that's going to start the revolution. 839 00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:58,000 I mean crazy. There's also a slightly less 840 00:49:58,000 --> 00:50:07,040 dark, but in my eyes still pretty dark future where Web 3 841 00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:13,600 is not primarily appropriated by state actors to kind of ensure 842 00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:19,760 absolute compliance with stupid rules they kind of arbitrarily 843 00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:29,560 set, but kind of extractive incumbents appropriating the 844 00:50:29,560 --> 00:50:34,160 technology to kind of do the extracting they already do in a 845 00:50:34,160 --> 00:50:36,160 more concerted and efficient way. 846 00:50:36,400 --> 00:50:39,080 And I think kind of like this is what we're currently seeing with 847 00:50:40,200 --> 00:50:44,720 the revolutes and stripes and Robin Hoods and so on moving 848 00:50:44,760 --> 00:50:47,800 into this space. So how do we? 849 00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:54,080 How do we? How do we stop Web 3 from merely 850 00:50:54,080 --> 00:50:57,120 becoming an infrastructure upgrade for Wall Street? 851 00:51:00,840 --> 00:51:02,120 I think we've seen a lot of this. 852 00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:05,360 I think that's already happened over the last few years. 853 00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:09,840 I think, you know, instead of, you know, again, in my early 854 00:51:09,840 --> 00:51:13,600 crypto idealism, I saw utility tokens has been a real thing. 855 00:51:13,600 --> 00:51:16,520 You know, these like digital assets that mediated access to 856 00:51:16,520 --> 00:51:20,080 decentralized systems and how to use within those systems and 857 00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:24,080 opened up new kinds of incentive incentive engineering 858 00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:27,000 capabilities. And, and actually we just use 859 00:51:27,000 --> 00:51:32,080 them as a form of non dilutive equity and largely, you know, 860 00:51:32,080 --> 00:51:35,280 the amount of this. So you end up with this dynamic 861 00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:40,120 where you've got quick liquidity and A and a game that's largely, 862 00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:43,760 you know, pre market and post market and the private market 863 00:51:43,760 --> 00:51:48,720 took over. And largely that has manifested 864 00:51:48,720 --> 00:51:53,840 in a case of, yeah, private equity game, but worse, right? 865 00:51:53,840 --> 00:51:58,200 Because what we've had is people just like accumulating tokens in 866 00:51:58,200 --> 00:52:00,680 private markets from directly from founders and their 867 00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:05,560 proprietary deal flow and then a token launch which allows them 868 00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:08,840 super quick liquidity, some light sub six months sometimes. 869 00:52:10,000 --> 00:52:12,960 And the retail market just gets butchered every time. 870 00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:16,120 And and that's just what we've had for the last few years. 871 00:52:16,120 --> 00:52:20,560 So hey, that's already happened. But yeah, there's a whole new 872 00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:24,080 realm of that when we've got, you know, these massive 873 00:52:24,080 --> 00:52:26,760 corporate actors have just been waiting in the wings like, you 874 00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:29,560 know, the likes of Google, Stripe, all of these lot. 875 00:52:31,240 --> 00:52:34,400 And yeah, they're just setting up their own L ones. 876 00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:37,160 And, you know, and and I don't see this is good for Aetherium 877 00:52:37,200 --> 00:52:40,360 and or good for the industry at large. 878 00:52:41,400 --> 00:52:43,480 I think they've just been waiting for the right time to 879 00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:47,160 come in and plunder everything. So I I think thinking more 880 00:52:47,160 --> 00:52:50,600 defensively and cautiously about this is probably a good idea at 881 00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:54,160 this point. I mean, I think kind of like 882 00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:58,000 part of part of, I mean, I, I would very much take the 883 00:52:58,000 --> 00:53:02,240 position that kind of like we can't stop kind of Google from 884 00:53:02,760 --> 00:53:05,680 launching its own L1. And I mean, who are we to do 885 00:53:05,680 --> 00:53:08,440 that? But we should make sure that the 886 00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:13,240 L1 that kind of you want to build on are not Google's L1. 887 00:53:13,480 --> 00:53:16,720 And kind of like if, if you kind of look at their press release, 888 00:53:16,720 --> 00:53:20,200 kind of like when, when, when they kind of announced it, it, 889 00:53:20,200 --> 00:53:23,200 it said kind of we're launching an L1 so that they'll be a 890 00:53:23,200 --> 00:53:26,240 credibly neutral one that other people can build on. 891 00:53:26,240 --> 00:53:28,680 It's like, do you guys understand what credibly neutral 892 00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:36,160 actually means? So it's how, how do we, how do 893 00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:41,280 we sway people, entrepreneurs and builders into the right 894 00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,520 direction, kind of how do we make them see the light? 895 00:53:46,320 --> 00:53:48,840 I don't think you really you there's no way you can really 896 00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:53,400 force these things. This is I think it's it's the 897 00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:57,040 nature of the culture where you just have to hope that there are 898 00:53:57,040 --> 00:54:00,000 there are enough of you who are interested in these traditional, 899 00:54:00,000 --> 00:54:03,120 say, cypherpunk values. Say Crops is 1 version that I've 900 00:54:03,120 --> 00:54:09,560 heard of put other censorship resistance, open source, privacy 901 00:54:09,800 --> 00:54:12,920 and security or so defy punk, all these different kind of ways 902 00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:15,920 of thinking about it. It really comes through just the 903 00:54:15,920 --> 00:54:19,560 practice of people attending conferences, giving the talk and 904 00:54:19,560 --> 00:54:22,680 sort of stressing these values. And one thing I will say about 905 00:54:22,680 --> 00:54:24,640 this is you can you can actually get surprised. 906 00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:29,520 So the recent trend of merit and ZK cash and sort of Zolana, all 907 00:54:29,520 --> 00:54:30,840 these things that I never would have expect. 908 00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:34,240 I'm giving a talk on Friday to the Solana Super team about 909 00:54:34,240 --> 00:54:37,640 cypherpunk, which is something, you know, if I just listen to 910 00:54:37,640 --> 00:54:39,520 kind of crypto Twitter, I never would have thought was a 911 00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:41,440 possibility like that they would be interested in it. 912 00:54:41,880 --> 00:54:45,080 And so it is just a consistent application of people talking 913 00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:48,160 about the ideas that that that secures it because I don't think 914 00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:50,200 you can really resist them at any other level. 915 00:54:50,200 --> 00:54:52,840 We can't compete in markets. We can't compete in the 916 00:54:52,840 --> 00:54:54,640 technology. But that's like a it's a 917 00:54:54,640 --> 00:54:57,320 complicated story that most people aren't going to get. 918 00:54:57,320 --> 00:54:59,280 And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because 919 00:54:59,280 --> 00:55:02,120 they'll just use your term anyway, even if they're exactly, 920 00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:04,400 they'll just take like a credible neutrality and say, OK, 921 00:55:04,400 --> 00:55:08,960 well, that's error term. And you know, they'll use in 922 00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:13,120 some very ambiguous way in terms of the this is, but there is a 923 00:55:13,120 --> 00:55:15,520 bit of a deal with the devil situation when it comes to the 924 00:55:15,520 --> 00:55:18,840 institutional adoption. So people want E to go to 10K. 925 00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:22,040 They know that the way in which this happens is going to be on 926 00:55:22,040 --> 00:55:24,520 boarding the institutions. But you know, one day you will 927 00:55:24,520 --> 00:55:27,200 wake up and essentially the institutions will be in this 928 00:55:27,200 --> 00:55:31,480 very powerful position. And I in a, in a strange way, I 929 00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:32,960 think that this might be a good thing. 930 00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:38,560 So what I think is maybe the the great reminder or renaissance of 931 00:55:38,560 --> 00:55:42,040 traditional values, like what exactly a blockchain is or what 932 00:55:42,040 --> 00:55:45,080 what credible neutrality is, will only come about when we get 933 00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:48,440 a situation where some institutional player, maybe like 934 00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:52,560 a Tom Lee gone rogue, actually try to in some way interfere 935 00:55:52,560 --> 00:55:55,840 with, say, ethereal governance. Or else we just have some kind 936 00:55:55,840 --> 00:55:59,560 of bug or, you know, something like strange happens, which 937 00:55:59,560 --> 00:56:04,840 requires a state of exception like a Bitcoin civil war hard 938 00:56:04,840 --> 00:56:08,880 fork type situation or the Dow. We haven't had one in such a 939 00:56:08,880 --> 00:56:10,720 long time. And I think that's probably why 940 00:56:10,720 --> 00:56:14,000 a lot of the the younger people are simply unaware of the the 941 00:56:14,000 --> 00:56:16,000 structure and why the structure is in place. 942 00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:21,000 So it may require a little bit of the like. 943 00:56:21,200 --> 00:56:24,200 Maybe the the best way we can do this is sort of push ourselves 944 00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:26,720 closer and closer to the institutions until something 945 00:56:27,280 --> 00:56:30,480 'cause it like forces a little bit of a a battle so that people 946 00:56:30,480 --> 00:56:34,560 can see why it's important to be decentralized or permissionless. 947 00:56:35,600 --> 00:56:38,200 That is quite accelerationist, I think. 948 00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:42,960 I think, I think I said this the other day, we can't stop them, 949 00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:45,320 but we should be thinking of counterattack strategies. 950 00:56:46,600 --> 00:56:49,440 And the thing that I'm most worried about is, you know, 951 00:56:49,440 --> 00:56:51,560 these incredibly well capitalized players just 952 00:56:51,560 --> 00:56:55,000 poaching all the talent and they're being a kind of massive 953 00:56:55,000 --> 00:56:58,440 brain drain across the industry where everyone just worked for a 954 00:56:58,440 --> 00:57:00,000 bank. I mean, like the, the most 955 00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:03,240 tragic end to crypto is all the cypherpunks work for a bank in 956 00:57:03,240 --> 00:57:07,000 the end. And so, yeah, I mean, like we 957 00:57:07,000 --> 00:57:12,320 need to be doing something about stopping that from happening. 958 00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:19,200 So I, I, I think things like the finding ways to like, we need, 959 00:57:19,360 --> 00:57:21,840 we need to find what those apps are. 960 00:57:22,000 --> 00:57:25,080 You know, we need a lot more file verses we need a lot more 961 00:57:25,080 --> 00:57:29,440 like real world applications. We need Dows to start hitting 962 00:57:29,440 --> 00:57:33,000 mainstream and solving real problems for real people in real 963 00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:36,120 communities that aren't in crypto. 964 00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:39,480 I think we need to start looking out into the world and, and 965 00:57:39,480 --> 00:57:44,080 hitting adoption vectors that Stripe won't do and we need to 966 00:57:44,080 --> 00:57:46,280 be funding it. We need to be like raising Dows 967 00:57:46,280 --> 00:57:51,600 and, and like locking in the talent and making sure it's very 968 00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:54,320 difficult to, and it's going to come down to money and like 969 00:57:55,640 --> 00:57:59,520 making sure people like taking the at the moment, there's a lot 970 00:57:59,520 --> 00:58:01,480 of people who will end up working for a bank because 971 00:58:01,480 --> 00:58:04,680 they're poor right in. And that's one of the things 972 00:58:04,680 --> 00:58:08,320 that I think we need to get better at as an industry is like 973 00:58:08,320 --> 00:58:11,640 supporting independent developers, grass root 974 00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:17,040 applications and like real world use cases that are outside just 975 00:58:17,040 --> 00:58:19,720 basic payments at the moment. It's just payments 976 00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:23,080 infrastructure that's rapidly accelerating in that. 977 00:58:24,320 --> 00:58:29,240 And yeah, I think we need to start working like I sort of got 978 00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:32,640 a lot of stick for defecting to Solana after several years of 979 00:58:32,840 --> 00:58:36,720 Ethereum. But Salon is like more of a more 980 00:58:36,720 --> 00:58:41,480 aligned than you might think. Like like Polo was saying, the 981 00:58:41,480 --> 00:58:46,000 cypherpunk mentality is there. I'm trying to push them into 982 00:58:46,600 --> 00:58:49,400 adopting a values based governance system at the network 983 00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:51,840 level at the moment. It's we need to start thinking 984 00:58:51,840 --> 00:58:54,880 more as an industry about there is a, you know, we've been 985 00:58:54,880 --> 00:58:59,400 having these kind of internal micro culture squabbles for many 986 00:58:59,400 --> 00:59:04,040 years between different block chains and even L twos within 987 00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:06,320 Ethereum and stuff like that. And it just doesn't make much 988 00:59:06,320 --> 00:59:07,720 sense. I think we've got this. 989 00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:12,640 There's an abstracted value structure that sits at the at 990 00:59:12,640 --> 00:59:16,880 the level of of crypto that I think is somehow we need to find 991 00:59:16,880 --> 00:59:20,320 the kind of unite the tribes, if you like, across the, across the 992 00:59:20,320 --> 00:59:22,320 crypto industry. Do you think that Ethan? 993 00:59:22,360 --> 00:59:26,360 Sorry. Just briefly, I do think like 994 00:59:26,360 --> 00:59:29,120 cypherpunk is kind of the unifying principle of, of 995 00:59:29,120 --> 00:59:31,520 crypto. And like one of the one of the 996 00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,640 jobs that we have in that that battle is to to keep using that 997 00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:37,520 term, to keep using those that, that terminology because nobody 998 00:59:37,520 --> 00:59:41,040 else will use it for us. Or if they are using it, they'll 999 00:59:41,040 --> 00:59:44,920 be using it in that sort of like a credible neutrality, but not 1000 00:59:44,920 --> 00:59:47,840 really kind of way. But yeah, I think that that's 1001 00:59:48,520 --> 00:59:50,040 yeah. So that we are more similar than 1002 00:59:50,040 --> 00:59:52,960 we think and we we need to get to that that mindset at some 1003 00:59:52,960 --> 00:59:57,360 point. I I I am 100% with you that kind 1004 00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:00,960 of like this tribalism and kind of inter faction warring that 1005 01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:05,280 that's it kind of like it just creates a lot of friction that's 1006 01:00:05,920 --> 01:00:11,000 ultimately A unproductive and B trans people like like nothing 1007 01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:17,440 else kind of and but I wonder how much is. 1008 01:00:18,160 --> 01:00:21,600 The decentralized nature of crypto kind of working against 1009 01:00:21,600 --> 01:00:26,000 us here because kind of like people are somewhat reticent or 1010 01:00:26,000 --> 01:00:31,680 kind of resistant to kind of having one kind of one kind of 1011 01:00:31,680 --> 01:00:36,960 leadership figure that kind of speaks for a united ecosystem 1012 01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:42,640 and kind of speaks for cypherpunk values at large. 1013 01:00:43,040 --> 01:00:46,440 And I think kind of like this is also something that that kind of 1014 01:00:46,440 --> 01:00:49,280 Ethereans have failed over the last couple of years kind of 1015 01:00:49,280 --> 01:00:53,080 with respect to Solana, which I think it's also why Solana kind 1016 01:00:53,080 --> 01:00:57,120 of rankles the Ethereum, the Ethereum people so much. 1017 01:00:57,400 --> 01:01:02,760 Because Solana kind of has a much more vocal and centralised 1018 01:01:02,760 --> 01:01:08,160 leadership that in some sense kind of is the voice of Solana. 1019 01:01:08,360 --> 01:01:11,840 And kind of does the kind of marketing that the Theorem 1020 01:01:11,840 --> 01:01:14,800 Foundation doesn't do. And that we don't kind of has 1021 01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:22,800 have as an overarching structure kind of across all layer one 1022 01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:25,640 ecosystems. How, how, how do you think, do 1023 01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:31,880 you think we can get to kind of like a consensus figure that 1024 01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:34,800 everyone can kind of rally behind? 1025 01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:39,440 That's a really interesting question. 1026 01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:42,040 And I think that like a lot of the rambling against the 1027 01:01:42,040 --> 01:01:47,680 Ethereum Foundation last year, earlier this year was almost a, 1028 01:01:49,880 --> 01:01:53,360 it was a reflection of looking at the likes of Solana, which 1029 01:01:53,360 --> 01:01:55,560 had a more unified voice. And I think there was a lot we 1030 01:01:55,560 --> 01:02:01,360 should be doing that, you know. And so I mean, nothing about 1031 01:02:01,360 --> 01:02:04,280 decentralized system says you shouldn't have leaders. 1032 01:02:04,640 --> 01:02:09,040 Like there's like the I've heard the term then they they should 1033 01:02:09,040 --> 01:02:11,640 be leader full, not leaderless systems. 1034 01:02:11,760 --> 01:02:16,160 As in what a good decentralized organization system would do is 1035 01:02:16,160 --> 01:02:20,440 elevate good leaders. So like find ways of discovering 1036 01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:24,800 people who can lead people. And the sort of leadership 1037 01:02:24,800 --> 01:02:29,520 paradigm I see is what's like if management is effectively about 1038 01:02:29,520 --> 01:02:32,800 control and conformity, leadership is about follow, 1039 01:02:32,880 --> 01:02:36,120 getting people to follow you with soft power, right? 1040 01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:39,560 So there's, there's nothing around like influence through 1041 01:02:40,480 --> 01:02:45,120 just by adopting a leadership position is exactly the kind of 1042 01:02:45,120 --> 01:02:48,200 thing that we need to be elevating people towards, right? 1043 01:02:49,360 --> 01:02:54,080 It's what isn't congruent with these systems is people being 1044 01:02:54,080 --> 01:02:58,840 forced to do things right. And, and it's that kind of, so I 1045 01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:00,360 think there's different ways into this. 1046 01:03:00,400 --> 01:03:04,720 I think, yes, you can elevate more leaders across the 1047 01:03:04,720 --> 01:03:06,680 industry. There are good ones. 1048 01:03:07,280 --> 01:03:10,520 We went through a phase of elevating absolutely the worst 1049 01:03:10,520 --> 01:03:14,160 people in the industry to almost like God like status, which was 1050 01:03:14,640 --> 01:03:17,680 disastrous. So we need to find people who 1051 01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:21,640 are like genuinely represent the industry, the best of the best, 1052 01:03:21,640 --> 01:03:25,080 if you like, in the, in that represent what differentiates us 1053 01:03:25,080 --> 01:03:29,960 from from and embodies the principles of the, of the 1054 01:03:29,960 --> 01:03:32,520 technology and what we want to see in the future. 1055 01:03:33,160 --> 01:03:35,800 But also I think we just need better social consensus 1056 01:03:35,800 --> 01:03:39,240 machinery. Like one of the things that I 1057 01:03:39,240 --> 01:03:43,360 got very excited about Dows is that you could use things like 1058 01:03:43,360 --> 01:03:46,640 voting systems and this gets more possible with things like 1059 01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:50,880 AI Dow crossover stuff of synthesizing the views of many, 1060 01:03:50,880 --> 01:03:53,880 many people. And and actually, you know, 1061 01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:57,320 innovating in sort of democratic tooling, which is one of the 1062 01:03:57,320 --> 01:03:59,920 things that I found very exciting about this industry and 1063 01:03:59,920 --> 01:04:04,200 its potential to do is democracy in the conventional world is 1064 01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:07,680 like failing, you know, represented representative 1065 01:04:07,680 --> 01:04:12,880 democracy and things like, you know, it is leading us down into 1066 01:04:12,880 --> 01:04:18,680 chat control, you know, and like, so how do we find better 1067 01:04:18,680 --> 01:04:21,520 systems for genuinely connecting with people and having them 1068 01:04:21,520 --> 01:04:24,080 influence the system as a whole? I think that's that's what we 1069 01:04:24,080 --> 01:04:27,920 need to discover. Maybe kind of a final question, 1070 01:04:27,920 --> 01:04:33,680 kind of kind of kind of building on this. 1071 01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:38,600 So in a way, kind of philosophically, we kind of 1072 01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:43,800 think about people as unhackable and kind of I think this is also 1073 01:04:43,800 --> 01:04:47,600 what kind of a lot of the governance mechanisms that kind 1074 01:04:47,600 --> 01:04:52,920 of we've built in the past kind of kind of take as a 1075 01:04:52,920 --> 01:04:56,160 prerequisite. But we have seen that people's 1076 01:04:56,160 --> 01:04:59,960 minds are supremely hackable. So kind of, I mean, we, we just 1077 01:04:59,960 --> 01:05:03,000 talked about the micro targeting that kind of like all our data 1078 01:05:04,360 --> 01:05:08,720 allow us kind of to kind of to happen, right? 1079 01:05:09,240 --> 01:05:14,440 How it is, is there a shift needed in how we think about 1080 01:05:14,840 --> 01:05:18,480 people's minds? And I think maybe this is this 1081 01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:27,280 is a question for Polo. Yeah, so this is one of the the 1082 01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:30,720 debates that I've been seeing from the the Block Works 1083 01:05:30,720 --> 01:05:35,840 expanded universe by my friends over at Block Works where they 1084 01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:39,760 had this idea about Tom Lee recently. 1085 01:05:39,760 --> 01:05:42,480 And like how this is the debate that's kind of really in my mind 1086 01:05:42,480 --> 01:05:45,000 that he has very instructive of the current culture post 1087 01:05:45,000 --> 01:05:47,080 ideological versus traditional cyberpunk. 1088 01:05:48,120 --> 01:05:51,280 And the idea was that say someone like Tom Lee could come 1089 01:05:51,280 --> 01:05:53,600 in and hire various different devs. 1090 01:05:53,600 --> 01:05:57,520 You know, we saw that the report, the EF like the like 1091 01:05:57,520 --> 01:06:00,080 Etherium core developers and how much they're making and how 1092 01:06:00,080 --> 01:06:03,520 distant it was from say just being on the open market. 1093 01:06:04,840 --> 01:06:07,800 And so I think from their perspective, they are thinking 1094 01:06:07,800 --> 01:06:11,120 in that kind of way that we're probably entering into a world 1095 01:06:11,120 --> 01:06:14,800 where with enough resources you can essentially buy people 1096 01:06:14,800 --> 01:06:17,280 regardless of values. You could maybe even shift 1097 01:06:17,280 --> 01:06:19,280 culture over time. This is something actually, I 1098 01:06:19,280 --> 01:06:22,760 think is probably the secret danger of the social layer of 1099 01:06:22,760 --> 01:06:25,560 governance is actually just the idea of wide body with any kind 1100 01:06:25,560 --> 01:06:27,960 of attack. Just simply seed new core 1101 01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:32,480 developers over a 1020 year time frame who aren't cypherpunk and 1102 01:06:32,480 --> 01:06:34,040 know Etherium is no longer cypherpunk. 1103 01:06:34,440 --> 01:06:38,120 So like I do think that this is like a yeah, the the ultimate 1104 01:06:38,120 --> 01:06:42,280 frontier, the great repressed of like, you know, kind of 1105 01:06:42,280 --> 01:06:45,440 blockchain truly be say credible neutrality or permission list 1106 01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:49,080 and so on, so long as it has an open governance process, which 1107 01:06:49,080 --> 01:06:52,160 is populated by people who themselves can be hacked 1108 01:06:52,160 --> 01:06:56,160 culturally over time. So This is why I think that that 1109 01:06:56,160 --> 01:07:00,120 where you get to the importance of the the polycentric or non 1110 01:07:00,120 --> 01:07:02,960 monocentric was actually a term I heard someone use instead 1111 01:07:03,200 --> 01:07:05,760 recently, just meaning that there are multiple decision 1112 01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:09,000 making centers that are supposed to take each other into account. 1113 01:07:09,000 --> 01:07:11,720 So if you're trying to take over a Tyrion today, you know you've 1114 01:07:11,760 --> 01:07:14,440 you've got to take over the ACD call, right? 1115 01:07:14,440 --> 01:07:17,480 You've got to somehow get Tim Baiko and you've got to like 1116 01:07:17,640 --> 01:07:20,280 flip him. You've got to infiltrate the 1117 01:07:20,280 --> 01:07:22,400 Interior Foundation. You've got to think about the 1118 01:07:22,400 --> 01:07:25,640 the independent researchers. You've got to think about the 1119 01:07:25,640 --> 01:07:29,400 cat herders, you got to think about the Ethereum foundation 1120 01:07:29,400 --> 01:07:32,480 itself, like trying to flip now two different sides of it, the 1121 01:07:32,480 --> 01:07:36,800 pragmatist side and then also like Vitalik and Shaw way, 1122 01:07:36,840 --> 01:07:39,920 etcetera. And then you also need to think 1123 01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:44,360 about the the infrastructure. So or PCs, Lido rocket pool, 1124 01:07:44,480 --> 01:07:49,000 each of which have their own sort of mini microculture famous 1125 01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:51,800 figures, Kobe and Hassu like those, those kind of figures as 1126 01:07:51,800 --> 01:07:53,680 well would have an important sway, I imagine. 1127 01:07:54,760 --> 01:07:57,120 But then even beyond that, right, you've got the client 1128 01:07:57,120 --> 01:07:58,640 team. So they're all working on 1129 01:07:58,640 --> 01:08:01,640 different client software. So you've got to hope that all 1130 01:08:01,640 --> 01:08:05,320 those teams will flip as well. And then ultimately the, 1131 01:08:05,360 --> 01:08:08,640 probably the, the, the reason why we, we could do with a, a 1132 01:08:08,640 --> 01:08:11,960 state of exception, a Dow hack, a Bitcoin civil war is people 1133 01:08:11,960 --> 01:08:14,920 need to see the idea of the power of the, the full node as 1134 01:08:14,920 --> 01:08:17,640 the, the last offence. Because at that point you are 1135 01:08:17,640 --> 01:08:21,479 talking about the ultimate, uh, bedrock of cypherpunk culture 1136 01:08:21,720 --> 01:08:23,840 that you're running a, a node, right? 1137 01:08:23,840 --> 01:08:26,479 Like you're a non economic node, as the Bitcoiners would call it. 1138 01:08:26,560 --> 01:08:28,880 So you're not doing it in order to, to be a validator, et 1139 01:08:28,880 --> 01:08:30,760 cetera. Like you are a pure true 1140 01:08:30,760 --> 01:08:32,399 believer. And that's a group that's 1141 01:08:32,399 --> 01:08:33,680 distributed all across the world. 1142 01:08:33,680 --> 01:08:36,000 To me, that's the, that actually is the real essence of the 1143 01:08:36,000 --> 01:08:39,640 social layer that is the the cypherpunk bedrock of Ethereum. 1144 01:08:40,520 --> 01:08:43,439 So the way that I would be thinking of countering this is 1145 01:08:43,439 --> 01:08:45,399 what we need to do is we actually should be thinking 1146 01:08:45,399 --> 01:08:49,080 about more distribution and getting across the people. 1147 01:08:49,080 --> 01:08:53,279 The importance of just how everything ultimately comes down 1148 01:08:53,279 --> 01:08:57,760 to the, the polycentric nature of the system and making it so 1149 01:08:57,760 --> 01:09:00,640 that like you can sway some parts of the culture, but that 1150 01:09:00,640 --> 01:09:02,920 will take you a long time and then you need to get another 1151 01:09:02,920 --> 01:09:04,200 part that will take you more time. 1152 01:09:04,439 --> 01:09:07,279 So now the the proof of work or proof of the stake at the social 1153 01:09:07,279 --> 01:09:10,120 layer is actually time itself. And you know, you're, you're 1154 01:09:10,120 --> 01:09:13,479 kind of making it expensive culturally for somebody to flip 1155 01:09:13,479 --> 01:09:17,680 you. I, I think that that is 1156 01:09:17,680 --> 01:09:19,960 brilliant. It's sort of look at how the 1157 01:09:20,319 --> 01:09:23,720 crypto is actually more resistant to these kind of like 1158 01:09:23,720 --> 01:09:28,520 mind viruses that can take over people than potentially the real 1159 01:09:28,520 --> 01:09:30,680 world system. And I, I don't think there's a 1160 01:09:31,319 --> 01:09:33,880 government in the world at the moment that's not scared about a 1161 01:09:33,880 --> 01:09:38,600 populist uprising like with, you know, attitudes changing 1162 01:09:38,600 --> 01:09:40,279 radically because of social media. 1163 01:09:41,960 --> 01:09:45,680 And yeah, I, I, I think there's, this is a very real concern, 1164 01:09:45,680 --> 01:09:46,720 right? And I think it's one of the 1165 01:09:46,720 --> 01:09:52,040 reasons why we're seeing, you know, a real rise in in online 1166 01:09:52,040 --> 01:09:57,240 censorship because they're worried about, you know, this 1167 01:09:57,360 --> 01:10:00,640 effectively populist uprisings by things just like ideas going 1168 01:10:00,640 --> 01:10:03,000 viral and people's minds being hacked and so on. 1169 01:10:04,320 --> 01:10:06,840 And I think there's like crypto potentially has a space in this, 1170 01:10:06,840 --> 01:10:10,760 you know, we sometimes refer to this as epistemic tooling, but 1171 01:10:10,760 --> 01:10:14,400 things like prediction markets and, you know, decentralized 1172 01:10:14,400 --> 01:10:17,080 sense making systems and, and stuff like that have a real 1173 01:10:17,080 --> 01:10:23,840 potential to, to add a layer of Poly centric decision making 1174 01:10:23,840 --> 01:10:27,640 that can lead to good decisions. That's one of the things that I 1175 01:10:27,640 --> 01:10:31,600 think we should be focusing on as an industry to, to, to 1176 01:10:31,600 --> 01:10:34,320 actually influence the world in a in a good and good way. 1177 01:10:36,080 --> 01:10:47,400 If, if each of you could kind of could suggest one way kind of we 1178 01:10:47,400 --> 01:10:52,840 as kind of players in this ecosystem can improve on the 1179 01:10:52,840 --> 01:10:58,360 culture or the kind of permeating the culture further, 1180 01:10:59,120 --> 01:11:02,720 how, how would you suggest we go about this? 1181 01:11:07,400 --> 01:11:13,480 I, I think the, the, the most important place at the moment is 1182 01:11:13,480 --> 01:11:15,120 the, the conferences, the events. 1183 01:11:15,120 --> 01:11:21,360 So if you go to say dev connect or you go to ECC, etcetera, then 1184 01:11:21,680 --> 01:11:23,880 you know, you're more and more going to encounter people who 1185 01:11:23,880 --> 01:11:27,320 are new to Ethereum, uh, maybe new to Solana, whatever, uh, 1186 01:11:27,520 --> 01:11:31,000 adventure at. And you can't presume the 1187 01:11:31,000 --> 01:11:34,840 familiarity with, say, the, the, the, the values, the the 1188 01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:39,360 importance of cyberpunk. And so even though it's sort of 1189 01:11:39,400 --> 01:11:43,080 like, even though it's kind of boring, if you're giving a talk 1190 01:11:43,080 --> 01:11:44,920 and you're talking about cyberpunk and you look out in 1191 01:11:44,920 --> 01:11:47,320 the room and you see other people who obviously know about 1192 01:11:47,320 --> 01:11:50,200 it, I still think it's really important to to run through it 1193 01:11:50,200 --> 01:11:53,640 for the, the benefit and the service of the, say, small part 1194 01:11:53,640 --> 01:11:55,800 of your audience who came, who are fresh and new. 1195 01:11:56,120 --> 01:11:59,520 Because the way that I've tried to think about this recently is, 1196 01:12:00,080 --> 01:12:02,080 yeah, if we don't say it, nobody else will. 1197 01:12:02,520 --> 01:12:05,280 So it, it now becomes more and more incumbent for, for those 1198 01:12:05,280 --> 01:12:09,200 people who are, who go around and give talks and even if it's 1199 01:12:09,200 --> 01:12:12,440 just like a local event to ensure that these things are 1200 01:12:12,440 --> 01:12:14,680 actually mentioned and to not presume them. 1201 01:12:15,280 --> 01:12:17,880 So, yeah, giving talks, if you are thinking of getting into 1202 01:12:17,880 --> 01:12:21,840 giving talks, promoting that. And then also the, the promotion 1203 01:12:21,840 --> 01:12:24,320 of the apps, I think is going to be in crucial thing. 1204 01:12:24,720 --> 01:12:27,680 So Ethereal's big focus recent years, all the infrastructure 1205 01:12:27,880 --> 01:12:31,200 and in many ways at the, the, the Solana issue plus the, the 1206 01:12:31,200 --> 01:12:35,160 revolt against the EF is also about the, the, the lack of 1207 01:12:35,160 --> 01:12:39,920 focus on apps that we, we have this, we had this hyper emphasis 1208 01:12:39,920 --> 01:12:43,120 on the layer 2 road map and then say Beam, as it was called at 1209 01:12:43,120 --> 01:12:45,520 the time, where you're thinking in 10 years. 1210 01:12:45,520 --> 01:12:48,440 And people like actually know we should be thinking in now and 1211 01:12:48,440 --> 01:12:49,920 what people can use at the moment. 1212 01:12:50,160 --> 01:12:53,280 So yeah, the the that that idea of like promoting followers, 1213 01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:57,520 promoting farcaster, I think becomes a small, it's a small 1214 01:12:57,520 --> 01:13:00,520 thing, but it's these, these, these add up culturally over 1215 01:13:00,520 --> 01:13:03,080 time. OK, beat the beat the drums we 1216 01:13:03,080 --> 01:13:06,600 already have is is Polar's kind of advice. 1217 01:13:06,880 --> 01:13:08,520 Nick, what's your what's your advice? 1218 01:13:10,080 --> 01:13:13,040 I think we need to go to real people. 1219 01:13:13,320 --> 01:13:15,760 I think we need outreach effectively. 1220 01:13:16,720 --> 01:13:21,600 There's a magic moment that I certainly experienced when first 1221 01:13:21,600 --> 01:13:26,840 discovering this technology that was this kind of hopefulness 1222 01:13:26,840 --> 01:13:30,360 about how this could be used, used to like make things better. 1223 01:13:30,360 --> 01:13:34,240 And I think and then experiencing several, several 1224 01:13:34,240 --> 01:13:37,360 waves of being completely jaded as as the reality of the 1225 01:13:37,360 --> 01:13:40,920 industry sort of beds in as as you learn more about it. 1226 01:13:41,960 --> 01:13:46,000 But that moment is still waiting for people out in the real world 1227 01:13:46,760 --> 01:13:52,720 and a lot of the times right. I think we need to be going out 1228 01:13:52,720 --> 01:13:55,600 to real people and, and explaining why these 1229 01:13:55,600 --> 01:13:58,880 technologies are important and developing real use cases that 1230 01:13:58,880 --> 01:14:03,760 can improve their real lives. I still think things like Dows 1231 01:14:03,760 --> 01:14:09,960 and social coordination tools are what could enable real grass 1232 01:14:09,960 --> 01:14:11,920 roots communities and empower them. 1233 01:14:13,000 --> 01:14:15,520 I, I still do a bit of teaching work at the Architectural 1234 01:14:15,520 --> 01:14:19,760 Association in London, which is taking it, I'm trying to 1235 01:14:19,880 --> 01:14:22,320 basically downhill people in the real world. 1236 01:14:22,840 --> 01:14:27,640 It's very challenging, but it's incredibly interesting to see 1237 01:14:29,320 --> 01:14:32,480 real everyday people like understand what is possible 1238 01:14:32,480 --> 01:14:34,920 here. And I think we somehow need to 1239 01:14:34,920 --> 01:14:41,120 like do that more at scale. Yeah, let's go to the normies. 1240 01:14:41,120 --> 01:14:45,840 It's time to we, we're in echo chamber and like I think two 1241 01:14:45,840 --> 01:14:48,680 sides of the coin there probably thinks we should make sure the 1242 01:14:48,680 --> 01:14:53,040 inner chamber, if you like, stay like it stays on message, but we 1243 01:14:53,040 --> 01:14:56,400 need to be taking the message outwards at the same time. 1244 01:14:57,040 --> 01:14:59,320 Fantastic. In this regard, so just in this 1245 01:14:59,320 --> 01:15:03,040 regard, Jesse from base who gets a lot of abuse for going out 1246 01:15:03,040 --> 01:15:06,160 there, like he is actually doing that which he shouldn't get as 1247 01:15:06,160 --> 01:15:08,200 much abuse for trying to go out and talk to people. 1248 01:15:08,200 --> 01:15:12,960 I think about these things. Cool, thank you both for coming 1249 01:15:12,960 --> 01:15:16,760 on. We'll, we'll include your 1250 01:15:16,760 --> 01:15:20,080 Twitter profiles and whereas to follow you in the show. 1251 01:15:20,080 --> 01:15:22,320 Now it's it's it's been an absolute pleasure. 1252 01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:24,880 Likewise, thank you very much for having us on.