Tate Berenbaum about Arweave and how a blockchain-based permanent storage impacts governance

so welcome on on another episode of

democracy innovators podcast and our guests of

today's date better bottom

as a like update thank you for

having the alex it's great to be

here and the i mean your project

is quite interesting i mean you're quite

young

i dunno how old are you know

is ima i'm twenty two now but

i think i was i was seventeen

when i got into our river originally

yeah

is wonderful and would you like to

tell us something about the the projects

are working on i've seen also community

lobster our the computer sure so maybe

just to start with like a a

story in terms of how i how

i got into this stuff

i i've been interested in crypto for

a little while now since twenty seventeen

in two thousand and nineteen i i

stumbled across our we is completely by

chance and i use the brave browser

and i don't know you know if

if many people use that but it

gives you the ability to see these

ads in

change for for crypto and one of

the ads was talking about permanent data

storage and and so i ended up

clicking on it and that led me

to are we even in twenty nineteen

at the time i didn't have a

use case for it but i kind

of realized like out of all of

the things you could do with blockchain

technology store data permanently was a pretty

interesting one and and so i kind

of set it aside and and came

back to it when the pandemic started

and twenty twenty and i was in

school at the time but my see

rule was canceled because the the school

itself wasn't sure how to my migrate

to the online learning environment so i

was basically stuck in my basements my

basement for six months with nothing to

do except build stuff and i just

started building developer tools on our reef

and i've been in are we even

in now

now a oh ever since our revisit

a permanent data storage network designed to

enable you to pay a one time

fee to store a piece of data

for at least two hundred years and

and the idea is creating a single

source of truth where people can upload

data and rely on it being available

and for fidelity and over

that period of time it at minimum

so our team now at community labs

that's my company is a software development

company and venture studio building out and

bootstrapping different types of use cases in

applications on top of our reef and

and you know we we sort of

see our job is similar to like

explorers and new territory

three permanent data storage introduces a bunch

of new primitives and and enables you

to do a lot of things that

you weren't really able to do with

other blockchain or web to technologies before

so we're building companies around those use

cases and helping them to spin out

operate on their own and and that

sort of what we do we're sort

of like a a lot

miniature version of consensus like consensus on

ethereum but for the army because system

and then aoe more recently is a

decentralized super computer built on top of

our reef and and it's really exciting

for us because now we can build

on top of permit data storage and

decentralized compete

in the same stack without having to

rely on some blockchain for compute and

our refer for data storage

it's very interesting the thurman into that

the third concept the and i wonder

like a which kind of technology is

used to achieve is a

two hundred years of safety yeah as

a super interesting technology and the way

it works is essentially will you pay

a one time fee and the fee

the size of that fee is in

proportion to the size of the data

that your upload

being at the time and that fee

goes and into an endowment that is

then head out to to nodes overtime

for being able to prove that they're

storing your data and and the reason

it works is because if you look

at like a historical graph of what

the cost was to store

a piece of data over the last

fifty years on average and the costs

to actually saw a piece of data

has decreased around thirty percent year over

a year and and you know the

idea behind our we've is essentially a

bet on our rivers a bet that

the storage for or or the the

costs

to actually store data will continue to

decrease and and a lot of people

are comfortable making that bad because it

has for the last fifty years pretty

pretty much and and also as our

lives become more digital and more online

more people are using the internet and

there are more incentives

for companies to actually make it cheaper

to store larger amounts of data and

so that's sort of very high level

but that sort of how are reworks

and and why it's able to do

that two hundred year guarantee

okay this is very interesting because i

do

you know like a is three m

is made the with the the primary

sources that humans and

like humans do things right things and

people of our time single cut the

source of that were written in the

past

and the now we are seeing like

a sort of the

change like at are a lot of

sources are digital life

and the i saw some yes i

ago

i thought also in relation to janeiro

i that the eventually like someone could

the actually like with some users scraped

with some

a agent modify a lot of things

and the modify them forever like theoretically

like someone could the i dunno i

dunno remove like the word that the

metal from all books from all the

you may just and then for the

people of the future that fingal not

the exist

of course it is his arm

it is just an example

but that's why i think the this

project is interesting and the

i wanted to ask you like a

also there is another and like our

archive dot org that is a completely

different project but in some way they

share some similarity i think

yeah there

and so archive dot org is is

super interesting and i think that's the

team behind the wayback machine machine isn't

is that true

i think yes but i'm not completely

sure you

i think so and the the court

so you're right in that the similarities

are both are trying to make sure

that data that is on the internet

is is around overall very long period

of time and the core difference however

is our we've acts as a decentralized

network where

your data is stored in you know

hundreds of places around the world and

hundreds of people are essentially competing to

to make sure that is the case

and whereas with archive dot org and

the wayback machine you're essentially tray you

have to place trust on the team

behind archive dot org

and to make sure that the data

isn't loss that also makes i guess

the the other problem is that archive

dot org has is carrying a lot

of the costs to actually store that

data and maintain it over these years

and what happens if archive dot org

runs out of money and and has

to shut down and the data from

bubbly you know their the risk would

be that the data might not be

archived and or archive dot org could

could alter or manipulate the data that

their story and i don't think they're

doing that to be clear but the

whole point is that with are we

have you don't have to worry about

that you don't have to be concerned

of someone changing the data

because if they are they're are not

able to earn a payment for being

able to prove that their their story

yeah thank you exactly i totally agree

about desert centralization in archive dot target

and the i also don't think that

the they are what he finding anything

but the potentiality are still is there

and the

so you're tall as a when you

had the this idea that you are

browsing an internet and you saw another

type

and the

and i wouldn't was wondering how you

how you develop dead yet like leica

he said that you start developing some

tools and the like how did it

happen you met someone that i dunno

it's fire you the through the your

prisoner

so the first the first thing i

built on our reverse sort of a

sort of a funny story and

both of the to first projects that

i had they they were both influenced

by people and changing data or taking

it down and and it was knee

wanting to make sure that that wasn't

possible so and one of the first

projects was called nest dot land and

and

the idea behind it was there was

this new javascript runtime called dina that

that had shortly before then been released

and dino is sort of like know

js if you if you've heard of

that and and it was created by

ryan doll who also created note

and and so ryan had this you

know pretty big following people really admired

his work with no jas cause it's

kind of everywhere now and and dino

was you know supposed to be like

the the better version of note of

to fix all the mistakes that he

made building know js and i'm a

nerd and so i kinda got into

it i became pretty interested in dino

in the idea behind it and but

after i got into the the ecosystem

what i pretty quickly found out was

that people were sharing code one difference

between know js and and dino is

that for know there's this thing called

a package

manager where you reach out to a

package manager and say give me this

package and the package manager returns it

and that that dependency that code that

your now importing into your project is

essentially downloaded to your local file system

whereas with dino it's it's much simpler

if you want to include code uk

can just paste and a u r

l you can say import from and

then this web you earl

and that was really cool that like

it saved a lot of time off

people building in the ecosystem in it

made it easier for people to actually

share code around and cause you didn't

have to you know share this other

file that would tell you this package

manager everything had to download before you

could actually run it you could just

click run and it will

just run and dino and one of

the problems with that however was the

code that people were sharing that they

were sharing that code on links that

would be changed or they would break

and so what that introduced was the

ability for your code if you are

importing a bunch

each of links from the web your

code might randomly break because one of

those links breaks and there's nothing that

you can really do about that except

find another week that actually works or

download the dependency in the same way

that no dead and it was actually

a huge problem people were sharing the

this co

code on get hub links and so

you know it wasn't version control which

means people could update it or change

it or delete it and it can

break your code or even worse if

someone had like a malicious intent they

could change the code so that it

injects something into your code maliciously and

you know

changes your kobe's masses something up introduces

a virus and and so we needed

a place that you could actually go

to store code that developers could share

code on that you could rely on

the data not ever being able to

change or not ever going down and

and so for me

me when i came across dino and

i found this problem i was looking

i was thinking about you know are

we even and how permanent data storage

as a thing now and this technology

could solve it so spent a weekend

hacking with a few friends on discord

and had some late nights just building

out a solution that essentially just built

a website that you could upload your

code

through and then it would give you

a link that you could then used

import that code into your code base

and and it would never change your

go down and and not projects that

sort of how i started building on

are we have initially it kind of

repurposed are we have as a a

content delivery network for developers in their

code

and unintentionally at grew from you know

like a small we can project like

a vibrant open source community full of

developers and engineers that were a hundred

times smarter than me

so i was able to to learn

a lot through that process and also

meet a lot of the people that

are actually on our team now building

out things and community laps

okay that isn't that is interesting that

the and like yeah we can project

i think it was the unexpected and

to become such a big project for

sure

yeah it was not at all

yeah yeah sometimes the maybe you you

or someone else can edit the goal

of creating something big then that doesn't

happen so

i think at this as an exemple

to i mean always be open and

and try and try a on your

feelings and and thumping will happen and

the

it also made me laugh when you

say i like working with some friends

on discord like i can imagine other

people that you have found its were

passionate about different topics about the same

stuff and a and also this is

my experience like in real life sometimes

it's quite hard to find someone that

is interest the day in the these

things

while aligned line there are a lot

of people that yeah actually will not

sleep

the tarp ready to stay there and

could

yeah and then

oh sorry no yeah i was wondering

like yeah your experience the with the

different to online communities

because i think it's important i mean

if you are alone you can be

sulking but if you're alone the and

you can find out of people

then you can be the incredible projects

yeah do you know that that sort

of is a winding path for me

i didn't really have a process or

a goal to meet people and on

discord in in fact when i first

downloaded discord and twenty seventeen or two

the eighteen i was actually quite skeptical

and because i thought it was for

gamers and and i i i was

a gamer but i didn't necessarily want

to talk to other gamers about games

i wanted to build stuff and i

think that you know over the years

when i found is that

that they're they're really to two truths

that i had to come to terms

with when i was thinking about discordant

and getting involved in the communities there

and the first truth is that a

lot of people seem to think that

many of the best engineers live in

you know big tech companies or or

fang

and are in silicon valley in are

you know hacking on stuff and but

but really actually if you know where

to look some of the most talented

engineers in the world are fourteen year

olds on discord writing code on rebel

and with a chromebook

hum the amount of talent that is

on discord is actually is unbelievable and

and it's incredible because these people are

really talented it's also incredible because they

are really friendly people and all they

want to do is build stuff they're

not profit driven many of them and

and

they're just looking for friends to now

i i was nowhere near the the

the skill level that a lot of

these people were that i was working

with and but the way i i

earn actually met them and this is

sort of the second truth i guess

i came to was on

you you have to you have to

come in with something right you can't

come into a community and expect it

to give to you are you have

to provide at something and and maybe

something will come to you in return

although you shouldn't come into it expecting

that so what i would do is

i would join these communities of people

that were building discord bots

the time and i would come in

i was i was an engineer but

i i was still pretty new to

it at that time this was like

ten years ago

and and

less than ten years ago it was

probably six or seven years ago and

i was essentially coming in and offering

to do graphic design because all of

the engineers were so talented and incredible

what they did no one wanted to

like make it look good you know

they just wanted to make it powerful

and so i came in and i

said i'll just do graphics

for free and so i learned graphic

design i was using like gimp and

escape at the time i got affinity

after that this was like before figma

really took off and and i was

i was just making logos for people

are not sending that that ended up

being how i met the people that

i was working with on that project

by

but discord is is crazy linkedin is

not the place if you want to

find incredible talent

i i would say discord is yeah

okay this is super interesting

i think that a lot of people

struggled in the i mean people that

the would like to work on a

project people that the

yeah i like funding a new project

i mean the struggle because the sometimes

they want to do everything by themself

well as you said there are a

lot of talented people that may be

will like to contribute on some good

project

and the and yeah totally agree that

the like on telegram also like but

also discourage you can find that very

talented people and a very interesting projects

and

another things that the

i mean during the previous interviews i

mean the project where a smaller polite

a lot of people

i complained that find the finding fundings

is quite hard

sure

what was your experience like

yeah i

so so when you when you described

that i'm assuming you're referring to like

the the past to fundraising and getting

capital to to fund a project that

you're working on or or am i

misunderstanding

yeah yeah yeah like because otherwise you

will have to develop everything by yourself

and

yes and i missed not doable if

you don't have a community of people

that once just want to contribute on

a software

sure

yeah i mean you know i think

this is one of those things that

it it it shifts and changes with

time right now

the markets are are are not the

most green i guess that's one way

to put an end because of that

and that is sort of out a

trickle down effect of turning off the

risk tolerance of capital alligators and investors

and and i think it's harder now

than it was a couple of years

ago when i was getting off

the ground to to race to be

frank and with that said though i

think you know my my journey into

it wasn't exactly intentional either and my

my stories kind of strange cause i

i really it looking back on it

i stumbled into most of the things

that brought me where i am today

i i did

didn't come into it with a goal

wasn't looking to do and intentionally and

but but for fundraising and i continued

building for a few months after launching

that that developer tool that i was

talking about earlier and i went on

to continue building other products in our

reef because our we've had a need

and and no one else was was

building solutions to these problems that we

were having and because they are a

ton of opportunities elsewhere and so we

wanted to just doubled down on our

even build solutions ourself and one of

those products that we built was actually

the first decentralized exchange

on on a permanent data layer and

it was called vert and we we

launched it in i want to say

june of twenty twenty june or july

twenty twenty and and

you know looking back on that the

process there for actually getting capital was

essentially building a product that was useful

to people and the investors actually became

users because they wanted to exchange things

and so

we ended up meeting investors because they

were using the platform itself because this

was the first time they actually could

exchange value in an ecosystem like are

with

the other point i guess is i

at this time i also met the

the founder of our we his name

is sam and samp panel saw what

we were doing he realized that you

know there were like ten people working

for fun and on this stuff on

a full time basis just cause they

enjoyed it

ah and he kind of took us

under his wing and he wanted to

help us figure out how to make

it more sustainable so that i would

be able to continue building and and

at this point i was in high

school but but the goal was to

not have to go to college so

he was like look you should you

should meet a couple of people that

i know you should have

a conversation with them

and and you know i kinda got

on the phone and i i treated

it like shark tank i thought that

all of these investor meetings where where

where like shark tank warrior you know

using your manners saying yes ma'am no

ma'am yes sir no sir i'm from

the south so like you know these

things are more common and and you

you were treated

like shark tank and you give a

pitch and then the sharks would be

sharks and they tried you know get

your numbers down and and what i

found was actually the the exact opposite

and i got on the phone and

with some of these people and there

were like do not one of them

in particular was don't don't ever don't

call me so

sir you know man that's weird like

we this is a deal like this

a partnership between two people you're giving

us something we're not just doing you

a favorite here you're giving us tokens

you're giving us equity and and so

i i learned that these things are

not like shark tank pretty quickly and

but i really did just

kind of stumble into it and once

we got our first investor to commit

and to say that they were interested

then you know it branch from there

that he introduced me to to to

people that became very close advisers to

the company and that then also invested

in than those people introduced me to

to people and had just started with

one that started with with

sam and and kind of branched out

from there so i would say for

people that are looking to to raise

you know

number one it's important to excuse me

to be able to ship quickly if

you're able to build quickly are able

to learn quickly figure out a product

that works you know we already had

a product we weren't going to people

in pitching them on the idea of

a product we had something that was

already live that worked

that helped us i think looking back

on it the other thing that helped

us was just being honest about the

situation we weren't sure you know we

didn't know what the plan was to

scale that to a billion dollars and

we were just taking each day as

it came building what customers had asked

for and trying to do it quickly

and it turns out you know

no investors at the pre sea level

they they don't necessarily want to see

this master plan that they want to

see honesty and transparency and they want

to see people that are doing thanks

for the right reasons

and and you know i'm very thankful

to the people that that took a

chance on us in the early days

and but i think that for me

the process was you know what was

different because i i really wasn't doing

it intentionally it was sort of accidental

and i'm trying to think if there

any other

points that i would make in relation

to helping of

yeah i really like these a how

everything opinion as seems spontaneous way and

then

some funders

are also worried that their with the

the venture capitalists i mean they will

deleuze the control of their project so

sometimes it's also like something that the

can stop them

yeah

i mean i think and that definitely

not definitely can happen if you if

you sell too much and the the

game i guess is figuring out how

much you need to sell and to

be able to sustain yourself in to

get to that next milestone into accomplish

the goal and

if you can't sell if you can't

get by without selling too much then

yeah i mean you don't want to

lose control that's for sure so i

think that's a fair concern

and thank you for your experience and

the

i didn't really ask anything about you

and they would like to

i mean you you told has as

and like you got the idea but

like if you'll like to say something

more about you like you said the

i'm an arab emirates an of the

but the

yeah like what you like what are

your of this where did you grow

up for like sure

i i don't have great answers to

to the hobbies question i think you

know my my obvious my my job

i really i really enjoy what i

do and so i spend a lot

of time doing it as a as

a result i i grew up in

in virginia in the u s and

the the

the south of virginia was a near

the closest city was was called rono

and it was yeah pretty small town

very small town environment i don't know

if anyone's ever seen the show friday

night lights on netflix but the way

that show is portrayed in

texas was a very similar lifestyle to

to how i kind of grew up

in in virginia at the time and

there were a ton of people that

were interested in what i was interested

in growing up and so that was

another reason why i went to discord

and tried to meet people that air

because you know it my school wasn't

really

the when i was getting into it

at least they they weren't teaching how

to code or they weren't teaching you

how to build stuff and they were

teaching us a lot of other things

that were useful in retrospect but but

coating wasn't one of them and so

i think you know for me

coding was like writing code was a

hobby

and i was fortunate to find a

way to turn it into a job

for myself by starting things and by

building stuff and but i don't know

i mean i think in terms of

other hobbies i i recently started trying

to get good at tennis and i

really enjoy playing tennis but tennis is

hard because

the courts are very crowded there are

a lot of people that that liked

her to play tennis pickleball and and

it takes to you you need to

people and i have a weird schedule

so i can't just text someone at

ten p m at night and say

hey do you want to go play

tennis right now when i finish my

work and so that's been

challenge i also enjoy skiing but that's

again there are some constraints there i

live in texas now and there aren't

exactly mountains nearby to ski it's a

bit warm here yeah

sorry i looked to the table to

omit the

i was thinking that the i mean

you you have a some experiencing the

web tree and the how will do

like is there like any kind of

problem that you then defined in the

web tree space generic problem like i

dunno fragmentation

whatever like her

yeah i mean so i would say

they're sort of and

there's maybe two two buckets of of

one could say problems and other could

say opportunities and one of the one

of the buckets is like opportunities that

exist within web three to to build

new thanks to build new products on

top of the technology i spend most

of my time thinking about that in

the context of of our read

a oh and but the other the

other i guess bucket of of problems

slash opportunities as you know the the

structure and that the nature and the

the way that people actually go about

doing work in the first place in

this industry and you know i think

that

tokens are a really incredible invention and

the idea of making it easy to

to create these these reward vehicles that

can be used to incentivize other people

to do things with minimal management is

is brilliant it makes a lot of

sense in it's it's proving itself out

with bitcoin at the beginning and

but the other slippery slope that you

run into his people conflating the equity

of accompany with the business model of

accompany and then applying that idea to

a token itself and the problem there

when when you don't have a separation

of those two things that not all

the time

time but the risk is people turn

the business model into selling the token

the business model becomes convincing other people

to buy the thing and in some

cases that might make sense with things

like nf teas or mean coins and

i don't own meme coins personally but

i guess i can see the appeal

of at for some

whereas for for others then you have

dislike you know that this risky territory

where people are marketing themselves as building

really meaningful technology and but the technology

isn't actually the product the proud the

product is the token people just want

you to to by the token and

say you're buying it because of the

techno

biology even though the technology may not

even exist or it may not work

and there are a lot of projects

that have made it of are remarkably

far in this industry and that are

that are sort of exercising that are

practicing it and it's hard it's hard

for me to see as someone who

cares about technology and

and likes to build stuff and and

likes to see a token as as

sort of a tool to build mechanisms

and it's hard to see the industry

be so captivated by people that are

not always being honest about what the

token represents and and i think that

there's risk to that that that you

know

people have have unfortunately had to deal

with the consequences of in the past

i don't think that those risks necessarily

make this entire industry invalid or it

doesn't make it worth it to come

into the space and build stuff and

but you know with i guess with

like the with great power comes great

reason

sensibility and we're seeing that play out

for sure

yeah i've seen also i think i

understand what he referred to like that

many projects are like yeah they just

want to sell the tokens and a

described the project and the per product

is so big but nothing has made

the and the the threat to raise

money and

yes sometimes they seems like a little

be like skin

yeah

some of them

and i i was when elect their

the future of the web tree i

mean them

ahem there is there this idea about

the building a decentralized things

the decentralized application and so on

and i wonder like a how do

you see it like and

i dunno like quoted her is your

idea

yeah it's a big question and

you know i i think that

there there are few a few possible

scenarios that that we see play out

over the next ten to twenty years

and i think one of them at

the the chance of it happening is

is pretty pretty significant now

crypto and and web three as as

payment rails for the next version of

the web i think is sort of

a narrative that that makes a lot

of sense and it's funny it's taken

stable coins close to ten years to

to become cool

but there's some truth behind the idea

of making stable coin payments sort of

a reality and and and ubiquitous across

the world because it's just so much

more efficient than the existing systems that

exist and so you know i i

think like crypto as

as rails for the next version of

finance makes sense i do think that

will happen over the next ten years

i think it's already in motion and

and it's sort of too big to

to be killed at this point and

what's more interesting go for for me

at least is beyond finance what are

the

areas in crypto that that will take

off and will remain and that that

aren't necessarily directly related to to finance

and i think our we've has an

interesting position in that and because you

know one one way to think about

how to how to predict the future

is and to

trying to to figure out what will

change about the world and ten years

and but a lot of people discount

the idea and this is sort of

amazon strategy they forget to think about

what won't change and there are some

of the things that we exhibit or

or or there are several things in

the world that we value that i

really think will not

not change over the next ten years

regardless of everything else that does

one of those things is valuing a

source of truth for data as the

world becomes more online and becomes more

digital globalization continues to evolve in the

digital landscape

the importance of having a source of

truth will not change in time i

think that'll always be a need regardless

of how much ai is doing things

for humans regardless of what humans are

doing in general we need a source

of truth and so

excuse me from the second

her sorry i think that you know

i think that are we've makes a

lot of sense as that source of

truth and and the next version of

the web will also need that type

of technology to exist both as and

accountability mechanism but also philosophically

in this kind of tying it back

to history and you know giving ourselves

the ability to to inform decisions for

people generations down the line so that

they can potentially avoid the same mistakes

that we made and in our generation

and and books books or or one

source for

that but books can be can be

burned you know we saw this with

with germany people were manipulated by hitler

and do to you know his ability

to to basically a race knowledge and

prevent people from understanding the consequences of

what he was doing and and army

makes it possible to avoid that so

i

i think in ten to fifteen years

and crypto will be the way to

transmit value and i think our we've

specifically will be the way for knowledge

to be shared any knowledge that has

any amount of value and and and

value in persisting will be

the way that that should remain in

and should be share

i think he also about and

i mean web tree of of course

money

and finance can be done us in

a the centralized way with the web

tree and i think he was about

governance that is something very important that

in there web three space that is

also quite political as a space i

mean except for the scams and

the project that are not really projects

but aren't that good product the good

products of the not alike

and they creating i will say they

can sort of new kind of infrastructure

do

and for many things like some a

technological infrastructure but also in some way

or political

yeah and the

like a relation they i mean i

think you have explorer built as i

said the explored the web tree alike

in relation to governance

what are your thoughts like if you

have seen him some dollars in some

organization yeah

yeah i mean i think so so

governance is one of the ones that

i think is a bit harder for

me to to think about what the

future of it could be ten years

from now and

you know i i think

so so one of the things that

really captivated me when i was getting

into crypto in twenty seventeen was was

the idea of being able to create

supposedly perfect governance structures powered by imperfect

people

and and you know there there's something

to that right the idea behind crypto

it it makes a lot of sense

in theory dow make sense as well

because it creates a structure to incentivize

people to do things

in practice i think it has some

bugs that we still have to work

out i don't know how many dallas

have actually been successful at you know

surviving without any form of centralized governance

and and the core reason for that

seems to be tragedy of the comments

where people on paper

her have this universal incentive to contribute

value to the dow and everyone else

benefits from doing so but in practice

no one contribute to the doubt because

everyone assumes that everyone else's contributing to

the doubt

and so nothing happens without someone standing

up and actually coordinating people and holding

them accountable and getting them to do

things and i think that that is

one of the big that sort of

the achilles heel from from the dallas

that i've witnessed that's like the the

thing that prevents them from actually working

in sustaining themselves with to

time and this also comes from my

own experience trying to launch a doubt

we tried to decentralized virgo in the

development of vertigo and and we tried

to launch a down realize the exact

same thing in the process of of

doing so i think there is a

lot of promise behind the idea in

the theory of a doubt if we

can perfect

the model and figure out how we

can actually avoid the pitfall of tragedy

of the commons in the process of

creating a down while simultaneously avoiding centralization

and but it's not perfect it's not

perfect yet and i think that there

are many doubts that market themselves as

decentralized that i i

i really don't know if they actually

are a you if you can go

into it and look look at what's

actually happening and how things are actually

being organized and one of the products

that were building inside of community labs

is actually aimed at creating a a

solution a potential solution to this problem

because ironic

the the one of them more decentralized

things and is is bitcoin itself it's

the first saw to she doesn't exist

any more it's sort of headless in

that sense and but one of the

problems that exists along with that as

the the concept of okay well how

is bitcoins code base actually governed if

you look at get hub there is

a specific number of

maintainers that are at their own discretion

allowed to make changes to get hubs

code base or the code-based that people

recognize is like the official bitcoin code

base and and that's crazy to think

about you know bitcoins been around for

all these years satoshi doesn't exist any

more and yet there's like five people

that are deciding whether or not that

coins kobe should change and it's crazy

you know that's like the most decentralized

thing that exists right now

but that seems to be a problem

some one of the solution that will

and building is essentially creating a model

where you can store your code on

our we've and create incentives for people

to fork those code basis if they

believe changes should be made and then

creating essentially like a fork resolution system

and that and

neighbours us to algorithmically figure out which

version of the code base should be

considered the main version defined by what

everyone else is using at the time

a pet this is so interesting because

of yeah i also have seen this

kind of sorts of centralization in the

they called the and the in in

the people that can decide the if

they called the can change or not

the end of thinking that the

the desert possibility of forking and eventually

how did you say like a to

to merger but like you know like

resolving the forks figuring out there should

be resolving the fork i am thinking

about the some a civic participation software

or like

and softer that are created the to

mediate between the different position so like

a conflict resolution basically an ai agents

that has they're all of a mediator

and as he these two finger associated

like i dunno i for

orca your code the

because i have a different idea from

you and then that if we want

to again to merged decode the i

mean i think we also have to

talk and to understand like different though

possible positions and the and i'm quite

were excited of

by all this possibility and that's crazy

year i guess like the the the

thesis

oh i'm sorry what were you saying

none not go go please the the

thesis of of that products specifically as

that maybe maybe the best governance is

creating a function for anyone to do

anything and and creating rules for the

best version to win rather than enabling

a council

our committee to sit down and decide

what the best version is setting the

rules of the game out and letting

people play it to figure out what

you know what version is is the

winner

i don't know if i would say

maybe the best governance is no governance

in this case but but that is

sort of the idea to solve the

problem maybe the problem with the dow

is to focus on empowering individuals to

act on their own volition rather than

empowering the group to act together and

but yes sorry i i interrupt

did what were you saying

no not am

i was deciding something but then the

i i mean i was talking about

ai agents and as so that the

you are working on some similar like

a the decentralized agents right to

yeah so one of the products that

were working on this is more in

like the the r and d phase

right now is an aoe as a

supercomputer it gives us the ability to

do some things that are pretty different

from other ecosystems and crypto a one

of the features is called cron and

it essentially

enables we they're they're like smart contracts

but we call them processes on aoe

that enables processes to wake up and

go to sleep without any human interaction

and and i think that's super interesting

for one the other the other core

mechanic that were playing with inside of

a oh that's pretty unique is the

i

idea of and trusted execution environments these

and that essentially creates an environment where

you could store private data or be

running private computation that aren't accessible to

the world while still being able to

prove that they're happening and and and

validate that they're correct

i sort of similar to like the

idea behind zero knowledge proofs and but

the interesting thing is when you combine

those two primitives you can essentially create

these cross chain agents that have the

ability to operate from inside of a

oh and but can make transactions on

other blogs

chains and and act on other blockchains

because these processes are the smart contracts

are actually holding keys to to make

transactions themselves independently controlled by am so

we're really excited about that because i

think there are a lot of interesting

use cases that that opens up for

defy for building bro

ridges exchanges cross chain infrastructure and you

know increasing compose ability between a oh

and and the rest of the ecosystems

and and also i guess kind of

positioning a is a coprocessor you could

see a world where if people are

trying to build really intelligent and trading

algorithms an ether

graham it would actually make more sense

to to put the logic in something

like a oh and have it execute

on ethereum if that's what you care

about and and the reason for that

is because computation is so much cheaper

on a on a o then theory

you can actually run large language models

inside of a oh as well i

just crave

easy like that would be very expensive

to run on ethereum if you could

build it or really any other ecosystem

and you know we've been doing it

for the last six months inside of

a oh so you know a was

a coprocessor i think is an interesting

narrative and we believe the long game

is for aoe to to be you

know everything and you don't really know

i think like ethereum to be honest

and but for now i think positioning

it as or is very interesting for

the crusher in egypt suitcase yeah of

the serve her like them may be

stupid question like i was wondering like

and and the i agent that is

decentralized does it mean lake

and that it cannot be stopped the

like in away if it is like

as as mark contract if the savior

and of locked-in yeah it's a good

question there are definitely some i guess

like a i safety implications that the

after be considered and

so so i guess technically you know

there there is a threat there and

but you could convince nodes on the

network to not run a process if

it were malicious for one and you

could essentially convince them to blacklist that

and not run the compute and contribute

to it and for to these things

they

they they they still costs money there's

still a cost that is incurred and

if your funding this agent and the

computation behind it but you run out

of money to be able to continue

funding it and no one will run

the computation because they won't have the

incentive to so i think there are

definitely some more that's a rabbit hole

we could we could go down there

that cause i i don't want to

we don't want to create like the

ultron of this world and like habit

live on a o ah but but

it is an interesting an interesting angle

for sure

and the about the projects you're working

on is there anything game i all

any problem that you are struggling with

i dunno i've read something you

that you cannot find a solution may

be you cannot even find the right

person that can find the solution

new

you know we're we're really fortunate to

have a great team in a great

group of people that that love more

than anything finding solutions to theoretically unsolvable

problems

and so i think that i don't

see many problems as as unsolvable may

be one of the one of the

more interesting ones that's perhaps philosophical as

opposed to technical is

the question of does the best technology

always win

that's been something that we've considered and

back and forth a lot over the

last few months as we've discovered what

aoe can actually do it's is becoming

increasingly evident that aoe is objectively the

best technology it is the most efficient

and it enables you to do things

that no one else can

compete with and but if you look

back in history does the best technology

always win and that's a that's an

interesting one and in it sort of

comes the reason i think about it

is because i you know a oh

as as a technology has as many

strengths but one of the things that

we're still trying to do is figure

out how to talk

about it

because it is so different than everything

else we haven't quite figured out the

way to pitch it to the world

and away this you know that the

world really understands the the implications and

the value of it and and so

we have to ask ourselves you know

does the best technology always win and

and personally i i regardless

of of the answer i'd be curious

to hear yours

i think that we should plan for

the best technology not winning so that

we can make it when

even if it weren't the best but

it is an interesting philosophical debate that

we've gone back and forth on quite

a bit recently yeah what do you

think

yeah good question

ah actually

actually the know i mean if we

save best acknowledge it means that the

actually there is one the acknowledges that

is better than the other and

les cap

i am making us stupid example i

like i think this and decentralized such

a networks or so the one that

are not running on web three like

and a on the and other kind

of such a network in a way

they

they will be better and that centralized

such a network but i see very

associated with a cultural problem so i

mean must of the people don't know

the existence of decentralize as such a

network and the

and also when they discovered them if

they register then there alone because all

their friend our own

probably mythos platforms or or eggs

and the

and i think must have the time

these a culture of problem that that

as you said that you you don't

know how to describe your platform like

two people

and the

i think this is the may be

something death in the next years with

and i mean read now still there

is some digital divide between the pupil

that the knows a lot that that

to do not sleep always stays there

coding and the and people that that

i also have friends that told me

like oh yeah i never tried such

a pity or

or or another llm

and the in a way i think

that is also find that we leave

in i mean you don't have to

use the i like must have the

i mean from the beginning of the

were until now no one ever used

they argued before

the

but yet wearing a situation in a

and in a time where if you

done know some technology that there is

this thing like they say if you

if you're not interested in politics the

politics will be interested in you and

i think the same about technology

and i think i dunno maybe ten

years we will see like and new

generation like also now people are according

like i mean

inside schools

i see some difference relation to different

countries so like and not europe there

i think the

technological smarter

and the

yeah the best technology always win

i ever say but this is something

said the eminent not native relations ship

with may be with their what we

are talking about but they will say

that must have the time in history

the most deadly technology when and this

is something said hm

so like a

and i'll a lot of time we

developed technology thinking that the okay now

we will be free from we don't

have to work anymore in the in

the field of

but then what happened is that the

humans were always working some time also

e na

more non human way like instead of

working the field the and

at in in an open space they

started working in a

in in in a company

but what he wanted to say yeah

i forgot sauce

that's okay no worries at all it's

a it's a tough one i think

you can sort of point two cases

where sometimes the best technology did when

and and and and other times it

didn't and i guess that's why the

question is is so difficult sort of

you know why is that why is

that discrepancy apparent throughout time

and to your point

i think that power is certainly a

driver for things to win what what

empowers people and another driver i think

his experience what what provides people the

best experience and something i i was

having this debate recently with with an

old friend and

he brought up the case of of

qwerty as a keyboard layout it didn't

win it it it didn't win because

it was the most efficient it actually

wasn't compared to the existing way out

that was before that i can't remember

how to pronounce it but it started

with a d and i think it

was like the the warwick or something

and or do brac but qwerty one

because it prevented typewriters from their keys

jamming it was better at preventing keys

from jamming then it was at being

efficient and the pain of that increased

key jamie

ing was greater than the pain of

being may be slightly faster at typing

what you trying to think of in

general and so because of that forty

one on the typewriter and and now

it's one on keyboards everywhere even though

the the key jamming problem doesn't exist

any more i think that goes to

say like the best experience or

the the the that solution that offers

the least amount of friction probably has

the greatest shot at winning and but

maybe the thing that takes it home

as the network effect after you know

everyone uses qwerty no one has a

reason to move away from it because

now the friction of moving away from

it would be so significant

you know so who knows

yeah absolutely when people see an advantage

for them they they want to use

the platform i mean the want to

use the product to i mean that

solution only things i would say

is that santa sometimes i mean a

in our society

the our suffice the is quite complex

so as an example i it can

be that the solution that is actually

effective for me because i dunno i

everytime i go to war i mean

to my office usually take when our

if i use a certain solution i

take care to and twenty minutes less

yes

the it it could be

that the solution is not really a

area solution because it can be like

the resolution can be like taken off

his nearest my house or like change

my house like the places my house

yeah

so does it says something that came

into my mind right now as interesting

for sure

yeah we live in a very complex

society and the and about the network

effect is actually something that i love

because the many times the and also

your experience like a

of the spontaneous process that the

that your experience that with the project

you're working on

and the

i wonder like out

going back to people that the would

like to start something that have a

project or may be that would like

to contribute in some way because we

said like that the people can just

go on the skirt and find a

community or maybe and telegram or also

raided the

i think or yeah or eventually linkedin

i

but the as you said the if

you go

issue approach her community it's better if

you have something to give before having

before asking something

and the

i think these a for that is

quite the

understandable

sometimes is not easy

for most of the people and be

because it can be hard to approach

her community it's can be hard to

like a lot of people think okay

i've this the also my the i

want to take it i don't want

to share it because of the white

people gonna are going to steal it

i

and this is something i

yeah really fascinated by the national catholic

but by you by the fact that

that the i dunno we're chatting now

and may be some someone else will

hear what we are seeing it may

be getting spot maybe he would contact

as i dunno i asking say sulking

and the for

sure anything this is part of like

and

i

knowing that we do not know

i

that is a

i mean you are saying something and

your question about technology if the best

technology when was a philosophical question and

i also think that the

i mean philosophy

sometimes if it is seen

as the something that should the just

be

and books you know something boring that

to study but they think it relief

affect a lot what we are doing

or seen reality like in the real

world and then

yeah i could talk forever about the

thoracic so interrupting replaced

no no i yeah i mean i

think and may the last thing that

i'll say on it as

i i have another good friend who

kind of he he's not as much

of an engineer's i am he's he's

more of a youtuber actually and i

was talking to him a couple of

years ago and he was explaining to

me you know i found i i

kind of found other people that were

like minded by going into discord and

by you know offering to

do things he found people by publishing

youtube videos and the the videos that

resonated with people similar to what you're

describing with with those who might resonate

with this podcast and the that there's

a term that he kind of created

for that i think about a lot

the term is called energetic echolocation

and and the idea is essentially if

you're putting things out there it could

be anything it could be a video

it could be continent could be product

could be you know code and or

a logo you're you're essentially putting something

out there and that will automatically attract

or or attract the types of people

that would resonate with it

and it's really cool you know like

people don't see the world that way

it seems no one really thinks about

a world in terms of i can

find anyone i want as long as

i know what to put out into

the world and and i think youtube

as a good example of this because

anyone can build a following on youtube

if they're just knowing what to put

out

out and and in most cases they're

just putting out things that they like

themselves and naturally people like them also

like that content and kind of gravitate

towards them i think about it a

lot energetic echolocation and because for us

building accompany building products the whole game

is

creating a business around solving problems for

other people and but how does one

go about finding the people that you're

solving a problem for and and and

is his name's max max his ideas

stop trying to start putting stuff out

and and for the people that do

resonate with it start their start small

start having conversations with people grass roots

build it up organically and and overtime

if you actually are solving a problem

that you know energetic echolocation enables you

to find other people that that

resonate with that

yeah it's it's also

in a were related to have it

there are different kind of concept related

to fowler

and the one of them is like

people that have the same intention so

that would like to create the same

thing

and the and yet

at as you said a few produce

something if you purchase a content then

you also truck that the people and

you create the center of power and

you can actually change reality

i i i saw that the like

issue some more time otherwise i ii

more minutes i have a few more

minutes i will have to jump soon

unfortunately i have but maybe one more

question or or one more topic if

you want to chat

eyes

the don't worry don't worry it's a

it was very interesting just the if

you have a message a for the

people for the community like

buffing the web tree both in their

in their civic tech space that are

working on these a mediation agents i

that to organize the

yeah i mean so i i've i've

been a founder now for for five

years and and it's been a it's

been an interesting journey i wouldn't trade

it for anything i'm very grateful but

if i had to if i had

to describe what i think was

most important for me across the five

years of of that journey so far

i would say coming into what i'm

doing or or or surrounding myself with

people and or immersing myself in work

for the right reasons probably matter more

than anything else

and the the reason is because if

you're not doing it for the right

reasons when things get hard you will

lose the reason to keep doing it

and and for me i i i

really love are we have i care

a lot about permanent data storage and

i know that it's a very boring

thing to think about and but i

it's really powerful you know it's like

this stuff could really impact meaningfully the

the lives of our generations beyond us

and and i i find it hard

every time i wake up regardless of

how hard things are day to day

i still can't think of anything that

i think we'd be better used to

spend my time trying to build our

on top of than than our reef

because of that that impact or that

potential for impact i guess

i think for people that are looking

to get started if if you're if

you're building things you know putting things

out into the world i think that's

the best shot at getting funding that's

the best shot at finding people that

are like you not being afraid to

socialize your ideas for fear of somewhat

stealing them if you're afraid of someone's

stealing them than may

the you should just build it or

you should figure out how to build

it and

i guess a few years ago it

was more important to learn how to

code then it is now but now

you really don't have an excuse if

you have a few spare minutes at

the end of every day log into

cursor and and have a i build

it for you you know

yeah i agree it's incredible what i

can do now and then cure lot

to

was very interesting thank you yeah this

is a great conversation i really appreciated

alex thanks a lot can select the