Inside the Cybernetic Forest: Terra0's Vision for Nature to Own Itself
In this episode I spoke with Paul Seidler (@brachlandberlin), a member of the Terra0 artist collective. Terra0 has been around since 2016 when it released a whitepaper outlining how a technologically enhanced forest combine with blockchain could own itself and exert autonomy. Since then the collective has organized several exhibitions exploring this theme including Flowertokens, an experiment with tokenization and verification of natural commodities, and an early attempt at creating a combine...
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Transcript
Cool. Hi, everyone. You're listening to The Blockchain Socialists. And for today's interview, I have Paul Seedler, who is one of the co founders of the Terra Zero Collective, which is a really interesting project that started, I think, back in 2016. Had a very, very forward thinking look on, kind of the potential relationships between, let's say, blockchain technologies, automation, and nature. And so maybe before I try to terribly try to explain what TerraZERO is, maybe, Paul, would you like to, introduce yourself and maybe regale us with the story of TerraZERO and how it came about? Because, I think it's a pretty interesting one.
Sure. So my name is Paul Zeidler. I'm an artist and researcher. I will go a little bit into the kind of origin story of Terra Zero and tell some, deep Terra Zero lore, and then, sort of go a little bit on, like, how we developing this project at the moment. So, we met Sotera Zero is essentially a group of, three people in the beginning. We met at the University of Arts in Berlin, and were interested in the possibilities of smart contracts, specifically the administration of capital and how they could almost like autonomously, manage capital in certain ways. At this point, the smart contract or smart contracts were pretty much, not used that much. So they were kind of novel technology and they were related, like, conceptually to the idea of autonomous agents. This were essentially, or this was a concept that if a computer program can administer capital, it could essentially autonomously make decisions and for example, become an economic actor. This was almost like I I think the concept of autonomous agents actually were like almost like pre Ethereum. So it wasn't like, kind of, wasn't something like Ethereum specific, but something which I think was almost like developed before. There are early, like, writings, from Vitalik on, DAOs and on decentralized autonomous corporations and also autonomous agents, which were also of these groups of organizational models, for smart contracts. And, we yeah. We were interested in this kind of various models which were outlined at the time. And we're questioning also what could we do with this? Like, could we basically use these ideas of autonomous agents or of DAOs, to, encapsulate ecological systems and sort of give agency to ecological systems in specific ways and form or reform like relations between, actors. So humans and sort of non humans, which are like plants or animals and these things. There is a science fiction author which I just want to mention because this is like sort of funny lore who is called like Karl Schroeder, and he wrote like a first novel in, I think, 2014 or something, which is called like Diodunce. And this is about a national park, which is owned by animals. So kind of a national park, which is like, owned by, like, almost like a KAI system, which then is, like, connected to animals and they sort of have like governance. They have like non human augmented governance for this kind of like, nature preservation of Hark, which, yeah, which is kind of like an easy sort of like pitch. So I think the one of the earliest ideas of terms you were really like, imagine, like, an intelligent self driving car, but it's not a car, it's a forest. Right. That's kind of like that's
kind of like the the easiest sort of sort of pitch. Yeah. It also it reminds me of kind of, I don't know if you know the book. What came to mind to me was, Demon or Damon by Daniel Suarez. Oh, yeah. I felt like that book, which I think was I think it was in the nineties, maybe, like, late nineties, it came out or early two thousand or something like that. But that explored a lot, this idea of, like, autonomous agents, more in a dystopian way. But, but, yeah, the the I think the the imagination can go into wild places when you think about autonomous agents and, what they could potentially do. But what is interesting about TerraZio, of course, is that it's, it's flipping it flips the script a little bit in that it's thinking about, yeah, how do we give autonomy to the types of things that don't normally have autonomy, and that have, like, very high consequences, like animals and nature, of course.
Yeah. No. To the, Daniel Souza's, kind of, question or, like, notion. Yeah, it's interesting that, like, I think this also directly influenced like Vitalik's writing. He he mentioned it. Yeah. Yeah. That's before. So I think we have there this case of like really like hyperstition in a sense where like science fiction is really literally like influencing people who are like building like technology,
which is something something funny or something something funny. Funny or terrifying? I'm still I'm always swaying back and forth.
Yeah. Probably both in a sense. Yeah. I think I mean, it's also it's also funny, like, if, like, Sousa wrote this as sort of, like, a critique. Right? And then someone is like, oh, that's actually kind of cool. That's too cool. It. Yeah. That's what I always yeah. I mean, that's that's too much of a rabbit hole. That's like a consistent thing that I find with some,
say crypto libertarians or techno libertarians or if you wanna call me like, wow. Look at this dystopian, sci fi book. Let's do that.
Yeah. There's this whole, like, story of, like, how people probably misread, like, cyberpunk in a sense, but, yeah, that's that's why we're not getting into this. Yeah. Stay positive for this episode maybe.
But, so yeah. So Terra Zero was interested in sort of exploring this potential to giving autonomy to natural things or non human entities. So maybe to start off, would you want to talk a bit about some of the art installments that you guys have made to sort of explore this idea?
Sure. Maybe I can also talk a little bit about the first, like, white paper we wrote in 2016 because it gives, like, a easy sort of easy to understand, like, narrative. So, like, in the first white paper, we were almost, like, interested in using this, like, sort of narrative of classical liberal liberalism. So basically, like, the idea of, like, okay, like, you have generational values to work, you have research resource extraction. And basically, like, using this almost like methodology, and, like, subverting it a little bit. In concrete, this was meaning that our first proposal would work as the following. Right? We have, like, a a forest, which is sort of governed by, like, a program, and this can be sort of any sort of program, which then collects data. This can be through, like, satellite data or through some sort of, on the groundwork. It can be any sort of sensor sensor data. And based on this, data, the the the program, would actually mint, like, wood tokens. So it would sort of, like, calculate, okay, I can, like, get rid of these and these trees, and then would calculate, like, wood tokens. And these wood tokens would then be sold, like, on the market so people could then go into the forest and sort of, like, acquire the wood. And was this, like, really this is, like, a really simple, like, procedure. Right? This is essentially what every, like, company which is selling, or which is like a lumber company is doing. So, but but, basically, this acquired money, which would be like could be, like, autonomously acquired, would then be used for the program to essentially buy, the whole land itself. So in the end, you would have then this almost, like, complex of, like, an automated system, which also owns, like, land because it can, to a certain point, administer capital. And in this scenario, this this almost like forest hybrid becomes like a shareholder of itself. I mean, there are obviously a lot of flaws with the system, like, technically and conceptual, but I think it shows that there are like already actors in all the kind of like systems we engage with who are like not completely defined by human decisions. And I think this is something which is like not super novel. I mean, it sounds pretty like science fiction, but if you think of these in like, the systems we're like, embedded in, you have, for example, like corporations, which are sort of as Charles Stross was like mentions, like a kind of almost like a slow AI form. Right? They're kind of like they're kind of like processes in which a lot of people like communicate with each other and, sort of fill decisions. But like, no one, I mean, like, technically, no one is like in control completely of the whole thing. Right? It's kind of like a emergence through like different processes and different like protocols. And they'd be like in corporations, they're like social. But I mean, obviously, they can be also like automated to a sense. So I think this notion of that there are already these kind of weird, like, organizational forms, can really lead to interesting experiments. And with the the emergence of DAOs, we now have the ability to actually, like, test them in more, like, decentralized
ways. Right. Yeah. I've I've sometimes I've heard I've read before of someone kinda describing capital as an AI. That's just kinda, like, always on the mission of accumulating more of itself. And so people are kind of, like, almost infected by this AI. They have almost like a virus, and they sort of, like, do its will to sort of, like, yeah, just to promote more and more accumulation, I think, is a it's a pretty wild idea. But, yeah, I think on your website, you kinda describe it, like exploring a cybernetic forest, I think is, what you guys say, which is really interesting. It's kinda like a which I think yeah. As you mentioned, anyways, it may sound crazy, but already corporations, they need this information in order to, maximize, like, what their goals are, which is to, you know, accumulate profits or accumulate capital or whatever else. So to imagine that, we instead just kind of, like, take the portions of, you know, the collection of this data and then, like, deciding to choose a very different type of algorithm to apply that data to that has a different sort of logic embedded in it, not one that's, you know, based on capital, but one based on maybe, like, yeah, the regeneration or the, upkeep of this particular natural space is, like, a a very interesting one to think about. And, we can get into it later, but, like, I think is the direction that is more interesting to me than maybe, like, some refi projects that I've read.
Yeah. I think in the first, in this first white paper or in this first idea, we were also, criticized, like, heavily for and I totally agree that this is a total valid critique that, like, essentially, this is just using, kind of logic of extraction to a different mean or to different end in a sense. Right? And, I I do agree that this is like a total, like, a weird thing. It's kind of like sub almost like subverting the logic with the logic itself, which is like as an art project, sort of funny or like interesting. But when you then, like, think this through as like, okay, how would this actually look as a as a as a living system? It's not that there is not that much of a liberatory or kind of like a liberational aspect to it. Right? It's kind of like that's essentially or, I mean, it depends, but, like, it falls it can fall, like, in this niche that it does essentially what any other corporation also is doing, which is like accumulating capital or kind of like, these these things. So, this is also why we're at the moment, like, really in the process or we started to, like, rewrite essentially our first, like, white paper a little bit, Because, as an art project, we we were in a situation that we never had in the beginning, like, enough sort of, like, means to, do this project on a large scale. So we essentially chopped up a lot of ideas we had in this white paper in, like, smaller experiments, which which we then could do, like, in art institutions in, sort of yeah. As small experiments, as small installations, as small sculptures. And, yeah, through, like, this iteration of these different sculptures or these different, small projects, we learned and experimented with, yeah, different about times different value creations and different, like, ways in which, like, care and, yeah, care is essentially happening. And all of these things led a little bit to, us
kind of rewriting and, like, rethinking all of this initial thoughts of the paper. Nice. Do you want to go through maybe, a couple of these art installments and how that shifted, your thinking from the last paper? Yes.
Let's maybe go through this. August, go through some of them. So, like, one of the earliest was essentially, like, flower tokens. And, flower tokens was an experimental project which was centered around the tokenization and verification. We called it of natural commodities and was the first sort of attempt to create, almost like crypto collectible, which is linked to sort of a physical asset. And what we did is we built, like, a installation in a semi public space and trust in Berlin. Trust is, by the way, a coworking space.
Maybe you should also talk to that one. No. I've I've tried to ask Arthur to come on before, but he says he's too shy. Why? I know. But I'm a big I'm a big fan of them, and I I I'm a I'm a paying member of for the dispute.
So, okay. I have I have done my duty. I've done some like trust trust advertising. So we basically did like the, installation, in trust, which was, a kind of rack in which, 100, flowers, which were dahlias, were, kind of positioned or were kind of like standing. So you had, like, 100 flowers in the rack. And these flowers were essentially filmed by, like, a camera and, have, like, a computer vision system attached, which would, like, use to collect the data and attach it to, like, the metadata of an NFT. So, basically, you would have for every flower, you would have, like, one NFT, which would have, like, changing metadata. This was done in 2018, and, yeah, there was not that much NFTs back then. And also, like, the protocol was kind of like I mean, NFTs were defined, but it was not 100% clear, for example, how OpenSea is passing the metadata and things like like, everything was still, like, a little bit more in flux and, there were no, like, NFT hypes yet. But, people, like, bought them and we found out something kind of interesting because we had also, like, a market site implemented on our page so people could, like, trade them also on our website. And we found out that actually barely people traded them because people had, like, kind of personal relations to their flowers. So they were, like, pretty much you know, we in the beginning thought, okay, that this will just be, like, almost a commodity thing and people will, like, flip them and stuff. But that didn't happen that much. Like, I think there were barely any people who who sold, like, theirs for, like, reasonable prices. So, people really create Were there people who wanted to buy them? Yeah. There were actually people but, like, there were not that much sold because people would, like, either, like, price theirs for, like, insane amount of, like, ease. Like, I don't know, like, 100 ease. And then, obviously, like, no one buy this. Or like people would not sell them that much. Which I think is due to that. In inefficient markets perhaps. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's definitely an infinite market. But, yeah, I also think it says something about, sort of tokenizing sort of like living organisms and that, like, there is a sort of bound between these things. There are, like, there are things which work beyond sort of being just like a commodity. And the other thing we we kind of, learn from this or we kind of saw is that a lot of people were actually interested in, like, watering the flowers or doing something going there and, like so, like, also, like, people were then, hey. How much are they how often are they watered? Can we change this? So so even if we didn't had anticipated that this would be about governance, it also became then sort of a little bit about governance in so far that people are like, okay. Like, what are the parameters of these systems? Can we change these parameters and things like this? Which we all hadn't, like, at all thought about. So this was maybe kind of an interesting two interesting things. And also, obviously, we learned that, we are like terrible gardeners or whatever you want to call it because they they grew essentially, like, way out of the rack. So this rack was, like, in the end, it looked like a jungle. And, like, even, like, the technical system. So, basically, like, the kind of camera, which would then and the computer program, which was then, like, crop, essentially, the the image, wouldn't, work that that good anymore because there were so much generally that, like, it couldn't, like, determine, like, the height anymore. So a classical example of sort of, like, a sort of, like, plant plant system, which, like, sort of plan and you have, like, your your modernist approach to this. Right? You're like, okay. We can all calculate this, and they're not gonna be bigger than this and this. And then, like, obviously, none none of this happens. Obviously, they get bigger. Obviously, the computer vision system doesn't and but but but this show is also something I mean, I think, like, a lot of the a lot of the practice of Terra Zero is probably, like, failing. But, like, this failing procedure is also really important because, like, teaches us or teaches also the people who are, like, contributing to this,
a lot about, like, emergent behavior of these systems. I mean, I I would say it's probably a good thing that that you guys are failing this, You know, failing in in in the art in the arts world rather than, like, I don't know, someone trying to implement it at a at a mass scale. So I think they're, like, really important, experimentations. One of the things that that came to mind when you're talking about, like, people not wanting to sell their tokens because they care about the flowers, because they have, like, a personal attachment. It's like, you know, you have this I can't remember exactly the terms, but there's, like, you know, generally agree like, three different types of kind of, like, ways you can divide up property ownership. There's, like, you know, uses, which is, like, being able to use something. It's, like, being able to profit off of something. And there's a third one that I'm forgetting. But, David Graeber I'm forgetting which book it was, but he he said that there's actually, like, a fourth thing which was, like, the the ability to care for something, as, like, a potential thing. And, so I imagine that, like, this is almost similar to me, like, when people buy pets. Like, usually when we talk about, like, buying commodities, you're, like, you're always open to your commodity being sold at a higher price. But people, like, they spend money to care for an animal, like, for for a pet, and they don't want to give it away, like, for more money necessarily. Like, usually people most people don't do that. And I imagine it's similar with the flower tokens where people ironically, people want to pay money to have the responsibility to care for something, which is, like, that's not a very tradable good.
Yeah. Yeah. It pretty much is like not super explainable with like a classic economic framework, I think.
Because they're yeah. Yeah. There is no there's no sense of care in classical economics or
classicalism. Or, like, really Which is because it's very,
it goes kind of against the, Homo economicus, I guess, that, like, why why why in the world are you spending money to, like, care for a little flower or, like, care for, you know, your dog or whatever who probably doesn't can't like, I don't know, help you find food or something like that. At this point, dogs can't. Like you do it because you you want to care for it and you want like the the kind of softer, mushy stuff that you get out of it than you do out of like, I don't know, buying a buying a Game Boy or something.
Yeah. I know. Totally. Good point, miss a grabber. If you find the reference, I would be also interested. Yeah. I'd have to find it again. Which,
which book it was. But, yeah. Would you wanna talk about maybe, like, the the current status? You've you've mentioned a little bit that you guys are rewriting the white paper based on the, sort of like learnings of some of these art installments. You wanna talk a little bit about, like, the status of that and how do you see the project moving forward?
Yes. So last year, we were approached by LIS, which is, called, like, light art space. And, that's an art organization, a foundation, which approached us and were interested in working together with us, because they knew some other or they knew some, like, previous iterations of the project, and they were sort of interested in offering support. And we were or we are at the point where we think it makes sense to really think through the first, like, white paper again and, look at the technology, which is there at the moment, and look at sort of what we wanted to do in the beginning and what we wanted to do now after sort of these experiments, really create almost like a Terra Zero land art project. Basically, like, you could also call it almost like a crypto land art piece. And this would be really, like, what would it take to actually, like, manage a forest, like, a proper forest by, like, a DAO. And also what yeah. Basically, like, what resources would this need, but also, like, what, yeah, different sort of voting or, like, governance framework this would need or would have to set in place there. And, yeah, with LIS, we got sort of, like, a cultural partner who was really interested in supporting this at a larger scale. And this gives us gave us, like, time to revisit it, our original paper, yeah, and think how we could transform it into which is something, which is still interesting for us, but also, like, actually buildable or actually kind of, like, implementable on, like, a scale of a land up project. And that means we scraped a lot of the automation part, of the AI part. I think I talked a little bit about this. Out of the out of our concepts and, sort of this more in processes which actually can be done by humans or can be, sort of, done by communities and, by people who want to participate in this in sort of, like, meaningful ways. I think I would go not not too much into the detail of, like, how we would manage this. But just in general that we're shifting the focus from, like, automation towards governance, and that this will help or help us also to think of the project almost not in a super, like, theological sense that we know where this is going. Right? This has, like, an entire action and, like, then you have this full autonomous forest, but rather in, like, a gradual sort of, like, community oriented way in which, we could first think of, like, a forest, a piece of land, which is connected to, like, a legal body. And this legal body, is essentially, managed by a DAO, or is essentially yeah. We're talking at the moment with lawyers, and we're, like, pretty pretty happy that we might be able to actually map a DAO into, like, a German form of, like, a fine. And a fine is something like, it's not directly like a foundation, but something like a little bit similar. It's more like a club thing, but there is no, like, complete equivalent in, like, yeah, in the yeah. It's kind of like an association, I would say, but it's, and but but we are now at the point where I think it would be possible to essentially map, like, a DAO, which has, like, for example, ERC 20 tokens onto, like, this legal structure and, like, defined, like, members by, like, token, by, yeah, by the token holders or by, like, the addresses, which means we can essentially if this all works out, we can, define members by addresses and don't have to do, like, some sort of, like, know your customer policy or something. So that that would be pretty cool because then we could have essentially, like, this association which has, like, all of these members, but, like, most of them could stay, like, anonymous or most of them could stay, like, without register registering with us, which I think is something, pretty pretty interesting or pretty cool. So you would basically have then this, like, mixture of, like, a legal body and a DAO. This would be probably, like, also, like, a noses multi sig, like, extended with, some sort of, governance structure. Like, they have, like, a governor mod now, which, in which we'll be able to do, like, on chain proposals and on chain voting pretty good. Like and chain is also pretty nice because it's, like, really low transaction costs. So that's something which we also look forward to. But, basically, yeah, then having this, like, technological structure, essentially managing and, having, holding essentially a piece of, forest and then doing also mostly in the beginning, like, sort of regenerative practices on it, like replanting and kind of, doing things which, make the biodiversity or, like, increase the biodiversity of the actual piece of land. So this is where we where we want to so strive towards to, but with sort of still the kind of longer term goal of, in the process, like, more and more getting people as responsible sort of or as failure points a little bit, like, out and see, like, what's kind of things need to be done by people, but what could also be done by, like, automated systems. And also what could, in longer term, what kind of, like and this might be also interesting, like, legal subjects or, like, new legal subjects could arise of this. So we we still think it's, like, worse. No kind of, like, we're thinking about what new legal forms would arise if, like, ecosystems would grant it, also legal rights.
Right. Yeah. Interesting. It to me, it this kind of, like, relates to this thing question that I guess I've been mulling over a bit of, like, how I mean, as as it exists right now, the system kind of treats nature as kind of, like, an externality, as, like, something that is outside of its scope, I guess. And so whatever happens in that in that realm is sort of forgotten about. There's no there's not much tracking, I guess, of of what happens. So, yeah, I I I think, probably, if we want to get if we want to do, like, serious types of climate action, I think, or to embed, sort of climate action into the system, it it's sort of like a requirement to to consider, like, its its place in in the system and where it fits. And, yeah, my my hope is that that can happen in a way that doesn't sort of, at the same time, subjugate it in in certain ways.
Yeah. No. I totally agree. I think we have also a quite different approach to, a lot of these, like, bigger projects which try to do this on, like, more, like, massive scale because we think, more of a way of this in in becoming bottom up. Right? So starting with, like, a small thing and then, like, going up and see how this can be managed rather than sort of, like, imposing, like, a super structure on a lot of different, like, territories or in a lot of different sort of, like, local, yeah, local environments, and then sort of pretending that there is, like, a one fit for all solution, which I which I don't think there is, to be honest. I think that this all needs to be if they need to be sort of, like, as you said, like, effective, like, climate action, there needs to be something which can't be, like, a one one fit for all model. Right. Right.
Yeah. I mean, what I like about the TerraZio project generally is, of course, like this like, the art pieces and what you guys do is always rooted in land of, like, the specific locality in which, you guys are doing your your pieces, which is, like, definitely, like, the opposite of most things that crypto stuff crypto people do in in that people are generally interested in crypto as kind of like a transnational type of thing that is, sort of that we are, you know, we have been released from our corporeal bodies, and we are just purely digital beings now through the blockchain and can, sort of get around any of these limitations. The thing is a little bit, well, I think it's very shortsighted. And it's something that, yeah, I think, with crypto generally as well, what's also different about with a lot of maybe crypto things that people are interested in is sort of subverting legal systems and sort of getting around with legal systems rather than trying to, trying to improve it or or change it in in some way usually. But, yeah, I guess based on, your experience of working, you know, in in relation to land and with, crypto and arts and and blockchains, do you have any, like, thoughts or suggestions? You kind of I guess you've mentioned it a little bit, with not sort of, like, imposing. But, yeah, do you have any advice for how to approach it?
Yeah. I think, you made a really interesting point was this strange, like division of, sort of the eternal body, which is like in, which is now sort of like uploaded in the digital realm. And I think like a lot of crypto suffers from this idea that almost like the net or like this early idea of cyberspace as almost like a no man's Right. Right? Of this sort of terra nullius in a sense, which Exactly. Which kind of on more deeper level sort of misses this, for me, like, naturalistic perspective on sort of technology as infrastructure. And there is this, almost like Cartesian duality between, like, a digital and physical realm. And I I don't think the separation doesn't make that much sense anymore. I don't think you can, like, think of technology without thinking about, like, the infrastructure. You don't you can't think about, like, software without thinking about the hardware. Right? You can't think about, like, all the infrastructure which is behind and all the kind of production processes, which went into these technologies. So, and I think, like, a lot of the approaches we see, from crypto towards land and this this kind of idea of, creating, like, new states or creating, like, Is is that is that a is that a network state reference? Kinda like a network state thing. So I mean, I think, like, to to to come to this point where you're like, okay, we can actually make a network state. You have to sort of live in this or have both of these things. Right? You have to, like, on the one side, be convinced that there is or that there is a strong separation between the material and, like, the digital world, which I think is, like, a fallacy. And, also sort of have to ignore them, yeah, and the material conditions of the production and this itself. And then you're essentially proposing some sort of, like, sort of transcendent imaginary superstructure onto, like, sort of something which just happens. Right? Like an imminent sort of, like, people live there for like a long time. There is like history. There are like shared like stories like and then you come and be like, oh no, but we come like from the digital wheel and we can now
We we are gods descending from the digital realm to help you.
I mean, this is this is also really platonic. I think there is a reason why a lot of this, like, shares, like, fascination with, like, for example, Greek, like, beauty standards and stuff like that. I do think all of this I do think all of this is essentially, like, platonic in a sense that they're like, oh, we have this, like, immortal forms, and they can be now, like, brought down onto the earth. And I think, like, it's really, like, in a sense, like, not or, like, pre modern, like, conceptions of philosophy, of identity, of, like, ideas. It's all, like, pretty, like, pre modern, but it's sort of, like, proposals that there's, like, digital real. Yeah. As you said, a sort of this eternal, eternal abstract, like, real, where in reality, it's, like, pretty connected to, like, all the processes we live around. Right. Yeah. I I have yeah.
That that makes me, like, yeah. I start to realize now, like, a lot of, like, vaporwave type of aesthetic stuff always has, like, you know, those, like, Greek, statues and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely something to that.
Yeah. On the on the other side, maybe to the question of how to approach, like, this mixture of legal or basically this, kind of intersection between, like, law, state law, and crypto, this is something where we're working on on this intersection quite for some time, and it's actually not super easy. It's quite, like, hard to do the even basic things. We we did for the, Carnegie International, International Festival last year. We did, a art piece which was called a tree of corporation, a person. And this was basically, kind of a legal body, which was five zero one c four, which is kind of like a legal body, which is normally used for lobbying in The US. And we sort of, like, formed this body. And this body was, like, leasing a piece of land on which a tree was, splattered. And this legal body should then be, like, controlled by, like, a smart contract, and managed through a smart contract eventually to then also, essentially become a new sort of legal person, in a way, like, later in sort of, like, the process. But, like, even getting to the point where you can manage, like, a kind of property by, like, a smart contract even through something like a legal body. It's, like, pretty hard. It's, like, not something just, like, completely solved. So, we were, like, in sort of, like, rooms was, like, I don't know, or in calls with, like, six lawyers from, like, different, different institutions. And all of these are, like, not solved problems. So, yeah, I think when we talk about this intersection, there's, like, pretty little done sort of in the real world. Right? I think it's super easy to write about, like, oh, yeah. We're gonna go to some country where there's no jurisdiction and sort of build build something there or try to build something there. But, like, actually doing it and, like, trying to, work through the law and, like, communicate with these people and it's it's much more like yeah. It it's it's much harder to to do this and to, sort of, yeah, try to make these things happen. I think maybe part of the reason why
crypto people try to avoid that a lot of the time is because they don't want to do the hard the hard work of, like, having to deal with the legal system maybe partially.
Yeah. I I wonder because, yeah. I do think there are, like, huge, like, opportunities, in actually working through the systems and thinking of how you can make, like, a, I don't know, like, a corporation more, like, a DAO to make it more even, like, on a pure level of, like, economics to make it more feasible to to, like, found these or, like Right. Also, like,
make, like, workers shareholders and stuff like that. DAOs as a Trojan horse to force, like, worker ownership more worker ownership and corporations. That's what people should be thinking.
Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah.
Hi, everyone. If you're enjoying this episode so far, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and join the crypto leftist communities on Discord or Reddit, which you can find links to in the show notes. If you're joining the episode or find the content I make important, you can pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theblockchainsocialist to help me out. As a patron, you'll get a shout out on an episode and access the bonus content like q and a episodes, which you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. In the last bonus episode, I analyzed applying an anti CAPTCHA framework made for DAOs and applying them instead to left wing organizing, keeping in mind the specific challenges that they face. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain does not need to be used to further entrench capitalism if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. Also, in case you didn't see it yet, I recently wrote a book review for Outland Magazine on, no surprise, the network state focused on Balaji's misunderstanding of the role of land and statecraft and his insistence to think of everything as a codebase, titled Fork Your Society, I Want Out. Additionally, I've written the piece under my real name, so I am now officially doxxed. I can officially stop gleeping out whenever someone says Josh during interviews now. It was time I came out of the Anon closet since this is all in preparation for an announcement for a book that I've been writing for over the past year and a half titled Chain Radicals, but more on that later. For now, let's get back to the interview. That it's funny that, yeah. I I assume the with the art piece is kind of a play on, like how corporations are seen as like, as basically like humans in The United States and things like that.
Yes. We are pretty much interested in or this was one of the earliest Terzu research themes is in the sense how, like, personhood is constructed, how legal personhood is constructed, how natural personhood is constructed. And, also, like, obviously, what is not granted personhood. And it's, yeah, it's kind of like a really, sort of interesting history how this is always, like, also instrument of sort of the state to determine who can do what. Right? And who can say what. So this is almost, like, always like a power relation in a sense, which is expressed through through this.
So from 2016 and only till, like, fairly recently, I feel like TerraZeal was probably one of the one of the only, like, kind of, like, nature related crypto projects that I had really been aware of until, you know, the great explosion of of refi projects that have, sprung up, the past year or two. But, I have some, definitely spicy thoughts on on refi, but I'm curious, what your thoughts on there having, maybe been like the you're kind of like the the hipster who was like, oh, I was here first exploring this space before you guys. But, yeah, do you think there is, like, kind of this relation, between, I guess, what is happening with Refi now and with TerraZERO? I would just say, like, just for myself, one of the things that has bothered me and, I imagine many others, about the refi space is that there is kind of like this mixing of nature with finance. So it can often come off for a lot of people as kind of like this financialization of nature and, where the solution that's being proposed is sort of like financializing more of nature. And this is seen by, I think, a lot of people who are, maybe like active climate like climate activists or like people who are deeply involved in sort of like the climate movements, find deeply unserious. That's, that financial that, you know, relying on carbon credits, which is a lot of refi, and I know a lot of people have intentions of, you know, moving beyond carbon credits and refi. But, a lot of the things that I see proposed, I sometimes have a yeah. Something goes off in my head. I'm like, that doesn't sound right. But, yeah, I'm curious what you think.
Yeah. I'm, I will not be, giving my most spiciest takes on refi. But, you're right. I think it's kind of like the I was here before thing. Maybe maybe that's right. For me, like, one of the basic assumptions, which I think you you talked also a little bit, sort of like the following, which is kind of like more markets can solve market inherently problems.
Right. It's like leaning more into markets whenever markets are kind of a
big part of the problem. Yeah. It's kinda like almost like digging deeper into the the thing. Right? It's kind of like you've got this hole and you're like, how do I come out of this hole? And you're like, oh, let's just dig deeper. And I think sometimes this could work in a sort of sense, but like also like one of the basic assumptions, is never kind of question. So it's never a question like how are these markets like created historically? Like what what history do these markets actually have? What purpose do they solve outside of blockchain? And I think this is also, like, inherently not, like, crypto spirited in a sense. If you would be, like, saying, okay, crypto is really, like, a thing or a question of how, like, even basic things are, like, organized. You would say that, like, a lot of the verification models and a lot of the, models of how c o two credits are created or how these systems how are these accounting systems for natures are created, And they're purely centralized. They're, like, done by, like, big sort of, environmental agencies of they're done by, I don't know, like, VERA, which is this, like, what is it called, like, voluntary carbon credit standards. They're, like so, like, none of this is in anyhow, like, connected to, like, basically the the ideas of crypto for me, which is kinda like eliminating middlemen, having trust as very verifiable, like, kind of, yeah, processes. Because all of these things are just like centralized entities, which act pretty much outside of like the crypto sphere. And now if we like, just take these, like, I don't know, verifications or processes and just put them on chain. For me, that's not like that doesn't solve anything. That's just like, kind of kind of adopting, like, bad practices and, like, porting them to crypto in a in a sense. So I don't know from yeah. For me, like, there are, like, more hard questions to to solve. And this is basically how decentralized verification of biodiversity can happen, how metrics of this type of data can be decided scientifically on, and how this can be helped done transparently. And I do think we have, like, the technology to, like, build this. And just think, like, no one is, like, doing the hard work of, like, applying these, like, properly in, like, contexts which are, like, not reliant on, I would say, like, trapped trapped c o two structures or something like the the trapped c o two market. Oh, trapped c o two.
One of the things that I think they are perhaps trying to do, that that I've I've basically mentioned before that I am interested in thinking about is kind of, like, through the financialization of nature that that would then become no longer an externality because financial markets would have to consider. Of course, I still am pretty I think it's pretty dubious a bit, like, what type of impact that can have. I'm not I'm not fully convinced on on a lot of that stuff. But I think in comparison to Terra Zero, just to make this, that you guys use this language that you mentioned of kind of allowing a force to become a shareholder of itself, which, you know, this could be seen in some ways. Like, it's not it's not financialization per se of how people think about financialization, but it is kind of like the, I don't know, like, we like, putting business logic, like, by saying shareholder, I guess, is that term, in the context of nature, which is also maybe a bit strange for people.
Yeah. I I mean, for me, there is the general problem with the term nature, how it's, like, perceived today or how it's kind of, like, sort of today as it's, like because when you think of it, it's something you always search, but, like, you never find. Like, it's really hard to see where, like, nature is actually, like, located on, like, in, like, the physical space, for example. Right? Like, it like, is it something which is, like, untouched by humans, but then it's, like, barely anywhere anymore? Like, if you if you would, like, talk about nature of this sort of, like, pristine sort of untouched, like, forest, untouched, like, then, like, hold on. Then there is no nature in Europe anymore. Like, this is, like, basically everything which is around us at the moment is, like, cultural landscape. Like, there is in I'm pretty sure, like, in Germany, there is no, like, untouched forest. There's nothing which is, like, not inherently formed by society and the production sort of which take place in, like, society and the sort of, like, mode of production. So, yeah, I have, like, a little bit of problem with this term of nature because it's pretty, pretty hard to distinguish what is nature and what is not nature in a sense. Yeah.
Yeah. That's fair. I think that, ironically, I think that kind of links to a lot of especially just because this episode will probably come out, definitely in the middle of our, network state series, but, like, kind of Balaji and sort of, like, this libertarian obsession with the frontier and like this this terribleness and the fact that I mean, that is kind of true. We don't really have that anymore on the Earth. We've kind of like we've touched everything now. So we've we've lost the the ability to be like the novel one to to touch something that someone else hasn't touched.
I mean, also, like, historically, it's a question if this ever existed. Like, honestly. As well. Yeah. Did the like, it's really hard to, like, I mean, when the first when the first like settled settlers came to like America, I mean, obviously the land was like used by other people. They just like, they just like colonized it and like, yeah, I don't know. On another notion, I think, this term of like, nature is like this pristine or this kind of like object, which is like, not like if you break it down, it's kind of like, it's almost like a landscape or something which is not touched by, like, capitalism, which is quite, like, quite, like, quite, like, funny or quite, like, interesting. And, like, if you if you look, for example, if you look, like, in the German for like, when we first presented this project to people who were in Germany, they were like, oh, no. You can't do this to the German forest. No. It's but, like, I don't know. Like, I think 60 to 70%, probably more of, like, the German forest is already, like, lumber production. This is already, like, wood production. Like, when you go into, like, the forest here, like, literally everything is, like, under the pressure of production. And it's like a mode of production, which, like, the lumber is taken or the timber is taken from, like, the forest. And, like, this idea that there is, like, this nature or this, like, untouched space, like even in Europe, it's like pretty vague or pretty weird. I mean, there are these like, places where you have like, nature conservation, and this is true. But these are like a friend of me, like, called these like reverse gardens. And that's also pretty true because they are like they are like spaces where like nature or where like processes is given like space to and then they like develop and maybe this is, aesthetic interesting and also like it gains like biodiversity, but still it's like a conscious decision of someone. Someone made the decision to be like, okay. This place is, like, protected in a sense.
Right. Right. Right. Yeah. We it it it seems that we've come to the point where we don't really have a choice. We have to intentionally create these spaces for this type of growth to happen. And yeah. And if the intention is to try and to optimize, you know, like, the particular type of growth and to allow it to exist for as long as possible and not to fall under the the pressures of capitalism, then we need to have some sort of system, to do that. Of course, I can imagine some people may argue that, like, oh, well, we've done this in the past already without technology. Why can't we do it, like, today without technology? Like, do you have any any response to that, or do you have any thoughts on, like, I guess, the the potential, side effects or issues with combining, nature and and technology? And, of course, I'm also like when I ask these questions, I'm like I'm like, suffering in both what you said just before about, like, the division with nature, but also, like, the division with technology. I think I have a very similar view to what you to what you said about, nature as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean the, yeah, hot, hot question sort of. I think, in general, technology can help us as a tool to reorganize society or reorganize certain things in society. This be like that it can make things more transparent. I mean, specifically, blockchain technology that it can, make things verifiable, that, it can that people can participate, like, easier in these kind of structures. So, if you think of, for example, just maybe in relation to nature, if we would think of, like, a DAO controlling, like, a piece of, like, eco or like an ecosystem, like a nature preservation park or like a national park and, like, a normal national park. Right? Then I would say, like, the DAO controlling the national park at least have some sort of, like, participatory moment in it where people can actually, like, propose things or, like, have sort of, like, a voice in the system. And also, it can have a different, like, models of ownership in which, like, the ownership is more, like, communalized or more, like, brought to, like, community than, for example, with in German, we have a lot of, like, which are foundations where which are pretty, like, unclear who is, like, sort of, like, owning them or, like, who is sort of, in in control of them. So I think, like, in terms of, like, how we manage access to nature or we manage sort of, also the maintenance or not the maintenance, but also the the, flourishing of these places, I think, like, technology can definitely help. Yeah.
Yeah. I I yeah. There's sometimes, I guess, this, like, primitivist side who will kind of be adamant that we ultimately what we need to do is sort of, like, rely less on technology and intermingle and, like, to intermingle these things is, like, problematic in some way. But I guess, yeah, for me, it's also kind of that type of thinking imposes a very particular image of technology and what technology is. Like, we can anyways like, I don't know. Like, a long time ago, the the horse and cart was, like, the most innovative thing that that was created. And, but now in in today's standards, if you had a horse and cart and you were, like, I don't know, tilling the land, people would be like, what are you, a primitivist? You know?
Yeah. I mean, I'm a I'm sort of like a big fan of, using technology really, like, specifically for really specific tasks, almost like as a tool thing, but, like, don't use it for just because you can use it in a sense. Right? Like, if you if you look, for example, like, at forest management, you have things like satellite image, kind of, is like satellite image. I'm just missing a word which I have in German. It's like when you look at the satellite images and essentially, like, gather data. Right? And you can do this and this is like interesting and it also has like a purpose. But on the other hand, also, like, if you look how like a lot of, forest is still managed in Germany, it's, people walking through the forest and looking at it every three months. Right? And that's probably almost the same effect. Right? So if I I think there can be also, like, a conscious conscious way in which technology is used in certain things, but in certain things also not because, it's probably sometimes more efficient just to send someone there and look and look at the trees.
Right? Yeah. Yeah. Old school. Old school. Yeah. Alright. Thanks so much, Paul, for coming on and sharing with us your experience with TerraZERO and what you guys, have been doing the past few years, and your, thoughts on sort of the connection between land and, blockchains and crypto. Maybe to close it out, would you want to share with people where, they can keep up with TerraZERO and its progress and maybe with, with you as well? Sure.
You can keep up with TerraZERO mostly on the website, which is, terra0.org. You can also, visit our Twitter, which is, underscore terra zero. And you can also follow me on Twitter, which is brahland belly as a handle. Nice. Alright. Thanks a lot. Thank you.