Techno-Utopianism vs Class Struggle Technologism
For this interview I spoke to Izzy Meckler (@izmeckler), the Chief Science Officer of 0(1) Labs which is currently building the Mina Protocol. Mina is a blockchain that utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to be as light and scalable as possible. Izzy is also an active member of East Bay DSA and has a blog called Parametricity.
During the interview we spoke about his journey from making a startup to becoming a socialist and converting it to a worker-owned cooperative, how zero-knowledge proofs work, and the political implications of these technologies.
Mentioned Sources
On Moralism
On Techno-Utopianism
Mina Protocol Documentation
snarkyJS Github
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Transcript
Hi, everyone. You're listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And for today's episode, I have Izzy Mechler. He is the chief science officer at Zero One Labs, which is building a product called the MENA Protocol, which is trying to be essentially the lightest blockchain using zero knowledge proofs. Zero knowledge proofs is a really interesting technology and it can be a little bit complicated, but Izzy is an expert in this stuff. So he's going to explain some of these things and also tie in how all this technology kind of comes in in a, through a political lens and through a political framework. So, yeah, I'm really excited to to talk to you actually. Cool. Yeah. Thanks thanks for having me. Yeah. So, like, maybe just to to start, I think, you have a you have a really interesting background. And so maybe it would be good for those who don't know you, if you can just, like, give a quick introduction to yourself and how you got into the crypto world and also maybe a bit about your, I guess, political transformation that happened while you're getting into the crypto world as I understand it.
So, in 2016, I moved to the Bay Area to do a PhD, at Berkeley, and I I was studying math. And I started taking a lot of classes in in cryptography because I I'd always also been interested in in kind of, like, computer science or, like, theoretical computer science, and it seemed really cool. And, anyway, I I got more into it, and and I I actually, like, had an adviser in computer science and was, you know, starting to do cryptography research, writing papers, and whatever, like, you know, just being grad student. But at the same time, my friend Evan, who Evan Shapiro, who I knew from high school, was out here and, you know, we we always kind of, like, I don't know, toss, like, project ideas back and forth, and and we sort of started this was around at this time, like, in 2016, there was this, like, big, like, box size debate, in in Bitcoin. I remember that. And yeah. So so that was kind of, I guess, maybe the impetus for, like, us starting this project because I knew about zero knowledge proof z k snarks, like, from my studies. And I kind of thought, oh, okay. Like, this why don't we try and, like, make a blockchain that, you know, compresses the the blocks and so there's not not the same block size issue or, like, there's not the same tension between decentralization and, like, increasing, transaction throughput. And so we started working on what eventually became MENA then. But, yeah. I mean so so, yeah, we started a company called o of one Labs, which,
Oh, I totally butchered it then.
Oh, no. That's okay. Everyone does that. It's it's really confusing. You know, when we started, it was like, oh, yeah. Like yeah. Yeah. We were like, oh, the name of the company doesn't really matter. Like, it's just gonna be the protocol, but, like, that hasn't that's not really true. Yeah. It's it's a nightmare for, like, forms, and everything, you know, putting parentheses. I thought it was a reference to, like, a like, binary or something like zero point zero. It's o one because it's, like, a constant size blockchain or whatever. And, like, some the t k snarks are small proofs. But, anyway, yeah. So things have changed a lot since the initial vision. The, you know, like, there is still Mina still has this, fully succinct kind of, like, z k roll up, but as an l one property, like, that's still part of it. But, what we're really working on now is adding this kind of, like, zero knowledge application, z k app, like, programmability layer. And, you know, at Owen Labs, we're focused on kind of, like, building the tooling for that specifically. We have a TypeScript DSL called Snarky JS that, you know, is, like, a really easy way to write kind of zero launch proofs generally and also for Mina. But yeah, so anyway, Evan and I, like, kind of started this project. We, started, you know, getting some interest from investors. I I eventually, like, we raised money and I dropped out of grad school and started working on it full time. And, yeah, I guess in parallel to that so that was 2016. So Trump, you know, had just gotten elected and I think I I'm really part of this, like, same stream of history that, like, a lot of, people who are, like, who are now socialists, who are, like, around my age, millennials or whatever, are are also in. So I'm I'm I'm it's kind of like I don't really have to say that much. Like, if if you're familiar with that, historical trend, I'm just, like, one particle in that stream, but, I can give specifics. So yeah. So, like, 2016, Trump's got elected. I don't know. All my friends were like, oh, shit. Like, we should start caring about politics now. I I I I was aware of Bernie, and I was aware of, like, his 2016 run. And I I really liked him because I think yeah. Like, health care, that that seemed great. And, you know, it just seemed it just seemed kind of good. He was anti war and, like, you know, that all all seemed cool to me. And and, you know, it just like like, you're kind of young. Like, you have this kind of anti, Broadly progressive. Yeah. Yeah. And, like, maybe, like, kind of, like, anti establishment, contrarian kind of I don't know. I feel like that was in the mix as well. Anyway, I was kind of, like, you know, around DSA for a couple years, but got involved specific oh, DSA is a socialist organization in America called Democratic Socialists of America. It's kind of interesting. It has this sort of yeah. It's a weird organization, historically, but it it blew up, you know, around this time because Bernie said, like, I'm a democratic socialist. So, like, I think, like, everyone just Googled, like, what is democratic socialism and, like Right. Right. Just joined the first thing Google result. So I was sort of around that, for a while. I think the first time I really got very involved was with the twenty twenty burning campaign. I was, like, very involved, like, and this is, like, as this is, like, in parallel to the company developing. Mhmm. But I was, like, very involved. Like, I, you know, was spending all my free time, like, canvassing and, like, I went to Iowa to, like, go, like, Why while, like, running a company or trying to run a a company? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, anyway, when that failed, that was kind of a positive I mean, that was, like, a, I think, another important step in my kind of political trajectory. Like, I got you know, I I I sort of, like, then had to take a step back. I think a lot of people was like, oh, like, why did that fail? You know, let me, like, try and deepen my understanding and analysis. And looking back, like, I it's fine, but, like, I I had very I feel like I I was very naive, and it was it was really just yeah. So, anyway,
I think we everyone was hopeful at that point. They wanted to believe in something.
I think so. Yeah. So but, anyway, it's good. You know, you learn. So I started, like, reading more and, you know, learning kind of I joined this this reading group where we kind of, like, you know, read all the all the sort of classics of, kind of early twentieth century socialism like, Russell Luxembourg and Lenin and, you know, I don't know, Stalin. And then, when the that was, like, I think just before the George Floyd uprising started happening. And then once once once those started happening, then, yeah, I I we also started reading kind of more kind of, like, black Marxism stuff, which is cool. And then, you know, after that, I I I read Capital and, with David Harvey's, lectures, which are really amazing. And Classic. You know, and now it's been a couple years since then. So I just, like, read more and more. And now I'm like, you know Full full blown. Full blown Marxist. Yeah.
Nice. Yeah. I guess I imagine that's got to be, like, a super I mean, it's it's it's a similar trajectory that I think I kind of had, but I had, I mean, very different circumstances. I wasn't definitely not running a company. But from what I understand, like, this process as well of of you kind of going through this political journey, I think also informs, like, some changes that were made also with the company, with with, O of One Labs, not Zero One. Yeah. Yeah. So I think so I think you guys run it as a as a cooperative from what I understand.
Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, it it's kinda I mean, it's a weird but maybe not that historically unique position to, like, be a Marxist or whatever, but also, like, be in the position of running a company. I mean, you know, angles, also, you know, was like was like a factory owner or or whatever. But I I think, for me anyway, there's a big there's, like, personally a contradiction there in your head. Like, oh, like, I believe in, like, communism, but then I'm also a boss. You know, like, how do you resolve that contradiction? So, we eventually turned Olin Labs into a sort of cooperative. The the word cooperative is sort of weird because, like, there's no real definition of it. Like, every every kind of cause like, every, like, sort of democratic or workplace does things very differently, I think. Like, there's not really a standard, set of practices that has evolved. Yeah. But yeah. You know, I wanted to kind of swear, I guess, sort of swear this contradiction in my mind, and inject a little practice into into my my day to day. Sure. So, basically, what happened was, o Overlabs, kind of split, in in a way. So we we sort of reorganized things a little bit where now we have well, not we, but now there exists this other organization called the META Foundation that is kind of analogous to something like the Linux Foundation. You know, it it's sort of like a not for profit entity that, like, stewards the development of this open source protocol. And then there's Open Labs, which is, you know, just like a Delaware c corp or whatever, for profit company, that works on basically z k tooling and also, you know, we work as, like, contractors to for MENA, I guess now. And, anyway, at that time, like, as part of this kind of split, we also decided to reorganize Olin Labs as a sort of democratically run workplace.
Was it difficult to convince, like, your, like, the CEO and, like, the the others you were working with at that time?
So that was kind of the, I think, the convenient part of it. So the former CEO of Owen Owen Labs, my cofounder, Evan, went to go, run MENA Foundation. Okay. So there was sort of a a vacancy, you know, and so there was this opportunity for us to A vacuum of power power vacuum. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sort of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, but, yeah, I mean, we did have to get, approval from some of our investors. I think I don't know. I think I wasn't involved in a lot of those conversations, but I think that wasn't that actually as difficult as you might think. I think they're kinda like, well, you know, as long as I get my money, whatever you do inside is is okay for me. So, yeah. So what we did was, basically, my cofounder and I returned well, in his case, all in my case, almost all of our equity to, like, an employee pool. And, so there's kind of two parts of, I guess, the cooperative sort of structure. There's, like, ownership and governance. So ownership, like, most of the the more than 50% of the equity or maybe all so somewhere around 50%. I'm not sure exactly the number. Of the equity is, like, in this employee pool, and it get kind of gets, distributed over time in a kind of roughly equitable certainly more equitable than, like, a normal startup way, but, like, there's some there's some, like, weighting based on, like, seniority. You know, if you're if you're, like, more senior kind of person, like, you'll get slightly more equity. But so that's kind of the ownership side of things. But then there's, I think, the more interesting so well, I mean, they're both important, but then there's also, like, the governance side of things. So there's two democratic, institutions of governance that we have so far. One is the board of the company. So in a usual VC funded startup, the board is, like, maybe, like, the founders plus, like, an investor or something like that. In our company, the board consists of five five, you know, worker owners, who have been elected one person, one vote by, the other, you know, worker owners or voters in in the co op. Right? And the way that, you're you get qualified to vote is, like, anyone who's been there for at least a year can vote. I think now there's 22 people who can vote. We have something like 30 there's, like, 30 something people in help me, I guess, 20 something have been there for at least a year. So that's how how that looks. And then, and then the board appoints the CEO. Then we have this other institution, which is sort of more democratic. I don't know. Like, the board is sort of representational, and that's, like, fine. But, there's this other institution which is more democratic, which is we call it our general assembly, and we run it every six months. And, basically, anyone in the company can write a proposal for pretty much anything. And we come together, we discuss the proposals that you can present, debate. We debate them, and then we vote on them as a company. And I actually I modeled our that general assembly process on, like, what we do in my tenants tenants union, tank. Nice. So if you're a tenant in the Bay Area, check out Bay Bay Tank, baytanc.com.
If you wanna, you know, stick with your landlord or whatever. But Which I encourage everyone to do. Yeah. So, like, I mean, it it is really interesting. I mean, I think a lot of people in this, like, milieu, I think of, I guess, sort of broadly progressive who became socialists, millennials a lot have, like, felt similarly. And, like, how do I contend with, like, these contradictions with, like, I don't know, working a corporate job or something, and then also believing in socialism or wanting to move beyond capitalism, but, like, finding that there's very little it it feels like there's very little you can do about it. But it's great that I think that you were able to actually to do something with that. Sounds very cool. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of a weird position to be in because, like, usually, like, people
who just the pressures and, like, ideological filters Yeah. Like, pick out people who start companies usually throw out people who, you know, will
believe in socials or whatever. So I imagine you may be, like, the odd one out at, like, I don't know, entrepreneur meetups or something like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. At networking events or tech networking events. That yeah. That yeah. Definitely.
Yeah. But but I I guess I do think that, software engineers in particular, ones who are working at, like, in industries where they're where, like, it's kind of a tight labor market, can can do a lot. I think mostly people just use that position to, like, negotiate, you know, really high salaries for themselves, which is fine. I mean, right, I get it. But, yeah, I I think because of how how few workers there are who, like, have the skills and and knowledge in certain domains, you can, I mean, you can you can do a lot? Like, you can set up cooperatives with probably minimal pushback from investors
and I don't know. I I feel like there's kind of like a it's a weird thing where I think tech workers in general are kind of I mean, within, like, this higher you know, fucked up hierarchy are, like, on the higher end of the worker ladder. But, because of that, it's also maybe difficult to to also unionize tech workers sometimes because they feel that they well, they already have a pretty good, package.
Yeah. Labor labor aristocracy.
Yeah. Whenever, like, they're probably the most powerful in the most powerful position to sort of make considerable changes if they wanted to.
Yeah. Yeah. Because, yeah, they're also the most bought off.
So maybe moving on to Mina protocol. Would you maybe explain a bit what it is? Because I think I think I've kind of I've mentioned zero knowledge proofs probably before, but I don't think I've ever had someone, like, properly explain what zero knowledge proofs and kind of, like, the the power of what they are. So maybe we can start with that and then how that relates to MENA and and blockchains generally because it's it's a it's a technology that I think I mean, like, every blockchain, I think protocol is, like, trying to use somehow.
So zero knowledge proofs are a primitive for doing private verifiable computation. So let's kind of break it down with an example. What is your knowledge proofs allow you to do is let's say you have a a computation in mind. That's like running a program. Right? And let's say I have a program. Let's say I have a program. And I wanna run that program and, convince you of the result of running that program. Okay? So
Could we give it, like, a what what what if we give it, like, a a very specific Oh, let's be let's be really cool. Yeah. Okay. A program Yes. For your tenants union
Oh, yeah. We could do that. To calculate,
the likelihood of the search.
Sure. Sure. Okay. You're a member of some organization where you're voting on on on something. Let's say let's just say you're a member of socialist organization, and you are I don't wanna say distrustful of the leadership of your organization, but you have a healthy skepticism of them. And you're running an election for or or you're voting on some, resolution in your organization. And you wanna make sure that the leadership can't, put their finger on the scale, in this election and and bias the result one way or another. So what's gonna happen is everyone in the org is gonna send their votes to the leadership. Then they're gonna tally them up. Right? And they're gonna say, okay. The the the resolution passed or failed. And, normally, you just have to take their word for it. Like, there's no real auditing process. But with zero knowledge proofs, what you could do is they would basically you'd you'd send them you'd send them, your votes. They would then run the program that tallies up the votes, you know, checks is each ballot, well formed and, you know, just adds adds them all up and gets the results. And they would additionally produce a proof that they ran this program correctly. So they would make a zero knowledge proof that then they could send to all the members that the members could just check independently, and be convinced that the election was run fairly, that no tampering was done. And, there's kinda two cool aspects to this. So there's the verifiability thing, which is, if, you know, if you check this you're a member. You get this proof from from the leadership. If you check it and it passes your verification check, then you know that actually the the procedure was run correctly. That's verifiability. And then there's a privacy aspect as well, which is, perhaps the leadership was able to see some of the information, like, who voted for what or what was the final vote count or something like that. But, depending on how you set up the zero to proof, none of that information will be revealed. All you'll see is that from the proof is that the election was conducted fairly and the outcome was the resolution passed or whatever. And there's also an important property of of the kinds of zero knowledge proofs that we use in practice, which are z k snarks, which is their succinctness, which means, they're very easy to check. So, and and they're small. So regardless of how how many ballots were in the original election, regardless of how long it took to run the computation of of tying them all up, the The proof that you get is gonna be really tiny, so, like, a couple kilobytes, and it'll be very easy to check. You'll be able to check it in a matter of milliseconds. And that's basically true regardless of the size of the computation.
So you can say from what I understand and feel free to to correct me. You could run, like, a computation for the results of an election, in which case, there may be also, like, plenty of smaller computations in between that. There's, like, the fact that I voted, you know, a blue and another person voted green. So you can using as your knowledge proof, you can ensure that, like, the leadership doesn't necessarily know what you voted for. As that could, you know, you may want that because people the leadership could take advantage of the fact that they know that you voted against them, for example, or whoever wins out. And you can also, like, prove that depending on how you set up, you can probably prove, like, the number of votes for each one, but not necessarily who voted for each one. And therefore, also the results of that election and prove mathematically very complicated math that we don't want to go into. And better for you to read it than to listen to a podcast about it, but can, like, prove these things in a way that doesn't require, certain types of, let's say, centralized trust or centers or,
single points of failure, maybe? Yeah. I mean, this example is maybe, yeah, a little complicated because you in practice, you probably would wanna have two layers of zero knowledge proof as you're kind of suggesting. Like, the the individual voters, like, the members of the org would probably make a zero knowledge proof that said, I'm I'm allowed to vote, but it doesn't reveal who I am and it and, like, this is what I vote for. Right. Yeah. And and then you'll have another proof, which is then, like, going and checking everyone's ballots, checking, okay, is everyone qualified to vote, and then summing up all the votes and like, getting it resolved. So
you can use your knowledge proof as, like, the base layer for, like, the identity system, I guess, behind this Mhmm. Voting Yeah. Membership requirements. Yeah. And then you can use a separate zero knowledge proof system for the tallying of the actual voting. Exactly. And and and so that technique of, like, putting zero knowledge proofs inside
proofs is called recursion or proof composition. And so ours actually, that's, like, kinda what Mina is based on. But, also, Snarky JS, which is our, like, TypeScript programming system, is I think, yeah, it's the only sort of, it's the only existing system that allows you to do recursion, very easily. So, if you wanted to actually build such system, I encourage you to Google Snarky JS. Go to our GitHub. Play play around. But yeah, I could give you another example that's maybe it's a capitalist example, but it's just one that I have in my my head, that maybe
makes sense. You will be canceled after you give this experience.
Okay. Oh, god. So, yeah. So let's okay. So the current process by which, you, let's say, get a credit card from a bank looks kind of like this. You go to their website, then they, you know, they, like, slurp in all of your personal information from somewhere. Right? Mhmm. And Like, k y they they have to do some amount of KYC. Well, yeah. But they'll all they'll also, like, go to, like, a credit agency and, like, be like, oh, tell me, like, what this guy's other credit cards look like and tell me, like, if he has a mortgage and, you know, blah blah blah. And who knows? I mean, they might be getting other shit. Like, you know, did they go to university and, like, you know, what's their race? And, you know, whatever whatever. All these types of inputs that they put into some algorithm to calculate, like, a Exactly. Exactly. Then then exactly. So they take all these inputs. They put into an algorithm, and that spits out, like, either no or yes and, like, have such and such a spending limit. Right? That's pretty crappy for, you know, individual people because there's this whole system by which their personal data is, like, totally out of their hands and just being, like, passed around, willy nilly. A better kind of architecture that we would you know, it's still it's in a capitalist framework. So that's why
I don't love I can give you utopian examples too, but, like, that's, like, it's just But but but in this case, I guess, like, it's I think what's also about this example is that you could also argue that, like, people in a shitty situation who may, like, suffer from, like, the, you know, systemic issues with poverty is that they're going to get worse rates on maybe, like, like, worse interest rates. They'll get, like, maybe lower spending limits on their credit cards. They'll get, like, worse so, like Well, yeah. Potentially exacerbated. I wouldn't argue for this as any kind of system for It's not a solution, but it's like a No. No. I someone may argue.
I wouldn't I wouldn't encourage people to put any energy I would encourage people to put energy only into revolutionary activities and, not autonomous sort of thing. But let me just finish the example. It just it's just a good example. Right. So a a better way would be if we had a assist a kind of informational architecture where users held on to their own data, or perhaps there was, like, a third party who held on to the user data encrypted. And then when, when a user wanted to apply for a credit card, what they would do is they would, like, basically say, okay. I prove that if you take my data and decrypt it and then run this algorithm, the loan the loanworthiness or the creditworthiness algorithm on my data, the result is x. The result is, yes, I deserve a credit card and with such and such spending limit. And then they would take that they would produce a proof of that fact, that that they are credit worthy as your eligible, And they would send that to the bank, and then the bank would just check that instead of having to slurp in, all of their data from from all over. So and because it's zero knowledge, like, the bank wouldn't learn anything except that they are, in fact, credit worthy. I think it's, it's kinda like zero knowledge. I was I also wanna say, like, computation that the when you want to prove something through computation,
that's the person who, like, you are proving this to has zero knowledge about, like, you. Yeah. Yeah. They will receive zero knowledge
except for the output of the computation.
Right. So it might be as a as a way to, what the outcome is for that. But so I think so Mina, I think, takes this this idea of zero knowledge proofs and is applying it. I think, one, I think taking a step further with z k snarks, which is kind of like this recursive property that you're talking about. Or sorry, the, like, easy easy, proofability verifiability?
So yeah. So there's two ways that that MENA uses zero knowledge proofs. One is, it uses this kind of verifiability and succinct succinctness property to compress the whole history of the blockchain into a tiny little proof. So, you know, the normal way that ways that blockchains work, is if you wanna verify the chain, you look down with the whole history and reexecute it for yourself. What MENA does instead is, it's kind of constantly verifying into a proof that, procedure of checking, the validity of the chain. And every time, like, there's a new block, it kind of it kind of folds it into this proof. So it says, okay. We had a proof that the state before was was valid. And when we add one more block to it, it modifies the state to some new state. You know? And then, and and it sort of wraps that whole thing up into a proof. So it's kind of compressing the chain as it goes along into this this one proof. That's what Mina, you know, has done. What we're working on now and what we'll you know, is is currently running on our Berkeley test net, and, you know, will be on Mainnet relatively soon, is what we call z k apps, which is basically a system a smart contract system, where the smart contracts are zero knowledge ified. I don't know how best to put it. But, basically, each smart contract you know, if you wanna run a a smart contract, you actually sort of run it off chain and produce a a proof of its execution and then post that on chain. And so you can do things privately inside of a smart contract and then, kind of sync to the chain to sort of interact between contracts.
So to sort of, I think, maybe try to to summarize what you're saying, What is really interesting about Mina Protocol is that it is kind of it is solving this the problem of scalability for sure as far as blockchains go where in the case of, basically every other one, it gets large it's going to get larger and larger until infinity because that's how it works. So over time, we will need to have larger and larger amounts of storage. If you want Bitcoin or Ethereum to exist in the way that it does for millennia, we're going to have to store, a lot of data. And so use so Mina kind of solves this problem by using zero knowledge proofs recursively. So taking, basically, you're able to keep the Blockchain the same size, which is a very small size. I think it's, like, I think, 20 kilobytes or something like that. A very small size so that's, while also being able to give all of the properties that that a that a Blockchain has. So it makes it you basically get around this entire issue of the, you know, infinitely larger Blockchain, and therefore also makes it a bit more, it makes it possible to, like, use to to to run a node on your phone or something like that on on on smaller,
hardware. Yeah. Or or at least to verify the the current state. So there yeah. And I'll just kind of emphasize, like, there's really, what it's solving is, like, there's this trade off between kind of decentralization of verification and throughput or something. And, like, one way you can you can solve this trade off is by just saying, actually, we're not gonna have the, current state be publicly verifiable or verifiable at all. Like, that's what Solana does. So they just, like, throw away the history, and, like, no it's just no one ever checks it. So it's just like the current state is the current state because all the validators agreed on it, and there's no way for anyone to, like, go and audit that per se. The way that Mina works is, yeah, by solving this trade off by enforcing that as you're kind of going along, you're also producing a proof,
that anyone can check later. So what I found interesting as well from what from what I understand based on Ethereum's roadmap from Vitalik is that this is kind of like the the the place that also Ethereum wants to get to. But the problem is that I mean, Ethereum can't get there just like all of a sudden because there's a there's a bit of technical debt that Ethereum has already built on, and I guess, Mina being a new layer one can sort of get around all that.
Yeah. So we kind of built it from the ground up to for it to be easy to to do this with Mina. Yeah. They they are kind of trying yeah. It seems like they're they're trying to do a sort of similar thing on there.
Yeah. And then I think as well, does it, I guess, does this setup also improve privacy quite a bit, versus using, you know, the ever present,
blockchains that that exist. Yeah. So it it it makes it possible the new kind of z k apps functionality excuse me. The new kind of z the new z k apps functionality makes it possible to write applications that use user data in in a in a privacy preserving way. Usually, with blockchains, you can't really use private data because everything has to go on chain. With z cap. So, Amina, you you you're able to write applications that use user data but but don't reveal that user data. So, like and and, we're working on a a system that we call z k oracles, which basically allows you to import, any kind of web two data, any data that you can get over HTTPS, into your smart contract. And that opens up a lot of interesting applications. Like, you know, only people who have a Gmail account can interact with my application or something like that. And then what you would what you would do is, like, every time you interact with the smart contract, you'd you'd include a ZK Oracles, like, proof that I can log in to Gmail or or whatever, but without revealing what is your email and, you know, blah blah blah. Or, I don't know. Like, you know, some DeFi thing that you wanna prove my bank account balance is at least whatever. And, so you could use the secret Oracle system to to do that in a privacy preserving way where you're not actually revealing anything about your bank account. You're just providing the proof that it their balance is at least whatever for you to interact with somehow. So then I wonder if, like, in a system like Mina, would you be able to have a block explorer? Yeah. So, I mean, some inform yeah. It it wouldn't, I mean, some information wouldn't there is a block explorer for MENA. So, but I guess it depends on what the exactly the applications look like. But, yeah, maybe, like, not all of the information would be on
a block explorer. It depends on the applications. But I think what is so what is interesting is that you also have I mean, the same thing with these other privacy tokens with, Monero and Zcash. Like, they they don't have, you can't really, like, check, the states of the blockchain. And I think, like, whether or not it's a blockchain is also debatable. I think most people say it's probably not. So MENA is kinda similar to that. And then but with the addition of smart contract, functionality, which is, like, a as far as I understand, a pretty difficult problem to solve. True. It's, it's a little different. So, actually, trans so transfers,
like, payments with MENA, all of those transactions are actually transparent. We don't have privacy implemented, like, on the level of payments. It it exists, internal to each smart contract. So, basically, like, your smart contract calls, like, the data that you feed into the the contract is private. But then payments in the MENA token, like, will not be private. And people are implementing, like, private tokens as a smart contract, on top of MENA. But, in the MENA token itself, it's Not by default. Just to clarify. Yeah.
Cool. So, like, this from a perspective of a Crypto Bro, Web three Maxi, you know, zero knowledge proofs are, like, an amazing new primitive that's going to unlock, like, all this new value, all these new applications that their venture capital friends are going to invest in for them, and, you know, create this kind of, like, cryptographic utopia. But for you, you know, we we've talked about this already a little bit already. But, I know you are a member of, DSA East Bay, and you've had some thoughts maybe, like, more concretely on where this type of work that that you've been working on around zero knowledge proofs as being potentially very useful for socialist organizations. So I think one of one of the examples that we've given is this, this this voting, example, which is applicable to any type of organization. But I think, you know, in especially, like, DSA, I imagine where it's kind of a it's it's kind of like a big tent organization where there are people and you may you know, there are different factions inside of it as which is, like, what always happens when political organizations get bigger. Like, you it's like I I feel like it's it's healthy to have a little bit of of skepticism or doubt or just, like, desire to want to have, like, some amount of accountability to, like, for its leaders and stuff like that. But I was wondering if you had any any, like, other thoughts when it comes to the the social, the social implications of something like zero knowledge, Bruce.
Yeah. Sure. I guess, like, first, I just wanna stress that no technology is inherent, you know, inherently pushes in in one direction. Well, I mean, maybe different technologies do do to a different degree push you know, like, if you build, like, an oil rig or whatever, that that's gonna have one very concrete effect. But Within the context of
I think, like, the oil rig exists in the context of, like, you know, currently existing capitalism and, like, the state of of climate change. So that that does have, like, a, you know, a politics to it, I guess. Yeah. And, you know, any yeah. I guess, like, we have to consider, yeah, we have to consider this specific
technology of zero knowledge proofs in our specific context. So, yeah, I mean, I think zero knowledge proofs are useful for, enforcing compliance of various clients. And if you're in the context of an organization where you don't have complete trust in in in the processes of the organization, it can help strengthen that trust. So I I I yeah. I think it's I I think it's useful for that. Although, I think there's an important caveat here, which is people need to trust the technology. Right? So, like, if I try to go in to, my my, DSA chapter and say, hey, guys. Like, I I work in this company, and we should all use our product, to, like, improve, the functioning of our internal democracy. I don't think that would go over very well. I think people would be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, crypto, bro. Like, you know Right. This this is garbage, got it here. So, it's yeah. So, like, there would need to be people would need to believe that the that the technology really did what it said and, you know, and and that's sort of complicated, and I I don't really know how you get there. But
I think that's just sort of So so you you you haven't yet pushed zero knowledge proofs to DSA East Bay?
No. Not yet. But it's funny. We do we do use to, like yeah. So, like, we do, for voting, use this, like, online voting tool, a a few different ones, that are totally opaque, actually. And, like, I mean, as far as I know, like, I don't maybe one of them is open source, but one of them is closed source. And
People don't complain about it. People don't complain about it. But Yeah. It's a it's a I feel like it's just gonna be, like, a really, really big issue to to get past that for just because of the amount of, like, psychic damage that's been done, I think with social media and, and and and cryptocurrencies and sort of, like, anything that sort of touches it as being kind of a, yeah, de facto right wing scam or whatever. Yeah. I think that's going to be tough and there's, like, always going to be that. And there's it's just, like, unfortunate that people don't put the same amount of, like, scrutiny on, like I don't know. The fact that your organization is using closed source software also purchased by a centralized profit profit oriented company to facilitate, you know, various things, but that's sort of the reality. But I imagine, like, I would think that if I had thought about maybe doing this and you would have to probably start small is my guess, is that you would have to, like, have a an experimental, like, find some friends that you trust, to experiment with it, and try to build up from there. That's the only thing that I can that I can think of. And that maybe, like, goes against some of the Marxist ethos, but, within the organization, I think makes sense in order to, like, build trust through just normal human ways rather than trying to build trust through, like, the fact that you're using as your knowledge proof. Yeah. Def definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So it's about, finding finding those allies. Hey, 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 enjoying the interview or find the content I make important, you could pitch into my efforts starting at $3 a month on patreon.com/theboxwingsocialist to help me out and join the newest patrons like Justin, Boo N Word, Lorepunk, Brady, and Sinclair, which really helps since making the stuff isn't free in terms of money or time. As a Patreon, you'll get a shout out on an episode like I just did and access to bonus content like Q and A episodes where you can submit and vote on questions you'd like me to answer, and I'll give my thoughts in roughly twenty minutes. You may also get bonus content like what I recently did by releasing the full interview that I had with Vitalik Buterin a week early before anyone else. Of course, I'll still be making free content like this interview to help spread the message that blockchain doesn't need to be used to further entrench capitalist exploitation if we put our efforts into it. So if that message resonates with you, I hope you'll consider helping out. So you wrote you have a blog called parametricity.com where I can't remember which piece it was again, but you had listed out a few different use cases that you thought were interesting from a lefting point of view, that that were really good. So
I think as the intensity of the class struggle hopefully increases over time, resistance from the state, which is pretty low right now because the intensity of class struggle is pretty low, will also increase. And in that context, having some degree of security in in terms of, like, privacy of communications, is is really important, and also also security in terms of the reliability of your systems. Right? So, like, if you're using a voting system that's closed source and runs on some other person's server, I mean, if if you're at a scale that the state cares about, it's not very difficult to imagine them intervening to just, you know, change the results of your internal democracy or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, change the results of your election. So I think in in that context, it would be useful. I mean, we I think we also just see, like, already a lot of this
similar things have already happened in the past. If you take just take a look at Yeah. With with WikiLeaks, with, I know various, organizers have had, like, you know, lost access to their Google Drive because of, like, one thing or another that they're that they're working on on their Google Drive. Like, it's I think it's it's already an issue, but just not it's not super visible, I guess. And the the speculation, the speculative aspects of crypto are very visible. I think that's why you get kind of, like, I feel like there's this disconnect.
Yeah. Yeah. I think yeah. I think in in that sense. So that's, like, a little bit a little bit of a different different thing, but, yeah, definitely having, like, non centralized alternatives
to some of these corporate services is would be very important. I mean, have you I because I so, like, I have, like, this, for some reason, a lot of other socialist programmers, that I've spoken to largely over the Internet about crypto, they insist that decentralization is not important. That actually what's important is just, like like, the fact that workers own the servers or something like that to some just that kind of degree. Decentralize
it. I I guess sorry. Decentralization,
like, in what sense? Because I guess there are people people who are, like, up Who cares if we use a peer to peer network? Who cares if we use a federated network? That doesn't matter. Actually, it's better to use a centralized one because then we can take it over and give it to the workers. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess it it just depends on the specifics of what the class struggle looks like in any given moment. Like, if you're, you know, if if you're, like Are you saying we need to do a materialist analysis of,
of a specific context? Concrete yeah. You gotta do a concrete analysis of the concrete situation. Yeah. Because I mean, yeah, if you're in a context of, like okay. This is this is so far in the future, but, you know, sometimes that gets happened in weeks. So but, you know, if you're in the context of, like I don't know. You're, like, a gorilla organization, trying to communicate with each other, then you probably don't wanna be using, you know, WhatsApp or whatever where the and, you know, the government can can just call the FBI can just call up, Facebook and say, hey. Can you just ban these, these users? You know, you wanna be using your own your own kind of kind of, service and probably not one that's just running on one server, but, yeah, some kind of distributed peer to peer sort of sort of thing. So, yeah, it depends, I guess, on the specifics Right. Yeah. Of what kind of struggle you're you're you're doing. But, yeah, if if if you're just, like, you know, some workers at Starbucks, like, it's probably fine if you use WhatsApp. Like, Starbucks is probably not gonna coordinate with Facebook to, like, shut down your Hopefully. Hopefully. Your chat. Who knows? What do you mean? Until the, yeah, the class struggle,
really heightens.
Yeah. Yeah.
No. I was just curious your thoughts because I yeah. Sometimes I I hear that sometimes, and it was just always strange to me that it a lot of these types would just kind of completely ignore, like, the, like, kind of brush brush away entire, like, classes or types of potential solutions or architectures just because of, like, I don't know, just the they're kind of, like I feel like they're, like, imprinting a specific, like, a different context in which maybe they're really, like, into, worker workers taking over the states, and they just, like, apply that one for one as much as they can even though it's not the same thing in the context of technology.
Yeah. I mean, in the in the very long run, you know, in really building a sustainable classless, society, you you do wanna avoid local concentrations of power because those those do I mean, I think historically tend over time to to transform into into class structures. Yep. But that's yeah. I mean, that's kind of a long long term consideration. I don't know. Yeah. Of course.
So what are what are your own thoughts on working in the cryptocurrency space while being, you know, such a dedicated comrade. You you wrote perhaps maybe it could be it could be a starting point. You wrote a really interesting piece on on your blog, specifically about moralism, which I really liked because it it was you you you you wrote about it in a way that, like, I wish I could write about it.
Okay. Yeah. I I can summarize that. So there's a a certain kind of thinking which is very common amongst left wing people, which is, I think, what I what I would call moral moralism, which is basically, yeah, a kind of a certain pattern of thinking and, like, rhetorical style, which means basing one's opinions primarily in, one's own feelings of guilt, and and belief about how others will will will judge judge your moral, worthiness or or whatever. And to I mean, we could give a lot of examples of that, but I'm sure people are familiar
with should we give examples? Sure. Yeah. I don't know. What would be some examples? I've I mean, the the the biggest example to me is always cryptocurrency. I think it's, like, kind of people's,
how they feel about, cryptocurrency. I think a lot of the times comes from people's it comes from, like, a moralist position. Yeah. I think yeah. And and there's certain things about that which are correct, perhaps. But yeah. So it's like people have people have this identification in their mind of, like, cryptocurrency with financial scams, which is true. I mean, there is a relationship between those two things. But then they generalize it a little bit more and say, like, you know, any there's a relationship between basically, like, any kind of cryptography or, like, just sort of permissionless distributed systems and financial scams. And as a as a result yeah. So I feel like that error is a little bit different because because then that's really, I think, based on the incorrect identification of, like, you know, cryptography and decentralized systems with financial scams?
I mean, I was just thinking, like, I don't know, like, in a situation where someone where someone could propose, like, maybe in a realistic like, if you're if you're trying to be a realist about a certain situation that maybe you have to do something that is, like, on the edge of, like, what people deem to be morally correct or not. And while you could prove that it would be a good decision to make or, like, not where there is evidence to back it, But there is, this moral components that, like, that perhaps has more of, like, a maybe it it derives from, like, your particular culture. Maybe it derives from just, like, associations being made that make you feel that, well, I could not do that. So therefore
or, like, I associate it with something bad, and therefore, like, it it means we cannot do that because it is bad. Yeah. Yeah. I I I yeah. I I see what you're saying. Yeah. So so, yeah, maybe just to return to what I was saying before. So, like, this kind of moralistic way of of making decisions, basically, you you ground your decisions primarily in your feelings of what is right and what is wrong, in some abstract sense. What makes you feel guilty? What what doesn't? And, I mean, I would argue that that's an incorrect way of making decisions because, like, that that feeling that you have, does not capture all the information about a particular situation or about a particular decision. It's it is some information. It, you know, it's this moral signal, which is like a summary of a bunch of information that your brain computes and gives to you. But it's not all of the information about a particular moment. And, yeah, you just have to kind of be more complicated or complex or whatever in your thinking, I guess, taking more information, base your decisions on on more information.
It's all it's all kinda abstract. But But to to make it concrete, I guess, is this, is this, like, the type of framework that that you think about yourself as a socialist in the cryptocurrency world?
Oh, Yeah. I mean, kind of. I yeah. I guess it just comes back to, like, you know, the concrete analysis of your own concrete situation. So I don't it's it's it's not it's not like my, like, involvement in in my company. I guess, especially now that I'm not, like, a a boss per se. It it doesn't it doesn't it's not really it doesn't really present many material contradictions to, like, the kind of organizing that I that I do as as a as a socialist. Yeah. Whereas maybe someone would look at look at it and be like, oh, you're in an industry that is associated with financial scams and blah blah blah. And, yeah, that's true. But it doesn't in my concrete situation, there's no, like, actual I I think. I mean, there Right. There's not much of a contradiction between, like, my position in in my in work and and the kinds of activities that I would like to pursue Right. In as
a revolutionary or whatever. You know what I mean? I mean, I just yeah. I imagine that like, I'm sure you can you can say that. But to, like, an outsider's perspective, like, judgment could come from a moral from a moral position. Yeah. Totally. And I mean, like, politically,
that may be important, like, to, you know I mean, may maybe it is an insurmountable barrier for Maybe it does make people, you know, completely not trust you or I I don't know. Whatever. And that's also part of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation that you take into account. Do I need to get these people to trust me in such and such a way? Would that require, you know, you know, I don't know, changing my job or you know what I mean? I don't know. Right. I mean, it's yeah. It's part of the political complexity, I guess, that,
you kinda gotta embrace because you can't be, you can't, does it make everybody happy? So another thing I wanna talk about actually, because you also wrote another piece that was really good, is about techno utopianism, especially in Web three where I mean, in Web three, like, it's in the crypto space, like, techno utopianism is for sure, like, all over the place. I mean, if you, like I I like, it is one of the things that, like, really like, I I understand why people get mad, like, when they when they enter some of these spaces and, like, kind of see the stuff and, like, kind of the the things that are said by a lot of the different actors that that exist in this world. Yeah. But, yeah, do you wanna talk a bit a bit about that?
So I I guess, I would put it like this. I I really like this model for of historical materialism, which you know? Okay. For listeners, like, there's this thing called historical materialism that, Marxists like to talk about, and it's basically the idea that, we live in a physical system. Like, history is a physical system and evolves according to physics. We don't necessarily wanna study it on the level of individual particles because that's too much information. But but, like, we should still sort of think try to think about it like a physical system, you know, system that has a state and that, you know, moves and whose trajectory through time evolves via some kind of physical laws. And there's this model you know, that that's all very good, but you need to be specific about what the state of history includes. You're not gonna write down the location of every single particle. That's too much. So you need to kind of, break it down in some coarser, more approximate way. And, one model that I really like of that is this kind of seven coordinates model or seven moments model. And the idea there is to analyze any historical situation in terms of the following seven coordinates, which are what is the state of technology? What is the relationship to nonhuman nature? What are people's mental conceptions of the world? What are the dominant social relations between people? What are the institutions? What are the kind of habits and activities of people's daily life, like driving a car or, like, drinking coffee or, I don't know, brushing your teeth or whatever? And what do labor and productive processes look like? So that's with seven things. And one of them is techno. So you can think of any historical moment as sort of having these seven coordinates. And sorry. I know this is, like, a huge preamble. But, one of one of them is technology. One of those seven coordinates is technology. And a lot of technologists, are pretty blind to the other six coordinates and and really just think about this one, which is technology. And they often think, okay. If I can make an intervention in this one coordinate of technology, then I can totally revolutionize society. I can I can totally transform society for the better? And you hear that a lot amongst crypto kind of people. I I think you would agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But this is the No. That is how it Because
What?
Nothing else we can. No. We can't. Yeah. No. No. Yeah. Actually, you can't. Because What? There's not just, yeah, sorry. There's not just technology. There's these other six things too. Shit. Right. And, you know, any technological change that you make is made in the context of a certain array you know, set of all the other six coordinates, and it will push the kind of technological technological change, that actually gets produced and, you know, promulgated throughout society in a particular direction. And, I mean, of course, in, in capitalism, that direction is towards the accumulation of profit. That's what the whole social order does. It just runs this stupid algorithm of profit accumulation.
Did you did you describe it as an algorithm? Yeah. Yeah. It's an algorithm. I mean, I'm a computer scientist. No. I think that no. I think it's a I think it's very apt. Yeah. I have Yeah. It's it's sorry. Go ahead. No. I have I have, like, this, I've been playing around with this idea of, like, how there are certain, like, I've I call I I I call them, like, protocols of capitalism or just, like, certain certain things that, like it's just, like, the properties of capitalism that's, that kind of, like, very strictly dictates kind of how things progress. But, I think algorithm algorithm is a similar word to use, I think, for that. Yeah. I have another another, blog post about this. But, yeah, this is not something that's unique to me. Yeah. People people talk about the process of capital. People often talk about it as a process, like an organism. But I I I think, like, thinking of it sometimes as a sometimes I hate when people do it, but I do think sometimes it is useful to think of the world in, like, a computer y framework can be helpful in some ways in some frameworks. It's helpful for me as a computer person. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like,
I have another blog post. The title of the blog post is the the title of the post is the capitalist class is not the primary enemy. Okay. I don't know. Spicy. I agree with that statement or or not. But, anyway, yeah, you can kind of there's, like, a little a little image there of, like, this, like, self replicating pattern in Conway's skin of life Yeah. That, like, expands and self replicates. And that's basically what capital is. It's this social process that expands itself, by accumulating profit and social reproduction. Yeah. Yeah. On an expanding scale. So, anyway, back to techno utopianism. That's what all efforts without an effort to challenge capitalism, any action basically taken will be pushed towards the direction of profit accumulation. So, yeah, I mean, that's, you know, that's bad. And, I mean, I think you can you can know this just, like, from a theoretical point of view, like, if you believe in Marxism or whatever, but, also, it's just, like, you just it's very easy to look at history and deduce this as well, which I think most normal people do. You know, they look at, oh, yeah. Like, what about all the utopian promises about the Internet that then degenerated into, like, Facebook and, you know, I don't know, whatever. So I I I think, most normal people under kind of understand this. But technologists I I think it's I think it's sort of, you know, necessary to believe that we are doing is somehow good. Right, like, otherwise, you would you'd feel too bad about it all the time and and stop doing it. So it's kind of like a necessary delusion, I think, for people to sustain.
Yep.
But, yeah. I mean, it it it's not correct.
In short. In short, they're wrong.
Yeah. You can you can read read the article. But yeah. I mean, basically, you know, I mean, it's it's just, you can look at history. It's happened over and over, the technological any sort of technological developments that maybe have held some utopian promise, like, the ability to communicate with any person anywhere in the world, they just get, turned into opportunities for profit accumulation, and deformed in in that direction rather than any necessarily laboratory direction. And, we we know that the directions of profit accumulation and the directions of laboratory action are not identical to each other. So so, you know, those two things are different. But, I I did kind of I feel like any critique is sort of useless if it doesn't point the way towards a better thing or, like, a Right. How an alternative. Useful model can sorry? Yeah. Some kind of alternative. So, like yeah. You still have these people who, like, technologists who, like, want to use who, like, want to make technical interventions, technological interventions, and want to because as I said, like, they're you're a tech you're a programmer or whatever. You're gonna be a programmer. Right? Like, you're probably not gonna go and, I don't know, do something else. Like, you have these skills. You wanna use these skills, and you wanna believe that you're doing something good with them. So, yeah. I I think, like, once you have this kind of anti capitalist analysis, you can understand that, like, any intervention in technology is not gonna mean anything unless you're also making interventions in the other six coordinates, towards, like, anti capitalist action. Because otherwise, your technological intervention is just going to get sort of co opted in the direction of profit accumulation. So yeah. I mean, I I I guess I people sometimes talk about, like, class struggle x. So I, I talked about class struggle technologism. I don't know if this really makes sense, but I think it does. Like, any real movement towards the abolition of capitalism will have to involve some technological interventions. You know, people need various technologies to build robust, you know, workers' organizations and, and, you know, in in the transition process, like, away from capitalism, I mean, there's gonna be a lot of technological, challenges. But yeah. Again, like, it just it depends on what stage in the class struggle you're you're at or or whatever. But, yeah, I I would I guess I'm kinda advocating for what is technologism? It's like, I guess, a belief that technological you're focused on technological interventions in terms of these seven coordinates. That's good. Some people need to make technological interventions. I just suggest that those technological interventions be made with the idea of class struggle in mind and, to to support various other movements in the other six coordinates
of of struggle. I think it's just it's it's about I think what ends up happening is people build technology with like, in a very technical sense or, like, within or the only thing that is outside of the technical aspect of the technology that they're trying to create is basically, can they make money off of this? Can they, like, fund a start up? Can they get venture capital? Whereas I think if you are anti capitalist, then you should take I think there is right now kind of this a little bit of a shift where people are saying, no. Technology has, like, basically fucked us this entire time. Like, it's it's lied on all of its promises. The Internet didn't make us any freer. Stop this solutionism which exists. And so, like but if you are trying to have a, I think, a robust, really, like, anti capitalist, framework or or strategy, then I think it is probably not smart, not a good idea to not consider, like, the technological aspects because it's part of this, like, seven, you know, these seven coordinates which I which I liked that you pointed out.
It's it's an aspect. It's one of the seven core. Yeah. Yeah. It's one of the seven things that needs to be changed. The thing. It is just one of seven. Right? Yeah. And and and I I would just say one more thing because I think you pointed out really something really important, which is, like, people's realistic options or, like, people the the actual paths by which people make technological interventions are either, yeah, by, like, starting companies and getting VC funding, which means you will probably be in the profit accumulation direction or going and working at a company, which also means you're in the profit accumulation direction. So or, like, most likely, majority of what you're doing. So it's important to emphasize, like, you need to you need to you really need to be part of some kind of organization that is trying to move do some kind of anti capitalist action to to do this kind of class struggle techno techno techno technologism or whatever. Other you know, otherwise I mean, there as programmer, like, sometimes you can do things on your own. Like, maybe you can do a work weekend project Yeah. That overthrows capitalism or whatever. But yeah. So, like, the the I I give some examples in the blog, so I'll just enumerate those. So one was, yeah, having implementing kind of zero knowledge proof based voting systems to support democratic workers organizations to run fair elections. Another example I gave was, having, like, democratic, bureaucratic administration of workers' organizations. I'm using, like, distributed systems with some kind of consensus to, like, reduce reliance on centralized, infrastructure providers
or, like, state structures, like legal systems. Just the amount the amount of, like, organizations lefting organizations that are reliant on Google Drive is pretty obscene. It's pretty obscene and, like, pretty like, I cannot believe that people are, like, not thinking that this is, like, a terrible idea in the long run. Well, on the one hand, I do think it's true,
about, you know, who's who said it about the the capitalist, you know This thing. I think it was Lenin. Yeah. Use, yeah, that you'll use to hang them. I I do think that's kinda true. Like, I do think capitalism makes sense. Yeah. Tend to be tend to be sort of sort of shortsighted or in that way. But, but the Google in particular is so integrated with this with this the the securities state, in The US that I I I I'm sure, you know, if they wanted to pull the plug on someone, they would just totally easily do it. But
yeah. I mean, it speaks to, like, what the level of intensity of class struggle is Right. At the moment. Sure. I'm not saying that, like, you're you're an idiot for using Google Drive if you're just, like, a bunch of your friends trying to do something, but just, like, you know, something to keep in mind in this, I like class struggle technologism, like, when in your seven points, seven coordinates strategy that you're thinking of for growing your organization, hopefully, that you are considering perhaps maybe a road map or, like, a point in which maybe it is time to think about using some other type of infrastructure than relying on Google. But in the beginning, maybe, yeah, they're not gonna, like, stop you from, you know, you and a few friends probably until you get a little bit bigger. But having that just, like, in mind, you know, just not, like, completely ignoring it or saying that, like, oh, I'm not a technology person, therefore, like, I'm not gonna do it. You know? I think that Right. Right.
Totally. I'll just finish reading these examples just, because I I feel like it points towards, like, what kind of organizations I might be talking about. Yeah. So another example would be, like, encrypted anonymous messaging services for allowing workers to communicate without fear of reprisal from the state or employers. So, like, that in the context of, I don't know, like, a unionization effort or or planning a strike or I don't know whatever. And, you know but what that means is, like, if if you're trying to work on that, you need to be integrated with a union or, you know, some kind of workers organization.
Do you have your thoughts on signal as like a
signal? Yeah. I think that, again, like, it's all about what level of intensity of struggle we're talking about. Like, at some point, probably, they will target you and, you know, put get get Apple to put a specific backdoor version of signal on your phone or whatever because you don't know that the app that's running on your phone is the same as code in the GitHub repository. But, yeah, I think I mean, mostly, signal seems good. Fair. Fair.
Just wondering.
I wouldn't say I mean, if you're I wouldn't say anything too spicy on signal. I I would try and do that in person. But, yeah. So right. And then I guess this is sort of further down the road, but, like, at some point in you know, who knows what the transition to communism, will look like in in reality that we get because we're sort of in this period of, like, decay of of the capitalist system. So this final example is, like, tools, technology that facilitates the local production of necessity of necessities of life, like food or or or whatever. So, like, that will potentially be you know, in some context, that would be another, like, class struggle technologism that you could do. But this all this is all just a point towards, like, you just need to, like, look at your specific context, figure out the actual, anti capitalist struggles that are happening around you and see and try and think of technological interventions, like, make sense as part of them, I guess. Right. So build technology
within the context that you're in and the overarching strategy that you're trying to pursue. Right. Simple stuff. Simple stuff.
Easier said than done. I hope people listening, begin thinking about it now so they can start building it nearer rather than later. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the problem is that people, like like, kind of start with the technology and then, like, back into convincing themselves that, like, it's it's actually good and, you know, a 100% the correct thing to be doing and so on. So Yeah. Fair. Well, thank you so much for coming on and teaching us about zero knowledge proofs, about amino protocol,
and class struggle technologism. If you want, do you want to leave us some of your, handles and the places where people can keep up with you and your work? Yeah. Yeah. So you can find me on Twitter
at I z meckler. So I z m e c k l e r. And then my blog is parametricity.com. And yeah. And if you look at my Twitter, you can also find, like, Olin Labs' Twitter and MENA and stuff like that. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I highly suggest people take a a a peruse through the blog. It is, got some very good content
on, blockchain related stuff and left wing related stuff.
I'm not the only one. There are other there are others doing it. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me.
