Access the Internet without ISPs using Mesh Networks and Blockchain with PKT
For this week's episode, I spoke with Caleb James Delisle (@cjdelisle), founder of PKT Cash, the world’s first bandwidth-hard blockchain meant to support de-monopolizing internet access through mesh networking. Previously he also founded Cjdns, which implements an encrypted IPv6 network using public-key cryptography for address allocation and a distributed hash table for routing, and Packet Crypt, which is the proof of work used for PKT Cash. During the episode we spoke about how his p...
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So, yeah, we can get going. Alright. Cool. You're listening to the Blockchain Socials podcast. And for today's guest, I have Caleb James Delisle. He is the founder of PKT and CJDNS, and he's working to demonopolize Internet access with mesh networking, decentralized bandwidth markets, and blockchain micropayments. So hey, Caleb. How are you doing? Hey. Thanks for having me on. Sure. Maybe to start off, it would be great if you can give a quick introduction to yourself and some of the work that you've been doing, especially and how you got into blockchain because you started off, from what I understand, not in the blockchain space and doing something else and, trying to to, yeah. I mean, you had very, like, formidable, goals that you wanted to accomplish with the projects that you first started off. So I think it would be great for people to to hear to hear what you're working on before and how that led you to to PKT.
Yeah. Absolutely. So, my my development story goes back to about February, 2011. That or you can even go further back, but that's about when I started to actually develop c j d n s as a technology. And, this this came around about the same time as Namecoin. The c j d n s project and Namecoin were a bit in the same space. So I got a lot of exposure to blockchain really early on. Wasn't really interested in it at the time. What I was interested in was, at that time, basically solving some of the problems which made it so that, a, an an I s a router basically could only be operated by one ISP. You could not subdivide routing routing equipment on the Internet. And because you can't subdivide it, it makes it so that your, the the ISPs that own those routers, they it ends up kind of gravitating toward this monopolization where, you know, there's only two ISPs here because they own that infrastructure, and nobody else can really get into that infrastructure. So I was I was looking at a lot of these ideas way back. You know, I was thinking about, like, imagine you know, I I grew up with slow Internet too. So I was thinking, you know, imagine if I could just make an Internet connection to my neighbor, and they can make an Internet connection to their neighbor and and so on and so forth. You know, why do we have to wait for DSL to come to my my town, which was, you know, the the the hills, and there was no no Internet whatsoever, just dial up. So, anyway, I started this CJDNS project around 2011, 2012. It kind of developed a little community following because it built this capability to, route traffic through a network where you may not trust some of the nodes, so some of the routers themselves. And, you know, it's common to have to not always trust all of the computers in the network. But when you're not trusting some of the routers in the network, that that becomes a lot more complicated because, you know, they could say, oh, I I I'm responsible for Google, for example. And then all the Google traffic flows right to them, and and then, you know, that network falls apart. So
And and CJDNS, just to for for people who may not know, it's like, was it meant to sort of begin creating almost like local mesh networks so people don't have to rely on their ISPs to, or, like, whatever was available as an ISP in their local area, which 100%. 100%.
Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, we were trying to reinvent the Internet. You know, that that was the the lofty goal from the beginning. And I feel like that goal has gone has moved through even till now. It's just that at that time, we were getting the protocols down. So, 2011, 2012, 2013, you know, we're really nailing down a a lot of the protocols of how we could imagine that you could connect to your neighbor without necessarily trusting them. That then that's a huge thing. And then the next step was, okay. Once, you you know and there was a there was a big pause here. And, you know, from 2014 to 2017, I was out of the out of that space, and I was building another project called Cripbed, which, you know, you'll see it around the, decentralization and, the the technology space. It's it allows you to, type like, Google Docs except that the server doesn't know what you're typing, and, it's, it's a AGPL open source. So, you know, c g d n s, that was a GPL project, crypt pad AGPL, you know, building a lot of these types of technologies to try to, you know, advance the state of the art. And what got me out of CRIPpad and back into the mesh networking space was basically when Lightning Network, reached a certain level of maturity. And so to to fill you guys in, Lightning Network is a, it's a it's a means by which you can do a bunch of kind of weird transactions. And with those transactions, you're able to kind of agree to to transfer money really quickly and really cheaply on top of a blockchain.
Specifically on the specifically on the Bitcoin network, as far as I know.
Yeah. It's adapted to Bitcoin. It could be made to work on, like, Ethereum. It can be made to work on anything except for the the privacy coins like Monero. But, yeah, it's really well adapted. The Bitcoin people have been pushing it forward. And when that was reaching the level of maturity that I was feeling, like, okay, we can do this. Then I started thinking, okay. Now we can take what we developed back in 2012 to then '13 and actually build a functioning, a a functioning industrialized version of the thing and actually get Internet to people.
Yeah. I and then I guess, from there, PKT came about.
Right. Right. So, yeah, PKT was this next evolution, and we did a couple things there. So we tried to be really boring in terms of the financial technology because the the the concept is we wanted to make sure all the bugs would happen on the routing technology, which is easy to fix. And the financial technology, if there's bugs there, it's really hard to fix. But we did do a couple of things. One of them was we changed the proof of work to, a new proof of work algorithm that's called PacketCrypt, and that's something else that I've invented. And it is bandwidth hard, which means that you use Internet bandwidth in order to collaboratively mine with other miners in the network. So that's one thing. And the other thing is that we created this institution called the network steward, and this is a way that we're able to fund research and development and, and just evolution of the project and and the the mesh networking space, with 20% of all the new every block as it's made goes to the network steward. So you can think of it like a founder's fee or a pre mine, but as opposed to going to this one entity and just piling up, we established as as a very strict rule that it goes to competitive research grants, you know, competitive grant making in that ecosystem.
Yeah. So I guess the the network steward is really just, like, if I understand correctly, it's sort of an on chain governance mechanism for funding funding the project itself, and I assume, like, maybe spin off projects from it or or something like that.
Yeah. So it's it's a little bit complicated. There are things that we cannot fund because, that is for example, marketing, it's just there's no go for anything in the space of marketing. And the reason is because there's too many things that, too many ugly things in that direction. But when we're talking about research and development and building out of new things in the packet space and anything that's adjacent, you know, we're really wanna cast a wide net, going forward. So, you know, if we're talking about somebody who wants to build a Wi Fi, chip, that kind of thing, open source Wi Fi chip, that's the type of thing that we would potentially fund. The the the rule, the one of the key rules of it is that nobody can benefit unequally from that funding because, otherwise, it would be it would create a corruption. So, we are really looking to make sure that, the projects are not profitable in some way and that the, the project is creating this result that is open source and going out to the entire ecosystem and, I mean, the entire world, actually. So it's very close to what you would, consider to be a charity as as far as its, its functionality goes.
Yeah. That's that's that's really interesting. So if we're looking at it from, like, maybe a a bird's eye view, what what are we looking at? I guess, CJDNS is maybe something that people can use to, the very basics of starting their their mesh network. PacketCrypt, I know, is the is basically what's being used within PKT as the consensus mechanism, taking from that.
PacketCrypt is just a proof of work. All all it is, it it just creates something to do to prove that you've made effort in order to get those coins that you're getting and in order to keep the chain working correctly.
But I guess it's it's leveraged within PKT in order to, like, fund these microtransactions so people can, they can purchase basically almost like a almost like a local ISP or something like that.
So the way that we're building the decentralized bandwidth marketplace is a lot more complicated than what a lot of projects like AltheaNet do. Now I wanna give a shout out to AltheaNet because that is a project that's done, great things, and they, you know, they've gotten people on the Internet. We're not even there yet. But we're taking a bit the slow road because our our technological stack is that complex. And what we're doing here is we're building a bandwidth marketplace where so when you're you're putting an antenna on your roof, you're connecting to your neighbor. And instead of just charging your neighbor, like, x number of micro pennies worth of something for the bandwidth and trying to price that algorithmically, what we do is we take that bandwidth lease, and then we we sell that bandwidth lease into a marketplace and let a bunch of marketplace trader people figure out what the price of that is. And then they take it and sell it back to what we call a cloud ISP. And you can think of a cloud ISP as kinda like an Uber, but it's not like one Uber because there's a bunch of them all competing for the same drivers. And the bandwidth lease is kind of like the time of that driver. So you're you're you're leasing that driver's time and then taking that time and turning it around to to pick up a rider and take them somewhere. And that's kind of how the the cloud ISP, the bandwidth lease, and the marketplace all work together. Now we didn't wanna have just one company like an Uber type thing because, you know, that would be a monopoly, and that's what we're trying to get away from in the Internet space.
So is it it's like basically as a user, if I want to get Internet, I can spend some, PKT in order to pay my neighbors a bit for their bandwidth that maybe they are they have because they have special equipment to access the Internet.
The vision is that as a user, you should be able to download an app and get on the Internet for absolutely free. The only thing that you should need to pay for is a guarantee of bandwidth at times of congestion. And that's also a a fundamental like, that's one of our political positions on this project is that when there is extra bandwidth, it should be free.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That that is I don't know how much you know about, like, energy markets, but sometimes energy markets also function that way. I mean, depending, of course, on how it's designed and what the particular market conditions are, but sometimes you can get paid for using energy because they have too much there's just been too much energy being, produced. So I guess that's Yeah. Kind of the way you guys are maybe approaching it.
Yeah. I mean, bandwidth is not something you don't need to get rid of it. You can just Yeah. Not use it. But, it it's it was a fundamental, really sticking point of the project that I mean, granted, PacketCrypt is going to create this artificial demand for bandwidth, and we and that is also for a purpose. But,
the the And and the purpose, maybe just to make that clear, the purpose is so that you don't have to pay, you know, some sort of monopoly telecom company out your ass to be able to go on the Internet.
So the purpose of PacketCrypt so let let's let's get into PacketCrypt a little bit because, I mean, we're talking about proof of work. A lot of people have different opinions about proof of work. Now, I mean, the number one thing that everybody needs to understand about proof of work is that it is very difficult to build a secure blockchain without proof of work. I don't feel comfortable saying that it is possible. I know also the Ethereum people don't feel comfortable saying they they're not comfortable saying, okay. We can just switch to proof of stake. A a lot of projects are doing things that are not proof of work at this point. I I don't, you know, I don't feel comfortable with their security model. Just, like, from my security background, from, you know, what I've done, CJDNS or Crippad. If I do a security analysis on a proof of work coin, I can basically evaluate it and have a a good level of confidence in it. When I'm doing a security analysis on a proof of stake coin, it's really up in the air. So, you know, that's the first thing. And then this is the thing that I think people need to understand about why, projects continue to do proof of work even though, you know, there are other projects going around saying, we're a green blockchain. You don't need to do that. Now with regard to PacketCrypt itself, you know, I wanted to recapture as much of the value of that effort that's being done as possible because, you know, there can be some debate about the the environmental impact. But what there is no debate is that there is wasted resources here. You know, you you some people are putting something up that could be put to good use, and they're throwing it away. And so I wanted to recapture as much as possible. Now, again, with proof of work, anytime that the the work task itself can be changed, can be altered by a human being, that creates a security vulnerability because, one of the miners can alter that task such that it, it that they already know the answer. And then they'll supply the answer, and then they'll get the coin, but they already knew the answer when they changed the task. So this is this is like a hard problem with proof of work where this is why a lot of the sort of folding coins and and that types of stuff have some some major security issues that is why we're not seeing them in the more mainstream, projects like, you know, maybe Monero or Ethereum or even Bitcoin. You know? But I don't think Bitcoin's ever really gonna change their proof of work because, they're very focused on, you know, the deal you signed up for. Now with PacketCrypt, we do two things. We exchange lots of data between all the miners, and the other thing that we do is we do a lot of encryption. And the encryption is designed so that it it mimics the same behavior as encrypting a packet. And the reason to do that is because that way, anybody who's building who designs, high performance, crypt packet crypt miner is actually also going to be designing a high performance packet encryption, device for, say, VPN for CJDNS. So we took the same encryption operations that are being used in CJDNS right down to the aspect of different packet sizes. Everything to the all the way to the end, and we place that into packet crypt so that whoever builds a fast miner needs to be able to do exactly the same task as encrypting VPN traffic. So that's the one aspect. And then the other aspect is, of course, this artificial demand for bandwidth, which, intuitively, if you have, an Internet connection and you're paying, you know, $50 a month for it, but then you're able to get that back, or or even more back as a, from mining with PacketCrypt, then you're able to upgrade that Internet connection. And some of the ISPs maybe are saying, okay. We're not allowing this because it uses too much bandwidth, and there's a whole other aspect about that because they oversell that bandwidth. But if they're if if you're needing to upgrade to a business line that's unlimited, well, that's actually a benefit too because then you can start sharing that Internet with your neighbors and your neighbors' neighbors, and then that entire community can potentially turn off their cable and just switch to using the packet network.
So, well, in compared to to Bitcoin, like the type of proof of work is very, obviously it's like energy intensive. It's about calculating for like a for a particular hash. But in in this example, it sounds to me a little like, in the Bitcoin example, you see like this competition for faster, graphics cards and like this specialized equipment which can be very wasteful over a certain amount of time as they upgrade. Like, they double in, in efficiency every year every couple of years or so. And they need a lot of, like, it it it's this one unidirectional sort of competition. When it comes to this type of proof of work consensus mechanism, do you have or do you foresee, like, any type of similar unidirectional competition that would lead to just sort of no cap like, a non cap to energy usage or something like that?
I think that the only the only difference in the end so you you can't really change the proof of work. So contrary to what a lot of projects with green proof of work have to say, I mean, I I have to side with the Bitcoin people here. You can't change the proof of work to something that's less energy intensive because maybe it's all about storage. Oh, okay. Then the same amount of actual effort is gonna be put into acquiring
those disk drives. Which is what this is what happened with, with Chia, I think. Exactly. Exactly.
So, you know, I mean and if Chia was branding itself as a green cryptocurrency, I think, in the early early moments. Yeah. And I I mean, the problem is, you know, you just can't you can't really do that. So I I mean, that said, I'm actually favor I actually think she is a great project, and I I I'm I'm very much a fan of, of, Brent Cohen. You know, he and he built he built bit BitTorrent, you know, incredible engineer. And, and I think that what will come out of Chia is going to be eventually much cheaper disk storage because, the it's creating its artificial demand for storage. And, yeah, it's gonna drive up the price right now. And everybody's gonna complain about that. But three, four years down the road, we're gonna be starting to see, like, 10 terabyte SSDs and 20 terabyte SSDs. And nobody's really gonna notice when that happens because, you know, it's now it's there, but all that r and d got paid for by Chia. And it's kind of the same thing, like, I know I I don't know if you have, like, an a seven nanometer processor on your computer. I I have this, this this Mac with this five nanometer thinger. Basically, the equipment that made the seven nanometer process was paid for by Bitcoin miners because those are the people who care enough about making chips at the next level down process and that they would actually pay significantly for just a slightly more powerful chip to to save just a slight bit of electricity. So, I mean, basically, the fab got paid for by Bitcoin miners, and we're all using the chips from that fab. And and nobody thanks them for that. People just talk about how wasteful it is because that's what makes headlines. So I have a very, very unique opinion of it, obviously. And, you know, I see the people the Bitcoin people, and they're not they're not representing themselves very well. And I see the people talking about, against it, and I I feel like their arguments are not very, very coherent. So Mhmm. You know, it's it's just But I guess with with the example of, like, using Bandwidth,
would the comp similar to how Chia had made like basically a competition for, disk drives. The competition under like a, a PKT, mesh network system, would it then be for bandwidth? Like for connect like, would people be making more efficient machines for being able to, transfer more data across the Internet faster?
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're gonna see that. I mean, already, we've got people figuring out, okay, we need to bring a 100 gigabit into this computer. How do we do it? Yeah. And where where we're going next is we're gonna see people bringing a fiber into different areas, into different communities because they wanna mine. And then when they you know, what the thing about packet crypt is you bring a fiber into a community to mine, and then maybe that mining becomes less profitable in the future when, you know, whatever the economics change. That fiber that you bought is still a fiber. You know? Whereas you buy, a Bitcoin mining rig and, you know, that mining rig goes out of style. And that means things basically a paperweight, unless you have, like, free power. Yeah. But you bring a fiber in, and that fiber is still a fiber. And that's one of the, like, big thoughts in the design of PacketCrypt. Now we are going to upset a lot of telecoms and monopoly telcos because they are doing what is, in my opinion, a very dirty trick, which is that they oversell. They they take one Internet sir Internet connection, and they resell it to 10 people. You know, it's it's like a gym that is, you know, selling subscriptions, selling subscriptions, but they're just hoping people don't all show up at the gym at the same day because they don't have the equipment. And that's kind of what the, major ISPs, are doing. And, they so, you know, we're already starting to to see, you know, some of the hate tweets about Packet because, you know, people oh, they're gonna use up all the bandwidth. And, yeah, I mean, we are because they're selling the same thing over and over again. You you can't do that. You know? You you gotta actually have the infrastructure. And finally, you know, somebody's coming along to create some pressure to make that infrastructure. And if they're not willing to make it, then we'll build it. Yeah. But I guess the difference here is that with packet, you really have to build
good infrastructure as compared to like in the case of Bitcoin or Chia. These are like consumer products that you can like you just churn them out. But here like when you build a fiber line you're building, like, access to pretty good Internet potentially for a lot of people.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, that's Yeah. That's I that's the in the design of PacketCrypt. I mean, you can also talk about the, censorship resistance that's in the design of PacketCrypt. You know? There's a lot of things that are in that design, like, the fact that when you need to send all this traffic to these other miners, then, you know, you can slip some actual messages into that traffic. And it's really hard to, because if you're blocking packet crypt traffic, then the the packet crypt miners are gonna find a way around that because there's there's an economic incentive to find a way around it. And so if you if you're you know, it's going to create this cat and mouse game, a market for censorship evasion when people are censoring packet crypt. So unlike, for example, Tor, I2P, which are great protocols for hiding in the shadows, you know, this is a protocol that challenges censorship right face to face.
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Now Let's say what if I throw, like, this, like, a disaster or no. Or like a potential scenario, I'll say that. Yeah. Let's do it. Like, is it is it possible that, you know, the rich guy in the community has a fiber connection, to his house. IT savvy guy makes a lot of money already. And he goes on packets and he sells, his bandwidth to his local community. Could he essentially become, like, the community's ISP and potentially, like, use that leverage somehow? I don't know. Maybe block block local news to to, like, some I don't know. But, like, you know,
in Yep. I get you. That's built into c j d n s. All data is encrypted.
And why is all data encrypted? C j d n s?
Yeah. That's what we'll be building it on, is we'll be we'll be evolving the CJDNS protocol because it uses source routing. And source routing is, in this case, the answer to the problem of subdivision of, of of the the network, or, network equipment. We need to be able to subdivide that so that when he has that, that big antenna and he's, you know, bringing Internet into that community, he's not just bringing it in and then selling the Internet like a classical ISP. He's offering that bandwidth to all of the cloud ISPs that are in, you know, who knows where, probably California. And they're they're all these startups. They're competing for the customers who are in that community. And, you know, customer uses whichever one they want, and they may use the same person's, tower to connect, but that connection is being routed and controlled by the company of their choice. And that's that, aspect of having the company of your choice, even though you're getting it from that one person, is how we evade the aspect of that one person then taking control over that Internet in that local community. Also, how we prevent the monopolization by decoupling the infrastructure from the service, we can prevent the monopolization.
So you're keeping so, basically, you know, rich guy in, like, some podunk town is providing Internet for people in, you know, you know, metropolitan, cities. You know, it's like it's not there's not a direct, such a direct connection between this guy and giving internets to his community as, like, Internet lord or something.
He's providing, what would you call it? Like, he's providing this raw resource, and he's not even providing it to the people in the community directly. He's not he's not doing he's not engaging in business with that community. He's providing that resource to these cloud ISPs who are who knows where, and their their Internet service providers who it's kinda like a VPN provider. They don't own any infrastructure, but they do the in the interaction with the customer. He provides that raw resource to them, which they then leverage in order to offer that Internet service to the people in that community. So it's it's basically everything is going through a VPN all the time. You can think of it that way.
So then, like, there there will be I guess at least a few different businesses that are doing this. They're like connecting they're the ones connecting the users with the with the providers of, of bandwidth. So, like, they're sort of, I mean, could could that is that the position of, like, the trader a bit?
Yeah. Yeah. So these companies that don't own any infrastructure, they're they're just like the the VPN companies. You need to type VPN, and you get, like, 30, offers on on a list on when you search it, and you don't know which one to choose. It's kind of like that. So it's very hard for them to be abusive of their customers because there's so many choices, and you choose the one that works best for you. And you don't even need to involve yourself with packet or cryptocurrency when you're just buying from one of these companies. You can pay in whatever way works for you, and that that's also by design. You pay them. And the only place where packet is involved is in the way that they pay the person who's actually running the antenna on their roof. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Yeah. So then, as a user, do you need any infrastructure beyond your own router, I guess?
I mean, as a as an end user, it'll be an app on the phone or an app on the desktop. That's, you know, that's really all you're gonna need. Or yeah. You could have a router as well. Yeah. I imagine
you'll need Wi Fi connection, but that Wi Fi connection needs to be provided by,
one of the infrastructure providers that's local to you. And then you're gonna have the app, and it's gonna control your Wi Fi on your phone and make it do weird things that automatically connects to all these different Wi Fi's and automatically handles getting you to your,
your cloud ISP. And so that then you can get on to that VPN. So what do you think about, like, except for some some lucky cities have been able to basically, provide their own Internets to their citizens. They just get, you know, there's a group of telecom companies say we'll do it ourselves and they provide Internet for much much cheaper than, like big tech telecom companies would. Is it is this something I kind of see this almost as like, like a grassroots movement more of being able to do that in your in your town rather than having to, like, get lucky and, you you know, your mayor, like, spearheads some sort of effort?
So my opinion of these, state or city, municipal, Internet service offerings is kind of it's complicated. Right? Because, you know, I've been living in Europe for, some years now. And the European part of me, it says, oh, that's a brilliant idea. That's how everything should work, just like the water, just like the roads. But the American part of me is saying
Freedom. We can't
allow we can't allow the state to have control over something as critical as the means by which the people communicate. Because the way we communicate is the way we decide we basically decide who the state's going to be. And so it makes an end run on democracy when the state can potentially limit the way we communicate. So, anyway, I mean, that's that's a European American kind of
difference of culture. Is it the same as the state if it's like a with a municipality, I get, like I guess maybe, like, the the localist in me wants to think that, generally, municipalities aren't most municipalities are not strong enough to have, like, an incentive to really want to censor the Internet or to be able to do such things. I mean yeah. I don't know.
Where where are they gonna get their Internet from? Right? I mean, they're they're gonna get it from a data center. You know, they're gonna get it from somewhere, and it's probably gonna be unencrypted, you know, plain text, you know, Internet. It's gonna be coming from somewhere. And in the end, the state's gonna have very good control over that, that that Internet traffic. So, I mean, I think it's something to be concerned about. And in in every aspect of the CJDNS and the packet ecosystem, you know, we built in these controls where, we've we've believed that it's fundamental that when, you know, you know, free speech is a big, is is a a big debate, but we believe that when Alice wants to talk to Bob and Bob wants to talk to Alice, that communication's sacred. So, you know, it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody gets to stand on a soapbox and be annoying all the time, but it does mean that, you know, two people should be able to have a communication between themselves. And, you know, that that's the vision of end to end encryption, you know, and that's what I've been doing for, like, ten years. So I'm pretty committed to that one at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, you can you could say that the problem solved by just putting it into the state. I think that it is the Americans will are are probably too, extremist about this saying that, you know, it's inevitably going to blow up. But I think that it is more fragile, and it's something that needs to be one needs to pay attention to this.
Yeah. Do you think that's there any, like, other implications beyond because like is there any implications for how platforms on top of the internet would be built if you're using, PKT or using like this type of ISP, infrastructure? Do you think there's any implications there? I guess because only I only ask this because there's I don't know. Sometimes I get, like, a bit frustrated how sort of the left is so so open to using very, like, big tech centralized platforms for communicating and and organizing. And maybe that's just a a habit of, you know, not being a a tech person studying social sciences so you don't really know. You don't want to get into all these technical details. You just want something to work and but you're sacrificing something whenever you're going for, like, this type of convenience.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I as I've said before, I wish the, populist left and the populist right would compare notes from time to time because they they both get certain things right, you know, and, they both both have certain, let's say, blind spots. Yeah. So, you know, it it doesn't really solve the problem. So so Packet does not solve the problem of big tech organizations alone. Yeah. It's not something that we that we were trying to directly solve. And the reason's because this is really complicated too. What happens is you have, like, you know, you make a search engine and you have a thousand search engines, and then one of them turns out to be really good. And everybody jumps on board the one that's really good, and then that one get becomes really big. And then it becomes a de facto monopoly even though there is, like, 10% of these other search engines that people use. And that pattern seems to repeat itself, in the Internet, but these are not monopolies in the traditional sense that they can force people to use them. It's just that everybody gravitates to them because of network effect. And it is a problem. It's just that it's a problem that I'm not sure how to solve without reducing people's agency. You know, I want if somebody wants to use, you know, Google, who am I to tell them that, no. You can't use Google. You have to use the the local thing because I told you that I'm I I'm ruling over you and telling you you cannot use the thing that you wanna use. And so it it's a very difficult problem.
Yeah. The there's sort of like a part of me that which is that, you know, why can't we just have one's like, one search engine is okay, but can we just call it search engine? Like, can we just, like, non branded note company? It's just like a public utility. Like, you know, can we all just have, like, all of our movies all the movies in one place and and just just an on an app on your phone or your computer called movies. You don't have to go through Netflix. You don't have to go through like these like for profit centralized, companies. No. Apple seems to like to do that. You know, they they you open up like they have these apps called like movies. Or I mean they put an I in front of everything and then Right. Right. Yeah. And then whatever it is. No. Yeah. I I I would hope that I don't know. As peer to peer technologies in general just become more prevalent and more popular, of an option and it functions at least at the same level as what's already provided then we begin stick through that process. We can begin to rethink our relationship with these platforms.
Yeah. I mean, that's my hope. That that's what I'm hoping because, there's a there's a essay called, oh, no, Ecology of Something and Strong Drink. I don't I don't remember the exact title of the essay. But, basically, the argument is that when, they prohibited alcohol in The United States, after that, it led to people it it broke through all of the, what do you call it, cultural, behavior patterns that were built up around, reasonable usage of alcohol. And so when they removed the prohibition, people didn't know how to drink responsibly. And so, there was this, like, kind of chaotic adoption of alcohol, which is not present as much in Europe where it was legal all through that period. And they compared it also to, when you when you spray a pesticide or a herbicide on a piece of land, and then what comes up again, what grows is first the weeds. You don't you don't have a a a an even ecosystem from the beginning. You don't have a a healthy ecosystem. You have just all weeds after you have decimated everything. And I think that the Internet is just so new that it's all been sterile. I mean, if you think about it, like, thirty years ago, or twenty years ago, it was you know, we had our five channels, you know, or three channels depending on where you lived. And, you know, you just watched nineties, ads and sitcoms, and it was it was awful. And, and And we thought we were having fun. Oh, I knew I wasn't. I I knew it was garbage. I was just sitting through it. But, you know, that that's a that's a, like, a sterile environment, and now we're we're exiting that sterile environment and and returning to this world where people communicate with one another. But in a lot of cases, I don't I think we don't know how to communicate anymore, or we don't yet know how to communicate with the new tools that we have. And so we have people getting into these, these crazy groups and, you know, the Twitter stuff and and all of this that and and we just need time to adopt some of these tools that we have and and for this to settle down and and grow an ecosystem, basically. You know? And and that's why I'm I'm excited about the Fediverse as a a technology.
No. Yeah. We originally met through, through, Mastodon. Yep. Which is, I think is a is a really interesting platform that I think, people should definitely check out. I I'm a part of the social dot coop, instance. So I just pay, like, I think it's like £1 a month. And, you know, they they use that money, and they use it to to support cooperatives.
Yeah. I just joined the, the the oldest or the the original whatever Mastodon instance by the developer of Mastodon when it was new, and then I ignored it for a few years. And then I've I got back into it because it is it is pretty pretty interesting. I mean, the the the big value there is that you have incredible moderator to user ratios, which you just can't have on something like, I don't even wanna name them there. It's terrible. The bird. The bird app. The birds. Oh, yeah. And the face thing, it's it's all awful. You know, and it's and you can have these relationships with your moderators that you could never have there, and you have these relationships between the instances. I still think that there's a significant need for improved moderation. And I think the the whole extremism thing can just fly off, fly out fly out of control as you see if you kind of go to the dark side of the Fediverse. But, I I do think that this is where the future does
lie. Yeah. Yeah. One of one of the interesting features about it I think is like not having the numbers in Mastodon. Like in Twitter there is like people may not want to admit it but like when you see the when you see like the number of likes or the number of retweets it's sort of like it grabs you a little bit, you know. And it's designed that way to get to keep your attention so you like check back the app to see how how did tweet do, you know. And you just the thing. But with Mastodon, I don't I don't get that as strongly and it's more it's more like a like a collaborative communication, I guess, when I talk to people. I don't I've never been in like a, I don't know, just like a an insane fight. Some people have, sure, but it's not not as vicious as Twitter. Sorry. The bird app.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't have I don't have a lot of interactions on Twitter. I don't have a lot of, you know, negative interactions on Mastinon. Just just hit the mute button. You know? It's it's person's in their headspace. You're in yours. It's okay. You know? Yeah. And I think people learn that and and adopt that those more practices. Mhmm. Yeah. Anyway, so what got you into, so, you know, the the one of the reasons why I was so interested in in your podcast was that, you know, what you're doing is you're talking about social you have blockchain and socialist. And most of the people that I interact with either are seeing money as entirely a positive thing or they see money as entirely a negative thing. So, So, you know, you've got a lot of the people, in the blockchain space, and they're just like, rich, rich, rich, make money, make money. Making money is good. It's all good. Anything involving more money is always better. And then you have a lot of the people, especially, like, on the Mastodon, you know, those are more of the, socialist type people, and they're they're just sort of rejecting the concept of money entirely. And so you have this this really unique blend, and that's what attracted me because, I mean, it's for me, it's very clear that you don't adopt either of those extreme positions. So tell me a little bit about, especially what what is money for you and what what do you see in blockchain technology?
Yeah. I guess I think that's I mean, for me, I think money can be a lot of a few a few at least a few different things. There's, like, quite a few different theories around money and what what makes money money. I think one of the, unfortunate sort of down one of the unfortunate things that I think Marx missed a little bit, in in in in some of his writing was on money. Not that he was like horribly wrong and horribly, incorrect or anything. I think he has a lot of really when it comes to, you know, all the different types of value that he goes into in Das Kapital I think is really interesting and there's a lot of to take away from that. But he uses sort of, the liberal sort of version of the theory of money as like money as like a commodity, money. He sort of refers to money as like the ultimate commodity that is exchangeable for all other types of commodities. And I think to a certain extent, in certain cases that is that is true. But I think there are other types of frameworks that you can look at money. I think you can see money as like a type of promise. There was of course David Graber's book debts in which he talks about money as as debt and and credits, which I think, maybe explains money a little bit more. And, yeah, there's I think one of the because he he he talks about socialism as like this is transition to communism, communism being stateless, classless, moneyless society. And I think when he was talking about moneyless, he was talking about like his own theory around money which is largely sort of this commodity theory of money and being like ultimate exchange for other commodities. And Capitalism is like a mode of production in which like the commodity commodity exchange is is pretty dominant. So in that case like I I get I get why he why he says that and why he believes that. I don't think that if we're going to move beyond capitalism into a post capitalism which I hope is going to look more like a socialism and is not going to be like a reversion into feudalism or something like that. But that there needs to be some type of like signifiers and, like, signals for particular, actions to occur, like, to avert resources in the prior into a particular direction. And so I think that's sort of one of the problems that socialists, I think, haven't very clearly defined, in certain cases. And which is why it's pretty difficult because we're sort of constricted by this commodity theory of money which is not it's not the only theory of money. I mean there's a lot of different ways that money sort of manifests itself. And that and that's what's ironic is that that's the same type of view of money as a lot of like crypto people is that especially in Bitcoin they see they compare Bitcoin to gold as digital gold. And so basically you're calling it a a a digital commodity. It's you know and it's, yeah to them if you're a gold bug then you think that's, you know having some sort of value that's backing your money as like a particularly good feature. So you can there's there's like this need for, like this ultimate truth that you can you can always latch on to. But I think in reality money, if you think about money not as a commodity and as like a promise or as a debts or as like as something else something a bit more social, then it gets a lot more complicated and it's a lot more, there's a lot more nuance in it. And I think for crypto and especially a lot of bitcoin people that's that's very frustrating to them because they look at the fiat money system is that it's which is really you know the state is able to print as much money as it wants and how it wants to. Of course, it's not like an ideal situation, but I don't think reverting to, a pure commodity back to money is necessarily going to bring about the type of positive changes that you want.
I mean, I I kind of I think that there there's something to be said in favor of hard money. I mean, packet is hard money because, you know, we copied the Bitcoin code base. We didn't wanna have the bugs in the finance. And, you know, the thing I think is in favor of hard money is the the idea that, you just keep people away from these things because people are inevitably going to make some bad decision at some point or another that you'd really wish wasn't made that way at that time. But at that time, it seemed like the right decision, you know, like in 2008 when, you know, the the bankers sort of pressured the government to print a lot of money in The United States and, kind of hand it to them and and and let them off on some of their problems. And and those problems ended up trickling down to the rest of the economy and and hurting a lot of people. So, I mean, I I think that the Yeah. The to speak in favor of the Bitcoin people, it's clearly, you could make a good argument that this is something that should be beyond the reach of human hands. I get the sentiments. I definitely get the sentiments. I think the issue though is that it's I think it's much less about
how hard your money is and more to do with how democratic your money is. Because really we have zero inputs into our monetary policy, in The US by design. Right. And, you know, if you, if you restrict yourself to solely thinking about like, I don't know that someone needs to control money rather than like the democratization of money then I can see why maybe you would think that hard money would be, a particularly useful, like more beneficial system.
Yeah. I mean, I I think that the the the thing where I think the Bitcoin people are wrong is I mean, I think that they're thinking or at least some of them are thinking that, money is there's real money and all other money is fake. And I I I don't think that that's a tenable argument. I I think that, you know, money is what we agree money is, and we agree because it's that we agree on that framework because that framework benefits all of us. You know, it's it's just like law. It's just like language. It's just like protocols. But what what framework is is the best one? And, I mean, the the concept of just blockchains is that we're just gonna let everybody decide what framework they want, and they can exchange the the coins for the other coins. And, yeah, there'll be some bubbles and some busts, and we'll let people do what they wanna do. Very a very, liberal, attitude, you know, in in the in the best way. You know, the concept of letting people do what they wish is, something that, has worked very well for keeping people alive in the past, two hundred years. And many other ideas didn't work so well for keeping people alive. So, you know.
Yeah. I mean, there yeah. I think, well, it's it's it's more I think the blockchain is sort of, it's being brought up in a world which is very neoliberal. Which is very, you know, free market based. And, we're seeing the issues with the free market. But sort of the the difference is that, you know, with a lot of Bitcoin people who tend to be right wing libertarians, to them it's more about, like, bringing more of the markets. And for us on the other side, we're saying that no markets are sort of causing these problems to a certain extent the way that markets under capitalism sort of, create these create these issues. But I would what I would really love is to introduce to these people like just new monetary systems. Like under like just introduce mutual credits. Like now under a mutual credit system, the government doesn't print the money. You print the money. We all print the money. We all democratically decide how we all want to print money to each other. And I think that would be a really interesting, a really interesting experiment because it really I think mutual credits is, it removes the sort of alienation that is given through a commodity exchange, through money exchange in, you know, today at least.
I mean, I I imagine, in an ideal world that I might have a phone and I keep my my spending money on my phone, and and some of it would be some, piece of equity in the, butcher shop that's down the road, and some of it would be some equity in the, the pizza place around the corner, and some of it would be some equity in the coffee shop, you know, and maybe the houses around the the way, because these are things that I think are cool. And I like them, and I believe in them, and I would like to own some of them. And then maybe I would own some solar panels somewhere as well. And I would just kind of pick out all the things that I I want to have something of and, you know, and then and just enter all that, and that's my money. And when I wanna spend it, I just sell a little piece of it into a marketplace. You know? I I think that we have the the technological capability to do that, and it's just, just we kind of need to maybe get more experience with the concept of doing it. Not sure. I mean, one thing I think that is is important is to start differentiating between what we want and how we wanna get there because, you know, I think that, you and I would very much agree on what we want. I I consider myself as a sort of an anarchist in terms of what I want because I want to feel like I live in a world where nobody's ruling over me, and I wanna feel like I live in a world where nobody's ruling over anybody. And I I I think that you probably feel relatively similar. And but then how do we get there? I I'm okay that there be lots of rules and and regulations and whatever it takes in order to get us to that world where I don't feel like anybody's ruling over me. And, you know, I'm living in a country with lots and lots and lots of laws and police and military and all these things. And, I don't wanna I don't wanna give them, too much credit because they are very, hard on a lot of people. But, they create this this ecosystem where for maybe the majority of people never have an interaction with the police. So, and granted, I know it's not perfect, and a lot of people do have, negative interactions. But, you know, this this creation of more rules takes people in the direction of feeling like there's less being ruled over than you might have in, like, a, what is the one of these war zone countries where technically there aren't any rules, but it's very you're very much ruled over by the local warlord or whatever it might be.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think Somalia is, like, the perfect example of a libertarian utopia.
Well, if if libertarianism is about the means and not ends, but for me, you know, I want libertarian ends. I don't want libertarian means. You know, I I wanna feel libertarian I won't feel liberate liberated, you know. I don't wanna Yeah. I don't care how I get there.
Yeah. Maybe, since we're we're about at the hour, I don't know if you want to talk about some of the any future plans or vision, like, any upcoming, milestones for PKT for people to to look out for?
Yeah. Well, we're we're developing a lot of the technology. So, I mean, we we did launch with, not as much of the technology because it is, you know, it's a true to life kind of blockchain. No, no VC funding, no token, no, pre mine, none of these types of things. So, you know, things happen as it goes. You know? We started, and then we developed the the finality of the technology. So, a lot of stuff with Lightning Network, CJDNS, the VPN marketplace, these are the types of things that are ongoing, you know, interacting it with, other, blockchains, being able to wrap it into Ethereum so that you can use, pack it with other currencies. These are the types of things that are ongoing. I mean, you can go to pkt.cash, and, there's a there's a road map there. And you can, join us on, pkt.chat. And, you know, we have a place where you can, just chat with the community.
Maybe just to finish off, maybe you just share with people where they can, keep up with you and and all your projects, like PKT.
Yeah. So, I mean, mostly, the way we coordinate is on pkt.chat, which is a self hosted, kind of Slack like thing, and, it's open source. So, you know, I everybody I invite everybody to come and and hang out and, talk about ideas and projects. You know, it's a it's a place where we should be able to, you know again, like, in the concept of, of libertarian and feeling liberated and socialist and feeling social, where we can all just kind of come together and have good ideas together and, you know, and then try to get some of those things implemented and build some of that technology. Obviously, you know, we have this super ambitious road map. You'll find it on pkt.cash. And, but, you know, we're we're all here sort of writing the road map together as participants of the project. This is not, like a token with, you know, a centralized, issuer and then, like, an, ICO or any kind of a venture capital. This is something that we're all sort of doing together. So we we learn as we go, and we we try, you know, what what I think is the right way is is just my proposal, and this is something that we're developing together every day.
Nice. Cool. People should definitely check it out. It's a really interesting project. And, yeah, we'll stay in touch. Curious to see what happens to the future.
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. On.