We Need More Sociologists in the Blockchain Space!
For this week's interview I spoke with Kris Jones (@KrisJ_Official) who wrote his Masters thesis in 2018 titled "Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain” as well as another article titled "Blockchain in or as governance? Evolutions in experimentation, social impacts, and prefigurative practice in the blockchain and DAO space." He also has a Medium profile where he expands on different ideas he wrote about in his thesis. During the interview we talk about what got him interested in block...
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Transcript
Hello again? Bullshit. Hello, everyone. You are listening to the Blockchain Socialist Podcast. And today, I have a special guest. His name is Chris Jones. He has his fingers in a little bit of everything in a lot of really interesting projects. So that's why I have him on today to speak about some of those. And he also published his master's thesis in 2018 titled Toward a Political Sociology of Blockchain. So, hey, Chris. How you doing? Hey. Not too bad. Thanks for having me. So, Chris, I know you because you are just a part of so many different projects and a lot of really, really interesting things. And you've and I've been able to be lucky enough to come across your, your writing that I found really interesting. But for the people who maybe don't know you, could you give a bit of an introduction introduction to yourself? For sure. So, yeah, I'm, I'm Chris Jones. I, have been in the blockchain space for a few years now.
Kinda got interested, around 2014, at least in terms of actually getting involved. I'd been interested in the space for a little while before that, but just had never really got into it. Yeah. Right now, I work with several projects in the blockchain space, primarily, the common stack, helping with their communications and, yeah, different kinds of, tool management and contributor management, community work there. I also help with the community, with Keep Network. I've also helped a little bit here and there, on on an informal or volunteer basis with, MetaGame, Radical Exchange, as well as, Don't Buy Meme for a little bit as well with their community. So, yeah, a bunch of different, different projects in the space that I've been involved with. And, yeah, really, really just been interested in the possibilities that this space opens up. So that's what that's what really brought me into this space. I, like I said, I got kind of interested in the space, a little bit before I kinda dove into it. That was kinda the end of my undergrad. What were your thoughts at first
during that time? Like, were you immediately, like, oh, I gotta know more? Were you first, like, a bit wary? Like, I don't know.
Yeah. So, I mean, at the start, it was it was kind of that that would have been 2012, 2013 ish. It was really just Bitcoin then. Yeah. It was very much just Bitcoin. So, and at that time, it was really kind of just starting to hit some of the more mainstream, outlets and things cause of all obviously price action at the time. Like, I think it had gone to, I don't know, just under a $100 or something around the time. So at the time that was that was massive and people were like, oh my God, what is this? And, Yeah, it was still quite technical to get into. So a lot of people, were discouraged by that or just didn't understand it. And but for me, the biggest thing was I it was something new. It was something interesting that was very different, from other at least in the in the aims of what it was trying to do. And, yeah, I just, got interested in particularly the the first thing I was that was really hard for me to wrap my mind around was just the mining aspect and how that worked. And so the first thing that I did, when I actually got involved, which I don't know that I would, recommend this route, nowadays. But, at the time, I purchased some, just a small amount of, cloud mining, Bitcoin mining, power. So out of, yeah, just kind of a shady company. And the first Bitcoin cloud mining service that I participated in, they actually I'm not sure if they were an intentional Ponzi, but they did go under and, yeah, kind of I, had the rug pulled. Oh, shit. Pretty early on in my, yeah, basically my first time. But, yeah, I got a little bit of Bitcoin back from that. There was kind of a settlement. I was lucky enough to, yeah, have a little bit, come back to me. Then I, got some more cloud mining, service through, Genesis Mining. You did it again. I did it again. I did it again. So but, yeah, that was really the first the way that I really delved into it and tried to understand, kind of the the mechanics of what were going on, was, yeah, digging into that mining system, trying to get because at the time, I was still a student. I didn't have a lot of extra cash, so I wasn't really able to buy, an ASIC or or get a computer, a GPU miner set up or anything like that. So I really only had, like, $50, a $100 to put into it. So that was the most cost effective way for me to and at the time, I I knew it wasn't necessarily, like, a return on investment. What the the chance of that was not high. But for me, it was more I was investing in trying to figure out how this worked as well. So for me, it wasn't it was not so much about the money, but more about, yeah, the opportunity to see how this worked and kind of expand how I was thinking about it. So that was really how I got into it. After my undergrad, I was working for government for a little bit. Wow. A Bitcoin a Bitcoiner working for the government? What? Yeah. It's very strange. So we'll we'll talk a little bit about different ironic, ideologies in the space. And, I'm kind of like a personification of that in some ways. But, but yeah. So yeah. It's a real strange thing. I mean, I'm a little bit of a crypto anarchist to some extent, at least, and I've worked directly in government. So, yeah, very strange juxtaposition. But, yeah, I so I was working for government for a little bit, just after my undergrad, and still kind of delving into Bitcoin on the side. And really, I got accepted into my master's program in 2016, I believe. And, yeah, that was really where I was able to just say, this is something I'm really interested in. There's not a lot of research in it right now. Could be something that could be useful, and there's a lot of development happening here. And in my undergrad, I should say, I I also studied sociology, and, had a minor in digital culture and new media. So I was already kind of looking at, social trends and social behaviors, in the internet sphere and kind of virtual, meta spaces and things like that. How people interacted and behaved, and how how kind of these tools were used, in much larger ways than just even social interactions. So, so that that had kind of been my area for a little while. And I just kind of furthered that in my master's. I, I was lucky enough to have, find a supervisor that had at least, like, kind of a base base level of understanding of blockchain, and he was quite interested in the possibilities of it as well. And, yeah, I got the chance to really, make that the topic of my master's thesis and just delve in. And a big part of that was just becoming involved in the communities, across the space. Kind of talking to people, seeing why they're involved. Just observing a lot of different conversations on message boards and forums and that sort of thing. So, coming out of that, it really became pretty obvious to me, that there was a lot of social, social things that were going on in the space that had a lot of implications and impacts on the development of the space, as well as things kind of outside the space. So had an effect on, institutional adoption or, like, different different larger corporations and things that you're now seeing start to, see the benefits of the of the technology and start to adopt it. So, and and that was like really just starting to begin, around that time. Also, as you if you were around that space, if you knew, what was going on, there was the huge run up in 2017 and then the massive crash. So you you see kind of some of those, similarities to what we're seeing right now in in early twenty twenty one, and kind of the 2020, is that we're seeing a lot of this institutional adoption or interest and retail investors getting into it and people that are interested in just making money or, like, making efficient, using the technology to, gain efficiencies in what in kind of their different area, which is something that a lot of us that have been involved in the space have seen for a long time. But it just wasn't exposed. And there also is a lot of, as we will get to, ideology is a huge thing in this space, that affects adoption. So, particularly with major corporations and things and the really the public in general have for a long, long time seen Bitcoin and blockchain as this shady kind of underbelly, weird scammy, like, space. So they really had no interest. But now they're starting to see, oh, wow. I can do some of these things that either were not possible or were, like, insanely expensive to, to do. Now I can do these things, on the blockchain, on Ethereum, on, on with Bitcoin, whatever whatever. There's so many different things that have developed now that, yeah, it's basically impossible for them to ignore. But at the same time, these technologies would never have existed, if we had just simply relied on traditional, software development and corporations to it it wouldn't have developed. So Right. There's and and again, that's that's it it comes back to kind of these iron ironic, like, coming together of of different, different things that wouldn't nor wouldn't have been considered to be usefully combined in the past. So, yeah, that's a bit of a whirlwind tour. I mean, I I went back to government after my master's again, partially because, it was the block or, crypto winter. So, like, I was trying to find work in crypto, and it was tough. So I went back to government for a little bit. And, just at the start of 2020, I was lucky enough to, land some more work in crypto. I joined the Keap team, helping with their community and communications stuff, there. Also was able to start helping out with Don't Buy Meme and joined the Commonstack at the 2020. So kind of, yeah,
gradually have As the prices went up,
so did the job openings. Exactly. And I mean, to to some extent, I mean, I I generally don't have a lot of stake in terms of, like, oh, is it a bull market? Is it a bear market? What are the prices doing? I mean, we all have, to an extent, some some tie to that. But, the biggest, the biggest thing that I see is just the opportunities to be involved in the space in, they just are much more open in a, in a bull market, obviously. So there's a, there's a lot more optimism. People are more willing to take risks. And, yeah. So, I'm glad that we're here now. I I really would love to see, more people coming coming into the space and really getting involved and and seeing what there is to offer here. And with a bull market, I think more of those opportunities,
come around. So Maybe people with, like, slightly more diverse ideological, thinking as well.
Exactly. The only problem is, with the bull market, I'm I'm not certain that so the social social implications of a bull market are also quite important because I've I've heard it, from a number of different people, that it's it's really, really great building in a in a bear market, And it's much, much harder, and there's just much more noise in a bull market because there's so many more people just interested in price action or, like, just trying to trade and make a buck. A lot of distractions. Exactly. And you, you don't have that so much in a bear market. It's really the people that are committed. They see the opportunity. They're here even when it's not, like, super economically, like,
attractive for them to be there. So yeah. I guess the people who have, like, the means to do so, at least. Exactly. That's part of a, I think, an effect maybe.
Also true. I mean, some of these some of the positions, and some of the things some of the ways that you even get into, some of the crypto space, opportunities is, like, it's almost like volunteerism and internship, type stuff sometimes, which, yeah, it I mean, that's a barrier for so many people, particularly with who aren't socioeconomically privileged to, to get involved in the space. And that's that's another thing that, like, I would like to see change. And that's that's another reason why opportunities in the bull market are are really important. So, yeah, an increase of noise, but also an increase of opportunity. So,
I mean, there's pros and cons cons to both. But Yeah. Yeah. I'm wondering if you could maybe go a little bit deeper into what interested you about blockchain from the sociological point of view since you had already studied it before. And, like, when you think of, when you think of, like, standard Bitcoin or especially probably during that time, I mean, it's it's pretty heavily individualistic, heavily libertarian, anarcho capitalist, you can even say. People who very, very highly value their individualism and don't like to think about the social, let's say, or it's something they sort of consider it like an externality. So when you are thinking about it from a sociological lens, I guess that's when you begin to, like, unpeel the layers that of what these, like I mean, of these chuds that are saying, like, you know, extreme individualism that actually you can't really get away from from the social. So I'm curious how how you viewed that during that time, especially, with this dominance?
Yeah. I mean, there's there's so much if if you start like you said, if you start to peel back a couple layers, there's so much interesting, in this space sociologically, both in terms of active community work that's happening, different, interactions and things, as well as, like, the implications of some of the development that could be applied to just change a lot of different structures that we take for granted. So, for example, I've I've talked I talked about I believe I mentioned it in my thesis, but I've been in quite involved in the DAO space, which is a really interesting area for me in terms of really flattening organizations, taking out a lot of hierarchical structure, and decision and allocating that decision making power across the entire community. That's a really interesting concept to me. And, yeah, I've also something that can be structured. In some ways, it's it's analogous to the cooperative model, but in some ways, it's also not exactly a cooperative. So and it in many ways, it has the potential to be, more effective, particularly over large, geographical spaces, which is something that really that co op model doesn't it's really difficult to take into account, kind of the breadth as you start to expand, your geographic area. So, that's one area. And, some of the other areas include, just ways of of combating inequalities to some extent, partially because of the transparency that's, afforded by certain certain blockchains. Some some are obviously privacy centric, which that's one of the things that would not or it wouldn't necessarily transfer there. But supply chain stuff, for example, one of the things that that I looked at was the ability to so, as you know, producing goods between different companies, they they generally, supply chain info is pretty, pretty guarded, in terms of where they where they source from, what their practices are. In some cases, it's like proprietary and like a company secret. And in the end, that really only pulls the wool over the consumer size. And so you don't really know what went into the items that you're necessarily buying. And that's one of the ways that I think has been adopted in some in some ways in terms of at least tracking supply chain information. But, I also think it could be really interesting because of that transparency to justify higher prices for ethical goods, things like that. So something that maybe like, we have certain ways of of denoting this currently. So things like fair trade coffee, for example, or, different things like that that are just a certification. But at the same time, it's still very opaque, how they get that certification, who has approved it, where, like, it still doesn't necessarily take into account who produced it or it doesn't provide visibility to confirm and verify that that they've been treated fairly, things like that. So, which is which are all things that could be done very easily using, blockchain to secure and, and verify some of that supply chain technology, or information. So I also looked at mining as, as a form of, basic income if you were able to one of the biggest issues with this, and that kind of goes in the face of what how it's proposed is that right now, and the way that particularly Bitcoin, but also Ethereum to an extent, has gone, is that you can't really run it with consumer grade hardware, which was something that was, quite important, at the start, and to facilitate decentralization. And to me, like, if if you were able to create be able to run the mining system with consumer grade hardware and embed it basically in all generally, most of us have a simple either a computer or or a cell phone or something like that, that if if you were able to run, run that mining, algorithm on those consumer grade hard hardware pieces, it increases your distribution of the token. It, allows, in some ways, allows people to earn an income with something that they don't necessarily have to pay attention to for the most part. And, yeah, it should be accessible. As you know, the push to ASICs and things like that have kind of destroyed that as an option. But it's something that the technology itself, I think, could facilitate at some point in the future. I know there's, I've talked about UBIs and things like that in the past as well. I know, Santiseries' project Democracy Earth is doing, the UBI token. That just launched recently, but, yeah. So I think there's certainly avenues for, combating inequality, dealing with basic income type questions, different things like that, and in a way that, contributes could contribute back to the security and decentralization of the network. So, I mean, these are all pretty, like, big picture things, but, like, there are certainly things that are possible, and really flip a lot of things that we take for granted in terms of our current economic systems turns it on its head. So the other one other interesting sorry.
Tell me, tell me.
So one other interesting thing, about the mining system as labor, brings me back to some of Marx's later writings. So, his some of his later writings talk about, machines and labor and the eventual, basically, consumption of the labor intoor the migration of the labor into the machine as opposed to someone's physical, labor. And in many ways, itso in his writing, I believe he talks about Yeah. It's it's like he's, he reduces it to the physical labor is reduced to, like, a certain moment in time, and the rest of the labor is machine labor. So this, you can see in the mining, example pretty pretty clearly. There's a little bit of labor, obviously, to either set up the machine physically or program it, install the software, that kind of thing. But after that, it's pretty minor. All the work is being done on the chips in the machine, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, it's a way that kind of these developments are really, making some of these old, old theories,
come to life and really, really proving them in in my opinion. So Yeah. I I think that's really interesting because I I think if some either Bitcoin or r slash cryptocurrency thread, someone made the either a thread or comment saying, like, like, right now, you're doing proof of work. Like, when you go to when you go to your job, you're doing proof of work and then, like, your your block reward is your salary that you're getting. Like, it's really interesting how, like, they have to, like, reverse. But but, like, through the use through this new, medium, you're able to, like, see what has already existed for a long time now in a slightly different light maybe. No. But I yeah. I love how I can't remember where I read it, but Marx he just sort of compares, like, basically, like, you the human becomes more and more like a machine, like, over time. As you add more technology on top of it, you, like, you become more and more like the machine. And, like, I think about this all the time, and I'm on my goddamn computer for, like, eight hours a day working. Like, I'm just this fucking computer.
Well, then, I mean, we've we've kind of been, advancing along this path for a long time. Most so many people that I know, from our from an older generation have just been absolutely pissed off that work expects you to have your phone on you all the time. Like, they were always like, oh, yeah. I left work, and that was done. Like, my phone my work phone is there. If you wanted to call me for work, you gotta wait till I'm in my office.
It's an extension of the self.
Exactly. You've you've been you've been mechanized a little bit. And, like, yeah. Not in the cool kind. We're not transformers or something. We don't have, like, mech suits. And it's not even in a beneficial way to humanity, really. It's only beneficial to your employer or the capitalist or whatever, however you wanna frame it. But really, it that the way that we've gone in terms of, mechanizing ourselves has actually reduced our autonomy and reduced our ability to be flexible, with our personal time. Whereas this movement where, where we're actually taking our labor and putting it into the machine and the machine is doing the labor now. It's not an extension of us that we're having to operate the machine anymore. We're literally, relying on the machine to do the labour, and we're able to go and do other things, which to me, that's a much more, human centered development to, and ability to allow us to go back to being social, which is something that really in the blockchain space or in the internet and virtual space generally, People don't don't generally say that, oh, yeah. This development, it's gonna it's gonna allow us to be more social offline, which is, to me, something that this could, potentially,
afford us. If if we lived in, like, a sane society, then the more and more our work got automated, the more time we would have for ourselves. But, of course, that isn't the case whenever you're not, you know, you don't own the means of production, maybe some would say, or you don't have a Gundam suit.
Exactly. And this was, this was kind of one of the Yeah, we thought about kind of moving moving through. And really, it's it's quite quite highlighted in, basically the autonomous. There's a school of thought basically that is, pushing for, automation and a reclaiming of, like, family, social life, and things like that. So, and it's been around since like 60s, 50s, and obviously
Came from Italy, Italian Autonomous.
Yeah. And the, but realistically, the, yeah, I mean, the development of global capitalism has really pushed us not towards that, end goal. They've really integrated the machines and allocated the efficiency gains to the system rather than to the people. So, it's something that I think could have been, developed, in a much more, positive way for humans as opposed to the corporations. And one of the really exciting things about, blockchain
and the ability to turn that on its head. You've already alluded a couple of them already, but, I'm just curious to hear from you what are some of the thinkers that sort of influenced how you approached this space? I mean, a a lot of times people, they love to talk about Hayek as, like, the ultimate god of or, like, the the the the prophets or, yeah, the prophets of, of blockchain coming into being. But when I read some of your work, I mean, there's very clearly like, you you reference Marx, I mean, quite openly, about it. So it's clear that he had some influence, but I'm curious to hear, how you what type of frameworks you tried to try to approach the blockchain space with and who are those thinkers that, I guess, influenced that.
Yeah. You bet. So, I mean, at the time, it was it was really interesting because it was a really interesting time to be doing research and and particularly at an institution where you're expected certain, types of academic rigor, I suppose, in your research. And reference material for this at the time was not, not necessarily academically published, not necessarily written in an academic style. So a lot of the actual literature that I had to reference, was either very strange for academia or very strange for blockchain. So I either looked at other, like, studies of Internet cultures, hacker culture, things like that, or different economic systems, as opposed to and then I would also reference, though, like, forum posts and things like that. So it was a very strange mix of of of content and material, reference material.
Well, did you have to, like, cite, Satoshi's, like, forum posts from 2009 or something like that?
I did, I mean, I cited the, obviously, the the white paper. But, yeah, I did I did, I think I I don't recall if I actually named the forums that I,
that I used. Okay. Is there an MLA format for that? There
is formats. They've formatting for everything for all the rest. Don't worry. Don't worry. But actually, yeah, I mean, there was some weird stuff, like, yeah, referencing forum posts, referencing blog posts, referencing YouTube videos. Like, it was it was a strange, like, material gathering, journey. But, but, yeah, as far as, I guess we can talk about some of the more, specific theorists that I that I, that I utilized, kind of to build out that framework. I mean, we mentioned Marx. Obviously, Marx is, is an influential thinker, in economics and sociology. So and particularly in the space, his his, his writings and theories are are very relevant. So Which any any, like, crypto nerd
or the average crypto nerd hearing that will, like, shudder probably.
Yeah. I mean and and the thing is, people people take Marx to be very political, and he is very political. But his writing, the things that you can take away from his theoretical writing doesn't always have to be political. It can be very informative and and, without having to you don't have to be a Marxist to be and if because that's such a shadowy word to some people. But, like, yeah, you don't have to be a Marxist to be able to understand and apply Marx. So, I mean, that's one of the biggest downfalls that I see. And, yeah, particularly when when we talk about really entrenched ideology, people are like, oh, god. That that person, you can't use them? That that corrupts it all. It's horrible. But, but, yeah, so I I, built a lot on some of Marx's classical, theory as well as some of his like you mentioned, the I I don't really know how to pronounce it. I'm not Drissa? Yeah. Something like that. Something like that. But But his his kind of unpublished piece on on machines, which I found really quite, quite interesting and applicable here. But, some of the more directly applicable to Marx, though not Marx, is Kojin Karatani, his, his piece looking at basically taking Marx's, modes of exchange or sorry, yeah, it's reframing from, from Marx's framing to the development of human history using modes of exchange, so different ways of of trading between groups. So there's, I believe, three main modes of an of exchange, and then he, which are a, b, and c. And then there's mode of exchange d, which is kind of a it's like coming back around on a higher plane. So it's like an evolved version of a, b, and c or or a or a combination. And it's basically the idea that human history, as we go along, it's, the way that we structure and relate to each other is, to some extent, based on modes of exchange as opposed to modes of production. So that one that one was quite interesting to me. Particularly, he talks a lot about the development of the bureaucracy and requirements for, like, money systems to be developed in order for that to happen. So really, development of governance systems, which what are we see that's really what we're seeing right now in in the development of the blockchain space is we've got gotten the tokens. We've gotten kind of some of these systems and mechanics. And now we're really building out the governance to manage this, which, again, is very analogous to how we've developed money systems in the past. The economic bandwidth is there, to facilitate work around development of governance or engagement or incentives to, have people participate, different things like that. So, in many ways, this space is just developing in the way that we've seen, money systems and governance systems develop in the past. So I'm really excited to see where that where those developments come in as well,
and where they end up, really. Yeah. That'll be, that'll be interesting to see.
So one of the other major, theorists that I use, and I just I just like his writing and his ideas, is Nick Sernacek. Oh, yeah. He he did a piece. The one book that I that I found quite influential when I was reading, when I was writing and researching was his his book with Alex Williams, which is Inventing the Future. And so, basically, the ideas are that we should be pushing towards, automation. We should be pushing for, universal basic income to cushion the effects of, what is sure to be some reduction in employment
through automation. And, yeah, so that's It's like a bit of a a left accelerationist.
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, again, kind of kind of strange. I accelerationism is also, yeah, one of the places that I that I explored, to at least some extent. You also have the classic, like, oh, what's it called? The sovereign individual. That that's a piece. I mean, the biggest theme that I see in this space is related more like, you kind of characterized it from the right as, as a pursuit of, like, individualism and individual freedom and liberty, which is true. But I think overall, this space is really concerned about, freedoms. And freedoms can be characterized differently from the left and right, obviously. And I think that's one of the overarching, like, ideals is a push towards some form of freedom. And there's there's ways that different groups can kind of find alignment, with different ideas of freedom and push that forward. And I think that in many ways is is one of the more kind of umbrella driving factors of of the space. Definitely some contradictions,
I imagine, with, these different ideas of freedom.
Exactly. And really, and that's why I think that particular piece of literature is very, influential in the space. I don't there's not many reading lists, in the crypto space that I see that that one doesn't appear on, the sovereign individuals. So yeah, that one's that one's quite interesting. The science and technology studies, so Bruno Latour, Michelle Callon, those those folks, who have were pretty influential in terms of, yeah, considering scientific developments from a social perspective, as well as the idea of multiplicity, which is a little further down that, STS rabbit hole, that I I believe, law, law, he he talks about that, multiplicity a bit more in terms of, particularly one of the pieces that he talked or that they wrote about was, I think it was hand and foot or foot and mouth disease in The UK and how they how they developed it and, like, alternatives and basically the way that they had different multiple realities that they could enact, that the other branches just never were enacted. But they were certainly possibilities, and they enforced and enacted one particular multiplicity, one particular reality that, that we come to know. So, yeah, it's, that the idea of multiplicity and the idea of, like, understanding kind of the same system, in different ways. So someone coming into this, for example, from, from a global country that has that doesn't have stable currency, for example. They're gonna they're gonna look at something like, like Dai, a stablecoin, very differently than someone from The US or or, North America more generally, where they have a more stable, national currency. They're gonna and and they're involved. So in The US, I know lots of people are like, oh, I don't wanna hold hold DAI for long term because I wanna be exposed to, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum price. Whereas people who are, in, like, for example, one of my coworkers is in Venezuela, and he his, the people around there, they just see the the value of DAI just being stable because that's something that they don't even have access to, in their native currency. So there's so many ways of even understanding just the same coin and the purposes and use, for different people, that isn't immediately obvious just from looking at it. If you go into it and just look at it and research it from your own perspective, you're likely missing a lot of, and a lot of other use cases and a lot of other value that people see in those things. So, so, yeah, multiplicity is is a big concept.
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May on on the theme of multiplicity, maybe, I'm curious what you see as sort of like the main sociopolitical camps currently in the blockchain space and how has it changed over time? At least I I get the feeling that, it shifted, a bit in the past, few years as compared to the beginning. I mean, for sure. But I wonder if you do you were you able to get to a political sociology of Blockchain to where you're able to say, you know, we have you can name a couple of different camps or something like that. Yeah. I mean, certainly, I talked about two groups in my in my thesis,
which are very broad groups, of essentially businesses and institutions that are interested in the blockchain space. And then there's, like, the crypto enthusiasts. And, and the way that they interact is very, very different. And I would say, yeah, there's likely similarities to this, ideologically just within the blockchain space. I didn't have a chance to delve into that specifically in my thesis. But yeah, I mean, there's certainly areas I mean, you see this firsthand. I've seen I mean, I follow you on Twitter. And I mean, there's certain people in the space that even look at your handle, and they're just like, Oh, what the heck? This guy doesn't know his name. Or whatever. But, like, it's just it's like an it's certainly an ideological camp that they've really set up strongly in, and anything that comes at them from somehow a different point of view or a different political perspective, they just reject it. Which is so strange, because to me, like, one of the big parts of delving into the blockchain space is requiring yourself to potentially unlearn things that you've learned in the past, kind of throw traditional knowledge in some ways to the side, and be willing to accept new information, which the new information part, that's the part that I'm really seeing lacking, in some of the ideological camps, basically because they're not willing to engage politically
with someone that they see a difference with. Which which I think is interesting just considering a lot of the, like, I think a big pool or a big trend, at least, I see in people who are interested in, the cryptocurrency space tend to, at least in the American context, like, I'm not a Democrat or Republican. I'm not like, they try to they try to be like this, like, pseudo third way type of camp as if they're, like, free thinkers, which is just I mean, libertarians in general think they're think they're like that, except when it comes to maybe socialism or, like, other particular camps that they, really don't like. And then with the, with the Bitcoin maximalist community, I mean, it's just like when you fetishize one thing so much and, like, put it on such a pedestal and, like, think of it as going to solve your problems and and also probably economically have a lot to gain from the very small amount of price changes of one thing, then, like, I I guess it does something to you psychologically. I don't know. That's not me, but that's what I imagine.
Yeah. Yeah. It's and it it's interesting. Like, I would say, there's certainly pretty obvious camps, although they're not necessarily like you mentioned, the Bitcoin maximalist. I would say that's kind of an ideological camp, although it's not necessarily neatly mapped to what we would traditionally think, of as a political ideology. But in many ways, it is. And in some ways, yeah, it can be violently, against every other, project, essentially, to some extent. But yeah, and then there's certainly, for example, the folks that work with Democracy Earth, that's like another camp of really pushing, grassroots engagement and things like UBI and things like that. So that's a really, like, core community empowerment type of ideological camp. And I mean, I'm also seeing this, more recently in terms of things like like the BSC chain, people who are really, really set on, like, oh, it has to be decentralized or I need this to be uncensorable, these transactions kind of thing, where which which is certainly one of the arguments made for Ethereum. And that, yeah, the one of the arguments made against things like proof of stake and more centralized,
consensus models. But you're still seeing a lot of people that are moving over to BSC or, I don't know, any of the other chains. Tron hasn't been so much lately. BSC is the the Binance Smart Chain for for people who don't know. Sorry. Yeah. Binance Smart Chain. Yeah. I mean, that that that that's one thing that I'm interested in in seeing just because people talk about like, there there is the camp of people who sort of fetishize Ethereum as well. And then and, like, and a lot of the arguments for the fetishism of Ethereum, I feel like, is just, like, flipping the flipping and, like, you know, having a market cap larger than Bitcoin. So it's largely price derived, which is, like, okay. So then by, like, very small step that is, like, profits, related. But, like, you know, you have the almost the exact same chain, but, of course, more centralized and whatever. And you can make a ton more money. So and it uses more or less the same tool. So now now once money is in play, the thing that you, like, claim to argue is going to, like, prove that your coin is is better than the other one. Now does it matter anymore if you can make more money somewhere else? Like, are you a profit maximizing individual, or are you as ideologically, sound as as you say you are?
And so that's another thing. I I have seen people in the crypto space describe themselves just as a profit maximalist. Like, that's that's just what they're going for. Right?
Whereas Yeah. The homo economicus.
Yeah. So if you're if you're, like, really focused on decentralization and that's your that's your prime directive for engagement. I mean, yeah, you're gonna be not not happy, with basically, you would be it Binance Smart Chain or analogous chains, gaining traction. Right? So
But, yeah, I I feel it's sort of like the the DeFi degenerates, I guess, is sort of like the profit maximizing,
homoeconomicus. The other camp that I've seen, more recently, and I think this it's kind of blown up, with kind of the NFT exposure to the mainstream space is the environmental, activists basically in the space. So or environmental activists taking action against the space. I've seen a lot of Twitter, Twitter, just conversation about people outside the space trying to theorize how they could attack it and be like, oh, yeah, we gotta make this fail. It's like because it's just blowing up the environment. Okay. But I mean, a lot of those people don't understand that there is development to reduce power consumption and things, at least on the Ethereum side. And that's again why a lot of people, kind of take, issue with some of the Bitcoin maximalism type stuff and and the idea that they're like, oh, well, we'll never switch off a proof of work. Doesn't matter. And then there's, at the same time, people who are on the Bitcoin side that are environmentally focused and, are willing to do things like carbon offsets or things like that or Use solar panels or something Yeah, or believe that And in some ways, I do think this argument holds some water is that over time, the requirement of, of miners to be more efficient, and the dropping price of renewables will eventually move more of the mining power to renewables. I mean, I mean, that's like such, it seems like such a long term thing that Yeah. Like, to to use that as your only defense.
Yeah. It's two it's two, markets like, too much faith in the markets for one. What I think is the my favorite argument that I've been able to come up with is that, like, if you want to stop Bitcoin, like, history has shown that whenever, communists begin to adopt something, the government will be right there to actually do the work that maybe it would take to take down something. So, I mean, it's it's sort of like because most of everything from the left is just like a a bit of a fantasy, and it's not to like it's, yeah, it's a bit too utopian. It's just it's just sort of like, oh, I we should just turn off these digital assets, and we should just, like, you know, make it make it illegal. And, like, okay. We can fantasize, and that would be maybe sure. It would be great if we could do that, but it doesn't come with any it doesn't come with any of, like, the rigor that's the rigor that you take in order to understand Marxist theory of value. You don't put that rigor into trying to figure out how to change, to influence these material conditions. Yep. Exactly. So it takes a bit more work and yeah.
Yeah. Well, and I mean, that's the thing to me also is why when you have these things that are that are or, like, technologies that are developing, and if you look into them, they're doing things that aren't possible, that weren't possible before.
That that that's one of the arguments that have been annoying me. Just like, there's nothing useful that it does. It does like, there's not we can do everything that it can do, without it. Like, okay, then why does it exist?
Like, it's just it's a bit of a And and the the arguments to be like like, oh, just outlaw it. I mean, for one, it misses the whole point of what
what this whole space is about. It's been thinking about this for, like, over a decade now.
It's a it's a bit ahead. The whole space has been building towards making that impossible, yeah, for a decade. So, like, the there's the people coming in just saying a lot. There's there's been a little bit of work done to get ahead of that. But but, yeah, it's like And also though, why would you look at outline and not exploring it, not improving it, something that offers you real benefit and real new opportunity? And just not exploring that, just simply saying, This is new and it has this one this certain externality that we don't like. We're not gonna try and change the externality, we're just gonna cut it off, ban it, and try and make it really bad so people won't touch it. Like
yeah. It it it feeds also into the the belief, on the libertarian or on the right wing side that, like, you know, communism equal when the government does stuff. And so, like, when they see a bunch of these left wing accounts saying, you know, ban Bitcoin, they're like, oh, they just want the government to do stuff. They're doing communism, and then it's just it's just this horrible feedback loop. So maybe, we can start getting into some of the projects you've been working on, to see how you've been applying, trying to tackle this space from, from your angle. So, yeah, could you you you mentioned some of them, like, before, but maybe you can, you can mention them again in case people forgot.
For sure. So, the main focus for me, tends to be in community and, communications. So really, particularly trying to simplify and translate, more technical concepts or things that maybe are a little more complex in more concise language and that kind of thing. And that's kind of community work to me is is one of the more important and generally overlooked, areas with most most projects in the space. I think that's changing now. People are kind of seeing the value of community, particularly as we move towards, kind of DAO governance of projects and things like that. So for example, the Keep project, Keep network that I'm working with, we have been, kind of engaged in, what we think is a new, like, new process. We haven't really been able to find another project or set of projects that have done something like this before. But we're engaging in a community, community led, merge, protocol merge with NuCypher, which, both Keep and NuCypher use threshold cryptography. So the idea was that, instead of both putting work into, their own protocols, both projects putting their work into their own protocols, which do, some of utilize some of the same crypt cryptographic, technologies and that kind of thing, it would make much more sense, to do a hard merge, develop one single protocol that both, projects can, contribute to, but both teams still stay independent. So they can still control their, their priorities for development and, different kind of, projects that they want to engage with and that kind of thing. But by, by merging the network into a single protocol, the networks, both new cipher and keep folders, people that are engaging in those, in running the systems. So for KeeP, it's TBTC and, for NuCypher, it's proxy re encryption. But the idea is that both communities could then come together, use a single protocol, and, and do all of those, basically both communities could engage in each other's, use cases and develop more use cases together. So, the idea is that together, we're stronger than we are apart. And, also, the one of the things that, Keith and myself personally are we're pretty, pretty committed to is the the idea of open source development. So the really hard merge for protocol, for the protocols makes a lot of sense in the context of an open source partnership. You're not duplicating that work in creating two very similar protocols.
You're really bringing it together, leveraging it so that basically together we can we can make a lot more. Which which maybe it's it's just to to add on, maybe that's that's interesting to think about it compared to I I don't know if you're thinking like a traditional, like, two capitalist two capitalist companies who have, you know, very slightly different products. It's very easy for one of them to make a spin off of that product that sort of gets into the market space of another one, and now you're creating, like, this type of competition. Whereas in this case, it sounds like I mean, they're going with a merger, which I mean, mergers happen, sure, in in a capitalist economy as well. But it's interesting to note. I mean, if I understand correctly, it's just two slightly different types of cryptography. And if you add them together, yeah, just the the possibilities of using both for something sort of abound, and you might as well make it easier to use both.
Exactly. Exactly. And so, like, Yeah. The idea is that, the yeah. This this idea has existed in traditional finance for a long time. Although, I would say in the mer in the case of a merger or or acquisition in traditional, corporations, usually you only have one entity coming out of it. Whereas this one is still two independent entities, and only the protocol itself is merging. So it's it's also quite different in that way. It's like a federation almost. Yeah. So it's it's not it's there's no kind of absorption into a there's no, yeah. We're not trying to to make one unified project either. We're we're maintaining the two separate teams. So, and the other thing is that the teams themselves, they're not they've brought up the idea. They talked about it, before they proposed it, just to make sure the teams were on board. But basically, we the teams put the idea out there and said to the communities, if you guys want to do this, you make the proposals, take it forward, and we will, we'll make the changes that the community requests. So all of the proposals for token economics, all the proposals for different ways of staking participation in the new protocol, All of that is, community proposed and will be community, there'll be a community snapshot to vote on it as well. So it's really, also interesting in that what previously was mostly team managed, things are being passed to right now, it's a multi sig that was of community members that were elected. But, eventually, it'll also move further to a DAO, once once this all kind of, settles out. But, yeah, it's quite an interesting, yeah, an interesting development. The other thing is that, with a DAO, there's certain there's certain things that a DAO can do, that a company, may not be able to do. So there'll be some interesting, opportunities that might arise from that too. So really excited to see how how that kind of pans out and where we go from there. The biggest the biggest thing that we're excited from the Keep side is that TBTC, the current version that's deployed, has basically it's been behaving, as expected. It performs as expected. But the issue right now is that the economic bandwidth to mint new TBTC, is low. So the reason, the way the TBTC works is there's background signers that, deposit ether collateral, that then gets tied up, when someone else makes a deposit. So if there's no stakers with enough, ether in the system to back a new deposit of of Bitcoin from the Bitcoin native chain, it won't allow, new Bitcoin to be created. So the biggest thing, there is a v two on its way, but the problem that we had, was that the the new model that would address the economic issues needs more signers. So by doing this, this hard merge with with NuCypher, we the NuCypher nodes, which are I believe they have around 2,000, and I think Keep has around 200 nodes. So it it very it expands the, the capabilities of that, system and the mechanism design to a larger signer set. So it increases the ability for the system to manage more more deposits with, less backing collateral, essentially.
There there's certainly much more technical detail that What what is what is the t in in BTC in TBTC?
It's, ambiguous, actually. Okay.
Yeah. So it's Just another type of wrapped Bitcoin on the Ethereum network.
Exactly. So and there's there's also been, like, a little bit of, kind of tongue in cheek joking over the over the development of the project, from Bitcoiners because tBTC on the Bitcoin network is testnetBTC. So it's so there's, like, yeah, there's some interest. And, like, that's kind of, I think that was somewhat intended from the product design as well, partially because, it creates a little bit of, almost controversy or, like, just some buzz on that side of things to get them talking about, well, what is this thing? It's not test net BTC. But, yeah, I I don't think that we ever I don't think the team ever gave us a definitive definition for what t was. It could be whatever you wanna make it. But, yeah, it is it is essentially, a wrapped Bitcoin that is yeah, it's more trustless than any of the models that, exist right now. Trustless Bitcoin? Is that what it is? Yeah. So c the t is also could be that. So, yeah, it's it's one of the more trustless and the most, decentralized wrapped Bitcoin. So one of the big things one of the big reasons, the team developed TBTC was that, you see that, with WBTC, it it has great use cases. But the consortium model poses some risk for things like seizure. For example, if, a government comes knocking on on BitGo's door and says, Hey, we need you to seize this person's Bitcoin, they have physical leverage. It's kind of like the what's it called, the rubber hose, idea. You can, if you tie someone to a chair, they can have the best security. But if you've got a $10 rubber hose or whatever, you can get them to give it up, essentially, is the idea. So the risk is in, that's identified that we that's tried or that's attempted to be, remedied in TBTC is that there's no KYC involved. The signers there's a new signer deposit or there's a new, signer set for every deposit. So there's no single, there's no single entity that's backing the deposits. And, it's all enforced by smart contracts, so you don't have to ask anyone. You don't have to be approved to go back to native Bitcoin. You just have to have the TBDC deposit it, and it'll release it on the Bitcoin chain. So, yeah. I mean, it's it's really built to be, the decentralized enthusiast or, like, yeah, the person who really gives, like, that's their Yeah. Mac decentralization maximalist. Exactly. So that's really, and and the trust the trustless bit. So not being not having to provide KYC and not having to ask anyone Yeah. To get it back. Those are kind of the main Privacy seekers. Exactly. There's also there have been developments in the community to create a basically a TornadoCache, fork for, basically, depositing TBTC. So, again, additional privacy measures.
Tornado Cash is like, how how would you just It's mixer. Yeah. A mixer.
Or tumbler. Yeah. I'm not sure exactly what To make it difficult who sent what's to who. Exactly. Yeah. It's a obfuscation
tool. For maybe some of maybe some of the people on the left who are listening, like, this is how much people are thinking about this. So that even if your fantasy does come true or the government's goes out and, I don't know, it tries to assassinate all the all the all the Bitcoin people, like, it'll still work to, you know, to a certain extent. Yeah. They're they're thinking about it for a long time. So I think in one sense, it may be, like, depressing if you're thinking about Bitcoin and, like, oh, shit. It's like, it's just going to keep existing. Damn it. The other side is to think, like, okay. How do we deal with this situation? How do we how do we co opt the situation for our ends rather than always allowing space seated to the right to co opt what is, I mean, may have come from, you know, something from the left or something like that. Yeah. And I'd love to dig into that co optation,
a little bit more too. But on that point, I would say that in many ways, the obfuscation tools are not a political, they're not intended to be used by anyone, on a particular political bent, really. There's the obfuscation tools could be and are used by many activists or whistleblowers or people that have, like, a real reason to be, to fear prosecution from their government or another body or that kind of thing. And it's really, in many cases, is a defender of those kinds of human rights, and the ability to, receive payment, for work, in places, for example, where, your religion or your gender is somehow oppressed and isn't isn't allowed. So for example, I've heard of, female coders in The Middle East that get paid in Bitcoin because it's very difficult for them to get banking services,
in their country. Because they're a developer or because they're a woman. Because
Yeah. Not because they're not that because they're involved in Bitcoin, but, yeah, because because there's barriers there that keep them from accessing For women to get back accounts or something. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So in many ways, there's like, you can certainly look at these things as like, oh, this is a terrible thing, and it's it's it's facilitating tax evasion and money laundering and and whatever other terrible things. I mean, yes, it it can facilitate those things, but at the same time, it's like very like many, many tools, that have come before it. It can be used for a variety of purposes, some of which you may agree with, some of which you may not. But, but it really opens it up to be used in ways, that protect people. So and I mean, to me, that's something worth defending, So Yeah.
Part part of that's that argument for me that sort of annoys me a bit is sometimes on the left, it's sort of, like, considered, like, a good thing to pay your taxes. Like, you know, I'm not advocating people stop paying their taxes, but, like, you know, paying your taxes isn't some sort of, like, morally good thing to do necessarily. I mean, especially if you're if you're American, my god. Like, half of your money is going to like, it okay. Like, it's not really how actually you know, it's not taxpayer money literally going to the military necessarily, but it at least gives the facade of, like, giving it legitimacy to give unfathomable amounts of money to, I mean, bomb people in in various countries. Yeah. And to oppress you as a as a leftist and however they want. Like, you're paying them to do that to you. Why the fuck could you why I mean, yeah. It sucks. Companies don't pay their taxes, but, like, Jesus Christ. Doesn't mean that it's a good thing to pay taxes.
Yeah. It's not it's it's yeah. It's not like it's especially if you have moral issues with actions that your government takes. I mean, yeah, why would you want to enable it? And, again, also, I'm on the same same thing. Like, there are purposes for taxes. I understand them. I'm not, I'm not just like But, yeah, there's certainly a lot of waste. There's a lot of, issues with allocation. There's all kinds of government, issues, which I think is quite obvious to people on the left and the right. But, yeah, I mean, I struggle with that too because I'm and particularly now, it's tax season. I'm trying to figure out how the government of Canada wants me to even, like, report accurately or, like, what they want me to owe. And, like, there's no real clear rules. It's, like, even the even the guidance is, like, oh, well, it could be this or it could be this or maybe it's this. And if you're wrong, you're going to jail. Like, okay. I mean, I'm I'm fine with putting in my fair share kinda thing, but, like, I need to know what that is, and you guys are not helping me with it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's there's a lot of, interesting, even just tax questions itself in crypto. But, yeah, that is that is not my desired topic space.
I think sometimes, nowadays, I think the left sort of forgets that the, I mean, capitalism rose in partnership with the rise of the nation states. Like, the I mean, they were they're inseparable. They are, you know, they're twins. So, I mean, yeah, it's it's you you just you gotta you gotta pose. Neither of them are your friend necessarily.
Exactly. And that kind of, like it kinda brings us, a little bit back to the, kind of co optation, aspect of things. And, like, yeah, like, the idea of, power in small groups of people going outside the system and building something. I think, like, it it also kind of, when you talk about nation, the rise of the nation state, also brings me back to, Karatani, one of the theorists I mentioned previously. And he describes, kind of the institutional, being that holds up kind of, the economic and governance systems that we have. He characterizes it as a Borromean knot, which is basically, a knot that is unbreakable, essentially. So the or it can't be untangled. I'm trying to remember what the actual characterization is of it. But the idea is that there's three kind of there's three main areas. There's nation, there's state, and there's capital. And basically, the idea is that if you want to get rid of, like, oppressive forces of one, it's not enough to just focus your efforts on one because the others get strengthened. I'm not sure if I mentioned this to you, in one of our other talks. But, yeah, it's like, so for example, if you want to get rid of the issues with capital, if you don't deal with any of the issues of, like, nationalism and, and the state power, it gets into, like, authoritarian, like, communist type situations. Or if you get rid of, the state side and you only have, capital and basically, yeah, your nation. Fascism. Yeah, it's basically fascism, right? So the idea is that, you need to, distribute your efforts onto multiple areas of this at the same time in order to actually make some sort of a tangible difference that's, that's, like, evolutionary as opposed to just forcing it in one direction. So, and that's one of the things that I think is most exciting when we talk about the development of Again, this kind of goes back to monetary systems and governance and things like that. But the idea that,
now I'm losing my train of thought. Well, I I think mostly, it just it means that we have to have, like, a multi pronged approach. Like, I think one of the things that are that lose it loses me whenever I, like, read, I don't know, arguments against, communists and anarchists is like, you know, like, no. We need to deal with the states. No. We need to deal with capital. Like, I mean, they're both very closely linked. You can't you can't do one without the other. I I imagine if you want to be successful, it's sort of like, okay. Just just just do it all. I mean, like, why do we have to why do we have to do just one of them? We have, you know, if whenever you're making, like, yeah, if you're if you're doing, like, some sort of project, you don't say, like, you know, we should only do x when you can also do also y, and it it it it'll leads you know, it'll it'll help out.
Yeah. I got I got the train of thought back, though. So the idea so this idea of trying to combat all of these things kind of at once is also, yeah, why why kind of this blockchain and governance and monetary system development is interesting. Because we're we're combating multiple things literally just with the development of this technology. I mean, we're we're breaking down, nation in terms of, we're not very territorial in terms of our engagement here. Like, you and I are halfway across the world from each other right now, and, like, it's not really an issue. We're able to find, alignment. We're able to have good conversations, that kind of thing. It's a community connecting thing. State is being combated because obviously we're having issues with they're trying to figure out how to tax us, figuring out how to, regulate, figuring out if they wanna try and ban, which is gonna be an, very difficult issue. So, I mean, it's posing problems for that as well. And then on the capital side, it's really reducing the issues, or the it's reducing the power particularly of the US dollar, but of fiat currencies and national currencies all over the place. So in my opinion, in many ways, this space is, dealing with a lot of those, major, areas and combating them or at least disrupting them in some way, that, yeah, this space makes a good case for why theoretically, we could consider, if we're if we're looking at Keratani's work, that this could be, a strong, competitor to the to the systems we currently use, and, basically a sign of potential progression towards, his theoretical mode of exchange D, so the kind of coming back to a higher level. So, yeah, I mean, theoretically, that's super interesting to me. And seeing it, play out and continue to play out over time is quite interesting. And it gives me a lot of hope for, positive outcomes in the future, really.
It's hard for me to, like, be positive or negative about it just because I mean I mean, you probably know a lot of the people are not, like, necessarily the friendliest, or there are a lot of people who maybe are well meaning, but, you know, you don't really agree with, so you can't really be positive about it. But there are at least people who will, like, want something different. And at the very least, like, something's going to be disrupted. Could be better, could be worse. If you're able to have a a mass movement behind it, like, maybe it could be positive rather than solely leaving it up to the, crypto geeks.
Yes. Yep. And to me, I think if we leave it solely up to the crypto geeks, we're gonna we're gonna get a bad system. Like, the strength of development here is in the diversity of the space. And it's and again, I think that's that leads, that gives some credence, I think, to the cultural kind of divides between communities as well. So, for example, you've talked about, Bitcoin maximalists. And, like, I would say that generally in the early days, the Bitcoin community was relatively open. But these days, it's it's a little bit more kind of, like, yeah, aggressive or, like, if you're engaged in anything else, you're you're a trader kind of thing or, like, shitcoiner. Yeah. A shitcoiner. Exactly. So, like and whereas in the Ethereum space, that's not like, the diversity is much more encouraged. And that's not to say that there's not diversity in those spaces. There certainly is. But I would like to see a lot more, I guess, active diversity as well, in terms of different people with different perspectives, not even necessarily from the crypto space. I'd like to see people, like, from the social sciences. I'd love to see more people from the social sciences get involved.
You're one of the only ones there right now. Yeah, yeah.
But, I mean, people like I have I have coworkers that have, like, a theater background. And a lot of the ways that they talk about, different concepts in the space are ways that I never necessarily thought about in that context. And it really can be illuminating, in other ways. So to me, really fostering that diversity, a perspective and really getting those people who may not be, like, the insider crypto folks. Like, get them involved, get them expressing opinions about developments or things like that. Like, I'm happy to read, critical pieces about, projects and or the space, because really, it to me, it gives us, kind of a focus area of where we should be looking, where there's pain points, where there needs to be improvement. And so if you if you look at it that way, I think it it's you can create a lot more long term healthy development if you take those, diversity of perspectives and incorporate them. So, that's one of the things I really would like to see. And I mean, it has been improving even since I wrote my thesis. I think, like, the diversity over the last two years, I think, has, has increased. But I mean, it, it certainly is, is not like, there's still a certain, like, crypto elite sort of. Yeah.
I think with almost any sort of innovative technological space, it just to have the ability to play in that technological space, you usually need to have the means to do so. So I already have the cash. I already have the the safety and security and, you know, tends to be, you know, guys,
who who have that ability to do that. So Yeah. And so, like, some of the studies I've seen also, like, they talk about things like risk taking behaviour, which tends to be a little bit more, masculine trait, if you wanna call it that or whatever. But it sort of mirrors things that we see in kind of the prerequisites though, in the space too. Like, I would say the majority of people who are involved tend to come from STEM fields, right, which tends to have a diversity problem already. Exactly, yeah. So in some ways, I think that some of those, structural, kind of holdovers from training and education and things also have some effect. But, yeah, I, again, it's why I think there's a lot of value to increasing participation from people outside of the STEM fields. So people from the arts, people from cultural spaces, people from nonprofits, people from, like, all kinds of we need all kinds of, perspectives to be contributed in order to actually take into account and solve the problems that we're seeing in the world. And there's no way, without a diversity of perspectives that we can really surface those, in my opinion.
And with NFTs, there's been an definitely an increase of artists, of course.
Yeah. And I mean and so that that's been an interesting, avenue. And actually, yeah, I I wasn't expecting NFTs to blow up like they did this, over the last few months. But, yeah, it's it's crazy. And it's it's really cool, to see different people that you'd never expected to be in the crypto space. So particularly, like, I'm thinking of, like, mainstream music artists or things like that. I know, oh, what? I think Kings of Leon. Yeah. Kings of Leon did one. Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park is pretty involved. There's a few there's I mean, there's more all the time. I think Eminem just released an NFT or something like The grinds. That's crazy. But yeah, at the same time, as much as it's hype and it's brought a lot of, like, potentially negative space, or negative thoughts to the space, at the same time, I think it's proven a lot of different, uses. And I I'm really, really happy to see more artists taking back kind of their autonomy and their ability to claim the value from their work over a longer period of time. So that's that's for me one of the biggest things that NFTs revolutionize for artists is that prior to this, you could you could sell a piece and that would be that'd be it. That's the end of the artist's, engagement. That piece could maybe go sell, change hands multiple times, could increase in value. Maybe the artist dies and their their estate doesn't really have any stake in the in the piece anymore. Whereas with NFTs, all of you can build in some of those, those mechanisms to retain a percentage. So, like, you don't have a piece that you've sold for, like, a $100 that goes to millions of dollars and then you see nothing from it, right, as an artist? And in some ways, maybe that, maybe that will start to turn on its head the the starving artist, paradigm, which would be interesting. But, I mean, that's pretty, that's a pretty utopic, end endpoint to get to. But at the same time, again, it's something that was always structured by publishing houses, labels, different things like that. All of your, unless you were an independent artist already, all of those kind of, incentive mechanisms and payouts were all structured with, with the benefit of the label or, publisher in mind, at least to some extent. So again, it comes back to our the very basic elimination of middlemen kind of thing, of the blockchain space. So, to me that's really great. And I've seen really great takes on the space from artists that, yeah, they don't have necessarily the technical, they're not discussing the ins and outs of the functions in Solidity, but they're definitely, like, engaging with the space, how it works and, like, how it might be beneficial, both for them and for their craft. So, those kinds of things are really, really beneficial. As much as some of the hype, at times is like, oh, yeah. It's it's just a hype cycle or it's or it's bringing, a lot of people that don't know anything into the space. Like, at the same time, it's also or or or, like, vitriol towards, you know, different aspects of Definitely. Of the technology. But at the same time, every every hype cycle like that brings in new folks with new perspectives. And, yeah, it to me, it's hard to to make that a a bad thing. So There is the aspect,
the potential for the ability for someone to own their labor a little bit more at least than they are, at the moment.
Yeah. I mean, if we wanna take it if we wanna take it to a a Marxist characterization, it reduces your alienation from your your product of your labor. Yeah. You're you're less less inclined to give that up to some middleman or some some, someone. You also generally don't need, someone to facilitate you publishing and or selling it. So, yeah. To me, to me, it really brings back some of those pieces of alienated labor that, have been piecemeal,
taken off over time as as we've gone from, industrial era into information age and all that kind of stuff. Maybe we we can talk a bit about, your work with, the common stack. There's another project that you're working on. And, yeah, I had I had Jeff Emmett on, like, the very beginning when I first started. Before I even had a podcast, I had I had two interviews that I did by text because I I couldn't yet figure out how to do a podcast. So I had to, like, transcribe everything that we said into into text, and that was horrible. I did it by hand. But it was a really interesting interview, so people can can check it out if they want. But, yeah, maybe you can explain a bit of what Commonstack is because it's an interesting project, and I know they've developed quite a bit more since I last spoke to Jeff, and, you know, some of the, some of the bright sides of it because it's it's one of a it's it's a diamond in the rough,
I think. Yeah. Sure. So, yeah, Jeff's a great guy, great coworker, really smart. If you guys get a chance to, check out any of his writing, he does a lot of work with, CADCAD and applied cryptoeconomics and that kind of thing. But, yeah, Commonstack is a really great project. I was able to join up with them, kind of the end of last year, October, November ish. But, yeah, what the Commonstack is is a group that's focused very much on building out tools to facilitate commons. So common goods, basically, nonexcludable particularly, goods that tend to be used by a wide group of people but not necessarily funded well. So part of the things that we're developing are different ways, different tools to either recognize community engagement, build out processes for cultural development. We help deploy, bonding curves, augmented bonding curves. I believe risk adjusted bonding curves are also in the works, if not, out. And, yeah, it's just a lot of different applied tools to deploy for communities to basically control themselves, deploy their own economic systems, and their own incentive models
for for the work that they they need to do. So, yeah, that's kind of that's kind of where kind of a big picture story. Yeah. Maybe you could explain a bit what an augmented bonding curve is for some people, because that's a it's it's an interesting concept, and it's something that, I mean, you can't really do without a blockchain as far as I understand.
Exactly. So, essentially, what a bonding curve is is, there's there's a set formula for essentially pricing a token. So the the idea is that over time, the price of the token as more are minted increases over time. So, the idea is that earlier people who get into the system in the bonding curve generally get a lower price. People who get in later, they're interested in the concept, but they're paying a higher price, because there's already a more there's already an amount of this token already existing, right? And, essentially, it's a way of becoming involved in getting skin in the game of either a project or a, a community or, something like that. Generally, in the bonding curve systems, there's also, a tax for exiting. So the idea is that if you if you buy in and you make it to a point where you either need to get access to the the funds that you put in or maybe maybe you see an opportunity for making money because the price of a token has increased over time, from when you bought it. Generally, there's an imposed tax percentage wise. It's It's generally community decided. There's a lot of parameters that can be, adjusted by, communities when they deploy these things. But the idea is that by leaving the system, you're also having to pay a small amount of that fee to the community, chest, essentially, to carry out funds or to carry out activities and to fund those activities for the, for the group, the community project, whatever. The augmented part is, being able to adjust the curve based on external factors. So for so we talked about risk adjusted bonding curves. So that could be, changes in token prices or maybe a change in a, governance mechanism or something like that where those those changes eventually get priced in, into the the overall curve. And it's a way of, it's a way of facilitating trade and economics without having to rely on an external market maker. So you're able to provide the funds for maintaining that curve without a third party. So, essentially, when you buy buy a token in the bonding curve, your funds go into, a pool. You have in in some ways, I guess, you could consider it, like a liquidity pool because in many I believe, Uniswap and and Bancor and those also use a version of, of bonding curves to facilitate those. But, yeah, the idea is that all of the liquid capital that that goes into the curve is held in a central area, and it's so anytime that you want to exit, the funds are available. Essentially, there's no, delay. You don't have to also find a buyer. There's always a buyer, for the token if you want to leave. So in many ways, it makes some of these, economic models much more simple to set up and much more easy for people to interact with and deals with some of the issues of liquidity that you generally get with early stage projects, particularly. And so the way that, the way that we're doing this now for the deployment of the Token Engineering Commons, which is the first partnership and first deployment, of the CommonStaq model, for a for a community. The Token Engineering Commons is engaging in a hatch. So the way that they do that is the initial funds, and this is to deal with to make sure that people who basically, it's not a race, for the first tokens. It's kind of a pool to to initiate the curve. So the the first people to get in in the initial group, there's a capped amount. Once it reaches that cap, the funding ends, and a DAO is formed using the tokens that were, given in that hatch. The hatch tokens have no value. They're non transferable. But they allow you to then vote on the parameters and deployment of the actual of the deployment for the final bonding curve. So in that's the way that their early whales are avoided, because it's based on the amount. It's basically an average that goes to everyone that participates in the first bit. It also gets around some of the issues of token issuance and kind of the issues behind that. Because we're creating a non transferable token first and then voting on the parameters, it's really a community initiated project and bonding curve. So, in many ways, it should meet the the criteria for, decentralization as well. So, yeah, it's just the common stack itself has been working on, developing some of these tools and applied technologies for some time in the aim of deploying something like this. We're finally at the stage now, with Token Engineering Commons. I believe the targeted date for launching the hatch is, the May. So we should be Mhmm. Should be coming up on it pretty soon.
But so for for bonding curves, it basically is also a way to get around this issue of the, the people who come first just benefit disproportionately to the rest. So, like and there's a problem with Bitcoin. Like, with Bitcoin, you know, everyone who was, like, crazy enough to buy a bunch in the early days, all of a sudden is way richer than everyone else. And it's an unbelievable amount, wealthier and more difficult now to purchase one Bitcoin. So they have a lot of power. At least they have a lot of wealth on that network. So the augmented bonding curve is a way to sort of develop a more communitarian way of, I guess, financing common projects. Or at least it would be towards common projects just because I mean, if you're thinking of it as a commons, you're probably not wanting to have this this type of effects that Bitcoin had and with, I mean, most over most other cryptocurrencies.
Exactly. And some of the parameters that the communities can set when they deploy this, like, you can set, capped amounts so that you have so that you limit at least, the size of your early whales, and different things like that. So and, I mean, that's that's something that, obviously, we're interested in, from the common stack. We don't we don't necessarily want, people to come in just trying to think that they'll buy up a ton of this token early on and then just dump it later. Like, the the the intention is really to have commons focused, individuals participate and, and engage with this. And part of the way that we're doing this, ties back to the Commonstack as well. And, I can talk a little bit about the Swiss Association that we have as well and why we've done that. But the reason part of the reason for the partnership with the with the common stack for token engineering is that the common stack has, what's called the trusted seed. It's a curated group of individuals. You can apply anyone can apply, to get into the trusted seed. We just kind of ask a little bit of information. What's your name, your handles, why are you interested in this, that kind of thing. And basically, we review these the applications manually and accept people who have demonstrated proof of altruistic activity. So, for example, donating to Gitcoin accounts or, being involved in certain projects that, that have a social good component or different things like this. So, it's a curated group that is, yeah, has demonstrated some basic amount of either commons knowledge and skill or altruistic activity on the blockchain. And so the partnership with the trusted or sorry, with the token engineering community uses the trusted seed, as basically a as the registry to as an allow list for, participating in the hatch. So that's another way that we are able to, curate and make sure that the right people are involved, or at least people who have an interest, that is much beyond, simple token profit, like, profit maximalism. So and and the way that the token engineering partnership works is that anyone who wants to be in involved in that hatch, at least from the start, has to go through the trusted seed. They have to be approved, and they have to yeah. So they basically, it's a way of ensuring that we don't have, a lot of only profit driven, individuals contributing at the early days of Commons projects where it is going to be in its more fragile state. So, that's so that's kind of the way that the Trusted Seed, as a curated community helps, contribute to the to a healthy hatch, I suppose. And part the other part of the Trusted Seed is that we now have a, a Leo Swiss Association, that, you're able to join as a Trusted Seed member. So part of the benefit for this is that, I mean, for one, it's a Swiss association. So there's some benefits there in terms of, just, jurisdictional Nationality. Yeah. Well, jurisdictional, authority, I suppose. Generally, the ways that the way that the that Swiss handle, their associations and things like that, it's fairly flexible. But also we have, the ability to, pool funds to assist members, in the event of any legal issues. So that's, that's one of the big, things that we're hoping to, facilitate with this. Not only is it, curating, Commons Commons, based community, It's also providing protection, to some extent or at least some sort of legal shield for, individuals who participate in, deploying some of these commons models, in the event that for some reason, there's a litigation event. So, a few different, few different things there. We do have a, 450 membership fee, but we also have a full, scholarship program as well, because we want there to be adversity in our membership. We don't want people to be have who have, an issue with that. If if that causes hardship, we we still want you to apply. So if anyone listening is interested in in getting involved and and that membership fee sounds high, please feel free to apply and also apply for our scholarship. You can get up to 100% of your fee contributed from from the association. If you, for some reason, are have a lot of crypto and you're like, Oh, $4.50 DAI is just not enough. I'd rather support the crew. Some of the funds will also go to, scholarship funding, if you donate in addition to, yeah, above $4.50 DAI. So, yeah, there's there's a lot of ways to kind of give back to the community and and really get involved. So, yeah, I would encourage anyone, that's interested, feel free to get get in touch with me or anyone on the common stack team and, find out how you can get involved.
Cool. One one of the last questions I wanted to ask, if there are any other projects that you think are really interesting, because I know you are I mean, you have the insights on a lot of the different projects that are that are that are popping up and, you know, especially small ones that may be difficult, for people to find. Are there any projects out there that you find interesting that maybe people on the left would find interest in or that, you know, maybe make them think about, the blockchain space a little bit, differently besides Commonstack
and, the ones you've already, talked about before? Yeah. So, I mean, one of the ones that I've helped with to an extent is, Don't Buy Me. It's kind of an interesting one in that, their their focus is really on on the community and also on democratizing, what would be likely higher priced, and, like, higher art, I guess, style, NFTs. So, for example, I believe there's a Beeple drop coming up, on there. And the idea is that, it's kind of a race mechanism. So you're able to stake up to a cap of the meme token, which generates pineapples. The pineapples are, non transferable, so you have to use them in the pool. But, yeah, essentially you based on the amount of meme that you stake in the pool up to the cap, you generate pineapples based on that. And you use those points essentially to cash in for the NFTs. For the artist pools, there's sometimes also an additional fee to go to the artist. They also donate, for all the artist drops, they donate 10% to, charity as well. So that's, I mean, it's a way for, in my opinion, it's a really interesting project that mixes the NFT space and the DeFi space. It looks at ways of engaging with the community, and democratizing access to, high value art, which is which is pretty interesting to me. I mean
Is it is it like a community a community of, yeah, a community of art buyers? Kind of.
Some of them would be would be NFT collectors and that kind of thing. Some are just, I mean, some people tend to flip them as soon as they mint them. It depends. There's there's a variety of different, different people involved in it. But the interesting thing, about that project is really, its formation. So it emerged out of a meme. So Jordan Lyle just, like, posted a tweet that was he was just making fun of the copy paste projects of DeFi, in the summer. And then a Telegram group formed around that, and they basically just built this out of the community, airdropped the token, all of the existing supply to whoever was in the community at the time and then kind of built it from there. So it was I mean, to me, the origin is is probably more interesting even than than the project itself, even though I think the project itself is quite interesting. But, yeah, it's a very I mean, only in crypto. Right? Like, who what company do you know that emerged from a meme posted on Twitter? Like, I I can't think of any. But, but, yeah. One of the other projects that I have been quite interested in is, Alchemix, self paying loans. So it's it's, basically a money LEGO that's a little higher up on the stack. So it's built on, it's obviously built on Ether. It also uses, DAI as the the main token. So, obviously, it integrates makers, systems. On top of that, it has, it integrates yearn vaults to have a, interest, income from what you deposit. And they also have, some farming opportunities for their governance token. So the idea is that you deposit DAI. You're able to mint up to half of that value in, the Alchemic stablecoin, which is called ALUSD. So it's basically, stablecoin to stablecoin vault deposit. So in that way, the the risk for liquidation is very, very, very low because, obviously, both coins are intended to be stablecoins. So there shouldn't be at least in those vaults I know they're they're looking at, integrating other assets in the future. But for those stablecoin vaults, it's a very low list very low risk of liquidation. And while it's deposited, your DAI is earning interest, through the the Yearn Vault. That interest then goes back to pay off any loan that you've taken out. But so the loan is taken by minting the ALUSD against your collateral. In the meantime, you can take that ALUSD. You can trade it back for DAI. You can trade it you can stake it in their, farming, pools, that kind of thing. So it's yeah. And you're able to kind of use that interest, that future interest, immediately and then leave the the capital in there, to generate interest to pay off the loan. And you're left with the the, all the capital you had in there in the first place at the end of it. So that one's really quite interesting. It kind of turns the traditional banking and interest system for saving on its head and allows you to get that upfront, which is, again, yeah, kind of something that you don't really see in the traditional world, but is quite an interesting concept, that we're messing around with here. And I mean, from a leftist perspective, it may not be as interesting because, I mean, you have to have that, some funds upfront. So the idea is that, you have to have some savings in order to take advantage of it, which, obviously, creates some barriers for folks who don't have, funds that are, that are able to be, discretionary spend, spending and that kind of thing. So, but, I mean, I I've been I've been in it with just a small amount of DAI. And, I mean, the rates are are actually reasonable, to I think it's, they well, also, they proposed a governance change recently where they have excess, dye in one of the one of the contracts, and the governance vote allowed them to start farming with that, which also boosts the pool, percentage for everyone else, because all of those, all of the income from those, kind of funds that are would normally just be sloshing around there, is being distributed to everyone else that's that's in the pool. So, yeah. They've got some really interesting mechanisms for, for use there.
So, yeah, that's that's one of the other projects that I've been looking at that's that's quite interesting. It's It's a bitcom I'll probably have to listen again to make sure I understood it right. But it's fairly complex, financial product. But, yeah, it's something that you can't really do otherwise. Or, I mean, at least it's not available if you can't do it. Exactly.
So it and it I will say, it is built on several pieces of of the stack. So, like, there is some smart contract risk there. So as much as the liquidation risk is low, there may be some smart contract risk. So do your own research. Be safe. Yeah. Of course. Don't ape in with more than you can lose as usual. You know?
I sometimes wonder how many actual, DeFi explorers there are who listen to my podcast.
Could be maybe more than I think. I don't know. If you're not a DeFi explorer, it's it's worthwhile to put a couple bucks in and just try it because, yeah. So there's just really interesting. Yeah. There's just really interesting stuff to learn too, is is how I look at it. So Yeah. We're running almost at two hours. So
I think it's one of, one of the longest interviews I've ever had. But, yeah, it's it's been super interesting, and, I was really glad to have you on. I'm sure we could talk this could last at least another two hours, but I know you have other stuff to do, I'm sure. So maybe to finish it off, you can share with people where they can keep up with with you and your work.
For sure. So, I mean, I'm on Twitter. My Twitter handle is at Chris J underscore official. The official is, some kind of a, yeah, piece from back when I was DJing. But, yeah, Twitter is is, Chris J underscore official. I'm also on GitHub if you wanna check me out there, Chris J Py, because because I do a little bit of Raspberry Pi hacking. So it's Pi with P I. Nice. You can also get a hold of me. Where else would be good? I'm Chris Jones on, Telegram, if you feel like, tossing me a message there. And, I'm Chris, number eight thousand seven hundred and three on Discord. You can also get, get in touch with you. I'm usually on Discord, in any number of servers. I work in community, so I'm pretty active there. You can get get in touch with me in the Keep community Discord. You can get in touch with me through the CommStack community Discord, probably through the Token Engineering Commons Discord, all kinds of different places. But, yeah, best place is probably look me up on Twitter and, figure out from there where to branch out to. But, yeah, if you're if you're interested in any of the things that I've talked about, or interested in having a discussion about this, feel free to reach out. I don't always have the bandwidth to reply immediately, but I do love having conversations all the time about this. So, don't be afraid to reach out. And thanks so much for having me on. Yeah. Really appreciate what you're doing with the podcast too. Keep it up.
Thanks.