The Explorer Mindset with Simona Pop | Layer Zero

This episode takes place in the geographical heart of Layer Zero: the middle of DevConnect, the 2022 Amsterdam conference. With the backdrop of a lively conference center, Simona Pop explores heavy topics like the 1989 Romanian Revolution and the pitfalls of DAO governance. When you cut off the head of top-down totalitarianism, you must replace it with something better—otherwise, another hydra head will appear. Simona thrives on the cutting edge of big problems like these, working on DAO Engagement Strategy at Gitcoin, Community Strategy at Status, and founding the Bounties Network. When Simona talks about crypto and the Web3 space, the epic proportions of this moment in history become clear and present. ------ 📣 THE GRAPH | Graph Day in San Francisco | June 2-5 https://bankless.cc/GraphDay ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALED ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🏦 ALTO IRA | TAX-FREE CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/AltoIRA 👻 AAVE V3 | LEND & BORROW CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/aave ⚡️ LIDO | LIQUID ETH STAKING https://bankless.cc/lido 🔐 LEDGER | NANO S PLUS WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ledger ------ Topics Covered: 5:00 Simona, Amsterdam, and Real Life 8:55 A Revolutionary Childhood 12:45 Successful Evolutions 18:03 The Wheel of Time 25:00 The Governance Problem 30:30 This is Water 37:00 Replacing Nation States 40:55 Generational Change 48:50 Status and Networks 55:34 Why Simona’s Optimistic 58:44 Working for DAOs 1:02:41 Advice for Noobs ------ Resources: Simona on Twitter https://twitter.com/Sim_Pop?s=20&t=fIE7m8Zd9HS5KoyysvdVEA Simona’s Linktree https://linktr.ee/gmeverybody DevConnect https://devconnect.org/ Romanian Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_Revolution ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm a little bit of a child of the revolution and I know what it's like to not have freedoms of expression, travel, all of that. And I think it's very, very important and very ingrained clearly in me to be able to enable that for other people.

• 0:19David Hoffman?

  Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people. And each individual member of the crypto community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it. And Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code, because Ethereum is people all the way down and always has been. Today on Layer Zero, I'm speaking with Simona Pop, and we recorded this episode in the middle of DevConnect. And so there is a big conference room, a co-working space, where a lot of people are heads down, building whatever it is that they're building. So there's a little bit of background chatter, but hopefully that adds to the vibe rather than detract from it.

• 1:00David Hoffman?

  We talk a lot about governance, and Simona is a child of the Romanian Freedom Revolution from the Eastern Bloc, from Russia's dominance with communism. And so she was very, very young when the revolution in Romania happened and broke Romania free from communism. And we use this as a metaphor to discuss Tao governance of all things. She talks about how, yes, you can cut off the head of top-down totalitarian communism, but you have to also replace that with something else, or else the same sort of structure just grows back in its place.

• 1:40David Hoffman?

  And so we take this idea of if we are going to kill something, we need to replace it with something new, otherwise the same patterns will unfold once again, which is what happened in Romania post-communist Russia.

• 1:55David Hoffman?

  And so we talk about the different structures of DAO governance. We use this metaphor for a flowing river of liquid governance, of liquid representation, and allowing this river to adapt, as rivers do, to its surrounding environment. And if DAO governance needs to change and adapt over time, it also needs to act like a flowing river. And so there's plenty of metaphors with rivers and adaption in there. And overall, Simona is just a beloved part of the Ethereum community. She's working extremely hard figuring out DAO governance, which is the problem of problems in this space right now. So let's go ahead and get right into this conversation with Simona Pop, right after we talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Aave is the leading decentralized liquidity protocol.

• 2:40David Hoffman?

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• 3:24David Hoffman?

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• 4:08David Hoffman?

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• 4:53David Hoffman?

  the smoothest possible user experience while you're doing all of your crypto things. So go to the Ledger website to check out the features of the new Ledger Nano S Plus and join the waitlist to get yours. And don't forget about the Crypto Life Card, also powered by Ledger. The CL Card is a crypto debit card that hooks right into the Ledger Live app, right next to all the DeFi apps and services that you're already used to doing, like swapping tokens and staking. So if you don't have a Ledger hardware wallet, go to ledger.com, grab a Ledger, and take control over your crypto. Hey, Simona, what's up?

• 5:23Speaker 00

  Everything's damn fine.

• 5:24David Hoffman?

  Why is it damn fine?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  Because we're in Amsterdam.

• 5:26David Hoffman?

  We are in Amsterdam.

• 5:28Speaker 00

  For Defconnect.

• 5:28David Hoffman?

  Yeah, have you been to Amsterdam before?

• 5:30Speaker 00

  I have, and it was raining. And it was, the city was beautiful, but in the sunshine, it's a totally different experience.

• 5:36David Hoffman?

  The consensus that I've gotten about Amsterdam is that everyone loves it.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 5:41David Hoffman?

  Everyone just has the best words to describe Amsterdam.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  It's beautiful. It's, all the flowers are in bloom. It's tulip season.

• 5:49David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  And we are here.

• 5:52David Hoffman?

  As a connoisseur of plants, I will have to say the plants of Amsterdam are top-notch.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Right on point.

• 5:58David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  And the street flowers. What is the thing? That's like a whole different level of street flower.

• 6:03David Hoffman?

  I have walked hours. And I've only been here for two days. I don't know when you got here, but I've been only here for two days. And I have walked for like four or five hours total.

• 6:10Speaker 00

  Agreed.

• 6:11David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 6:11Speaker 00

  And it's like, why would you take a means of transport? When you're like canals, flowers, trees in bloom.

• 6:18David Hoffman?

  Do you know how Amsterdam was chosen? Uh, Dev Connect? Do you know who made that choice?

• 6:22Speaker 00

  No, I don't actually.

• 6:24David Hoffman?

  Well, they made a good choice.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  They absolutely did. And the weather, they like arranged that to a T, so pleased.

• 6:30David Hoffman?

  I've asked you this question before, but not in a long-form podcast capacity. So we're gonna go into this a little bit more. But why real life? Why is real life important? We live, this industry is on the internet. Like, we don't need to meet in real life. Why can't we just go meet on Discord or Zoom? Why can't we meet in the metaverse?

• 6:46Speaker 00

  Because we're people and energy is important. And being able to spend time with friends. Because at this stage, a lot of us are friends. Let's face it, we've known each other for what? Five years? Um, it's a long time. And it's actually a really, really, um, nice kind of group of friends. And if you think about it, it's a really, really good dynamic that we have together. And the new people coming in and the OGs. It's just really, really important to just catch up now and again. And obviously the hugging. Now the hugging is back on the menu. It's like, it's great.

• 7:22David Hoffman?

  I have been warning people that I am a hugger. So they're not surprised. But it's also like, no, it is surprising. Because like, the last time I've seen most of these people was months ago.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:32David Hoffman?

  Uh, and so just the enthusiasm of seeing people here on real life is, is just lovely. Plus, like, we get to lock all of the ETH developers in a room and force them into having a merge date. So that's what's going on right now.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  Amazing. Very true. Um, at an undisclosed location.

• 7:46David Hoffman?

  Yes, a very secret location of only the privileged parties can get to.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  Um, but yeah, it, look, and again, everything does happen online. And we can obviously reach a lot more people online. But it is important to create all of these little moments that we can touch base. We can interact with each other face to face and then go back to being online.

• 8:08David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 8:08Speaker 00

  And I think having those catch-up moments is important.

• 8:10David Hoffman?

  Certainly, yeah. The, uh, Dev Connect, it's called Dev Connect for a reason. We are here to sync our nodes.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 8:17David Hoffman?

  Uh, because even though I think obviously the crypto industry is probably the most adept at working online. Like, we can get, we can be the most productive versus any other industry online. But it's like, still, in real life, like, there's always the These tailwind benefits of being in real life that will never be replaced.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Of course. And think about the fact that most, I mean, I don't know about you, but a lot, a lot of the relationships that I have and a lot of the friendships and a lot of the collaborations that I've worked on started at certain events, 2018, 2019, and so on, when we were first kind of doing these things and establishing the schedule of events. So yeah, it's important.

• 8:56David Hoffman?

  So what class are you a part of? Like, what is your, what cycle of the crypto industry did you come in? Are you classed at 2017, earlier?

• 9:04Speaker 00

  End of 2017.

• 9:05David Hoffman?

  End of 2017. Okay, same z's.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  When I actually started genuinely working on a project, because that's when I met Mark, well, end of 2017, beginning of 2018, and that's where I became the co-founder of the standard bounties protocol and bounties network.

• 9:21David Hoffman?

  Yes, bounties network, right. So what, what brought you in? Like, bounties network is very, very Gitcoin ethos aligned, which is kind of where you found yourself, like close to Kevin O'Walkie, very much like finding ways to push development to the, to the margins. Like, what about crypto brought you in?

• 9:38Speaker 00

  So I think for me, it was always this ability to level out the playing field and allow more people a seat at the table. In fact, rebuild the table with a lot more seats, right? And that's one of the main things that attracted me to bounties and actually, because Gitcoin was built on top of the standard bounties protocol. And so we were very much value aligned. But in terms of the core interest for me, and that's what continues to be my core interest, is how can we enable access to resource for everybody? Regardless of geography, regardless of social status, regardless of education, regardless of language, regardless of all of that.

• 10:19Speaker 00

  And everything that I tend to do is to push that forward and to try to create more pathways in for a lot more people.

• 10:28David Hoffman?

  What were you doing before crypto? Did it kind of align with all that stuff? Or what was your mode of operating before crypto?

• 10:35Speaker 00

  It was very much in comms and experiential and always in tech, but you know, the web two.

• 10:42David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:44David Hoffman?

  So kind of getting, trying to get the listeners grounded for who Simona Pop is. What, what did you know before crypto that you brought to crypto? Like, what, what information have you blessed the crypto industry with?

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Um, I think for me, it's, it's interesting because being originally from Romania and having experienced albeit a very small part of, I was very young when the revolution happened um in eighty nine, but you still have that sense of what it is like to live in a country where censorship, complete lack of privacy and restrictions is the norm. And so I think, I see this sometimes where

• 11:28Speaker 00

  I'm a little bit of a child of the revolution and I know what it's like to not have freedoms of expression, travel, all of that. And I think it's very, very important and very ingrained clearly in me to be able to enable that for other people. And so with that knowledge and also the fact that knowing that, I'm also aware of a lot of

• 11:54Speaker 00

  I guess the importance of why balance matters when you are trying to completely redesign the flow of things. Because you want to make sure that if you're gonna redesign it, you're gonna not redesign it in the same image as what came before. Learn from what came before, but try to redesign it in a mindful and balanced way so that we don't end up in the same place or even a worse place.

• 12:20David Hoffman?

  So this is going to uh reveal my little knowledge of that era of, of time in, in Eastern Europe. But uh, uh, I, I think this is what we should definitely dive into. Uh, the revolution, let's go, let's go into that. You, how old were you when, when?

• 12:35Speaker 00

  Six.

• 12:36David Hoffman?

  Six, okay, so you didn't know much else other than that.

• 12:39Speaker 00

  No, but also when you're a kid, you kind of don't really realize the true.

• 12:44David Hoffman?

  What's going on? And we're, we're talking about, uh, is this communism in Russia? Is this relevant here?

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, so basically every

• 12:52David Hoffman?

  Give us a quick history lesson, yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  They call it the Eastern Bloc because everything that was around Russia and below was under Russia's influence, right? You had the USSR at the time, so anything Eastern Europe was like communist, controlled by.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  Had the same modus operandi as the USS Hark. And the idea was that it would be made in its image. And so what you had was the um Prague Spring. That kickstarted revolutions in all of these countries in the Eastern Bloc. And it almost went like a domino effect.

• 13:25David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  And so all of them then removed communism from their um governments. And went on to hopefully rebuild and redesign so that it is uh you know in a democratic way. Now, what that also kind of showed me and made me understand is that sometimes

• 13:50Speaker 00

  a revolution doesn't really do much.

• 13:53David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 13:53Speaker 00

  You cut off the head, but the body stays the same. So then you just replace the head. But everything else, particularly when you're talking about a bureaucracy, will just be exactly the same. Which is why, when I talk about crypto, it's it shouldn't be a revolution, it should be an evolution. Takes longer, but it changes the whole organism versus just the head.

• 14:16David Hoffman?

  Yes, I I think there's a very common pattern throughout history is that like revolutions are really good at breaking things.

• 14:22Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:22David Hoffman?

  But not necessarily putting them back that in a way that answers to the problems of why the revolution decided to happen in the first place.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:30David Hoffman?

  Right? All all it does is says, well, this isn't working, let's end it. And kind of fails to follow through. It just creates the vacuum of power.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  It creates a vacuum of power and I think also let's remember that a lot of the revolutions that have happened in the world are really orchestrated by completely other interests outside of that country. So you also have that.

• 14:52David Hoffman?

  Okay, so uh the revolution started when you were six?

• 14:55Speaker 00

  So it it was all of a week.

• 14:58David Hoffman?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It went like this. Yeah.

• 15:01David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 15:01Speaker 00

  Um.

• 15:02David Hoffman?

  Very fast.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:03David Hoffman?

  Okay, so it was more the process of recreation that probably because I don't know when people start remembering their first memories, but about six is about right?

• 15:10Speaker 00

  Right. So that's when it started building, let's say, towards a democracy again.

• 15:16David Hoffman?

  Right. Democracy.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:18David Hoffman?

  Right. So your formative years were all about just looking at and being under the paradigm of how are we going to re-architect governance?

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:26David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Hind. In hindsight.

• 15:30David Hoffman?

  Attempts to.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 15:32David Hoffman?

  So like, again, like history lesson, how would you rate that re-architecture if you had to rate it on a scale of one to 10?

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Minus one.

• 15:39David Hoffman?

  Uh-oh. Why? What should we learn from this?

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Again, it's very, very important to understand that things that have been almost cemented in a certain way take a lot longer to break through. Like if you think of plants growing through the pavement, right? That's gonna have to push and like really work to get through it when it's so solid.

• 16:04David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  And because like I mentioned earlier, usually the body of the beast

• 16:09David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  remains the same. And so you have to work with a lot of things that were already in place and then try to slowly remove those and replace them with better, with better, with better. And so what you get a lot is, and I think that's still valid for the whole of the former Eastern Bloc, you have a lot of corruption. You have a lot of people who were in power who then, you know, decided that they could maintain power, but this time it would be financial.

• 16:37David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  And so you have that switch.

• 16:40David Hoffman?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, using the plant metaphor.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 16:44David Hoffman?

  If you have a, like a tree, for example, like in the middle of a storm, it blows over, but it doesn't die. And then it'll start to regrow in a different direction, but it'll always be scarred by the storm. It'll never be the perfect emblematic, vertical, beautiful tree. It will be the kinked tree and it will never get away, it'll never get away from that kink, right? Like it'll always have this in its base like DNA, right? Not the DNA, the epigenetics, right?

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:07David Hoffman?

  How the DNA is expressed. And so if you're telling me that like the Romanian government did a, or Romania did a good job of taking the head off, but forgot to like replace the culture, right? The culture was the same.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:18David Hoffman?

  Which is why the layer zero is always so important.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Indeed it is. And also taking again from that tree metaphor of breaking, I think what

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Looking at Web3 and what we're doing now with governance, we need to look more at a Willow model.

• 17:34David Hoffman?

  Hmm.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Where it bends and it's like it's a lot more flexible versus again, just um very rigid.

• 17:42David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Right? Because as soon as you start potentially being very rigid about things, you could miss or could be, um let's say, a little bit more fragile when something happens and you can't adapt.

• 17:58David Hoffman?

  Yeah, that rigidity aspect is really, really important.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:02David Hoffman?

  Uh, we'll go down that in a, in a second. One, one thing I learned while uh kind of going down the Ukraine versus Russia rabbit hole.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 18:09David Hoffman?

  Is that this same thing has already happened. This happened in the eighteen hundreds. It happened in the nineteen hundreds and now it's happening again. And like the, what my takeaway from that was that there's this like Russian, like Putin is very uh like focused on like this like kind of this manifest destiny of Russia, right? Like this Russian sort of just like ethnic imperialism or something like Putin is like this embodiment of this weird like Russian energy that wants to like dominate Eastern Europe, right?

• 18:38Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah.

• 18:39David Hoffman?

  Yeah, and, and this, the, the story of the Russian Empire in the eighteen hundreds, whatever it was called back then, coming in to dominate Ukraine and then Ukraine to like um just not wanting that and revolting against that. That, this story has already played out once before. And so that you, when you know that that was like three generations ago, there's something in the DNA of Eastern Europe that like makes this story happen again and again and again. And again, how do, but how do we get people to be aware of these things? Because it's, isn't it education that is how we get through this?

• 19:11Speaker 00

  It is education and it's also a, you know, a, a level of respect for what has come before. Not necessarily in a must be revered, must be, uh, you know, um.

• 19:26Speaker 00

  Glorified in any way, but it must be understood.

• 19:29David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Because if you, like you were saying, you notice patterns. And what that enables you to do is when you notice those same patterns repeating again, you can bend, adjust, flex away from it.

• 19:43David Hoffman?

  You don't end the pattern, you redirect the pattern.

• 19:46Speaker 00

  Right, or you work with it and you kind of go, okay, what is, what is it that we could do to essentially go on a different path versus just repeating this one?

• 19:57David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  And that's a big thing that I think sometimes in Web three, we kind of go, yeah, everything's trash, let's just rebuild everything.

• 20:06David Hoffman?

  Everything's new again, new paradigm, new paradigm.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Which is great, because that's, you know, we're enthusiastic and we want to do these things and it's wonderful, but are there lessons for us to learn in that process so that we don't just again follow that same pattern, go down the same stuff and then at the end of it go, shit, did it again.

• 20:27David Hoffman?

  Right, there's the, uh, the wheel is something that I think Chris Bernuski talked about where like, you know, in the future, we're going to be the boomers and like our kids are going to be like, you know, you guys got to, you know, you guys bought Bitcoin before it had a market price, right? You guys got Ether at the ICL price.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  What did you do?

• 20:42David Hoffman?

  Right, you got Ether before, you remember when you got into Ethereum before it was proof of stake, like you boomer parents, like work is hard now, like things, things are now like saturated and difficult and just like the same complaints that millennials are having about the current institution. So, um, when you see these governance structures, because governance is all of the rage in Web three these days. Governance, governance, governance, win, airdrop, win token, win governance token. How, how do you see us falling into the same traps if we, if you do see us doing that?

• 21:12Speaker 00

  I think one of the main things, and certainly this is very much something that I'm interested in from kind of a multitude of different perspectives. I'm obviously, um, uh, one of the top delegates in Gitcoin, in ENS, and I also, um, work together with Gitcoin on what I like to call governance engagement, because right now governance and engagement are like this. There is a lot of rubber stamping, there is a lot of, uh, there's.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  High, high lack of context for different conversations happening and decisions being made. That is because things are not transparent, things aren't necessarily easy to grasp context for. And also, most people are so insanely busy

• 22:05David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  that to dig through notions, discords and all of this, to gain context, to inform a vote

• 22:12David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  that may actually influence quite a few things is quite taxing.

• 22:18David Hoffman?

  Right. So like a snapshot vote comes into existence and like the many, many voters of this snapshot vote like, alright, like yes or no?

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:26David Hoffman?

  And there's like, there is perhaps hours and hours of like debate and deliberation and arguments as to even what are the parameters of this vote to begin with.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  Or there should be.

• 22:35David Hoffman?

  Or there should be, or at least with the people that put this thing to a vote, right?

• 22:39Speaker 00

  Yes, right.

• 22:39David Hoffman?

  Okay, these four people are talking about this governance decision and they are the experts in like the yes and the no cases, but they need to give it to the community because that's what decentralized governance is. But then the community is like, they spent thirty seconds reading the snapshot vote

• 22:54Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 22:54David Hoffman?

  and they don't know the extent of the details and they don't know the impact.

• 22:57Speaker 00

  And that's a problem. Because if I want to have context to be able to make an informed decision, that's incredibly important and you would do that in, you know, in any other area of your life. You would want to know what you are making a decision about. And so with regards to, and coming back to your original question, how could we perhaps make those same mistakes? Is that again, we go in this direction where voting remains binary, there is no respect for nuance, there is no respect for, let's say, the in-between, the maybe, the ambiguity.

• 23:38Speaker 00

  Because a lot of things that we're dealing with right now, it's okay for them to be ambiguous for a while until we figure out how they can be clearer and simpler and easier to make a yes/no decision on. And so with that in mind, I think being comfortable with ambiguity and being comfortable with nuance and a spectrum of

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Decision making and a spectrum of discussion versus just no, it has to be this or the other. It's important to not only think about, but also weave into the processes that we're putting in place. Like, I love a standard, obviously. But I think that's important, especially when you navigate various different DAOs. Like, for me, even in these major two that I am one of the main delegate in, it's hard because they're structured differently.

• 24:33David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  And they have a different flow for the governance.

• 24:35David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  Not majorly different, but different still.

• 24:39David Hoffman?

  Importantly different, yeah.

• 24:41Speaker 00

  And so I think for us to be able to really have the context and be able to make the right decisions, it's important to have a flow that is...

• 24:54Speaker 00

  Uniform is not the right word. Something that enables that access again in a very...

• 25:02David Hoffman?

  Digestible.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 25:05David Hoffman?

  So, there's one way to tackle this problem, which is like just making governance easier.

• 25:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:12David Hoffman?

  Like, being able to make the nuance more digestible, the debate more digestible. But the other solution is just like, let's just centralize it. Let's just like centralize the governance.

• 25:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, but we don't want that.

• 25:22David Hoffman?

  But why is that bad? Because like, yeah, we call these things DAOs, but they're like, most of them, they're not autonomous. They're definitely not autonomous.

• 25:29Speaker 00

  No.

• 25:29David Hoffman?

  And they're definitely not decentralized. I really call them digital organizations. Now, the cool unlock is the actual decentralized part of this.

• 25:36Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 25:37David Hoffman?

  But we don't have that yet. So like, why can't we just like have the centralized governance while we figure this out?

• 25:43Speaker 00

  Because I think you want to... And, look, we are in a very difficult situation right now, just as an ecosystem, because we're so embedded in the current world whilst trying to build a new one. And so you're almost constantly enmeshed in the current way of doing things whilst trying to envisage what the new stuff will be. So it's hard. It's a continuous exercise and you almost have to do that daily practice, that daily exercise to maintain whatever it is that you want to build, right? That muscle mass, maybe, or those habits, to build those new pathways and those new habits. I think the important piece is to have the right...

• 26:30Speaker 00

  Either groups or structures dealing with different stages of the flow. And that's the thing that can unlock that decentralization. Where you put things, you know, imagine a river, right? Because we're in Amsterdam, imagine all of these bridges and all of those boats. At each one, you have a different checkpoint, almost. And then the whole thing becomes clearer and it evolves and it involves conversations. It involves dialogue. It involves certain amounts of decisions, but not a yes, no, right? And you evolve it that way. But to create that flow, you have to look at, okay, who's going to be involved? What is the end goal? How long can this take? What is the process? Will it be different for certain types of proposals?

• 27:15Speaker 00

  And will it be different for others? When you have something to do with a budget, with a treasury, does that go on a different path? Versus one that has to do with, I don't know, removal of stewards from, right? And you have to map all of that out. And I always, always use this analogy because I think it's so important. When you go to an amusement park, you see the map of everything that is there. And you know where you're going and you know how to get there. And you know if that is where you want to get to, or you want to go here, in fact, or there. Or stop halfway through there. And we don't really have that right now. And that should be something that is almost, because we talk about DAO tooling, oh my god, DAO tooling.

• 27:55David Hoffman?

  DAO tooling, DAO tooling, DAO tooling.

• 27:56Speaker 00

  It's raining DAO tools. But I think it's important, again, to look at those and create those mindfully and from a place of experience. Like for me, I see the pain on both sides. I'm working on governance engagement, but I'm also a steward. And I know that, for instance, the other week, like two weeks ago, I was focusing so much on that and curating Shelling Point, that I dropped the ball in my NS duties for a week.

• 28:24David Hoffman?

  Right, right.

• 28:25Speaker 00

  Because that's what happened.

• 28:26David Hoffman?

  Right, yeah, duty calls.

• 28:28Speaker 00

  Which is mine.

• 28:29David Hoffman?

  In a decentralized world, nodes are going to drop.

• 28:31Speaker 00

  Right, right. And so figuring out how to make sure that that isn't a tragedy, or that isn't something that... Break something is right is something that we need to bake into the whole flow because we are humans. The whole Dow governance thing should be fluid because again using the river and the flow and all of that. It has to be fluid. It has to flow. It has to enable people to kind of go, oop, okay. I can't do this at the moment, but I'm okay to come back in when I have more focus, when I can dedicate more time.

• 29:08David Hoffman?

  Okay, uh, so just, uh, I want to recap all of that. I think both for the listeners and also for my own benefit. The answer to like, why not central centralize is because of obvious reasons and the alternative is micro centralization in pockets. Which I think are like committees where like you, you talked about these certain proposals such as if we're talking about a treasury, like a treasury proposals. And we are going to do this with the treasury. Uh, and perhaps like we can have two different versions. It's like if this proposal is above $10,000 or below $10,000, it can go, the river will split.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Right.

• 29:40David Hoffman?

  Right? And it'll go to this committee first and then this committee will tinker with this part of the proposal. Maybe this is the clarity and definitions committee. And then the clarity and definitions committee do their work. One of, maybe there's four nodes, four council members of that particular cabinet of sorts. And then once they're done, they pass it off to another node, which does the, uh, I don't know, the, the allocation of funds committee or something, right? And it goes, it follows, flows down this river.

• 30:06Speaker 00

  And you always ensure that those little pockets have the right representation in them.

• 30:11David Hoffman?

  Yes, right. Okay. So like micro centralization as in like, all right, four people have the role and responsibility, four people have the block.

• 30:19Speaker 00

  I wouldn't even call it centralization. I would call it.

• 30:23David Hoffman?

  Delegation?

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Specialized delegation.

• 30:25David Hoffman?

  Specialized delegation. I think we mean the same thing. I think that, I think that's a semantics difference.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  But it sounds better.

• 30:29David Hoffman?

  But it definitely sounds better. Definitely sounds better. Uh, and so, okay, so we have like this, like mesh network of like a river.

• 30:35Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:36David Hoffman?

  The concept of a river is that it always flows downstream, right? Like water will always go where it's easiest for it to go. Uh, and like right now, when I, when I said like DAOs aren't autonomous, rivers are autonomous, right? Like they just go. Uh, and so. Uh, one of my bull cases for DAOs, not DAOs as concept, but the DAOs that are the most bullish.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 30:55David Hoffman?

  Are the ones that lower the threshold for participation.

• 30:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 30:58David Hoffman?

  Down to the bare minimum, right? Like, how can you make a verifiable contribution?

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 31:02David Hoffman?

  The easiest possible way.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 31:04David Hoffman?

  Uh, and so if we're gonna extend this to governance, it's like, how can we make sure that the governance proposals always go downhill? Whether or not they're accepted, like, maybe downhill means it's rejected, but like, a rejection is a choice either way.

• 31:15Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:15David Hoffman?

  Like, successful governance can reject a choice.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  Oh, absolutely.

• 31:18David Hoffman?

  So how do we make, like, a governance proposal hit all these subcommittees to refine and digest? And, uh, do all these things with these governance and make sure the thing always flows downhill? So that it comes to a conclusion. Cause I think so many of DAO governance right now is like, we forget to come to a conclusion on a lot of things. Like, it gets lost in the river.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Or we rush to a conclusion, right? And sometimes that's not necessarily a good conclusion, or it's not necessarily thought of as much. But keeping it, as you say, on that path, I think that's where potentially those standards that you put in place come in. Because then it's almost like the banks of a river.

• 32:00David Hoffman?

  Sure, right.

• 32:01Speaker 00

  And you create that versus just like letting it spill all over the place, in which case, again with the river, you lose control and it damages things.

• 32:09David Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, it turns into a flood.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  Right. And so what you want is to have that, and, cause you were saying with the flow of water, obviously you have like the whole Bruce Lee thing, be water my friends, like all of that, right? And you take that shape and you enable those, the banks of the river to be that tooling that you put in place. But you have to understand what the substance is.

• 32:34David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Right? Because you could make the, you know, the, uh, banks of the river out of material that is not conducive to the flow.

• 32:44David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 32:45Speaker 00

  Right? It could be too porous, it could be like breakable, it could...

• 32:49David Hoffman?

  And then the river always automatically corrects for that, cause the river will erode.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 32:53David Hoffman?

  The broken banks.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Voila.

• 32:55David Hoffman?

  Right, lovely, lovely. And quite quick.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  This is beautiful, this is so, I mean... I'm I'm impressed with us right now.

• 33:01David Hoffman?

  Also, just quick side quest, rivers are inherently decentralized, right? And so like top down government could become like, I want to stop this river and build a dam. But all dams break over time, like we can just route around the river, right? There's that meme of just like governments banning Bitcoin and it's like the fence that has no edges. And people just like walk around the fence. Same thing with the river, like you can, but you can dam up a river, but like over the long timeframes, the river always breaks.

• 33:23Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 33:23David Hoffman?

  Or the dam always breaks.

• 33:25Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 33:26David Hoffman?

  Let's take this back to Romania and governance.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 33:29David Hoffman?

  Where we cut off the head, but then the same similar shape reappears.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 33:33David Hoffman?

  How does this model fix that?

• 33:36Speaker 00

  I think, and again, another analogy that I I particularly like is this um idea of the puzzle. If you lose, you know, you're making jigsaw puzzles and you lose one piece, you have to replace it with a piece that is exactly the same shape, exactly the same pattern, exactly the same.

• 33:56David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 33:57Speaker 00

  So what we are doing is we're scrapping that puzzle, or at least the image that's in that puzzle and starting from scratch. Because if you just remove the piece, one piece, the head, the rest keeps it.

• 34:12David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 34:12Speaker 00

  So you have to put.

• 34:14David Hoffman?

  The void still has the same shape.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Same shape.

• 34:16David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Speaker 00

  And so my hope is that what we're all doing here is actually redesigning and replanning a whole new puzzle. Learning from how puzzles work. Learning from how long it potentially takes, what type of thing you need in there, what type of material, what type of whatever. But it's a different image, it's maybe a different structure, maybe it's 3D one, hopefully it's a 3D one, that's a lot more, right? So you're kind of evolving it. And again, that evolution from your very basic one to something that can really, really capture the richness and the not richness in the cash bags.

• 34:58David Hoffman?

  Right. The uh.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Aspect of it.

• 35:01David Hoffman?

  What's the other word for this? Vibrancy.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Vibrancy um of what we can all do to ensure human thriving, to ensure that we are in a much better place, that everybody is in a much better place. The many, not the few.

• 35:21David Hoffman?

  The era of proof of stake is upon us, and Lido is bringing proof of stake to everyone. Lido is a decentralized staking protocol that allows users to stake their proof of stake assets using Lido's distributed network of nodes. Don't choose between staking your assets or using them as collateral in DeFi. With Lido, you can have both. Using Lido, you can stake any amount of your ETH to the Lido validating network and receive ST ETH in return. ST ETH can be traded, used as collateral for lending and borrowing, or leveraged on your favorite DeFi protocols. All this without giving up your ETH to centralized staking services or exchanges. Lido now supports Terra, Solana, Kusama, and Polygon staking. Whatever your preferred proof of stake asset is, Lido is here to take away the complexities of staking while enabling you to get liquidity on your stake.

• 36:03David Hoffman?

  If you want to stake your ETH, Terra, Sol, or Matic and get liquidity on your stake, go to Lido.FI to get started. That's L-I-D-O dot F-I to get started. The Layer 2 era is upon us. Ethereum's Layer 2 ecosystem is growing every day, and we need bridges to be fast and efficient in order to live a Layer 2 life. A cross is the fastest, cheapest, and most secure cross-chain bridge. With A cross, you don't have to worry about the long wait times or high fees to get your assets to the chain of your choice. Assets are bridged and available for use almost instantaneously. Across bridges are powered by Uma's Optimistic Oracle to securely transfer tokens from Layer 2 back to Ethereum. A token proposal is being deliberated as we speak in the Across forum, where community members will decide on the token distribution.

• 36:45David Hoffman?

  You can have your part of Across's story by joining the Discord and becoming a co-founder and helping to design the fair, fair launch of Across. If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.to to bridge your assets between Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Boba networks. If you're trying to grow and preserve your crypto wealth, optimizing your taxes is just as lucrative as trying to find the next hidden gem. Alto IRA can help you invest in crypto in tax-advantaged ways to help you preserve your hard-earned money. Also, Crypto IRA lets you invest in more than 150 coins and tokens with all the same tax advantages of an IRA. They make it easy to fund your alternative IRA or crypto IRA via your 401k or by contributing directly from your bank account. There is no setup or account fees, and it's all you need.

• 37:30David Hoffman?

  To do to invest in crypto tax free. Let me repeat that again. You can invest in crypto tax free. Diversify like the pros and trade without tax headaches. Open an Alto Crypto IRA to invest in crypto tax free. Just go to altoira.com slash bankless. That's A L T O I R A dot com slash bankless and start investing in crypto today. This is actually accidentally turning into a very logical progression from a couple of other layers of yours I've done.

• 37:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:59David Hoffman?

  Starting with the Tarun and then also most recently Trak Yoptics.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:03David Hoffman?

  We're talking about like, okay, cool Dow governance. Eventually, we're going to get this thing perfected and refined.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:08David Hoffman?

  And the engine's really going to start to turn.

• 38:10Speaker 00

  Right.

• 38:10David Hoffman?

  And all of them are like, well, eventually this will start to eat at the role of nation states. Right? Like eventually United States governance, the original Dow, by the way, will start to start to incorporate some of the models and the efficiencies that we've innovated and developed with Dow governance.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 38:27David Hoffman?

  Tarun gave the example of how he thinks that it's really going to be the finance sector that comes first. Where like a lot of financial contracts use price, prices of a certain thing at a certain time to be embedded into the contract, right? And this is like, we just, we just agree that the price of this thing is at this time at this date by this, by this oracle, which is like the NASDAQ. But they could start instead of using the NASDAQ, which is a centralized company with, with that kind of a gamable system.

• 38:53Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:53David Hoffman?

  Instead, you could use the oracle of Uniswap.

• 38:54Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 38:55David Hoffman?

  And you, what we're doing is we're taking out the NASDAQ puzzle piece and we're re-implanting the Uniswap puzzle piece in his place. And it's, and his theory is that over time, we're going to find more and more ways to swap out old puzzle pieces with new puzzle pieces.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  Until you create a new puzzle.

• 39:10David Hoffman?

  Until you create a new puzzle, right? From, from the inside out. Do you have any, any thoughts on that?

• 39:14Speaker 00

  So again, I think it's, it's really, really interesting.

• 39:20Speaker 00

  Thinking about, because you mentioned the financial system and because we chat about money, it's really interesting to, to remember that we came up with that whole thing. And we just perpetuated in the normal system now in the world. It was decided at some point, but we can always change our minds and decide something else. And this is something that for a lot of people, I guess.

• 39:47Speaker 00

  Even sometimes when they come into our space or into the Web3 space, it's very difficult to really get comfortable with the fact that that is just a decision some people made at this one time.

• 39:59David Hoffman?

  Right, it's not canon.

• 40:00Speaker 00

  It's not canon, you're not contractually bound to do anything. People just agreed that the US dollar was gonna have some value. People just agreed that this other thing was gonna have value. That's all it is. It's unagreement. And we are making new agreements, and we can make new agreements, and we should make new agreements if the ones that have been in place are no longer serving us. Cause that's what you would do. If a car, if you had a car that broke down as much as the current financial system? Are you joking? They would remove it from the market. It would be a death trap.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  We've had more systemic crises in the financial system since I don't know when they started measuring it.

• 40:46David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  But it's fifty, sixty across the world. And again, think about the analogy of a car. It broke down that much, you feel like, I don't know, I'm not getting into that death trap, I need to buy a new one.

• 40:58David Hoffman?

  How do you think about the rate of change, right? Because the younger generations, the millennials especially, Zoomers seem to be in their own world, but they're gonna get the brunt of this eventually. Probably once they graduate from college, but like, the rate of change of the world seems to be not be satisfactory for a lot of the younger folk.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:14David Hoffman?

  And so like, they're just asking for change now, now, now, now, now. Meanwhile, the other half of the world, like the older folk, the boomers are like, this is pretty Gucci, we kinda like, we kinda like where things are right now.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  We're at, we're at the speed limit, this is nice, this is cruising.

• 41:31David Hoffman?

  No change, no faster change, like, no more change. Like, I haven't even figured out my iPhone yet. How, how do you think about this conflict?

• 41:39Speaker 00

  Again, I always say balance in all things. Um, I think nature, if you look at nature, and again, I love all of everything that comes with biomimicry. I love everything that we can learn from nature in the way it behaves and in the way it does things, because it's very clever. And there's this thing in nature called the optimum window of viability, where it's in between diversity and efficiency. And it's always in the middle point. What we tend to do is always go way too efficient. Anything happens, restrictions, sanction, all of, like, every austerity. You always go way too efficient and you disturb the balance.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  Too much diversity is also bad, because then that doesn't work because there's too much.

• 42:28David Hoffman?

  Right, there's no coordination.

• 42:29Speaker 00

  But in the middle, that's where the sweet spot is. Now, in terms of the piece of change, I think if we again look at evolution, if a fish swam up on the shore and suddenly grew a leg out of its gills, that would not be very good, because it would die.

• 42:50David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  It would nibble. But slow evolution, little by little, ensures that it can become a successful new species, a successful new thriving organism. But it takes time, because it needs to take into account all of the elements that it needs to build and build well. You rush one, you're like, I don't know, one side is lopsided and again, it's not conducive to thriving. So I think if we can get to that point where we balance out the speed, because we do need to move, right? We can't just be like, ah, I'll be fine. Because again, things aren't rosy in the real world, right?

• 43:35Speaker 00

  So I think if we can reach that balance of doing things mindfully and doing things properly, that we don't cut corners, very important. But we move because stagnation is also not good.

• 43:49David Hoffman?

  Right. Do you think we have time? Like global warming is not being solved by nation states?

• 43:54Speaker 00

  No, it's not.

• 43:55David Hoffman?

  And I think that's generally a thing that most people across outside of the crypto industry would agree with. Like, no one's really taking nation states seriously. Granted, it's not like the crypto industry is doing anything for that, but we kind of think that we can. So, but also, do we have the time to actually be methodical about this and not rush this?

• 44:17Speaker 00

  I think, I think it's almost a conversation around having that urgency, but not making mistakes because you're under pressure.

• 44:28David Hoffman?

  Sure.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Which again, is not easy. Like, we're not in an easy situ- It's a big ass, right? Go like, okay, so the world is gonna end, so, but you need to be like, you know, make sure you focus. So, look, it's not easy, but I think it's one of the main reasons why we're sort of, more and more people are coming into the space because like, okay, okay, but this is how we can, right? And this is what, at the end of the day, this is what the Web 3 piece is about. It's that choice. It is that alternative because for so long, we had none.

• 45:03David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 45:03Speaker 00

  And we were just stuck with that track.

• 45:06David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  And that was it.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  You can do, you know, turn things up and down over here and up and down over here, but really, it's the same road. Now we have a chance to a new one. And obviously with a new path, you have to, you know, remove some thorns, pivot, do all of these things, and we're doing it whilst we're carving, carving it. So, hard, and it takes a lot of people because you need everybody involved to be able to get to where you want to go.

• 45:39David Hoffman?

  Right. And Steph connects, right?

• 45:43David Hoffman?

  Why can't we cut corners? Why, why, why can't we cut corners to get there?

• 45:46Speaker 00

  Because look at what cutting corners has got us into. Everybody's been cutting corners for like decades, for generations. The, the point that I'm making there is, I think the technology that we're building is so, so powerful.

• 46:02Speaker 00

  That if we enable backdoors, cut corners to, you know, deliver for VCs a little bit faster, don't quite focus, ah, privacy. All of that, right? We need to ship. Again, the balance, it's important. Yes, move, yes, ship, but don't sacrifice the principles to go get your VC some returns. Because that's what everybody has been doing.

• 46:29David Hoffman?

  Okay, my next question was going to be, what's the corner that you see being cut the most? But would that be your answer, like optimizing for VCs?

• 46:36Speaker 00

  I think privacy and security.

• 46:38David Hoffman?

  Privacy and security?

• 46:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:39David Hoffman?

  What's security mean?

• 46:41Speaker 00

  Just think about the amount of projects that have like one, the first version of their contract audited, and then they say they're audited, but they've had like five since.

• 46:49David Hoffman?

  Right. Okay, so we're talking about bug exploits.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Just a plethora of risks that is just not exposed, not addressed, not even thought about. And it's important, right? You're building these new things, and we've seen so many recently. Oh, this, oh, here's another one. Oh, here's another exploit. Oh, this broke and the bridge fell. Oh, is that the trend? Oh, yeah, yeah, cool, cool, cool. Damn, I didn't get exploited, oh shit.

• 47:21David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Right. Is it a rite of passage? I don't think it should be.

• 47:27David Hoffman?

  Okay, the other one was privacy.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:28David Hoffman?

  Um, how are we cutting corners on privacy?

• 47:31Speaker 00

  I mean, just, I think the concept of privacy has been so diluted and so... I don't even know what the word is, but almost we've just become so detached from what privacy actually means that for a lot of people, as we know, you know, why do you need privacy if you have nothing to hide? That type of thing, it's like, well, no.

• 47:57Speaker 00

  That is not what privacy should be about. Privacy is a human right and you should not be tracked for things that you spend on and you shouldn't be tracked for everywhere you go and you shouldn't, your face shouldn't be scanned by a supermarket checkout. Are you joking? What? But again, is that erosion of, and people are so comfortable giving away so much of their stuff at all times, that actually now there's this process of having to claw it back. And for a lot of people, it's like, yeah, but why bother? There's like so much out there already.

• 48:30David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 48:31Speaker 00

  It'll be fine. But again, getting back into a place where our identity isn't correlated with our money and everything else, so that a simple switch through a backdoor of an application can just cut your access to everything.

• 48:51Speaker 00

  It's bad.

• 48:52David Hoffman?

  I'm reminded of, I'm a CLEAR member, because there was one time I was not gonna make my flight and so I had to sign up for CLEAR, just get the security line. And all you have to do is go and get your iris scanned and boom, your name comes up with your birthday and everything. And every time I do that, I'm like, hmm, that's gonna come back to bite me in the butt one day.

• 49:10Speaker 00

  It really will, and I love that you spend those seconds to think about that and then like,

• 49:15David Hoffman?

  And then get on my flight, right?

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Oh, well.

• 49:19David Hoffman?

  Well, at least I'm not gonna miss my flight.

• 49:22Speaker 00

  Silver lining everywhere.

• 49:23David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 49:24Speaker 00

  No, but it's that, right? And we've been so pushed to think, or like, of course you realize that's like probably not okay, but like, what can you do? But it's, we've so been pushed to being comfortable with all of this stuff, that the moment, like, status, perfect example. The moment you kind of go, actually, let's build the whole thing as a pseudo anonymous thing that doesn't require a password, a phone number, or who you are, people go, oh, this is hard.

• 49:52David Hoffman?

  Right, right.

• 49:53Speaker 00

  This makes sense. Oh, and I can pull all of my contacts from my address book on my phone? Oh, well, this is a bit shit.

• 50:00David Hoffman?

  Right. Can you, let's go into the full status show mode. Can you get, can you give the listeners and me the pitch for status? What is it and what does it do and why is it good?

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Status was obviously one of the first players in the mobile wallet space back in 2017. And then they also started building a chat. And the idea with it and a web three browser. The idea for me is that now it is perfectly poised, that stack is perfectly poised to create spaces for the web three community to actually switch from the centralized tooling that they use to a web three native stack, space, app, whatever it is that it's going to become. So, one of the things that I came in back in 2020, again, and we say it's important to have that balance between speed of shipping and doing it properly.

• 50:52Speaker 00

  I proposed this feature of the community's feature that is now being worked on. But there's obviously so many implications in that. Where if you are going to have, let's say, hundreds of thousands of people on it, you want that messaging reliability to be on point. Which right now it is not. You want the design to flow. Right now, it does not. It needs a refresh, it needs like updating, it needs a lot of things. But even something as simple as pulling from the OpenSea API to show your NFTs in your wallet. That's technically, let's say, an infringement on your privacy, right? Because you're like, I'm finding things out about you. But the point is, the user should make that decision.

• 51:37Speaker 00

  Give the option. And then for those who don't care that much, just pull. For those who do, go and via the browser to access your OpenSea. And it's those little things that actually make a big difference. And it's important to make sure that when you do build it like that, you do take your sweet time. But again, urgency is needed there. So that's that.

• 52:00David Hoffman?

  And again, connecting this back to like real world stuff. Back in the revolution, what was the revolution called? Drag my memory.

• 52:11Speaker 00

  So the whole kind of sequence of events in the in the Eastern Bloc was the Prague. It started with the Prague Spring and then all of them kind of.

• 52:20David Hoffman?

  Right. And so the fact that it went off like fireworks, right? Like it was like it was like ready to go, right? And it just needed this one thing to light the match. What was missing probably was like a messaging network of people who were like,

• 52:35Speaker 00

  To disseminate.

• 52:36David Hoffman?

  Are you are you tired of this bullshit? Because I'm tired of this bullshit. And if we had a messaging network that was private, people would have been more comfortable communicating their dissent.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Communicating and congregating and being able to coordinate.

• 52:51David Hoffman?

  Yes, coordination technology.

• 52:53Speaker 00

  Exactly. And it's important. And this is the thing. And again, we're drawing parallels here between, you know, late eighties, early nineties and where we are now. But if you think back then, you had landlines and the phone was probably bugged.

• 53:10David Hoffman?

  Hundred percent, couldn't trust it.

• 53:11Speaker 00

  Right?

• 53:12David Hoffman?

  Couldn't trust it.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  You couldn't say, oh, meet me there. We're gonna like throw some shit.

• 53:15David Hoffman?

  Blow up the Russians, yeah.

• 53:16Speaker 00

  No way. And now you're in the situation where you have all of these like privacy messaging applications, privacy, used in the loosest of terms. That again, if you think of most of them, it has your phone number. You know what your phone number tells about you? Your address, who you are, everything. So unless everybody has burner phones, which I doubt that they do, we're not that far off. Okay, it's not as nefarious or as entrenched as it used to be, but maybe it is. That's all I'm saying. And then if you start and again, this isn't necessarily about and I think that's the other perception,

• 54:01Speaker 00

  that you will always use these things to do bad things.

• 54:05Speaker 00

  No, just you can have conversations.

• 54:07David Hoffman?

  I'm here in crypto for the drugs.

• 54:09Speaker 00

  Right, like all of the things that can be bought with US dollars and have been for generations. Right, yeah, all the good stuff. But it's that thing, that perception, and maybe that again has been the narrative that has been

• 54:22David Hoffman?

  woven, yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 00

  publicized of, oh, these guys, that's why they're using it for like bad things. It's like, come on, I just wanna have a conversation about things that I maybe not, don't agree with, or I wanna have a conversation to be able to coordinate some sort of protest, movement, whatever, something that does not agree with my values and my human rights. There's so many countries in the world where you need people to also be protected, journalists, because we brought up Russia, because we bring up all of these different countries where journalists are genuinely at risk all the time.

• 54:59David Hoffman?

  Right.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  You want to be able to offer a space, a safe space for them to be able to speak to their sources, speak amongst each other, be able to share information, be able to share situations that would put them in a safer place than they are right now. I mean, all of these things, it, that perception of it's always bad is simplistic and a lot of it is, dare I say, just, it potentially can be dangerous for all of those people who need that protection.

• 55:33David Hoffman?

  Certainly, certainly.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Victims of abuse, again, there's endless.

• 55:38David Hoffman?

  Simona, what about the current state of the crypto industry makes you optimistic?

• 55:44Speaker 00

  I think everything that we, and, and this is, this is a great segue, because obviously one of the main reasons why I'm at DevConnect, not only to support and speak at the different events, but also I'm curating Shelling Point again.

• 55:59David Hoffman?

  Yes.

• 56:00Speaker 00

  So Shelling Point Amsterdam is happening on Thursday, and for me, and this is the way I've kind of designed the experience, is for it to genuinely be that antidote to a lot of the events that we're seeing popping up now, and that usually tend to happen in a bull market, that are all flash, no substance, and kind of gross.

• 56:22David Hoffman?

  From what I've, I've heard of described as a pile of money searching for a soul.

• 56:26Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 56:29Speaker 00

  With a hint of dumpster fire. Right. Right. So, I think a really, really important thing to keep in mind is that we must protect and elevate the conversations around what we are genuinely changing and where we're going. And that's what I want Shelling Point to be. That's kind of what we did in Denver a little bit, but this time around, I'm doing, we have almost three hours of workshops just on climate and what Web3 is doing on climate and bringing all of the projects working in that space to have these hands-on workshops, chat about things, have conversations, involve

• 57:11Speaker 00

  the participants into whatever the solution may be, right? We also focus a lot, a lot on, again, discussing this governance situation, discussing public goods, how are we moving the needle, how are we progressing things, discussing decentralized science, discussing all of these things that we need to be focusing on because that's the stuff that actually matters. That's the stuff that's going to evolve us from here to there, not a sprinkle of cash and like a party. Parties are great, don't get me wrong, and the Shelling Point one is going to be amazing. But it's important to have those conversations and delve deep into those conversations. And I'm playing a little bit with the format as well because after so many conferences,

• 57:56Speaker 00

  I am bored to tears of the traditional format. And so what I've asked all of the speakers to do is to do 50/50 in terms of their content. Fifty percent can be, you talk about whatever it is you want to talk about, the other half, you involve the audience. I don't care if you do yoga with them, I don't care if it's plain Q and A, do something. Engage. Where it is a collaborative effort. Everything that we're doing, it isn't the work of one person, it's not the work of 10. Everybody has a contribution to make and everybody can and should feel comfortable making that contribution and figuring out what is on that, uh, what's it?

• 58:39Speaker 00

  Amusement park map. Everybody should see the whole map and decide where they want to go. And how they want to get there.

• 58:48David Hoffman?

  What are you looking, in addition to all of your work at Shelling Point, which maybe is taking up a majority of your time here, but what else are you looking to get done here, here at DevConnect?

• 58:56Speaker 00

  So I think it's, it's a lot of, again, catching up with a lot of the stewards. So because of the work that I do with, with Gitcoin around governance, there's a lot of the stewards, particularly in Gitcoin and in the new Stewart Council that we created, a lot of them are here in person. And I think it's important, again, to have that connection because we do have a lot, a lot of, let's say, flows that we're putting together, together, right? And we're figuring out, hey, does this work? Is this better? Did we achieve something here that is moving us closer to that flow of the river, to that more structured pattern?

• 59:38Speaker 00

  And I think, in addition to that, of course, there's also, so that's important to have those governance conversations also IRL, right? And then be able to take them to the online realm and be, okay, here's where we've decided we're going to observe this for a while and then improve it. But of course, also, ETH Amsterdam, I'm a perpetual judge of the ETH Global Circuit, and I absolutely love seeing all the new projects. I'm excited every single time, especially after a week like this. How inspired will those people be? What will they take from everything that they've listened to, that they've participated in? What will they take to genuinely create something that is better?

• 1:00:22Speaker 00

  That is getting us, that is a stage of evolution?

• 1:00:26David Hoffman?

  A new Lego, a new Lego.

• 1:00:27Speaker 00

  A new Lego, yes, yes.

• 1:00:29David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30David Hoffman?

  So at Bankless, we often say like, hey, go, go work for a DAO. And it sounds like you, you work for at least two DAOs, if not more.

• 1:00:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38David Hoffman?

  For, for the people that, that hear Ryan and I say, go work for a DAO, from our privileged position of having the centralized company, what's it like to work for a DAO? Dow like and do you get compensation for the DOWs that you work for like is this this is how you how you you buy groceries?

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  So right now, actually, this is a fortuitous event because I am actually now transitioning into the Gitcoin Dow where I'm gonna get paid by the different work streams within the Dow. So for instance, I because I do the content curation, I did the content curation for a Shelling Point. There is a certain amount that will be allocated to me for that work.

• 1:01:20David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 1:01:21Speaker 00

  Then the stuff that I do with governance engagement will come from another work stream. Then I also help out with funding public goods. There's a lot of relationships that I have and we pull funds for the grants rounds. That's gonna come from another stream. So it really is this very interesting and multifaceted, again, taking that whole thing of streams into a river type dynamic of what is it that you contribute to and what is the level of that contribution? And that's how it flows.

• 1:01:53David Hoffman?

  And do you feel that the DOWs that you are are part of, how how would you rate their adeptness as to properly balancing contributions to?

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  We're just getting started.

• 1:02:02David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  A lot of that needs to be improved and and a lot of that, it it's fine that we don't know and we haven't figured it out yet. And and again, coming back to that thing of like being comfortable in ambiguity and not feeling like we have to get it right from the beginning because every single time we kind of miss something or we don't do it right and so on, it just enables us to improve on it, to do it better, to make it a little bit more transparent, to make it a little bit more accessible, to make it a little bit less taxing.

• 1:02:34David Hoffman?

  Nice.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  But like, yeah.

• 1:02:36David Hoffman?

  Yeah, contributions over taxing. They're the same thing, but one people like word that one word much better than the other. Uh, what was gonna be my last? Oh yeah, so for the newer newer comers to the crypto space, people that came in 2020 or beyond or more recently.

• 1:02:51Speaker 00

  Oh, welcome.

• 1:02:52David Hoffman?

  Well, yeah, welcome. Thank you for being here. We're so glad you're here. What advice do you have to help these people actually stay in the crypto space? And why should they stay in the crypto space?

• 1:03:02Speaker 00

  I think definitely make sure that, um, and again, man, this is gonna be your most analogy laden episode of all time.

• 1:03:13David Hoffman?

  Oh, I'm not so sure about that.

• 1:03:14Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 1:03:14David Hoffman?

  Oh, yeah. We're pretty hot on the analogies at Banquet.

• 1:03:16Speaker 00

  Okay, okay, okay. So I'll keep going. Um, so I think, again, with that whole idea of the path, right? There is this one that just is established and everything. And when you start off a different path, it's gonna be a little bit trickier. You're gonna have some obstacles in the way. You're gonna have to be like a little bit more uncomfortable. And like I say, there's like some stinging nettles here and there and whatever. A rug here and there. But, uh, just casually laying out in the grass. But no. Um, for me, it's don't feel or don't give in to feeling overwhelmed or being scared if you read some article about something or if you go into

• 1:03:57Speaker 00

  a Discord and you feel, ugh, this isn't really my vibe. I would say look for those communities that are value aligned with you and what you want. This is one of the reasons why, particularly with Bitcoin, right? There's so many people coming in because they are genuinely interested in regenerative stuff, public goods, solarpunk stuff, like all of this impact. And it's, it's that value alignment that really makes that ability to start contributing so much easier than if you go into, let's say, a Discord that you found somewhere that's full of...

• 1:04:38Speaker 00

  Price talk and all of this that you just don't feel like where do I even start? What do I do I even want to be here? And so I think there's that kind of shock sometimes of, oh, I didn't think this was. Or you go to one of these events that I mentioned earlier, not the good ones, but the other ones. And you go, oh, is this what crypto is all about? It's not, it's not. Um, and so that exploration, I think, almost have that explorer mindset. Go and look behind this. Go and talk to some other people who are also on this path with you. Maybe share some maps. Okay, I've got this bit, you have that bit. Maybe let's do things together.

• 1:05:21Speaker 00

  Kernel also is a very, very good example of where this can be done, right? Uh, Kernel was started by one of the, the Bitcoin co-founders, Vec. And it's a great, great journey to take people from that very edge of the path a little bit further. It won't take you all the way, but it will take you and enable you to meet some people to have that journey, to take that journey together. So explorer mindset, absolutely. But like, again, the curious, nice kind, not the invader kind.

• 1:05:53David Hoffman?

  Of course.

• 1:05:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:05:54David Hoffman?

  Simona, thank you for coming on Layer Zero.

• 1:05:56Speaker 00

  Thank you so much. This has been fun.

• 1:05:58David Hoffman?

  Cheers, and I will see you all around Amsterdam.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  See you in the dam.

• 1:06:01David Hoffman?

  In the dam, of course. Oh, beautiful. Hey, we hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, head over to Bankless HQ right now to develop your crypto investing skills and learn how to free yourself from banks and gain your financial independence. We recommend joining our daily newsletter, podcast and community as a Bankless Premium subscriber to get the most out of your Bankless experience. You'll get access to our market analysis, our alpha leaks and exclusive content, and even the Bankless token for airdrops, raffles and unlocks. If you're interested in crypto, the Bankless community is where you want to be. Click the link in the description to become a Bankless Premium subscriber today. Also, don't forget to subscribe to the channel for in-depth interviews with industry leaders,

• 1:06:45David Hoffman?

  Ask Me Anythings and weekly rollups where we summarize the week in crypto and other fantastic content. Thanks everyone for watching and being on the journey as we build out the Bankless nation.