Anon Anthology 404 | SheFi Summit Bangkok

Transcript

[Music] hello hi how's it going everyone oh thank you uh so my name is Maurice buun and the co-founder CEO search Andora we have a wonderful panel here on the anthropology of the unnown unnown and on anthropology 404 um we're welcomed by some amazing people here um like to introduce yourselves first I'm Maria Paula I work at Lance you just heard my talk Lance a VAR hi everyone I am roshen head of people and talent at Nan

Network hey everyone how's it going I'm Liz I'm the head of growth at isuki for the people that do not know what a non anthropology will be about or what it is uh will just discussing about what it takes to be an anonymous first in crypto uh where are we on the full spectrum from being fully to fully Doss and yeah just tell us a little bit more about yourselves and what led you to fall somewhere in this Dynamic of being anonymous online and onchain I'm unfortunately fully docs uh I started in two I I started in 2017 and you know I've been thinking all of these years um that it would have been been better if I

was an a an Aon but in 2017 when I started it was the Ico fever and if you were an Anon then you were sort of scammy U so the circumstances of that time meant that you had to show your credentials and you had to show who you are and then I just stayed uh so but yeah you know come 2024 the kind of H you know the kind of systems that we have and the kind of you know the social capital that anons also have and the freedom that they can enjoy I would 100% have become an ano yes so the I guess the idea of an an anonimity I I had to learn how to tell

this word during the we here was like oh yeah the concept is is really interesting to me especially as head of keep and talent at Nilan I came from a web to background so it was always thinking about anons as these people that wearing wore masks right I never thought about a non's coming into the workplace or having to onboard them and it was a really interesting concept that someone in um on my team had flagged with me in my early stages so I've been with nly in about three years now the first time that someone said oh we'll probably have to onboard the nonperson to the team at some point I was like I don't think that's going to work I don't know how that's going to work right um because for me it's the connection piece and the trust that you have to think about in a

business setting um but personally since learning about it um and I'd like to put this one out to the audience as well like who here has ever thought about being a non or having that freedom to be able to post your and speak your ideas freely I got to show a hands how many people in the audience are fully Anon one person okay that they just do themselves as being Anon how many of the people in the audience are pseudo Anonymous like you post yourself online but you don't say your name let's say no way are most people in the audience just fully docks or like very open out there yes okay yeah so it's it's something I definitely thought about um but in my

role I find it it's kind of difficult to do that but there are many reasons why I would love to do that online as well because I have lots of things and opinions that I would love to share as well so it's kind of balancing I guess and it's a different level right so um to paraphrase Oscar wild if you want to see how someone really is give them a mask and I think there's this false dichotomy that's often set up in our space between you know anonymity um and that breeding distrust but if you think about how we are even those of us who are fully doxed you are not the same person in every situation right like how you are with your family how you are with your significant other how you are with your colleagues these are all

different aspects of your identity and identity is more Prismatic than than it is you know all-encompassing and and you know I have a lot to to share on that subject but but yeah I I I personally I'm fully dox I go by a pseudonim there's a lot of things that I find actually quite liberating about using a pseudonym even though you know people can find my full name my details like that if they if they if they just look but yeah interesting definitely a lot of interesting things there to unpack so I just hopping on from that what do you where do you find power in your pseudo anonymity what actually makes you what what type of confidence does it enable you to

engage on I'm not pseudonymous no but I guess from the ecosystem I think working with pseudonymous people and also dealing with an completely Anonymous people I found that there is you know and I met a lot of them RL and you know they reach out to me as well on DMS and we talk I think there's a special moment when a person chooses to trust you by revealing their self of and I'm not saying that you know they're going to say hey I'm

Maria paa I'm they're going to show up they're going to start talking to you they're going to share their talents with you and I think that moment and that trust that sort of TR trust tapee connection of is much more visible when you're dealing with synonymous or Anonymous people and we take it for granted in this space as well which is amazing because other spaces like you said rashin wouldn't wouldn't even think of these people yeah so fully docks myself but I have obviously had the experience of working with salonon and at Nilan and for me I can see that for them or at least for who I've encountered it's either like privacy online externally which is fine but then

there's also like a safety element for some people right um which I like to respect as well but there's a balance and I think we spoke about that in terms of the levels when you come internally into a business I think that you can open up and you should be able to open up and Trust the business a little bit more to know who you are and probably extreme cases where that is not the case if we think about Sashi I don't know if anyone I would love to know if anyone is in the know did um people on his team are there well their team um so yeah the other side of it as well for me is like the identity and freedom of speech and I think for me if I was to be a non that's where I would drive because I have this like

backlog of Twitter post that I have in drafts that I've never posted because what if that person thinks about this or what if I'm seen as something so the social con constructs and then one other point that I love is the lack of biases so on my crypto Twitter feed when I see aons I don't know who they are right and I see these interesting Concepts I engage I don't know who these people are so I don't instantly think anything of them except oh I like that picture oh that's that's a fun picture so um so I go by a pseudonym although I'm fully dox go go by whiz Wang on Twitter and I think that there's something incredibly powerful about using a pseudonym it's

like um you know you know I work in the anime space so it's that feeling when a cosplayer dawn on their cosplay and they feel like they have a superpower it's the feeling that a drag queen has when they put on their drag and they've stepped into this you know alternate kind of identity and I think in a space that can be you know very challenging at times I see using a pseudonym as a form of you know reclaiming your identity reclaiming your femininity reclaiming power and um and it's something that has I think really worked out in my favor sure so there's a lot of Pros to be in and on I think that we can all agree that even if we're fully dogs there's also a lot of power on putting our full trust that everyone around us in our

community will be able to respect us and continue and elevating us what are some of the downsides that you've noticed either working with Anonymous people being a sudon or not being fully re or being also the converse of that being fully dogs being fully out there present at all times I there's there's a few challenges um some of them are funny to some people and some I I found it really really hilarious when you know several teams have been working with Hackers from North Korea for a very long time that were like calling themselves John Smith you know they were they were just pretending for years um of course that has geopolitical implications that I don't even want to think about I I just

want to think of the meme that does for like one of the things that I would say about that is that obviously it does increase uh this trus in Anon people but at the same time you know like this industry was created by an Anon so I think that you know that this trust shouldn't exist you know more like there can be other ways to kyc people before they get to work in a real like in a team or you know or contributors to project another consideration that a that I would believe it's it's growing in this space is obviously um dealing with Anam people

and you know here like being a w being a woman um I think given the stuff that happened very recently with that with that absolute criminal that this girls drink I think we need to you know we need to try to figure out better ways to respect anonymity but at the same time to ensure safety uh because if that person wasn't a on then the the problem would be 10 fold as well so it's it's a Nuance subject um I do think still this industry was created by an Anon we should give them the same personhood as everyone else has and we are doing a

really good job at it but at the same time you know we need to stay safe yeah I would have a similar pause on that especially from a workplace perspective uh I really really am passionate about creating a very safe working environment for people so a nonculture is quite scary to me in that sense and I do think like when we think about the hackers I've had numerous numerous screening calls with people that definitely wouldn't be able to verify their identity um so I think that's very important um another point though that I find is really interesting on like externally maybe with uh crypto Twitter is like that poly account if

anyone remembers like the community would be very quick to report and block and I think it's a really nice thing that I saw as kind of a newbie in the space that people weren't even I think vitalic had like commented about Paulie to say like this account is horrible and I haven't seen seen the account in a long time since so that's that's a positive I think um but also as I said a challenge because you have this troll that's really probably targeting people and and hurting them as well so I think it's important to distinguish a couple of different concepts you know anonymity identity and reputation because you can be fully Anonymous but you could still have a reputation in the space meaning

there are repercussions um if you are if you were to do something you know unsavory with your Anonymous identity of course you know you could just stting other account and establish yourself in that way but I do think there are repercussions for people who are Anonymous in his face to Second what Maria Paula had said I think that this North Korean infiltration is is a very insid threat that we're dealing with in our space like my my partner actually once um interviewed somebody with a very American sounding name like Alex Benjamin and after after the fact he's like oh they had an accent that I couldn't quite Place uh I was like they were probably North Korean and there's so many examples you see on Twitter of you know get trying to get them to say

Kim Jong-un and they won't do it which actually should maybe be a part of your hiring process to weed out the North Koreans because they they literally will not do it um but uh but yeah in terms of anonymity I think that you know for the downsides there might exist um I think a lot of what we've outlined as downsides are things that are not in necessarily inherent problems with anonymity but just problems with the Human Condition right like Twitter actually commissioned us study about anonymity to see if they were to like theoretically if they were to you know get people to have to use real identity with that eliminate online abuse and they concluded that it didn't

because a lot of people who come out with hate speech on Twitter actually do so under their real identity and there's many examples you can see of this on Twitter um so so yeah yeah I think anoly I feel like this Bas goes um back and forth on whether or not being a non is uh an edge and there's alone being a non like I remember on our first fundraiser for Dora it was really bullish somehow to investors that we were a fully a non team and then that day we were willing to put ourselves forward and say hey these are our full names these are our passports this is what we work for before they were like wow they really trust us and then for this most recent change in the market they were like oh they're putting really the themselves out there like I now can go into space

and say oh my name is Mauricio and then they're like wow the project is very real because now we're being a bit more transparent about it uh but yes speaking on a little bit on the reputation piece who because I I feel like on my experience of getting on board then he was primarily driven by anons into crypto and also a lot of people that then transition into being a little bit more public due to their success in crypto and wanting to keep on growing their company is there anyone in the crypto space who's Anonymous or you Anonymous that you will be thankful for in your crypto Journey well satosi no very important no honestly and here's a really good thing that we have in crypto a lot of these people

they have a do E A lot of these people have traceable wallets so we're building our reputation in an immutable way whether we're aown or not through our wallet histories uh it will come a time where identity will be able to be integrated as well um into your wallet history uh and where digital identities will be more flexible than you know IRL identities now so I think these anons that we are working with that we're doing business with um teaches ways on which um their identity is is not a problem because as long as

they have a reputation that's te to to their blockchain um and I think that's the real Alpha uh it's not about the people it's about a technology that allows you to you know have this ident to this reputation yeah I don't think I would specifically call out any anons but I would say that in general this entire um industry has made at least me personally feel a lot more comfortable with sharing opinions and ideas which is amazing um I did have another point there but it's gone for my head so I'll will pass on um yeah in terms of like anonymous people that I'd have to than um I don't know if there's anyone in

particular but there's there's certainly a lot of anonymous people that I I interact with um as part of my job um actually funnily enough one of my friends she hired her she started a company and she hired her CTO who was fully and on and then when it came when it came time to fundraise you know you do have to like dox yourself it's like a legal liability thing for the funds and it turned out that her CTO was 18 years old and so um if a normal you know fully docks 18-year-old is applying for the role of a CTO they might not I mean I probably the recruiter would toss their resume in the trash cuz you you just assume they're not qualified in this case this person in question was a prodigy and had been a programmer for many years of course um prior to

becoming CTO but I think it unlocks a lot of opportunities for people in the space being anonymous and it's probably one of the few Industries maybe the only industry where you can actually make a career for yourself um being being fully fully and on yeah I think that there is a a lot of reputation behind being anonymous and people won't trust you unless you actually get to prove yourself and is one of the few ways in which you can get a little bit of a taste of meritocracy to an extent I think as well just to add um I think it'll be really interesting to see how this unfolds within a business environment especially when we take more I guess control over our own data and if that evolves into a a workpace where actually it's more

transition or transactional based rather than like fostering that trust and collaboration right is like are we going to move towards an era where we take the personal connections away from the work environment I personally would not enjoy that because I think that you spend so much time in work it's nice to get to know the people that you're working with and spending that time with but yeah it's definitely an interesting thing to follow and I'm excited to see where we go with this so I remember at the very beginning of the panel where Paula said that you may have consider being fully and on from the start what would you tell someone in the audience that is considering them being pseudo not fully on fully dogs and and why as a woman in the space I would have killed to be

anonymous I can't can't count the times where I've gotten in trouble on the internet and then I've been labeled difficult to work with I now you know after having like an eight-year career in crypto I'm just like whatever people keep hiring me and I I'm doing amazing uh but at first it was tough you know when when I would meet someone and then they were like oh my God I'm so glad you didn't post my stuff on Twitter you didn't post about me on Twitter I'm like I don't post everything about my real life on Twitter like are insane like I first of all I don't have the time and secondly like that's not how Twitter Works uh but they get these weird labels you know and I don't know I don't

understand if it's gendered I don't understand if it's because um the way that I express myself online I I don't really get it but there's like there's always the prevailing idea that I'm going to report like that I'm going to just like post at them and yeah that's not how it works first of all sheep posting is an art so like I don't share my art with everyone it's my IP oh no but more most so I think I would have killed VA on and to the my sheet posting because I do love sheet posting for the love of God in a more Freer way uh I also think that you know and I was

thinking about wallet history maybe it's not a really good idea to show wallet history as part of your resume resume because then you'll see the horrors that I do on chain and all the bad trays and all of that and then I wouldn't be de good to work with either you know I don't have a perfect solution I think that a universal identity on chain and the right to be anonymous after you prove like you can Z prove the out of H things I think that those things should exist and I would say go for it you know the technology is coming really really fast yeah definitely Echo that I if I could go back in time and I knew that that was a thing I guess um and that there was a whole Community there

behind it I definitely would have kind of Dove head first into anonymity and I def me pop back to my younger years as well when I kind of struggled I guess with identity as well and like in a very low level I guess just different kind of friend groups and like where do I fit in and it always had me kind of questioning myself so being able to express yourself freely like that I think is just amazing so um in in the space you know Maria Paula and I have we've known each other for for for many years right so when you know when we first Joy the space there were like no no women like like literally like literally like literally I would go to events all men no one wanted to talk to me because they just

assume you're stupid or someone's girlfriend um and obviously you know things have changed but that being said because there aren't still aren't that many women on the balance in the space there are upsides and there are downsides to being I think like publicly doxed in a space as you know Maria Paulo alluded to there are a lot of criticisms that and insults and you know hate mail and things like that that women get in the space especially if you're a public figure um which I think is on the which I think men do not receive on the same level you know I personally have gone through this I'm sure you know many women in the audience have gone through the same but you know I think because there aren't as many women there's also the opportunity to stand out more from a

career perspective but you know there are pros and cons as for you know whether or not we should be anonymous or pseudonymous or or or have an anonymous sorry whether which should be doxed or Anonymous I don't think it's actually binary I think you know you can you can do both like many people are docs and they have an ALT um so you know you can you can live out your best lives on those two different trajectories yeah I feel like um anecdotally I have some friends that have uh started projects being fully dogs people didn't believe in them and then when they switched to their unon uh accounts then people wanted to fund their projects immediately which I think is hilarious because I guess you know like sometimes you don't feed the pedigree of what an investor or uh other co-workers may want

but as soon as you put your work out there it very much speaks for itself oh thank you so much uh everyone thank you thank you