Aya Miyaguchi: The Role and Challenges of the Ethereum Foundation (#287)

Transcript

[Music] this episode of epicenter is brought to you by Microsoft Azure do you have an idea for a blockchain app but are worried about the time and costs it will take to develop the new Azure blockchain dev kit is a free download that brings together the tools you need to get your first app running in less than 30 minutes learn more at aka OMS slash epicenter hi my name is Brian Fallon Crane and my name is Peter pecans so before we start

with the interview you guys did a wonderful conference last year called zap con and another one is coming up again this year like tell us a little bit about that font conference yeah so it's we had one last year was our first it was notices first conference we're organizing another one this year by popular demand it'll be August 21 to 23rd it it'll concentrate on taps depths that are usable on etherium and tickets are pretty affordable so a full-price tickets is 150 euros and there are HEC our tickets and student tickets and we're looking forward to having many hundred people

there and if you want to check it out it's at DEFCON dot IO perfect and of course we can put a link to that in episode notes too but one thing that you should also say is that the a couple of the epicenter hosts going to moderate panels as well okay that makes the conference all that much better so today we spoke with I am your Gucci she's the executive director of GQ if you're in Foundation and of course if you're in foundation being you know one of the most one of the largest you know kind of this original Swiss crypto foundation and you know having had a you know tremendous impact on the space through their you know funding of aetherium and developing avi theorem and kind of you

know steering Ihram through all its its history yeah what did you think of the interview with Federica I had many positive things so I like that the if your own foundation is moving into a direction of transparency which so far has often been somewhat lacking I remain curious to see how this plays out yeah I agree I mean it's it's it's a little bit it was not so easy to get answers I think for a lot of questions but you know I think they're making an attempt and and that's that should be honored and appreciated so let's go to the interview with IO hi and welcome so we're here today with I am your Gucci's the executive director of the theorem foundation of course the

theorem foundation having had you know an enormous impact on the blockchain space since the beginning when it conducted kind of the first one of the first token sales or of public fundraisers for a crypto project and then as you know it's done a tremendous amount in terms of building deuterium ecosystem so really excited to have Ione today to speak a little bit about that you know the role of the foundation and how that has changed and evolved over time so thanks so much for joining us aya sorry to be here so curious to get started like how did you originally become involved in the crypto space okay so you were a high school teacher for ten years that seems

quite a quite a change in transition yes so I I am originally from Japan I was born and grew up there and like you said I my first career a professional career was a high school teacher and I was teaching English to high school students there for a long time actually for over ten years and then as a teacher my basically I had some experience studying abroad and then Japan is a nice big economy but at the same time it's pretty isolated surrounded by the ocean and then the culture is not that diverse so

I my mission was to tell my students like you know to at least go out there and then city the world and then you know feel the diversity so I was I was telling him like my I was inspiring students to do that and my students started to go abroad and then and in the meantime like I also had this question about like how teachers didn't really try to go outside themselves and then I thought it was important for education for the teachers to also have more diverse experience and I also got jealous of my students who were going

out there and there wasn't a lot of opportunity for for teachers to kind of take a leave or paid leave to go outside and learn so I I just decided to quit I still I'm still passionate about education so if I I thought it way if I want to go back I can just always come back so that's the country V and then move to the US the ridge area that I wanted to go in order for me to get a job I or in order for me to get a job I needed a pizza and you know time for me to get a visa

working visitor I it was better for me to get some like master's degree and since I thought I learned enough about education being a teacher I decided to get a business degree and then sir when I was working on my MBA my focus was sustainable business which you know like you kind of have to think about economic and environmental social sustainability for her business to evenly make profit and I thought that was interesting and and also had some experience working for a non-profit when I was like working on

MBA and also specifically I was focused on microfinance Financial Inclusion for that sustainable business study and and that's when I learned about I heard about Bitcoin when was this ayah with you so this was in 2011 and that was a time that I heard about Bitcoin in the visionary there is no materials to learn so if like now like Bitcoin seems very simple now for us but since there was no information education it took me a while to understand what it was and then but then

I when I learned but it was and I thought oh this is really I could be perfect opportunity or combination with with things like microfinance and just it was just up to thinking about the efficiency that can create but they now like of course busy thing and we can do a lot more but parkland I thought that was my interest and and then while this is going to create a lot of impacting financial inclusions and then I just had a chance to since I was in San Francisco the company who studied fracking well it was I joined kracken when the team was

getting known dead people so I was original like a few founding members one of a few funny members and I had an opportunity to join kracken before their launch work before its loans and that was early 2013 it was around the time that all other crypto airport or startups studied other groups like home base or like all started to happen and then San Francisco was kind of center of those companies and then every poll was there and I still remember my first boxing event was

big coin event in San Jose 2013 in Naples it felt big that the event seemed big back then but now looking back it was very small we tell everyone like who are now the leaders of this this industry but it was very very still very geeky nerdy group yeah it's funny like I thought about this is almost too too geeky for me the wrong way is that cool and so so you worked it cracking for a few years then how did you how did you end up at a theorem foundation so I worked at crack in a few years my job involves a lot of different

things including like basically I was heavily involved in starting like you know like up the ecosystem in Japan the crypto there was no crypto industry there when I joined but because of what happened to man Cox which was a big thing to man Cox pack also their how they collapse I was heavily involved in the regulatory situations in Japan too and I had come what's always a having conversation with the government and bankruptcy case and also building studying of the industry association

there and I was doing all that and then NIH the Krakken work was really still during the early stage of crypto industry my passion again original my passion was into this impact side of boxing so I I decided to leave and focused on more on this like you know social impact side of boxing and you know when I my actuary was was kind of working on different things and personally advising different

applications and around that time yeah I was asked you have interviews with the term foundation people when they were looking to looking for help or they seen foundation and I spoke with them and I joined the foundation that was early last year so there's some sort of so the foundation is a very centralized organ that governs or that kind of steers a space that is very decentralized so how would you describe the role of the e

theorem foundation in the theorem today yeah I wouldn't describe this organization as centralized at all I guess at all because when I joined it was since like I think I food to Berlin to meet some developers there and I was so there are you know bunch of other people who are all spread out to different places in the world but it is still compared to like even flat startup this is very decentralized because

almost like not almost an old project in in etherium including the stuff that the members of reasonable foundations are involving or not only by the Foundation's members that they their collaborations with other community members so it is really hard to to oh the line who is working on one project so I I couldn't tell like who are the members of one project and that along like shows how they centralize the whole thing is so it's really hard to it's more like the coordination is very important and the Foundation's role is to coordinate everything in ecosystem

and so that the the goal is to levy support DTM and that's it and meaning it can be about education it can be about development research but how it works is not us to it not the Easton foundation to do education like for like we can support that effort but fundamentally we are the coordinators we are we were like our peoples are coordinating like a special operations team is coordinating so the Foundation's all is to support everything in Ingham we have operations team we have grant problem team and then

we do some developers and researchers who who work on projects but their projects also are not centralized by the very foundations members they work with people in the ecosystem to actually work on the project so it's really hard to say who is working on one project because of that strong that sounds very difficult in terms of governance can you talk a little bit about the governance structure of the of the foundation so um how does the if your foundation actually take decisions and who has what role in that yeah so the governance is definitely difficult like like now like

people want to somehow the governance has become like a super hot topic but it is governance exists in any organization any any structure but again like I'm like the coordinator coordinators meaning like we try to that each team or its members to make their own decisions and we our job is to support their decision and they coordinate their decision with other decisions so that's why I see my job as the coordinator or coordinators but I can't really coordinate everything by myself so I have other people to

crunching together and it's more like I oversee all these coordination works so this is your making is never top-down and we don't really I don't know if you know like a lot of people I have this title but this title doesn't really explain my my work because that's this this is something that doesn't really exist in other organizations but so just just to get like a little bit more specific so you mentioned kind of coordinating and different parts but like are there some kind of no principles or like core processes that you used to say like okay this is this is the way the theorem foundation goes about it so that you know we get good

outcomes maybe the different interests are protected yeah and there is like a team guess and then we that then make decisions over there the roadmap and then this is just budget this is this is a plan that we want to this is a roadmap we want to execute this year and this is how much we you need and then since that's one project we need to support and we have to think about the total about that so that's why the coordination happens there they can make their own decision on for their own team but like they can really see decide on an other project so we coordinate that

Airport so that's why when I use that term coordination yes we have to have some structure for for this coalition to work and the structure meaning like base adjust and it's that so it's not in the normal company the management decide on everything here's a plan like you guys have to work on this way but it's not that way like they suggest their ideas and then we coordinate their decisions but um given that there's probably not unlimited funding of all this means that someone actually have has to restrict teams and say this is too much you can't you can't have that much and decide on

the general direction that the foundation is going to go in is is that you are who is that we have we have like your other operation theme that's basically listen to like together-together with me listen to their request and then but again so I don't want to get too deep into like internal teams or so that the plan that we are about to make it or let make it clear is that this this concept of the external teams that we were funding with grant and then internal teams we want to eliminate this distinction between internal or external at the end of the

day the Foundation's goal is to support important project in their ecosystem what I mean put a meaning like our focus would be like you said when we have limited budget how we make decisions is really like what what are the most important in the ecosystem now so it shouldn't be about internal or external and so we are looking at that number that I just mentioned a CEO we're going to spend about 30 million to support its a.m. this year is that that rough decision is decided by a few like our operations team including myself and

but then that the how we spend those monies or depending on the types of decisions we have multiple people to make decisions again like I need other people that's not really only unique about our organization but I don't yeah maybe there are there are small companies who like only see you'll make decision but that we we have experts it was mine heinous and legal and not like we have to discuss different things that's I think that's normal for an organization this episode of epicenter is brought to you by Microsoft and the azure blockchain workbench getting your

block team from the whiteboard to production can be a big undertaking and something as simple as connecting your blockchain to IOT devices or existing ERP systems is a project in itself well the folks at Microsoft had you covered you already know about the Azure blockchain workbench and how easy it makes bootstrapping your blockchain Network pre-configured with all the cloud services you need for your enterprise app their new development kit is the IFTTT for blockchains suppose you want to collect data from someone in a remote location via SMS and half that data package in a transaction for your hyper ledger fabric block team the development kit allows you to build this integration in just a few steps in a simple drag-and-drop interface here's another great example perhaps you're an institution working with etherium and

rely on csv files sent by email one click in the deaf kit and you can parse these files and have two data embed it in transactions whatever you're working with the dev kit can read transform and act on the data to learn more and to build your first application in less than 30 minutes visit a kms / epicenter and be sure to follow them on twitter at MSFT blockchain we'd like to thank Microsoft and Azure for their support of epicenter so of course their ATM has you know sort of it its founder Vitalik we're doing you know who has a very very high profile and and kinda you know extremely well known in ECM community so what's what's alex role

in the foundation and you know like what what's his role is responsibilities and like how much power does you have how much power so his role is the wizard so I think she he he claims himself a chief science officer and he's a he's a researcher and of course he is involved in like important research wishes themes decisions but right when he is involved in some like I'm in charge of the Foundation's

operations meaning like things like budget and and he is aware like how we you know decide on things and then also including budget and then you know like at the community like whoever wants to listen to him they would listen to him but he doesn't really control any decision-making in fact someone actually has not only to control the budget but also the strategic direction of the foundation right so you said that you have experts that you listen to but it sounded like the team that finally calls the shots is

the operation team so is that correct and if if so what kind of act experts do you consult and daddies known figure so basically adi is known within the ecosystem as advisors to the foundation and so what's what's the process just faster yeah so we tried to actually when I joined that operation there was no almost like a it was very very like that the operation team wasn't big and then also the foundation wasn't really giving up grunts as you know and in then when we started giving a lot of grunts starting last year we built this this team or grant program team and

since this it's still new like the team what's very still like illusionary it was small but now we have more people including community members someone like Evan s is is also providing information like what he thinks they're most important because as you know like he knows they know he's watching he has to write we can you to him so he is watching everything in the ecosystem so we have those people who are who actually join that the screening process of grant problem and and I also talked about this apathy Oh our the whole grant process from the screening

and doing interview and making the final decision is that it involves all those other other people and then some depending on the topic we go to like when it involves security discussion the grant team talks to our security team but also sometimes like our security teams outside they have to reach different groups depending on the topic or depending on the project that they are considering so if I we see the entire ecosystem was basically we can reach anyone like if we if we want to you know take a look at prediction market discussion and then we go to like

we we go to gnosis team and they may be asked their feedback work that's like that's totally possible unless you don't want to give any feedback right so that's yeah that's how so you mentioned that the Hearing Foundation is going to give our thirty million dollars in grants what are the you know like what are the priorities the funding priorities like how much are you planning like are you dividing it into different categories and allocating some amount of different categories or how are you going to go about deploying that money yeah so again this is going to be a detail is going to be provided very soon but there are a different way to

categorize this one is Oh like I think it's at the fundamental criteria that we use the grant program use is that like how so when you take a look at one project and the solution it is providing how how could it critical of course the how important is the solution is and how urgent that solution usually happened how unique the solution is compared to other ways so solving for the problem so that that kind of key criteria we do

have when the grant program screen projects but also and then there were topics that we originally kind of you know like asked meaning the wish list like a security scaling new axon and all that but but now that the big categories that we have regarding support from the interim foundation is this one for you know like what's happening on the 3m now and also the future waiting and then it was something like blinging I more more

developers to to BCAM or like but the different different types of thing that we like the ecosystem to have more then the moss tree when we make decisions we try to focus on the things on that if we don't give support no one else give support but this is very important so something that some like sometimes there are things that only they think foundation can do because of our unique position with the history can you give an example for that oh yeah yeah like something like a research project that like do like a lot of a lot of public project P support or a

research project right and then most of them don't have business model meaning the investors are only interested in supporting them unless in investors could be interested in supporting them if they can see like long-term effect including the price of ease and but normally it's hard for them to receive support because they don't have business model okay that makes sense and so you just said that you're going to give out 30 billion in grants for this year um as far as I know the foundation doesn't even really yeah financial statement yes so can you give us a sense of what what

percentage so how much how much money does the foundation have so basically if you continue giving out giving out grants for that if for 30 million a year how long will it last you I guess is what I'm asking well that's that's that depends on of course price of ease right and then how much so how much III eath be ether we have is sort of public information because you can just could get the information online so it's already there they like information about like about the six six fifty fifty K ether that EF has and and also we do have some Fiat animal and then then combining that

it's like how how long this lasts is like the acid it depends on the price of ease and and it changes every day so why doesn't eat um foundation like publish I don't know look every quarters like okay these are the assets we have here's how we spent the money these are like there's very this feels like there's a lack of kind of a lack of communication and transparency in definition do you see that the same way or so just just objectively like when also like enemies as you know like a Swiss foundation and the EF has to do everything that is required by the Swiss clothes because we

are Swiss Foundation and so it's doing everything that it's it's required regarding financial statement as a foundation when there's obligation to disclose financial this is you know just minorities that you you are required when you have actual like source of income from other Oh meaning normal foundations have receive glance from other organization or governments and that's where you you have response reading I mean I don't think anyone doubts that the theorem

foundation is complying with all of the you know foundation regulations and stuff who you are but but it still seems that maybe there's besides two legal issues that sort of from this um community like a reasonable expectation that it would be like a transparent sharing or any yeah so that's why that's why we are trying to you know sure like you said right it's not legality like it's about you know like for the community to feel good about the entire ecosystem again like if community sees the same foundation to be I see the EF you know it's one of these folder but but again

like since it does have a unique position so we try to give more information that's really coming very soon so that's like a right now you are we are having this conversation we're about to make i'm preacher when this podcast is out there i don't know when it's going to this crazy but yes that's that's happening now let's go to hear that you're working on transparency and so may i just come back to the runway question again so basically if you look at the 650k is that the foundation holds and if if we assume that that's the main money that the foundation actually has so doesn't have enormous amounts in fear that's 130 million today so if you give

up a 30 million in grants and that's your main expense that's the runway of four years at today's ether prices so do you expect that ether prices go up or do you expect that development is done in very few in a very very few number of years so we do have some fear among a cure there's some information out there again like we're going to give more information soon but we do have some fear amount of course but so the year that you should just mention but at the same time again one of the things we try to do here is we don't I think the only EF providing or

supporting the entire ecosystem it's not sustainable and one it's not sustainable but it's also not good for that this is supposed to be decentralized very so that's why there other funding mechanism now exist which we are we're excited to for for them to exist but also at the same time we're happy to work together with them that's why we were talking about more collaborations there so hopefully and then there other you know like efforts we're studying like double funding or all that so we are optimistic that there will be more other planting

systems to exist in the new future and then there are there already exist by compared to before and that it's a beauty of making this more decentralized yeah totally I mean we'd love to come back to that in a second but I'm I'm just curious so you mentioned its information how has a bunch of ease and it has a bunch of Fiat like are there other like investment serum foundation has made like either into you know equity of companies or potentially in different tokens and like if so like AHA you know what are they and and how do you go about managing conflicts of interest a foundation in nonprofit Cantore

legally again my going back to invest but we don't invest that that's not decision at least so far that Ethan Foundation has never made the decision to invest in other things or it could invest in a team project but we we are not doing that now so that's the question sometimes I get asked but we don't invest in things other than we do hold if either how do you deal with other potential conflicts of interest so what comes to mind for example is vitalik angel investment into stock where and stock

we're then receiving a full million grant from the foundation do you have processes in place to make sure that everything is above board yeah the process is basically I think it is not never start with whoever is involved in investment and then we should support that like you always start from like you know bottom up water the most important and then some Enterprise Ferg on and is this really important political system and so you know like we have no doubt that what stock where was working on was important

and they have great team and our whole team discussed with them and then we were confident that they would make good progress and their milestone that set place so that not entire money has been provided yet of course and then they report to us every every quarter so it is like one thing it's already creating good impact but also about Star Wars I don't know how he was actually involved in in that but it is public information that he already made it clear before this this grant happened and yeah that's

the only detail like you know but yeah again like we of course we will we watch because you know this was public information and of course we want that if that could happen we will definitely watch and discuss you talked about down mechanisms of funding earlier and if you you made the announcement that the human foundation is actually going to invest into the monarch Tao can you talk about the rationale behind that and what you hopes for now funding mechanisms are for the future we just made an announcement

Ethier in that ether information is supporting morale Tao who is with 1,000 earth and along with metallic himself as as individual and consensus and Joe Levin as individual that that was announced at detail but then there are other individuals who are a part of has to have been part of it marked out already and I do think this is very good expert what not just I but that yes we we thought we are always open to experiments with using this technology

but then you can really put a lot of money into a good you know like something dangerous but this is this is something that we thought it's a with a good team and it's something though funding it's something that the different way that ecosystem should experiment and so we are happy to support those airports and start being this with small amount and that's not just for Moldau but this was the first thing we did and we're we will be excited to see more if if there will be something that it work and yeah so I'm excited these series coming and then how

this it work and then it's an exciting thing to see in the ecosystem so historically the human community has been disliked kind of super open-minded place and like very tolerant of like all kinds of opinions at least that's my my personal impression it seems though that like in the last I don't know year or I'm not sure exactly sort of the timeframe but like it's kind of been changing and there's a lot for a bunch of things right so I think one this is if here maximalism must kind of come up with you know a lot of people being very adamant that it serum is is the one and only a little bit like you know people have done it often a Bitcoin and it's become much more like hostile to or like

contentious and argumentative like you also see those changes it's like what do you think is a driving factor here I personally blame Twitter I know I think it's the modern world and not just about III crypto I think it's a kind of the challenge this this modern society has it's a free free debate space and then used to be like there is like a professionals of meteor who passed things and then they you actually check resources check the source of information and then so it's really hard to see what information is correct and even this concept of the Oh III emits

getting becoming more maximalism it's it's when one person started to say you know like other people could be manipulated but I still see that the whole term America system to be very very like open and peaceful I mean like the first of all when I decided to store exam not other other like a proteins or other crypto effort is really about the culture like to me technology is something you can copy anyone can copy but the reason why district acted so many people didn't we do a lot of like a mark

money marketing or it's just they don't it it naturally attracted so many people is really what is when I specialist culture so like you said like I mean you you probably know better than I quite like how it's just uh this is very open bro so we don't to me III am is really about I use the term Kaizen at them combat like improving something that exists and as long that says that the vision long-term vision is like we want to create this platform finish creating this platform so that

the apps can you create the word of but the more distributed word the power distributed power decentralized word so that that we can solve problems like a financial inclusions and and that's the vision we want to see because we see a lot of problems because of this because of centralized structure of this modern society and and that vision naturally attracted people like oh I want to be part of the conscious community because people care about this and and I don't think that has changed but if you only

focus on some arguments on social media it does you know like kind of spotlight those those problems but I don't I still don't think anything has a lot of maximalist but you know sometimes people had passion about what they work on so they they might feel very protective about what they're working on but that doesn't mean like it has become maximally I don't don't think so yeah and then I personally like again like when I said we need to support experiments is this whole crypto thing is this whole thing is is experiment but

and and that's why it's so hard to work with regulators or because you know they they are scared of risks and for for experiments to be extreme nted we have to have different efforts we can't just have one effort when it's still an experiment so that's why we are very in you know open to different ideas so many doctrines are actually seen as competitors to ëthere IAM how do you feel about that and how do you think if you remember it with them competition yeah so the competition exists I don't I don't want to sound like like to a naive

that I don't see any competitions like a competition does exist in in you know in different definitions but we as the interim foundation or I think the ether McCullar in general it doesn't maybe like it's we're not really working on this to win and so that's the competition is really like there are other efforts that exist for for us to like it can actually help us to be better that already happens before too so again like I think like it Vitaly created him when he thought about the better way to use boxing that Bitcoin

and and then like because of a Bitcoin he was able to great teaching him like without that team hasn't been born so it's not you know like that's that's not competition it's more like a like this this is one idea that can inspire other ideas so any other ideas can be inspiration for us to be better and but again it's not about winning and that we think other other things up there could could inspire us and that's that's the fundamental philosophy here

and I think that's the fundamental philosophy that even community also believes but in the end right you have all of these different applications and there you have all of these different platforms and they're all trying to get applications to build on them so it is competitive right because if the applications go elsewhere then a project is not going to win or not going to succeed for application side when you're a business like you have your own priorities right and then it's their decision to you know to decide which which boxing makes most sense for them but there are things that like their pride like 40cm decentralization is the

priority weight like we don't compromise there that's why there's scaling issues that the whole ecosystem has been working on if you don't care about the centralization and then your decision would be something else that's okay because that's their decision and when it's you can define that as competition but when you when your priority is something else like we don't see it as a competition like yeah yeah and then you decide on something else and then there's no point for us to like you know convince them Lord you should

it's like a you care about different things in the world we care about decentralization and maybe some people don't but I think it's naturally attracted so many people because so many people care about decentralization so what are your hopes for aetherium for the end of the year and maybe for the next five years so my I mean like yes like the entire ecosystem and also yeah at the end of the year this serenity is 2.0 will show more more progress but but also we see you know a lot of the apps applications or making huge progress already and again that kept calm we

often have this you know announcements and updates from them that's always exciting so and that's a difficult by the way they've gone five this year is happening in Osaka in Japan and October we hope to see those exciting more exciting amounts announcement new applications happening and then personally hope to see for usability in atrium like boss for developer experience but also for the apps usability for end users and and in the long run again like my original passion

into this was maybe for this technology box and to be used for social impact were like a Financial Inclusion like like I'd like to see that more it's actually already happening which is exciting but I'd like to see that more in in the long run and then with that we are doing this survey of the apps solving real world issues we started to do that the end of last year and we were receiving like hundreds of submissions now which show that how many the apps are actually solving like real stuff like compared to five years ago in a

long time ago it was only those applications who you know say said they were using blockchains rock but you know not necessarily you didn't really see the solution happening but now we see that I'm excited about that now but I'm excited about the future that the world will have more of those and then again going back to my original passion is something I'm excited about yeah well thanks so much for coming on IR and just regarding DEFCON 5 so that's going to be in Japan and of course we'll put put the links in yeah Japan secret just what can you remind us of the dates

oh yes October 8th to 11th and you know circus Japan and more information will come very soon and I'm like of course I'm from there so I'm very excited but that and then Osaka is very like more unique has more characters yes that's perfect for eating and I you know you know I'm pretty sure a lot of people haven't been there so I'm excited to see our community people there okay well thanks so much I was a pleasure having you on and and yeah learning about the theorem foundation thank you so much right we release new episodes of epicentre every

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