From utopia to reality: the crypto compromises

Transcript

foreign good morning everyone and thank you for waking up so early I know it wasn't easy so my name is Costanza and I work for this worm foundation and today we'll be talking about web trim and the compromises that we make every day because sometimes more than we're three we are actually web 2.5 so before we start special disclaimers I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice and I do not represent any organizations that I am or I was affiliated with in the past

so why we're here today um the idea for This research came a few months ago when I was in Denver um a bit of context about me um I'm head of partnership at this worm Foundation the centralized turret and communication Network so my job is literally to talk to people Founders and dads to see um if they can if we can work together implementing the swim Network at the central life turret system um in the architecture so that we can make a transfer ship resistant and we can defend our privacy and we can defend our digital freedoms

so I was in Denver at a side event and I was talking to the founder of a very well-known crypto project something I'm sure everyone here knows and so of course we're like exploring how we can collaborate together what can we do and so of course I pitch in this world Network and if response left me speechless our community doesn't care about the centralization and transaction resistance so unfortunately this answer is um actually more common than you would expect them so in this talk we will see that web trim is actually a spectrum and we will examine web trigger values the ideal

architecture and how those values will translate into an architecture and the unspoken challenges for appropriate option and what we can do to move forward so in case someone here is new to the space um a bit of summary about web trigger values defining that I'm in a considered and bullet point is format is not easy but let's see what the ethereum foundation says first of all we have decentralization and this is because web show is dominated by a few players that control everything in web 3 ownership should be

distributed among Builders and users empowering individuals then we have permissionlessness to ensure that everyone and anyone regardless of phrase geographical location and possibilities can actually contribute to webstream then we have native payments and I don't think I had to explain it to anyone here so I'll move forward trustlessness and this is underpinned by economic incentives to make the network sustainable so that we can foster transparency and collaboration

now why does it matter and I will see why it matters in the architecture um but because it's also transformative power for people so first of all we Empower through ownership of assets so it is a paradigm where individuals have control over what goes online and over the digital assets um and this is not possible where your content is being stored on Amazon on Google Oracle or Microsoft and this is very important secondly um censorship resistance again if the content is being stored in a centralized way you can have transition resistance because someone else is

deciding for you when you go online and what goes online um then we have ownership and control over governance again this is not possible in the previous web show models and it's very important to Champion today to give back control to people and finally we have a strong focus on privacy and yeah it's about importance of personal data protection and empowering individuals to maintain control over the digital identities and so yeah what three values are important because they Encompass the centralization

permissionlessness native payments and they Empower individuals and this is why we're here so question is how does values translate into an architecture so here we can see when building any adapter they can be um something super simple uh it can be an nft Marketplace a wallet or anything we have several elements to consider the front end which has to be the central ism um it's going to be a long year um so of course you need a layer one ethereum maybe a layer Zoom you might need an identity system

you need definitely a third solution to store and retrieve data in a secure and censorship resistant way so the centralized third Solutions and ensure data integrity and eliminate the dependence and centralized servers and that can also be for the front end sometimes you also need a messaging solution to ensure the exchange of data between the user and the app and even better if that is the zero leaks messaging solution that you might need a computing power solution uh you're definitely going to

need query and apis and you need to put the code somewhere so you need a code Reaper and to run all of that you need a differential live address system and in order to effectively manage it you need a profit governance model and to make it healthy finally we have the community which is super important a vibrant and user Community provides feedbacks and helps you in making your product better every day now all those elements are crucial for your products to be truly web free and you can't keep a single one of them so now of course like implementing such

an architecture um this is like a very high level it can be very different um it can be challenging because the attack is very new and in some cases is even experimental so that's the problem because sometimes some products might choose to implement some components of the architecture in a Webster way but other components on for example AWS or Google Cloud or they can rely for example on YouTube instead of the differential live alternative to Shorter videos and why yes they do offer a reliable solution I'm not saying it's not if

we're short of emboding all the web 3 values that we saw before and because relying on those centralized providers projects are essentially placed in the trust in a centralized way to manage and control the infrastructure and powering the app and that introduced potential vulnerabilities and risk and it goes against all the principles that we saw before because it might not be transition resistant it might not be permissionless and this is the most common case where for example IP addresses are banned or kyc is enforce so here we have an architecture where all the elements are read and all the

elements are being centralized and it can be any web 2 organizations um yeah it can be the website for most companies and in green we have an architecture where all the elements are decentralized and in an Ideal World this is what your app will look like now unfortunately we're not we don't live in a real world yet so most of Webster projects for somewhere here and there some elements are being decentralized some others are fully web free and to achieve a fully webped Q architecture product to try to make all the

components green um so now um that means using alternatives to AWS using alternatives to Google Cloud for hosting storage infrastructure for the hardware um so that they can assure that the power and control are distributed among the users and not to the big corporations so now that we saw what Daniel an ideal architecture looks like we can see why most products are still not there technological Readiness illegal Readiness and lack of Visions Community readiness

so Tech Readiness is a critical Factor and it has two aspects so it is possible that the components of your architecture all the pieces that you need might not be fully developed by other products so if you need to use for example aquarium API Solutions the one that you need it's not still fully decentralized so there is nothing you can do um on the other hand it might be your Readiness meaning that um when you are developing an app you need to have a fully functional architecture and you need to demonstrate a proven track record of low down times and rubber sandaling back support

So In some cases you have to Leverage The centralized providers but okay while that is not good it is important here to recognize that achieving full defensualization it is often on the roadmap for products so when developer aspire to decentralized all the elements in the architecture they might be bound by the constraints and resources that they have so the must prioritize some aspects over some other aspects so it is important here to emphasize that despite all those compromises the primary focus remains on delivering a fully web free product that aligns with

the principles that we saw before and in that case being web 2.5 represents an interim compromise on the path towards achieving four different validation and of course like as we evolve and the landscape matures and all the components become available then we can make it um and in that case for this project embracing a web 2.5 stage becomes a strategic compromise that they have to make and that's fine um because they acknowledge that um being fully web free is the ultimate object

and by advancing the development and process then they are gladly integrating the centralized Solutions in their architecture um so because of technological Readiness then it is important to recognize that various degrees of web trainers can manifest leading to diverse configurations that can be however maybe not decentralized not fully permissionless that not fully permission lesson and it can be they can lack in trustlessness so in other scenario whether it is geotechnological Readiness or

infrastructure providers technological readiness the commitment to achieve a fully web free compatibility is evident for both users and the community and the community is actually supporting that supporting all the efforts and that the developers are making so if that is your case I want to say a big thank you because it is a very difficult process to make then the second reason why projects might not be fully web stream is legal compliance so there are quite a few challenges that crypto projects have to face in order to be fully web free because the regulatory

landscape is pretty difficult to navigate let's put it this way um there is always a new regulations we often say that Tech goes faster than the low and I think that this is the future because everything not illegal is legal but that also means that crypto projects exists in a great Zone and while some degree of disruption is considered healthier even by legislators it can be challenging because some products might also be deemed illegal in some countries or might be completely shut down because the low is not ready

so there can be various approach to this and um someone might decide to build regardless of the implications and the challenge the status quo no matter what and they have this admirable determination to be fully web free no matter what um but someone else might prefer to take the safer path and to have a over legal compliance team where they go beyond them what is asked for them and Implement more and more to make the regulators and the legislators happy and this is not a black and white solution it's not a black and white

situation um and most products were somewhere between the Spectrum the important thing is that it is your choice so some protocol for example um sorry um analyzing a single protocol might not be the best thing because it would be legal advice and will not offer an example on how to proceed so analyzing the human components I think is the best way so often there is the desire to Service as many people as possible so that means that the project has to be approved have to be legalized in as many

countries as possible so that means complying with legal requests for example blocking some jurisdictions in order to make the product available to everyone else and also because the alternatives are in the best case scenario being shut down in the worst case scenario getting arrested and those are like the choices that so many crypto projects have to make where to fall in the Spectrum now as long as this is your choice it's completely fine because nobody can decide what is your risk habitat and what you're willing to do the miles that you're willing to work in order to make

your products available to people but the problem comes when you rely on a centralized provider some because Dan is not your choice anymore as the series capitalist but there is also the risk appetite of the centralized providers that you rely on and that is normally quite low so for example if your data is in a centralized providers then they can take you down to comply with their legal requirements so for example the Mayan that blocking an IP address because this is what they have to do and in that case it's not your choice so you will have to compromise them not

because of you but because of someone else so that wouldn't be fair and yeah so so far so why some products are web 2.5 for Technical and legal reasons which is completely legitimate reasons but now we'll see my favorite reason why some projects are 2.5 so before I mention the founder of a famous crypto products saying that their Community doesn't care about the centralization but it's not the only one um and other crypto native projects when I was pitching to use worm told me um I don't see the other value of using

this rather than Google and I was like did I understand it like did I understand correctly um so yeah that was my first when I heard that and believe it or not that can be a good thing I can feel it in a good way I want to be optimistic here for you um it means that the space is growing bigger and bigger every day and it means that we are going mainstream and this is remarkable this is amazing it means that there is a shift in uh in the landscape and more people are coming from outside there are more individuals from a diverse background coming and joining and they bring ideas they bring perspective

although maybe they don't come for the attack because they don't see the attack the added value of the attack but still they're bringing here and this is the first steps toward going mainstream and yes there are a few challenges and because many Disney cameras are enthusiastic about the possibilities but we need to educate and we need to Showcase them why that matters and this is an opportunity that we have to make that to make web free growing again and align it with the core values that we saw before um so we need to prioritize education Community awareness and Community engagement so basically that means

making a bridge between web3 and newcomers so first of all we need to focus on education to make it happen um to empower newcomers then we need to Foster an inclusive community so making sure that everyone is engaged and everyone is involved and finally we need to keep each other in check because I drafted before a dual architecture I'm sure that I have a blind spot everybody help blind spot and the only way that we can overcome them is to have Frank an honest conversation giving feedback to each other and keeping each other in check so in this way we can build a web 3

ecosystem that is not actually web 2.5 and that can go my stream so to recap with so what is required for a project to be fully web free and we analyze the three main elements and Technical Readiness legal Readiness and Community readiness so point of that revolutions don't happen overnight it takes time and it takes effort to build the evolution and the internet that we want to see so in my opinion as long as web 2.5 is on the path towards web 3 is fine it's a compromise we need to make to get

where we want to get and with that thank you so much for everyone and if you have any questions I think that we still have a few minutes left [Applause] questions anyone cool I have a question but it's not oh what you Enterprise proposing to solve this problem about um

yeah or you say what you want to price is proposing a solution what kind of solution are you proposing well easily um I would like to get to have this so in order to be fully web3 you need all the components all the components are done from the front end to the centralized Hardware to making sure that your data is still in additionalized way to having a code repo that doesn't go down like GitHub so this is the final goal now in order to get here you need to understand why you're not here because there might be very several

reasons so maybe for example if you need to integrate the field of your architecture and there is no decentralized alternatives to what you need then you need to like look into the tech Readiness and making sure that we are developing the right tools and um if the reason is that the people behind the project don't see the added value of the centralization then we need to educate them it's about understanding why we're not here so why are we here what are the components that bring us here and then trying to understand how we can solve that problem because there is no one solution fits all

thank you maybe it was a question uh cool thank you so much everyone [Music]