DappCon 25: The Ticker Is $ETH - Jerome de Tychey, Joshua Dávila & Nixorokish. Ep. 604

Transcript

Between 2017 and today, there's been like five generation of so-called ETH killers that are like, "Yeah, let's let's go kill some ETH and kill E and B and be and be the second blockchain or maybe the first blockchain." And part of the the frustration that happened in the uh in the community probably in the during the witch hunt was like, "Yeah, but look at all those foundations. They are doing much better than us. They are more aggressive than us. They are they want to win." One thing that I find is really detrimental to uh communicating and culture is trying to put blockchain somewhere on the political spectrum.

Doing this isolates a lot of people and makes people believe things about crypto that aren't true. Oh, the Ethereum Foundation actually made some pretty cool things and there's some really interesting research. They did not really capitalize much on for me. A big question of whether or not this has become a reaction to price not going up. And that's kind of like the big question. I think that's like what caused the most amount of rage and anger and why like people had this like crazy behavior on Twitter and whatever else. If you're looking to stake your crypto with confidence, look no further than Chorus 1. More than 150,000 delegators, including institutions like BitGo, Panta Capital, and Ledger trust Chorus 1 with their assets. They support over 50 blockchains and are leaders in

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panel and the people who joined me here graciously today are Nixo previously from East Staker now at the Ethereum Foundation, Josh whom you may know better as the blockchain socialist from from Twitter and Jerome Nishi from Kamoth and ETH France and ECC and kind of like all things you know French Ethereum. Fantastic. So maybe we can do a round of introductions first. Um maybe maybe let's start with you Nick. So kind of give us the T on you on yourself. Okay.

So um I used to be a scientist. I um went from oceanography to working in the Ethereum ecosystem because I got like very obsessed with Ethereum staking and Ethereum in general and so I loved oceanography to work in staking. um worked in staking for a few years, was the executive director at East Staker uh before moving to protocol support at the Ethereum Foundation. And the way that happened is like when you advocate for solo stakers, it means that you have to be aware of uh research that's going into the protocol. And I ended up um becoming close with like researchers and core devs. And I wanted to help support that uh that process of of uh upgrades going into forks and so um protocol support was a very direct way to do

that. Cool. And we'll we'll talk about kind of like recent developments at the foundation after the intro. So kind of like you you you are very well placed as an inside source here. Perfect. And Josh, you are the blockchain socialist. We kind of like we we we touched base on this kind of like just before the the podcast and kind of like tried to rank different networks by political affiliation and we kind of we we kind of landed on the fact that Ethereum is kind of like in the more left side of the hemisphere but kind of it's it's a lonely stance. No, I mean it's you have um I have friends.

Yeah. Um, yeah. I mean, I, yeah, have a few years ago taken the unfortunate stance of putting my flag down and saying that I'm the blockchain socialist after being like kind of frustrated after many years of being involved in the crypto space and and working in it and also feeling a lack of good I thought was needed kind of from a leftwing perspective analysis on the crypto space. Um so yeah so that would the blockchain soldiers is the name of my my blog and podcast where um I share a lot of things and sometimes I I tweet and um yeah but I also build through bread cooperative we build a lot on Nosis chain um as well so yeah I

think I coming from a perspective of both like following everything from a media point of view from a you know I'm open about my my stance on things and then uh also from from building stuff on on various chains Um, tell us about Bread Shade. Yeah, so we recently announced our rebrand to Bread Cooperative because there's nothing to lo We only have our chains to lose, right? Um, and so yeah, basically it's a project. It's a cooperative um network of kind of politically aligned projects.

We kind of use this term post capitalism to frame the things that we build. I think yesterday at DevCon I uh presented on solidarity primitives. So this is kind of like the technological conceptual framework in how we think about building applications. Uh thinking of technology as something that facilitates relationships between people and institutions. Um DeFi primitives being you know cool in their own right but they are ones that generally facilitate relationships of of finance. So trying to I use the term kit bashing. So taking taking things that maybe had a certain purpose for one thing but mashing them together so that they produce different logics that don't necessarily involve kind of a individualistic profit motiv motivation

in using technology. What didn't use you to kind of put down your flag because kind of like I I think kind of the politics of the space has shifted very marketkedly over the years. So kind of I think there's always been kind of the liberty faction, but I mean that's still there and kind of like the crypto anarchists and so on. I would probably also camp kind of count into that camp despite the fact that kind of like they're not not kind of like economic libertarians per se. Um but kind of we we've seen a huge influx of more conservative forces right over the over the last couple of years. Yeah. Uh I mean I would say in in large part it's kind of more uh people have become a lot more vocal or emboldened um in their conservatism

but yeah I think for me I mean I originally started everything anonymously so for me it was just kind of like someone's got to do it. I don't really want to do it and associate my name with it because I had a corporate job and I didn't want to like explain to my boss what I was doing. Um so I did it anonymously but eventually I left that job and then I was asked to write a book. So I had and they said I have to be public if I want to publish the book and so I had to come out of the anon closet and yeah so for me it was kind of a I think there was a certain empowerment for others as well. I think what I found is that there were a lot of people in the crypto space who were

uncomfortable with certain political aspects when being involved in it and so by being the person to kind of just be open about it then I think it gave other people more confidence in like being able to express that. So, I mean, I constantly get, you know, messages from people of just like, you know, thank you. It's not like, thank you for showing. It's not like all just an alt-right, you know, wormhole or whatever like that. So yeah, I've ended up becoming that. But you know, there's more than just me just to say that like I think share the similar politics and are also involved in the crypto space and have the critiques and also the you know different uh interest as to what is being pursued in the space as I think you know there's a difference depending

on your politics sometimes on the things that you're kind of interested in because it's it's a very large spectrum of things you can do with the technology right. Yeah, absolutely. And I think kind of socialism, this is also something that kind of it depends really starkly where you're based, whether this is something that people believe as an insult. So kind of here in Germany, kind of like being a socialist is kind of like being middle of the road. Um where whereas kind of when you when you go kind of like into the US, it's basically an insult to call someone a socialist. So the territory is being challenged now. Um in America I think American politics is like very much in flux uh at the moment with I think you know in especially starting in 2016. I mean Trump and Bernie Sanders definitely kind

of broke the political spectrum a bit or what was the norm in the US for so many decades but so things are being things are being challenged and yeah and now we have I mean if you're keeping up in New York City the leading mayoral candidate is a I don't know if he said he's a socialist but a lot of his policies are pretty are aligned in that way. Cool. Speaking of socialism, Jerome. Oh my god, what a transition. So on the on the political spectrum, I think I sit in the bleeding heart libertarians like yeah, libertarianism, but let's mutualize as much as we can as we can because there's a lot of thing that uh like just works better if we mutualize a risk. But yeah, so for a

quick intro, I've been in the space for about 10 years now. Uh I started out as a as a minor. uh my my um I'm an economist by training. I was very appealed by the idea of doing uh money without central banks. Hence why I love circles. I think it's an excellent idea to uh approach the uh the the the minting of money the other way around. Um so I did some mining. I switched to Ethereum because I had a lot of GPUs uh back in the days. I created Ethereum France to like organize a bit of the the French community around how we can mine, how we can do smart contract and we can do things this way. I started to work u in the space first at EY then at Consensus, then at le uh to to bring everybody together in

Paris or in France or in Brussels or in K uh regularly every year roughly at the same time. So we get a we get a get together time and uh if you're as a nonprofit has been running for about 10 years now and uh we will happily party for the 10 years anniversary of Ethereum in a few uh in a few weeks and uh see everyone at CCC uh in the in 10 days now or the 30th of June. Yep. Yeah it it it is coming up pretty soon. Give us the precap of what's going to happen at at ECC this year. Uh so every every big conference like to say we are the biggest uh so let's say we are the biggest the biggest in Europe I think is very by far the biggest in Europe so

conference wise like uh we can expect uh several thousands of people uh like last year at Brussel we had a 6k people coming to the conference we have a few more tickets open than 6k this year so let's say okay at u seek people with a with a band um probably quite more people are coming You can also even if there are don't showing up to ECC because we have a lot of side events like last year in Brussel we had a 600 side events. Uh this year we try to uh to be a bit more careful about the side events we we list. So there is ETCC week that's listing couple of vested side events that we have checked out. Okay this is real and so on. But you have lots of list available on cryptonomad luma and and so on and so

forth. So lots of side events, lots of people coming, but also lots of speakers, 360 plus that are going to speak at HCC. Uh and then right after HTC, you have the uh Eve global can hackathon. Mhm. And so yeah, a full week of events in the south of France between the 30th of June to the 6th of July. And well venue wise uh this is going to be happening in the festival palace which is the the same place that um gets to host the uh film festival of cano. Uh so you will walk the same uh the same carpet as uh well let's take people from different political spectrum. Tom Cruz uh Tom Hanks uh I don't know who is the

the main leftist actors in the US. Yeah. So lots of different people have been walking the the red carpet. Uh so same place it's also quite a small city uh with a lot of accommodation. So when it's organizing a festival or a big event like HCC uh you roughly have uh 20% of the population that are in the town that are coming for this uh event specifically. So you will have a town that's blockchain minded for about a week. Uh and also the city of K has been very very welcoming to the idea of of crypto. Uh it's a right-wing mayor ring center mayor. uh called David Listar that has been really pro crypto saying this is the future we cannot miss this

train uh so let's make sure we on board all the all the the the shops uh to accept crypto to be friendly of crypto and so on which was very very positive to see in the organization did that actually happen kind of like can I go into a shop and kind of like pay with yes yes indeed um there is a local startup uh that created a port of sale approach to uh paying with crypto uh they based in Marseilles I I think yeah based in Marcel and so they partnered with the the city hall to equip a lot of the different shops. When we came before the operation in um in February I was already able to pay with crypto on uh for for lunch. Uh and you will see on the front door uh big circle u circle um

sticker that says crypto accepted here uh in blue and gold. Uh so you'll know that you are going to be in a good place. Uh but yeah, it's going to be very pretty pretty nice. And what kind of crypto do they accept? Is it very inclusive or is it kind of like uh well you can pay with USDC here. So I I I paid in Eve. Okay. Yeah. So I I don't know exact I didn't proof check the solution like can you pay in this is also it's also an interesting challenge for a shop right kind of like which coins do you do you accept in exchange for your goods and services? So it's uh so ETCC as a as a as an or well as a as an event tries every year to accept crypto for payment and the event

organizer like maybe you you know the the problem uh making sure that a large for um heavy duty ticketing system accept crypto. So you have a two two inbounds of payment the classic payment with credit card and the the payment with with crypto. Making sure that those two are getting reconciled and properly integrated is kind of hard first and then accepting any type of tokens to be performed as payment is another another challenge. And if you add on top of that that uh from an accounting perspective you prefer to receive this on this L2 or on Nosis or on poly on polygon whatever as a specific output you add another layer of complexity. So you need to do a crosschain payment and so on. So, we

tried something at DCC this year. Uh, it's workingish, but it's definitely a big challenge. And like coming if you if you take the point of sale at a brick and mortar shop, uh, them having to, uh, handle all this complexity is super super complex. And I assume it's also kind of it's converted on the spot and they actually receive I think, right? I mean, kind of like uh you don't you don't make them holders themselves. Yeah. I mean from uh if you like the the first bars that accepted uh crypto in uh in in France or for example in Paris we have a few like this uh they just show you a QR code linked to Coinbase and like okay scan this send me some Bitcoin send me some ether like hey whatever I'll just keep it and in the book they

show that okay I sold you like 20 of beer and uh yeah and they keep the thing but I I wonder if they yeah I probably don't they probably switch immediately to uh to euro and so on at DevCon we we don't accept credit card payments. So, you actually have to pay on I think kind of like if you actually show up to the venue then kind of we we let you pay with a card. Um but uh basically if you buy ahead of time and it it's actually proved a really good fun kind of really good filter um for getting the right kind of people here and I think kind of as as someone who's kind of built in the space also for years. I mean if the tech is so bad that not even we ourselves are willing to use it. Um there's something

kind of that we we urgently need to work on but uh yeah no I I I agree with you that's a it's a strong stance and it's a adverse selection like you only have people that already have a wallet that show up to Dubcon at the end of the day. This this is correct. Yeah. But at the same time if you are in the five of thousands and six of thousands of you of tickets it's a different you need to use professional services for the ticketing and they look at you like crypto. Okay. uh we use unlock and I know you've worked with them in the past too but kind of I cannot endorse them enough they are fantastic so if any of you kind of run a uh crypto event unlock they are your guys happy to make an intro but

yeah we went we went back to back and forth with different ticket providers to that were able to handle our load and um now we have a crypto integration in a ticketing provider uh let's see how the the checkin at the at the conference works before I can endorse them. Yeah. Okay. Let's see. Cool. Who are your headliners this year? The usual suspects. I mean, everybody everybody that has a something to say at at CCC usually gets to say it like uh we have a most of the major protocols are here. Most of them are also showcasing something that they recently released.

Uh that was the plan initially to have a recurring conference happening every year at the same time. which means that from a production perspective, you prepare to do a product announcement around HTCC. So we have uh people from most of the D5 protocols, most of the big ones uh and we have also a few people from uh the IRM foundation that are coming. Thomas is coming. Uh Vitalik is coming like every year and I'm very excited by the release of V4 of a like Stan has been supporting us for for a long time as well. And HCC is also a place where you have smaller rooms from 50 to 60 seats and we welcome a lot of researchers that come and showcase what they have been building in the in the recent weeks and recent months. So it's also pretty cool if you want to stay uh

stay um updated with what's going on in the in the research space. What I'm personally very excited is to see uh web two companies coming and and sponsoring. So yeah, Robin Hood has been uh one of the main sponsor this year. Uh and uh they have a lot of thing to announce. So it's pretty pretty nice to see that. Yeah, it's showing that we are getting in a in a new maturity at the ecosystem. This is super interesting to hear. There's other tiny things we should probably talk about. So kind of the Ethereum Foundation, they um a week or two ago they kind of announced a major restructuring kind of some people were laid off, kind of teams were merged.

Maybe Nixo, do you do you want to give us the rundown of what happened and then kind of we can talk about kind of like what's the community reaction has been like? Yeah, for sure. Uh so basically there are like different uh parts of the EF. One of them uh was the protocol research and development side and um there was a a restructuring of that Ethereum um R&D section and it's just called protocol now. Um and they sort of restructured the teams. They dissolved some teams. they moved some people to um different places on teams and it was kind it was kind of a shock for people because um I I haven't been at the EF very long. I joined last September and so the majority of my experience with

the EF has been sort of as an outsider but since last September um I sort of like the the EF was sort of like this mystery entity to me before I joined and like you don't really know what the structure is. You don't really know who works there. you don't really know how big it is. And so when I joined, the first thing I started doing is I started keeping lists of people and I was like, "Okay, who are you? Who where do you work?" And I um was sort of like trying to parse out like who worked where. And one of the things I did is uh we were running our first internship program and the interns were sort of like, "Okay, but like I'm applying for an R&D position, but I really don't know like what teams are there." And I was like,

"Yeah, me neither." So, um I created like this this blog and I sent it to all the researchers and the development teams and I was like, is this correct? Um and sort of forced them to like come up with a um come up with a description of their teams. Um and I think that that was like part on on the way to like the EF discovering like it needs to sort of publicize who works there. needs to publicize what the teams are because it makes it a lot easier for people to collaborate with research at the EF and development at the EF if you know what the teams are and you know what the points of contact are. So I published this blog post um for the interns. It was helpful for the entire ecosystem I think. So uh the the restructuring has been yeah it came as

kind of a shock to people uh because there was this feeling when I joined that like the EF was sort of like tenured like when you work there you just kind of work there as long as you want to work there. No like hotel California. Yes. Exactly. Um and so I think that u this is really a shift in culture at the EF to be like you know like we're going to make sure that teams are efficient. We're going to make sure that like people who are there are their projects are still relevant to the ecosystem and we're going to constantly re-evaluate if those projects um are relevant. But on the other side, there was sort of like this growing narrative in the EF like we need to we need to grow and develop with the ecosystem and like the Ethereum ecosystem and the

crypto ecosystem in general looks so different than what it looked like in 2017, 2018, 2019. Um, and so if the EF still looks like exactly what it looked like back then, we're not growing and there's no way that that Ethereum as an ecosystem would keep up without like its best steward growing with it. So yeah, I think people are pretty stoked about changes at the EF um after getting over like the initial shock and like of course like not everybody um some people were let go and so like it it was sort of bittersweet for people. Yeah. But I I am very bullish on these changes and I'm very excited to see that like there basically when um when Tomas and Shawe came in it sort of represented this

change that was happening at the EF where there was like this subtraction philosophy and it was sort of like infinite garden and uh Shawe and Tomas came in and Shawei sort of has been at the EF for a long time. Tomas was at Nethermind still is at Nethermind and it was like this yin yin and yang and Tomas sort of represents the mercenary part of the ecosystem and Shawei uh sort of represents the missionary and I think that it's important for the Ethereum Foundation not to just be like center missionary or mercenary. I think it's important for them to have both so that we have representatives from both like sort of like balancing each other out.

And I think so far it is going very well. I'm super happy to hear that. Jerome, you've been extremely vocal in your criticism of the Ethereum Foundation. You gave a talk titled what I don't like about Ethereum and of what where you mostly talked about this. So what's what's your kind of external view on these changes? So I I've been extremely vocal I think in a in a polite way in polite and constructive manner. 100%. So, and I I think it's been very needed. So, it's there's been um a witch hunt back in uh November, December, uh January against the EF. And I I well I pity the ones that participated actively

uh and uh and harshly uh around this uh but it was like a a hard moment to go through I think as an ecosystem. Yet the what I don't like about Ethereum it's um it's it was initially an ask for from Joseph Jose Joseph Jassic from it Frank told me like hey this was a fun talk that happened atCC a few years ago you know would you like to do this talk I was like yep yeah let's do let's do something like this because there are there are things that I don't like about Ethereum things that are changing and I'm happy to see some changes right now and we had a we had a history at the ecosystem of doing our dirty laundry in public but there's different way of doing the dirty laundry proposing things that can change probably things that work and don't work and um I think it's

um it's a good way to to do it now. So about the changes at the at the at the foundation, I'm very happy of what I what I'm what I'm seeing unravel right now. I think one of the one of the one of the thing that got me into Ethereum uh and got me bullish and and and dedicated the past 10 years of my life growing like I think when I'm when I'm asked what is my mission? I'm like I want to bring more people into the blockchain. I want to bring more people into Ethereum by organizing events, by doing some custody stuff. somewhere to the service stuff helping different things and I I want this technology to succeed and I feel like there is a strong appeal in um very brilliant minds very uh talented people very dedicated people into this ecosystem because uh

when you deep dive into it and you look at how welcoming the community is you feel like hey yeah this is this is what I want this is what I work want to work on like I I want I want to I want to be part of this project and this also comes with a realization that we are at different stages of maturity of our ecosystem. like uh Nexus said it uh very elegantly like Ethereum now doesn't look like Ethereum before like in 2017 like uh you just joined the foundation and you're like yeah it's a tenure but between 2017 and today there's been like five generation of so-called ETH killers that are like yeah let's let's go kill some E and kill E and be and be and be the second blockchain or maybe the first blockchain and part of the the

frustration that happened in the uh in the community probably in the during the witch was like, "Yeah, but look at all those foundations. They are doing much better than us. They are more aggressive than us. They are they want to win." Uh, yeah. Well, completely ignoring this wasn't a wasn't a solution and uh people coming in and coming out of the foundation is a net positive to the ecosystem because someone that has been working on the foundation for a few years and now is on the market or joining a new team come with a lot of network at the foundation and a huge knowhow about how it works regarding the the R&D project that the foundation was coming up and so on. uh so having an inflow of people from the foundation into the project that are developing

right now is very positive for the ecosystem as well. the lack of of transparency that was at the uh about the budget of the foundation uh was something that was easy to critique um and now that okay we have an organic ground we have a clear much clearer uh direction uh it's being received very positively uh among uh if holders uh if blockchain builders and uh and and the general public as a whole so uh yeah those changes were expected and I'm glad they are they are being uh they are being unraveled But there's many things that I don't like about Ethereum. Way more things that I like about Ethereum.

So I'm staying and I we'll get to them in in a second. So I think kind of I was also vocal in the debate on kind of like Ethereum culture kind of like when kind of all of this got brought up because I think kind of like a lot of the the voices we were hearing were needlessly antagonistic. Yeah. And I I think kind of I'm also very much not in the camp. There were also a lot of people who clamored very loudly that the Ethereum foundation doesn't do enough marketing and I think kind of like there's in my view kind of market marketing is not in scope for the foundation right and I think kind of I know that there are foundations who do this but I think kind of like critiquing the fact that there was not enough vision and kind of the

technical road map and kind of there was no no clear narrative about kind of like where we're trying to go and kind of like what we're trying to build. I would 100% second that. And I think kind of like the infinite garden narrative was also a little bit of a of a copout because basically it includes everything and nothing, right? It's kind of like what does what does that even mean? What does that even mean? Uh so in def in defense for people that were harsh, uh sometimes when you feel like you are not being heard, sometimes when you feel like things need to change and you have a no way of making yourself heard, you you begin to shout and you begin to insult. So when you result to insult and so on, it's not a good sign, but it's also not a good sign from the people

that were supposed to listen to not even give a give attention. So maybe there was a kind of a evily tower feeling uh like, hey, we're just uh nice and uh and doing good. Uh why why people are so mean to us at the foundation? Like it does. Yeah. So it it doesn't make us look good uh for the general public for sure. But still sometimes you you have to resort to those kind of of push unfortunately. You you you disagree, Nixo? Absolutely. I think the the the mob mentality that happened on Twitter last fall was was horrible. Like I I it was not productive. It was actually counterproductive to decisions that were being made at the time. Um and I think that the way that especially like trusted people in the ecosystem, people

who have very large very loud voices, very trusted voices on on crypto Twitter were being really irresponsible with the way that they were handling this situation. And it made a lot of people jump in and it enabled a lot of gross behavior. Yep. I don't want to excuse any of those behavior at all. But I think from this kind of when when we are at this scale of uh bad talk and bad debates, I think it's also interesting to say like hey how how how this could have been avoided like what what could have been done to be to be more reactive and to be more proactive on this front.

Now from a from a marketing standpoint as a whole like um I think we have to accept that we are not in our teenage years anymore like uh the back in the days where you just had a a few people showing up at an interim friends meet up saying like hey I just want to install an inter miner uh on my uh on my gaming computer so I can get some E. You just contribute you start to plug the things you pay a little bit of electricity and you have some ETH and that's cool. It turns out that now if you want to get into anything that's epher related, you first have to go on an exchange and buy ether. Yeah. So your first contact with uh with the the asset is actually the ticker. The ticker is if I said someone famous. So yeah. Uh and when when you

have this entry point that's not a lobby uh hobbyist entry point but but a but a buyer ent entry point uh you you just create an account on whatever socialized exchange or yeah usually you do that and then uh you get into the the memecoin stuff and the and the the fun stuff around and the and the betting stuff and any any any weird any weird tokens and then then you look at the the ticker of Etherum and you're like oh wow uh is this something I want to hold? Is this someone I want to participate in? So I I I doubt we can avoid to be uh to be more proactive in um in how uh in how we we explain the project in how we we position the project and how we get people to actually participate in the project. So solo staking is extremely

important in that front but also having a clear narrative on why you should order Eve and why Eve is important is extremely strong and we miss out on uh on on thing that we took a lot of time to to set out on the market like from example the the world computer like shaping the thing like hey it's a world computer even ultrasound money like okay we wanted to position us as ultrasound money so why ditch that for uh for for um infinite garden and uh and solar punk nar narratives while creating those value and creating those reference points to the public is extremely long and enforcing and creating a culture is extremely hard. Uh why we didn't really push our our uh history and our and our uh like value differently than just

dancing on the stage and saying like hey we just everybody's welcome just show up and and contribute. It's much harder to be in that position and pushing that when you are not alone anymore on the scene like when uh there is a lot of well organized foundation that push hard for their own narrative. Do do you think that a culture element is kind of like it's run its course because kind of like I don't I don't know whether you you guys saw too much's talk kind of like it was actually very entertaining. He he kind of uh he he ran us through his um adventures trying to kind of onchain some money on a fresh account and kind of like everything everything didn't work but this is the t so kind of do do you think somehow this you know but it's

Ethereum culture kind of um narrative kind of is stopping us from actually going out and you know getting users. We're not good at pushing our culture. I think we're that's something I don't like about it. We're not we're not we're not that good at pushing our culture right now. Uh what do you think Josh? You you're kind of the question is what is our culture? Yeah, exactly. I think credible neutrality, you know, being a welcoming that's a difficult that's a difficult culture to push. How how do I enact credible neutrality culture? Exactly. Look and u and for for me every time you speak about every time we try to bring a culture into an ecosystem like uh we need to have reference points we need to

have examples and we need to we need to have a uh some u recurring celebration of things like uh unfortunately I think Bitcoin is a good example like we do pizza day. Hey, pizza day. Look guys, we do pizza day. Every 22 of May, we do pizza day. Look, why pizza day? Oh, because this happened. I I hope we get to celebrate the Dow hack. I hope we get to celebrate a couple of forks. I hope we the dack. Celebrate Dway. Yeah, just a realization that uh sometimes on the computer that don't reboot for 10 years, like thing can happen like we can get together as a as validators of the network and say like, hey, this went wrong and uh okay, let's change this.

Let's celebrate the the parity multiG hack. Oh, sometimes we don't change because uh we need to stay incredibly neutral. I actually think that this is something that Ethereum does really well is celebrating these things because uh they do live streams for all of the upgrades and like Estaker started doing that way back in the day um just because they were stoked about like the beacon chain going live and I think that that is like I have never I'm never so bullish on Ethereum and I never feel as good as like when I get out of a live stream call because they are so energetic. the 1st of December changing the consensus on the on the life chain like come on guys uh this is this is recordet science engineering at scale and safeke keeping all of those uh value onchain at the same time uh diffusing

the difficulty b five time this is something we celebrate because there's no proof of stake system that compares to ethereum in term of maturity how hard it is well it takes five year dedication and commitment to do that tell a last year engineering about this and we were like oh wow this is this is something I want to join and suddenly the the big values like oh credibly neutral openness research and so on uh that Ethereum as in the foundation want to embody uh suddenly this become clear this become real like oh yeah over the past 10 years this is the the the the adventure that you guys went on and I want to be part of the next chapter this is much more powerful

than a green flowers dance and uh and just being nice like uh this is this is how we embody this culture and this is what I think we should push more for uh more uh more embodiment of the culture in the in the history of itself. Yeah, I will say and I hope this isn't a shot at you but I I will say that one thing that I find is really detrimental to uh communicating and culture is trying to put blockchain somewhere on the political spectrum because um blockchain is supposed to be credibly neutral. it's supposed to benefit everybody equally.

And like I think that people who are uh right or left keep like trying to like claim or disown crypto in general. And I think doing this isolates a lot of people and makes people believe things about crypto that aren't true. And I I can tell you have like response to this. I have I've been hold I don't want to interrupt. Um but I I find my my own I I find that like putting things on political spectrums generally is detrimental more so um than constructive because in a lot of the world right now we love to place things on political spectrums which is a way to divide people rather than a way to uh move something forward and it makes

people choose teams. Um, and I just I find that um, Ethereum in general, even if you uh, look at the the specific issues that people on the right or the left care about, if you like isolate issues, you find that they agree on a lot more than they disagree on, but they focus on the things that they disagree on. And putting it somewhere on the political spectrum focuses on those things that they disagree on rather than the majority of issues where they where they agree. So this is this is a very complex uh, I think problem space to talk about. Uh, I think the problem is I mean I don't know for me the reality is that like everyone associates a lot of people associate crypto with a very right-wing politics and that's kind of the I don't know if I'm a good foil for

that. I mean I'm trying my best. Um, but I think there's a lot of like very big powers that we have not really contended with very well. I mean, yeah, Coinbase sponsored the the military parade in the US. I mean, this is something that's like I mean, this is this is pretty bad optically, I think, for like this this is sending a signal to the world that like Coinbase like a very big image is on the side of like American Imperial might, you know, it's it's communication run that was even worse. Sure. Yeah. You know, and and this is and Coinbase is not the only group that is a part of I mean, during the runup to the last election, it was very obvious. I mean,

yeah, I guess I just I I would fight back against the the feeling that it's both the left and the right's fault for trying to claim like I I would say that, you know, there's some arguments you can make that Ethereum relative to other blockchains. Generally, there are people who are maybe more kind of like on the center left. I would say that's not crazy to say and and in comparison, but the bar is fairly low, I have to say. like if uh you know uh if you saw the latest that the Salana advertisement and just like plenty of the people who are very big voices in what they've said outwardly it's um it does confer to a right-wing politics and I think that I think I think you know just maybe getting back to like the Ethereum Foundation changes perhaps like I do

think that there was a lot of changes that probably needed to be made. I'm not like super privy to all the details and all the specifics and whatever else. I don't want to comment like too much on it, but like there was a need for some sort of change because yeah, it kind of felt everyone was like what does the Ethereum Foundation kind of do? What are they what does it look like? What's the structure? How do I get help from them? Like that was always like not that was often very not clear. But the Ethereum foundation all did also did if like at least just you know once I did started learning meeting more people in it and like seeing what they were working on then I realized oh the Ethereum foundation actually made some pretty cool things and there's some really interesting research they did not really

capitalize much on as well like um there's a ZKTLS is like one example like they basically created it and now there are a bunch of companies that are using it and I don't know if the Ethereum foundation is like getting much out of it for example and Yeah. So like so the there I think there are some like legitimate critiques and some change needed. I think there's also for me a big question of whether or not this has become a reaction to uh price not going up and that's kind of like the big question. I think that's like what caused the most amount of rage and anger and why like people had this like crazy behavior on Twitter and whatever else.

After Pekra there was like this surge of like good feelings and everybody was like Spectra went well. were so happy and I I made a comment to somebody like and like the the vibes on crypto Twitter are immaculate and somebody was like so the price is up. Yeah. But but I think this is like a very serious like you know thing to notice because like okay talking about culture at least my view like I definitely agree with a lot of what you said but I think the the the root at what defines culture is like material reality it's like economic reality defines culture in many ways or like nobody nobody complains when we are performing at par with the rest of the market of course. Yeah, like cultural stance defend to another cash founders super strong cultural stance that uh

that the term foundation took. How is it advertised? How is it being uh being put into motion like uh if you talk to any great engineers or great to be engineers who told them hey we we defend free code. Yeah. And concretely what this translate to? It translate to this and not uh sponsoring a military parade. Oh yeah sure. Okay. That's extremely impactful. Uh but at the same time people were potentially reacting to uh some big institutions, some big uh major financial institutions. So public institutions going to work with a weird blockchain that we never heard of for upcoming blockchains. They were like what is the foundation doing? Why aren't we uh part of the discussions like uh and part of the part of the latest

strategy that the the newest blockchain were employing is elbowing their way and nudging their way really uh really well to various regulators and various financial institutions. So behind the the credible neutrality stance of the foundation I think for a long time they refused the EF refused and I think still refused to talk to governments talk to public institutions talk to big banks talk to uh those different uh bodies. I will say still refusing is that Tomas has been open about the fact that he is talking to those institutions now. That's great and that's a definitely a change that uh that's ongoing and that's super positive because usually when you look at this and you want to be credible you either take the I talk to everyone and it's super hard to maintain and it's super hard to accept to talk to everyone

including potential dictatorships and so on and I'll talk to no one. uh and the seat in the middle that I'm open to talk to anyone and I will not lose my my soul implies that you have people that are actually doing those talk that are very very strong stance and are really credible in the way they implement it and I do think it's a mistake to suppose that it's okay to say hey uh those different nonf foundation are going to do it uh because we say they are good enough to do it at the end of the day you have a institutions that says well I've been talking to uh this foundation that foundation that foundation we wanted to talk to the etherum foundation and uh we had conveys if and those guys

but that's not the EF so they are not in control of the protocol even if we say we're not in the control of the protocol anyway at the EF no now the institution wants to talk to the EF and not wanting to wave the term flag to those institution is is probably a mistake and I'm I'm glad to hear that Thomas is doing the the work anyway uh you cannot really externalize that when all the other blockchain are doing it themselves. I think Josh I mean when we kind of look at kind of like how the ecosystem has evolved over the years and I'm going somewhere with this. So um uh surprise. So in the very beginning kind of we we talked about things like agency for individuals, right? We talked about shared ownership structures. We talked

about large scale scale coordination bottom up and so on. And to me these are very much not right-wing speaking points, right? Kind of like these are talking points for kind of the pro progressive left. But somehow we kind of left those people behind or we kind of we alienated kind of like the non-crypto leftists by I I'm not entirely sure doing what despite the fact that um kind of if if you look at say the Elizabeth Warren of the world in principle kind of like on principle she should love crypto right so so where do you think we went wrong and kind of like now kind of with speaking the Ethereum Foundation kind of

speaking with large banks and other institutions. Is that good enough for kind of the common man? That's kind of the the common user, right? What's good enough for the common man? This kind of emphasis shift to kind of speaking more with kind of the economically powerful players that are already out there where kind of like in the beginning it was kind of more of a let's level this playing ground kind of feel. So where do you fall on that? It's complicated. Um I mean I think that you know in my book blockchain radicals I available in all bookstores online. I mean Elizabeth Warren I mean she's an

interesting character. I think she's not she doesn't really like you place her in plenty of European countries. She's a centerright politician. Absolutely. In Germany she would be center right for sure. Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's it it's really complicated when you're looking at specific countries and where they stand and what they're kind of going for. So, yeah, I mean, she is uh yeah, I mean, the US there's not very much of a of a left. It's still like constantly trying to grow and then the Democrats destroying it. So, it's that's hard to say. I think there's like I had a big interest in the cryptocurrency world because of a more I I would argue a more radical politics than someone like Elizabeth Warren. Like like I do

have like plenty of critiques of the states. I have plenty of critiques of also capital, but a lot of kind of the the thing is like the the image of who is on the left oftent times if you're getting that from a lot of news media and whatever else like the people who can actually get into power often places in places like the United States don't necessarily represent what you would historically if you read into the the history of what is like historically the left doesn't really um particularly exist and this is like you know decades of plenty of strategies and policies that have kind of destroyed it in many ways that would be too long to to talk about here but yeah I think it's that uh there is this association as well of

crypto with it simply being a pursuit for individual profit and that often times doesn't reflect or doesn't it doesn't combine well with kind of a the traditional like left-wing ethos of like a type of collectivity I think we had the the moments with Dows was like there was a bunch of people who were like like oh we can all own our you know workplaces and we're all going to like you know it it was a lot of people what I found is there was a kind of pipeline of people kind of libertarians to socialists a little bit as they were got interested in Dows but then Dows now have kind of not turned out necessarily the way I think that a lot of people expected it to but I do think that generally there is like there is like a

a group of people on the left that I think would be very interested in uh the things that crypto has to offer. It just hasn't been packaged in the way to them that they can receive it. So So if if I say imagine a DAO is kind of an online cooperative and kind of I take that to to the left, do you think that that is something that would kind of resonate for some? For sure. Yeah. And I think it did. Um it is definitely like a lot of people that did happen to them, I think. And I had a lot of friends who got interested in that specifically the difficulty I think in the next step perhaps in a more practical sense maybe onboarding and the the economic reality

like the I mean Tomas's talk probably showed how difficult it is to onboard these types of people who are like very not necessarily tech people but they love the ideas and the concepts. So it's like how do we make a flow to where we can package it to them? Hey, this is like something that's interesting for you and the things that you want to pursue and also it's not that complicated to do it. It also just doesn't play well when you talk about like Dows being this online cooperative and then you look at how Dows have practically p it out and most of them don't work. And so I think a lot of the people who are coming in on that and they're like, "Oh, this is broken." Um, yeah, Dows are a primitive product right now. They're a building block. And I

think that something cool will come out of it eventually. But I I don't think that most of them are are functional right now. This should this should be very uh attractive to leftist anarchist. Yes. That was an organization in most of the the country from my personal perspective like the the leftist anarchist have been absorbed by the left and like a resonating style of an echo chamber for the left. And so like they don't really need a way to organize and to be more vocal. uh they are already there and active this way uh in the shadow or sometimes in the forefront of the left and attractive for that. I can I can tell you a little bit from the French politics perspective like the in the French politic spectrum uh the left anarchist are almost disappeared. Uh

there's no more real big communist party uh in uh in France. The left uh like the socialist as a as a whole from La France to the socialist they both hate crypto to the ground like they hate it hate it hate it hate it. and they've been extremely vocal and extremely against it. Um, I think from a pure philosophical standpoint like one of the the biggest changes that bring that crypto is bringing is a new form of ownership you own through uh cryptographic standpoints. So, it's a type of ownership that's not given by the state. So, it's not easy to control.

So, it's not easy to to tax and redistribute. So, uh yeah, and it's also going against our capacity to uh impose our money and impose our thing that we mint ourel. Okay, I hate crypto. I hate crypto and it's for it's for uh I I will I will go and push all the narratives against against crypto whether it is money laundering, terrorism and so on. Anti-crypto anti crypto anti-crypto and they've been very very vocal against it and very very acting against it. At the other side of the spectrum uh the far right they're like oh uh looks like people are uh embracing crypto in the US and they are close to our our thinking so we should be pro crypto. And it turns out that the far right has had a lot of difficulty to fund their campaign to go

talk to banks to fund our campaign. So when they hear about uh own the bank, pone the bank, be your own bank, they're like, "Yeah, we'd love to be our own bank." So today the far right is like, "Yeah, crypto, why not?" And having the far right saying, "Crypto, why not?" makes the left say like, "Crypto definitely not." And so at the middle ground like the the rights and the conservative right or the central right are like so crypto is good for innovation in business. So we should be pro blockchain but at the same time we don't want to associate oursel too much with the far right but we want to differentiate from the from the far left and the left. So, see this is like this is the problem. Maybe it's become something hard to uh this is the problem that I'm talking about though is that

like people place it on the spectrum either left or right and they don't talk about the actual like technology and so like one word what we haven't even mentioned is cippher punk values. Yeah. And I think cipher punk values are quite apolitical. Yeah. Even though a lot of people in the cypher punk community have Josh I say it's hyper political actually. I I disagree. I think um depends on what you how you define politics. One of the biggest issues in our entire society right now is how our data is handled and it is something that I think everybody in the world can agree that like they want their data to be more private. They want their data to be better protected. Actually most people don't care. There's a surprise kind of like almost no one actually cares. I mean nobody wants to be inconvenienced.

They care they don't but they don't even want kind of I don't think it's even about the inconvenience. So kind of like if you kind of look at kind of like what percentage of the population kind of has a Gmail address rather than kind of say proton mail or something privacy preserving which offers the exact same user experience at the exact same cost i.e. I disagree that they're the exact same user experience because Gmail is integrated everywhere and like it's just easier to use Gmail. Proton Mail is a conscious choice that you have to make. You can't use like the G Suite the the single sign on. Um and it's people just don't want to be inconvenious. If you make privacy easy, if you give people two choices and privacy is is included in one of them and they're exactly

equal, people will choose the privacy one. I I Yeah, I'm not entirely sure because I've heard people say too many times, I have nothing to hide like like this like like this is like it's not about you agree. Oh yeah. I mean I've had people say that like multiples when I talked to like my you know my one of my brothers like you know you think about privacy he's like I have nothing to hide. It's fine. Yeah. But you have to but you like when you um put the everybody's been affected by data leaks in some way. Like if you talk to people about what they get in their email inbox, people will will start ranting. They'll be like, "Oh, I get so much junk mail. It's like such a pain in the ass."

But if you talk to them about like, "Oh, you can have a privacy email that um creates like an alias that forwards to your address and you can uh delete it if somebody starts sending you junk mail." Like people people are like I I've talked to a lot of people about that and they're like, "How do I do that?" And if it's too hard, they won't do it. But if it's an option, they want it. And like there are so many ways that you can talk about how data is leaked that people that will grab people. And like that is one one of the things that uh blockchain could potentially be really good for or potentially be really dystopian for.

Yeah. 100%. Go either way, right? Yes. And like if we end up being um Salanacentric in crypto, I think that it will be very dystopian. And I think if we end up being Ethereum centric, I think it'll uh hopefully veer more towards um being like really ideal for data protection, but I think like if you grab people with that kind of narrative rather than like this is left or this is right, it's a lot easier to get people on board with that. I I think it's really hard to get people to care. So kind of I if you actually if you look at for instance say VPN usage, right?

19 out of 20 people use VPN because they want to watch something on Netflix that's not available in their region. No one uses it kind of to to protect their private maybe 5%. I mean this everybody blocks them. Okay. In two weeks ago in France we had a law that uh blocked every uh pornographic website uh because they had to enforce specifically very very very specifically to make sure that the people that are watching are over 18. So it was the the best publicity you can bring to VPN like oh yeah well I have to switch to a VPN and you go to to a porn website and it sold you like hey sorry like the the news is now in France so you cannot show you this website because we don't want

to enforce whatever thing and like so go talk to your politician to remove this stupid law or use a VPN okay well then people will use VPN and you see a spike in usage of VPN like do you have any kind of use a VPN kind of people don't use it to pro protect their privacy typically It's uh they don't use it to protect their privacy because it's a pain in the ass. You have to learn how to use a VPN. And honestly, like once everybody starts using a VPN, then companies start blanket banning those IP addresses that are that are associated with a VPN. And so, it's actually like really useful to use a VPN that no one else uses because then the IP addresses aren't aren't uh blocked. And as soon as somebody runs into like a technical um problem and they have to troubleshoot, they're like,

"This is way too much of a pain in the ass. I don't care that much. take my data whatever. Yeah, you can get a VPN inside that node. Uh noVPN is launchp. Oh, really? Nice. We will be doing built work. Uh expanding the network, make it more resilient. Uh yeah, then maybe let's talk about user experience. Okay. I think this is kind of like the the the topic that's still missing kind of from the Ethereum foundation restructuring. So, we already talked about transparency. Okay. and and yeah, but kind of like the the focus on user experience experience and this is also kind of like the vein that Tumash's talk was in kind of like look how terrible this is to use. How can we find this acceptable? Okay, you you're shaking your head. Oh, I you know I I I hate and I love this topic. I think we

had a Oh, I mean we had um I cannot be extremely vocal on on that front publicly because as a as a competitor to most of the world as a service where you log in through a Gmail login uh cometh as a account abstraction SDK. So for the for the past three years uh the only on boarding that were visible in the in the space was like hey where's the service go put your email address and then you you get an MPC address uh people are washing their hands like we're non-custodial non-custodial what does it even mean? We don't care we don't take any responsibility but we just give you an address so you can uh do things with the address like uh and what happened with the data of the users or we take

everything but don't even look at the the terms and condition nobody look at it. So we had a three years of this being pushed at at scale on various project for retail one time one time addresses with maybe one single uh NFT one single year 20 blunting the state at the end of the day for the EVM uh really bad on boarding no interactions cross cross products uh bad pricing but everything and like and at the end of the day you have an address to just store one thing that you're not even going to use anytime and you still have to go through the whole steps of uh just buying the crypto, getting the crypto on the address, doing the thing in the at the same time we were pushing hard for for a

abstraction and trying to figure out the standards and having a lot of trouble with the standards. Uh a couple of competing EIPs and things um and now we have to realize that no the acadection was the right way all along and we have EIPs in the two digits that were already talking about that uh seven years ago. So we we we we left uh the lane open for weather as a service to uh chime in and give a poor experience that we now have to overengineer to counteract. It's really bad. It's really bad that we had this but like both the uh the two side of the spectrum two competing project like circles is doing a fraction worldcoin is doing econ like poly market is are doing absraction

their way. So look like a abstraction is the way this is how we should have done it in the first place instead of being stuck in a in a in a second best with a well service with a not privacy preserving login in the first place that's really bad. So what you're kind of a proponent of is kind of having a smart account that kind of you have you have different login for and kind of in in kind of we can also talk about comments here. So kind of like what you guys provide is the solution to kind of integrate kind of let pass keys hold private keys, right? So I can kind of have um a pass key that kind of controls my smart. My dream scenario would be that every single application on the blockchain would have a smart account

for each of their users. To be fair, like these are upgrades that are either have just been integrated into Ethereum or are coming. So like I don't know specifics but like the R1 curve is something that is being integrated next time uh next upgrade and that will be something that will be enabling to pass keys and account abstraction. Um there was just a big unlock in Pekra that was 7702 that allows delegation. Um so smart contracts uh are about to get a lot better and like once wallets integrate this these these applications applications have to integrate it like uh you go on any applications and uh the application tells you like hey you're a new user cool uh here is your smart account just delegate to this smart account for the sake of this specific transaction I'm going to handle the gas fees for you because I'm being paid for

the value that I'm bringing you. So I have one smart account per application. That's great. At the end of the day, what happened in the past three years is that the major DeFi apps went on to say like, hey, should I should I use a wallet as a service? No, I'm going to build my own wallet. Okay, that that was kind of kind of bad. But uh I'm happy to hear that R1 is going to be integrated soon. like from the in the past like uh new cryptographic primitives on the uh on the EVM has been really hard to push because initially the first new primitive that uh that was uh integrated as a a native contracts were um were well pre-ompiles were not really used like the alternative ashes that I think

so the core devs were uh reasonably pushing against it like what we do we will do that's like we should have this on the on the on the rollups first and see if it flies and if it flies we should we should get that in. I commented a lot on the EIP 1271 for L1. Uh KF has been one of the first to implement the verification of the L1 signature uh in solidity and contributing to the different uh steps of optimization. At the end of the day, pass keys are a hack around the web of to have people sign in a way that they are in control of their keys. Uh I think it's right now the best second best thing that we have like we cannot accept that uh the average Joe is going to install a wallet uh note down 12 words

and learn the new security modules. They are already socially trained of using their biometric on their phone a lot uh and safekeeping things in the enclave is good enough for a credit card. So it should be good enough for um a key that activate a smart account and it's so smooth to onboard people this way. uh it's so hard for what the service and what else to make a business on top of it but who cares like people are already equipped with the devices for the pass keys so all in on pass keys it's a very good way to sign I mean it I I I totally agree and kind of we we heavily rely on your pass key solution for metry the kind of the circles wallet and I have been complimented on kind of like easy onboarding many times at this conference but I have to say you need a password

manager so kind of if you don't if you don't use a password manager you're you're you're in trouble, right? Kind of like pass key. And I think a lot of people don't understand that that's kind of a bottleneck. And obviously you you you then again and obviously you can choose kind of your your your password manager yourself, but kind of there's a limited number of options. And I'm going to say this is another another place where I go back to people care about data um private if you make it easy. Like if you ask pe most people if they use a password manager who have iPhones, they say, "What's a password manager?"

But they're using a password manager. They just don't know that they're using one. You just have to build it in. And they they will use these things as long as you build it in and make it easy. That's the point with with pass keys. Like the first question we get when we push pass keys to a new customer as comf is like what is the recovery process? So the re-reovery process usually is either your password manager and honestly it's really hard to uh to encompass all the different hiccups that you end up working with on supporting all the different password managers and I think this is something we did very good uh but anyway uh if people don't uh have a password manager like you don't show one password or whatever guard and so on by default the manager of the enclave is the OS. So you end up with the uh the OS

managing the uh the enclave. So it boils down to uh Google encrypting and safekeeping your uh your enclave. So you rely on your Google login to uh get back your pass key. So what is the default uh recovery method? Uh well uh the recovery method of your Gmail account. If you're on iPhone, what is the default recovery method is iOS uh iCloud. So at the end of the day the pass key belongs not it belongs to the user uh but it's being handled by uh by the by the OS and those big corporation that already equipped everyone. So it's very hard to bypass them. Uh but indeed if you have one password and you want to save your pass keys inside it will definitely work with com. What what are the kind of like if you had a wish list for the coming 12

months kind of these are the the concrete UX improvements kind of we need to kind of have real users kind of use these things. Um so kind of top of my list would actually be better on and off ramps. So kind of making it easier to kind of because currently kind of the default way is kind of going via centralized exchange, right? But in principle this shouldn't have to be the solution and within Europe we kind of have um kind of uh identifying your wallet with an IBAN and then kind of you can do the same in Brazil and so on and I think that would open up kind of the the the market by a very large degree.

What what are your things that kind of you wish kind of we would adopt or see in the next 12 months to kind of increase actual adoption by actual people. Oh I would say a lot of it's around wallets um because people are really uncomfortable holding holding their own keys and so like this account abstraction issue um and the things that are being enabled is a is just going to be like a huge unlock for people. nobody wants to hold, you know. I gave I onboarded someone onto MetaMask, um, a friend of mine, a non-cryptonative person. Um, and I gave him this 12word seed and I was like, "Write this down.

Do not show it to anyone. Keep it safe. Do not lose it." And next time we were on FaceTime, he picks up this 12word seed. I still have it. Like, I still have it. And I was like, no. So, yeah. I I think the NSA was like, "Oh my god, it doesn't cross people's mind that like I shouldn't show it on camera." It's it's also kind of like people people have ledgers, but kind of the you know the little card that it comes with kind of like where right down your most people actually keep that card next to the ledger which kind of and because it comes in the box, right? It fits in the box. So it's uh Yeah, they usually they they made it too ergonomic.

Yeah. the EAP 1271 R1 curve support uh will definitely be uh really good for really good for that. Oh, really good really good for really good for the adoption. I mean to answer the the initial question from um well it was definitely on my wish list. So yeah, thank you. Um now I've been in the space for quite a while now. So I try to uh be the man in the mirror and like try to embody the the kind of this kind of changes. So um my current uh occupation at uh at bringing the adoption like my small contribution is trying to distribute the cheapest most efficient way to get a custodian with an opt out of kicking out the custodian. So this is this is where I

stand today. I'm trying to expose a custodian infrastructure that is really cheap, really easy to integrate and so on. that is account abstraction first uh and that you get you get option to pick different keys and if at some point you feel more comfortable uh using a ledger uh as a signer on top of a smart contract or on top of an alternative L1 to Ethereum like yeah go go for it and have it like uh we're trying different ways to onboard different people and having a custodian in the loop at first is an extremely good way of uh getting swift on boarding you get an IBAN you get to buy buying stable coin with credit card would be also something really cool on the wish list on the wish list because currently like you either

go with a centralized exchange so you have to create an account and blah blah blah blah blah and you get stuck into the oh wow this trading there's leverage trading and so on and you get into the rabbit or you go with a on-ramp service that takes credit card uh the fees related to this on-ramp is usually pretty high uh you need to go through the old KYC and so on while it should be looming really closely uh that we will be able to buy stable coin with credit card and yeah I have another wish list item. Yes. Um 95 I I would say even higher than 95 99% of this space is people extracting money and getting scammed. Um and there is like a 1% that people are are advertising. They're like

this cool technology like come put your money with me and then they and then they extract that money. It is so easy to get scammed in this industry. you interact with a contract um and like it a legit contract looks the same to you as a scam contract and so have you ever used Rabby wallet? Rabby wallet is amazing for this. Yeah, the it like makes you go through all these checks. It's like this is this contract was created yesterday like does this look legit to you? Um, and I I really hope that that becomes more of a feature like all of these built-in like uh rails that keep people safe who maybe don't know what uh a legit contract looks like.

This is also one of the main things kind of like we're building with safe right now. Kind of like making sure no one ever signs anything that they don't understand because I'm I've I've blind signed many times. Yeah. And I every everyone does it kind of like independently verifying the payload. This is it's impossible if it's not something super it's not something uh super simple or kind of you're very dedicated and obviously you should be very dedicated in certain scenarios but kind of fact of the matter is pe people kind of people don't do it and I mean we've we've we've seen this time and time again. So kind of like having a human readable kind of interpretation of what you're signing is uh changing the changing the internet IG this is the

kind of social change that we can embody in the ecosystem like look guys you you are asking yourself uh the question before having unprotected sex so like before doing something weird on the internet before sending something weird like a yes you should have a look like ask a couple of question take a look at the in the blockchain even I can internet yeah I consider myself quite an advanced user, but like when the Bybit uh hack happened, I was like, I have no idea how to how to conduct a safe transaction that like I know is legit. So, I had to do all this research and now I use like two different tools when signing a safe transaction because I'm like, all right, I got to make sure that it's actually going to the address that I think it's going to and I got to make

sure that all the data It's really scary. Yes, Josh, you didn't get your one wish item. So, can I agree on that? agree with everything that was said and uh I yes I think having tools for making it easier for collectives to also take part in crypto I think is like one thing that I would love to see and one just out there thing I think is to we need some sort of um education for people about a lot of this stuff I think part of the reason is that people are so there's no like standard technological education like what I know about technology is [ __ ] that I read on the internet. Sure. Yeah, we need something better than that. I think those are

fantastic closing words. Thank you so much for participating in this panel and uh yeah, we'll be back next week with the regular episode. All right, see you in K. Thank you.