#DappCon22 : Day 1 - How NFTs Can Restore Digital Ownership For Humanity, Julien Genestoux

Transcript

hey everyone welcome uh today I'm going to tell you a bit about uh the web not so much about crypto not so much I mean we'll definitely tell you about nfts but I really want to start back from maybe 20 years ago I was actually here in 2008 Yes 14 years ago uh at a decentralized identity Summit and there was already a bunch of events happening in the in the in the in the industry before crypto before Bitcoin that we're thinking about okay what's the state of identity what's the state of the distributed web how can we make the web uh better because let's face it the web is in a pretty bad State I live in the US every time I come to Europe I'm astonished I mean we already get the banner ads in the US but here it's like

10 times worse like every website I go to starts with like clicking seven buttons saying that I'm waiving All rights to any kind of thing that I can do so like my kidneys sure have them just let me watch the website and it's something that everybody we probably all realize but I think Nomi's actually even feel more of this there's it's very frustrating to use the internet day and it's also frustrating not just because of the banner ads because of that mess but it's also frustrating because the web is actually doesn't have a lot of information anymore it's a lot of noise it's a lot of distraction it's sometimes very stressful to to do this there's a bunch of studies that show that social media for example is something that actually creates uh depression for a lot of teenagers and further so really in in

a in a bad shape of the web um and obviously this is coming from I mentioned the cookie banners clickbait but also something that I think we're all well aware of in that Community but that most people don't realize is like this idea of the surveillance economy the idea that everything you do online is being watched not by people I mean maybe some people but also by machines and then they basically feed us more of the same I was going to say but more of the same stuff that we keep consuming that really creates kind of unhealthy relationship with our information Source because at the same time the web is the number one way most people around the world are getting informed um and I've been thinking uh also um that well you know all of these

things at least people get paid on the web well not really if you think about I mean I'm just this is an example of what's Happening Here for Spotify which is the the number one streaming website uh for music and I think a bunch of large Offices here uh a creator that actually puts music on Spotify I need 314 um uh streams to make a dollar and I did the math basically to see okay how much would it take to create a thousand dollar which seems like a very basic kind of monthly Revenue well it would be nine month worth of continuing listening to a specific song like old days and night nine month okay a thousand dollars so the web is also not really in a state where it pays Creator as well and yet we keep hearing about you know Google

Facebook Apple making billions and billions of dollars so really there is something wrong where the big companies are making sort of money good for them but all in these smaller creators uh which the web was built for in the end are actually pretty much starving at this point and Spotify is in the middle of the of the road here apple is arguably doing a bit better because now the first two are Apple but if you go down to the the French and I'm French the French uh uh player here it's it's abysmal like you know it's it's all of these things are are pretty bad um well you could say well at least it's free at least we don't pay for that stuff well that's not true either um this the the the top here is actually coming from Brave the web browser that I

think some of us might be using here and I reset it in in July so it's actually not a lot of data uh it blocked a bunch of trackers and ads and then I looked at the number in the middle it's like okay 6.61 gigabytes that's a lot of bandwidth that's actually a you know a lot of stuff and I looked at the same time and you might not see because it's kind of small but like the price of bandwidth because believe it or not we actually pay for bandwidth like this is a thing that you pay when you get a subscription you know a mobile subscription to the internet even like DSL or Fiber at home you pay for that bandwidth and in Germany I took the numbers from Germany there's a website where it records all of the price of bandwidth around the

world in Germany the average price per gigabyte is 200 and sorry 2.67 cents so basically these 6.61 gigabytes of bandwidth saved by Brave if I used chrome or Safari or any other web browser what would have cut me about 17 so that free stuff that I consume online actually is not free I pay for this because I get all of these crappy ads that are being served to me and all of the all of the thing that comes to this if you also think about this thing there's a bunch of studies and I'm not pushing them publishing them here but like these websites keep getting heavier and heavier like the you know 25 years ago again I'm old the average website was

you know a couple kilobyte maybe not kilobytes tens of kilobytes uh Boris can pretty uh attest and now it's almost getting to the megabytes like every single website downloads a ton of data well most of that stuff is actually not more text it's more JavaScript it's more trackers it's more ads it's more heavy stuff and these heavy stuff well that has to be parsed by your device so we're all consuming the phone uh the internet on the phone you've seen this right you spend the day on on your mobile phone browsing the web at the end of the day the battery dies well that has to be charged that energy you're going to pay for this similarly we change phones every two years um they don't actually get slower it's the same device it's the same machine like the it's not like you know the the

silicone dies in it it's just the same thing except that it keeps having to eat and digest more and more stuff and that stuff means that you're going to change phones every two year and again it's another 500 to a thousand dollar every two year on a new device so thinking about the web as being free is actually kind of like you just pay for this but you don't realize that you pay for all of that thing so thinking further I was like well where where did that start like what what happened and I'm sure you all hopefully familiar with HTTP 4-4 you know when you go to a web page like it doesn't exist you've seen that right yes yeah so there's actually a bunch of statuses there's multiple families the 400 family uh in which four four is is what's called uh client error it

basically says the client you I mean the person on the other side of the computer needs to do something better so 404 is like you need to type the Earl better you you type the wrong thing it doesn't exist there is actually an HTTP status called 402 and 402 the you know 4 4 is not found four two is called payment required and you say oh well that's interesting I didn't know the web initially on add the idea of requiring people and say initially it was like 93 so 30 years I had a way to get people to pay for things when you look at the specification for this you will find it's the shorter specification of all of the 400 status codes and actually all of the status codes it says reserved for later use basically if you go back 30 years the

web had the idea of a payment built in but it was too complicated I guess I mean I think it was and they said yeah we'll do this later the problem is in the meantime all of these websites that were built and needed to monetize and how did they monetize well you know they started to invent the banner the first Banner ad actually was invented in 95 if I'm correct it had a crazy click-through rate do you know what click-through rate means it's basically the number of times somebody clicks on an ad based on the number of people that see the ad that click-through rate was 75 so basically three out of four people that so they had clicked on it right now it's like 0.01 if you're lucky on some website so at that time first Banner ad like cool this is really good but that's kind of

the beginning of the of The Descent that's the beginning of why the web got run because quickly when she's like okay we get paid every time people click let's put more of these like one there one there one there one there one in the middle okay let's actually make sure that they appear so that's how the pop-up I'm sure you remember the days of the pop-up we still have some of these but like there was a point where you would open a web page and there's actually seven other web pages that open at the same time they're all ads it's like just a nightmare um that's how most website realized okay well if we can't really add too many let's have the user click to go refresh more and so the slideshows are the things like okay cool click to see the next click click click all of these uh

become I mean just show more and more ads and so that's how the attention oh sorry I click too fast here can I go back yes that's how the attention economy kind of start to emerge and again that was like you know like 20 plus years ago at the same time some smart people uh start to realize like if we know more about the user if you know more about what they're looking for online well they'll click more on ads because we can show them more targeted ads and that's how when you do a search for pair of shoes once in your life randomly on your phone then for the next six months you're going to see the same pair of shoes on every single ad this is so annoying but that's the tracking thing that's basically the attention economy that I mentioned earlier is

basically the idea that since we can't monetize at the protocol level all applications are going to try to capture as much of your data and then serve you the same over and over again so until you buy the pair of shoes and actually when you buy the parachute that for the for some reason now they can't track anymore they don't need to know that you bought the pair of shoes so they're going to keep showing you the pair of shoes the same that you have here you're going to see them on the screen over and over again so really that's kind of the origin scene of the web what's interesting though is like I mean I'm definitely not the only one uh thinking about this and there's actually a lot of I was going to say smarter people at a bunch of companies that realize this and they've

started to move away from this attention driven economy uh to what I would call the membership economy and so we start to see all of these names are pretty something that are familiar you're familiar with the idea that okay you know these ads actually don't work well they don't pay creators that well they're really annoying to people they are annoyed annoying the irregulators as well which is what we see all these banner ads maybe there's a simpler model and that simpler model is really really wide it's like what if we ask people to pay for stuff it's kind of like the thing that people is kind of blowing my mind that it becomes a surprise but that's actually a lot of what these companies ended up doing you're pretty all familiar with patreon um it's a platform it's what it is but in practice it offers creators say you know what

don't try to sell ads to people just ask your fans maybe your 1000 true fans to pay you you know one dollar three dollar five dollar a month so that they can you know listen to your music maybe watch some uh pictures that you post get a t-shirt from you but that's really kind of the membership thing you become a member of that specific Creator New York Times pretty familiar with this big newspaper they are now closing on 10 million subscribers uh which is crazy because you think about 10 years ago they're zero they went from a business model which mostly ads online at least and want to say mostly it was only ads to a point where now they make almost half of their revenue through subscription by people to access the content it's the paywall I know it's frustrating from user perspective but in

the end it actually makes sense if you really want to read this why don't you pay for this sub stack the newsletter tool kind of similar another one that's kind of interesting is Amazon Prime so we already are familiar with Amazon the big I think you have this in Germany as well a big kind of retailer and they realize like a membership could access content so they have Amazon Prime Amazon Prime we get access to videos but they can also also offer some benefits some perks so if you're part of the group of people that is cool people uh members of Amazon Prime and I'm laughing because you're not necessarily that cool as you have Prime uh you get access to certain extra features as part of this and believe it or not actually until two years ago if you look at the profits of Amazon this

was exactly the revenues that Prime was making so if you divide the number of Prime members by the Prime Membership which was roughly 10 a month you get the profits of Amazon so Amazon this massive company the only profit that they're making is actually from the fact that they sell memberships not from the fact that they sell Goods to people does that make sense you might think what's what's the what's the relationship with nfts well a membership we start to see this in the crypto space as well we start to see like crowds of people and I haven't seen that many here which is good uh people wearing you know the board Apes hoodie or the board of tabs like I'm a proud member of this uh crowd of people I'm not I'm a bit sad I'm not or actually I'm sad I was not at some point

um but basically the membership primitive in the crypto space could be thought of as nfts like if you have the nft you're one of the core people and if you had this board ape thing maybe you're one of member of the board of crowd if you have a crypto plan you're a member of this and really you can think okay a non-fungible token is a membership card it's the same as your library card from 50 years ago is the same as your maybe Amazon Prime account it's the same as your ticket to a conference because if you think of a ticket to conference an nft and unfavorable token is a membership to the specific conference itself if you start to look like the right thing to represent these membership in the web 3 space and maybe in the web altogether because now I can my wallet

is connected to website I can easily identify and prove that I have an Amazon Prime membership when I connect to Amazon I don't need to log in with my Amazon account maybe I can just connect my wallet in the sea of the Prime nft okay they'll give me Prime benefits but then nfts are also not ideal one of the big things that nfts have which I think everything has on on the crypto is like there forever so pay once for the board ape and then have it forever and have the benefits forever for a creator that is not really a good business like if I'm making music I'm creating my little nft selling it I'm selling it once maybe I'm actually selling a ton of them good for me but then I have to make music the rest of my life and nobody's gonna pay me ever so the nfts being

forever is kind of a not an ideal thing in the context of membership your Netflix account you pay every month and there's a reason for this because they keep producing more shows and their costs actually don't stop the minute they made one shows so we need to have better kinds of nfts nfts for example that have an expiration date and a way to say okay cool you're gonna have this it's in your wallet it's there as long as you want to keep it in your wallet but at some point you're gonna have to renew you're gonna have to extend that membership to keep accessing the content and if we write new things if we make new music if we take new pictures if we write if we create new software you're gonna have to pay up again for that thing another thing that nfts have oh

sorry oh okay I'm gonna maybe next time the problem though is like each nft is different right now so even though we have erc721 um actually that's the question do people know what that is w3c some yes worldwide Web Consortium I see I mean I don't want to say only old people are raising their hands but I worry that's that's the case uh it's it's basically the it's kind of the dough of the web kind of it's basically a lot of people going coming together in a room and say hey cool this is how HTTP you know the thing that you type when you put in Earl on the website HTTP this is how it should work this is how we're going to do videos together this is how we're going to do authentication you've heard of oauth that's actually not quite w3c even though it's involved at this point

um it is kind of the thing that this massive I mean actually pretty small organization out of uh MIT in in the US runs the internet they say okay this is how protocols should work on the internet and so if we're going to do a protocol from membership that uses nft we should start thinking about normalizing it making it so that it works the same for everyone and so that's actually what unlock protocol which I'm representing a little bit is trying to do it's going to build or it actually built a protocol for memberships an easy way for creators organization Brands conference organizers and welcome to this in a second to create a membership contract deeply on a blockchain an evm blockchain so from mainnet hypnosis to optimism it's not a blockchain but any VM

ecosystem to create a standard way for all memberships so that every single website every single organization can easily deploy their own membership contract um tons of use cases ticketing again we'll come back to this media membership mention Netflix New York Times these are examples Dow membership I think the way we've done that is kind of wrong like I don't like the idea of a Dao being something where the richest has more voice than the poorest people in some way like there's many dials where it's like oh it's just a group of friends having coffee why is the richest person deciding what coffee we go to like we're all going to pay for the coffee anyway so why don't we have something that is kind of membership based rather than actually be kind of ownership based in that scenario certification credential like some of you have been to school you

get a diploma well that's a membership to your school that you have in your wallet forever that's something that proved that you attended the thing and then you've got a degree maybe there's kind of certification that need to be renewed every year like the driving license I don't know about Germany but in the US needs to be renewed every five years that's something that is kind of an inspirational if you don't mean you well you can't drive anymore you need to renew it again so it's kind of another example of a membership here obviously the digital Collectibles you can have Collectibles that have expiration date you say okay cool this thing is in your wallet it's going to be a live remember energy it's like one of these little games I mean your can imagine this membership being alive as a little item in the game for as long as you pay for

this if you stop paying well it dies and you can't play the game anymore and other people in the game might see it as dead which I think is kind of a fun little application here I want to finish with a quick demo so all of you probably had ticket for the conference otherwise you should tell someone that you shouldn't be here if you have a ticket to a conference you actually got an nft that was sent to your wallet and what's cool about that nft is like it's in your wallet now it is not of course it's linked to coming here but it's going to be in your wallet for as long as you want it you can actually get rid of it if you want to but that means that you can give you access to other sites and so for example we built a little chat application you

can just have to scan this QR code from your from your device I'm going to do that as well at the same time as you and then what's going to be cool here is like you'll be able to drag and drop a QR code inside of the your QR code instead of the inside of the application here or you can even connect your wallet if you have it with you which might be the case and then you'll end up on a little basic chat room uh and and write something and what's really cool about this a from stage um what's really cool about this is like obviously this shows that again the membership exists in many places maybe next year's dapcon they have a pre-cl period where only the people that came this year can purchase a ticket and the only the easiest way to do this like you

cut it your wallet we'll see whether you actually have the nft in your wallet does that make sense cool I see one raised done thank you very much um this wrap set for today uh more than I have to take a few questions either here or a bit later uh if I if you guys have more personal questions every time questions if anybody wants to raise their hands no way s go ahead um so how do we remind young people of what old people have learned in the past

and connect I I think a lot of people who are only on the website of things so you know is unlock a solution nft the uh hatred out there for even experimenting with so many things do you have some thoughts on how to connect these worlds a little bit better I do have a lot of thoughts old young crypto non-crypto it's hard so I think um we we do mistakes on both sides and I would claim myself as being on both sides like I think on the crypto side we do a lot of mistakes by you know pumping literally uh the project that are just about making money like I do think one thing that I realized the other day is like initially again going back to http uh it's it it was created to transfer files it was really created for like

researchers out of Switzerland to send you know their paper to somebody else in the US this was this is definitely not what the web is today it was created to transfer files and now everybody uses it to access applications and kind of run software I think blockchain is going to be the same we've initially created blockchain we I wasn't there I mean I'm not Satoshi basically uh but uh people created blockchains to transfer money I don't think most interactions on blockchain in the future will be about money it's going to be about exchanging States like uh yes you might be buying stuff but it's not about like you know uh have your own goal Beyond Bank whatever uh and Bank the bank or whatever kind of crap we see it's just gonna be like the Internet it's been created for a specific technology and then used for a

lot more things and so I think the crypto crowd I'd say let's actually you know chill a little bit on the cryptocurrency aspects of things and show more use cases that are Beyond just okay cool we're gonna get rich because we have this curve thing that actually has massive yield and it's like ah you know even I don't understand what that means so I think we should say on the on the web old web people side of things I think we should also Chill on the oh we've done this before kind of things like yeah we've done it but it clearly failed like we wouldn't have this massive Facebook Amazon Google out there if we actually did succeed building these decentralized open protocols uh For Better or Worse crypto people have been able to put private keys in the hands of at this point tens of millions

of people that was kind of I mean this is kind of massive adjustment like if you think about private cryptography this is even older than the web it's like you know 70s uh and since then these people have been trying to get people to adopt private key cryptography I'd say it failed until I mean maybe for very small um use case of pgp it failed for the largest thing until crypto came around and all of a sudden a ton of people that had no idea what they were doing started to get private Keys which I guess is a success factor does that answer your question what do you think about Soul bound

tokens so I think these are kinds of membership membership that are non-transferable so I mentioned the credential use case this like you don't want to transfer your diploma I think that would be weird or your driver license like I am drunk get it from me like know that be bad so they're a sub case of non-fungible tokens in the same way that I think and that's actually what we built unlock there's token nfts that are recurring that are that have been expression it so if you think about nfts as a primitive it's great it's like website that allows you to do many many different things there are some that are going to be transferable some that are not going to be transferable the soleban some that are going to be transferable if some other conditions are met which I think is maybe even more interesting

than the Binary Option there's going to be that expiration date there is going to be that have you know Unchained metadata off-train metadata there's going to be some that have uh you know I'll be bought or some that can only be earned there's all kinds of nfts and I think Soul band is just a subcategory thanks um and basically nfts uh if you compare it with w3c uh dids and verification credentials um if you compare that with the kind of hype around saltbond tokens just because we just like said so and uh and other

things like transferable kind of credentials like you said a certificates you could have an nft isn't it just kind of Reinventing what already is kind of more or less standardized in the in the in the w3c about very verbal credentials I it is in some way Reinventing but it's also getting more popular like if you ask your neighbor that has never heard about technology they know about nfts that we don't know about verified by credentials so that's kind of the point that I was making earlier about like the old people things oh we've done this before it's like yes we have but we haven't been able to reach the masses let's actually try to find mechanisms I'm not dismissing very fiber commercial I do think that actually a good combination of nfts and very fragrant crucial is probably the solution that we need to

have some way to kind of commit credentials onto a chain and then have an nft in return I think is pretty useful model but again we need to start moving away from the not invented hair syndrome like uh I've done this before that yeah we might but the fact is at this point nfts as a primitive is a lot more known or I don't say popular because it doesn't make sense but like at least starts to be a lot more accepted than verification there's way more blockchain capable wallets with actual users than any of the diabes VCS that doesn't really work and has known option exactly can you explain a very viable credential British

it's the idea that instead of having an oh okay it's basically a description of credentials that you might have that is signed by a bunch of private keys so think of a diplomatary school is the school has signed something assigned I mean telling you have earned the thing and it doesn't it is not stored it's a virginal idea which is why it's a good primitive in that concept um and it's actually a lot more complicated than this but that would be the high level s an entity yeah thanks everyone

[Applause]