#DappCon22: Day 3 - Discussion Round: UBI And Blockchain - Potentials, Challenges And Success

Transcript

uh this is a discussion round it's uh the panelists will do their best to answer your questions this only starts with your questions so please um again there's no right answers there's no wrong answers it's all a hypothetical discussion because we are very early if you're here or if you're watching this on video you are very early already so please um ask our panelists any questions you may have or the panelists if you have any burning questions that you get asked all the time feel free to start off first of all I want to uh thank you for your moderation work the whole day so [Applause] and maybe there's any questions from the audience so far about all the discussions we've had

how do you feel how are you any questions to us the panelists otherwise I otherwise I start with a question of a discussion we also had well kind of privately uh or I mean during the talks uh and the question is are we is is it time is this already the right time to think about kind of combining uh kind of blockchain and Ubi on a broader um broader uh yeah I can be on the crypto Community or or is it still kind of too early so it's a blockchain and Technology um kind of still lacking behind hmm

interesting question I for me personally like in the experiences in Berlin um already I've met people come for example to the assemblies who have nothing to do with the crypto world and they're using effectively these Primitives and they say that it has changed their life in the way that they spend in the way that they use things so at a very very early stage we see that it's already going beyond the crypto Community you know and I think also with Mission possible we saw that you're already you know organizing blockchain based ubis in places like rural Kenya so yeah I think for oh look I think for um remodel areas where there is uh you know

um no smartphones and things like that and severe poverty I think we have two roads to go one is to give them the money so they can feed themselves and think because your brain doesn't work when you don't eat and um these people in these areas are often called the underprivileged I would want to call them the privileged because they have not been poisoned by the financial systems that we are used to so they may come up with ideas that we have never thought of and um I would like to encourage you to First give and experience the power of giving

so that these people can think with you how to implement these new technologies and free them from the system that is actually imprisoning us I wonder Daniel maybe your perspective on this because um we also spoke about in earlier panels that um also maybe Andreas you can also chip in in this that um one of the structural issues uh that we're quite aware of in the space is the hierarchies of knowledge that are produced between the uh developers computer programmers Etc and like the end users so when we are doing systems

that people use to settle payments debts have a Ubi and so on what would be a good way or an or a path to decentralize the knowledge as well uh so that you know people in in Kenya can also sort of take these tools and make them their own uh so I think a good way of doing this would be to lead by example so uh we we need to start with a smaller dedicated group of people who are really into the idea and who are curious and brave enough to use circuits and and Ubi on a blockchain already in the day-to-day

lives so um then you can create documentation from that point and and go and lead by example and bring it into other communities so I think it's um yeah a problem of finding the right group who is willing to tackle the challenge already today and I think this is very hard for people who have production costs for instance but if you're for instance a graphic designer or something and you work together with a photographer and usually you would pay Euros for the photographer to use their work in in your work they could settle

already with circles so I think it's finding the right people right it's a comment on there so I totally see the problem of um yeah kind of um well knowledge distribution and how that also creates a hierarchy of power I'm just not sure how realistic it is that can you say again we need to distribute knowledge because um I mean we we every day use a lot of things that we don't understand how they work so I mean we we use uh money is is one example we don't know the details of how that works but I mean there are plenty of others we are kind of sitting

on this boat and I don't know kind of houses I mean how that works or I don't know roughly but but we are using electricity we are using smartphones we are using I mean all kinds of things that we don't nearly understand how they work and I mean that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist so I mean I would say also for those things um the problem does exist I'm just not sure kind of if the answer is we need to understand kind of how kind of everything works I'm just afraid that will not be possible yes the the it seems like the original question marking that you asked was like Ubi with blockchain ready for the Masters and I think the answer is yes in

terms of usability of apps now they're like tons of apps currently that focus on Ubi I think they have reached a state where a normal person will understand them so I think that's doable um technology wise we should be able to scale up that Ubi can be used on a larger scale if not on those chain directly through some roll up on gnosis chain since that's the only chain that I currently see being possible to you know pay for transaction costs since we can't do it on ethereum Etc um the question that I more have is like why is Ubi not being used more without blockchain and so like there are a lot

of projects out there that try to do Ubi and they don't use blockchain and they already don't scale up and so like why why is Ubi and blockchain is that the the magic mix that will basically cause adoption or is there already something that we need to fix on the Ubi concept itself oh um yeah maybe I can chip in there so uh for me I have heard of Ubi and some initiatives who want to bring Ubi into the public usually via governments might sometimes on a local region sometimes a little bit bigger but um I always had my difficulties to to see how the financing of that should be done so there were

sometimes private donors or whatnot for me the first um thing where I really thought okay this can work was when it was coupled with the blockchain so maybe it's just my technical point of view but um in in that sense there's the people create their own money and trust each other to give give that money value that was for me the the last point where I thought oh well this this can actually work because it has no Gatekeepers everybody can freely join and it can evolve naturally from within itself but the usage itself is important right so like I've been part of circle

since the early beginning and today was actually the first time I was able to buy something with circles because there were a bunch of hot sauces that I liked so I bought all of the hot sauce with my circles right and the problem is I live in in Wiesbaden yes or near Frankfurt and there's no circled Community there um it's mostly focused around Berlin Community currently still right so like how do we expand on that in an easy way that we can get more users in you know good systems which for example circles is to then grow organically without needing to have a lot of people chasing other people to build communities Etc um from web zero to web 1 to web 2 and

now we call ourselves alleged Webster right um there's been one thing in our industry right the cost of building a product is a hundred dollars it's one dollar to build it and 99 to market the damn thing this is usual saying in Tech right where are we spending the 99 in marketing blockchain we don't Market blockchain enough anyway and we therefore don't onboard better and yet so one question I have for on a few panelists is what are certain parameters that already exist in the universe like for example Vietnam buying a lot of Bitcoin Venezuela buying a lot of Bitcoin Argentina very working dexes and ecosystem Nigeria feeling you know actual currency like the naira is

falling like crazy a constant coups and they buy a lot of Bitcoin like they buy ten dollars of Bitcoin five dollars a Bitcoin how many people know you can buy five dollars of Bitcoin but the Nigerian grandmothers I know like my friends grandparents they know this and they buy it so are those good places for us to start a pilot like are those places that we can test something like this out on because at least a few of the parameters are taken out of like you don't have to teach everyone from scratch what a metamask is or what Bitcoin is and convince them about ghost money like it's been called ghost money by my you know African friends parents and stuff like it's it's actually a thing so like what are some um like utopian models that we can try

today so like is it I'm not saying is it wrong that we're piloting something like this in Berlin um we could you know this might be a great use case to sort of hand over to a circle's Africa or a circles Asia or circles Philippines I mean Philippines has the axi movement they bred nfts on the ethereum blockchain and pulled people out of poverty this has already happened in 2022 so what are we missing what are the missing links and how can we sort of grew on top of that I I don't think it's a bad idea to Pilot circles in Berlin I think it's a

beautiful idea yeah it's just the the one thing that I always or based on the experience that I have with trust lens is that um we think that people might need something that it turns out they don't actually need and so like I don't know people I don't know what the people in in Africa need or Venezuela need I learned it by talking to people there and having groups there building stuff and in some cases it doesn't matter what you give them it doesn't help them and like the the first time we had a pilot in Venezuela for for trust lines it was not about them needing a medium of exchange but them not having access to

water how does Ubi that doesn't that doesn't get solved yeah they literally did not have access to water because the government shut down the water and like the Ubi will not solve that but once basically they reached a certain state where the typical day-to-day life is normal again projects like Ubi projects can definitely help them to have monetary value that they can basically use to do exchanges and to do payments I think also about the question on circles I think things like group currencies could actually be a way where different communities can come together and use both the peer-to-peer layer and the community currency or group currency

layer to actually start to use both the power of digital assets that already exists the ones you mentioned and also be able to embed the economy locally with these types of peer-to-peer exchange I see I see that as probably the most powerful combination because so far we've only done either one or the other and I think there's a power in combining them um sorry here I want to I want to add in what you said like yes we don't know what people need in other parts of the country and this is something that it's obvious to everyone and we shouldn't be going we should really be guessing what other people needs and that's a basic thing that um she has said and I agree

and that's why I think the pilot in Berlin is so important because here the community is building itself and is working together so why do you have they seem Frankfurt and maybe the community can grow in Frankfurt like maybe the community can grow in other cities and I know this need and like in the tech world of scale and get bigger and get the like I don't know grow grow but do we really want to grow like that or do we want the communities to grow independently and be the let the communities go wherever they want to be like I think what it's important is like if we have a pretty like circles here we can showcase this in and can be built somewhere else and the people and the

technology is somewhere else can also build this on top and let their Community decide what to do with their stock and then that way for me at least this that's the growing that I would like to see like let the communities grow themselves rather than having like these global um yeah this arm can buy something from everywhere in the world maybe the problem was like why I can buy something that is made in China and then kind of buy something that is made here by my the neighbor but someone else why this global economy has to keep going like that maybe that's what it has to change how do we think about the economy that has to be globalized maybe we don't have it doesn't have to be like that I think that's a very relevant

um reflection especially now in the context of uh you know the breaking of Supply chains and inflation and energy crisis like how could we use things like circles to regain that type of autonomy build local infrastructure and so on but from yeah the communities forward I think that's very important especially in places like Europe where if you know when I talk to a farmer here they say that the cost of a tomato that they grow in Brandenburg is 30 cents more expensive than the one that comes from even not even outside of Europe in Andalusia in Spain right so like how could we create uh these types of more people power Regional economies they can then scale up right but for the for the and and maybe I

typically don't like to answer questions with other questions but like why do you think Ubi hasn't taken off yet in Berlin for example yeah circles has been around in Berlin since years why is not everybody in Berlin using uh circles as a Ubi that's it's like the the letting communities grow on their own works very well if the communities actually gain something that they need out of it and luckily Germany is in a position or other European countries is in a position that you know compared to other regions on the world we are actually doing quite good um

the question is do other communities in other countries then grow better if they are introduced with something like circles or Ubi Concepts I don't know I have not talked to other regions and countries about Ubi especially circles and ask them if they want to implement it there Etc but it could be that they are interested in using it I don't know and then I see also a motivation for them to self-educate them themselves and then grow the community especially yeah if they have something that they can gain out of it wonder if someone else there are some questions also I I got a quick uh idea so there are already different kinds of communities

around which are quite old at times so there's this time banking movement for instance and they they used to do all the bookkeeping on uh with pen and paper and maybe with circles or trust lines we got a tool nowadays to digitalize the workflows so I personally don't know many people from from this movements but they're around since quite a long time so maybe we have to expand our Outreach and make existing communities more aware of the new technological possibilities that there are nowadays the the main challenge with those they're like hundreds in Germany right

the problem is if you go into like if you go into a dialogue with them Etc most of them were a lot of participants they don't have phones because they're more in the older generation than in the younger generation they don't want to change what they're they're very comfortable with what they have and that's fine that's fine definitely yes it's fine so but but then like introducing like blockchain and and I've been to many of those those Taos Kaiser where you know and the first thing that they say is like and they can be very um uh passive aggressive in terms of like what do you want why are you introducing something like a Bitcoin into our tauschkais Etc and we're like no no I'm

not even like him and then my favorite question is what are you gaining from this like why are you selling this to us are you making one another like the social impact project we want to provide something for a community and then grow Etc and they don't they don't like that concept apparently yeah no but they have experiences um um that we're not that good I mean the white man came to the village and brought them something then took their children so uh for example yeah uh um and I think you know for example Bitcoin has value you can buy train tickets for Bitcoin if you exchange it to something else and for circles it is very difficult I think for people to understand the value of circles if you

cannot yet buy your train ticket with it and what's happening in El Salvador now for example uh I mean the government understands oh wow Bitcoin is an escape from the IMF and uh with the lightning Network people can you know with low transaction fees actually exchange and you know keep their money uh um so yeah I mean it is already happening and uh it is going to be organic and um uh you know because of the blockchain we we don't have to wait for the policy makers and we don't have to go through

the banks and that is very very transformative so uh yeah I think you know it will grow organically um I I I think that's the complementary currencies are really a good option uh to to facilitate the local economies um they will probably exist alongside uh the more you know accepted currencies like big Bitcoin and and maybe even the Fiat currencies if they will still exist but you know I for myself you know with the Central Bank digital currency is coming I have decided that I will not exchange my energy or products for slave money

and I think more and more people will do that because they will understand that this is a system of total surveillance that's coming so if they give me Central Bank digital currencies and call that a basic income but it is a very very conditional income then they may offer me a wallet and you know if I can pay my rent with it you know fine but my energy and my products is not going to be paid through Central Bank digital currencies no way but but what are you doing with the costs you have during creation of your products well I will accept gold silver Bitcoin yeah I mean yeah and then we can have a

peer-to-peer exchange here somewhere you know with uh yeah but but my energy my products are not going to be going to be paid in Central Bank digital currency because I know what they are but I think it's very straight those looking for a working model of what Hilda has said um please look up Bitcoin Beach it is a movement in El Salvador the Prime Minister takes his currency and he takes his payment in Bitcoin now and Bitcoin Beach is a movement where they uh where they educate even a stall on the street that sells watermelons about Bitcoin through the lightning Network it is a square style Apple app so there are no excuses there they're a very poor country and they're trying to move into a new store of value they are trying to

break out of the clutches of the IMF so I am really sorry Andreas I don't subscribe to a lot of that school of thought but I'm really sorry but and Jack Dorsey has endorsed this like he's the one who actually publicizes he's the owner of Twitter by the way and you know a lot of echina is like a few like American rappers and stuff started funding it and these things blow out of proportion but it doesn't mean we don't try and I think one of the top things uh that we should try for Ubi is empathy if it doesn't work in one place doesn't mean it won't work in another kind of bring out the kind of perspective in here because I I actually really think uh it's a it's a I have to say it I think it's a bad idea to to say

people they should use Bitcoin and I explain why I explain why um [Music] yeah to me um I I see kind of uh some some core um core yeah revolutionary ideas in Bitcoin of course and I actually got into the space because I was very excited a bit about Bitcoin but I'm uh definitely no longer and uh and and that is yeah because fundamentally I would say the system is extremely uh unstable so um and well it's also part of story what happened in El Salvador that that um kind of or if or I I feel like it's

it's dangerous to to say kind of that is what people should save in if if it's a currency that can lose and does lose or easily can lose 10 20 of its value in a day so currently I would say if you um if you um or you can kind of for for people in places with well no banking infrastructure or um or um or kind of but the local currency that's that's then maybe worse than Bitcoin I would say simply the iusdc kind of stablecoin are a better solution

yeah maybe on that point that was just because I have some TS some of relatives who live in El Salvador and um it isn't as romantic as it somehow like portrayed to be like um not just with these volcano bonds and so on but really like many people uh if you actually look right now at the usage of Bitcoin is very few like there's not it's not really like a means of payment that everyone is using Bitcoin is not the sign to be a means of payment first of all so there's also a lot of like uh corrupt things that's going with the government you know like trying to like yeah so it's not a bit like the issue is that we have to look at Bitcoin and the

politics around Bitcoin together with the all the crazy stuff that go on in Central America you know with gangs and Narco traffic and a lot of those other stuff so it's not it's not in a vacuum right I think uh Kia has a question sure but did anyone else want to respond to this or um one thought for this maybe so um because Martin said um it's it's not a good way to to pay for your daily Goods or something like that but that is only true if um you're in a com in a world where you import goods for instance so if you would have an Ideal World a kind of circular economy and that one would be

it wouldn't even matter which kind of currency you use then you could use just as well Bitcoin just like any other but but in in that case why should you um kind of first I mean like let's say you have this local economy and you kind of can be circular why should you first need to buy off Bitcoins of someone like me who has a lot and who got them early and pay me out and why shouldn't you use your own local uh currency oh you you could use Stones basically or shells or yeah I I think where I'm not asking people to buy Bitcoin to be very clear and a face you thought this is like hygiene right it's a blockchain conference I'm talking

about the Bitcoin Beach marketing awareness campaign that's it it was an awareness it is an awareness campaign and it just tells you what Bitcoin is and your prime minister's sort of like your celebrity spokesperson who's sort of taking his money God knows if he really is he's sort of taking his money in it and if it's also like it sounds then Jack Dorsey is also wrong to sort of like promote that but I guess we're just talking about awareness and um how are we going to like cross this Chasm if we don't even become aware so I'm not asking people to buy Bitcoin I mean I have Bitcoin but um it's it's a very big impermanent loss appetite and I would never recommend it to anybody so yeah I think my question is somewhat tangentially related because there's a

kind of narrative of Ubi that often talks about equality um kind of reducing inequality um but also this idea of basically disintermediating or in some way introducing other funds to escape whether it's the IMF or another system but I was really struck by this interview from 30 years ago with Ilitch that I was reading last week because he put it really succinctly and saying that maybe an inequality is an issue but also there's a kind of additional issue of the fact of just basically needing money for subsistence so the fact that you can no longer kind of take wood you have to pay for electricity the fact that you can't kind of travel somewhere without paying for the bus ticket and it's that

basic kind of everyday disintermediation that I think that Ubi narratively is more equipped for and I think that's also the same reason why you shouldn't necessarily buy Bitcoin but you could have a different kind of Ledger system that's more locally intermediated or translocally it could be Regional it could be Global but it's not necessarily buying into someone else's Ponzi scheme but making sure that basically there are ways to account for Value that are not necessarily mediated by a financial system that's outside of your control right but I think the the times that I've seen this work in practice have been like when I was living in Athens in 2014 and basically the debt crisis mixed with the refugee crisis and there was like a narrative

moment of Crisis that allowed the time bank and other tools to really kind of take cultural apart and then the only other times I've kind of seen this are things like with Bitcoin where you have the white paper as like a form of a kind of cultural movement or like a lot of people are talking about like lore so the fact that the founder was Anonymous the way that it was introduced to the world like I don't believe that money equates to believe I think that's a quite naive way of of thinking about money but I do still think there's like a cultural belief that Ubi systems need so I'd be curious on everyone's thoughts about like what is your kind of like culture or lore either with the Ubi pilot here or what do you think are like the actual like stories people have that

can make it kind of very culturally mysterious and interesting for people to participate in because we often talk about it in very different terms I mean I I can just say something quickly about um like the Berlin experience what sort of stories have emerged um so maybe I'll start with the latest one that I knew so um the last assembly at the beginning of September we had a woman who just joined uh the assembly a bit later on and she said oh I'm so happy to finally meet all you people like I've been buying my food

at this local shop in Nikon I had to be overpacked and she said it's really changed the way I shop you know it has really there is this sort of narrative that oh it's it's a local Source food so there is this idea that local is more uh bu no there is a cultural element in Germany about the bo foot no the bio Deutsche as they say in German so there is uh there is that lore so to say you know that there is okay um it's not just a basic income it's also somehow making the economy more local uh I think there is some I don't know if I would call it mysterious element to it but it definitely helps people to like relate to it in a way where they feel oh

it's it's not a Ponzi scheme uh I'm actually getting my food and that that will be like just one example of many people right yeah what I really look about um programs like circles is that you move away from the homo economics we are more than uh uh you know entities that exchange currencies um we exchange value um and value can be something that you cannot buy and circles is because it's so Community Based so it's it's much more a network of people that really want to transform

at least that's how I uh see it and um I hope for for a future where there is no money at all and that you just take what you need and just leave what you don't need for someone else who you don't know and if we reach that stage then there is a future of abundance because nature is abundant and uh you know there is no uh scarce scarcity of energy even one of the one of the criticisms on bitcoin is oh it costs so much energy but you know they lie there is already free energy

so um we need something that disturbs the whole system and the system doesn't like it so it's going to be a very very bumpy road that's why your examples of you know entering the doors and shoot people um are serious I mean we have experienced something almost like that in our project where one of the people was abducted um so yeah um it is a bumpy road um and we are more than economics does anybody else have any sentiments to offer any opinions to offer even if not questions

that's the whole point of this hi um thank you I don't really know how to make this comment slash question um I think or what I would expect from this panel or this session is um I understand Ubi or well circles not uvi circles as a you said complementary currency and also it can be seen as a social currency um so if we go to the roots which is or the basic which is the communities uh

that need to exchange things for like their local economy and they need a currency to make these exchanges easier then they they go on to what are the systems that they have you said a paper and a pen others have implemented in the past or even still are like a centralized applications with a centralized database where they have the letter of everything the depth and they have implemented different solutions for implementing the social currency assuming that we need a coin you said the future is we're not

going but assuming we need a coin to to or a currency so circles for example is one of these options and and for example one of the advantages is that the issued by the people not via by a bank or whatever and then and then is implemented on an infrastructure which is the blockchain but it can be maybe as a as a program in another language uh so what I expect maybe from here is why are we choosing blockchain and which type of blockchain

and and I also um think that each community in each part of the world has to like analyze and study its solution and for example circles if they have bad internet that is not useful for them so they have to to balance or study um if this is a suitable technology for for them so maybe it makes sense in Berlin because there is quite good internet sometimes and yes so for example for me to sell in uh uvi in the blockchain I would need to know why blockchain is the best

infrastructure and not whatever other um you said Andres you said before for example if uh government comes and shutdowns governments can shut down a private server but not the entire blockchain that is an advantage but yeah maybe we can discuss yeah I I can give a short answer why I think blockchain is a good technology and I'm sure there are also different opinions and maybe it's a good like trust lines created its independent blockchain for itself and we did that out of very specific parameters and um we are switching now to noses chain because noses chain is going to fulfill also these criterias that we had for the

blockchain that we wanted to be on so we always said we want to be have a blockchain that we basically is not run by Central authorities so that you can have that you don't have censorship resistance but also they cannot shut down the infrastructure on which the value is being generated and uh back in back in four years ago when we started building it there were only a proof of work chains or proof of authority chains and with the proof of authority chains you would basically would know who is still running the chain so proof of stake is actually the the consensus that we need to have like a blockchain that is distributed and censorship resistant Etc I think that is

one of the core elements of why you know projects use blockchains because it is transparent but still censorship resistant in some way to just say to that to me to me the important piece is that um white circles has a very local kind of component in it it has still um at least the potential or yeah the potential to become um Global or at least the um as as an individual that at least one idea in circles you don't need to be kind of just part of one Community you can be part

um of of many communities and but at least many of us that is also how our life is we have connections uh across the globe um and uh yeah well there to my knowledge blockchain is is the only infrastructure that that uh that yeah kind of works globally without um yeah a central uh just being controlled by by one entity I would just maybe add that um it's also something you said no just now you know the the really radical thing about circles is the I they say this this thing that we are as as people are issuing money outwards

that's structurally in the way that Society runs today very different from how things work right so I think that in itself like I what I the way I think about it is like how you know we go from thinking about money just as a commodity to making it a Commons because if we all issue money together um then you can actually move into you know not just different social forms but different ways of relating to other people right so um I think that's really really interesting and important and something that can actually change the social reality in the whole world if we actually do things right so I think that's the interesting part for me

to what we had um I mean now we have many people that were not able to open a bank account that have now access to a wallet without identifying themselves and that is so disruptive and so um you know it frees up a lot of people so um I'm really happy with the blockchain technology because it's really nothing more than a ledger is it and um so you know we record transactions and it's and it cannot be changed or if you change it you can see it that it has been changed so um yeah it's a it's it has given people access to uh wallets um or bank account well sort of like

comparable to a bank account that had not accessed before you know we had the example this morning uh you know someone like Billy who didn't get a visa to come here there are so many people that are not allowed to open a bank account so that is really transformative hmm yeah and I think it's the censorship resistance and the global availability of the blockchain which makes it so interesting for issuing Ubi currencies on it and um if people don't have internet access there are still ways to bridge it it might not be live but you could still have a bank-like structure like a

bookkeeper and a to paper money again with respect by blockchain currency so it's a bit of a crude idea but uh this should show how far you can get with adapting uh to two different environments even if you're using blockchain technology at your core yes yes good I think we've reached the end of our session our day of Defcon of Ubi thank you so much everyone for sticking around with us thank you to all the panelists everyone is from very different wavelengths but it's nice that

we can all have discourse so thank you so much for this thank you thank you