EB115 – Matan Field: Backfeed And The Social Operating System For Decentralizde Organizations

Transcript

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today hi welcome to epicenter Bitcoin the show which talks about the Technologies projects and people driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency Revolution my name is Sebastian kucho and my name is Brian faan crane we're here today with Matan field he's the CEO of back feed now some of you may have heard of back feed it's basically it's an interesting company sort of exploring the concept of decentralized autonomous organization so we look forward to diving into that it's a topic that we haven't explored for quite a while so thanks so much for coming on Maran yeah nice to be here yes so Mar we actually we all we we did sort of meet so when we were in uh with Aras we were

in Tel Aviv in was it October and we had a dinner and and and maton came as well so we we but we didn't get to talk back then so I'm glad we will have to a chance to talk now um can you tell us a bit how did you get involved in cryptocurrency decentralization and um this whole field right so um almost Co instantly I would say I I was doing uh completely different things I was uh doing my research my postdoctoral research in theoretical physics at at the techon at the northern of

Israel um and during that time I had an idea to build a real-time right sharing application I joined with a couple of my friends and we've uh started working on this application and and and trying to solve the critical mass problem of how bringing enough early doors to make real time right training work uh at the first place and through that process that thinking process we realized that um we realized the ideas of of tokens and and the centralized organization it was before before those ideas um were called like that and through that we basically

came into the the Bitcoin and the blockchain space during that process event eventually we've we I mean eventually real time right training became secondary and decentralization became primary and that's how I reached all this field and and dived in at some point I just realized how how promising and and larger potential there is in it and at some point I just quitted my my academical research and decided to focus on that so you you started working on on right sharing and that was before before you aware of cryptocurrencies and blockchains and then you thought like oh that's that's a great fit and let me explore

that right yeah so exactly so I mean as I said I mean the in the real time right sharing field which was which which hasn't been cracked down uh yet um there is a serious problem of how to uh bring the early adapters because if there there are not enough early adapters the ring doesn't work but if it doesn't work how do you bring the early adapters and our solution to that we said well we just you know we how many how many people do we need to recruit let's say in t Aviv we need 100,000 people so let's just make a project with 100,000 partners and we just solved the critical mass problem and then we asked the question okay but how a project with 100,000 people you know is functioning how decision are being made how value is

being distributed and so on so forth and then we said yeah of course you need to have some some tracking of of value tracking of of of economy and then we said said probably probably Bitcoin can do some help on that front and we dived into blockchain that was exactly the same time where ethereum where vitalic has has had an idea has his idea of ethereum and and the whole revolution of the centralized organization has started so it was a perfect match and then we dived deeply into the blockchain uh scene uh and then we become we became from a ride train application we be we became a ride train decentralized application um and the more I worked on this I

realized that actually the the basic concept of the central organization and the thing that were still missing at the time of the centralized value distribution and so on are more basic and more generic and more big than specifically uh right sharing and at some point also start also decided to quit Lazo the the decentralized r Shing application and found back fed uh early this early 2015 uh to systematically build the the layers that were still missing in that space to to enable the centralized organizations yes so so there was some some parts and some components that you felt like were were missing for

something like let used to to really work so we said like okay let's let's try to build those Bas layer Technologies and infrastructure layers so that applications like laus and you know 100 others that will come that uses similar architecture can thrive in the future is that sort of the evolution you took yeah exactly so so basically um I mean in the you can you can think of Bitcoin as a as as a prototype for this future and the idea is that millions of people can can collaborate or cooperate in decentralized fashion by distrib Distributing value that is being created so in the Bitcoin

case it is by miners that verify transactions of others and then for contributing to the network by verifying those transaction they receive some of the value of the network in terms of new Bitcoin that are being issued but then uh that that is that is that that value distribution is only um enabled by algorithmically verifiable actions in that that can in that case it's mining verifying transaction is algorithmically verifiable but there was no way to um to make a decentralized cooperation of a generic kind so for example decentralized uh coding uh decentralized startups decentralized Insurance

decentralized publish publishing decentralized journalism decentralized lending or whatever but decentralized cooperation that requires actions that need to be valued or evaluated by by by real people and not by algorithms so all this logical layer of decentralized governance decentralized value distribution decentralized influence reputation system uh it was completely missing and without which you cannot you cannot make a generic decentral Corporation so we we came came up to build exactly the to build and fill up that layer and of course to develop the whole um road map uh further so when you when you go to the

back feed website it it says it's a social operating system for decentralized organizations and when you think of an operating system you you think of a a usually a computer or a mobile phone that has the central software that allows for software to be run and uh for uh sort of the ability for applications to talk to each other and you know interact with each other through file system Etc so um can you give us the the the sort of broad overview of uh of bat feed and how how it relates to uh operating systems uh as software I mean how how what is a social

operating system is what I'm getting it right right right so so I mean a computer is basically uh the Skeleton on top of which you can run softwares just as the blockchain together with dhts distribute hash tables are the the skeleton to run decentralized applications um but then you still you still need you're still missing the human uh layer or before the human layer you need still still missing the the operating system for the human layer in order just as IED before in order to fa facilitate the central cooperation between human being uh and this is the social operating system um so so so that in that sense it's it's

analogous it's it's it's the if if you want it's the it's the partly software partly human layer that is enabling uh to run social applications to run collaborative efforts uh of people and what does that look like exactly what are the the components to this technology and how do people interact with it so yeah so it is not it is not a an application it's a really more like an operating system on top of which you can build applications um also by the way I should have also said that it's also the the system that allows to different for different software to be interoperable to for with each other so

different Central cooperation will be completely interoperable with each other uh and eventually we'll create one big Network one big collaborative Network um how it looks like so different application will may may may look uh in different ways but the the basic idea is that the the core protocol uh within is enabling people to feedback each other's activities to feed feedback each other's contributions um and then this feedback is kind of uh tricky and that's why it's back feed because when you feedback someone else the the environment feedbacks you so the more you are aligned with the network the more your

feedback uh brings your reputation upward and also counts more so and if you are disigned in your feedback with the network around you then your reputation decreases that's what we call it back feed um so basically it's protocol that collects if you want all of the feedbacks in a network and by that creates the influence power the reputation creates the value distribution and also creates alignment um multivalue system alignment so so if you have initially a a you know a a big network with let's say Millions people that all think very differently then by via this protocol organically and

spontaneously the network starts to um crystallize around different value systems and all of which are Rel leg legimate just as just as GitHub basically allows an organic uh creation of different opinion of of how code should be uh should be designed and you have multiple branches of code so in this case you'll be have multiple branches of value system of reputation system I I up until now had not even realized the word play with feedback and and back feed um but uh you mentioned in a talk I was watching one of your talks that you did at at Devcon recently and and you said that identity is defined by your actions

you are what you do um and that's an interesting idea because in um in traditional identity systems your identity is defined by you know a whole lot of other things we've had we've had guests talk about Identity On on the podcast a bunch of times before identity can be defined by you know what other people say of you identity is also defined by what you say about yourself uh identity can also be defined by um a power structure like the state uh but it's the first time that I ever hear someone say that identity is defined by actions uh give us uh you know tell us what this looks like and how it applies to reputation uh your reputation score

in back feed right so um in a decentralized world you can you can participate from you know from your node on the network and do whatever you do you can you can contribute code you can contribute ideas you can write blog post you can you can make comments uh or or or anything else this will also connect with the internet of things and and and basically our Physical World um and for your actions uh your actions have influence right they have consequences in the world and the network around you can feedback or back feed um on on those activities so so basically people can appreciate or or disappreciate your

contribution um and and at the end of the day I mean I can I can also handle several identities it's completely legitimate but these several identities will basically have only part each of them will have part of my history and at the same time we can with three of us can also handle one identity which is completely legitimate this identity will have history of activities it will have opinion and according to the activities that it will do and then the feedbacks that the network will uh make on them this identity will have a level of reputation now it's not one reputation because you'll have uh many many different networks uh and each network has its own reputation system even a part of a network is can be another Network which

has its own reputation system and then an identity will be the aggregation of all of its actions and the aggregation of all of the feedbacks on these actions and the resulting multiplicity of reputations in all networks so I'd love to go a little bit deeper here and explore how this can work so so you mentioned that uh you could have a sort of branching off and you have have different network that coals around different value systems um how would that work in reality can you give an example of that so so for example let's let's

discuss um maybe we can let's discuss several example but let's start with one and then we can discuss later in more depth examp another example that we work on so for example um there is this very simple application that we start to build uh about curation of content on the web so um you know you can on any on any website that you are you can you can you can click if you want to curate that website if you like that website right because eventually the problem is that the Internet is just vast and huge and we're not even touching the 1% of the internet and Google decides for us what is the right H it's the it's the strategy of the of the filter bubble so Google decides for us what what is right

to see for us and what is not um and imagine that all of the people in around the world can you know can inform each other about good Network good website versus bad website and then if you know if you and I have similar similar opinions and we curate the kind of the same content similarly then gradually we are we are we're starting to aggregate a network around us uh which is with with s similar with like-minded people and this network will start to curate content you know according to its opinions but maybe some other some other person is you know thinking differently and you know some other people people and they they curate content in a different way um and eventually what

what you'll have you'll have many networks that curate content differently they see the website differently and with this extension you'll be able to search the web it's like kind of search engine but it's more more than engine I would say it's a mind it's a search mind you'll be able to to search the web for Stuff according to the value system of other people you can you can ask yourself how you know how people in in uh in Argentina uh look at things rather than people in China or how leftwing people think in terms of the web with respect to right right-wing people and so on so you'll be able to look at the web from different goggles of different networks uh with different value systems

or different or different likes and dislikes let's take a short break so we can go to Paris I stopped into lame Bitcoin the house of Bitcoin at The Ledger offices and I met with Ledger CEO Eric L so he could tell me all about The Ledger wallet Chrome app The Ledger wallet Chrome app is a perfect comp compion app for your Ledger hw1 or Nano we have a very powerful and cool feature you can use multi accounts for instance personal accounts business accounts this is very useful also when you want to make a transaction we use a second factor of verification you can either use a physical security key or cryptographically securely pair your

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like to thank Ledger for their support of epicenter Bitcoin you know let's say if you look at an example of a decentralized system where you have obviously very uh wide Divergence of value I think Bitcoin would be a great example right and it's not really clear to me here how you can have easily a sort of Divergence into you know multiple Bitcoins that have uh you know different views and you know different interpretations you know let's say around what is this thing actually supposed to do because you have Network effects that are so big that it just it doesn't really work so do you do you

think that's going to you know Network effects would be one thing that prevent these sort of systems to emerge so no so um yeah I mean no and yes I mean for Bitcoin it doesn't it doesn't fit in this in this if you want in this scheme because it's not designed in that way from the beginning but in the right with the right design what I speak about is is basically a fractal of network so it's not just just many many different networks which don't speak with each other there is a fractal structure of a network that is in a way divided to many sub networks divide of many sub networks and so on so forth and all these networks are not independent of each other they do have economical and reputational relationship between

them so that eventually in in a way you are this kind of fractal of network is leveraging both competition and cooperation or if you want agreement and disagreement so in a way two networks are using uh a common component on whatever they agree about and use different component on whatever they disagree about and that way you you you both explore maximal cooperation and the same times divers diversification of opinion and competition of of on the disagreements so these different networks are not independent of each other they they they they do build one big network of information they do build one big network of cooporation so there is you don't lose the network effect

okay so it it wouldn't work with something like a A cryptocurrency in that case it you think it would work with a publishing system can you talk a little bit more you know let's say if you take a a general or can you give another example of of how that could work and how this sort of exchange of value and competition and collaboration will work yeah sure so let's let's take let's explore another let's explore the centralized journalism or publishing which is something that we work on today so so for example anyone can uh add content to that Network anyone can write a blog post anyone can suggest edit of others blog post any one can suggest new

title or anyone can um you know suggest comments or translations to the network now communities who are like-minded or systematically like-minded will appreciate the same content and this kind of content will start to aggregate in that Community now different community may appreciate different content and this different content will start to aggate around around that Community but they may very uh well have you know um common component or common content that both communities appreciate now it's not that it's not that it's not it's not like binary so it's it's basically uh a continuous evaluation of content uh which will vary between the

two communities and the the content that both communities will will highly appreciate will be visible in both communities and content which is only appreciated but one of the communities will be more visible uh will be visible only in that Community or or content that is more highly valuated in one Community than the other will be more visible in one Community rather than the other but as a whole those two communities will be part of one big Community they will H they will have access to one big database uh of information they will just choose to look to view that database different differently So eventually at the end of the day you have one big dentalized journalism but with two different goggles to look at it to read two new

newspaper if you want from the same database of content so whatever whatever they agree about they leverage and build up more content with the N with the network power of the whole network whatever they disagree about indeed that's where they have if you want less of the network that is building up that power but but that's just because disagree about it makes sense so in that way you leverage you want you build up the the op optimization between uh cooperation and diversity how do you connect so in the in in the context of this example dist decentralized journalism uh let's let's hypothesize that you have like you said a fractal uh

some sort of fractal pattern of of this network that stems from this initial um idea of having say a newspaper um it it sort of starts to look a bit like evolution where some branches will become more powerful and other others will become um will have less influence can can you talk about the Dynamics there what happens when you start having you know perhaps thousands of branches on what was initially one newspaper uh the what what what what impacts does that fragmentation of

information have how do you then know you know what would be sort of the correct information are we can we assume that the you know bigger branches are correct or um or is there something else at play here well firstly there is no correct or incorrect there is just the branches that live get stay alive and the branches that die out and you gave the Perfect Analogy uh to Evolution this is evolution in fact it's very very analogous to evolution in fact you have the same two forces so in evolution you have a force of alignment so the back fit protocol Works in a way that creates a feedback loop so that people who are systematically aligned with each other

their reputation is gradually increasing and then at the next step they Define the axis of alignment in a stronger way and then it's still it's still keeping increasing so you have a force that drives towards alignment homogenization which is the same force force of genes that drives into homogeneization of species in closed environment okay could could could could could you also use something like back feed then to create a prediction Market because it seems like the mechanics would be somewhat similar only you would you have human reputation on the line yeah it's it's it's a little bit it's a little bit analogous to prediction Market but prediction mark But non economical prediction Market it's a reputational prediction Mark Market in a way uh and

and you have also the second force that in evolution uh well mutation basically make the diversification uh from homogeneity and here the fact that you are misaligned with the community around you um makes you the incentivization to Fork out to a new network and this will create a dynamics that will balance itself organically and dynamically so if you'll have too much of diversity you you'll be able to collect Power from from you know from cooperating with people and and agreeing with them and building the network effect if we have too strong a network too too much homogeneous then people will be able to create value from forking out and exploring New Dimensions

new directions so in a way organically just like Evolution Society with this decentral governance mechanism will explore explore the whole Spectrum the whole h space if you want of the of directions of actions of opinions and whatnot in a way which which will be able to maximize and optimize uh itself so you know it you have too much homogeneity you create diversity if you have too much diversity it will create homogen okay now you also mentioned in in one of your talks that uh that reputation is seated by making a valuable cont contribution perceived by as reputable agents

how if if you have say one branch of a system where there's enormous reputation enormous weight of the community behind it uh how how would it be possible then in that case for for any one other agent to Branch off uh and be successful if Network effects were so big there and also try to get my head around this but um what would a sort of the guess the equivalent of a 51% attack look like in um in a system such as proof of value right right guess those are two questions that may not be directly related but right right right so so the

idea that yeah the more the network the more the network the bigger the network the more the network effect exists then in a way the harder it is to change the momentum of that network but at the same time the economical model that lies uh beneath this uh this protocol is in is analogously to the Bitcoin is giving more value to early adopters more Val the earlier you are in a in a network the more value the more financial ownership that you gain from that Network so in a way if you can Fork that Network to a new direction that will in the future uh uh drive a lot of attention then the earlier you are doing that the more uh the more value you'll gain so the bigger their incentive to do

so so that and that's exactly what will balance that so if the network is too big if you want and the homogeneity is not justified meaning there are enough people who think differently then there will be incentive for that person you know for that entrepreneur to Fork out the network and find and found a new direction for others to follow and those early adapters that will follow will also gain from the network and then that builds that builds a Snowball Effect right so so the economical incentive for early adoption is basically balancing out the the the rigidity of the M of the momentum of a network effect that is gener being generated uh that makes sense and in terms of 51% then just like there also here you have 51% attack like

if you if you can take over 51% of the reputation in the network then you are definitely controlling the network but the whole point is that the the H like if you if you are if you are 51% of the network you are the network right you should do whatever you want and if you will if you'll rule the network in a way that will not make H it will not make the other people happy they will just Fork out to get a new network so in that way you cannot really you see the forking out can always run away from you can you cannot like you cannot control anyone um what one one big difference in that protocol this is bit more technical but but there is a there is inherent uh tension between um scalability uh

decentralization and resilience so decentralization requires that uh information and decision is distributed along the whole network and not gathered in one place um and resilience requires that in a way every decision needs to be approved by 51% of the network but then that brings brings an inherent tension with scalability because you know when when the network is very big it's it's it's an it's unacceptable that every decision is being observed by 51% of the people on the network and here we're talking about actual people observing an activity it's not a machine observation although also in the blockchain machine observation is also a bottleneck for scalability but in human

network is much more severe right and so this is a built intention and and the Sol the resolution of that Paradox is exactly this fractalization so fractalization or if you want compositionality let you have uh let you make decisions with less attention in the network like the the example well you can think of the US uh political um uh architecture this is the same thing but but uh just for for a simple example if you have nine people with equal weight on the network uh you need five of them to agree about any any decision but if this nine is is is separated is divided into three groups and each groups is divided to three

people again all of our all of whom are equal weighted then you can see that you can get a majority vote by four people two of each of the two networks so you can you see you can get a vote to to pass uh or a decision to pass with less attention in the network and and you can show that the more you fractalize network the less the the the threshold for decision is going down so in a way the 51% is going down down and down but you can show that it it happens in a way that doesn't disrupt resilience because although you need less and less people to control well to take decision you need more and more specific configurations of people to do so and you can show in in a simulation that it

is done so organically in a way that resilience is kept intact all right that's um it's quite a challenge to wrap your head around that I have have to say now I had a question before that maybe ties into that so with something like a prediction Market I mean I have been thinking about that especially also in the context of augur where you know you have like different people predicting things and you know you want to predict like what everybody else is predicting right so in proof of value because you know outliers basically get punished and you you deem to be bad at you know predicting things

or evaluating things if you diverge Too Much from the sort of consensus so you have a similar system um do you think that's a you know that leads to for example good decisions and good or does that just lead to sort of you know least common denominator and you know you sort of try to you know have this homogenization and everybody fitting in with each other well yeah I I think I think I think it it works good but let let me let me emphasize two things firstly um um you're not being punished your reputation is decreasing in a network if you are systematically misaligned with it but that's completely good like I don't want to have a hyper reputation in the network that I don't think that I'm not like-minded like I

don't want to have my feed uh you know spammed by a network that thinks differently actually I I want to have a lower reputation in a system where I'm this align but then I have the incentive to just open a new network which is align with my opinion so actually want you have the in you have the incentive to just Express it's not a prediction Market in that sense it's analogous but it's not a prediction Market I don't have an incentive to predict the future I actually have the incentive to say what I think should happen and then the network will organize around my opinion or not organize a mar then I will have the incentive to for to a new network or or I'll just be driven to a network that is more like-minded that's one thing the second thing is that the protocol is not

only not only about uh a alignment and this my this alignment is also about in a way Innovation so the early earlier I kind of expressed different opinion from the majority and then people some people follow my route then I will gain more reputation around that because I was early so in a way I have the incentive I actually have the incentive to say what I think should happen not not not what I believe will happen by netw but what I think should happen and I I have incentive to say that as early as as possible yes so that makes sense to me I think that early early mover reward I think that that could have some effect not necessarily to say what you think but you know if if you think you see uh

an opinion that may be unpopular today but you think will become popular in the future you know then sort of you know standing up for that might be might be a good move I mean but when you say you know you just started another Network I guess a lot of this depends here on you know what are we talking about what are the costs of setting up another Network you know is that just a sort of automatically it happens or it it's really hard I think to wrap your head around that because we talk about it so abstractly right I I you know when if I try to sort of translate it to bitcoin for example then you have like yes you can do that you know you can like Fork to C Bas do a new coin but the costs are

enormous I mean maybe the cost of of just doing the the copying is not enormous but the cost of like actually trying to create value there moving people over is enormous so I I wonder if you'll have similar effects here or or if if maybe what you mean when you talk about networks is something quite different well uh yeah in some in some it depends on so firstly depends on application in some application forking out to a new network is just completely automatic just happens H so these two different networks are not really separable from each other they're actually still using the the same code base and same everything just the reputational system is forking out or also the economical system um but then in some Network it might be manually so

just with a click of a button new new reputation system will be created around me um and and and yes I mean maybe thousand of them will be created all the time and will just die out because not enough people are interested in that diens will be alone but then those who just like Evolution those who who will have resonance around them will start growing and they will have more and more incentive to grow them further and then they they they will still use the same code base and same information and same everything they are not separable from each other the two Network that just forked but they just use different reputation system and in fact even that is not like completely distinguishable like it's not that I will only use that system or only use that system I will have reputation of that system and you

have reputation of that system and again it will it's just if you want it's just it's just a Machinery to to in a way identify alignment and misalignment and more alignment and so on between people and aggregate that and and in a way organically and spontaneously uh Mark where like-minded people think together so um you mentioned reputation isn't money in this system but there is something a little bit like money or tokens or a currency or an appcoin or whatever it is called how does that work and what what's role of that right so so the idea is that whenever people are doing activities in

a system and then they are feedbacking each other then two things happen so one thing is that there is a there is a reputation distribution um or again maybe the reputation is a little bit confusing but but but the influence power in the system is being distri distributed and redistributed but another thing is that the the conical power in the system the if you want Theon economical ownership in the system is being redistributed all the time so if I'm doing contribution to if I'm contributing to a network then I get uh back from the network some some of the value in that Network and that that value is is taking place in terms of crypto tokens and each system each network has its own crypto tokens now

these tokens are comp completely tangible you can you can you know you can exchange them you can trade them or just keep you keep me in your wallet and there are indeed the centralized application dap tokens and there are dap to tokens because once a network is becoming uh powerful enough and it produces something maybe this something is decentralized journalism maybe this something is the central ride sharing or what not then you will need or not you but anyone else will need to have those tokens the same tokens that were being distributed to early adapters and early contributors you will need to use those tokens in order to facilitate the new service or product or value that was created by that Network so people that will have those tokens will be ble to

use them in order to facilitate the value and people who will not who want have those tokens will have to purchase them and then either the people who don't have the token can purchase the tokens for people who have them or you can also do that via the system which although decentralized hold a smart contract that runs uh in a way like a bank and then people who can who doesn't who don't have token can purchase those tokens from the network and people who have tokens can sell their tokens to the network and and gain back the funds that are entering from the people who purchase tokens from the network so in that way uh that that creates a demand for those tokens that gives them a real tangible value and that basically that basically reward back the early

contributors and early uh adapters this is this is basically just a generalization although somewhat differently U put it's a generalization of the Bitcoin economy right so I mean we we've this is of course these are ideas that we have actually talked about many times on this show so we've had you know Joel dets on Once Upon a Time quite a long time ago to talk about SW swarm you know when they were doing their thing which is very similar right we also had gems on which was a similar idea that you had an app where you would reward early contributors who you know made the app popular and then they got some reward for that we've had storage on at one point also quite a while ago which was a

similar thing where you know you people would sort of contribute to network with their Hardware thing and and of course even ethereum you could think is is in a way it's a little bit like that right you pre-sell the currency and then it was given to um to developers as well right and then into a foundation and yeah the miners right um so yeah I think that that idea of crypto Equity is is certainly interesting although to be honest I feel like the results have been a little bit underwhelming with a lot of these projects that you know there was a lot of sort of promises and a lot of uh excitement and it didn't sort of quite

live up to it I I I guess that might have a lot to do with what we're talking about here right the sort of lack of tools and lack of Technologies to actually enable those processes is is that one of the reasons that informs also how you go about here yeah absolutely I think I think those ideas are great but they they were just very premature I think we were lacking systems we were lacking the even the blockchain technology was still premature uh the DHD technology uh needed for that is premature the integration between them was premature the protocol that I'm talking about the economical protocol were premature the governmental Pro protocol completely Mis

existed um and it was just very early and Visionary but but very far from implementation and then that's exactly what we have decided to to to to to to do differently this time we decided to firstly build up the foundation in a very systematic way uh and only then start building application with those uh with those uh technology and that's that's what where we are right now we we're having I would say not even the full uh foundation in place but we have we we're having large Shunk of the foundation now technology in place and now we're starting to build proof of Concepts uh but from A to Z it will it will still take long time before the technology

matures but we hope to have this year a first example of completely decentralized cooperation um maybe it's not will not be fully scalable maybe it's not be fully generic maybe it not be uh I don't know fully operational but it will be it will be working and proving itself uh and then I think this technology in future will gradually build itself in the in the coming in the coming five years or so [Music] let's take a short break and talk about hide. me you know setting up a VPN on multiple devices can be complicated say you want to do like three devices and you have 10 different exit nodes that you want to configure well that's 30 different configurations that you have to do manually in each of those devices

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Amsterdam and Montreal and if you use our URL so high to me/ epicenter it's going to give you 35% off if you ever decide to sign up for a premium account and the premium account includes unlimited data it includes up to five devices connected simultaneously so you can put your grandmother using a VPN even your dogs tablet you can put on a bpn uh and you can use any of their exit noes and they've got 30 30 exit notes all over the world and of course you can pay with Bitcoin so give it a try and we would like to thank K me for their support of enter Bitcoin so let's talk a bit more about

applications we we mentioned uh the idea of decentralized Journalism tell us what are some other you know perhaps like far into the future or maybe not so much far into the future applications that you're most excited about and that are in all fair like most likely to work with something like this because I think there's certain types of things that definitely would be hard to build on on on application like this but others are as perhaps more obvious what are your thoughts on that right so yeah I think we're just try starting to scratch the the surface of it um so there are there are those applications are coming from from the from the content I would say

like journalism and Publishing and book writing and there are applications who come from from the making like decentralized startups what what it looks like million people who who build a startup together um and there will there will be applications are more financial in nature like H social trading of assets like decentralized Insurance like decentralized lending um there are you know real like real life application more like real-time ride sharing and other ride sharing application or Transportation application um there'll be more more more like the so from the social like social networks uh Twitter Etc there are there will be a lot of applications that that that use

the if you want the curation the evaluation component in a way like decentralized Yelp or decentralized product hunt or or those kind of of network that that that basically help people to reach out to the content to the piece to the information that they are looking after um um what else I'm sure there are many others that I I just don't think of right now but there are basically tens and hundreds of basically every industry that you can think of I think will have a decentralized counterpart okay and specifically with regards to to governance so we sort of brushed on this uh before the show where we said that this could potentially be useful for uh

for something like Bitcoin in the context of the the block size debate and figure out what uh is the good decision to take and and and you mentioned I think that you there's a a g a GitHub plugin um that you're developing so in in terms of governance of governance of say things like a software project or governance of just you know government like social government uh of anything but you know like state government also uh tell us about how you think that backfeed what role you think B Feed could play there and how how those Dynamics would play out well I think any cized interaction cooperation

collaboration of many uh will need some some level of governance and that can be from as you say the governance for for for decentralized application like just such such like Bitcoin um where today we we speak about the centralized uh application but the governance the building of the application is completely centralized or we can talk about C decentralized collaboration to build stuff together and I'm saying that in the future we will just have decentralized organization where the the building of stuff and the the usage of stuff and the adapting of stuff is not separable from each other it's just one one continuous or one Continuum um and so so yeah so the governance is starting from you know

from application to collaborations and eventually to meta collaborations uh you know between different applications or between different networks and eventually also I would say to to to you know to real life networks to iot whether it's iots or actually you know municipalities or States I I see no no reason why it will not reach there although of course it will take more time but eventually I think once uh once um I would say we learn how to spontaneously indirectly manage a society um I think we will find out that this un management if you want is is a order of magnitud more efficient than

centralized coordination and in that way we'll we'll found out to be more powerful more resilient more participatory H more growing faster ER and probably also more fair and and and and desired for everyone so yeah I think I think eventually it will reach out to to real life governance as well but it of course it will take much more time for that and uh one one issue that we wanted to touch on as well and uh we were supposed to have one of your co-founders on Premier Philipi she couldn't make it unfortunately um and we want to ask her the question of the legal status uh of daos of course she's done a lot of work

on this and um because is part of her research uh and the idea of the the the the question of legal status of daos has come up quite a bit you know when we're talking about we've been talking about daos simply like crowd sales like ethereums crowd sale it had it had been questioned whether or not those were legal or not and with something like the zoos Brian and I were speaking about it earlier before the show and it uh well the legality of something like lzo could be questioned where you know you're potentially building a taxi service that uh is made up of people that don't have taxi licenses so um how does at at Dao where where there is

no U Central Authority managing it fall into an existing legal framework are the individuals taking part in something as disruptive as building a decentralized uh right sharing system are they not becoming are they not putting themselves at risks uh individually to be targeted by you know lawmakers that would say something like you know you can't do this we're going to find you and we're going to take your your driver's license away perhaps take your car away so well yeah is very particular because of the because of the taxi and driving stuff and insurance but but actually there since since we're speaking about real-time ride sharing and it's not

Commercial Drive then I think there is no there's no issue about any insurance or or risk um still the the the sensitivity is not that definitely is not actually there the sensitivity is in the token economy uh and the the the if you want the risk is the exposure of these tokens to definition of uh Securities or the the exposure of the uh the the whole monitor system around it to to to definition of banking and all that the these are these are the serious sensitivities um there's a lot of work put forward to to struggle that because in a way those new futuristic

Technologies and system systems are right now bound bound to Old regulations which doesn't fit them anymore um and and and are not serving the purpose anymore and there's a lot of work to in a way to um uh legally architecture that that framework that will make that uh that that system legal and leg legitimate and at the same time there's a lot of effort to change regulation uh to fit uh the future um so I would say that um yeah I would say that there are two if you want two ways or yeah three three ways to think

about it two that I just mentioned one is one is building the legal building the legal architecture to make what uh what exists right now in the new technology fit the the current regulation another effort is to change the current regulation and a third if you want ideology is simply to build a truly decentralized Network and then regulation in a way is just just impossible I mean even today the regulator could have woke up and say well Bitcoin is illegal but there is just simply no way to regulate anymore Bitcoin and say it's not legal it's just there it's just impossible to you know to to unroot it so in a way it's too late for the regulation and the

regulation has to face it the existence of Bitcoin and to adopt its regulation according accordingly so the same thing happens here I think there are advances in all three fronts and eventually I think it will just uh meet somewhere in the middle we are personally trying to we we are planning to in the next in the coming year uh to spend a lot of our resources on on building those legal architectures that will make those Frameworks completely legal uh in all jurisdictions and and we're I mean it will take it will take a long time before the network will be fully decentralized and the technology level so we're not waiting to that time we're just trying to adapt what we are doing uh to be legal in the current uh

regulation scheme today's magic word is feedback Fe d d a c k head over to let's talk bitcoin.com to sign in enter the magic word and claim your part of the listener [Music] reward so is back feed uh sort regular startup you know that has raised money from investors and is trying to you know make money and exit at some point or do you guys have a what is the business model here right so backfeed yeah back feed is a company that was one of the lessons I took from Lazo Laz we we said no we are building decentralized

Corporation we will be ourself de centralized Corporation but that was a little bit too naive because it was too early the tools were not mature the framework the protocols nothing was mature enough uh and this time we said we'll do it we'll extrapolate we'll start in the old world we'll found a company we'll raise money we'll have a business model and then gradually we'll build the new world eventually we'll decentralize ourself as well so so yes backfit is a company we've raised so far in two rounds uh about half million dollars uh we are now raising actually these very days we're raising a few a little more fund um we are also now actually in process of raising larger funds from VC's um that we are hoping to close in the near future and we have a business

model so the business model is is very simple it's just the business model of the centralized cooperation is that if you are contributing to the network you receive tokens as I said those tokens become invaluable because they are needed to be uh to be to facilitate the network and and us back feed as as if you want as a founding agent we we we will receive uh amount of of tokens for our contribution to that Network so initially will be the founding contribution will will have all the tokens but then then the the as long as the network is growing we'll just become just one more agent you backf the company will just become one agent in the network uh that is contributing and getting tokens and eventually redeem those tokens into

funds um and if you want like my my vision or my dream is is is actually making an IPO but IPO not in the stock market but IPO into the decentralized world So eventually backfit can dissolve V decentralized organization that it has founded so it will just disappear into it um yes and we and and the idea is to create value for the investors that's you know that's that we need that to engine and and fuel our development so it serves it serves that future so we're not trying to we're trying to build a new future but we are still relying on the existing one yeah okay no that that certainly is it's an interesting model right I think I remember talking about this with VC actually the at ages ago you know two

years ago or something where we had that sort of conversations like oh would you would be allowed to for example invest in tokens directly or you know maybe invest in a company that then does this sort of thing and comes out with with tokens um so you you alluded to a little bit the sort of world you see and and I think especially like back feed dissolving into into this kind of decentralized organization itself if we project forward and let's assume that you know this is success uccessful and a lot of other projects like that are successful and you know this technology gets you know adopted on a wide scale what kind of world what's

the world going to look like and what are the sort of second order effects of that yeah that's a good question so so firstly first of all um you can be sure that the world will be decentralized and by that I mean that everything will be decentralized um human beings and and and and int artificial intelligence and well you can also assume that artificial tangents and human beings will not be that that far from each other they will be all intermixed with each other you'll have in a way what what I call swarm intelligence so so back fed protocol is basically a SW it's a machinery for swarm intelligence of people but it's also as just as much a machinery for swarm intelligence of of

bots of bots or algorithms or artificial intelligence agents So eventually you'll have these I don't know trillions of of artificial agents artificial intelligence agents uh whether it's in I internet of things or whether it's like in the financial Market or anywhere uh Each of which will operate by its own strategy uh and then you'll have millions and billions of people Each of which will be a free agent you know to to act in any way and be part of anything that he or she wants and then the idea of the blockchain and and the back feed layer and all that is is basically to indirectly synchronize indirectly coordinate with all of those

trillions of Agents into a collective coherent State into Collective coherent action um the the derivative will be that that there will be a large scale uh correlations large scale cooperations uh that will make will make a a will make much more efficient activity much more efficient decision making uh much more Freedom it you can I think this kind of movement will completely release the power uh from the hands of of of of few people uh from the hands of if you want government from the hands of of you know uh people with very very large stake um and will be distributed

in much more uh wide scale I would say not not necessarily evenly but in a in a wider scale um it will uh release content information um it will release it will create uh much more Co Cooperative environment if you want if you want it's creating the environment where cooperation is the winning strategy rather than competition or or better say coopertition so there is a lot of cooperation and maybe on things we agree and and competition on things we disagree H I think it can create I think I think today it's the only thing that actually can can H can re um er can can can cure if you want the ecology

so we talked before about the centralized governance you can also apply all these ideas to decentralized ecological governance so the decision making of what is good ecologically wise and what is bad ecologically wise and how to monetize that and in a way incentivize large bodies to be ecologically viable um it it will create a much more coherent production uh uh chain because today the production chain is is completely disrupted and divided into tiny tiny tiny bits that Each of which optimizes itself but the whole change is completely off Optimum the whole change is completely disrupting the environment and completely disrupting the will and the desire of the con consumers and when when you have

a a spontaneously indirect uh coordination over the whole throughout the chain you can optimize the the whole chain to be you know ecologically Wise and and consumer wise and and and and everything so I I would say that generally we'll have a much more coherent World much less disrupted or or or or I don't know corrupted world I hope yeah know that's uh certainly a hope that we share as well so you mentioned a little bit about the the GitHub plug-in you're working on and also the the publishing site is there anything else people should check out or you know if they want to collaborate or Co operate with with back feed what's

what's the way to do it yeah so so firstly the best way is to just enter our new website that we just launched recently uh back feed. CC H BF W.C um inside there you can also reach the the back feed magazine that we just launched uh this will be an open magazine where people will will guest guest authors I mean we will also um fuel that but guest authors will we already have a list of get guest authors to write H blog posts and articles and gradually we will make that as as our one of our Flagship applications so the back feed magazine itself will be a decentralized collaboration uh eventually it will be fully DEC

decentralized for the community and by the community um of course people are are always welcome to be in touch with us to cooperate we will gradually build the decentralized collaboration around this so we call it the dco for dcos so to found a decentralized CL organization that is building the environment for the centr CL organizations uh and at some point we also make crowd sale of tokens to found initiate that uh dco so we expect the crowd sale of tokens for that towards the end of this year um yeah and and I mean people are contacting all the time and and and and we hope to create a movement to create a momentum around that eventually it's not only about us by the way it's stack that

we are envisioning is a much bigger stack than just back feed we we are we are if you want uh um making a significant layers in the stack but there are others there are the blockchain elements there is the DHT elements uh and like visual browser or Explorer elements and we are in touch with all of those groups who are building today components which may uh serve as part in that stock and we are trying to build up a a much larger cooperation uh to fuel and bring about the the future that we see so I think yeah I think I think cooperation should be part of that of the design also to make that that happen Okay well Matan

thanks so much for coming on and and sharing a bit about what's going on with back feed and your vision for that and I'm certainly looking forward to seeing what you know as you roll those projects out and as those things kind of come into life how how they turn out so thanks so much for taking the time thank you was a pleasure yeah so we're at the end of our episode so enter Bitcoin is part of the LTB Network so you you can find lots of shows on let so Bitcoin and they're quite excellent H so please check that out on let's talk bitcoin.com and of course our podcast you can get you know get with all the familiar podcast apps and you can also watch videos on youtube.com/ Bitcoin and uh if you want

to leave us a riew you can do so and we will send you one of those t-shirts you should just need to let us know by sending us an email at shower bitcoin.com and we'll send you a t-shirt you can say it was the absolute best thing you've ever done with your life or you can say you're very angry at us for putting out such terrible content anything goes but in any case we will send you t-shirt so so that's that and thanks so much and we look forward to being back next week [Music] no [Music]