Guardians of the Ether launch

Transcript

[Music] hey I'm super Fizz and I'm really excited today to uh spend some time with you we're gonna talk about Guardians of The Ether I have uh a bunch of great friends here and some some people I'm just getting to know uh but just in terms of introduction Guardians of The Ether is a new nft project uh developed by Kendall and Leo G GIC along with GLC Stak and um maybe a a crew of people and the idea of this nft project is to identify uh solo home stakers and uh and provide them with an nft that can show

their kind of staking credential um and the big picture being that this can add governance and legitimacy to uh people who are Solo and H home stakers with me today um actually I'm going to let you guys introduce yourself so we're going to do the popcorn style um I'm gonna go to my dear friend nixo Hi everybody I'm nixo I am part of eaker I help do whatever I can to make sure that there are um continuing solo sakers on the network and um new solo sakers on the network because solo sakers are the backbone of the ethereum network and they are what provide the most censorship resistance and we I fully believe that if ethereum doesn't have any solo sakers there's no point to ethereum um um should I pick someone

else y That's pop J JT hey how's it going JT here uh eth Finance moderator longtime uh friend of the ethereum space resident barbecue guy and uh part-time substitute music teacher and I'll put it over to a logic Beach hello everybody logic Beach here uh fellow nfg Creator actually um I also uh I help people do things in web 3 now uh that's my full-time gig yeah that's all I'm going to say I guess uh I could take next Leo GK here founder of my tree Network which is a project to help decentralize social media um the and I also came up with this idea for

Guardians of The Ether uh a while ago and um and then it's been a team effort to to bring that to fruition so we'll we'll talk more about that and I'm excited for it I guess that leaves me I'm Kindle I am a full stack developer also with MIT treee and as of this year a smart contract developer and um I am the developer on this nft project so as we're about to get into what uh I'm gonna call it Goat you may or may not that's do it for sure like it I like it I am interested in goat and as I as well as I think the other people here are because uh there is there's nothing but service in this project this is not a a project designed for anyone's gain or benefits um the only EX for solo

sakers except yeah the only benefit to this is empowering solo stakers and so uh on one hand you might say well I I can't sell this so it's not worth anything to me um on the other hand uh Leo Kendall me none of us have any Financial uh any potential Financial benefit from this uh that was very important to me at the outset and I want you to know as a listener that um we're sharing this because we think it's good for solo and home stakers not because uh we're promoting or for anyone to benefit uh except for those valuable home sakers and so with that uh Leo can you tell us what is goat thanks yeah um and that's

exactly right uh these nfts are non-transferable uh By Design to make sure that there is no way to monetize them right you can't sell them because you can't transfer them and um the way that this really started was it was really about two years ago that we saw this centralization threat um coming to ethereum uh the staking layer from um entities like Lio uh where it's not even anyone it's not even anyone's fault it's just the incentives are structured in such a way that it is it's easier to liquid stake through somebody like Lido than to go and set up you know buy your own hardware and set up your own node and do all the work that we've all

individually uh been doing and we and we know what it takes um for for the extra 5% or 10% whatever light it takes of the yield it it's so much easier to just uh to liquid sticking and and you know set it and forget it and so I was thinking about how can we change how can we change incentive system is there an extra incentive we can create for Solo stakers or for for those operating their own nodes and I want to be clear this uh is going to be um available to Sol stickers and Rocket pool node operators so anyone operating their own their own node um and how do we create an extra incentive so it makes people say hey maybe I do want to go put in that extra extra effort because I I'll get something I'll get something extra for

it um and that's that's what really gave rise to this project and there was a gitcoin round that we participated in um uh we we submitted it there there's some decent support from the community we got about $5,000 500 if I recall correctly in matching and we ran we used that to run the art contest so that all that money went to the artists uh to uh and we picked the winning artist or the community picked winning artist it was put up for a vote and his name is zofie x o f on on Twitter um and uh he that was the winning art theme that we were going to use for the nfts um and so then it's been a it's been a journey to to develop this project uh it's a it's a passion project pH like like you said nobody is gaining anything from it um

you know we uh we had some other things we have to prioritize over time but we were able finally to Circle back to this and and really um devote a lot of time on it and and it's kindall being the the main developer and Main engineer on on this project um and there's a couple other members of the mitry team as well but it's it's really um from the mitry side kind of a pro bono thing that we're doing nobody's nobody's benefiting from this uh it's it's a passion project because we really want to support the community and I feel that this is extremely important to keep help keep ethereum decentralized Leo um can you give us some context who are you like why do you care about Sol stakers are you a Sol Staker like how did you start getting involved in this yeah yeah so I've been uh I am a

soul sticker I've been Soul sticking since almost the very beginning maybe like the first or second month that that was opened up so uh yeah I I it's something that again is just a side passion of mine uh I I love it and uh it's also what got me interested in it and thinking about how we could you know um try to avert this avert this issue but yeah just to tell you I guess to tell you a little bit more about myself like where where I primarily spend my time and and kall as well and and the rest of our team is on my tree which is a project to decentralize social media um so the you know a lot of a lot of value alignment around decentralization um but but no no direct real overlap with you know ethereum staking um we uh my tree

is very aligned with ethereum we will be using ethereum uh for the blockchain piece but um um so we obviously have a vested interest in E keeping ethereum decentralized from that sense but uh that's that's about it um can we maybe see the uh nft and see the art that you were just talking about okay so this is on the website and it's just you know it's guardians of ether guardians. XYZ and um and here we have some examples of of the art and um the art really there's a there's a few different pieces uh to it that that I'll talk about but there's this um the theme Here the original name was called Network Watchers the idea is that uh we're all watching over the networking and uh keeping keeping it safe and secure and decentralized and uh

and then and then the name eventually fell right in with either guardians or Guardians of The Ether um because uh in the Marvel Universe uh it was there's this species called the Watchers um that actually watch over the Universe um so uh so it all it all kind of tied together U and it's funny because it was the artist zofie that that came up with that independently while at the same time I was using a a Marvel theme to do my Twitter threads on which topic for for months I was I've been chatting in private channels about like we need a name for solo stakers like I want to call them Sentinels or some kind of like of like these are the people who are safeguarding um the network and they are

like these uh these Watchers who who maintain the network for everyone and so seeing this project come up I'm like wait wait that's that's it that's a manifestation of this this idea of of people who are safe or Protectors of the network I love it yeah let's be honest steaky M Stakes a lot doesn't really roll off the tongue very [Laughter] easy exactly Leo just to uh ask some technical questions um how so this is a non-transferable nft um that a solo Staker can claim can you tell me about um how often one is claimable what what are the specifics of like how um I know

there are like different tiers or or different um tell tell me some more about the technicals yeah yeah that's a great question uh there's there's there's two aspects here one is the upgradability of these nfts or Evolution and and one is the Rarity and so the upgradability side is really the idea of the longer you've been staking it's kind of like evolving your Pokemon right like it's like you get one nft but the longer you've been staking the um the more it evolves and so the way that that's uh denoted is you see how like on this image for example we have three there this triangle in the background made up of three nodes and that's the starting point you start with three nodes which which that represents the um you know the idea that ethereum is solving the uh

block the blockchain trilemma um so we start with the three three nodes if you're if' been staking it all you get the you get a triangle and then and then from there uh and you know I can talk more about the layers and stuff like that but um from there it evolves and you can see how in this art you can go to uh here's here's four noes so if you've been staking for more than a year so in you're if you're in your in your second year of staking then you get the four nodes U and then in your next year you get five nodes and six nodes and so on so um uh and and those nodes all all get connected now um so the number of nodes is determined by how many years you've been staking and so there you can you can always keep upgrading it so you

if you mint it one year and then next year you come back okay now I'm still I'm still on the white list because I'm still staking then uh you can just upgrade that nft it burns that one and gives you the upgraded one um and and then there's a rarity component which has to do with the way these lines connect the nodes they can either be solid or dashed and solid means that it's a connection and dash means that it was a potential connection but it wasn't and it this is kind of like a a rarity component it's sort of a dice roll right and so um the more solid lines you have the more rare it is um and so um for the for the triangle for example to get all to get all three lines solid only 5% of the total uh population gets all three

lines solid which we would call like a perfect role right to borrow a gaming term a gaming term um so you might get one line one line or two or if you're lucky one out of 20 you you'll get all three um but then as it as it goes higher it becomes even more rare to get all solids on four well now there's six lines connecting them so you have to get six solid lines uh and and it grows exponentially so it gets more and more rare to have to to get a really rare one um so there's a rarity component to just kind of make it playful yeah and so that's that's random that's right that's fully random okay um just so just to C some I would just I could add something about the upgrade ability um so at at this stage we um if you've been

staking for one year you'll get basically a level one uh nft which is the the triangle and if you've been staking for two years and that's like currently the amount of data we have so you can only be sticking for two years currently um but then you'll automatically get issued a level two nft um and one feature we have coming up in the future is the ability to to upgrade so as a third year comes in if you have a level one you'll basically be able to uh burn that level one and get a level two and if you have a level two you'll be able to burn that and get a level three instead that's right and and just to be clear here on the years uh the the starting date is the date of the merge not when staking uh was uh

actually started um it was um because everything before the merge it's like you were staking but you weren't actually securing the network it was still on proof of work right so um it was uh so it was September of 2022 that's when we uh snapped the line I think September 15th uh if I'm not mistaken there um and then another snapshot got taken on September 15th of 2023 and then another one will be taken on in in a month uh in September 15 2024 and so on as someone who I have a gamification oh you go as someone who staked uh like two months after Genesis I'm kind of excited about this because this offers me an opportunity to be an OG when because I've never had the Genesis yes every everyone before the merges of the OG yes you waited two

months I was nervous ah I was hosting a call and jamming my finger like I gotta get in I Gotta Throw My e away and this is this is why you have a low digit and I don't yeah um I have a question a kind of a gamification question so these are non-transferable if I Mint one I'm going to get one that has this whole 5% chance of getting all of the lines filled in um when I upgrade that the subsequent year am I risking losing that kind of gem of having all of the lines filled is that just part of the game and it is what it is it it yes and no so what you'll do is

you'll never go down the number of solid lines so if you go from a three solid lines on a triangle you'll get at least three solid lines on on the Square but you won't be guaranteed to six solid lines right so you'll get so essentially I'm I'm going to need a whole lot of valid ators to increase my odds of getting solid lines uh no you you can only mint you can only mint once per deposit address I'm gonna need a whole lot of deposit addresses I'm gonna have to do this uh the coin you're gonna need time machine too to go back to the pre merge well I can start now all right lots of deposit yes um so I I guess the big question what other than the the gamification the

coolness of having it in your wallet what is the actual use of what's what is the benefit to the community why why should I actually consider minting it if it's non-transferable yeah and and that's that's a question that you know it's like there's a menu of options this is you can think of this as kind of a thing that we're turning over to the community and it's up to the community to decide how how uh the community would like to use it and you know obviously it's nice to just get the art and um and having the kind of the stat status and recognition to be able to show that hey I have this nft and I've been I am staking or I've been staking for a long time and I'm helping decentralized etherium but beyond that if the community wishes to use it for uh gaing

into certain Community memberships uh um or gating into certain events uh or getting ticket discounts for certain events uh we uh we can talk a a little bit more about this because it's more expensive topic but governance as well around like uh voting um and um whether it's binding or non-binding it could be non-binding is just you know kind of a sentiment signal U uh type of tool there's there's a lot of ways that this could this could be used and it's really up to the community of how they want to adopt it or how they want to use it this might be a naive question are these integratable into things like tally and snapshot would that would it work with those do you know yeah well I mean we'll have to find out more about those platforms but you mean these are these are nfts on ethereum on ethereum

blockchain so any platform that can you know scan the blockchain and or or you know ping or or wherever uh can utilize that attestation of some kind it's a testament to the node operators's possible you know deep knowledge based on years of experience not that not that you need to be like a rocket surgeon to run a node but if you've been able to keep it online and healthy for a number of years it might might be a simple attestation to show um you know that maybe you're more legit or your opinion May matter more in a forum or whatever I don't know yeah that's exactly right um

I don't know if you guys have talked about this yet or not but who did the art for these who ended up being voted as the artist yeah so uh we talk about it his name is zofi okay I recognize that name yeah yeah uh he's been doing some cool art projects um but uh yeah he he was the one that that came up with these and that's what the community selected we had some awesome art submissions but many how many pupils do we get I see at least six I love them by the way I think they're great uh the P the pupils are random um and I believe there's definitely more than six I believe there's something like 18 different ones um although you counting um like when you upgrade or when you

stick for longer and you get those extra nodes do the does the pup stay the same uh no it was it's a roll it's a you get a new you generat a new art yeah and the only thing I'll say is that if you get a the ethereum pupil only comes with the perfect role so you have to get a perfect role to get the ethereum pupil but uh yeah the question of um kind of the evolution of the nft when you upgraded is actually something we still have an opportunity to Ida on because um we haven't yet implemented the uh the burn and upgrade functionality so I think it would be interesting to have some discussions around uh should those pupil maybe remain the same that might be a neat feature oh that's that's true yeah that is something that we could

potentially still layer view you're currently showing is really cool too it's fascinating yeah this is kind of how the art comes together and it's you can have 68 billion different combinations just using all these layers so the math gets kind of mindboggling it's funny like no one no one wants the 69 or I'm sorry 67 b999 M 999,999 everyone wants like the rarest one like give me the just give me the rarest one Leo who who is who is eligible to claim like um I know you said solo stakers and Rocket pool home operators um but how is that determined and I know um some people have already

been in the East Acer Discord asking you like I run a solo node um but I'm not eligible so if somebody is in that position what can they do and uh what do they need to look at to make sure that they're eligible yes okay so uh great great question uh thank you for that and um like I mentioned the eligibility you you have to either be a solo Staker or a rocket pool node operator and you have to be on a white list uh that's based on Snapshot dates right so like I said earlier one the first snapshot was taken on September 15 20122 and then the next one on uh one year later on the anniversary and so on and we'll we'll do another one this year uh that snapshot and that list was um then maintained by GLC State uh um and uh in the state team

so we take the list from them and we use that we use that for the white list um it's not perfect sometime because they there are some issues sometimes that comes up with the way that ether scan for example tag certain addresses and and they makes their system think that it's um like a coin base address instead of a instead of a Sol scker um so I've had uh one uh instance particularly uh with an individual who was like no here's my address look you can look at it and we we can look at it on chain and it's it should be on the list but it wasn't so uh we can go we can go manually append uh those types of cases and so there's a a channel in um in the Discord server for the scker Discord server um where you can reach out to us

and and GLC Stak and we can look into these um uh as they as they arise and um and correct for these because we can always manually investigate anyone address to see should it have been out there I would say if you are legitimately a home Staker uh or a solo Staker in some way you really should advocate for yourself when when these kind of projects come out because you don't know what it's going to be in 10 years like I don't know if goat will be here in 10 years but I also don't know if it's going to be like a very valuable or like whether it's relied upon and it's important when it starts a lot of people would be like well there's no money in this so I'm just going to let this one go but you really should advocate for yourself and go to the

Discord and get on this list if you deserve to be on it and you've somehow been overlooked because it's not spiteful it's just a thing that happens sometimes I wonder if uh there's a there's a portion of the staking Community that's engaged through uh stakers Union and I wonder if you could add some eligibility through the stakers union so uh another question um does it make my validator index public so um am I am I doxing my validator index to my public Persona by claiming it so claiming it no because all claiming it does is AD mince the nft to that same address that address is already tied to that validator publicly and now all the time of you can see public L is that whoever owns that address now also Meed

the nft that clearly they were eligible for because that was already public so now when you go to use that nft in the manner which you use it you might end up doxing that address right because it's now in that address and you can't move it somewhere else so now if you say if you want to go show your friend hey I'm a Staker look I have n and here here's the address well now you've revealed that right so there's a couple things that uh can be done there I think ideal uh solution is um some kind kind of a ZK snark to be able to to prove that you own an address with this nft in it without reveal without revealing what the address is um and uh um we we probably don't have the bandwidth on our team to to be able to do that but I

would encourage anyone out there who who uh would like to you know put that together uh that would be a big benefit to this project and that way uh you could preserve your privacy while still while still be able to use the nft uh the other thing that is on our road map for this project is to be able to min to a a different address um and uh that does have a privacy assumption regarding our backend servers our backend server will know that those two addresses are tied uh but it's not going to be public on the Block on the blockchain anywhere and so um you'll be able to say look I own here's my deposit address a which is on the white list but I want you to Mint to address B and it would and all you'll be able to see on the on the blockchain

is that it was M Meed to address B but not that the address B was ever tied to address a um so that's something we want to add uh on the uh on the road map in the future I'm I'm kind of seeing this long-term and it's just kind of dawned on me like let's say that I I'm staking right now and let's say that I do it for five or eight years but then I need that eth and I sell my validator and like I'm out of staking for it's because you know eth is 100k and like I'm just there um the the benefit to that address and that that key that you can sign will show forever that you were a validator for that number of years like you have you've done that length of service it's kind of like um yeah a you know a

service a years of service badge kind of thing which that's right that's right I'm only thinking of it is like currently like I plan to validate forever but it's it's so valuable in the future to have this address that says uh hey look I I was a validator for 10 years so this this is my credibility yeah absolutely yeah uh do we want to demot it yeah let's do it so um I'm going to go to claim. guardians. XYZ and I'm going to so this is have validators laying around that haven't claimed it yet no no no this is on the this is on the test net uh okay I I already did the production test with

mine and I can't do it again obviously so I'm going to demo it on the on the test net but we will flip this over to prodction by people are uh watching this so let's do this oh I see the live SL is on testet right now but you're going to convert it got it got it exactly um and so I've connected my wallet and I'm going to click mint and I'm going to do the I'm going to do the signature on metamask and then I'm going to pay the gas fees which are really low in seoa and doesn't really matter because it's seoa e not really um and there we go your n has beened successfully I hit okay and here's the nft that I got nice very cool only one solid line or is

that two solid lines I think it's two I think it's two but it's uh you know it's a testet it doesn't it would have sucked if it was a perfect if it was a perfect roll it was like no not on the test I'm really excited to see my role I've been staking almost as long as super Fizz I think still that's only four line or four nodes at this only be four no it's only it's only going to be two because it only starts at the merch three and then no but three is the starting point three starting count oh okay oh right would it would it make sense to wait a month to September 15th to to Mint is there any is there any value to that um there if you mint now

then you can just upgrade on September 15th um and uh we hope to have it's like 15 is going to be a snapshot date but it's going to take some time for the state cat team to now produce that into the Whit list addresses it's going to take us some time to uh you know do the things we need to do in our end so it won't be exactly on September 15 that you'll be able to claim it might be like a couple months after that so is there any kind of paperwork trail that says you've done X number of up upgrades or or is that just assumed with a number of connections you have um it's as so with a number of connections yeah okay well there actually will be a a a record of that on the blockchain itself um whether or not we do anything with that

is another question it it seems like a good like long-term engagement metric uh like someone who comes year after year to upgrade is is also someone who's committed in some way yeah that's a good that's a good point yeah so uh does this show up on something like um I don't know what the popular browsers are I don't want to say the what I the one that comes to mind uh the n ft explorers um like open seed it should still say open seed okay yeah it's uh yeah what what do kids use these days I don't I'm out of the loop I I have stopped messing RS nfts I don't know anymore I still use openc when I when I am messing with an N I'm all in on

MySpace Myspace yeah Myspace nft let's go the PO app app so we've kind of been through it we know what it is we know how to upgrade it we know how to claim it um we know like the value in having the badge of honor um but I I think the the big underlying purpose here is um giving some kind of governance value can you can you give us like your dream vision for what governance value it might bring sorry you caught me drinking water there but yeah no I I think to me like to me I I share that sentiment it it is that is kind of the the big unlock that this

could be because it's exactly what uh JT was I believe it JT earlier hinting at which is not only do we know who is staking but how long they've been staking and so now you can think about um using you know anyone with an NT can cast a vote and it can be a non-binding vote or a binding vote um with and it can be within the Staker Community or it can be used to Signal something to the broader ethereum community and those votes could be waited by how long you've been uh you've been staking so you could say like well people who have been staking for you know who who have been doing it for two years or three years have more of a weight they should we should you know pay attention to them more than somebody who's just been doing it for one year um and and you can just

choose those weights over time and and kind of balance them out um but it it it's a really interesting it's a really interesting use case um it's something that uh after this project was uh already underway um on the mitry side we've been expanding on with um uh one thing that we're building on myi side uh is called Community graphs which is a way of mapping uh similar to how social graphs we we map one onetoone relationships with Community graphs we map group memberships and not just who's a member of which group but to what extent they are a member um and and then that can be used by different groups to improve their governance because people who have who are more Central to a certain group or a community are uh can have more of a vote in the decision-

making um or even who should be allowed into that grp group um because you know they could be better stewards of the um ethos and the culture of that of that community and so uh there's kind of this kind of also inspired some of the some of the ideas there uh that we're that we're building on but um and and and by the way that's a that's a tool that uh you know we're it's it's very early on right now we just launched our Alpha at uh um we at Zu Village Georgia at Zulu Georgia uh we're working with the Zulu software team on on incorporating this and we're supporting a lot of the Zulu uh pop-up events but um as this as this matures a little bit uh that's a tool that we can make a available as well uh for for the E scker Community to um uh

to use in a number of ways um and uh and these nfts can be incorporated into these membership levels so it's like it gives you it gives you membership levels based on how long you been taking and there could be other things that also go into those membership levels uh whether uh you know people can be attesting for one another uh uh and so on and those things can be can be combined in a number of ways um to to create even more refinements to a governance structure but uh you know this is stuff that I think is really interesting to experiment with and uh any kind of government's uh experiment should always be low stakes it should always start out with you know let's make some decisions that don't really ma don't really matter you know um like what uh what the theme

of the next uh song The Daily song is you know or something like that uh yeah but uh over time kind of get a feel for like hey do we like this thing do we like the way it's it's helping us make decisions and and using it more more seriously I I really see a value in this um also as like proof of onchain personhood I'm thinking of getcoin passport um with Kyle Weiss like this is a very strong indicator of individual personhood um that would be a really great integration um so I know Kyle you're watching so um this is probably it's a really valuable way to indicate people who have a deep interest in investment in the chain um that no

that's that's exactly right and um you know another use case that we uh didn't cover earlier but it's become more prominent this year is aird drops right where a lot of air uh aird drops have been looking for a way to um give back to the eaker to ethereum community especially the eaker community and this is something they could they could use in uh uh as well for for the air drops but yeah you're absolutely right this could be used for a um a a pretty strong civil resistance uh kind of signal that was actually the first thing not aird drops but governance like communities being able to allow only e stakers to vote on something that's the first thing I thought of when I looked through like the short description of what this nft was and yeah that's really cool yeah and it'd be cool to just you know imagine I

imagine it would be like uh helpful to the um uh to the core devs Community if they for example you know they had a list of eips and it's like like what the what does the Staker Community think how these these should be prioritized um as a signal it's like it's not it's not binding but it gives us a signal from a very core constituency uh that they care that they care about uh or like let's let's aggregate let's aggregate this community uh believes in and and how how they're viewing um some of this stuff um that could be could be really helpful for them absolutely especially because uh I know there are several groups in ethereum who love to speak on behalf of solo Akers even though they're not solers right we are speaking for the

interest of the little guy as the big guy yeah right yeah hey as long as my uh mini pool works I'm happy as long as I can claim this with the rocket pool mini pool um all right I feel like we've kind of hit everything we wanted to hit um any other details or ideas all right thanks else oh nothing else for mind thank you thank you guys so much uh for for having us on and always happy to answer additional questions but I'm really I'm really excited to get this across the finish line and and uh and then keep improving it from there I got one thing um when should we as East sers expect to be able to me this uh well

that is as soon as we actually do the post video editing and we actually do launch the minute we do the launch we can flip this to production and people be able to Mint so what we want to tell people is they can mint as soon as they watch this all right thanks again uh Leo Kendall for sharing the goat project uh thanks logic Beach and JT nickel for hanging out with us uh thanks nixo for co-hosting we're really excited about the goat project and we know it's not going to be um an atomic bomb in ethereum it's going to be a long-term uh steady project that that will grow over time so um I look forward to your participation and uh take care everyone hey you don't have to be Michael Jordan

Michael Phelps or Simone biles you two can be a goat I love that that was good thank thank you so much and everybody bye everybody bye