How Blockchains Could Solve the Tragedy of the Commons - Ryan Jesperson, Tezos

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome to the blockchain and us we're pioneers and thought leaders talked about their journey in blockchain technology crypto assets and a token economy and I'm your host manuel staggers this episode has support from no official sponsor but from my very own the blockchain and us newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can immediately pick those interviews you'd like to listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.nasa.gov/twan [Music] yes person Ryne is the president of the

tezo's foundation and before he was the chief operating officer at Divi a fin tech company prior to his work at Davie Ryan was an executive turnaround specialist and tech entrepreneur in the healthcare industry and he helped launch the humanitarian self-reliance services initiative of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints and now today in show you hi Ryan and many thanks for taking time today now Thank You Manuel appreciate it great to be here Ryan tasers has somewhat of an adventurous history to say the least and in this conversation I don't want to dive into every single detail I'll put links in the notes of this episode for those who

don't know the story and want to read up on it but today I'd like to dive more into your personal journey in all of this so let's perhaps begin with how you got to become president of the Tassos foundation sure so I most recently was an executive at a fin tech company in Salt Lake City Utah and during that time I had a colleague who introduced me to all things blockchain so this colleague had been been involved in Bitcoin for years and then was involved in aetherium since the beginning and so he introduced me to two blockchain technology and all things crypto and it was just fascinated by the technology and so I spent

a lot of nights a lot of weekends a lot of time really looking into the technology and grew more and more excited about it as mentioned before in the intro I worked for a few years in the humanitarian space globally trying to find ways to help the poor to help lift them out of poverty examining the best ways to do that and really implementing that and and I love that work where was that where did you do that you know it was all over so Central America South America you know Mexico Africa India you know globally so I was centered or located there primarily in Salt Lake City but had the opportunity to travel a decent amount but also to to analyze and

research ways to better help the poor and then what others would help as well implement in the field and so it was it was a great it was a great effort I'd loved being involved with it one thing that's always discouraging though in the humanitarian space is how do you really scale something that's going to be able to have a huge impact on a large number of people and as I got involved with blockchain technology I saw the potential for something that could scale and that could help a lot of people and a lot of people at the margin at the margins of society what one question do when you say blockchain technology you mean Bitcoin right I mean well big Bitcoin was the first version of the technology right and so I I think it was

around a three point Bitcoin the Bitcoin etherium and in a lot of different projects so yes I think that the whole spectrum though I I came after and learned about this technology after Bitcoin and aetherium had already started so that whole kind of realm was encompassed in my knowledge and my learning about what it was but I really see something as that's immutable this transparent that over time is accessible to all that's not governed by a central authority as being something that would be very powerful to help the people that live in places where those types of power structures keep them down things aren't immutable things aren't transparent things are frequently abused

maybe bye-bye central authority and so I see blockchain as an escape and a way to really leverage technology to to help a lot of people and so that got me really excited about it and also the technology I just love technology I'm not a developer I sort of wish I was I've been involved in business for years but but have a real excitement for and a desire to learn about all things tech so I just wanted to ask you have more of a management background sure yes I worked for about 10 years in the healthcare industry as an executive and a turnaround specialist who had helped take on distressed businesses businesses

that were not working and helped to turn them around during that time period I also co-founded a software company and later sold those businesses decided I want to do something totally different I want to do something where I'm directly helping somebody and I'm not just running a business or or selling something or whatever it is but I'm directly helping someone who needs it and someone that maybe if I don't help them they're not going to get the help otherwise and so that's why I jumped into the humanitarian space for roughly two years and then back to that FinTech company and back to technology where I learned about blockchain and so so I had this this friend that introduced me to the technology read a ton learned a lot about it and he also introduced me to

this project called tezo's and looked at the website looked at the white paper and was really really excited about it and excited about it because back in 2014 the the founder Arthur Brightman was able to accurately foresee the problems that would be affecting the blockchain space in the future and not only foresee them but to actively work on solutions to solve those problems problems around a more sustainable consensus algorithm problems around security of smart contracts problems around governance and how do you govern something or decide that of the future of something on the future of something that's decentralized and so so it was

really excited about Arthur's foresight to not only see those problems but to design design solutions around them and then when it came around to the spring and summer of 2017 I was excited to contribute to the fundraiser because not only did they have great solutions to relevant problems but a lot of people don't realize that the tezo's project it was not just a white paper it was an actual functioning alpha net or a test net even before the donation period so it had something functioning that could work as a member of the community you could actually be involved with that network and interact with it and so all of those things combined I was really excited about it I contributed to the donation

period in 2017 I'm really excited about it involved in a lot of the online communities Tasos has a fantastic community amazing people from all over the world so it was very involved with that and then like everyone else became concerned when it came to the fall of last year and we learned about the I'll call it paralysis dysfunction whatever you want to call it of the Tasos foundation and was concerned because I cared along with many others about the technology deeply and felt like it could really provide solutions to relevant problems and have a good chance of changing the world in a lot of positive ways so you mean I mentioned this paralysis and I know

that's been talked about so much already many many times but let's just briefly like in just a few sentences summarize what what the hang-up was this you're sure I don't know honestly a lot of the details in regards to it because I simply wasn't around back then at the foundation I really was just a normal normal contributor to this to this project to the fundraiser and how did you learn about the issues that happened I think probably some sort of news article came out and so I learned about it and which is always disheartening because you know there's so much information in different sides to a story but you're just learning something maybe from a headline or something that was really superficial but basic summary is there was a dispute between the head

of the foundation and the the founders of the project resources were not being used to be able to fund the project and that was the primary concern of the community we wanted to see the technology go live we wanted to see it see the light of day and it just wasn't happening and you wanted information about what happens you know maybe some information but we knew that there was a dispute to me honestly I wasn't too interested in learning or even diving into who is right or wrong or even the details of what was happening I was more concerned about how do we get out of this how do we move things forward and so the focus was always at least my focus was we want to make sure that the voice of the

community is heard so you have a foundation you have you know the founders of the project what does the the community think and feel and we really wanted to see the technology see the light of day and so I helped to launch an effort to we had a petition that we put online launched an effort to start a petition to make sure that the voice of the community was heard and all that was happening the petition was ultimately assigned by I believe it was roughly 2,000 people from over 95 countries and it was really exciting for me the exciting part was just seeing people from literally all over the world come forward and sign this petition and say hey I want to make sure my voice is

heard I'm part of this tazers community I care about it deeply this project and I want to see it succeed it was amazing how dispersed it was but at that point you were a member like everybody else of the community absolutely so it's back in November and then the petition launched the first part of December 2017 so I was just in I worked a lot of nights because I was still working at a fin tech company as an executive during the day but at night my wife she's the saint and all of this was was very supportive but would really be working around the clock at nights to catch up and and help in this effort so no I was not an official part of anything to do with Tazo so I

was a well I guess you could say official because honestly tase us really is all about the tasers community and everybody is a part of that community so in that could but not any official capacity with the with the foundation or any of that sort of thing so so that was the first part of 2010 burov 2017 and the petition started to be signed by people all over the globe and we realized that we needed to make sure or I realized I had a lot of executive management experience had been on boards that it's great to have a petition that's signed by disparate people from all over the internet from all over but we need to make sure that it had wait let me just ask you I mean

you said you launched a petition I mean with a blockchain project like Tasos how did you go about launching that petition no it was really interesting it was really a grassroots effort so we had people from all over the world with different talents some more with communication others with web design others with back-end a database experience and all of it combined to be able to make sure we had an appropriate message for a petition to make sure that we could host it appropriately that people could have access to it that we would be able to track the locations of where people were signing and and allow them to tell us you know where they were from the other geo IP location and it was it was a great opportunity to see

how the community was able to come together in an organic grassroots type of way to solve a real-world problem so it was a pretty organic effort and honestly initially I was happy that we got a few signatures and was concerned you know come on everybody we had we had organized this petition but we we care deeply and we wanted it to be a to be a success and a few people started a sign then a few others and then just an avalanche of people coming forward and really wanting their voices to be heard but it was really one of the first times I felt that you know a community of a blockchain project really mobilized in a governance or around a governance issue yes I think so

in this sort of way definitely in this sort of way to make sure that the foundation that was supposed to be using the funds for its intended purpose was able to to hear the voice of a community that mobilized in a very in a specific way like this I think you're right I haven't heard of another case like this it's pretty unique and to be a part of it was I just felt fortunate to be a part of it and to saw an opportunity to help we realized that we wanted to make sure that the petition had wait and so from my past experience I knew that it was important that we do that and once again my wife is awesome so I I said honey you know I really need I really feel like we

need to help out with days dose and to do more we need to start sending money to a Swiss attorney and he can represent the voice of the community to the supervisory authority the authority that that oversees foundations here in Switzerland she was awesome she's like a you know if you feel strongly about it like go go ahead you know let's do this let me ask one more custom about that I mean you said you were very convinced about tasers as a project and and that's why you wanted to help you know yeah clear up that kind of you know road block that happened there that stalled the project basically sure so your conviction in the project how did that come about I think as some of it was already mentioned so I think that this

experience of having worked with trying to help the poor but always feeling like there's so many more people to help and seeing blockchain as a leverage way to do that studying the the protocol itself and seeing that there were there were solutions to problems that were really apparent in the in the space it was Arthur and Kathleen Brightman as well I saw an Arthur somebody who was able to foresee things that would happen in the industry and provide great solutions but also somebody different than others this I I noticed at this time in the summer of 2017 there was so much hype and it was it was terrible you'd have people trying to hype all sorts of different projects just having some sort of paper

asking for donations and contributions just based on that or crazy ideas or really just about the promotion of themselves and frankly of just getting wealthy rather than really focused on the technology and and being serious about it so I saw in Arthur and Kathleen this focus on the technology itself look you know they already had something that was up and functioning before the donation period I was on the online channels when people would ask hey should I contribute or this or that and they'd always say if you have any doubt don't contribute you know don't don't contribute or or send any funds if you have any concerns it was the opposite of what everyone else was doing and I love that contrarian

view I love people doing something different than the norm especially when the norm seemed to be so out of out of touch and out of reality at the time so that's something that really appealed to me as well I think another thing that appealed to me is that they had a lot of connections with a real world business a Kathleen was a consultant before and Arthur had worked for for Google and I believe Goldman Sachs and other other places they they had a lot of interactions and prior interactions with with real world institutions and businesses this was something that was not only an exciting technology project but the vision that I could see or hear was that Talos would seek to integrate or would seek to

connect that the technology with real-world application and with with real world meaning without all of the unnecessary hype and so that that that's what a combination of that I think as I got more involved in the community I just realized you tell awesome they were as well that this idea that people from all over the world from so many different countries surely speaking so many languages and everyone doing their best to communicate often you know in English but just how amazing every person was and with their unique talents how people were coming together and so that got me excited and I got excited too when I saw a community willing to work together to solve the problems that were occurring to come

together that it wasn't people that were just involved in any any old project who just you know we're flippers or whatever it is but these were people that deeply cared about the technology and when a crisis came they're like hey we're gonna do something about this we want to help rather than just running away or or doing it doing something else so all of those things combined can be really excited to the point where I just felt like I could help somehow I didn't know quite how at that point as I was mentioning before it was okay I need I'm gonna start sending some funds to a to a Swiss attorney and I sense a decent chunk of part of savings to do that and I've just from me personally from my

wife and I and I did it gladly because I really really cared about this project and so so helped to fund that effort and then we realized as a community that still funds were not flowing from the foundation to the development of this project and so we started to contemplate actually how could we start to receive donations or all contribute ourselves to help fund the developers what people don't realise as well is though there was dysfunction at the foundations this paralysis the developers and even the founders as well are amazing in all this so they stayed heads down kept on working on the project the development kept on going

you know the pace might event might have been disrupted a bit but they kept on going which is incredible there were so much uncertainty during that period of time that they were heads down it was amazing so parted as just caring about the project also in recognition of what they were doing we wanted to help fund what was happening but then we realized shortly that there was an even more critical thing that needed to happen that we needed to make sure because the development was continuing to progress heroically but we needed to make sure that there was a safe place for the network to launch that ultimately if the foundation was not able to get itself into a state to be able to fulfill its mandate that there we needed to make

sure there was at least another foundation that was able to be a safe place for the network to launch so we launched the t2 foundation right so this was an alternate Swiss Foundation and really the focus was not adversarial the focus was hey if the first foundation can get its act together great but if not we have to do this so that there's some place for this network to launch and one question there um basically you created a second foundation yeah and and again right before we spoke about how this is sort of a premiere of a community around the project yeah so how did you come up with this approach you know to to start a new foundation to to

you know have this approach with the Swiss lawyers and all that I mean was there any experience from your management work that you did before that that you know flowed into this or how did you develop this approach honestly I think it was more simple than that if foundation a is not able to do it foundation B is gonna have to do it you know I'd like to say that I was some sort of genius but I'm not this is that this is out of necessity you know and being scrappy as a community and saying hey ultimately we want this thing to launch and we're gonna have to have another foundation do it if the first can't and so for the t2 foundation there was a great board that was recruited for that foundation and the key focus though was to not rehash or get stuck in the

past but really the the purpose of the foundation is to be a safe place for the network to launch if the first if the tazewell's foundation was not able to do so and really keep that focus forward-looking I think that focus on trying to find a way forward rather than getting stuck in the emotional past helped me to be some sort of intermediary I guess trusted intermediary to help solve the project that I really at my core wanted to see the technological life was so impressed by the work that the developers were doing and somehow became this person to help solve the solve the dysfunction that was happening there I had never

planned on being president of the Tasos Foundation it's not an ambition that I ever had have no desire to do that in fact I'm more of a person that likes to get things done but I'm not like things recognition ego to me doesn't doesn't really matter much I just like to see see things succeed and and hopefully be a part of that as well money and wealth doesn't excite me that much I mean in as much as I'm grateful to have enough to support my family and hopefully to help other people when I can but but we're happy and we're content more important for me is doing something that I'm passionate about that I care about so being the president of

the Tassos foundation wasn't something on my radar at all and not something necessarily necessarily that I desired but as well I deeply cared about the projects a proud member of the tases community and I think that each member of the community has a way that they can help and this happen to be the way that I could help I was in in this particular time at this place and happened to have maybe some experience and skills that allowed me to help in solving the dysfunction that was happening and so I became president of the TSS foundation I remember well you stuck your neck out I think any people were just angry I'm wedded you actually did something that's that was always my impression you know generally I think that's something that

it's great about the community and that will continue to further and develop as we go along is that it's easy to sit back and be a critic and it's easy to sit back when we don't have all the information about something or just to demand this or that or to be a critic and say why isn't something this way it's not so easy but it's somewhere so much more valuable to stand up for something that you believe in but to do something about it so if you're concerned about this or that is to help find solutions for it or to help further the TASIS Network there's so many critics online and on social media that I think being a community of builders if we focus on that that that's a really a

healthy place to be but that's it did it ever get to you this criticism because you personally were also criticized sure yeah I get criticized a lot online and honestly I don't blame people that a lot of times people don't have a lot of the information so we're making more of an effort to be communicative but it was a tremendous so when I took over in February it was a heavy heavy load and it was a load that is bigger probably there's probably only a few people in the world that will ever realize the magnitude of the load that there was and a lot of things that people don't know about as far as just there was a lot to be done and

everything has gone well and I'm really pleased but those are things that people don't see and so maybe they're saying things or making judgments based on a lack of information or not having all the information but generally what do they don't see most people that criticize sure I think that when I got into the foundation there there weren't any big surprises like I've had people ask oh so is there any money you know they're left like his all the crypto Ghana like of course is there you know like there were no there were no big surprises but literally there was a state of paralysis like there was dysfunction like it's not that the wrong things were done is that was nothing was done right that there

was had it been stalled for a long time and so just the amount of effort just to get things in place to get us to a state where we could effectively fulfill our mandate was was a heavy lift and it required a lot of focus and yeah I think things went well but but that generally is what I would say in regards to that subject and so you know when I came on board seen February I remember so it was a meeting and I think this might have been spoken about and there's this wired article that came out a while ago talking about the situation and which is nice on this podcast because the wired article ends right as the dysfunction stopped it doesn't tell the rest of the story which is so important but there was this this

this meeting that was really long and and at the end of that meeting I was made president of the tasteless Foundation and mr. Cheever stepped down from that role and it was late at night it was something like 12:30 a fellow board member gave me a ride back to back to Zurich I was staying near the airport so it's really late it's like two or three in the morning I finally call my wife and I said well I'm president of the tezo's foundation and you know and we're moving to Switzerland and so we talked about that she's been tremendous and so grateful for her support but what's the surprise for you you know we thought because we're

involved in the t2 foundation that if the teacher foundation launched the network that we could end up in Switzerland but had no I did not think that I would be president of the TASIS foundation as we went through this process and didn't know if we'd ever you know if we would ever live in Switzerland didn't know if this t2 foundation effort would be necessary or fortunately the foundation would get its act together what kind of solution did you imagine before you know when you launched the petition when you launched the t2 foundation I mean you must have thought of some possible outcome mother than you being the president yeah honestly I thought that things would resolve themselves that people would see that there are also other people affected by this there's a larger

community they care deeply about the about the protocol about the network and I thought that things would calm down and there would be some sort of solution that would that would come out of it and that that didn't happen and ultimately was what was a part of the solution that happened how did that decision come about you know were there people sitting around a table thing let's make Ryan president that's the most obvious solution or what happened there sure you know what I can say is is this is that it was remarkably kind of uneventful it was okay let's figure a way out of the way out of this and and it would just was thought that potentially I could be someone to help the foundation overcome its over overcometh dysfunction once again it

wasn't something that I I walked into some situation was like okay you know secretly I have in the back of my mind that somehow I'm gonna be President of the tanzanian I I didn't have it on the radar and it's not something that I really aspired to at all but but ended up as president you know that night called my wife and talked we talked about it said it would have to come soon I have you know a wife and three kids three great kids so a boy and then then two girls and so we talked about it of course we didn't tell the kids initially we had to make one of those parent to parent decisions we said okay you know we're gonna do this because I jumped on a flight a few hours later back to Salt Lake City and it was announced while I was in the

air that I'd become president of the Tasos foundation but I wanted to make sure that I could tell people to represent in that first initial communication that I would be moving as soon as possible to just which we went to to Zook and for several reasons number one to make sure that the foundation never got into this dysfunctional state that it was in before to show that hey the president of the foundation is going to be in Zook and we're gonna I'm going to personally make sure that it that it gets on the right track going forward but also to show that look Tasos is located in Zook and we're grateful to Zook and the ecosystem here in switzerland and we're a proud member of the ecosystem and I thought the best way to do that was to be here in person and so I remember as parents when we

told our our son that we are moving and of course there were all sorts of Tears he was not excited about it but my wife she's brilliant so she so she had bought them him the Swiss pocket knife and she just like had it in reserve to be able to use for just this moment and she's like you know I'm really sorry you know I'm sure it's really hard for you to process this that they were moving to Switzerland but I did get you a present you know here's a Swiss pocket knife and so he looked at the pocket knife music huh it was like maybe at least 10 or 15 seconds worth of silence and he just kind of contemplated it looked at that the Swiss logo and looked at the knife he was like wow you mean to tell me that these things are made in Switzerland

like yeah absolutely and so he was it's like man Switzerland must be a pretty cool place then oh okay and so it was really neat from that point forward he started to have a better outlook about coming to Switzerland and of course we have you know like certain rules like we supervised same as he uses this knife so all the people don't worry for like a basically responsible parents but but he yeah that helped with him and then we started to watch we watched a couple videos with the family on Switzerland and the mountains and everything and we lived in Salt Lake City near the mountains so it's somewhat looks somewhat similar and and really started the preparations to come we had to move

pretty quickly and because I wanted to be here on the ground in Switzerland there was we initially were in temporary housing actually I hear in Zook right by the train station and it was an old we walked in to this place and we just literally brought our suitcases because we're like hey let's get there as soon as we can so so walked into the place and learned it was an old it was a converted dentist's office it used to be a dentist's office made into temporary housing so we walked in and had this receptionist desk you know and everything and the rooms for us and for the kids were head could be converted from a doctor's office into a in two rooms but it was funny because for the first night I couldn't figure out how to turn the lights on at least in the main area of the the apartment

and he had to go behind the receptionist desk and push the buttons back there and it would actually make the lights go on in the apartment but no I I remember that first that first night and then the next day it was my daughter's birthday and so we went there's this shopping mall called matali mm-hmm here in zoo so we went by the matali and got Rona : oh yeah I just round the corner from here and it got this little birthday cake for her and we went and stand out on the lake just over here in zhuge on the on the dock that kind of juts out from the lake and that was our first kind of night and first day here in Aaron's ook anything I mean there's all these stories about zoo and Krypto Valley like they like to brand themselves and sometimes I wonder you

know what people maybe you know living in America or living in Asia feel like the soup will be when they arrive here and always I have this you know impression that they will be terribly underwhelmed okay for my family and I would love it it's been great it's a very it's it's a place that I feel like has everything that you need as far as shopping and things like that it's got it's got space though it's a little bit it's definitely family friendly but also if you don't have a family it's great they've got all the conveniences and other things that you'd want if you're single or whatever but but no I love it here I've had tours at different places here kind of hubs up here there's

different co-working spaces and different things that are dedicated to blockchain so that's really cool yeah I once spoke with somebody who had recently got off I think it was the the train to meet with me here in zhuge and they had envisioned in their mind that there would be all this like posters you know all along the walls in the train station are like Bitcoin and all sorts of different cryptocurrencies and no that's not the case when you get off but there's definitely a lot of people you know gathering here I would say everyone's been really friendly and and really inviting and it's a great place so we you know so we made it here and started with the family got the kids involved in school and then and the work began got to work on taze us yeah and

that was in February well so February is when I was announced that I'd be present at the foundation and that happened we actually moved the first part of April so not to say that then the work started because it was crazy I was working all hours I mean really since December though whether I was president of the Tasos foundation or not I was putting an incredible amount of time into into this and today's O's itself what did you work with in sook specifically I mean was there a team where the Brightman's here as well or how do you do - this um Arthur and Kathleen know that they were not here in Zook there was a myself and you know really a lot of it was initially was just working through some basic operational things and - to make

sure we could get resources flowing to the development team as as quickly as possible so a lot of the focus was was there in Paris because the development team is is based in Paris so I traveled quite a bit - in from Paris just to make sure I first of all wanted to them to know that we just appreciated and we're so supportive of the developers and grateful as a community and also as you know the president of the foundation for their efforts and so spent time there just thanking them being supportive and then getting resources flowing and really that goes to - part of the focus so so we're not about the hype were about the technology right and really coming into the - the foundation we wanted to get ourselves into a state or we could where we could

be supportive as quickly as possible to the developers and to also have a foundation that did not get back into this difficult state that it was in before so one of the first things that we did was expand the the board from three to seven members and so we have a full complement of seven board members very reputable from senior researchers to the first female computer scientists to receive a master's degree here in Switzerland to discrete people in the business and VC space accounting space Olaf Carlsen we you know over I think the largest and pretty sure it's the largest you know VC firm in the in the space out of edit poly chain but just a

great board so we made sure that we had a fantastic had a fantastic board initially and then and then also were focused on the technology that none of this matters unless you ship the technology and so it was heads down let's have a laser-like focus and really get this network launched right and so we made an announcement that we would launch in q2 of 2018 and we launched with like three or four hours to spare so it's this tremendous tremendous effort just to make sure another thing that's really unique about Tasos that people don't realize is a lot of projects they you know they launch with just some very minimal basic

functionality or a lot of the the tokens out there they're a very simple basic GRC 20 tokens built on top of aetherium that really didn't take much coding at all to produce but then they have this token right and then at least for a protocol layer block team which is a base layer blockchain which we are the work is in actually building this this network right that you're gonna have permanently and some projects have taken an approach where they have these you know lofty goals down the road but then they're gonna launch something really not anything close to the ultimate product but just something that's out there that allows that token to go back and forth or whatever it is and then they'll kind of progress and slowly over years or whatever it is have more functionality but we really had this

great vision and this great project that you know this great vision that Arthur had had that they had derived or come from his from the white paper and the beta net phase of the network launched in on June 30th but it's fully functional I mean it's it's a really revolutionary piece of software out of the gate so a lot of people don't realize that and it took a tremendous amount of time and energy a lot of people asked about communication hey why wasn't there a lot more communication because I rather had more during this time and really it was it we had to stay focused on on the technology because we could communicate you know all over the place and and a lot of projects you know

we'll just have a lot of hype and a lot of statements but at the end of the day is this the technology that needed to ship and we had to have this focus on that so we could so we could meet the deadlines so that was a key focus another key focus was to make sure that we were that we we are accountable as a foundation and to do things a little bit differently so we are the first large-scale blockchain project to bring on a big for auditor as the external auditor of the foundation and we did that just to show that hey look you know we are really doing things we fill it in the right way being accountable being responsible and we welcome that sort of scrutiny and that sort of external auditing function by a by a big for so

that's been a that's been a big effort and another effort has been to really define more clearly the role of the foundation and it's really important that the this project stay and that it is and that it stays decentralized and that the foundation really it's one part of a larger community and I think it's so cool as representative of that the foundation president is now was just a normal member of the community but the foundation is one part of a larger community that is made up of researchers scientists developers enthusiasts literally from all over the world and sure we do have unique role so we've been given these these resources to be able to use them wildly wisely to help further the network so we want to be

accountable for that and we've announced several weeks before the launch of the network that we would start this grant making process and we see that as the primary means by which we can use the funds to be able to support support the network and allow for researchers and scientists and people from all / to be able to to be able to receive grants to be able to further the further the tase's network so that was another key effort and then we launched the network and it's been remarkably smooth I've been so impressed by the development effort that's gone it's gone into this and and with how smooth things have gone and some people have asked you know what is what is going on with with Tazo so I haven't heard about them for a

while they haven't been in the headlines and the reason is because we've been getting a lot of stuff done we you know we've been we've been focused on on delivering and I think as well sometimes the media gravitates towards some sort of sensational story lots of sometimes that all the time right and so and so there's really not a sensational headline like we are delivering on the software we're really excited that community is expanding and growing we're continually launching grants we've got exciting people that are inquiring about interacting with with the tastless network to build applications and so yes so that's kind of where where we've been where we came from and where we're going Ryan we know covered a lot of your of your journey into becoming the president of the

foundation sure in of how you you know untangle that mess so to speak how you shipped right how you went live with with the protocol and also how you reorganize some of the governance and the processes in in the foundation and and you said before that it was much much more work than maybe you've thought before and that was visible from the outside was there ever a point where you weren't really sure that this is gonna happen that is a great question you know there were a lot of times just to be totally honest that were really hard it was it was a heavy heavy lift and and I was grateful to be able to help but it was a heavy lift and it was it was a big

disruption to to life you know to my to my wife too much my kids to the family and then that combined with the heavy load yeah it was it was intense it was it was difficult I think generally maybe the analogy that I like to use is I think that we all go through really hard things in life there right I mean whether it be on a personal level whether it be with a business or an entity or a society or a society and and there's life can be great in life can be really hard right and but when you have something that you're doing that you think is is really worthwhile and you believe in that that obviously helps a lot is reminding yourself of that but I think that I think any great success has

gone through a period of a lot of adversity right and I look at the community and how galvanized they were how hard everyone pushed to help overcome the subversive I just see the developers and them continuing forward when there was so much uncertainty and then the founders as well just the tremendous great it's taken to do all this that I think there's one perspective to look back at what occurred and to look at it as this this tragedy but I choose to see it in a different way that we can't always control what happens to us in life but we can control our reactions and how we face the adversity and everything that successful goes through times that are really hard and I think people become

successful in part because they've gone through something really harder and they've pushed through it you know they've had to overcome some of some significant adversity and so I see the tezo's project just being a lot stronger for it I always people ask me sometimes how is this on chain governance thing really gonna work can I say well you know there's a lot to be sorted out we're gonna have a basic on chain governance and we'll move forward but there will be a lot of coordination and different things that will have to be worked through but look this community solved a really difficult off chain problem and did that successfully that I really think we'll be able to figure it out this on chain governance and maybe not in spite of all that's happened but because of it you know we'll be able to find more and more success because we've

gone through difficult things and when things are hard again or when we have to find solutions to hard problems we're capable of doing that you know as a group as a community so yeah hard but yes worth it and and grateful for yeah for everybody else that's been involved would you say the issues that exist with tazers are solved or is this a still an ongoing process no no it's great so what people don't realize is expanded the board the board is phenomenal we've been working a you know firing on all cylinders since you know since March of last year and moving forward there's just a lot to do launching a state-of-the-art project like this is really really hard that's why a few people in the world have done

it successfully and this mateos is not the code base it's not a copy of something else a lot of the projects are a fork of something else a copy of something else this is written from the ground up in a in a functional programming language I'll talk a little bit more about that later but it's really really hard to be able to do that it's using a novel consensus algorithm and I'm chained governance there's a lot of features to it that are that are that are really revolutionary and it combines a lot of those so it's it's a really hard thing to accomplish and it's hats off to the to everybody who's been involved you personally what was your main learning from this experience let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsors this episode has support

from no official sponsor but from my very own the blockchain and us newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can immediately pick those interviews you'd like to listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.cannainsider.com/careers what was your main learning from this experience you know I think it goes back to a couple of things I think that you need to care about something deeply and you need to do what you think is right and make hard decisions and move forward

and there's always going to be a critic and always somebody that's going to say that that you're terrible or that you're doing things wrong there's a lot more of that I think now than there used to be even because of the nature of things online and on social media as of late you know a lot of shouting a lot of anger a lot of people oftentimes do things when they when they're a distant maybe online or anonymous online that they wouldn't do in person and so you have to have conviction that you're doing the right thing and that you have the right motives and and just move forward let's speak about something else I mean I have I did some research obviously before this interview and I read that you brought Prince Constantine

of the Netherlands together with with Tasers in some way it was crazy so I was just getting started with the taste-off Foundation I think this was like baptism by fire like I was just getting involved and and this was maybe more of what to expect is I had been asked by somebody here locally in in Zook to give a little bit of a like a 5-10 minute presentation on some boat that would be going across Lake Zoo apparently Prince to Constantine the Dutch delegation was going to be coming into town to talk about blockchain technology so I'm all new you know what the foundation or our new and this in this role and said create no this is an opportunity to really give back to zhuge right and really contribute say yes the Tasos foundation is here and of course we'd love to help so I get on this boat and

and I give like this five to ten minute just like a little speech about Tasos was really excited about it and and then this picture goes online some sort of tweet goes out with a picture of me you know speaking on this on this this boat cruise with kristin prince constantine close by and everybody is you know shipping is a sipping champagne and everything and everyone's like oh well Ryan doesn't even work he's too good for everybody now he's on some boat you know sipping champagne not even paying attention or there might be a some sort of like rumor that somehow prince constantine is now like a Talos community member or something no like the truth of it is I wanted to give back to the to the local community and I got asked to do this so I'm like great you

know I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints aka a Mormon we actually don't even drink alcohol so like I don't even drink alcohol of course I wasn't sipping champagne on a on a boat but anyway so this street goes out there and I'm like okay my life is it's a little bit different now that some sort of picture that's taken can be taken totally totally out of context or something that I say or something that I don't say or something that I communicate or don't communicate is gonna be seen in many different ways and it was maybe a rude awakening to and a little bit of structure to me on and just how life would be God and once again I'm not I'm

not somewhat I don't mind if it's to help further the cause of TASIS to speak but I'm not one that seeks the spotlight like it doesn't excite me to be a focus of attention and so it's just interesting how motives and and things can be misconstrued but that's part of the territory and it's hard to differentiate you know some people are there's all sorts of different types of community members and some I think debates and even criticism is fine you know healthy debate and healthy criticism but there's people with all sorts of different motives and then some people who just purely want to want to tear down and and find faults and I like to think that generally the Tasos community is a community of builders and is a positive community and so that's been mostly my experience ok cool

so um what is maybe you know and a piece of advice you'd give somebody who may find him or herself in a similar situation where all of a sudden you know they they had to step up to a more public role and and have to find out how to deal with it that's a great question is um I would say a few things I would say that I think that there's do what you think is right and stick to that and and make sure your motifs are good and be humble and try and take criticism you know from from others that people can be critical but one approach

is just to reject it another approach is to say hey you know maybe I can learn something from that and maybe I can find some sort of kernel of truth you know that can be used to improve but I think generally inside of each one of us we have this little bit of a compass right and and we kind of know in our gut when something is right and we do our research and we do our kind of deliberation that we do we do all that we can to prepare for something and make a decision but we but we we know and we feel like when something's right it's right and go for it and it doesn't mean it's going to be easy and sometimes you're standing up and you're you're the focus of criticism or or you know that sort of thing but but if you do what you

you think is right and really have pure motives that the things end up working out not always in the exact way that you had anticipated but but things work out I'm a firm believer in that cool in your work at Tasos and maybe also before as an entrepreneur and your projects do you have any role models any role models I think I'd probably maybe I would answer the question a little bit differently in the form of characteristics because I have a lot of people that I look up to for various reasons and I really appreciate people who take the time to understand others I appreciate people who who can execute who can get things done who can think critically through

things put a tremendous amount of desire and passion into something I appreciate people who also are kind I appreciate people that are humble and I think there's some basic leadership principles that those are things that I really look up to people and there's a lot of them that have those different traits and those are the the things that are most important to me hopefully over time I can make sure that I have some of those but that's generally generally things that I appreciate you yeah did you I mean when you grew up did you always want to be an entrepreneur or you know in a in a function where you could

decide how things are done yeah you know so my dad was an entrepreneur yeah and he's a great great man but I think from that like I both was excited by entrepreneurship and terrified by it at the same time you know because it's so exciting and you get to do new things and that's such a part of me but also you see that it's really really hard and it takes a lot of grit and it things never work out as you think they're going to and it takes just a lot of effort and problem-solve and so I think doing things that are creative doing things that take a lot of effort solving problems particularly I'd love to fix

things I'd love to solve problems like that is just so fulfilling to me to be a part of a solution to our problem I really like that so in as much as that's part of any entrepreneurship project I really like that but no I think I've had the typical love-hate relationship right with entrepreneurship that most people have had and but but yeah I think those I really liked to to learn and to do new things and so for me that that's really exciting is doing something something different mmm what are you currently learning what am I currently learning balance so I gave you know six months seven months

just of life almost entirely to tittays which I'm glad to do but it's taken such an amount of time and energy morning daytime night middle of the night morning and and that was okay for a turnaround face and to be able to get tazed dose on the right track but I love my family dearly and they are the most important thing to me and so it's there are seasons of life I think where we go through times that extraordinary effort but it's focusing on the things that matter most and it's not that I'm going to be less diligent as far as taste oh so I'm really excited about it we're on a great trajectory and the future is bright and we'll continue

to see I think accelerated improvement and a lot of exciting things but it's having that balance and making sure that I give appropriate time to those things that that matter you know the most of me you know to my wife and to my kids so that I develop that relationship and and I think we can do all those things but it's just this process of balance it's like it's like keeping you know you know twirling plates you know balanced on our fingers and maybe on our feet and trying to keep them all up at the same time so sometimes you have to throw one faster and then kind of keep the other one going and focus on that but so it's a little bit of work in progress but but really love my family deeply and so I think balance is what I'm learning now

and I think we're doing good cool I mean this I find this fascinating because I'm probably one of the least balanced people well sometimes find it very easy to do one thing sure 200 percent to forget everything else you know and that's similar for me is I really like to jump into something and dive into it and just give everything I have you know and solve a problem and be passionate about it and that's has been and what is what Tasos is for me but it can be done but with balance and that now is a season of balance but while not leaving anything and done it of course still moving ahead at great speed but yeah I think that's something that I'm learning and life is exciting you know

there's always new faces where you learn different things and well it seems like every day here every week there's a you know a new learning but that's exciting part of life yeah cool let's speak a little bit more about you know the technology of Tasers of blockchain technology and also you know about maybe it's part in in the future sure let's imagine I mean you obviously you said it before you said you see blockchain and tasers in particular as one of the building blocks of some you know maybe let's call it some kind of blockchain future if let's say all of this happens all of this pans out the way it's intended to bye-bye you know the the inventors who built these protocols how would you describe this kind of future that we'll see maybe 5-10

years down the road now that's a great question and let me answer it starting a little bit differently explaining exactly what tezo's is and then how then how my seat ASOS being a part of that future so there's been some incredible innovations I would start first with with Bitcoin which the innovation is incredible to me and I call that blockchain on 1.0 this idea that you can exchange or transfer value without an intermediary is a really really powerful idea in an innovation and just the the fact that it's been running for what over over nine years now and is still up and up and going and it still hasn't had any major compromises as far as security it still works is incredible to me and I

I think I just Anana by that that kind of core innovation that was that was Bitcoin and in in blockchain and then comes along etherium which incredible the innovation there and I call that blockchain 2.0 or this idea that you can you can transfer value right between parties without an intermediary but you could do so with you know while using this idea of a of a smart contract right that you can you can embed more code and logic into the value being transferred so let's say that I'm going to transfer some value something from point A to point B but if C happens then I split it and I send it to parties D and E and

just that logic and then the more complex logic that can be built around that sort of of transfer of value to me is is incredible and I see a blockchain is this internet of value meaning that now we have this ability to transfer value without an intermediary and the types I'm excited for the types of things that will that will come from that now I see a Tazo saz on a leading edge of innovation within the blockchain space and I would consider it a blockchain 3.0 and I would say that for three reasons number one is the proof of stake algorithm so each blockchain for those who are not very familiar with the technology as a consensus algorithm and that is the

method by which all of the different people on this network come to consensus or agreement on who owns what or what they call the state of the ledger and so previously what's been used is this consensus algorithm called proof of work so this is idea that one is going to use a computing power to be able to decide who gets to help participate in in coming to consensus on the network or or in and in and really securing or validating the transactions on that network so often called mining yeah mining yep exactly so so what's growing out of that is that you have these really large banks of mining computers in different areas of the world some

areas more concentrated than others that use last time I checked it was something like the energy consumption of the entire country of Ireland or something like that the bigger and bigger country yeah oh right and see these massive amounts of energy to be able to secure the network so Tasos has a different way to to come to consensus on the state of the ledger it has a different consensus algorithm so it uses a proof of stake and what that means is instead of using work or electricity or energy to be able to participate in this process this validation of the network the stakeholders the people that own tazed those tokens are able to contribute to this process so you don't have these

miners or these banks of computers you have antes o so we call them beakers but what i was always wondering why it was called Baker's I mean many other protocols it's called stake hearth staking here it's called Baker's yeah it was it was done before I got to the foundation so the explanation that I've been told is that it was it was yeah Harkins maybe back to its French roots and it is a didn't want to use the the word forging because that also has negative connotations and maybe minting is too close to mining and so what could we use well it's baking you know that that could be a great idea for it so so that that process is called baking in the in the tezo's ecosystem and what that means is that Tasos token holders

can participate in the validation of the network and how that works is if so if I had teased those tokens then I'd have to put up a portion of those as a deposit or a bond so that is I am in the name called on randomly depending on how many T's those tokens I have to be able to help validate the network or validate some of the blocks or transactions that go through the network so what happens if I basically in basic terms if I were to do something malicious then the bond would be would be slashed right and then that is an incentive to keep everybody honest on the network and so the result of that is instead of having having this very energy consumptive process it's a lot more efficient and it's a lot more sustainable in the long term and what it

does as well is it really aligns the incentives of the different pieces or parts of the network so currently you have in in Bitcoin you have the developers right maybe in one camp and then you have the miners who are out running these big banks of the computers on the other hand and then you have the the actual token holders may be in another camp and they all have this interesting relationship and some of them have different incentives that aren't necessarily aligned you see the the people that are that have the have Bitcoin would probably like transactions of these to not be very high but I would imagine if I was a miner I'd say well I'd really like those transaction fees to be high right because then I can receive those as a miner so there's a misalignment sometimes maybe as far as incentives and on various blockchain

solutions and so with Tasos being proof of stake you really align those and you align those by saying that hey the people that are actually validating the network are the token holders themselves and then when they go through that process which they're randomly randomly called upon to do so they receive a reward as part of that process it has been really really exciting to see how that's worked in the real world so it started June you know the network went live June 30th the foundation did the baking for the for the first seven cycles and then the then the decentralized decentralization continued or started after that in the foundation itch let's see it bakes I think it's to a point where parties other than the

foundation bake approximately 60% of the network now and that continues to be more decentralized over time it's so neat to see because as a token holder you can bake yourself and set up a node but if you're not tech savvy there's also a secure way to give the rights to bake to a delegate to another party to be able to do that how many different parties currently exist that bake on takes us great question and the next site and the the most recently scheduled cycle 411 hmm yep so significant do you know where they are you know I've seen of lists and it's all over the place as far as delegates so there's these services that that advertise that hey you could send the right to bake to me

and then I will bake for you then I'll give you some of the rewards back right so I've seen a list of these delegates and it's really neat to see them from all over the world as far as the location of all the bakers I'm not sure if that's if that's available I'd I'm not sure if that's tracked but that would be exciting if it was or or to be able to know that information but generally you can know where the delegates are from and it's from all over so I anticipate that that is a very widely distributed process as well there's no concentration like for example in mining right I mean we can just also say openly where most of the miners are in China because they're the chips are cheap and the power is inexpensive I know indication of that and I could

even see in the future though that the foundation wouldn't even bake it would just delegate its tokens to a community member and and allow them to do that and of course any of the rewards that the foundation receives from whether it's baking itself or it's delegating and gets some rewards back those go right back into the ecosystem right so this go right back into helping further the you know the support the network and further the tazers protocol so that's the first part the consensus algorithm is really really exciting because it just see how quickly these have these have these businesses have kind of grown and and overnight developed is really really exciting and there's actually so we've

supported as far as the grants one of the grants that we that we issued was to a company obsidian systems out of New York and so they do they are helping with ledger integration so you know legend nos I'm sure you're familiar with the ledger Colorado wallet hardware wallets so the really cool thing is that we actually have and I don't think I'm not sure if any other blockchain uses it in this way so there's a it's is currently that the tool is improving but there's a command-line client for the for just the basic wallet functionality to use with a ledger the integration but there's also a there's also an app for for baking so you can have it I think it's the first time that a that a hardware wallet like ledger Nana Wes has

been used or that specific device for securing the network for for validating the transactions on a network usually it's just you know considered kind of a wallet type device where you send in your seats so basically the tezi that reside on the ledger you can stake those or or bake with them yeah there's you have to have a baking node set up and so every time that you you have to sign a block to validate it and so it just pings your ledger it's done in a very secure way when it needs to sign it rather than just the typical usage of a letter which put ledger which is great and I have to say one thing a lot of times people call Tezz desease and kind of different nomenclature gets thrown around but but I think Tess you know

generally I guess Who am I to say is it's any sort of authority but I think tez sounds so much better than than tezi sort of like to do away with the tornado away with tezi so yeah it should be Ted's right the singular or plural tez is great okay so that's that's the first innovation so this proof of stake algorithm that's gone really well been really excited about that the second part is this focus on security so as I mentioned before TASIS is not a copy or a fork of something else it's really a new protocol network written from the ground up and it's it's written from the ground up in a functional programming language Oh camels which was developed in in France and a functional programming language is like Oh camel

are used in a lot of mission-critical type infrastructure projects so you're going to see it in like aerospace you're going to see it in the transportation industry like like trains and things like that you'll see it in pharmaceuticals you'll see it in the financial industry you know Jane Street uses Oh camel so it's used for traditionally for really secure types of applications so it's written from the ground up in Oh camel and furthermore the programming language lends itself to this process of formal verification and so what that means is this this as the field of research where you can actually mathematically prove certain properties of a code and that certain code will behave in certain ways as intended the

idea being that as we continue to research in this area that the the tase dose protocol will be a prime target and lend itself more easily to this type of formal verification so if we wanted to have very high value or mission-critical smart contracts on the Tasos platform this process of formal verification as it continues to be developed what it would allow you to do is to say okay here's this high value smart contract these are the properties that we want to have verified right that these certain things are going to happen and that there's no possibility that they're not going to happen and you could actually verify that sort of thing and mathematically prove it and I could see even see services as popping up in the future where you can

have people that are formally verified different contracts you could have mathematical proofs that then are distributed to the different parties and you know there's proof that this thing is going to behave as intended so so that's a really exciting innovation as we've known there's been a you know smart contracts are a prime target for malicious actors to either steal funds or freeze funds or whatever they're going to do and so I think written from the ground up in a functional programming language then also one that lends itself to this process of formal verification is really exciting the third innovation is is also really exciting it's one of my favorite so this idea of Unchained governance right so we've seen this in in protocols where they are decentralized but then how do

you decide the future or coordinate the future direction of something that is decentralized and do so in a way that it can continue to innovate and grow and and do so with the speed necessary to stay at the forefront of innovation and so there's this idea of Unchained governance that there's a clear method built into the protocol by which each token holder has a vote and they would be able to the future of the network they'd be able to say this is the direction we want to go this is the innovation that we want to see and they'd be able to guide that what that does is it not only solves this problem which you know currently I think the method of doing that online right is just flame-throwing on Twitter like you say no no this should be the future of the protocol or no this should

be the future of this other protocol and will you play a game of chicken and say I'm gonna fork or I'm gonna on this date and or no I'm not or yes I am or or whatever and then maybe there is a fork maybe there's not who knows well let's just say there's no clear on tango or currently yeah and the default Methodism is a lot of method is a lot of shouting and whatnot you did generally but I think that there is opportunity for a more coordinated type of on chain governance one where everybody still where everybody has a say so maybe it's a more true and a more fair way to do it where every token holder gets to have a say in the in the future of the network and so generally that really excites me but the part that of that that also

excites me is how it helps to solve this this problem of the tragedy of the Commons so in technology particularly there's this problem that manifests itself when you have something in common between a bunch of parties who has the incentive to keep that thing up to really provide the resources to maintain that or to improve it so we see it women I'm sorry to interrupt but an offline equivalent is overfishing true is you know the old economics example is you know this meadows that everybody can you know ascent their cows or sheep true and then you know it just gets you know trampled down and nobody can use it anymore because it's just been used irresponsibly yes and and so of course

there also exists digital Commons yes exactly and so one of the most famous the most used is the internet right and so with the internet you have this base layer protocol which is tcp/ip and it's the basic way by which information is shared between computers servers all over the world and so what's happened is you've had really large businesses come and build very profitable things and they've kind of pulled the value out of the network right so you have the Facebook's and the googles who have built these very successful businesses on top of it but there's no incentive to really upgrade or put resources in or to coordinate the improvement of the of the base layer protocol right that the pace of innovation at the tcp/ip level is

incredibly slow but yet there's no flow I think it's not exists not existing yeah and so all the innovation on the internet it's not on the base layer it's on the application layer absolutely absolutely it's on the application layer and so that's why we would call the internet or that the base protocol of the Internet a thin a thin layer protocol right so with Kay so this also Manaf itself in the blockchain space right so you have Bitcoin tremendous innovation have soft to the innovation to whoever whoever created that we don't know but hats off to them and and all that's been done but you have this network that has incredible value but there's not a lot of incentive to improve the base layer

protocol relatively speaking for the value that is there it's a relatively small group of people that are working on the base layer protocol right of Bitcoin a similar to aetherium you know incredible innovation there with aetherium you know hats off to them but the incentive is much greater to build something on top of it or launch an e rc 20 token and then work on the base layer protocol and relatively speaking I would say that I would imagine that the the the development effort at the base layer is is pales in comparison to all the different people that are launching tokens on top of it or just ERC 20s and doing ICL is on top of it right and so with Tazo so when you have on chained

governance it gives you a new and innovative mechanism to solve the tragedy of the Commons and how we do that as we say okay let's invite developers from all over the world to think of a problem with Tasos and how we want to improve it and make it better bring your idea create the code and bring it to the Talos protocol bring it to the protocol and then we are going to we can vote on it well put it to a vote all the token holders going to say okay yes that should be a part of it or no that shouldn't and then the person that brings the innovation they attach an invoice to the upgrade right and if everyone accepts it then they get paid out and tasers tokens patek rating this potentially massive

incentive to be able to contribute to the base layer protocol and not just do like a token on top of it but to contribute to that base layer and I would imagine if somebody could build something incredible that could maybe let's say they could justify that somehow they're going to increase the value of Tasos by by one percent by half of a percent the the amount of value that that a single developer or a team of developers could demand by bringing that sort of innovation and if the Taser taste those communities said great you know we we want that but we want that feature that functionality that code it just creates this really interesting innovative way to be able to have people

build at the base layer and and and create what we would like to think is as a fat layer protocol where the value accumulates mostly in the t's O's protocol itself whilst to allowing you need things to be built on top of it so that's that third innovation that I would say that it's there that is really exciting in regards to T's O's so how does tase O's fit into the wider ecosystem and what does the world look like in the future so it's hard to say I see industries where I say that they're ripe for for disruptions so you know financial industries I see insurance industries you know different markets that sort of thing but I think we're in a phase similar to people have likened

the state of the cryptocurrency market for example to that of the dot-com bubble right that hey there's all these ideas and there's this innovation but most the stuff you know went bust but stuff some stuff succeeded and it was really really big so maybe there's yeah some powerful similarities between those analogies that have to do with states of the market but I think that there's also similarities with the state of Technology so with the internet when we found out that you could exchange information without an intermediary people were like wow you mean you can send an email that's incredible we solved like like all the world's problems because you can now communicate you don't have to send letters anymore amazing right email oh and actually you

don't have to go the library anymore because there's this online like there's online dictionaries and now there's the online encyclopedias where you could find out about a lot of things like Wow okay amazing innovation the internet but nobody could foresee all of the what would happen thereafter right all of the tremendous things that would be built when you unlock this key ability to transfer information without an intermediary and more freely between any party around the world and so I see a similar state in blockchain technology that that there's this tremendous potential right there's this ability to exchange value without an intermediary and right now we have a glimpse we're like oh great that means you could like

send value across borders and there's no intermediary wow that's really powerful or okay great that means that if you have a feeling government like there's going to be the ability for somebody to have their value in something that's not going to depreciate incredibly like the whatever local currency there is so there's some of these use cases that are kind of easy pickings the people look to but I think that we'll see waves of innovation that when you unlock that key potential I mean clearly if you can change exchange value without an intermediary if you can do so in a way that it can embed in computer code and logic into that it's going to be there's going to be some tremendously powerful things that are that are built out of that and that will see your eyes so I'd like to see in that a future vision of

how the world would be or or the things that will be built from that how tases would be positioned is you know Tassos will as the self amending ledger right meaning that any upgrade that could be you know any innovation that's out there can be assimilated into the Tasos network so for example when looking at consensus algorithms so right now there's a lot of research around consensus algorithms and --'tis us you know it was it's been in development for a couple of years so it's I believe the technology solid but there's new research and innovation that's going to come out that's probably going to have you know faster you know you know more scalability you

know faster throughput you know get to finality a lot faster that sort of thing well maybe new consensus algorithms don't even but imagine this imagine a world in Tazo square you say okay so we've incentivized all these developers around the world so there are three new cutting-edge consensus algorithms around there and so we're going to spin up a test net that is consensus algorithm a Tasos test net consensus algorithm beat ASOS consensus algorithm so you know CJ's us and we could literally have those up and running probably before another project even launches that's using those consensus algorithms and then you simply go to the community and you say okay which one do you want let's have a vote and then you could integrate that into the Tasos protocol and because it's built in a modular fashion it's

much easier to take components and bring them in and you could really actually swap out a consensus algorithm you know that's possible so I see the pace of innovation being being fast with Tasos and really I don't see it because it's self amending it's there's no limits right you can always you can always take in the the latest innovation and have that become a part of the protocol with self amending you mean this on chain governance mechanism yeah exactly the self amending meaning that the community votes on on future innovations or or current innovations they want to bring in to the protocol and then all the nodes hot sync they automatically update with the latest version of Tay so that the community has decided upon and though in the end the blockchain

continues for it I mean that that idea is is it's really really powerful and you could do that with all sorts of aspects not just the consensus algorithm and so I see Tazo as being at the forefront of innovation and not having limits as far as innovation and being able to do so really quickly because of that mechanism I see it as being a platform when people want to build things that are secure you know generally that they would say okay you know what types of programs lend themselves to that sort of security that we're looking for in the future which one is moving in the direction of formal verification and it's going to have those capabilities first those are the types of things that I'm excited for as far as Tasos I think when you look at in in the end of the day

a blockchain is almost like a it's almost like a jurisdiction right so you're gonna have so people come to Switzerland often because it's this place where you know there's peace you know there's there's things don't go from side to side there's not radical swings in what's happening with it the country it's a pretty stable environment so businesses would commit to Switzerland because they're like hey I want a place that's peaceful where there's a stable environment where there's a you know you know that sort of thing where I can like where I can be confident in the the current and the future state of where I'm gonna be I think blockchains will increasingly become more like that you know if a big company is gonna want to build up on a

blockchain if a government is gonna want to build an application or a solution on top of a blockchain they're gonna want to go somewhere where they know that hey the future like there's there's a mechanism by which you decide the future of this thing it's going to be something that's on the cutting edge of innovation and it's going to be a place with stable and it's going to plead me a place that that's governed well that has a community that's proved that it can that it can govern so I think those types of things excite me and give fetty's also unique unique prospect for the future cool I mean you described a lot of the technical aspects of the features so to speak of tasers and also some of the you know of the applications you mentioned financial applications but what or maybe applications that you see tasers play a

big part in that fulfill maybe that original promise that you mentioned at the very beginning of our conversation where you said let's hope that maybe people who are less fortunate can also you know participate in the wealth of the world can trade what what would be applications of Tassos in this regard sure so look at Africa for example so Africa tremendous penetration as far as mobile phone technology and creasing lis smartphones as well and you could potentially look at people storing a value on their phone in a secure way without need of any sort of intermediary you could potentially have people

participate in the validation of the TSS Network from their phone and help to stake the network I mean be a part of this global community to provide the security of the ted's of the tasers network right from their phone you could potentially have them you know family members overseas er in different places you could also they could they could provide value back and forth without that without an intermediary but beyond that I see all sorts of you know applications that will be developed as far as as being able to to provide transparency being able to provide immutability in societies where that's not always the case where when it comes to value and smart contracts putting a key part of that of whether it's insurance markets or other markets or

whatever it may be or lending markets providing a means by which that's done in a transparent yet a secure yeah but a secure way but done in a way where it doesn't rely on this kind of local intermediary that maybe has or has not done what they're supposed to in the past those are still mainly financial use cases don't should you mention here you know insurance remittances and all that whatever may be more use cases that we can't currently so easily grasp sure sure you know I would say a couple others so these are pretty general so there's been talk about about property rights and things like that we're in different places in different countries

it's it's unclear as to who owns the property and it's it's it's very difficult to get a clean title or appropriate title to something so I think being able to track who owns what at a particular point of time could be something generally a powerful thing that the technology could bring in a indiv in a developing economy identity probably is another big one and then then others as they come come down the road yeah I think the key for us is to unlock a base layer protocol that has the ability to attract the developers it has the properties that they're looking for to to build things on top of and I wouldn't pretend to know all of the things that they're going to build with it but we know that technology is powerful and they will come and I'm

confident in that that when the right technology is there and the right ability to provide solutions to people in various areas with these powerful properties that they will they will come generally I would say that there's a good amount of yeah of interest and excitement around TSYS cool we spoke a lot about solutions right that blockchain technology can can bring and ideas for positive change but we mentioned the internet before and of course the internet had also many you know maybe less intended consequentialist to put it nicely so um do you sometimes worry maybe about certain things that blockchain technology could unlock that aren't so

desirable you know I think that it will be similar to the Internet in certain ways like you've like you've described where you will have use cases that a lot of positive things and some negative things as well but I think when you look at the balance of the Internet and you look at the positive than negative should we not have an internet because there's a negative I mean does it on net provide a positive to society I would say yeah yeah that it does that it provides a positive to society I think it will be the same I think it'll be the same way as far as this new technology that there's going to be some great

things that can be done with it there's going to be some not-so-great things done with it but I think at the end of the day it'll be it'll be a net positive for for societies and for people's I think generally that's why it's important for the people creating in this technology as well as those people using it of just doing our best to be responsible actors in the space generally there's there's two things about the state of the current state of the space that the concern me so I would say one is is the hype that there's too much hype and there needs to be more of a focus on the technology what are we actually are we delivering on the technology and then at the end of the day let's connect the technology to real world real world applications I would say the second thing that concerns me is

decentralization that I see in in decentralized you know projects or centralization yeah I would say that things like that appear almost like big businesses to be running decentralized networks right and at the end of the day the foundation we are being really deliberate about staying true to decentralisation and to defining what we really are in the ecosystem that we are one member of a larger tazers community we're not that there's no control or central authority figure and the taste-off network nobody no single entity controls right or manages manages Tazo sits it's a community effort it's a decentralized effort and what that means

is that we have researchers and developers and computer scientist enthusiasts all over the world that matter that that can get involved how that informs the decision-making of the foundation is the following so before I got to the foundation it was considered that there would be this veto power over the network for the first year and I think it was done just to make sure that things were you know security kind of safety net for the first while of the network well the new board as we got in this idea of decentralization is really important to us and so we are not having any sort of veto power of the network it should be the community that decides the future of the network throughout the life of the network so another thing

that that informs is this I this strategy of grant making process that really what the foundation will be doing is providing grants to all different aspects of the Tasos community to where they can do their own effort and their own work to help further the Tasos protocol and what that means is we're not going to have this centralized authority that is that is controlling the effort right there's not a centralized Authority that does all the marketing that does listing on exchanges that decides the future of the network that's that's everybody the wider TASIS community decides the future of the network it's not the not the foundation so those are some things that we are being deliberate about about staying true to even this this baking that I

described earlier so the foundation is baking roughly 40% of the network that will continue to decrease over time as more Baker's come online but as well we'll end up most likely in the future delegating tokens to other people to be able to bake to further help decentralize things and like I said any rewards received will be used right back towards the right right back towards the community so so those are some of the some of the things that we're doing to position eyes ourselves I believe well and that's the current focus of the foundation one thing I also wanted to ask is I mean we spoke obviously about Tasos mainly here sure but um you know how it's the conversation with other networks for example cosmos Definity even aetherium you know how how are how how is it our

the bridges between those different communities yeah that's that's a really good question so I generally think that there's a lot more ways to collaborate than we do and there's too much of tribalism generally in the space but I can only speak from personal experience so we gave a grant it's the latest one of the latest grantees was a group team labs they're actually based here in Zook the developers two of them actively work on the cosmos Network and another one it worked for them before they run a delegate service but they're also doing a lot of other things for the for the TSS Network they're going to do a lot of kind of documentation community building and in helping people to understand what

tase us is all about and have the resources to interact with the Tasos network so that's great I mean that's here locally in Zook it's actually people that code on another protocol but are working on tasers as well cosmos is proof of stake and tasteless is proof of stakes so they're excited to be involved with tasteless as well so I've had the chance to meet with them have the chance to meet with somebody from web three from the Polka Dot group the other day but generally I think that there's opportunities just to at least be decent to each other I mean there's obviously going to be some healthy competition among various projects but there's a lot more that we have in common that we could we could better communicate on and in exchange ideas and be respectful you know in our in our deliberations and

debate healthy debate is awesome but but I think a lot of it could be brought to a higher level particularly online and maybe that starts with interacting with some people in person or or face-to-face okay great if you had one wish to change anything you'd like maybe in the world what would that be you know I'm a weird guy where I I walk down the street and sometimes my wife probably gets annoyed but but inequality bothers me of this this idea that that some have a lot and some have a little and and there's not a way that everybody can just have enough and be happy and have

more and so so I think one wish would be a world that's more this this more fair that's more equal we're still people you know work and our ambitious but poor but where people have more opportunity all over the world not just in certain locations and that that would be a be my wish cool do you think you'll still be working with blockchain technology in five years oh that's a great question you know my life takes so many interesting crazy turns but I'm it's grateful to be a part of Tasos and to help it to move forward so I don't know what the future is going to be in in five years but it will be somewhere where I feel like I can contribute where I can provide value and do something

that I'm passionate about great excellent well I mean this was really fascinating and I was just sitting there absorbing the information so we could have gone on on many of these topics much deeper but I I really appreciate your insight and your openness and thanks a lot for this conversation yeah no thank you very much man well I'm I'm humbled that you would yeah that you would you know take the time to speak with me and and we can do this together and thank you for the opportunity thanks so much for joining us today more info on our guests and our sponsors isn't the show notes of this episode and on the podcast website the blockchain and us comm to help people find this podcast it's important that

you download subscribe and give it a top rating and review on iTunes or on the podcast platform of your choice I'm Manuel staggers and I thank you very much for listening [Music]