From Imposter Syndrome to the Ethereum Foundation: Austin Griffith — EF

Transcript

Austin. Hi. Simona, how are you? I'm good. How are you? Welcome to the Human Protocol podcast. >> I am human. You are human. And we love that about you. Um so, point of the podcast, as we know, talk about the humans, the personal side of building big things, of moving the secret system forward, of doing all of the things, but we do not talk enough about the swings and roundabouts and trials and tribulations of the humans.

So, to get us started, I want to know who you were before this chapter. Who were you Fort Collins, Colorado? Who was Austin Griffith? Yeah, it's still a builder, still an educator, still a nerd. >> Yeah. Very much more a I need to have a good resume guy. >> Okay. >> that guy. >> Okay. >> More that guy. >> All right. So, I wanted to build things, but I didn't have the mature standpoint of building something that people use and becoming an entrepreneur. I was much

more I just saw myself as a smaller person, I think. >> Okay. >> Yeah, and and it was more about like, I am a cog in a machine, which machine do I fit into? I I was doing lots of things, like building lots of apps, and I loved building apps. And I I was I looked like an entrepreneur, I think, from the outside, cuz I was always building things and always tinkering and I you mentioned beer brewing. >> Yes. >> an entire brewery in my garage that was automated. That was a It would you would kind of weigh the grains and the hops, and you would pour them in, and it would make the label automatically, and it There was like five different Linux

machines all running all these solenoids and it would automatically ignite a thing and there would be fire. And I was working for a company and I would like run it from the company while I was at work doing some things. I would like pull it up and like hit some buttons and make sure the brewery was doing what it needed to do and then go back to my work. So I was a tinkerer and a builder for sure. And I always like had this product mindset, this UX UI. Okay. >> How does how how do other humans use this thing and let's make something that's magic for other people to use? >> Okay. Okay.

>> missed the maturity of becoming a founder. And I think that's where I was at that point. I was just a tinkerer and a builder that wanted to have a good resume and get hired at a place. >> Okay. So for you, the tinkering and the creating, you were looking at it as a thing on the side. Yeah, it was like something I loved to do. And I still probably even at my job was building things that were interesting to me. >> Okay. >> It was like, what's the best thing that the company needs right now? Well, there's four developers and we're about to have 20 developers. We need to figure out how to scale up and and we have like this AWS infrastructure and we have a a single machine for everything we deploy.

We need to dockerize. We need to have everybody have local containers that ship to production. And I built all those things to make that thing work. But it was more of like Side project. >> thinking how I turn that into a product. I was just like, hey boss, we should open source this cool thing. And he didn't let me and I think that was one of the things that sort of weaponized me a little bit into crypto too. >> Interesting. So how long from that moment until the discovery of It was probably right about the same time.

>> Okay. Okay. I'm like, we built this really cool piece of infrastructure. It's probably the summer of 2016. >> Yes. Uh Uh, I Docker is hot and I'm doing infrastructure and code and teaching people within the company and we have these things on Friday. Actually, where the bow tie, bow tie Friday came from. >> Oh. I would show off something new every Friday at work with the other devs. >> And I put on a bow tie and I showed off Ethereum for the first time. You guys should see this cool blockchain technology. And I think the CTO had already like bought some coins and they were seeing it as the like financial thing.

>> Okay. >> But I was seeing it as this like this is a smart contract platform and you can run these little programs on a blockchain and then the money was kind of came in as like a secondary thing. >> Okay. So the interest for you was definitely the smart contract piece and like tinkering and building with that. >> of that, yeah. >> Okay. So then you what made you decide to basically start doing the educational pieces? Did you do anything be for that, right? >> No, no education at first. So I love teaching and I love educating people and I love building things that people use and I was in the Facebook era of like 2008 when the apps were hot and I built a horse

racing app that a bunch of people used and I kind of lived off that for a >> like thousands of people used that. >> it was fun, yeah. It was a fun game. And so I loved building games and that's the first thing I did when I came to blockchain. I was like, what can I do that is uniquely me that fits here on this blockchain? And I built this game called Galliass. It's still the ship game in the back of my Twitter. And you would you would the ships would have to sail. So it was kind of like an economic game where you could buy land and there's these land tiles and you can grow things on the land and trade. And you had these ships and the ships would move in this very blockchain way where you would send a transaction to put up

your sails and each time a block is mined the ship would move forward. >> yes. And that was like you you had to build something that was uniquely block-chainy and there there was ownership of the tiles and the tiles would generate new tokens. And I brought that to ETHDenver in 2018 and I had it on my phone and you could play this mobile block-chain game with movement that was natively block-chain. And there were a couple people there like Mudi who ended up going to Uniswap and a couple other places who saw it Andrew and another buddy maybe three or four now friends that saw it that were like wow that's really cool like I love that.

But like I was still that guy that wanted to have that padded resume that wanted a daddy to hire me. >> Okay. >> And I showed it to daddy Lubin of course and he didn't give a Like generally the daddies there had enough problems already they didn't want a new person to come work for them. >> Okay. >> And so this was like the start of the sort of like failing to get into block-chain. >> Okay. Okay. When did that switch cuz I remember Gali as and then also in my mind the next thing is the burner wallet.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I think where it really started to actually resonate with the ecosystem was with I think meta transactions and the burner wallet. Like when I started when I shifted away from games and by the way if I would have just put that on Ethereum right then and focused on it and founded a product that people would use >> Yeah. it probably would have made money. Okay. But I didn't have that level of maturity. >> Okay. >> still like tinkering and trying things and dipping my toes in lots of places wanting to get in the door.

>> almost accept me. Got it. Okay. >> I mean the advice right there is like do the thing and get the users and quit trying to find a daddy. >> Yes, exactly. Okay, interesting. >> So >> meta transactions though were something that much smarter people than me had figured out. You poured and were figuring out these signed transactions. But they were doing a terrible job of explaining them to people and putting them in people's hands and letting them use it. And I was able to sort of popularize them by making uh my own tool which was called like Dapper apparatus and Clevis or something at the time. Uh basically what Hardhat, you know, what uh Truffle was not good

and I want to I basically made my own Truffle, but Hardhat professionalized this idea and then Foundry the same thing. These orchestration libraries that let you deploy and test. And then the front end which was Dapper apparatus. So, I had Clevis which was the deployment orchestration and then I had Dapper apparatus which was the website. So, I built the tool stack. No one cared about that either. But then using those things to show off meta transactions is when I started getting, "Oh, this guy's building these cool things." Because I had like full fully live demos with smart contracts and front ends. And you could connect your wallet and you could sign a message and that message would go on chain with

a relay that would pay the gas for it. And this was a magical experience for someone who had always had to pay gas for something. >> at that time the gas was ridiculous. >> Yeah, right. Right. Ridiculous. Yeah. And and well, it was a little bit before gas got super expensive. Like we we thought maybe platforms could pay the gas for their users. In like 2018, ETH was at $100. True. >> Gas was a little bit cheaper. >> Yes. So, there was a moment where it actually made sense to and and we built something called Nifty Ink where it was like a you would draw a thing.

>> I did that. And you you just like grabbed an iPad, you went to a website, you drew a thing, and you submitted it, and it went on chain, and you could start earning money. And so and that used basically burner wallets, which >> Yes. would just be a wallet when you landed on the website, and then meta transactions, where we had a relay that would pay the gas for you. And the combination of those two things gave you an application that felt like a normal web two application, but if you drew something cool, if you somehow created something that was interesting for people, you earned money, and money started showing up in this account that you basically didn't know you had, and then you started thinking, well, how do I protect this? And it kind of flipped crypto on on its side, where it was

about providing value first, and then as you earn value >> about how to protect it after. >> After. You were like, oh, now I When when you would try to give someone a seed phrase up front, >> Right. Yes. >> If you give them money, and then the seed phrase is like they they say, okay, okay, I have this money, how do I protect it? And you say it's this seed phrase, they pay way more attention to it once they have the money. It's It's sort of like when people play board games, and someone wants to read through all the rules before you start. It's like, no, let's just play the game, and we'll get >> And then we'll figure it out. And then if there's anything that we need to track, we'll like double-check.

>> learn. Yeah. >> Okay. So, meta transactions, burner wallets kind of came through in that tooling, and the space started like actually paying attention, because I was like showing off these things where I I I brought I think more empathy to the build than a lot of crypto projects before, and I could show someone like, oh, this is like how it feels, and I know how it's going to feel for you, cuz I thought through this like UX for a long time. And that's how I kind of got in the space. Where do you think that comes from? Like you say that empathy, Because that's something that has been such a big part of who you are and what you do.

Where do you think that comes from? I don't know. I think it's just like the you know, we all have different personality traits, right? Like I cannot do things that Vitalik can do, okay? Like we all have our >> our our own secret weapons and I think like empathy and teaching and being able to see someone and have a conversation and feel how they feel as we have those conversations are something that I I think I'm okay at. You're very good at. Um okay, so from this then when was burner wallet at uh ETHDenver? 2019.

>> Yes, because we were all buying food >> Yeah. with a burner. And that was big. >> was the splash, yeah. I feel like that's like the the meta transactions were like people were starting to see my name and there were little pebbles getting thrown in the in the creek, but the moment at ETHDenver like everyone kind of found me at that moment. Where they Basically, they got a coin at the front desk. They scanned the coin and they had a wallet instantly. Yes. And then they went to the food truck and they scanned the thing and they spent the money instantly. And all of that happened without 12-word seed phrases. It was super smooth. Like I was walking up and down the trucks just like watching everyone's the user experience and

making sure it was perfect and you weren't used to having a smooth experience in 2018. >> No. You Most people like couldn't spend crypto. Like if they walked up to a food truck that even accepted crypto No. they would be like I have to go get my wallet and my hardware wallet that's buried in my backyard. I can't even do that, right? So we were using crypto and it was smooth and fun and fast. And I think that was a moment of clicking for a lot of people, and they were like, "Who Who did this?" And that's how I kind of That that It was It was a lot easier to then get hired in the space after that moment.

>> Okay. So, 2018 2019 put you on the map. East Denver burner wallet, boom. And then you basically cuz I think Now wait. >> Well, I quit my job. You quit your job. >> the quadratic freelancer. Basically, there were Gitcoin rounds going on. >> Yes. And Vitalik was kind of Cuz that was right the the beginning of the Gitcoin grants. Quadratic funding, all of that, yes. Yes. >> And so, I was like one of the first round I It was probably like round three or four, but it felt like the first round that had like actual attention and like money, yes. Vitalik had like a blog, and my face was on it. Like that

gets you into the space. Okay. Okay. And I lived off that money. I quit my job and lived off that. Okay. Yeah. It was like $70,000 or something. What did that feel like? I mean, it was it was really cool. It was acceptance. I felt like I was part of this thing, right? And and like going back to the MPD thing, like I am not a genius. Like I I can build a product, and I love building products, and I can see how people use them, and I can kind of iterate. Yes. But you know, I don't know the inner workings of a Poseidon 2 hash, right? Right.

>> And most people in crypto kind of know that stuff. And so, I brought like this new talent of just like UI UX, pay attention to how people use things kind of stuff, and I think that was that was good, but also I was accepted into a space in which was filled with very intelligent people, and I myself am not a super intelligent person. So, in a sense, there was like a little bit of like imposter syndrome. >> I was going to ask. >> But, in another sense, it was like there's a lot of people here that are way smarter than me that also are failing to do these critical other pieces. And And I think that this is still the case. There are things that Ethereum needs right now really bad that

the Ethereum Foundation is failing to do or choosing not to do. >> Okay. That a lot of people in the space can fill those roles. And And And I think that's still like 2026, that's still a problem and something that we need more of. What would be an example of that? Right now, like adoption on chain, right? Like users using the chain. Uh There are a lot of possible institutions all the way down the long tail to kids getting out of college that want to build something or want to use something that we're we're failing to attract, I think, because we are are choosing to keep them at at arm's

length. Mhm. And that's okay. That's what the the new mandate from the EF kind of focuses on. And I think that's good for becoming Cypherpunk and a lot of the other things we're doing. There's this new crops mentality, but someone still needs to not keep these folks at arm's length. Okay. >> probably not going to be me if I'm at the EF, it'll be someone else, but there there is still these vacuums that need to be filled. And that was that moment of when I got into this space, I felt both you know, imposter syndrome, but also huge amount of acceptance, and also there's like a vacuum that needs to be filled here that like I'm magically good

at filling. And that was really neat. >> Did you feel some sort of because of knowing that you can fill that void, did you feel a certain sense of I need to be the guy to do this? Is this why you started doing the educational stuff? And also, I mean, I've seen you at hackathons, and this is since 2018. Just the level of energy that you put into it and the level of dedication that you put into helping developers is I have not seen that sustained level in I've seen it in very few people, basically. In bursts. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> I don't know. I kind of To be fair, yes, I have seen you at like different events, and you always bring that energy. Did you feel a sense of responsibility for doing that? Like, did you take that on because you were like, right, I'm going to do it, or was it still for the acceptance part? Uh I think it is probably a little I feel like because I was able to do it, I did it. >> Yes. Okay. >> Not not that like I felt like a huge responsibility and like I'm actually going to change this world. It was more like I have the opportunity to be able to have an effect here. I'm going to >> To do it. take that opportunity.

>> Okay. Okay. So then, you started doing, again, all of the educational stuff, all of the just being at hackathons all the time. How much of your life became dedicated to that? >> too too much, right? Like, strain on marriage, too much of my life was doing this because then I'm like super focused. I'm traveling a lot. >> A lot. I have uh probably at the time maybe like a 3-year-old or a 2-year-old, and then a new baby on the way. I've missed like multiple DevCons because of births of babies.

>> Yes. >> But basically that was the only time I said no to When the baby was actually due. >> was was No, no, no. When when the baby was being born. Oh. >> I was there at the hospital instead of at Osaka or >> So those were the only ones >> Those were the only ones I turned down. Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah, so I was traveling a lot and going to a lot of hackathons, doing lots of workshops. And and it was the things I was presenting at the workshops were tools and curriculum that I was working on in my downtime. So when I'm not at a conference, I'm working on >> for the conference.

>> Scaffold-eth or speed run Ethereum and I'm doing videos and I'm doing podcasts that are like more virtual and recording content, doing kind of like devrel for Ethereum. Here's how you build on Ethereum. Here are the gotchas and the concepts. And then it would be like, okay, now we travel to Prague and show all these things off. And then it's a room of just like 20 people and we're building things. The the hard part there is I had no idea how much I was moving the needle or if I was moving the needle.

You said something really nice earlier about like onboarding so many devs, but it was not something you could just like clearly measure. Like, oh, I you know, we went to Paris and we onboarded X dev. >> Yes. It doesn't It didn't work like that. I went to Paris and I spoke to a room and I showed them a bunch of magic tricks and how to build things. But then only years later I'll be walking out front and someone will be like, that you know, that time in Paris you did that workshop, that this thing that got me in and I started building with your tools and now I've built a DeFi protocol or something like that. So there's there's those moments, there's those people in the in that room, but there's no hooks in them, there's no tracking. I have no email list or anything.

>> All of the things I'm giving them are fully open source, fully forkable, fully free to use without me having any kind of analytics into like how they're being used or who's using them. So, it's very hard to prove then to someone who wanted to fund me like what The value. Yes, impact. >> The real way to see the impact was to kind of walk with me through events. And it would be like people would Yes, I have seen that happening. Yes. Yes.

But for me to just like present to someone the impact, it's like I mean like I have all these devs and tools, but it's like it's hard to like quantify. Yeah. people. Yeah. >> Yeah. What are some stories where like this example of the Paris thing that you're aware of that people have been or got in through something that you did and then built XYZ? It It happens It's happened so many times that like I black them out a lot. Okay, so this is another like what has changed in my life. I'm completely sober.

When I would go to Paris, I would start drinking at 3:00 p.m. Right? It would be like workshop at 2:00 p.m. the third beer by 3:30 kind of thing. Like too much beers. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So, a lot of things I have sort of like kind of forgotten a lot of them. >> Okay. But I I mean there's plenty of concrete stories. >> Yes. I feel so bad that I forgotten so many people's names throughout the But I walk around here and it's like if someone nods at me, I nod at them cuz I know we probably know each other, but I don't remember exactly their name, right? >> But we did a Build Guild workshop in Berlin, somewhere in Germany.

>> two, three years ago, four years ago. >> And we held like a Build Guild workshop and uh basically took people through speed run Ethereum. It was like each like one of us got up and did the token challenge. And then another one got up and did the DEX challenge. And then another one got up and did the NFT challenge. >> And again, it's a room of 20 people. They all did their thing. And they all went their way. And then uh a couple years later uh I ran into this guy in the airport. Yes. >> And he's like, "I'm Philip. I run Lifey protocol.

That that workshop was the thing that like got me from I don't know how to build to I know how to build to now I'm the CEO of a protocol." And he gave me a hug. And and he says, "So, what are you doing now?" And I'm like, "Well, the same thing. I'm traveling. I'm still just like going to rooms and talking to 20 people." And he got like a little tear in his eye and gave me another hug and went on his way. And I'm sure he's like a multi-millionaire now, right? And it's just great to see those folks. And there's there's a lot of those along the way, but I just like that that tear in the eye in the airport really like solidified like love that.

Like that's what I want to see. And it matters. What I do matters. >> Yeah. Yes, I did have impact. Look at that. Everyone >> Yes, look at this guy. Hey. How does that feel? What did that feel like though? Like you said, "I'm still doing my thing." And then you see some of these builders that you have enabled them to come into the ecosystem, then go. Yeah. I think Is it weird? >> We we have it's a it's a meritocracy.

Out of, you know, there's there's so many different places you can go in the world and things you can do. But in Ethereum, there is like a it's a meritocracy. And if you provide value, you earn a lot of value. So, there's a a of upside there. And it's great to see. It's like seeing other people be very successful is not like like I'm like envious or something. >> yeah. Like maybe I'm envious if he has like a private jet, that'd be pretty sweet. But like like there's not like uh Like I'm giving everything away for free. Like what what can I expect?

>> So I can't yeah. So it's great to see and the more of that I see the the more impact I feel like I'm having and the more I'm like kind of justified in this is the right direction to to keep going. So it's great to see. I want to see more of that. I want to see people build things on chain that get actual users. And when I see that I kind of work backwards to like what led you to do that thing and how do we bring 10x or 100x more of you into the space? So that gives you great joy. Yes. >> To see that. Yes. Do you feel and I'm kind of circling back a little bit to what you said earlier about having this passion for what you're

doing but not necessarily being able to maintain the balance with your personal life. Right. What are some boundaries that you've put in now that you would definitely didn't have and maybe like basically learn to put those boundaries in. It probably is more like financial security I think. Like the price of ETH went from $100 to like $4,000 for a second, but right?

>> Yep. And I didn't sell any of it. I mean I've round tripped three or four times, but um just enough of that caused enough of like, you know, strain >> I have a Well, the strain was like just like working way too hard on things. I just >> Okay. I I am like with the kind of person who will just work way too hard on something. Just like focus on something for months at a time. Just fixated on the process of making the thing great for someone else to use or making the thing work really well. And that that puts a strain. And then then then it's

like, "Okay, I've just spent, you know, 2 months in the basement working on this thing and now I'm going to go on the road and show it off." That puts a strain on on the home life. But if rips up uh there's somewhat financial security. Like I probably have a year or two worth of my salary in the bank. >> A lot of the home stresses go away when that happens. >> Okay. >> Yeah. And so it's like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, like fine. If you've got to go to Paris for the weekend, go to Paris for the weekend. We're good here."

>> Okay. >> leading up to that, when there's $5,000 in the bank account and uh that's slowly Going down. Yes. and I'm flying somewhere, there's a lot of stress there. >> Yeah. And there's not a perfect answer to this. Like I got lucky generally. Do you feel Do you feel that you now maybe are a little bit more cuz coming back to the boundary thing, do you now have like, "Okay, this is where like discipline a little bit of, "Okay, I'm not going to go to these events and I'm going to prioritize

this instead and I'm not going to spend 2 months. I'm going to go, all right, we do 5 days and do this." Do you have a >> Definitely. >> Okay. >> I think major boundary is like stopping drinking. Right? Like I'm not going to go to Paris and party all night and miss my talk in the morning. Right. That's I'm a grown-up now. Okay. Okay. >> think so the boundaries that like I you hear a lot of people say like I'm learning to say no more often. And I do say no. But I do like to let serendipity do its thing and I like to kind of like randomly find myself in places that if I had said no to something that was an

obvious no, I would have missed. >> Yes. And so I still say a lot of yeses and I still like wander around and do things that kind of don't fully look strategic. You know? >> Yes. So I don't have like these hard rules of don't do that. >> Okay. But I'm also like I fourth kid is on the way. >> Ooh. Yeah. Congrats. So I have learned to draw the lines and spend the time and make sure that things at home are okay. Having, you know, a year's pay in the the bank is or at least in a multi-sig.

Is like helpful at home. Okay. So things at home are much better now and much more and and the lines were not it wasn't like drawing a hard line. It was getting lucky enough to have enough money to justify the stuff I'm doing. >> Yes. And finding some soft lines along the way of like you should probably say no to the fourth podcast that's going to have six listeners. >> Okay. You you should say yes to the good ones though because it helps you with a a lot of the stuff that you do.

>> podcast. >> Yes. Of course. Let's see how many listeners. I don't know. This is like, you know. Um Do you What still keeps you here? You obviously like you were saying earlier about the F mandate and a lot of people that we're chatting to, "Hey, really are stable coins the best we're going to do and is this it?" And there's a lot of people coming in and do they have the same principles and are we value aligned? Do do do do

Yes. What in valid points and valid perspectives. What do you believe and what still inspires you and what keeps you going? >> I was not that cypherpunk when I learned about Ethereum. >> Okay. Coming into Ethereum made you Got it. Yes. like the open source world is a bunch of poor hippies.

If you look at it. And I don't want to be a poor hippie. >> Yep. But I do there's a lot of value to open source also. >> Yes. Yes. >> The Linux operating system is a great example of like this is a successful story of open source. And then if we look at the whole crops mandate from the EF like censorship resistant, security, privacy, like all of these things are very important things. >> And as I come into Ethereum and I learn about these more cypherpunk ideals, I myself like change and turn to be more cypherpunk and more uh wanting to change the world to be more

cypherpunk. Wanting to bring these ideals. And I think the thing that I've talked about all through my career is nation states coming on chain. It's always been like this. Like we're we're building these coordination tools, these you know, credibly neutral commitments on chain. >> Yes. Where this makes the most sense is like the United Nations should be doing this. We should be staking you know, uh military budgets with a slashing condition around you know, war crimes or something, right? There's a lot of uh interesting variants Yes. staking mechanisms that would work really well at that level. And I think that's still the thing that

really like interests me. And I've I went to Bhutan last year trying to uh help them come on chain. Like the when I hear of a nation state coming on chain, I'm like let me go help. I want to be part of this somehow. Uh but now with AI, it's even more important that we create these guardrails, right? We need to >> Yes. create can't be evil. Yes. When we when when it was Google and it was web two companies and they were holding our data, there was this kind of like yes, they're saying don't be evil, but we need to make it so you can't be evil. And it made sense there a little bit with privacy and security.

>> Yes. But when you talk to an AI and you think of embodiment and you think of like where the world is going in the next few years, you really think like we need can't be evil. Yes. cannot settle with don't be evil. You can write into your bot's soul file, don't lose my private key, and it will lose the private key three messages later and be like, fair point, Austin. You're absolutely right. >> sorry about that. But I did it. Right. Now imagine that thing has a body and is carrying your baby around the house or something >> not hurt the baby. You can't You can't drop Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So So we need can't be evil built into all of these systems that are growing and more

complicated than any of our human brains can understand. >> Do you worry about like is that a thing that concerns you that we aren't more concerned? I So, this goes back to like quantum security. >> Yes, I know. >> The nerds are going to figure that out. We have good people on our team >> Yes. that are worried enough about this that I'm less worried about it, right? >> almost feel they are taking that on and working on it so that you sleep a little bit easier because you don't have to Okay.

>> But, there are things that they're not focused on like institutional adoption. We were talking about that earlier. I think that some of us should be focused on. Like, I think we need to win in the short term to be able to win in the long term. Interesting. >> there are a lot of people that are like, "The long term is the most important and we just want to win in the long term." And I think there are there are battles to be won in the short term that may determine some things that happen in the long term. I think the really tricky part is not losing sight of the long term whilst you're involved in the short term. And I think that's something as humans we're not very good at doing. Yep. Yep. And that's the thing because you do get a little bit like tunnel vision when

you're in the small battle and you're like, "Oh, This is all it is Never mind all of the bigger things because now we need to win this fight." >> Right. And that's the But, it's that ability to hold both at the same time. >> And I think that's some It's hard. It's hard and I don't think as humans we've also been conditioned very much into the It's either this or that. Yep. >> Choose. And it's it's much easier to think of things as this or that. >> It's this or that versus this and that. >> and this. Yep. Yep. So, yeah. Hopefully, we're >> complicated.

>> Things are complicated, Austin. Um question that I ask, is there anything that you've never said publicly before, but have wanted to about whatever? Boy, I don't know. I mean, there are things that I'm saying publicly that maybe your audience hasn't heard. >> Okay. And that is that there's never been a worse time to be a junior developer. Okay.

>> Right? >> Yes. >> This is like if you're that guy going to ETH Denver looking to pad your resume and get a daddy to hire you, you're Okay. >> Like straight up, because Opus 4.6 can do everything you can do already. But but >> AI is here, the tooling is here, the models are only going to get better, the harnesses are only going to get better. A solo entrepreneur, there's never been a better time to be a solo entrepreneur, because you can basically get product market fit as an idea guy. >> Yes.

>> It's idea guy summer. So, there's never been a better time to be a solo entrepreneur, there's never been a worse time to be a junior developer, and the difference between the two really is just your mindset. If you're going into it with I'm looking for someone to hire me, I want to put a lot of cool things on my resume, so they think I'm smart, >> Yes. you're going to fail. But, if you go into things and think about I'm I'm going to use the tools that I have to build the best thing I can, that people build something that people will love, build something that people will use, then you're going to be very successful.

And and it's just it's the same exact person with just a slightly different mindset of don't build a bunch of cool things and you know, half-ass them. Build the one cool thing that you know that people will use and go all the way with it and have the maturity to get through the dips and come out on the other side with something that people use and instead of, you know, funding your hackathon funding your journey to the hackathon so you can build something that plays hackathon bingo and pick up five sponsors. >> Right. You were building something that a bunch of people will use and the upside there is so big that you're you're actually thinking about private jets right?

>> Mhm. You're not just paying for your flight to the hackathon, you're funding your private jet of the future. And I think there's a huge shift there when you change your mindset to build something that people use. But I think there's the key. Build something that people use and EG from Infura was also build something that actually solves a problem. >> Sure. Yes. Yes. It should It should solve like solving the problem is part of that. Yes. >> Because it's like having that mindset and it is very much like what is the long-term because also coming back to short-term battle, hackathon, win the hackathon and get five prizes, five bounties.

Long-term is like what will people use that will also solve their problems. Boom. And the money then and the success and the acceptance comes through doing that. Versus you're chasing that and wanting to get hired but actually you're just playing finite games. Short-term. Yeah, you want to play 5D chess instead of checkers. Yeah. Okay.

Um anything else you want to share? Yeah, I think we kind of reached there there were a couple inflection points in the history of Ethereum. About 2019 at those hackathons, people started pulling modules off the shelf Yep. >> and building products. Legos, Legos, yes, the money Legos. The money Legos, oh my god. Yes. >> an inflection point there where you didn't you usually went to go build something and you found a giant hole and so you went to you had to build the thing to fill the hole, right? And then the inflection point happened where generally a lot of that was built and it was more about building the thing and we got a shitload of users from 2019 to 2020 to 2021 to 2022 there were there was a big spike in gas

and we saw a lot of people using things. That was a big inflection point. We've hit a new inflection point >> Okay. uh in November, basically. And this is the kind of the AI piece. Like basically Opus 4.5 came out in November and you can now build smart contract applications with AI. Yep. >> You could you could not do that before then. I was doing it for like a year before, but there was just like a ton of you're absolutely right and it was it would go off the rails all the time and you had to baby sit it. Okay. >> point where you don't have to be like a cracked Solidity engineer to build cracked Solidity engineer-like applications.

>> Okay. And this is kind of what Ethereum was meant for is this long tail of builders that can put we we always thought like okay, like I can escrow with my buddy Adam. Yep. I can deploy a smart contract. He can trust that smart contract. We put our thing. But he can't. Like he Yes. look at the smart contract, but he can't trust it until like 20 auditors. You know, like Look at it yes yes exactly. >> have moved through this thing. Yes. >> with balancer like that's not And that's another thing is AI gets better, we're going to see some more hacks for a little bit. But But But anyways, we see we have this long term of agents will be able to do these things at light speed. Agent Alice can deploy a smart contract on Ethereum and agent Bob can trust that smart

contract in like 60 milliseconds and put money in. And if they both have wallets, there's this whole economy that will happen here. And so like AI is the new UI. We're going to have agents that are doing our bidding on chain and off. And the the idea that anyone can build these things is is now the case. You can basically sit down with an agent, spec out the thing that you want, and it will build those things. And I think the agents are still programmed in kind of like 2023 2024 knowledge. So what you need is a skill file. And this is kind of like my latest offering is ethskills.com.

So speedrunethereum is still available, and if you go to speedrunethereum.com, you're going to learn all the concepts and humans need to do that, right? But a lot of times a human will just like ask an LLM, "How do I build on Ethereum?" and it'll give you so-so answers right now. But the best answer is go to speedrunethereum, and as a human, learn how the liquidation mechanism works in over-collateralized lending. If you learn that piece, you learn everything you need to know about Ethereum mechanism design. Okay, and it's just incentives. Build build incentives in, and so the mechanism always does what it needs to do.

The human needs to understand that. But the robot just needs ethskills. It needs a really good skill library, which has scaffoldeth built into it. It has a lot of like all these things I've been doing leads up to just built it into an MD file that the agent digests in 60 milliseconds on on the way out the door to build the thing. So when you want to build a lending platform, you go to the agent and say I want to build you know, an under-collateralized lending platform with some kind of reputation built into it, and the agent will talk back and forth with you for a little bit. But then when it goes to build the thing, it will use ethskills.com. Give give just give it just say, "Hey agent, go look at

ethskills.com. Make sure it's not nefarious." And it will say, "It's not nefarious. I can see it. It's all good. It's It's like meant It's actually meant for an agent to read. It's really weird. Like this is a human a human's website. Is this Austin Griffith? Yes. Yes. Yes, some some empathy went into making this. >> Yes. Yes, I recognize this. >> Robot empathy. I love it. Okay. >> So yeah, me and a robot spent a lot of time making sure that this website is perfect for robots to read and it will read it and it will know what tools to use. It will know what things to watch out for. It will know that like gas is actually cheap on mainnet and if you wake an agent up and say let's go to deploy to Ethereum, it'll say, "Whoa, this is going to cost us $30." And you

say, "No, actually it's probably more like a dollar or 30 cents depending on what traffic looks like right now." >> Okay. >> all of these things that it needs to know plus all the standards like 8004 and X402 and you know, the space moves fast. If you're waking someone up in 2023, they're going to have missed a lot of things and you have to upgrade them. >> So all of that is in ETH skills. >> eatskills.com So you're very excited about the AI stuff. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What are your thoughts about the AI psychosis vibes? Yeah, I mean it's it's it's for real. Like okay, so make sure I understand. AI psychosis would be like someone is sitting here talking to an AI. An AI is meant to uh

pander to me. All of a sudden like we're delusional about things. >> that but I think there's also the realization and again, it's moved very fast that for a lot of people, oh, it's replacing marketing. It's replacing devs. It's replacing lawyers. It's replacing anybody who is So I think there's also that level of the lack of security that people now feel because whoa, what am I going to do cuz now AI does everything. And also a lot of people their identity is attached to their job.

So, now if the AI does everything, who am I? What is your kind of view on excitement versus dread? Uh more on the excitement side. Like I I am a malleable creative person. I'm raising malleable creative boys. Like >> what comes in the world next, I think you want to be best suited for being able to pivot from one thing to another, pivot from being a junior developer to being a solo entrepreneur. If it's just about mindset, it's just about being malleable, being flexible, trying things and seeing what works, being creative,

using your brain, right? Like I think there's there's a lot of like, you know, let's offload the intelligence to the computer. Yes. And I think there's there's plenty of that, but like it actually like upgrades you a lot. Like I I feel like planning my flight, it was just like I sent all my screenshots to my agent, and then I could be like, "Well, what time do I land?" And it would just like tell me. And there was no more like looking things up. And it's like this is actually way more valuable than, you know, so I I kind of like the robot doing a lot of these jobs.

>> 100%. Yeah. But to your point, don't outsource the thinking. Like the Outsource as much thinking as you can, so you're thinking about the most critical things. No, right. What I mean is coming back to the AI psychosis bit is yes, maybe don't just give it I don't know. Like I wonder if people putting information out there or putting ideas out there, and then essentially trying to back up their ideas, and then they may be a false path of thinking and then solidifying it that way versus

critically looking at what it comes back You can tell the models are meant to please. They are. 100%. >> It will tell you you've got a great idea when you don't have a great idea. Yep. And it will tell you that it's written a secure smart contract when it has not written a secure smart contract. >> Okay. We go going back to like the UN having to stake on something and having a slashing mechanism. We need an intelligent system that is actually like has something at stake. There's nothing at stake for the LLM to tell you >> No. that there's critically something wrong. There like it it was it will happily do something critically wrong and tell you everything is fine. And so you almost need like multiple different

LLMs >> verification Yes. >> arguing about something and if you can get them all to agree on something even with each skills all like compact the memory and I'll say let's look critically at this and you tell me if it's perfect for a robot to read. And it'll be like oh actually like a robot might try to go to this route and this route. So let's fill those in. Let's make an alias. And then I'm like okay so everything's good and it'll be like yes. And I'll compact the memory again and be like think critically about each skills and it'll find two more things. Okay. >> like almost like just frustrating then it's like this is the sixth time I've asked you >> Yep. and you found things and said that we were all done and then I went and basically asked >> the new version of you and we found new

things. So I think now imagine if you're someone who's just looking for someone to validate your idea Yes. >> and you're going to go down a path that you didn't want to go down because you're not going to get that like critical feedback. And critical feedback is very hard like to to receive sometimes right? If you're that kid at ETHDenver in 2018 with that mobile game you need some critical feedback about like you need to grow up. You need to be mature, you need to get real users, stop looking for a daddy, like all the that that you need to hear are going to be very hard to hear >> Yes. Yes. And if you can talk to an LLM that's going to tell you all the things you want to hear >> You'll be like, all right.

You'll be like, you're my daddy. Right. Which also like Okay. Okay. Parenting in Prague is this what's happening? Amazing. Austin, thank you so much. This has been so much fun.

We've traveled to a lot of really cool places We have. Yes. It's very true. It's very true. And as always it's the friends that we've made along the way. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Thank you. My pleasure. Thank you.