Bankless - Mariano Conti | Layer Zero

Episode Date: October 5, 2021

Mariano Conti is a pillar in the crypto space. Known for revolutionizing smart contracts with Maker, he has built a long resume of building and investing in key projects. He's also a fascinating human being with a unique story. Tune in to hear Mariano's takes on how the pandemic shaped crypto's narrative, Bull vs Bear markets, finding passion and community, and his musings on going anonymous. ------ 📣 ZERION | Your Gateway to the Metaverse! https://bankless.cc/Zerion  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/  🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/  🎖 CLAIM YOUR BADGE: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/-guide-2-using-the-bankless-badge  ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: 💰 GEMINI | FIAT & CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/go-gemini​  💧LIDO | DECENTRALIZED STAKING https://bankless.cc/Matcha  👻 AAVE | LEND & BORROW ASSETS https://bankless.cc/aave  🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants/dharma  ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 3:30 Mariano Conti’s Travels 8:17 Crypto & COVID 11:58 Financial Concerns 20:42 New Paradigm 28:22 New vs Old 34:32 Attention Maximalist 40:30 Mariano Pre-Crypto 50:14 Early Engineering & Investing 55:48 Work Ethic & Passion 1:01:09 Cult & Society 1:06:55 Churn 1:11:00 Builder-Focused Community 1:15:53 Clout, Ego, and Twitter 1:22:32 Anon & What’s Next 1:32:06 Closing ------ Resources: Mariano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nanexcool?s=20  ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Welcome to Layer Zero. Layer Zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the Ethereum community. Crypto is built by code, but it's composed by people, and each individual member of the community has their own story to tell. Cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it, and Layer Zero focuses on the people behind the code because Ethereum is people all the way down, and it always has been.

Today we're talking with Mariano Conti, who is one of my best friends in this space, absolutely, and is one of the most foundational builders, I would say. He worked at the Maker Foundation, working on basically all aspects of the MakerDal contracts. But he got actually into Ethereum before Ethereum was even a thing. So he was one of the first people to live a bankless life, if you will, and started receiving money for his code in Bitcoin. And that's how he got introduced into the whole Bitcoin space. And a lot of people know Mariano's story.

It's his story. So every time he goes onto a podcast and anyone ever asked, like, hey, Mariano, how did you get into crypto? He tells the story. But as soon as Mariano and I are done having reflections about the current state of crypto in 2021, I start at that point in the story where he got into crypto, but then I start going backwards, not forwards, which is something new that I haven't heard before out of Mariano's background. And then, of course, we finish right where we left off back around to current state of crypto in 2021, but this time with a different angle.

I hope you guys enjoy the conversation with Mariano Conti. But before we get there, a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. The era of proof of stake is upon us. Proof of stake systems like Ethereum, Terra, and Solana allow the industry to move away from the hot, loud, and wasteful. proof of work systems and return back to a cottage industry of individual stakers and individual validators. And that is what we need to make this industry stay decentralized.

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Yeah, it's been a long time since I've seen you in that particular room. Yeah, I've been missing this one. It's weird. After a year and a half of seeing myself talking to others with this background, then I spent more than three months away yeah away from home away from Argentina so where everywhere in the world

did you go before you came back home to Argentina I did the U.S. a lot road trip from Miami to San Francisco went to see friends in Seattle went back to Miami did a little stop somewhere

in the US for something. Then I think at the Paris, Mexico, Punta Mita, which is like a nice place in Mexico. It's a beach resort. Then what else?

Then Miami again. Then Denver, then New York. Then a fourth time Miami and then back to Buenos Aires. Yeah. You know, it was it was weird. I, we were just traveling with my girlfriend and Miami was the original destination and we had the

return tickets there. So it was like our hub in the US and I left. Yeah, I left at a different time that my girlfriend. So Miami became our, yeah, like our center in the US. Even though it's the place probably that I, you know, traveled the least inside. I just stayed in the hotel the whole time. But yeah, it was interesting, interesting months. Out of all of these travels that you've done recently, how much of it was crypto-specific or crypto travels and how much of it was just like Mariano exploring the world? I think it was almost half. It was crypto or a little bit less than half. So the original idea was just to do the road trip, right, to rent a car and drive it from Miami to San Francisco and we did that and on the on the road I met a few crypto friends

but that wasn't you know the the main idea for the road trip so in a couple of places I don't know in Vegas I went to see a meme at his you know layer I saw I think I saw Hudson and Johnny from Element in Dallas but there were like sporadic you know the main idea was was traveling and but then after yeah you know it's cc in paris that was entirely crypto mcon in Denver and then you know main net and the doge party in new york that was 100% crypto Mexico I was supposed to see the some somebody from the crypto community there but in the end I you know I spent most of the time with family and I couldn't

see anybody and then I felt bad because I got a lot of messages when I said that I was going to be in Mexico from the you know the crypto community there which was very impressive and I lived there for a long time so it's like it's my second home and it was like oh I don't know I felt weird people were saying oh Mariano is coming to to Mexico City it's like they wanted to organize things and take me out for coffee or beer or tacos or whatever. And they were like, oh, you don't have a car. You're staying for a month. I'll loan you a car.

Like, do you need an apartment? Yeah, it felt like really good. Mexicans are incredible. I want to circle back to that. But overall, I want to ask. You've been in crypto since like 2013 or 2014 when you first started playing around with Bitcoin. before there was really a big community, right? Late 2014.

Late 2014? So like, yeah. Now, now that we are on the other side of COVID, how has, like, crypto in real life changed? Or how is it different or new now that, like, the crypto community is hanging out with each other post-2020, right? Like, we had everyone, the whole entire society, all of the world got locked down, right?

We all had to go into hiding. And now not only is society. like coming out of hiding and like redefining itself like crypto especially is is coming out of COVID but also in extremely different context right like post defy summer post Bitcoin and ether breaking all time highs post NFTs becoming a global phenomenon so like for somebody that's been in the crypto in crypto society for a very long time what's it been like to do in real life crypto stuff all over the world for the past like year or so um first first of it was incredible you know going to paris and seeing people there after that was my first crypto

conference after a year and a half um i know a lot of people went to a bitcoin miami and which you know it wasn't an an ethereum conference but i hear there were a lot of ethereum people and defy people there that uh you know kind of co-opted the city and some of the parties for me it was uh it was paris And it was incredible. First, you know, seeing friends after so long. We're, we're growing the community. But, you know, there's a core that is still like a, it feels like a tiny one, you know, just like a group of friends.

Who we were defining and creating defy together a few years ago. And it feels like either we did our thing and now doing something else or continuing to do it and seeing everybody in Paris felt a little bit like that and then on the other hand noticing that actually the community had grown a lot and there were there were plenty of people who i had never met in person before because they had joined the you know in defy summer maybe a bit later there was uh the entire nfti community some of them people who we know from before that got into it but then also so many new players and then maybe of course but i don't know why i even mentioned this but it always exists what we call tourists right people who

got into this uh during the bull market and you know when we're back to a period of uh peace and quiet meaning that if it does happen, right, the prices end up dropping again and stay down for a large amount of time. These are the people who will say, hey, I'm out of here. I was only in it for the tech, but they weren't. But all in all, I felt that it was still very much the community that I know and love, you know, the friends. we've made along the way. And,

okay, I'm going to be completely honest. From last time, can I say this? Almost everybody that's OG that got rich. I mean,

let's not bit around the bush. No. Okay. If transparent, ledgers are transparent, we know this. Exactly. So many people

do not have financial self-concern us anymore and this is this is an entirely real thing and and it did change a lot of us but I think like for the better it's and it's interesting because you talk to these people like we're all friends with being through a lot together we've been through maybe one or two bear markets and we spent a lot of time building and we spent most of COVID building I remember when the pandemic was starting, I was in, I was in Warsaw and Black Monday was, Black Thursday was happening, you know. And even though we knew that at that point, DFI was pretty much going to survive instead of, you know, the drops in 2018 and everything, I know a lot of people that had a really

tough time. And then I would say 99% of the OGs who stood by and continued, they're, yeah, they're very well off now. And either if they're still continuing to build or not or they're doing other things, it's, I don't know how to describe it. It's, yeah, community of friends that we now have yet another thing in common and we can talk with each other about this kind of thing that essentially changes you in a way but also frees you it's incredibly liberating you have all this space in your brain and you know this brain power that doesn't have to worry you know about survival anymore right maybe it's like oh Oh. Food and rent are taken care of. So now we can move on to bigger and better things.

Exactly. It's like, I'm done with this. This part is I never have to worry again. I mean, hopefully, right? Hopefully, right. And yeah. And it is great talking to friends that are in that situation. And also I see a lot of people becoming more creative, more daring, being able to take more risks. So I think this was just incredible for everybody, you know, a generation of builders, of investors, of believers that it paid off for them. It is decently surreal when we go to these Ethereum conferences, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Comerces too, but the ones I'm used to are the Ethereum conferences. And I look around and so everyone kind of just assumes that like everyone else is doing like pretty well. all for themselves, right? Like, there's just this air of just like, what's the word? Abundance around.

And, like, I'm a little bit, I feel like I should be a little bit concerned because that feels very topy, right? It feels like a top signal, right? It's like, okay, everyone around me is wealthy, like, damn, that's got to be the top. But also at the same time, the whole point about crypto is that we supposedly have found ways to fund this whole thing that's sustainable, right? Kevin O'Walky calls this like regenerative finance, right? And so, like, I feel like we're in that like Schrodinger's phase.

We're like, is this a top or is this a new paradigm? Like, we don't actually know. But kind of like to your point, like what you said, like there are so many builders who suffered through the 2018, 2019 bear market and built all the way through it that like, well, I mean, of course they made a bunch of money when they came out the other side. Like they're the ones when you suffer the pain of 18 and 19, like you get to suffer the suffer the euphoria of 2020 and 2021.

Right. And but when you look around, I mean, I agree that on the one hand, you see people in, I don't know, dressed in Prada and things like that, but I still dress like shit. But don't you also feel like like, you know, yeah, but it is. well-deserved. It's like... Sure. I mean, of course we think this.

Yeah. We think this. Yeah. But yeah, at the same time, like, we keep on talking about, hey, like, new paradigm. Crypto is a new, new fundamental asset class. It's a new economic foundation. At the end of the day, it kind of makes sense that, like, everyone who would go to, like, the Ethereum Community Conference, which has been an ongoing conference ever since

2015 or 16, I think. Like, well, I mean, it... It's the only way that this would ultimately happen, right? Like the people bootstrapping the economy obviously get financially compensated for those actions. Yeah, completely. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really happy that it happened. And like I said, this changes the dynamics a lot.

And in my opinion, it's going to let a lot of people and a lot of teams, you know, build. differently, built with more conviction, last bull market. Most of us still didn't know a lot of things. And I tend to put almost everybody in the same bag. I feel comfortable doing that because I've spoken, and I'm friends with so many projects inside Ethereum that, you know, I can generalize, of course, there's outliers. But when I say something,

in the general, I feel confident that it mostly was that way. A lot of projects, they now know, like, I'm an extreme Ethereum Voltart, but even I know that, yeah, we know where it is going, but this is an asset class that in the end is still affected by macro, by whatever you want to call it. And it's not going to always behave the way we know. that it should, right? So, and a lot of projects didn't know this back then or didn't prepare for it. So, you know, even the Ethereum Foundation was selling ether at the bottom and consensus

to, you know, pay their engineers and pay people. And a lot of projects did that. And a lot of them were on the verge of closing. You know, because a lot of them did close. A lot of them did. And, but also with that with that scarcity we got things like you know malloc down in February 2019 in like depth of the of the bear market why because you know I mean Cassandra and a few others they decided hey we the community we're going to take matters into our own hands and if we can we're going to bootstrap a grand style and just like hand out money to projects to do to do you continue building and this was what little little remaining money that we had yeah yes yeah and the yes i'm in and consensus yes uh i'm in and a few of us in the community that uh that i'm in ping

were like yes we're in and out of that you know exploded a whole bunch of dows and the ecosystem as we know know it now. So I don't know. I think everything we need to make sure that whatever is happening that we make the best of it. So I think we did so in the bear market. And I hope we do that in the bull market. And, you know, projects are now a little bit more diversified when they can, but also extremely bullish when they can. And yeah, I mean, I've never been more excited to be part of this community, really. And one thing that I think is significantly different from 2017 and why, like, when I juxtapose, like, is this the top or is this the new paradigm?

Points for the new paradigm side of things are the fact that, like, everything being built here seems to be much more sustainable than in 2017, right? In 2017, it was like spin up a website, spin up a white paper, receive like $100 million in funding. we still have that sort of like ape tendency and things get overfunded very very quickly but it's on the backs of a much more real and sustainable like set of projects that are being funded right these aren't these are no longer ideas with the white paper anymore like maybe people are still aping in like a hundred million dollars into some brand new thing that just got spun up but that thing that just got spun up is something real right and so like the speculative energy is still there but like these projects that are coming out in 2021 are seemingly much more sustainable than anything we've ever seen in previous bull markets. And so like, and it's also really important, like when we have, while I think you and I look back upon like the 2018, 2019, and we aren't the only ones and look back on it with nostalgia,

right? Like there's a lot of people who was like, we all wanted the bear market to end back then, but now with like this absolute mania back then, we also are all kind of wishing for simpler times to have this like bear market come back so we could all be quiet and like have a quiet come by yaw community. Also at the same time having these builders like you and Amin and like these leaders like Eric Connor who made it through the bear market can and then provably like did well for themselves after the fact. I think that gives a lot of conviction and a lot of like a lot of people willing to take risks

on to build these new things, right? To enable an inspiring new generation of builders so that like we went through the bear market so you don't have to, right? Like you didn't come in when it was like the weirdest time ever to build something on an Ethereum which was 2018 and 2019. But you are here now and like look what building did

for the people that came before you, right? And so like hopefully that was like the bear market to end all bear markets. and as a community of sustainable builders, we can build things where that indicate to future people like, hey, even if you do build through a bear market, you come out on the other side, okay. And like we've kind of, now that we're building more sustainable things,

like you should be okay regardless. I hope so. I hope so. And yeah, you know, one of the things I do now, you know, as an angel investor and advisor, or it's just I talked to projects. And I did this as well with the, you know, some young founders in right now during my travels, you know, in Paris, Denver, New York, a couple of other places. They asked for my advice.

I mean, in the end, we start talking about the old days, you know, about 2018, 2019, because that's what they end up enjoying the most. it's like talking about how we built certain things and just so they make sure that they don't make the same mistakes with it and this is something I mentioned all the time it's when we were I look now and it's gonna it's gonna get better there's proposals and everything but like maker governance right now there's delegation and something but it's just not very easy to use it is complicated but why is it right when we were building it I would I looked behind my

shoulder and there was nothing there was nobody I could hey can we talk about that we were inventing everything we didn't know who to base or what to base ourselves so we just built something and yeah it wasn't the greatest thing but it was the first and then compound came and they they benefit from what we built and they build something so much better that now it's it's basically you know governor alpha bravo on the comp token they're the uh the standard i would say of you know governance uh on ethereum projects and others and now i like to think element they looked at what compound data now are coming up with maybe governance 3.0 or whatever and so that is what i like to just talking to projects and saying and that's what they

get the most out of just like doing that talking about the things we built and the mistakes we made so yeah i think and also i think when you if listeners tune into like me and anthony zanah we do a semi regular live streams every friday now and then we ultimately end up just talking about the way things were right it's like we all everyone who went through 2018, 2019, ultimately always ends up talking about it. And I think it's actually important, right? Because it offers like history lessons for so many of the newcomers that have come in 2020 and 2021. It's important to, I think, broadcast and advertise like, hey, what it was like to be in crypto in 2018 and 2019 when literally the world just forgot about crypto.

And what they do remember was like the ICO scams and not, well, because that's basically the only thing there was to remember, right? Yeah. Also, you know, yeah, back then, and this is also why I think that now is a great time to build. And there is still, like, back then there was ICO scams, just a white paper and nothing more and get a ton of funding, right? Right now there are equivalents. I've been working on a script. I'm probably never going to release it, but it, I get an idea and the script uses the name chip API to purchase a domain name, change the DNS to like a server that I have, create a template for a smart contract for a 10,000 PFP drop, set up like a standard website,

and then all I need to do is change the CSS a little bit. and I mean what else can I automate create a Discord create a Twitter handle and you know in a day you can have a 10K NFT drop

and you probably earn a nice bit of change with that if you set it to 0.05 you can maybe make I don't know 500 eth I know it's crazy and out of mostly automated things. But that is the cynic in me.

On the other hand, yeah, the ICO projects, they were building, they were creating these games, but there was also nothing there. There was Maker we were building, but we hadn't released yet. There were only like five protocols out there, and none of them on Mainet. You know, there was Auger, there was DIGs. Right. I remember when talking to new people, I always look back on like when I got into Ethereum in 2017 and early 2018. I was like, why was I excited about Ethereum?

I can't remember anything. Like, Ethereum itself was cool, but there was nothing on Ethereum to actually be excited about. Like, if you wanted to go trade tokens, you had to go to Binance. Yeah, I mean, I suggest you go, you grab your oldest account and just go to Ether scan. and go to the transactions and go through them, like, from oldest to newest and see. See what I was up to? Yeah. No, you'd be surprised there's more, there's probably more than you remember.

I went through this because of the Y, the X. And I had an account where, I don't remember, probably 2018 something, I don't know, interacting with the YDX. I need to double check, but, you know, CryptoKitties, 2017. Ether Delta, what was it? Ether Delta. Maybe 2016 even. I don't know.

But like you said, there was not a lot. And now, whatever you're building or whatever anybody's building that's new, there's at least a foundation, right? You already have, you know, protocols for liquidity, for swapping. You have stable coins. Stable coins have been one of the biggest factors to keep the money inside the blockchain, right? Inside Ethereum. Back then it was, oh, I need to exit.

It's like you had to exit to a centralized exchange, trade it for what? Best you could do is owning tether on Binance. Or tether, yeah. And it wasn't even on the Ethereum blockchain. It was on Omni. Omni Tether. Oh, Omni Tether. Remember Omni?

Yes. Yeah. Remember it was a big deal. And then suddenly... And suddenly it was all on Ethereum. E.C-20 tether. Yeah. And now you can just...

If you trust the system, right? And if you, like, believe that USDC is not going to... You know, black... Yeah. Blacklaced your address. And if you believe that dye is going to maintain the peg or L-E-O-D or you want to... to be in rye or you want to be in fracks or in um or in any of the i don't know dozens of projects that now exist there's absolutely no reason to leave and i mostly don't uh you know leave ethereum um the only bridge you know the only side chain i played with a little bit is polygon

uh and now you know l2's uh arbitrum um abridged you know a few ETH to play with that but I've never I don't know maybe I should because I've been telling people I've becoming more of an Ethereum

Maxi as as time goes on as time goes on and I have a different definition of maxi which I'll say it in a minute but I always used to be very open-minded it's like, no, no, I'll give everything a chance, I'll try everything.

But now, I mean, I've never used Solana. I've never used Avalanche. I never used Phantom. I don't think I ever used Binance. And I like staying there. I realize that I'm one of the lucky few that wasn't priced out. Yeah, right. I was not priced out.

And this is a funny anecdote. A lot of Argentinians, you know, I've been advocating the usage of die ever since I got into this. And this is the reason I got into this originally. And it's still in my mind to, you know, serve and people in an undeserving economy and help them free themselves from inflation and capital controls. That is still, that was still, I don't know if it's still front and center. I think that I fought my fight and now it's in the hands of

other people Yeah But that was the original goal, right? And so many Argentinians They got onboarded To die and they had to use uniswap And they had to use pull together And then they

They got a lot of money from air drops And it was incredible But then during DFI summer They were priced out But because there were they were some of the first people who got priced out. There were some of the first who got into Binance and into whatever projects are there. You know, the cakes and the beefies and I don't know what else is there.

And they ended up making a lot of money because they were the first priced out of Ethereum. And, you know, there were some of the first to get into Polygon. And I'm not going to begrudge anybody from making money. That's not why I'm here. It did break my heart a little bit that they got price. out. So hopefully, you know, now that we have Arbitrum and now that we're getting optimism and that, you know, we have the CK roll-ups and hopefully we're going to get them back into the fault because I still believe that this is not just about playing with Defi. It's also the ethos of

decentralization that I'm believer that Ethereum is the only, the most credibly neutral blockchain chain out there. And, you know, we saw what happened with Solana being down for a while. And, yeah. But it was interesting, you know, seeing this and watching people and then making a lot of money in these other chains. But me, I don't. I don't use them. I stay on Ethereum. And when I say I'm an Ethereum maxi, I'm an attention maximalist. It's like, my attention. Yeah. But my attention is an. Ethereum. Like right now, I'm not full-time, right? I, Angel Invest, I help out some projects, but mostly I've been enjoying my life. And I think that, you know, I deserve a little bit of rest,

been traveling, everything. So the limited time that I have, and also, uh, I'm already 40 years old, so declining, uh, mental cognitive abilities or whatever. At 40. Well, it's been a, It's been a journey, man. Sure, right. Five years in defy. Yeah, right. I'm like fucking Harold here. The weight of the maker's,

maker oracles on your shoulders. Exactly. With the limited time that I have, I don't have enough bandwidth even for what's happening in Ethereum. It used to be that you knew everything that happened in Ethereum. Then it was just what happened in

DeFi in Ethereum. And then just maybe in the lending protocols, inside D-Fi, inside Ethereum. And now you have Diles, now you have NFTs. You have so much. And my definition of Maxi is attention, Maximilist. I don't think everything out there is a scam. There are other probably interesting projects that, you know,

maybe they sacrifice some decentralization for speed. Maybe they, but I don't call them scams. Not in like the Bitcoin maximalist sense that if it's not my point. Yeah, that's generally a big one of flavor is to call everything a scam, yeah. If it is not my coin, it is a scam. And everything that is not Bitcoin is just something that wants to take your Bitcoin. I don't think that with everything. But I am an attention, maximalist.

I want to stay in Ethereum because that's, and also it's all I know. I'm not going to learn a new programming language. I'm not going to make new friends. I got my friends. And we're on Ethereum and we like it there. So, and the moment I make peace with that, so much happier. I'm a little bit trollier on more shit posting on Twitter, and people have mentioned that. But I don't know, I think it's a better way to enjoy life.

I totally agree. And definitely, I have my own group of non-crypto people I'm trying to get into crypto and have definitely turned towards like a shitpost maxi in that group at some point in time. I feel like this is just part of the natural progression that people go through is like, you build really hard, finally the market turns in your favor, and then you just like coast, you just like relax. And like, oh, thank gosh. And also at the same point of like kind of what you said, just like all your friends are in Ethereum.

And like that's like that's the society that you find yourself in, right? Like it's so hard when you have both the economy and the society around that economy, like that bootstrapped each other. To what you said, it's like not that you are shutting yourself off towards other things. It's just that like it's hard to get yourself to uproot yourself when so much of your life and energy has been dedicated to this one ecosystem, right? Exactly.

And the Ethereum culture has always been one of acceptance. Like we all like, oh, new thing. Let's like let's try it out, give it the time of day. But that's also worked against Ethereum. culture at the same time, right, where, like, a lot of nefarious projects came and it was like, hey, give us a time of day. And Ethereum's like, okay, that's our culture to do that. And then we learn those lessons the hard way.

And so, like, I think there is some of amount of, like, healthy, I don't careisms about some people in the deep Ethereum community culture, right? Because, like, you don't get to be called a maximalist just because, like, you've read out of time and you and because you don't know anyone your time like your time. Exactly. It's like, yeah, so why haven't you checked out this project and this? Because I don't care. And I don't care.

It's like I'm not calling it a scam. I'm just saying that I don't care. And, but yeah, that's true. I think maybe we as the Ethereum community, we skew towards the too nice at some point. well, you know, the Bitcoiners, they skewed the other way. Right, definitely. The being assholes about everything, not their coin. Maybe it worked in their favor.

I default to being nice. It's like, I will tell you no, but with a smile, it's like, no, thank you. But I don't know, I think that's the difference between the communities as well. And yeah, then we get into the whole, you know, Ethereum killers presenting on main stage at DevCon. I think there was a first and last time for that. All right, guys, in the second half of the show, this is where we go into Mariano's background pre-Crypto without actually going into the crypto section. So stay tuned for that.

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you can purchase crypto directly with your credit or debit card and have that fiat be instantly traded for any token that has liquidity. When you're making a trade head over to macha.xyz slash bankless and connect your wallet to start getting the best prices and most liquidity when you trade your crypto assets. I want to actually, so so many people tell you, or ask you when you come on the podcast, like, all right, tell me how you got into crypto, and then they go through the story of just like,

oh, I was working in Argentina, blah, blah, blah. I want to start at that point in this story, but go the other direction. And so right before you got into crypto, what were you doing? And what were you doing before that? Yeah. Damn, there's going to be a lot of honesty in this podcast.

the truth is that I made a couple of good investments early on in life so I discovered crypto at 34 maybe 35 and before that probably didn't work all that much maybe three four full years out of my life what do you mean you didn't work for three years what were you doing no no I work four three or four years total. Oh, you worked four three to four years total. Out of, you know, when I left college. No shit. Up to like 34. Yeah. So it goes without saying that the 34 onwards when you started working for the Maker Foundation, it's probably the hardest you've ever worked in your life. Yes. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Before that, I was working for a couple of years for a digital agency. And I started working there, I think around, yeah, maybe start of 2014 during the World Cup.

And the reason was, I think my girlfriend, she got a job and I was like at home doing nothing and I got bored. And I'm like, okay, maybe I'll find a job for a while. Just because you didn't have anything to fill your time? Yeah, yeah. And I discovered. And I, yeah. I had moved back to Buenos Aires in 2011. So I spent most of 2011, 2012, 2013, just like not doing much, just enjoying,

doing with family and traveling. So during those years, what were like the centerpieces of your life? Because if it wasn't crypto, right? Because crypto hasn't happened yet. So like, when you got up in the morning, what would you think about? Good question. I have mostly lived a kind of hedonistic life. I watched movies and went to parties and read books and used my computer and, you know,

kept learning about programming because if you're an engineer, you need to more or less stay current with things. I had a game developer phase where I built a whole bunch of different prototypes for video games. that are still out there somewhere, spent a lot of time with family, spent a lot of time thinking about, you know, the Argentinian situation and how different it was from, you know,

growing up in Mexico, which it is a third world country, but compared to Argentina, it's so much more stable. And, and yeah, basically doing that. It was,

when did you move from mexico to argentina in when was it like april 2011 yeah so the year before in 2010 i got like i think i turned 30 or i was about to turn 30 and i got like my i called my first mid like fricis i wanted to go your first oh no should i be expecting multiple i don't know i think there's another one coming at some point. Maybe this was the one and I just had it earlier. You know, I was born in Buenos Aires. We moved to Mexico when I was six, so in 86. I stayed there for 25 years.

And even though we came back to Buenos Aires almost every year, maybe two months out of the year, when I was here I was the Mexican when I was in in Mexico I was the Argentinian it was weird growing up like that but not bad at all right it was just that thing stayed in my brain

and in 2010 I was like okay I want to go to Argentina I want to live there I don't just want to go there as a tourist for two months in the winter or two months in the summer I want to be there and want to live there for six months and figure out what it's like.

And I told my girlfriend. What was your identifier when you were in Mexico? Was it like your, was it your accent? Like in Mexico, do you have an Argentine accent? And when you're in Argentina, do you have a Mexican accent? Like, how would they figure that out? I used to, no, it was easier in Mexico because I had, you know, Mexican accent. grew up there.

And, yeah. But, yeah, sometimes like a couple of words. But when I turned to my brother, I would talk to him in like Argentinian, but it would be like a weird Argentinian accent. When I came to Buenos Aires, then it was, it was always, they would look at me funny with my accent. And so, yeah, but where are you from? Still, still to this day. And now I used to be able to switch between accents.

And now I don't. Like my brain created a mix between Argentinian and Mexican. And that's the way to talk now. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it's weird. When I'm here, now people, yeah, they look at me and it's like, yeah, this guy is not from Buenos Aires. Maybe from a weird part of Argentina. They say, where are you from Spain, from Mexico, from, yeah, that was the mix.

And I just wanted to be here and live here for a while. So I told my girlfriend at the time in Mexico, it's like, let's move to Argentina for six months. just let me like do this i want to you know commune with my roots with my motherland that they will go back to mexico get married have kids and whatever and she didn't want to so i broke up with her and i sold all my shit yeah that was bad it was yeah i had been with her for like four years we're maybe going to get married i said i'm sorry there's something that i want to do so yeah we broke up And I gave away When you broke up

Was it like this is over Or is it like Hey we can reconvene in a few months from now Or what was that like? No, it was mostly over Well, I don't know Maybe I thought if I only stay in Argentina for a while And then go back

Maybe we'll Sure See what's happening. Yeah It never happened It never happened I came to Argentina with two suitcases One had my clothes

and one had my computer and my monitors, and I stayed here forever. So I left my dad and my brother. They still live in Mexico. Now, luckily, you know, the first four years, I don't think we saw each other because I was here and I didn't travel. But now it's like, yeah, I see them all the time. It's like easier.

Well, with COVID, became a little bit harder last year, but now it's, yeah, that's over. that's also one of the cool things you know distances they don't mean much anymore right it's a if it wasn't for this freaking pandemic uh i don't know it's like maybe we needed it to don't you feel and sorry to change subjects again but don't you feel like this pandemic uh i don't know advanced the crypto adoption by two to three years maybe oh absolutely Right. It's like, well, there was that whole idea that like, um, uh, people started speculating in the stock market because like televised sports weren't a thing. So they were just bored and they

needed, they needed a horse to bet on. And so they started gambling in the stock market. And then like, you know, defy summer happened. NFT winter happened. The first, the NFT like winter as in like the first bull market of NFTs that happened during the winter after DeVi summer. Just because we were all bored at home like speculating on our computers, right? Like we needed an itch to scratch. And so why not? Let's just have a bull market. Everyone's home.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. So when you were, you said you had only worked for like three or four years before you found crypto. What years were those again? So let's see. I had a job out of college.

I was doing what? Just like junior. developer. I think I was programming in C-sharp. I was also part of like a small shop. And I don't even remember what I did. Yeah, I programmed for like two or three months. Oh yeah, it was like one of this, I don't know, I was doing just software for like accounting. Before that, I had already, like, I did early on, you know, the first website for my dad's business and you know I did the that software for you know his salesman and you know for managing budgets and and shit like that and that thing is still running to this day it's like

yeah once a year like my dad or my brother they call me and it's like hey can you and they already know that I open up zoom or hang out so they're like hey that you know I'm all smiling and I can already see it in their eyes when they're going to ask me about something like that because my face changes and it's like you're going to ask me to look at old code that I don't even remember how it works like 20 year old code but that it still works and it's out there and it's uh you know helping a real company do shit that's awesome that's amazing mariano has code that hasn't gone down longer than Ethereum and it's not that's hilarious okay so it's not that complicated but uh but yeah When these awesome non-crypto investments that, what time did they happen?

Were they post-college? Around that maybe, yeah. So probably before, when was the first, no, not the first bubble. The internet bubble was around 2001. 99 to 2000, yeah. Yeah, 2000. No, the other one. Oh, there's another one.

Yeah, but not the internet. The other financial crisis, maybe 2008. Oh, the housing crisis? Yeah. Yeah, so the bubble 2006 to 2008. Right, right, right. So maybe a few years before that. So maybe 2005 and six.

No. My dad, bless him, he said, you know, you're young. You have a bit of money because I had worked. for a few months doing this, you know, just building software. He said, how about you buy some dollars and you put them in the stock market? And why the stock market?

And he taught me a little bit about the U.S. stock market. And he said, yeah. And he said, you're young. You can take risks. And now is the time. And he's an accountant. Oh, he's also an engineer. Like he studied engineering for like four years.

That is where I got that side of me. And he's the one that got me into it. So we figured out a way to do a wire to the US and then open up like a zero commission account online. And yeah, I started buying and selling mostly tech stock. You know, I don't even remember like, you know, AMD, Intel, Nvidia. a activation maybe I have no idea

the things that I knew about right zero diversification it was all tech only yeah tech only because it's

it's what I knew and I kept that for I mean even to this day I probably still have a couple of those that I never touched and yeah

that was my first four in that and I was lucky with that because yeah we had the 2018 if you look at the chart but then I had another couple of odd jobs here and there and those pretty much sustained me for a while okay so the the question I want to get to is like you

worked for a few years before crypto came into your life you had this you were lucky enough to put money into the stock market at the before the housing crisis and you were just like like riding off of that to fund a what you call a hedonistic lifestyle. So I want to get to know like when did the work ethic come and why did it come and what made it come? That's a really good question. I don't think I've ever thought about that. But like on the spot right now, I would say when I discovered crypto and I started working, you know, at Maker, I found. my freaking calling. I have no other way of explaining it. It was finding a group of people who were building something together and not just

what we were building the way we were building it. You know, decentralized all over the world on a chat room, we never met each other. And I don't know, I felt such a kinship to that. And I was always you know I built my first website 95 96 so I've been involved in this kind of thing but always on the fringe right like I feel I could have been like I know on the on the internet revolution of the late 90s but I never did because I was on the fringe I could have done shit with web 2.0 I don't I never did because I was in the sidelines building but never felt like yeah I'll dive into this but then when I found Web 3 and when I found Maker found Ethereum that's what I don't know my

brain finally said okay you've been involved and around you know computers all your life but you never been you know done more than that and when I discover this that's when I knew yeah this is this is what I want to do and it never felt like work it just felt like work it just felt like, yes, I'm going to do this. And I, you know, stayed up for hours and hours building and talking to people. And I would go to bed and I wouldn't be able to sleep, right? I would move around. And then I would have to wake up in the middle of the night and just go back to coding

because it was such an incredible energy. And, you know, I never felt that with anything else. And it went even beyond that. I'm like, okay, I'm a developer in this now. And then I discovered, you know, crypto Twitter or whatever and conferences. And it's like, I need, we need to go deeper, right? I just, I don't want to be a coder. I want to be, I want to be famous inside fucking Ethereum.

Like that I told a friend of mine, I think I was drunk either in Ith Buenos Aires or in the first East Berlin. It's like, I saw people. giving out talks, you know, talking about their projects, and then they would come down from the stage and people would go to them and ask them questions. And I looked and it's like, I want to be that. It's like at every step of the way, it's like,

what can I do to be even more involved, you know? And I don't know. I don't know why it happened, but it happened. And it happened with Ethereum. That's why I'm so adamant about. community, about purpose, and why I always get, you know, I do those sappy tweets about, yeah, the community, our people, my people. It's like, something clicked, you know, I have no other way to explain it. And at every step of the way, it was, okay, now you are doing this, what more

can you do? And, you know, that gave way to whatever, angel investing, or it's a, you For me, that was the next step. It's okay, now that you're financially well off, maybe you can put some of that into other projects, I mean, to France projects and into, you know, young people's projects. And so that's, you know, that led to where we are. I can just imagine Mariano trying to follow asleep and he just sees code just like running through his eyelids.

Like, oh, wait, the maker contracts, they could be like this. and then get up and starts writing them. Well, that's how the second version of the Oracles happened. Like, when we released Oracles V1, like three days before actually releasing single collateral die, I went back and checked. I have the first commit for the second version of the Oracles. So as soon as the first were done and not even SIE was released, I was like, okay, we need to make them better for next version.

And yeah, I was like, oh, epiphany. And it's like writing things there. It is pretty interesting to see. Like, there was a lot of, there's a lot of people that have similar stories. And I resonate with that story myself as well. I was like working pre-crypto is just not working the same post-crypto. And there's, I'm reminded of the layer zero I did with Eric Connor, where we talked about like, well, crypto's, it's not just like your career. It's also your, like, entertainment.

And it's not just your entertainment. It's also like your social group. And it's not just like your social group. It's, you know, all of these things all put together, right? And so many people have a similar story of just like, I was working my nine to five job. I was like looking at the clock waiting for the clock to run out so I could go home and do other things. And then I found crypto. And now it's completely reversed.

It's like I can't put it down. Like I can't wait to start. I don't like to finish. when I'm done working, I just turn on crypto Twitter. When I'm done with crypto Twitter, I just DM my other crypto friends. And I've seen so many people go from like, yeah, I went to my eight hour a day job working two hours a day to going from like now I go to my eight hour day job and I work 18 hours a day. And there's so many of these stories. And each person has their own story to tell us to like why it resonated with them.

but like I think the ultimate through line is like well something really magical happens when we have financial assets that align with our human values and as you as somebody coming from Argentina which has seen a chaotic government with a chaotic financial system perhaps you look towards Ethereum and you see like stability and not just stability for yourself but if you can build it stability for the people around you yeah yeah I you know everything that you said But I hope it all sounds sane to me. It all sounds like it clicks. I have no idea. I hope that somebody, you know, that maybe is just getting started in crypto is listening to this and, you know, DM me or like contact me if this sounds like you or if this sounds like we're talking about a cult. It's definitely both. It's definitely both.

It is a little bit of both, right? It is. A cult, the only difference between a cult and society is how big the cult is. If the cult, if the cult is two billion people, well, then you just call that part of society. Yeah. Where do you, yeah, that is true. In that case, we need to grow this. Grow this cult.

When we were in Denver with the M-Con, for M-Con, I was with the Meta-Factory. guys in the hills of Colorado and we were just joking about how like we were just doing the classic cult joke like we have a group of a collective group of people that all rally around the same totems like who do we pray to the god of moloch right like we have our own currency like I actually think we should have just actually just commit to this thing and just actually just instantiated religion at least if not for the very release at least at least for the tax benefits that's not a idea. Right. We have our own language. Right. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. No, that's exactly right. We have our own rituals. We have our own just like values. We could absolutely make a church of Molok.

I would like that. That would be, yeah. No, no, we totally, we totally could. And yeah, now that you mentioned Denver again, it was, it's so good being out there that, I mean, I saw you in Paris. I saw you in Denver. So in New York. Uh, You know, the difference. After M-Conn in Denver, I thought I wasn't going to have a great time in New York, you know, because Mainet, it was going to be something, like, completely different. Suits. Yeah.

But then I enjoyed myself so much there as well. A different vibe, certainly, but equally enjoyable. And, yeah, you know, just Ethereum people all around, like you say, talking about similar things. Just you can instantly, you know, talk to somebody new and just talk to them for a long time and find common interests and also talk about meaningful things at times, right? I know, I like to say, a lot of people ask me, hey, are you building on Defi? Are you doing something still? I like advising DFI projects.

I like investing in them. I'm glad I'm also on the sidelines now in DFI. Like I'm glad I'm not building DFI, but I'm not against it. It's like I still love DFI. I still think it's extremely important, but I say that I paid my pound of flesh and now I'm enjoying it from the sidelines

and I have to worry about oracles and liquidations and risk parameters and governance. and sometimes I talk some shit about that, but it's always from a place of love, right? It's only because I've lived through it. And yeah, that doesn't mean I don't like it. It's like it's because I love it that I feel that I can, you know, in a position to criticize it a little bit.

Sure. But then through that, hopefully make it a little bit better. Well, there's something to say about just like, we all joke in this industry. Like, oh, one year in crypto is just like one month in the legacy world, right? Yeah. Or is it the other way around? I don't know. The one that makes crypto go really, really fast.

Yes. And like, to some degree, like, this is expected, right? Like, you were introduced in crypto in 2014. We started building vigorously 2016 through 2020, maybe 2019. I can remember when you left the foundation. And then you turned to... Last year. 2020.

2020? Jesus. Yeah. It's only been 13 months. Oh my gosh. Hey, at least it's been a year, right? Anyways, so you go through the cycles and then you hit the sidelines, right? And like everyone's doing, even to some degree, like, I'm doing this a little bit in the sense

that like a new defy protocol comes out and like sometimes I don't even read the announcement post anymore. Whereas like in 2018, a new defy protocol. would come out. I'd break out my ledger, put some money in, see what happens. Gas was zero dollars. I play around with it. It's like, oh, cool. Now I know what this is. I can tell all my friends about it. And then now my friends are coming to me with like, oh, this new defy protocol, have you heard of it? I'm like, no, can you please tell me about it? But I think that's important, right? Because there needs to be this churn of active participants that are doing the things in the crypto world, right?

And if Mariana was still there, like, hammering out smart contracts left and right, you'd take up a lot of space for a lot of other people to build their own stuff, right? Like, there is ultimately only so much things that could be done. It's seemingly endless, right? But, like, we do want some healthy churn of new builders to come in, the old builders to step out and take more passive roles, you know, the village elders who are guiding the crypto novices. And, you know, we can only guide those people so much.

they need to just learn by doing. And even, even we also don't want the, the veterans of 2017, 18, 19 to actually dictate what the crypto novices of 2021 need to do because they need to do their own thing, right? And so like to sometimes the best you can do is just sit down the sidelines, watch and angel invest. That's, yeah, exactly. And it's also, yeah, after, you know, a career of playing, you retire and whatever, become a coach. Right. Yeah, it does feel like a professional sports where you just like, you can't last that long. It's too hard.

It's too hard to keep up. It's too, the things move too fast. It's too taxing. Well, there's a lot of people that, you know, are still going, right? And right, that's incredible. I don't know how they do it. And, you know, I mean, off the top of my head, maybe I just mentioned. But, you know, Martin Copelman and Stefan George from, you know, Nosis.

They're still building. Of course, everybody, you know, the core devs, Vitalik and Peter and Chris with solidity and Martin Svendi. And there's so many people who are still around. And you look at that devCon Zero picture. And it said, wow. How do they still... Beating the same drum. Yeah.

But then that's also what keeps me going. It's like, shit, they built this. They're still around. They're still doing. They're still researching. Maybe some of them from different positions, but they are around. And that's also why I think I don't ever want to not be around this ecosystem.

It's given me a lot. And it's not that, yeah, I owe it everything and I have to be here. It's no, it's that I want to be here. And I hope that I will still want to be here for, you know, years to come. And I think that this lends itself back to that, like, maximalism conversation that we were having before, right? Like, there's zero other builder-focused communities that have this sort of track record. And so, like, it's when somebody says, like, oh, why don't you? you pay attention to Tara?

It's like, well, none of my friends are, so why should I? Right? Like, we're all kind of focusing on the same thing, right? It's like, there's the metaphor of like, the hunters of a hunter-gatherer society. They're looking at the deer. All the hunters are shoulder to shoulder,

like looking at the deer. They're all pointed in the same direction. And so, like, for me, like, when all my friends were pointed at the same direction, like, I'm looking with them. I'm not looking like, oh, look, there's a squirrel over there. Like, no, we're all looking at the, the deer. Yeah. Oh, and I, for example, in New York, I saw a friend of mine, Will Barnes, we worked together at Maker, smart contracts, and now he actually, he was at consensus before,

and now he left and is building on Solana. He's building a Defi protocol on Solana. and I think he was a Rust developer before and I don't know either we talked a little bit in New York or just somebody on a tweet was like they wanted to know because there are there are very few examples but they exist right it's like when when people say on Twitter

oh every developer I know that you know the VCs what is it the multi whatever multi coin yeah oh every developer I know is leaving Ethereum for Solana you know those tweets that's 100% bullshit but also I know of one case right right so I mean it does happen and yeah I think he was mentioning why he moved and it's like in my case he said you know new challenges

new technology you know the things he thinks like Solana might be good for you know he wanted those like fast block times even if they

you know sacrifice decentralization it's like for my project I feel okay with that and it's like yeah we talk it's like interesting that's totally fair and then I want like damn could I look at you know something different at least you know for the for the intellectual exercise of seeing

how something works and you know not for me i cannot learn i cannot learn a new programming language man it's like i already have enough of them in my brain um plus there's with the this switching yeah the switching the switching costs is like not something that that you're interested in right and it's like it's kind of like the same problem as like trying to spin up a whole new social network, right? Like, sweet, we have this brand new awesome social network. Let's all go. And no one goes.

Right. It's like, well, I'll go if you go. I'll go if you go. I'll go if you go. And then no one actually goes. Right. And then it's what, yeah, making a whole new group of friends and talking about whole new things.

Nah, I'm too old for that shit. Happy where I am. And this goes back to the party analogy. And I think this came from also You know, I mean he said somewhere like Ethereum is a party and all my friends are here So why should I go to another one? And then that got expanded a little bit

It's like with analogies of gas and shit It's like oh yeah we have we have beer at this party And then somebody says oh but there's like champagne at this other one But it's like far away and there's nobody there And that's like that I'll take the beer that I have with it versus the champagne, I don't. Yeah, exactly.

And then the friends that are already there. I remember I talked to Cammy Russo about this. And she put it in the book, like Infinite Machine, the last chapter is called The Party. It's funny. Because of this. I have to go reread that chapter because I actually don't remember that. Yeah, last chapter.

And I think it actually starts with me. Yeah. That's why. Oh, I'm such a big, that I have like I have like the book the parts where I mentioned I'm like yeah yeah yeah that's awesome dude that's great if there's one thing that having it having an ego in crypto is definitely beneficial because like there's so much like clout to be claimed that you got to claim it right yeah yeah you gotta you gotta play the game I

I also said that, you know, the best thing I did on Twitter was like going from read only to read write. Right. And I started producing instead of just consuming. That also opened up, you know, it opened up a lot of opportunities. It opened up new friendships. It opened up investment opportunities. It, like, really improved my, you know, Ethereum lifestyle. It was so good.

And that's also, that's incredible. I freaking love Twitter and I'm on Twitter all day. I think I was with my girlfriend yesterday. We're watching TV and she's like, hey, what are you going to do? And I was on Twitter. It's like, what do you mean? Like job wise? It's like, I'm on Twitter.

This is my job now. I'm like drafting a tweet. It's going to take me this whole afternoon. It's going to take me 20 minutes to write this tweet. Yeah. But what other, you know, growing industry as, you know, Ethereum crypto Web 3 is also so accessible. It's like you can go on Twitter. You can add whoever, I don't know, Leshner now with the compound thing.

And he will answer, right? He's the founder of a multi-billion dollar protocol. You can add. You can add Cain and he will. You can add, I'm thinking the ones that are there a lot, like Joe DeLong from sushi, a lot of the anons. And they will answer, right? They will have conversation.

If you ask a good question. If you ask a good question, yeah. No, and of course, I responded to every single DM. It was like my pride that I said, yes, I will answer every single DM and my DMs will always be open. And I don't have a lot of followers compared to, you know, like you guys. But still, it's now it became unsustainable. It's extremely overwhelming.

Yeah, I cannot do it anymore. I still try. But, you know, when it's like a good question, you know, either like what should I do with my career or should it get into salinity, I at least try to, you know, write a couple of lines because I did that. You know, I, well, at the point that I was starting Twitter, I was also, you know, now in the, you know, the Ethereum, the conference circle.

So most of the friends, the community I made, you know, through conferences and not so much through Twitter. But, you know, where else? I don't know. the beginning of the space age, imagine if you could like fucking tweet it, the scientists. When we have these like digital, you have this like digital society, right? And so like where does the society congregate? Well, it's going to congregate on goddamn Twitter, right?

Like, Web 3 be like be damned. Like we're going to feed, we're going to use these Web 2 platforms until we have something better. And there's nothing wrong with like to congregate on Twitter to. be our place of just mutual conversations. And the whole cool, the whole cool thing about Twitter is just like one massive, massive, massive asynchronous conversations.

And so like, you don't actually have to tune in. You can tune in as you so choose. Yeah. Conversation is going on with or without you. And you can choose to add to the conversation to the global, the global conversation of this like crypto society. You can tap it in tune out whenever.

And it's like literally the industry having a conversation with itself. Yeah. And when there is an alternative, we'll find it and we'll use it. I don't want to force it. It's like so many projects in Ethereum, they were like ahead of their time and they failed because, you know, the landscape wasn't ready. We weren't ready for certain things. PIPPET existed for a long time that didn't pan out.

I don't know. Ava is building something now. I hear, maybe that'll be it. Maybe it'll be something else. I'm not in a huge hurry. We're changing so much that it's like when somebody says, yeah, but you're communicating on Twitter and on Discord. It's like, we're already changing so much, so fast. It's like we don't have to change everything at once, right?

It's like, this is like gradual. It's not like, okay, we're out of the city and now we're going to live in the mountains. and it's like, you know, do or die 100% or nothing. It's like, no, we're doing what we can. And let's not force everything. We're doing it in the correct order of operations, right? Like where the high value stuff goes first. And now we've just unlocked L2s.

And so we've gone from like $100 main chain transactions to like $5. L2 transactions. But you also have to think of like, what's the value of a tweet? And maybe maybe the, the value of a tweet goes all the way up to 10 cents, but it's never going to exceed like a dollar, right? And so, and most tweets are going to be worth 0.001 pennies.

Yeah. And so we just need a, once we have an economic platform that's like that, then we can talk. But right now we're doing all this stuff that's worth at least a $15 transaction, right? So there's just an order of operations. Exactly.

Let's do the foundation first, internet money, you know, metaverse money, whatever you want to call it. Right. Yeah. Oh, I just remembered who said it the other day. And you replied, shit. I'm on Twitter way too much.

Oh, Selkis. Yeah, it was Selkis, right. Yeah. Yeah. Selkis finally says, Eth is Metaverse money. And I'm like, dude, ETH is just money, man. It's okay. Selkis, you can say it.

It's all right. I still like the guy. Oh, no. He's absolutely great. He's a good conference. Yeah. Everything he says about crypto is absolutely spot on. until he starts talking about Ethereum and then it's only so-so.

Yeah. Oh, well. Oh, well, can't win them all. Yeah. So, Mariana, what's next for you, man? What's next? I've been itching to just like go and on and put something out there. Put your builder hat back on, but not let anyone know.

Yes. And I was talking to a prominent founder in New York about the benefits of going fully anon. And, you know, there were several things that they told me that I hadn't thought of. And it's not, you know, the responsibility or the legal liability, even though, you know, that's there. it's something else. It's like the being liberated. From judgment? Yeah.

And just being able to to build and release something without, you know, pre judgments and people thinking ahead of your intentions. You can't build anything these days without people coming and judging you. Yes. Like even when we release the bankless Dow with the bank token, like people judge. for better or for worse. No, no. Everyone that received the bank token was like, yay!

And then there's a lot of people that were unrelated, were like, boo. Yeah. No, no. Totally. And everyone I talked to, and this person as well, it's like this shroud of anonymity feels good to them. And like I said, it's liberating. But not just, you know, as a builder.

crypto Twitter as well you know that nobody has their actual face anymore it's just like profile pictures it's uh crypto punks and board apes and whatever

penguins and etc uh wassies I don't know and there is something weird I think people have become a bit more honest in what they say and I don't know if you've seen this movie Hollow Man

You know, it's like the invisible man, whatever. And there's a line. I think he says something. You wouldn't believe what you're capable of when you cannot look at yourself in the mirror. And I found myself saying shit that I might not have said or just like written things that I might not have said. If, you know, I'm seeing my picture there, like looking back at me, you know, my headshot. It's like, you know, with the glasses and, hey. going to DevCon.

Do you know that some bars will put a mirror behind the bar so that customers have to see their own faces when they yell at the bartender? Right. And when they're like bitching about something, it's like, oh, dude, like, I'm doing that. I look really ugly when I yell. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's the exact same thing here.

It's like you're looking at a, and at some point. that picture is you, right? I mean, you have your punk back there. And now when I see that, I see you. Like, I already, like that punk, if I see, I'm scrolling and I see it, I know that it's you. And then if I, you know, sometimes I double check. Okay, is this like a right click save, whatever. But, you know, that is you, but it's also like a, you know, a mask.

in front of you and so is my punk and i find myself typing and saying things that i might have been a little bit more restrained and i think that the whole of crypto twitter uh has done that so hopefully that's that's making ourselves you know more honest through anonymity if that's even possible but yeah no that that definitely makes sense for sure um i always my mental model is like that's our metaverse self and it's very appropriate that like well we're we're on this internet platform, web two or not, like, and now we have instead of our faces, our digital representations of who we want to be.

And like one of the, it's also worth noting that like the face that you have, like you didn't ask for that. You didn't choose that. You didn't sculpt that yourself. And so like the soul that you have behind your face, it's actually a completely anomaly of the relationship between the soul and the face, right?

Those are two separate things. So like in the Metaverse world, we're going to slap on a brand new face and it's as much as real because we at least we've chosen the digital representation we chose that i chose that crypto punk i didn't choose my own face though so like there is some sort of like uh natural resonance with like when you put on a profile picture avatar i will i will say that like a lot of my friends in my uh normie chat they all got into penguins all at the same time and they all swapped out their profile pictures with penguins and we all lost track of who was who yeah we could not recognize any

them. I remember when we were all penguins. It was like, who the fuck is this? I have no idea. And then you have to keep track that. I don't know, for example, Alex Vannevik now he got, he relaxed his penguin. I have to remember, okay, you know, the Viking penguin, that's Alex. Okay. But there are people whose identity. And yeah, I mean, I did choose by punk, but then I also kind of didn't. It's like I grabbed whatever floor punk was there at the time. And if I could have chosen one, I would have chosen one with maybe a couple more features, right? They're so expensive. But yeah, yeah, it's interesting. So the answer of what's happening next for Mariano is spinning up an anon account and putting out some contracts somewhere? Yes, but then how the how the hell

do you do it it's like do you tweet do i tweet from my account it's like oh i just found out about this project i just aped into this contract come join me from this completely anonymous person that is totally not me i have no idea how to do it but right you're you're going to have to start start from square one without the clout of marianna conti you're going to have to spin up a brand new identity that has no help from the actual human i you know i i met so many anons during the last three months, a few, like, big accounts. And you meet them and they're people, right? They're people like us. And it's like, they're anonymous on Twitter and everything. But it's like, once you start meeting them, it's like, yeah, hey, I'm this person. Hey, I'm this

person. But I never asked them how they got started. Right. Yeah, how they got started as an anon. I met G Money in real life in New York. I was like, I don't even know what the hell I was expecting, but I was like, oh, you're not a punk. I forgot. I was like, that's crazy. You're not an ape. Yeah.

With a nita cap. Yeah. Uh-huh. That'll be a great story to tell. The story of how Mariano's A-Anon account became more followed than his actual human account. that'll be funny. No, if that starts happening, like, I'll...

Docs yourself? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, no, no, no, wait, this is me, this is me. I swear to God, it's me. Follow my main. No, but for sure, that is what I want to do next. I seriously just want to come up with like a tiny, tiny, tiny project. Because I actually produce a fair amount of code.

And I tweet about it and I tweet like stupid, like salinity snippets to do, you know, fun things like saying GM to a smart contract and not if you don't say GM once a day, then transactions fail. And it's like, hey, grab this code and add it to your smart contract. So you need to say good morning or yeah and stupid stuff like that. But I never end up and I was talking to somebody else like a builder in the space. And they were like, yeah, same thing. It's like I produce a lot of code, but I'm not, you know, like the Andres or the doms of the world that they treat Mainet as a playground. They build really quickly and they deploy.

Like I build fairly quickly, but I don't deploy. It's like when I get to that part, I become so middle of the curve, you know, that it's like, oh, no, but maybe I should test. and no, I don't like this, and yeah, the UI. And then somebody else is like, contract in 20 minutes. And it's like, here, use ether scan, motherfucker. And I'm like, no, I cannot do that. Yeah. That's got to be the maker DNA in you.

Yeah, I know. The conservative side, yeah. Shit, what I was going to say next. Hmm. I can't remember. Yeah. Well, Mariana, should we wrap it up here? yeah yeah let's do it yeah well i appreciate you uh 90 minutes yeah not not bad thank you for coming on

while you are coming out of a cough from a net yeah sorry sorry if that was me that gave it to you i you know i have my my matte as always and i'm glad that uh you know my my throat was cooperative and thank you because yeah we've been trying to uh record this for a few days now and uh yeah it was pulling it out for the last minute for listeners that are listening this on Tuesday, we're recording this on Monday night. So not that we discuss anything timely, but it is still extremely, extremely fresh. Yeah. No, no, it is.

And it's like, yeah, we're just, that's what I like about this. We're just carrying on a conversation that we started a couple of months ago. Yeah, in Paris. In Paris. Yeah, I was like, oh, you told me the story of when you were wrapped up in the blankets under this fantastic new air conditioner that you had, and then your girlfriend came home and after a long day at work and saw you all cozy under the blankets, as you've been like super hot all day and got super mad at you. I was like, hmm, we're going to talk about that on the

roll-up. Or not going to roll-up on layer zero. Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. And then we continue it over in like different content and different cities and now here. Are you going to listen? Yeah, I will say that that is, that is definitely something that I've noticed with you, but now that you actually name the thing is like the conversations that you and I have all kind of seem like one, one seamless conversation, we just pick up the thread at random opportunities. Yeah. No, no. That is exactly right.

Are you going to Lisbon by the way? No, I'm not. After all the traveling I've been doing, I specifically scheduled a podcast recording during Lisbon so I couldn't go. So I will be home in San Diego during that time. Ah, smart man. I might end up following, but right now I'm leaning towards no. Lucas, the editor at Banklist, hit me up the day.

I just phone mode into a one-way ticket to Lisbon. I'm like, well, bye. And then eventually I'll see you in Bogota, Colombia, not Argentina for DevCon, but close enough. Yeah. I'll come to Argentina. I know. I remember when I tweeted that, you know,

going to meme DevCon VA 2022 thinking, like the people at the Ethereum Foundation, It's like, God damn it, Mariano, again. Mariano's doing it again. They responded from the official DevCon account. It's like, no, no, no. No, we're squashing that meme right now. Hey, it'll happen at some point in time, and when it does, it'll be glorious.

Yeah, no, I believe it. We're going to do something in Buenos Aires at some point. And it's going to be amazing. I will be absolutely there for the week before, the week during, and the week after, because it'll be fantabulous. Amazing. Yeah. All right, Mariana, thank you, sir, for coming on Layer Zero and telling me your story. Yeah, thank you, David. Take care. Cheers.