Bankless - The Next Phase of Humanity with Metadreamer | Layer Zero

Starting point is 00:00:06 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 crypto community has their own story to tell. CipherPunks 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, on Layer Zero, I'm talking with Metadreamer out of the Meta Factory Dow, but MetaDreamer, he's a Dowerer, so he's a part of many different parts of the Ethereum ecosystem. And every time I talk to MetaDreamer, either through Zoom or on Discord or in real life, the conversations just get really, really cerebral, really, really cosmic. And he's one of the guys out there that I think really embodies the core values of what makes this crypto space tick, the leaning into collaboration over competition and like this yes

Starting point is 00:01:00 and mentality and this how do we create an abundance mentality rather than an scarcity mentality. really focuses on what I really try and get out of these Layer Zero podcasts is ultimately the code that we write will ultimately come to impact society for the better if we design these systems correctly. And so he's very tapped into the whole point about crypto is to change culture. The whole point about this whole revolution in digital money and digital finance is to have a better society. And I think a lot of people, when they come into the crypto space, they feel that. but there, in my mind, is not enough conversations explicitly talking in that direction. And so that is what Bankless Nation you are about to listen to right after we get to some of these fantastic sponsors

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Starting point is 00:04:24 Hey, Meta, Dreamer. How's it going? Pretty good, man, how are you, David? Pretty good. I think for the rest of this podcast, I'll just call you Meta. How about that? Yeah, that works. Or maybe Dreamer. probably. Dreamer?

Starting point is 00:04:33 I don't want to be referred to as meta. Yeah, right. Okay. As soon as I said that, I was like, oh, wait a second. It's probably going to be the other one. Yep. So Dreamer, who are you?

Starting point is 00:04:40 Tell me about yourself. Yeah, I go by Meta Dreamer. I'm a software engineer and designer. I've been working in the Dow space for just over two years now. Founder of Metafactory and worked on a bunch of projects like Metagame and SourceCread and coordinate and part of Metacartel ventures. And yeah, just someone helping to. figure out where we're all going.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Where are we going? Wow, if we could only answer that question. Dreamer, I think one of the reasons why I wanted to pull you on layer zero is because every time you and I have had conversations either through Zoom or in real life in person, they always seem very cosmic. And these are my types of conversations. And so that's where I hope this conversation goes. I hope it ends up being very, very cosmic.

Starting point is 00:05:26 I'm going to have to figure out how to get there. And I think the first question that I want to ask to figure out how to get there is, is what do you really care about, both inside of crypto and outside of crypto, what really just stands out as important to you? What do you fixate on? Yeah, so it's kind of like from my name itself, I guess. It's like, you know, not trying to fixate on like the surface level things, but really trying to understand the underlying causes or sort of, you know, what's this like, what's the root cause of this, you know, so that meta level, you know, whether it's like, you know, within crypto and like figuring out like

Starting point is 00:06:00 what type of things to build or. even just like philosophically or on a like sociopolitical level like kind of breaking down what's really going on and going deeper than just like you know narratives that people hear or things that we you know like I think a lot of people it's just like more so about taking the things they hear from other people and sort of like recycling it or regurgitating it um but for me it's like trying to like break sort of what's like the underground mycelial network you know not necessarily the forest you know it's like the whole thing of like you missed a forest for a tree it's like people missed the mycelial network underground for the forest. So yeah. So there's always one more

Starting point is 00:06:38 stage of meta that we can get. Yeah. And you're always trying to chase the meta. Yeah. And I guess like the purpose of it is sort of, you know, I do think that if you solve things at like the primitive level, then you can like solve those problems downstream. And you know, that's like you also solve the most problems possible is like, you know, find the lowest common shelling point of something. And like if you make like a one percent improvement there, it could end up being like thousands of of percent improvements in many areas just because, you know, it's downstream of a lot of these other things. So I think that's like sort of important to me is like it's an engineering mindset, you know, which, you know, I went into school for computer engineering, but it's like you're always

Starting point is 00:07:15 min-maxing, right? Like what's the lowest budget we need for this project? So it gets built to spec, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, really in a more like philosophical way of what's like, you know, the lowest hanging fruit, lowest hanging shelling points that we can address to make the most impact. because I don't think there's any end destination or some sort of happy state that we're working towards. It's like all about the journey. I definitely resonate with that. I think a lot of people in the crypto industry resonate with that journey of like trying to find the most bang for your buck when it comes to changing the world. Post college, I was always focused on like how do I help people feel better the most?

Starting point is 00:07:55 So that led to a degree in psychology. But then I realized like, well, well, nutrition also is really important to have. helping people feel good. Yeah. So I layered on nutrition and all of a sudden I was, I was super fascinated with the way that the food that you eat impacts your psyche. But then I realized you have to layer on physical movement on top of that. I was like, all right.

Starting point is 00:08:13 So then now I'm interested in a career path that was one part psychology, one part nutrition, one part physical movement. And I was trying to figure out like, how do I make a holistic career out of all these things? And I saw just a bunch of bureaucracy. But then I found crypto. And I was like, I was learning about money and finance. I was like, oh, well, I mean, if I'm really focused on trying to make.

Starting point is 00:08:31 make the most amount of people feel the best, I would probably try and rework the money in the finance system. As soon as I kind of realized that about crypto, that crypto is going to, exactly what you said, be like the lowest common shelling point. It's like, oh, well, I was immediately just captivated by crypto because you can just have so much influence on the rest of everything about the way humanity works. Would you say that that was kind of a similar path that you found when you're going into crypto? Yeah, I would definitely say so. It's interesting too because my wife's a dietitian. So we get that crypto die combo. But yeah, I think like the, you know, even if you're like the bureaucracy thing is like, you know, that's everywhere. It's omnipresent, right? Like the whole, you know, people get convinced into thinking like we're in like a war of like left versus right or blue versus red or like, you know, this team versus that team. But the real sort of the split is like the elites versus the masses. And that's apparent in every industry across every domain. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And. And, you know, I think going back to a thing of like, you know, solving things at the root level, money at the end of the day for better or for worse powers like everything in the world, right?

Starting point is 00:09:41 So if you can make improvements on how money is distributed and, you know, the access people have to it and, you know, the, not even going beyond money, but even the concept of value itself and how we like engage with that as a society, you make improvements there, then it applies, you know, across the board. and I think, you know, for any like smart person who like wants to make a change in the world, I really think crypto is the place to do it. And whether it's like, you know, I think it also in crypto space needs to also like evolve a bit too where we need to get past like some of the technical stuff to actually like application. Like it's no longer about who has like the best L2s, but who can use L2s to like make the best most real world impact. Right. I think you said it once before of like if your Tao isn't moving atoms in the real world, not doing anything. So I think we're in that phase now where, you know, the tech is pretty much like a solved problem. It's a matter of time, I think, until like certain things get implemented. But it's

Starting point is 00:10:38 really time to like start walking that walk. And I think you can apply crypto principles to pretty much like every industry, you know, with matter of fact, you were doing it to fashion, but it goes beyond that too. So I think, you know, people getting involved in crypto now is just like getting involved with internet stuff back in the 90s, you know, whatever you're doing, the internet's going to like boost your ability to do it. Would you say the value is a lower, common what's the phrase you use lower lowest common selling point common shelling point it would you say value is a lower common shelling point than money as in like value is below money yeah i would say so money itself if you think about how money was created it was created as a means to convert one form of value to

Starting point is 00:11:17 another right like if i had a tomato and i wanted to get a haircut i would have to either like barter that which is harder to do but if i can sell the tomato and then use that money to buy a haircut then i can sort of achieve what I want. So money is a means, not the end itself, right? But the problem happened is like money became the only thing that's like objectively quantifiable and measurable. And it's the whole saying of like you optimize what you measure. So when money became quantifiable and measurable, it became the measuring stick in how we like organized everything. The whole game turned to like, let's maximize GDP, you know. And we all sort of convinced ourselves that that's really what we're trying to go for. Or that's the measure of like,

Starting point is 00:11:57 success or value is like money itself but value is actually everything outside of money money money is just a way to convert from one from value to another so if you can create things that are not money but serve the purpose of like converting one from value to another then you get to move into this like post money society where people can actually communicate and coordinate around value itself in its more pure form instead of only having to go through money because money becomes a bottleneck in a way where you look at you know the great depression like all the factories were there, all the people were there to still work on those factories. The whole thing came crashing down because of the money broke.

Starting point is 00:12:33 I think money's still going to serve the system. It's still going to exist. It's not going to go away. But it becomes a means to an end. And instead of optimizing for money, we actually make value itself more objectively quantifiable. And we can use cryptography for that as well. So we've used it for money because money is what we've known all our lives. But in the same way, you can record like a number in a contract.

Starting point is 00:12:57 that represents some token balance, you can also record like verifiable statements or attestations or all these things, which, you know, I can then quantify my values or what I think is valuable. And if you have a bunch of people quantifying what they think is valuable, you can run algorithms on that and then figure out as a group what these people think are valuable by summing it all together. And then what that gives you is like a real-time map of like what's valuable or not, you know, in a bottom-up way. And we're not sort of agreeing or controlling or trying to come to consensus on like what's valuable because that's impossible. It's all subjective, but we can get some sort of common ground by summing together our individual perspectives to get

Starting point is 00:13:36 like the intersubjective sum. And then that is a map of what's valuable. And once we have a map of what's valuable, we just like sprinkle money on it because then you just like money is the sort of water. And that water gets distributed to what people have attested to being valuable. And then that acts as like, again, a part of the system. But instead of like optimizing for the water itself, we're optimizing for the fruit that we're growing with the water. Okay, I didn't expect this to get so cosmic already 10 minutes into it. This is beautiful. Let me try and reiterate what you said just to make sure I'm following along. So we have all of these like pockets of value around the world, right? Got the shoemaker, the tomato grower,

Starting point is 00:14:10 the pencil maker. But all of these are valuable, you know, pencils and tomatoes and shoes are valuable for their own particular reasons. But we use money as like this intersubjective layer to instantiate the value that we have everywhere in the world. And it's like a communication between all of these very non-fungible forms of value. You know, while many, many, many tomatoes can all be alike to each other, they're still very different from many, many apples and pencils and houses and cars. And so money is currency is like this fungible value tool to connect all of these other distinct pockets of value separately and allow us to communicate value. But then you said like, oh, then it kind of leads us to optimize for the wrong things, right? Like we

Starting point is 00:14:53 optimize for GDP. And Andrew Yang, talks about this a lot where like if we keep on optimizing for GDP, we're just going to drive ourselves off of a cliff. Like we're going to optimize for GDP out of a cliff. And it was what you said when like all the factories broke down. Like if the money breaks, well, there's still tomatoes to grow and there's still pencils to make and there's still like shoes to wear and fashion and stuff. But we've lost our ability to communicate the value between all of these things. And so I think that gets really, really interesting when we put all of these expressions of value on chain, where like DAOs have their own native tokens

Starting point is 00:15:27 which are imbued with some sort of sets of value and they can be right next to another DAO with another token with another set of values. Sure, we have like the stable coins and the ether, but we also have the native Dow tokens. And since it's all on the same substrate, we're all able to communicate value a little bit more efficiently, a little bit more directly without perhaps having to go through an intermoney layer

Starting point is 00:15:49 and where does it go from here? First off, is that a good summary or would you change anything to that? and like we kind of where does it go from here because there's always the idea like oh we'll go back to a barter society because we'll have 10 bigillion tokens but i think a lot of economists would say like well no because you still need the money yeah yeah for sure no i think that's a great summary um i think the where it's going from here is like more than anything it's like a real mentality shift you know i think it's more about unlearning these things and it is about learning new things and the mentality shift is like, you know, the way we like value something. So right now there's this disconnect between value that's created in society and where money goes, right? So a teacher, for example, arguably generates an incredible amount of value for society

Starting point is 00:16:35 because they literally educate the people that then go on to like do all these things, right? So they're upstream of a lot of value that's created. But they don't really get any sort of upside on that value or they don't sort of realize the, you know, are underpaid overall in society because, you know, the value they create is disjointed from the value they receive. The value they're receiving is in the school board here. It's like not along the same like pipelines as the value they created. And then if you look at an investment banker, for example, like, you know, arguably they generate much less value for society. They're mostly just like, you know, acting as like analogs between like other people's value creation.

Starting point is 00:17:14 But because they sit at the intersection where money flows, like they essentially, get much more of that upside, not because they're generating more value, but because they're closer to proximity to where like financial transactions are happening. So in society right now, the closer you are to where financial transactions are happening, that's what indicates like, you know, how like successful you'll be. If we change that where money can, you know, actually track value more directly, then like it changes a game where instead of like the narcissist or like the psychopaths who can like, you know, become these like CEOs and like do these crazy things like instead of them making the most money, the people that make the most money in society would be the ones that are

Starting point is 00:17:56 generating the most value as attested to by the sum of everyone's like individual opinion on what's valuable. So if you think about like democracy, it's a very like lossy form of governance because we're essentially trying to take all these like nuanced opinions of like 300 million people in the states at least and then like condense it down to like a binary decision. of like this party or that party. So like, and it's really never about like left or right or any of that. And Andrew Yang says this too is like certain problems need left thinking and certain problems need right thinking in different amounts and different places at different times.

Starting point is 00:18:31 So to like condense that all, it's just like all that does is actually make sure these problems never get solved so that the elite can stay elite and then the people can just sort of continue to play that game and think that they're solving something or sort of making an impact. So if everyone's making attestations on what they feel, find is valuable at all times, then like we get a real-time intersubjective emergent democracy where it's like, you're not to like elect a representative to represent your views on a certain area. Like it decentralizes it where you can just express your views yourself and everyone's views are on some common substrate, which can then be like composed and interpreted and be used to

Starting point is 00:19:10 like drive decisions or make, you know, governance. And what that gives you is like that nuance where you can like height down to like the individual like hyper target exactly the needs and you know values of like each individual member of society so instead of trying to like fix problems from like the top down where it's like you know you can try to like implement this one law and then like it fixes five things but breaks six other things and then you do that again and like fixes some things and breaks and we've been doing that for a very long time and I'm not really optimistic that it's going to actually progress us fast enough to where we need to be to actually like get out of the sort of you know timeline we're in. But I think going the other way around is like a potential. We could address it in that way. But again, it takes like, it's the same thing like with the internet, right? When the internet first came out, people were just like, how do we put radio on the internet? How do we like put books on the internet? How do we take what we know and just like apply this new thing to it?

Starting point is 00:20:02 Instead of like, you know, the internet native companies like, you know, Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook, like they took that medium and, you know, utilize its strengths and unique advantages in a way that wasn't ever possible before. in a way that you couldn't even like really think of before if you just held on to like existing notions of what you had. So in the same way, I think the new system will look like very different and sort of that's going to be the future like social media as well. Instead of like just communicating information online and trying to like influence others to do things, we don't have to influence anyone. We can just be constantly making attestations and what we find is valuable around us. Right. So like social media, I think it starts to become more decentralized as well where it's like really more about you and your relationships and the people you were. work with and these sort of like networks rather than, you know, oh, here's a big influencer with a

Starting point is 00:20:50 million of followers. It's like, that's very like, you know, one to many. But I think it's going to become more many to many. And instead of just information, also communicating and value through these like direct attestations. What does a attestation look like? Or is it more of an idea? Because I think the most like basic, productive version of an attestation is like, I am a student at school and my teacher taught me something really useful that day. So I pull out my phone and I give her fun. stars. Yeah. Like is that the aditation we're looking for? I think like yeah, there's attestations that are made all the time. They're just not recorded or captured or, you know, made verifiable and sort of, you know, the whole crypto methodology. So if, uh, you know, like,

Starting point is 00:21:32 however, like if you get paid from your Dow, that's an attestation. If you, like, vote on a proposal, that's an attestation. We could actually create systems for like direct attestations to imagine like personal tokens and you can like, whoever you give your personal token to, that's essentially an attestation of some sort. So I think attestations will take many forms. And it's not really about creating this new system that we have to now learn how to use and adopt, but more so like mapping our existing behavior and like building the technology around that. And that's like another thing like I really prioritize is, you know, creating technology

Starting point is 00:22:05 and organizations and everything around the people instead of like molding the people around the technology or organization. So, you know, in traditional startup or company, it's like all the employees are sort of forming around the corporation and it's like you know they're sort of changing their identities or the way they're working or the things that they're doing to like conform to what this organization needs I think that will change in the future where at the center will actually be individuals and then like communities and groups of people and then organizations and products and tools will essentially be built around them to like conform to what they're doing and what their needs are and so in that

Starting point is 00:22:39 sense it's like kind of flipping the table a bit like finding out that like earth is not the of the universe and you know something like that so the idea would be in like instead of having the corporations that control us in our nine to five jobs being the center of the universe it flips it on its head and the corporations actually respond to the humans yeah and answer to the humans rather than the humans answer to the corporations yeah and it's all through the primitive of attestations like attestations or how this is unlocked yeah and you know if you make a tweet that's also an attestation if you say something like oh you know we should do this or this project is dope. You know, those are all attestations. It's just that they're not quantified or verifiable

Starting point is 00:23:18 or, you know, but if that exists in a Web3 medium where you can actually, when you say that, oh, you support this, that this is actually like a cryptographic record of something, you know, like there's an NFT that represents that, whether it's an organization or a event or whatever it is, you can like point to that thing. And then you can, once you've like mapped that out, then that same essentially builds up this irrigation system for the Infinite Garden, right now if we're talking about the infant garden of like everything humans are doing the way the irrigation system works is like there's a big bucket of water like certain buckets of water and then people are certain sort of you delegate allocation of money to someone else right so like I'll take a bucket of water and then my job is to go try to find out where the soil is dry and then pour some water there

Starting point is 00:24:02 but like on the way I'll probably drink half the bucket because I got thirsty and then you know all these other things of like someone creates like a cabal to like you know take all the water from everyone else and like all things happen. Instead, what this is, is, like, we have, like, sensors that can read the moisture levels of all the soil everywhere and this, like, automated complex irrigation system that can, like, sense exactly where water is needed and what amount at what time and instantly, like, get that water there. So I think in the world, that's how money will serve us is, like, based on what the humans want and what the humans sort of, like, instead of, like, getting rid of our humanity and sort of, like, suppressing who we are to, like, be the sort of, like, robot for the corporation. And I think that's a symptom of the industrial age, I think.

Starting point is 00:24:45 But, yeah, instead of doing that, it'll become, like, we express who we are, what our needs are. And then the irrigation system is, like, something we collectively, like, govern and influence. And we can control how it's set up in our certain communities. But it moves the resources from where they are to where they're needed. And if you think about it in the world, like, there's no shortage of money, right? The issue is, it's just, like, stuck in these pockets. So, like, imagine this, like, scenario where you had a society, where you have a society, where everyone got paid like $200 an hour,

Starting point is 00:25:14 but you couldn't keep more than $5 grand in your bank account or in your wallet. And then what that incentivizes is if you want to actually make the most of it, you actually had to spend it. So incentivize people to actually get capital moving through the system as much as possible. In that system, you actually don't need a lot of GDP. Like the amount of money you need in that system is not a lot, but you can get way more economic throughput. So money that's sitting idle is essentially like a drain on society.

Starting point is 00:25:39 It's all this value that was like capture. and sort of created and sort of stored in this form that's now sitting there doing nothing, that if there was a way to communicate exactly where it could be effectively used, even the people who are rich and powerful, like the money itself doesn't make them happy. It's still in human nature that you derive happiness from like, you know, making others happy or, you know, seeing some sort of purpose or influence that, you know, what you're doing. And people like rich people are like powerful people, they might want to influence that through, like, direct command and control.

Starting point is 00:26:07 But if you can know that, you know, if Elon Musk could know that, like, he could flow like a million dollars through this like irrigation system and it will actually get like really effectively allocated to all these places where it's needed based on attestations of people then I think people will be much more willing to do philanthropy because it goes even beyond philanthropy it actually becomes like a way to invest in these things that you believe in and you know ensure that your money like it's like lossless value transfer right now it's way too lossy because you'd be like oh I'll give it to this charity and then they'll give it to this nonprofit and then you know everyone's going to take a cut along the way and

Starting point is 00:26:41 At the end, it's like cents to the dollar towards the actual cause you wanted to do. And that's what happens when you have all the money, you know, all the water being carried by people in buckets instead of being distributed with an advanced irrigation system. So with this current financial ecosystem that we have and also nation state paradigm, I think a lot of your argument is that the lossiness creates a strong incentive for having a scarcity mindset. Because like if this paradigm of financial loss, if you do anything, you have lossy outcomes with your finances in like kind of how you were saying got a bucket of water walking through the desert you're getting go from a to b but you're going to lose water along the way for reasons

Starting point is 00:27:19 if we can build out this paradigm where we have much less loss you also create a paradigm of people that have a lot less of a scarcity mentality because like they're less fearful of paying taxes to the government they're less fearful of donating to charity because they have stronger assurances that the outcome of the resources that they are giving up, they have assurances that is actually going to actually, there will be something produced as a result of that and they'll be able to see that manifest rather than kind of just like pray and cross their fingers. Yeah, I think like the idea, like we talk about this blog post about like retroactive public funding and stuff like that. And I think that's really sort of on point. And you look at, you know, open source software software

Starting point is 00:28:01 and all these things like this is a key problem of like, you know, that generates all this value, but there's no way to like distribute value back to them. I think, you know, in that same way of like, guaranteeing it's going towards something that was, you know, not only that will create value, but that was proven to have created value. Like the value was already created. It's just now being retroactively recognized, right? And then that changes the game too because then people instead of like thinking primarily how much am I getting paid and thinking how much effort to put into that based on how much you're getting paid, like, you know, I'm getting paid 100 grand. So I'm going to put in the amount of effort that would like meet my boss's expectations for this like pay grade.

Starting point is 00:28:35 And then like not anything more than that. But it changes that where. like the first thing you'll think of is like how can I create the most value for the most amount of people like what you were saying after university you know you wanted to like make the most amount of people happier than average and then once you do that then the money you get out of that would actually map directly to that value you created whereas now it's like someone could do some that's ultra impactful like you know the core devs of Ethereum for example like I know they're doing it they're doing it they're paid way more anywhere else but they're doing it because of that fulfillment they get and that's another sign of like it's not about the money it's about you know they're getting value in all these other ways. ways, but we should map that to actual value they get monetarily as well, too. And we can do that if we, you know, have the way to like recognize that value and then, you know, ensure that it gets distributed to the right people. And I'm working on a project actually directly for this that was like inspired by the whole guest team not getting enough funding where like instead of having to like give money to like their bosses and then like delegate it to them on how to allocate it to the people, you could run something like source cred on the guest GitHub repo.

Starting point is 00:29:39 and then have a map of, like, who, like, did the most work and committed the most code and, you know, whatever effort they did. Even if it's not perfect, it's some representation, then you can create a contract that's like, you know, and anyone could deploy it. Like, it's permissionless that would then directly send the funds, like, to those people's wallets. You know, those devs that directly contributed. And then if you actually make that system, like, strong enough where, like, you have these, like, cryptographic guarantees, that could eventually become a thing at a protocol level where, like, protocol fees could actually... could actually become the master sort of like source of water that then, you know, gets redistributed out based on direct value created. And maybe not like on the crypto level itself, but there could be protocols above, you know, the base layer chain to do something like that. Well, this is certainly

Starting point is 00:30:23 what optimism is trying to do with the revenue from maximum extractable value out of their sequencer, right? So the idea of optimism's optimistic roll-up is that there's a lot of value to be extracted from fees, from protocol fees, not at the base Ethereum layer one, but the optimism layer two, that value that comes from sequencing, the MEV, gets fed into retroactive public goods funding. So this like illustration that you are describing is actually being experimented and iterated in real time with the optimism team. For sure.

Starting point is 00:30:53 And I see like, you know, when I talk about this being the future, like I get conviction and say this because I see everyone else moving towards this as well. You know, like you can start to see the patterns and the structures. And, you know, for me, it's like, I'm not really trying to like say I know what's going on. I'm just pattern matching on like what's actually happening. And yeah, I think what they're doing is like really awesome. And it illustrates a great point where there's certain things that will like generate a lot of money.

Starting point is 00:31:18 But they might not be something that you want to like, you know, fund itself. Right. Like these protocol fees like that's why people are like, oh, like, you know, projects shouldn't take fees because like what do they need it for? It's a protocol. It's permissionless. Anyone can use it. Like, you know, why are the fees going there. But and then on the flip side, there's all these things that generate incredible

Starting point is 00:31:37 value but don't have a way to be monetized or if they were monetized it would like sort of ruin the point of it you know so teams that like build this amazing tech that's not really like productizable and they're forced to almost productize it or you know add some way of value capture there that like doesn't fit to try to like you know get that value but i think when we can create that connectivity between these pools where a lot of value can accumulate but you know it isn't necessarily allocated yet and then places where it's like really needed but we don't want to like monetize that thing. Instead of having to like, you know, value these things directly, we can disassociate like where the value comes from and the thing that creates the value. So, you know,

Starting point is 00:32:16 protocol fees like that, defy treasuries, like, you know, yearn, for example, the fees it generates. And they do this themselves right now of like, you know, they really like give back to the community and sort of do a lot of grants and funding. But it's still sort of people, you know, like manually pouring buckets in places. I think eventually we can evolve that to be even more like decentralized and you know people can still have that influence right they would just have like a lot of voting weight for example to influence that like irrigation system of like where it goes right so they can say i think it should be here and then the pipes will like shift here a bit and then the other guy says i think it should be there and then it'll like shift there a bit and then once you

Starting point is 00:32:53 average it all together you get like the outcome one of the problems that i'm seeing with this is when you talked about like attestations and then you kind of list some activities like a Dow paying someone as an attestation or like a tweet can be an attestation if you're extracts like that, aren't you just really talking about data? Yeah. And like, how do you standardize data? Because there's so much data out there. And how do you ensure that, like, the data is the right data.

Starting point is 00:33:17 And how do you actually, like, consume that data in ways that is, like, scalable? Yeah. So I think, like, the difference in attestations and data is, like, an attestation is cryptographically verifiable. So, like, if you sign a message that says, you know, I support optimism or I like optimism, then there's inherent value in that attestation in that like your Ethereum address is attached to all this activity on chain, you know, all these like various forms of identity and reputation that you can associate with that address, that you can then weight the value of that

Starting point is 00:33:48 statement, you know, in a certain way. So the nice part about this is like normally in a blockchain, there's a scalability issue because you need like global consensus of like, you know, this token move there, this value move there. The nice thing about these attestations is it becomes much much more scalable because instead of like, you know, a bunch of validators in the network needing to verify that information before that block can be processed, the only people that need to validate that information is the people that are carrying or using that information. So you still use cryptography, you know, because like crypto is like way more than just blockchain, right? You can still use cryptography to like record these attestations. And as long as

Starting point is 00:34:26 you have it in a like, if Vitalik talked about this too in ECC, it's like we need like a shared state, you know, a credibly neutral shared state in which we can just like dump all the raw data of like what happened. And, you know, these are like, this is not like high level data. It's just like, you know, just as much information we have on like things that happen that it's like cryptographic verifiable. And then you can have multiple like entities essentially like curating that information or like filtering that information to represent a certain community's views or a certain product's views or, you know, so the way this like scales and sort of builds up is this composable thing. It's like it's not an end-to-end system.

Starting point is 00:35:03 You just want to get like the bottom layer right of just like, let's just get all the data in one place and have it be verifiable. And then we can work from there to figure out how best to use it and associate value to it. And then so you'll have like layers and layers and layers of like higher level sort of interactions being built. In terms like actually, I think ceramic network is like a great, great project. And they're really trying to solve this problem of, you know, acting as like the data layer. It's like an L1 for data and attestations.

Starting point is 00:35:30 and sort of verifiable identities. So, you know, things like social graphs or even like all sorts of data that you just want, instead of being stored in a server or just in like IPFS where it's like a static blob, it's not like, you can't do anything. You're storing it in a much more composable way where, you know, you can define a data model, for example, in ceramic. You can, so there's a group right now, Dow stars, I think. It's like a bunch of the top, like Dow people, like Nosis Guild and Dowhouse and like some

Starting point is 00:35:57 Oregon people, like a bunch of people kind of working group coming together. to define the data model of a DAO. So, like, you know, there's all these different implementations of a DAO, but if we can at least agree on what are the components of a DAO and, like, you know, the, oh, here's a proposal, here's a member, like, what are these, like, common denominator fields? If you can agree on that data model, then that, like, greatly increases the interoperability. So we can separate, like, the data model from, like, a specific application built on top of it.

Starting point is 00:36:26 So, you know, this is what Ceramic really enables is we have, like, instead of, like, if you log into a website, you have your user account for that website. Instead of that, we just have like a user account that's like sort of universal. This is somewhat your wallet, but the wallet alone isn't enough. You need like all this other auxiliary data and, you know, links and this like graph system on top of it. And then any app can be built in the same underlying data. So it actually changes data ownership too where you can actually own your data. It's not like, you know, this data is owned by the platform that you would give the platform access like read and write to your data. But the data would be like sovereignly like owned by you and you could like control the access to it and

Starting point is 00:37:05 everything like that so that's how it really becomes compulsive from the bottom up is like getting those primitives right it's like the if you look at defy right in 2017 maybe there's like a lot of these monolithic projects are trying to be like all in one defy platforms and stuff but that's not none of those really ended up working out the things that worked out is like you know we had erc20s and then we had ether delta and then we had unyswap and then we had compound and then we had yearn and these all sort of progressively built off of, you know, a really solid underlying primitive. So I think right now we're really just figuring out these underlying data primitives. And then over time, we'll all sort of build new layers on top of it to get like more sort of

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Starting point is 00:40:20 The other team that I know is working on this is the team at Disco. Are you familiar with Disco? Yeah, so the way that I've had this explained to me is with verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers. And like Evan McMullen always describes this as like your loop bag for data where your Ethereum address can be your loop bag for on chain tokens like ERC20 tokens and NFTs, like it's your inventory. But then she says that you need an off-chain loop bag for your data and your verifiable credentials and your decentralized identifiers. And the way that she's explained this to me is that like your Ethereum address, your private key, can unlock your loop bag, but your loop bag can actually rotate out private keys. So, like, you're not ever tied down to one specific Ethereum address, which makes sense

Starting point is 00:41:05 if we're talking about digital identity, right? Like, I use many, many, many, many Ethereum addresses. How can any one of them be my identity, right? How can any one of them reflect my soul? My soul is really an aggregate of all of my Ethereum addresses and much, much, much, much more that has nothing to do with any transaction that's on a blockchain. It has to do with the data of the world that I have both consumed and projected and interacted with. She calls it the space between the chains, as in there's all the blockchains in the world, kind of like the root system.

Starting point is 00:41:37 But then there's the space between the chains, which is kind of like the mycelial networks. My mental model for this was, like, data is a bunch of like micronutrients and tokens and NFTs and DAOs are a bunch of like macro nutrients. And those are the value, right? the macronutrients are the value, the proteins, the fats. But then you have the micronutrients of the organism, like the little, like the magnesiums and the iron and the molecules. But for an organism to exist, you need all the micronutrients to process, to correctly and efficiently process the macro nutrients.

Starting point is 00:42:09 And so to put this into crypto language, you need the Tao's, the tokens, the NFTs of the world, the value of the world. It needs the direction of the micronutrients in order to, know where to go. And so if we're talking about your irrigation metaphor, like the micronutrients of the world are redirecting the flow of water in micro ways in order to most adequately produce the outcomes that the organism wants, which is to route the value into the places that the people want it to go. Yeah, exactly. And I think it's pretty awesome because like we actually already have the answers in front of us. Like nature is already a highly evolved value internet. And, you know,

Starting point is 00:42:48 it's its own like distributed like chain, like my serial networks. they do like three things one they like communicate information so like stress signals and like you know organisms or plants and stuff and just like uh information sort of electrical signals that get communicated over them so then we had that with the internet and then after that there's value so you know nutrients or carbon or things that sort of travel along these networks then we got that with ethereum right and then the third thing that mycelial networks do that we don't have yet is they decompose it things. So when something dies or something, you know, they rot it and it decomposes and it takes those nutrients, then redistributes it out to the system. And we don't have anything for that. And I don't think people have really thought about that too much. It's like, how do we like allow for decomposition? Because the legacy way is like, you know, you create an organization or you do something, you like start a company. You essentially like want it to succeed forever and grow forever, right? Like that's sort of the game you're trying to play is like, how can you make this

Starting point is 00:43:49 thing succeed and grow forever? If you look at nature, only thing that like grows forever like that is cancer. Well it doesn't even grow forever though because then cancer ultimately kills the host. Exactly. Exactly. So if we try to grow these things forever, the only outcome of that is it'll kill the host, aka all of us. So to actually avoid that, we need to introduce the ability to decompose things, allow things to die. And I think like this is another sort of trick of like, you know, Western, not just Western, I think human nature too, but like this like fear of death and like people not being you know sort of come to terms with the fact that they're going to die or their own mortality is like you know I think a big thing

Starting point is 00:44:28 because it's like then you're just going to be like you know trying to make the most of like what's here and and whatnot so I think death is a feature not a bug right because like imagine if Putin was like going to live to be like 200 years old or 300 years old right like then he's doing all this like crazy shit now but like if he's going if he's no he's going to live that much longer then he's going to go to like even crazier lengths to do this shit right so it's actually good that you know at a certain point he's going to be like you know I'm too old for this shit I'm going to die soon like I'm not going to like all this shit I did is just going to be left behind so you know that is like a feature and then the new can sort of like take that place but we don't have a way to deal with that and I think

Starting point is 00:45:05 the way it'll actually take place in crypto like I'll use the example of consensus right so consensus like you know bootstrapping a lot of the ecosystem like you know getting the talent, like acting as that bridge from like, you know, pre-Web 3 to Web 3. But because they were that bridge, there's like inherently like, you know, they have that like legacy sort of baggage that came along with it and all these like issues and, you know, all this stuff happening with consensus. And it's actually like really hard to try to like fix consensus at its core and, you know, like turn it into something that's like, you know, actually better or sort of like, you know, next generation. the way to do that is actually decompose consensus from the outside in, aka take the talent that's there and deploy them in the Web3 ecosystem. Because it's crazy because there's an incredible amount of really top-level crypto talent at consensus

Starting point is 00:45:59 who's been in the space for like since OG days that are completely siloed from the rest of the ecosystem because they're like, oh, you can't work for a DAO, you work for consensus. So like now all these people are now like not interacting with Dow people at all and not really understanding that side. And like, but what would be actually better if you like, instead of trying to fix consensus, you took these people at the edges and like, you know, dialed them and then deployed them to like, you know, do some like awesome work somewhere else where it's way more impactful.

Starting point is 00:46:28 So like this is what decomposition is. It's like nature decomposes this old thing that's rotting and dying, takes those nutrients and puts it towards something new that's growing that's like it's much better off there. So then, you know, these people or these like this human resources would essentially be, like the fertilizer for the infinite garden that you can then like oh this shit died like just just decomposed it and distributed out there instead of trying to like put on life support forever and wasting resources and misallocating and I think you know we're trying to do the same thing with how we structure our dows and organizations where we should like start every dow with the assumption

Starting point is 00:47:02 that it's going to die and like prepare for that outcome and you know treat as like a feature not a bug you know like either then you evolve it into something else you take those people and you give them a pathway. Like, people want to be afraid of that because, you know, they would be afraid of uncertainty. But if you can give them a certain pathway of like, you know, here's the other channels or avenues which you can like be deployed or have your influence, then that, you know, it starts to make more sense. And you stop being worried about this organization dying because you're not sort of building your life or personality or whoever you are around the organization. The organization is built around you. So then, you know, if you were to fall off the mother ship,

Starting point is 00:47:36 that's like scary. But if some like, you know, some aspect, if you were to shed some skin, that's no problem, right? So it's all connected in that way of, you know, really shifting the mindset on how we think about how we coordinate and think about value and all that. I think the meta goal here is to how to retain and transform value rather than losing it, right? We're going back to like lossiness. The death of organizations is the destruction of capital. But I think what you're talking about is how do we not let capital be destroyed, but instead like let it also be transformed. I'm in the middle of a Ray Dahlio's book, which is a title, something, about lessons for managing how to survive like a changing world order and using like kind of

Starting point is 00:48:16 the frame of reference that we've been talking about right now. And also the fourth turning thesis or the fourth turning theory is also related to this where it tends to be every 80 years humans go through like a destruction cycle because like our institutions get too calcified. The people and their institutions are too misaligned. Whoever holds the reserve currency of the world has spent it on military for too much and now no one uses it as a coordinator. nation tool anymore. And so like the world order dies. And then there's a period of chaos and then like a new world order is being born in its place. Like we lose the structure, but then like new plants grow out of the decaying body of the old structure. The thing is like we want the world to be iterative games, not single games. Right. And so like one 80 year long cycle of conflict before we go on to the next 80 year long cycle of conflict is one game followed by another game, not iterative games. We want one game to fold elegantly and gracefully into the next game because every time it's like the current paradigm of the world is always like two steps forward, one step back. And that's just because we need to take that one step back in order to take two more steps forward.

Starting point is 00:49:28 But I think what we're talking about here is like, all right, how do we build systems where we can take three steps forward or four steps forward before we take a step back? And it's all about like there's this concept of jubilees that has been just ingrained. into human DNA since before like written history right like the concept of like sin in the Bible is a very similar concept to like a debt jubilee where sometimes society just gets like too much

Starting point is 00:49:52 pent up sin in the world and so we need just blanket forgive all sin and that's what Jesus did like Jesus blanket forgave all sins and then later on we got recorded history things got a little bit more concrete things got a little bit more like reason able to be reasoned about and we went from like sin

Starting point is 00:50:08 to like debt jubilees and debt jubilees are something we saw all throughout Judaism and many, many other religions and early, early human organizations where like, oh, there's just way too much debt in the system. We just need to wipe it clean so we can take two steps forward, which is very, very destructive because when you wipe debt clean, you're taking value from somebody that was owed that and just like deleting it just for the sake of everyone. Right. So there are big losses in the system. But on net, it's the right choice just because someone should do. debt was built up in the system. And now we're coming to that part of like our history more or less again right now. This is what Radalia's book is all about is like there's too much debt in the American economy. Like everyone owes debt. The American economy owes debt. The Federal Reserve owes debt. All the other central governments of the world owe debt. There's just too much a debt in the system. So now we're going to have to like wipe the slates clean as we have always done throughout human history in order to take two or three more steps forward. And I think one of the meta-gold

Starting point is 00:51:10 of crypto as human organizational structures is finding ways to not have Jubilees because Jubilees are always about taking step back. The goal is to not take steps back. And so when you're telling me, like, there's a system where we can build our social structures with like a difficulty bomb baked into them, like a dead end in them, like, hey, this is going to die. We can actually have like contingency plans as like, all right, like, well, the goal is to create value and then die. And then die. And that's the goal is to create value and then die. and then pass that value along elegantly so that one step forward turns into two steps forward turns into three steps forward. And perhaps we can have like a brand new human renaissance that we've never ever had before. Yeah, for sure. And I think like it's just that instead of like trying to delay the death for as long as possible, we're like, you know, because that's the thing is like we talk about human systems and then like natural systems as if they're like, you know, outside of each other. But we are actually just also a fractal of nature or a product of nature. So, you know, nature will have its way, whether we like, the easy way or the hard way, you know, like, if we, like, the longer we work against it, then it'll eventually still have its way, you know, on a long term. Like, even if we, like, destroy the world with, like, global warming or whatever, like, eventually it'll come back into balance and, you know, like, come to the stability again.

Starting point is 00:52:29 But I think, like, what you're saying about, you know, every 80 year cycle, like, I think what we can do is, like, instead of having 80 years, we can do it, like, maybe every eight years or, like, maybe every eight years or, like, maybe. every eight hours, you know, like take it to that level. Because then that's how we actually, it's not about, we can't ever like eliminate mistakes from happening, aka like steps back. But if the steps back are happening at a micro level, you know, instead of just at a macro level, then they're much less painful. And when you zoom out, it'll just look like sort of consistent forward progression, even though in between we're like taking all these like steps forward and back.

Starting point is 00:53:03 It's just that, you know, we got to iterate much more frequently. I think that's where we'll go. I'm getting sounds of like an old cranking engine slowly turning over like one revolution. Yeah. Two revolutions. But then if we can get it faster and faster, then you start the engine actually starts to turn and tumble and tumble and then boom, we all have an engine that is doing 80,000 revolutions per second. We can actually make some goddamn progress finally. Yeah, for sure. And I think the thing you said about this rebirth thing, Terence McKenna,

Starting point is 00:53:31 he had this like really good talk that he was giving once about how, and this was in the 90s and this is crazy because it sounds like he's talking about now, but he's saying like the trajectory of the world is just like, you know, we're at a road's end. You know, like things are going to like, it's too late to sort of fix them and things are going to keep accelerating and we're going to go through this process. And that process is actually not a bad process because it's like a birth in a way.

Starting point is 00:53:53 So, you know, think about a baby in the womb, right? It's like it doesn't know anything about crypto or the internet or anything. You know, it's being fed. It's getting its nutrients. It's like comfortable, warm, like has everything its needs, you know, in a way that's like heaven for the, that. And then it goes through this like, you know, the process of birth is like the most violent part of a pregnancy, right? It's like the transition and like the detachment from like the thing

Starting point is 00:54:16 that was created from the creator. So that's the thing is too. We actually have to let go. Like the child has to be detached from its mother. And then, you know, then you get to like, you're in this world now and then you like experience that and, you know, there's just like new paradigm. And I think in the same way society itself will go through this like valent rebirth and it's going to be like, painful and it's going to be like, you know, we'll be screaming and that's all you can do is scream. But like once we go past that, we'll be in this like entirely new unrecognizable space that's like, you know, fundamentally different from where we were before. And it's crazy too because like the universe, if you think about like primitives of the universe, a lot of people like we're

Starting point is 00:54:55 coming more from like a materialistic standpoint are like, oh, we have atoms and we have molecules. Now we have like quarks and subatomic particles and like trying to find the answers to the universe there, but there's nothing really there, right? Like, there's just like less and less stuff there. There's no, like, answers there. So it's like, okay, if that's not the primitives, then what are and, you know, if you think about, like, the golden ratio and fractals and, like, you know, these patterns, the patterns are the primitives of the universe, right? If you look at, like, the structure of a tree and the branches there and how that looks the same as the structure of a river and how that looks the same as the structure of the neurons in our brain and how our eyes look the same as, like,

Starting point is 00:55:31 you know, flower paddles or like these things in trees, like those are the parameters of the universe. So if you start looking at those instead, you start to see these fractals in which like the things that are happening at a microscale are just like, you know, smaller versions of the larger thing that's happening. And if you think about the process of like, you know, pregnancy and like the embryo, like the baby itself is like actually replaying the whole history of evolution. You know, we went from like this like tadpole looking thing. The speed running evolution. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:56:01 We went from this like tadpole looking thing to this like little like fish looking thing to then, you know, growing arms and like this. But like, so that's a fractal of like all of human history in a way. And if you think about it, that we can use that as inspiration to know what to do next is like this comes back to like the MacL networks. Right. So if that network pattern we can recognize in nature, you damn well bet that that pattern is going to repeat itself in different forms in the future. So it's almost like an onus to look at that and then, you know, recreate the thing. that we're building to follow those patterns because when you follow those patterns that's you know you're sort of like doing it in nature's way and this discussion like you know so if you really want to take it to

Starting point is 00:56:40 like a meta meta level you know when you think about nature itself like nature is essentially like the substrate or like the creation itself right but like underlying there's like even if you think about humans like we actually suck at coordinating you know like none of us really like asked to be here or coordinated us to be here right like you know it all sort of just happens right and in fact actually when we try to exert our own control, it actually like breaks things from coordinating. The more you like let go, like even this conversation, you said like, you didn't want to like set the agenda because that would like constrict you from like the actual good things that would come out of it. So you exerting human control actually. For the listeners, that's what I say to the

Starting point is 00:57:18 guests on the start of layer zero. That's the alpha. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that breaks down then. And then so you realize like letting go of control is actually like more intelligence and better coordination there. It's like if you think about like, okay, where is this like coordination coming from? That's God. Like that's what people refer to as God is that like root coordination. Right. That's like, you know, and then God's way is like letting go of that like human egotistical like exertion of control and more so realizing that you're on remote control. You're not under control. You're like on remote control and you're like a part of this thing that's like, you know, nature has been coordinating and you know like where like Kanye West says this, but like he says human beings are God's

Starting point is 00:57:59 iPhone, right? It's not like we're not doing the coordinating we are, but like where the, we're the iPhone. We're not the like the person running the iPhone, you know? So it's like we're the vehicle in which this coordination happens. Just like human beings use our phones to coordinate, but the phone itself isn't doing it. But we only see the phone, right? So in that way, I think like the, it really, you know, root coordination, you know, and this is, it's crazy because like people, I think, you know, for reasons like discard religion or like, you know, certain forms of organized religion because of things it's done, but it's actually a misattribution. It's actually a failure of humans, like them, like messing up and not doing it properly, not like the religion itself or, you know,

Starting point is 00:58:39 the concept of religion or God itself. You know, so people like, oh, like, why did God do this? God didn't do it. We did it. Right. So it's like religion or like God's way, essentially humans, like letting go of that control and allowing these things to emerge. And that's, you know, how I see everything we're doing is like, if you asked me like two years ago, if I'd be like doing any of this shit today, it would be like, no way. But like, as soon as I like, like, let go of control and allow things to emerge, then I'm in places that I never would have imagined. And, you know, I'm like, holy shit, I can actually, like, I see a light at the end of the tunnel for, like, how I can actually make a difference in the world. And none of this would have

Starting point is 00:59:11 happened if I tried to do it my way. You know, I was like, put here. The framing of crypto using a biological lens, I think is the most underappreciated and also the most useful. When you're talking about, like, the patterns of the universe, right? The lightning in the sky, the arteries in our veins and our neurons. And you can find these same, like the roots of trees, these are the fundamental patterns of the universe and how God is the, is the overarching rule set that produces those outcomes. Whatever God is the thing that just produces the rules. It is the rules. The if this, then that version of the things that make the outcome. That's the archetype for what this thing is. And like, I think as we move into the future and move into a metaverse and have an

Starting point is 00:59:55 even more digitally enabled future than we have today. I think one of the best things that's going to be an outcome of that are people are going to start to view some of these digitally native organization schemes as nature itself. Like right now, we look at like our square homes with our square windows and our square like skyscrapers at the grids of our roads. And it's like, God, it's so inorganic. It's so fake. Everything is so like manufactured and so wrong.

Starting point is 01:00:21 It reminds you of the cookie cutter houses at MCon in the mountains. But I think as we move into the future, people are going to start to extend what is nature into things like cryptography, things like math, things like what today feels like sci-fi, science, but is actually just once again, the only way that this crypto industry is going to work is if it follows the rules of nature. Because like you said, if you don't follow the rules of nature, it'll get you. And so like the crypto system, the crypto blockchain, the crypto L1 that wins. is going to be the one that resonates most with the rules of nature. And because that's the thing that is going to be able to take many, many, many steps forward without having to take a step back. Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 01:01:06 And I think, like, overall Ethereum community has done a great job of that. You know, like really decentralizing, allowing things to be emergent, you know, iteratively, like evolving things, like, you know, a lot of the, like, core innovation here. So I think, and Vitalik, like, he made a, that New York Times thing. I think he made a lot of good points is, like, you know, we've done a pretty decent job. thus far. Let's like, let's not like mess it up now. You know, it's like a fire that we're kindling, right? It's like, as soon as like gets a little like grow, we should not just like, you know, run with it and like do whatever and, you know, we'll just like end up extinguishing it. So it's, I think

Starting point is 01:01:39 really important. Or lighting the forest on fire. Yeah, yeah. And it's like it's really about nurturing it in the right way and continuing to nurture it. And, you know, we go through these cycles, I think of like, you know, bull and bear. And I think that like helps keep it in balance. So yeah, I think, you know, again, you know, we're not in control. And I think overall, as long as long as, you know, is we're all, you know, operating in God's way or in nature's way that that will have the right outcome, you know, and it's like, it's really liberating too because then you're not stressed about, you know, having to figure it out. It's like, I don't have to figure it out. It'll figure itself out as long as I'm, you know, adhering to these like principles. Right. The Bull and Bearer

Starting point is 01:02:13 case, I think is a great example. There's always been like frustration from the crypto people about like all the gamers of the world that hate NFTs and all the artists of the world that hate NFTs. And like we as crypto people got super frustrated. Like, you guys shouldn't hate NFTs. You guys should love NFTs. They're going to make your games better. But like if we really thought about it and we just injected NFTs into all these games, like first off, we don't have the technology to do that. Like Ethereum would be at capacity. Even the layer twos would it be at capacity. Solana and Avalanche would be at capacity. And so like the pushback from society about like, hey, I hate your NFTs is probably healthy and probably what the crypto community needs because we are not ready to onboard another like

Starting point is 01:02:54 more million people. Like, we do not have the structure to do that. And so, like, they probably would hate NFTs a lot less if we had more scalable blockchains. If we had better NFTs, if we had better organizational smart contracts around these NFTs, they probably hate them a lot less. And they probably adopt them. And then we would probably go through another bull market. I definitely resonate with, like, in the bear market of 2018 to 2020, like me and a few other people like Ryan, Anthony Sizzano, we're just shouting from the rooftops about like, you know, this defy thing is going to be a thing, guys. Like, this is going to work. Ethereum is money. Like, ether's money. Like, this is going to happen. But then as soon as the bull market started,

Starting point is 01:03:34 like, at least me personally, I was like, well, if you don't believe me, like, I'll guess I'll just stop shouting it because I know it's just going to unfold the way that it will unfold. And I'm going to stop trying to, like, make sure Ethereum doesn't die from a lack of funding because it doesn't have that problem anymore. And now I'm just going to let the leaf float on the wind because however it's going to work is going to be how it unfolds. And I just have to take that on faith. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, if anything, our purpose is just to like observe what's happening. And if things somewhere are, you know, like, diverting from nature's path out of balance and misaligned, then it's, you know, our job to like maybe step up there and try to correct it and

Starting point is 01:04:12 balance it. But again, it's like, it's not about us or like what we want. It's like, it's really about, you know, understanding that, like, what's that core thing underneath? And the Quakers, like, they had a very, like, interesting and I think effective governance mechanism. Their governance mechanism as, like, a decentralized collective of people to figure out, like, what to do and things like that was to, like, come together and discuss and try to, like, collectively determine, like, what is God's way? Or, like, what would, like, God do? What's, like God's path in this decision? So it's not about what you think you should do or what you think you should do. It's about like, you know, collectively trying to like understand what's like, according to like their principles or whatever, you know, values they have.

Starting point is 01:04:56 Like what's like God's path in that thing. And then that's how they would make decisions. So it's not basically it was like not making decisions, but discovering decisions. It's like, you know, like dusting for fingerprints, right? Like the fingerprint's already there, you know, dusting it just, you know, like drawing the fingerprint when you like put the ink on it. It's just like discovering what's already there. And I think, you know, what we do is. and when we iterate in our organizations and the things that we do, it's just like, we shouldn't

Starting point is 01:05:21 like make assumptions. We should like look at what's happening and pattern match and then, you know, build like roads on that pattern. And it brings me back to like this example of my university where they had like the middle like park area between all the buildings. They were trying to decide how to like, you know, where they should build the pathways between the buildings. So instead of like trying to decide that, what they did is the first year, they just like planted some grass and then just like let the people walk all over it. And then they looked where the grass was like beaten down the most. And then they built the sidewalks there because essentially people, the students themselves walking around needing to get to class on time, the patterns of all their activities sum together

Starting point is 01:06:00 to show like this is the most efficient like way to do it. Right. So that's the thing is like the answers are sort of inside us. But we have to like let them come out and not try to like let our egos suppress it. And then you know, when you look at the way they built the sidewalks, it's like who designed this? It looks like crazy. It's like all. They also like a bunch concentrated here and then like these weird going in different directions. But like when you actually walk on it, you're like, oh, this makes a lot of sense. How do they figure this out? I would imagine walking on the, like, again, taking a look at it and me like, well, that looks weird.

Starting point is 01:06:30 And then realizing that it's actually super functional would actually be a very trippy moment. I think trippy is the right word to describe the realization process. Because like, again, there's no grid. Like clearly an engineer didn't do this. Or somebody with like a fixed like fixed. engineering type mind, I think like Trippi would be the best word to say the discovery of like, because it's nature, right? This is an expression of nature. This thing is like we think we have the answers, but like, you know, we do, but it's just like in a different place. And I think like,

Starting point is 01:07:00 this is like where, you know, psychedelics are really fascinating too is because I could understand someone being like skeptical about this whole theory and like all the stuff I'm saying. Like, you know, it's like, ah, it's just like wumble jumbo. But like psychedelics is a way to like directly prove that to you through direct experience, right? Like there's like no doubt. in your mind that that's like, you know, it's not just like uncovering some fundamental truths about the universe and how it operates. So I think, again, that's not like an end either. That's just a means to sort of show you the patterns if you don't already see them, right? Like even like with psychedelics, like they're not addictive in that way. They almost like tell you

Starting point is 01:07:34 that you don't need to take them. You know, it's just like showing you things that were there the whole time that you just failed to realize or notice. So in that sense, you know, it's like I think training wheels, but not necessarily, you know, there's no, like, you talk to people too who have like done this like you know who go really deep into psychedelics and just like take insane doses of like DMT or all these things to try like discover some sort of truth about anything but it's like there's nothing out there really it's like you know there isn't a fundamental truth out there it's just a vehicle to sort of show you the underlying sort of uh you know the cosmic circus you know behind it all but the answers are really in what you do in actions you take and you know those sort of things and again it's like just fractals of what you're you know, many like world religions throughout history I've like expressed and, you know, tuned into. And it's just like we're evolving our understanding of that. Dreamer, what advice or just knowledge would you have or somebody who's newer in the crypto space? Is there like a life rule of thumb or just, you know, rule that you live by that you have thought is really, really useful for you

Starting point is 01:08:40 that you would like to share with some of the newer people in space? Yeah, I'd say like stop trying to learn crypto and start trying to unlearn like web two stuff you know i think it's almost frustrating i think to like really understand like the whole crypto space before you put in that effort to like it's not even effort but just be consciously aware of like you know assumptions that you hold about things and why you hold those assumptions and allow yourself to like let go of those assumptions and sort of discover things that way so i think you know once you do that you'll start to see like new patterns that you didn't see before and i think throughout history it's just really really been about, you know, suppressing people's, like, individual thought because, like,

Starting point is 01:09:18 you know, that creates problems. It's hard to coordinate that when people are all thinking different things. It's as advantageous as possible if you can sort of make people think in uniform ways and sort of control, like, how they think and how they coordinate. And that's, you know, what's been done throughout history. But, you know, recognizing that and then starting to realize that it's like James Young makes a perfect example of this. It's like this transition to Web 3 is kind of like, you know, the transition from like surf splouting. the land to then the Enlightenment age when the surfs were like, oh, hey, we don't have to just keep plowing this land or for our whole lives. You can just like go here and do some stuff ourselves,

Starting point is 01:09:54 right? And then you had the whole enlightenment phase. So I think in the same way, that's happening from this like Web 2 to Web 3 transition or sort of legacy to like new world transition is not necessarily, we're not tearing the old world down. We're just like throwing a better party and then people are coming over. Right. So it's like the surfs is like, oh, do I want to like slave myself away on this land? or am I going to go, like, you know, make some fun stuff there. And they're, of course, going to come over there. So I think, you know, we're not the legacy governments and legacy system. It's going to exist.

Starting point is 01:10:22 It's just going to decompose from the bottom up or the outside in until eventually it might not need to exist or it'll take a whole different form. But, you know, we're not trying to destroy it from the top down. Like, that's the wrong way to go about it. And that's like, you know, going to put us in more danger too. So, for example, with like money, like right now, government sort of plays the role of, like, allocating money through taxes. And I think that will change where like tax distribution will sort of become decentralized, but the government will still play the role of being the referee

Starting point is 01:10:51 and sort of like, you know, because there's sort of governance stewards then instead of actually players in the game, you know. So I think that's how like we'll sort of meet in the middle is like, we're not trying to tear them down or create a new system because if you actually like try to work for any Dow, you'll like realize how broken it is and that there actually is a lot of value in sort of the legacy legal system and the judicial system and, you know, the ways and practices we've been doing, like, you don't want to destroy that. You want to, like, encompass that and do something more. You know, it's like, yes and not like, you know, not that way and my way. So I think back to like the original question, I guess. I think that's one thing. Yeah, like,

Starting point is 01:11:28 unlearned the old mindsets. That's a general rule of thumb. Second one would be, like, really break things down into its primitives and, like, compose those primitives and, like, realize that, collaboration is now a better, more effective strategy than competition. And Web 2 competition was the most effective strategy. The people that can outcompete others won. In crypto, it's the opposite. The people that can collaborate with the most of the people win. So start to, like, you know, disassociate yourself with like what you think of an organization or working for an organization. Like think of it, like what you need, what you're interested in, where you can collaborate with others to like move that forward in a meaningful way and, you know, just like build up from there

Starting point is 01:12:05 rather than, you know, I see a lot of people, they're like, oh, I need to find some, like, company to, like, you know, work for who can, like, you know, pay me so I can, like, make the transition. And, you know, it doesn't have to be a binary thing like that. And you don't have to apply those mentalities, like, think of it more so just like, you know, an online game, right? Like, if you're playing, like, World of Warcraft or something, you'll, like, create your clan, you'll go, like, do some battles with friends. And then if you stop, you know, collaborating with them, it's fine. You go find some other friends to play with. Like, it's like, you know, we almost have to bring back.

Starting point is 01:12:35 that childlike mindset, how the child's like exploring the world just through play and, you know, experimentation and treat it like that more than anything. And you'll start to like figure it out and find your place naturally. Talk about the importance of a yes and mentality. Can you define yes and and just kind of explain the yes and mentality? Yeah. So I think like, you know, whenever it comes down to any disagreements between any two people, it's like very infrequently is it about one person is right and the other person's wrong. It's just that they're both talking about different. different things from different perspectives, you know, out of different sort of like, you know, needs. So it's like, you know, disassociate the fact that they're disagreeing with you from like your

Starting point is 01:13:15 idea being bad. It's like they're both good ideas, you know, figure out what's the common denominator between them or the pattern between them. And again, think about the meta level. Don't think about what you're disagreeing on. Think about why you're disagreeing, right? And like, disassociate yourself and don't make it personal in that way. Obviously hard to do. But then once you like do that, you start to pattern match all these behaviors, among all these people, then you see like, oh, this thing is actually common among all these. So if you can make an improvement here, it'll help all these people, right? It's like, we express our like problems, but like those problems aren't solutions, right?

Starting point is 01:13:48 It's like, I think some of the issue with like some, you know, of the like modern like left thinking is like, you know, recognizing a problem and then trying to like address it at that level of like, you know, for example, the whole issue of people like getting admissions into school. and whether there should be like quota for certain like races or genders to like oh you know we have to like meet this quota so we get more people in because there's not enough like you know colored people here right I think that's the wrong way to do it because like that's actually probably more racist because like you're assuming that those people can actually like get there through competency that you need to give them this handicap to get there and you know realizing that the problem is not there the problem is like upstream of that you know so like where can you go upstream and fix a problem there and then you know, that will actually result in this outcome that you want, you know, downstream.

Starting point is 01:14:38 So we see the symptoms and try to address the symptoms, but we don't, like, think back far enough to, like, talk about the real problems. MetaDreamer, last question before we wrap this up. What about the future makes you optimistic? I think just the thing I'm most optimistic about is, like, people, you know, again, moving into this, like, post-scarcity mindset. And, like, instead of everyone, even, like, people who are rich or poor, It's like, Zach from Cordenap said this once.

Starting point is 01:15:07 He's like, you know, money is great until you have it. And then it becomes a problem. So it's like, this is almost like, you know, if you have more money than you need, then it actually makes you more depressed. And if you have like less money than you need, then it's actually like you're just as sad. So it's like even the ultra rich, like they're not really happy or content with their lives either. So, you know, it's actually like about getting that balance. And if you have these mechanisms to better distribute value, you can give people guarantees

Starting point is 01:15:31 that they'll have their like baseline needs met, you know. And then once you have that and you can go into post scarcity mindset, then I think that'll be like this new sort of like renaissance where, you know, where like really understanding what it is to be human and like the way we're interacting with each other. And, you know, I think that will alleviate a lot of like the built up sort of internal like stressors or, you know, if you think about it, like so many of like all the problems in the world could be like broken down into, you know, like if you had a bad childhood experience because like you weren't, you know, your family wasn't well off. and they couldn't afford to do this stuff, then that leads you to all these emotional issues and all these things, like, so much of it can be broken down into people not having their needs met and having that worry of like, you know,

Starting point is 01:16:15 what's going to happen to me tomorrow and that safety. So true happiness, I think, is not really about like what you can get or like the good things that can happen to you. It's about eliminating how many bad things can happen to you. Because like if you've eliminated all the bad things that could happen to you, but like nothing else on top of that,

Starting point is 01:16:33 then I think you'd be like perfectly, content and happy and sort of, you know, like at peace with everything. And that's like, you know, a lot of people do have that. It's like they're just like monks or like living like minimal life. And they realize that the key to happiness is like eliminating like negative like externalities or negative the potential for negative outcomes to happen and not necessarily positive outcomes. But, you know, from the Western capitalist view, there's like an advantage in sort of convincing people they need all this and this will make you happen. You take this pill for that. Then you take this pill to like deal with the symptoms of that pill. And then you like shampoo,

Starting point is 01:17:04 your hair to get rid of all the oils and you use all these other hair products to put all the oils back in and then you know the whole cycle so it just creates this like artificial sort of game that leaves us like unhappy at the end of it we can actually change that and I see us actually like you know getting there and you know so for me that's like I think it's a race against time more than anything we're on the right trajectory it's just we need to like accelerate in the right direction before we like you know fly too close to the sun. I the dreamer thank you for coming and sharing your thoughts on layer zero thanks for having me it's great talk. Cheers Cheers.

Bankless - The Next Phase of Humanity with Metadreamer | Layer Zero

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