Bankless - Vitalik Buterin Discusses The 2-Month Zuzalu Experiment

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. In this 8-episode series, we are exploring some new frontiers. New frontiers in new technologies, all of which are poised to completely revolutionize the world and change everything about the operating system that society is currently running. In this first episode with Vitalik, we kick off by discussing the concept of Zuzalu with a birds-eye view. Vitalik helps us unravel the meta-quest of understanding the essence of Zuzalu and its role in curating communities. Discover why Zuzalu was structured in this unique manner, touching upon intriguing elements such as Zupass, zero-knowledge infrastructure, ZuPoll, and Stamps. Keep an eye out as we roll out the rest of these boundary-pushing episodes! ----- BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://k.xyz/bankless-pod-q2  🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask   ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum.  🧠 AMBIRE | SMART CONTRACT WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ambire  🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap  🛞MANTLE | MODULAR LAYER 2 NETWORK https://bankless.cc/Mantle  ----- Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:20 What is Zuzalu? 4:15 The Content Roadmap 5:12 Ethereum the Sibling 7:20 A Taste of the Future 8:45 Front-Run the Opportunity 12:00 VITALIK BUTERIN 14:00 The Zuzalu Experiment 19:00 Technological Seasons 22:50 ZuPass 25:00 Curating Topics 29:55 Cross-Pollination 33:05 Zuzalu Culture 37:30 The Future of Zuzalu 41:00 What it Means to be a Zuzalian ---- Resources: Vitalik Buterin https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin?s=20  Zuzalu https://zuzalu.city/  ZuPass https://zupass.org/#/login  ---- 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures 

Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet money and internet finance. But here today on Bankless, we are exploring some new frontiers. New frontiers in new technologies, all of which seem poised to completely revolutionize the world and change everything about the operating system that society is currently running. In fact, there are as many as five other technologies out there that are all accelerating in progress. And while each one of these new technologies are pioneering into their respective frontiers, they are also all beginning to converge with each other. And the intersections of these various frontiers are fertile grounds for massive disruption of the status quo.

AI, longevity, synthetic biology, network states and coordinations, and zero knowledge cryptography. Each of these are paradigm changing technological frontiers. And each of these industries are in various stages of development and maturity. But Bankless Nation, I'm here to tell you that each one of these frontier technologies is a tidal wave coming for society. The crypto wave hits society in 2021. now society is learning how to deal with his nascent but powerful technology, and society is in the middle of being hit with the AI wave now in 2023, and that wave only appears to be growing in size.

The waves of synthetic biology, longevity, network states, zero knowledge cryptography, and other technology frontiers are still to come. This was the main subject of a two-month-long experiment called Zuzalu. Bankless viewers who were watching the background of my podcast shift in the last two months will notice I was gone from my Brooklyn apartment for two months. I was in Montenegro of all places at this thing called Zuzalu. Zuzalu was an experiment in a temporary community. The idea here is that we have crypto conferences or conferences in general,

which are between 2 and 20,000 people for anywhere between 2 days to a week. And then there are hacker houses, which are 20 people for even as long as one year. Zuzalu was an experiment in a specific arena of both size of people, number of people and lengths of stay. So Zuzalu was 200-ish people for two months of time. And then also about 600 more people that would come in for shorter-term stays like one to two weeks during specific themed weeks. Zuzalu is a brainchild of Vitalik Buterin,

but it was really a holistic effort of many different individuals from across many different industries and also individuals who were adept at community building itself. It was simultaneously a place for different frontier technologies to come together and discuss and collaborate and cross-pollinate, while also produce this experiment in what a temporary short-term community looks like, something in the middle of a network state, a coordination, a digital nation that manifests physically in the world for two months at a time. So like I said, every single week, Azuzalo had a theme. Longevity week, synthetic biology week, new cities and network states, AI and crypto, public goods,

knowledge cryptography, digital tribes, and cordy nations. The idea behind Zuzalu is that residents were staying there for the entire eight-week period, and us residents would watch hundreds of visitors cycle through to have their week-long sets of talks, panels, and workshops, while the visitors of Zuzalu were able to present their respective work and industry to people across vastly different other industries. The benefits of this are huge, because some of these technologies have never really had a meaningful meeting place before. For many of the industry leaders here, Zuzalu was the first opportunity for them

to meet their fellow industry professionals, but not just other professionals inside their own industry, but founders, researchers, and builders across other industries who can bring unique perspectives and knowledge to the table, in order to cross-pollinate, spread knowledge beyond internal walls and optimize for serendipity by just including new people from new industries.

And then the community aspect of this made this especially unique, because having cross-industry conferences is one thing, but this was a cross-industry two-month-long community. We lived together. We ate breakfast together. We all became friends. And that level of cross-pollination is just so much deeper and lasting

than what a three-day or week-long conference could even bring. So Bankless Nation, this was Zuzalu. And here's what you can expect from Zuzalu content. My first conversation that you're going to hear is this one with Vitalik Buteran, which we will get to in just a second. And we'll talk about some of the philosophy and ideas and meaning and purpose behind Zuzalo. What it is, what he thinks it is, what it can be, what other people think it can be. Really the question of what is Zuzalu is embodied in the question itself.

There is no answer. It's up to us. And eventually, the idea is that Zuzalo spirals into a headless movement where maybe soon there is a Zuzalu near you. I recorded 18 different interviews at Zuzalu from all of across the different industries that had representation there. These interviews range from 20 minutes to up to a full hour. These topics of conversations range from synthetic biology to AI, to crypto in Africa, to how to live forever, to even conversations about Zuzalo itself, like this one.

Some of these are very much crypto conversations. A lot of these are only crypto conversations if you use your imagination. So to understand the significance of each of these episodes, I want to share my biggest take away that I got from Zuzalu. And that's this. Ethereum and Crypto is the eldest sibling of a bunch of frontier technologies. It's alone in this room waiting for its fellow siblings to grow up. AI is actually recently of age. So now crypto and AI are starting to be able to play together. Decentralized science will help longevity and synthetic biology come into the fold. The episode with Boris and Mikey will help illustrate that. Digital nations,

have a lot of work to do, and my episode with Prima Vera de Felipe will show you that way. Network states and new cities, there is an immense new need for competitiveness in governance over our physical countries and cities. When we get a bunch of new cities in the world, where are they going to find financial and governance tools ready out of the box? Well, Ethereum, of course, and my conversation with Nicholas will guide you through this world. So while crypto is currently going toe to toe with the old world of securities law and nation state regulation, it is simultaneously stuck waiting for its future use cases across other frontier technologies to grow up and mature. But the biggest takeaway that I got, Bankless Nation, is that as all of these other

frontier technologies grow up, and yes, crypto is not the only frontier technology that's up there, they are going to need Ethereum. They are going to need open public permissionless blockchain rails. They are going to need secure block space. The rapidity and speed of innovation and progress in the crypto space matches some of the innovation and speed and progress and just paradigm shifting technologies being built elsewhere. The frontier technical nature of all of these industries will bring them together. So meanwhile, here Ethereum sits alone. Fighting with its parents, the nation states, the regulators, the old world, while its younger tech siblings are still too nascent to give it support. But Bankless Nation, I guarantee you that day will eventually come

where each one of these technologies will impact your life. Zuzalu was a taste of the future. Everyone and everything at Zuzalu felt like they got beamed in from 20 years in the future to show the rest of Zuzalians how the future will look from their vantage point. The longevity people tell us of an inevitable future in which the option to live forever is a choice that you can make. The network state people show us a future of fluid human migration and citizenship across the globe. Synthetic biology people tell us about a future in which we can grow buildings and vehicles and materials out of all. organic material and that material can self-repair and self-propagate. Everyone at Zuzalu was a futurist. And I would also add that everyone had a resigned note of optimism. Resigned specifically,

though, as in everyone looked at the future and they see a paradigm shifting technology that could improve the human condition at a very deep level. And then they also see these seemingly impossible obstacles that get in our way. Governments, dystopia, malicious use of the technology. No one Zuzalu was naive about the trials that each individual industry faces. In fact, one of the main purposes of Zuzalo was to collaborate on how to get over these obstacles together. But no one at Zuzalu was a quitter. All the researchers, builders, and founders at Zuzalo, if they were given the one true ring, they would all take it to Mordor or die trying. So we're going to release these conversations over the next few weeks and months on the podcast and the YouTube. So treat these

conversations as Zuzalo as a sort of choose your own adventure. So this is an opportunity for you to speed date other frontier technologies beyond crypto because eventually all of these technologies will converge together on Ethereum. And that's what I see. Ethereum offers solutions, offers scaffolding, offers a place for other frontier technologies to collaborate and communicate and build upon. So this is why we're doing this. In every single episode of Bankless, we tell you this is how to get started, how to get better, and how to front run the opportunity. These Zuzaloo conversations are how to get started with other frontier. technologies, technologies that are on a collision course with society. If you listen to these

conversations and understand their implications, you'll be ready. And you won't be surprised when these tidal waves of technological innovations start colliding with the world that we live in. If you want to learn more and just experience more at Zuzalu, in front of every single theme of an episode, whether it's an episode about network states or AI, I will give you the taste of Zuzalu during that week. What was it like? What was Zuzalu like during AI week? Because Zuzalu was different during AI week than when it was a synthetic biology week or network state week. Each community, each set of founders and builders and researchers kind of brought their own vibe. And also the community of Zuzalu also progress and develop.

So Zuzalu itself as a digital nation that manifested for two months is also part of this frontier technology. So if you are interested in explicitly learning more about Zuzalu, they will be contained in the intros to every single episode. So to kick off this Zuzalu content, we're going to start with our conversation with Vitalik Buterin. But first, I went to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Cracken Pro has easily become the best crypto trading platform in the industry. The place I used to check the charts and the crypto prices, even when I'm not looking to

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As we speak, people are packing up their apartments, their hotel rooms, and getting in their planes to go home. And it has been a long two months. Vitalik, we'll start this interview at the end because it is, it's a long. the end of this journey of trying to figure out what Zuzalo is. Do you feel like that you have come to an answer as to what Zuzalo is? In some ways, yes, in some ways no. I think the yes part is basically what this particular thing is. Like, it feels like we understand, you know, what it means to bring, you know, a few hundred people together for a few months from a couple of different communities and try to create interaction between people,

help people learn about each other's interesting stuff that they're doing and just see what kind of a community comes out of that. The thing that I think is still unclear is like sort of what lies in the future, I guess. When the original ideas of Zuzalo came to be, in your brain and other people, brains about what this could be. Was there any original intent? What was the main goals before people actually arrived at this place that we now call Zuzalo?

So I'd been thinking about a lot of ideas in this space for a while before. So last year I read an Obology's book, The Network State, and I wrote my longest blog post ever. That was a review of it that just ended up being insanely long. I had also been thinking about like crypto cities in general like more real world use cases of the blockchains and zero knowledge proofs and so the blockpost I wrote on crypto cities two years ago is like one example of that but we also had some other ideas that were since then I feel like I'd been interested in the topics of you know decentralized government and it's going beyond what it means for blockchains,

and trying to apply some of those ideas to other contexts. And just the question of, like, what are... Like, I think I approached all of those issues from this frame of, like, what would actually be concretely valuable for people in the real world. And at some point, the idea came to be to basically, yeah, do an experiment and try all of those things at the same time. So the way that I think about the experiment is, conferences have thousands of people, and they last for a week, right?

And those already exist. Hacker houses last for a very long time, but they only have up to 10 and 20 people. Well, what about something that has 200 people, so more than a hacker house, and lasts for two months, so more than a conference? And it has both of those at the same time. and basically, yeah, bring people together from a couple of different communities with, you know, some medium level of organization, but realistically relying on people coming in to do most of the rest and just, like, see what actually comes out of that, right? Like, basically, instead of just the discussion about creating, you know, new network states or new societies or towns or, like, any of these things being this kind of purely abstract thing where you have, you know, blabbers, blabers, blabers,

accounts are blabbing each other as blabbing. We actually try this, you know, live thing and we'll just get a huge amount of, you know, real world and data and understanding of like what that, what it actually means in practice and go from there. You said what comes out of that, that being this space of 200 people for two months. Right. Well, what do you think something like Zuzalu or something like Zuzalu? What are your emergent characteristics that can come out of this landscape of

size and time of 200-ish people for two months of time. What's unique about that set up? I think the time duration is important because like one week is a break from your life, two months is your life, right? And so just the kind of mentality that you have, it becomes totally different. And the like the kinds of things that you're willing to do become totally different. There's time to like actually make new connections and actually start like doing things with people that you I did not just kind of know before and brought from outside. It's also large enough, the number of people is large enough that it's big enough to hold like pretty big things with multiple subcommunities, right?

Like, you know, we had cryptography lectures that brought in 30 people. We had discussions about AI that brought in, you know, like over 100 people. We had, you know, some, like various different health-related. events like exercise food biotracking everything we yeah I mean had I mean cooking of different types I mean you know like literally like Chinese karaoke is you know hiking trips and like in a group of 10 you're not going to get those things right in a group of 10 you're going to have one of those things and like I think one of the differences between a yeah city and a family is like a city has neighborhoods and 200 is like

big enough that it actually had neighborhoods which was fascinating right so you actually got to see some interactions between communities. I've got to kind of make some connections that did not exist before, even make some progress on some Ethereum related things. I had a good chance to talk to various different privacy teams and scaling teams and, I know, talk to people working on social recovery and people working on privacy at the same time. And so it's like there's just a lot of things. things that become possible. And it's interesting to see that, like, even at the scale, those kinds of things already become possible. So you've said that 200 people are here at Zuzalu,

but I think something like 8 or 900 have actually come through Zuzalu over the two months. Right. And in addition to the different, like, neighborhoods that you've called them, like you have the longevity people and the ZK people and the Ethereum people. There was, and so, like, that has created some sort of emergent cross-pollination. But there's, There's also, like, from my experience from the last few months, there seems to be, even though it was just two months, seasons of Zuzalo, seasons that came and go. Because weeks had themes and different people came to populate what was Zuzalo at a different time. What do you think was the benefit or net product of this dynamic of Zuzalo? 200 people here at one given point, but 800 people over the eight weeks.

I mean, I think there were kind of two motivations there. One was just, you know, if people only wanted to come. and experience a little bit because they did not have more time than they would be able to come in. And then the concept of these theme weeks or theme seasons was basically sort of encouraged so that people who only had a limited amount of time and were interested in one topic area could come in for like the exact time that their topic area was the big thing. So I'd say yeah, like those aspects succeeded but like there's also outside. aspects of that that probably did not go over very well, right?

Like one example of this was, especially in the free cities and network states events, there was like definitely a large disparity that you could feel between like the kinds of things that people coming in from the outside cared of it and the kinds of things that people had Zootalu cared about. The tribes did not mesh? Yeah, there's like, I think the tribes could have meshed better if a lot more effort was put into it. And I don't think people quite understood going in

what kind of effort was required. Another issue is that, like, theme weeks are not actually good for learning. Right? Like, in college, there's a reason why courses are, like, in parallel and not in series, right? And, like, you know, spaced repetition is the best form of learning. And there's a good reason why it's, you know, it just, like, our brains are just why. in such a way that we remember things much better if we repeatedly get exposed to them over a longer period of time.

And instead, people just got this, like, crazy introduction to synthetic biology, like, big overload, and then no more synthetic biology. That people got exposed to, like, a crazy overload of cryptography, and then no more cryptography. Like, the word Nova got spoken, like, you know, every minute for a week, and then, like... I haven't heard of sense. Exactly, right? So, I think, like, that was one of those things. that I think works well.

Like in some ways, I think the biggest successes of Zuzolu might have even been the persistent themes. Like, the development of Zupass, for example, right? Like, I think that was actually, like, a really great kind of, like, technology, sort of, you know, community fit there. Because, like, for Zupas, it was, oh, for Zuzaloo, it was an application that, like, got actually used to do some really cool stuff. And then for Zupass, it was a, you know, a community. of real users that were actually able to give feedback on a whole bunch of different edge cases. And, like, actually help in a way that it would not be able to on its own. So, like, I think if I were to, like, redo something like this,

like I would try to focus more on persistent themes than even, like, having goals across those themes rather than just, you know, lots of things coming and going. And for people who want to know what Zoo Pass is, Zou Pass is kind of like, it's a passport, except for Zuzaloo. Two-month-long passport that works inside of this community. Right. But it is now like infrastructure that future Zuzaluz or future other temporary communities can also use. So it was like this top, is this dynamic passport that could change, but then also you could collect stamps. Right.

So the interesting thing about it, I think, just, you know, make it clear to viewers that this is not the same as a COVID vaccine card, is that is the zero knowledge aspect, right? So, look, if I can take out my Zupass right now, I, hold on, I have to switch over to my other profile on Graphene, and then I open up the Zuzzo Passports thing on my browser, and I get this, right? Basically, it's a QR code, and that QR code contains a zero knowledge proof, like just, you know, standard snark. I forget if it's Groth or Polonk or whatever, which proves that I am a member of the set of Zuzulu residents without revealing which one I am. And so, like a bunch of interesting apps were built on this, so there was Zup Pole, which basically had like polls where only Zuzolu residents could vote, but the votes were anonymous.

And only vote once. Yes, and only vote once. And then Zucast, which was a Twitter, where all the accounts were numbered accounts, and only if you were Zoola residents, you can only get one numbered account. So, you know, like a lot of really fun, you know, online stuff happens. I mean, they're used for just like physical gatekeeping for an event's when capacity got limited as well. And then there's stamps, which are the Zubass equivalent of popes. So, like, I was a cook for one of the community dinners, and I got a Pope saying that I'm a cook.

And then what else? You'll be getting one for being on the Bankless Podcast series. Indeed, perfect. Yeah, there's, like, a bunch of, you know, really nice popes that have been going around, and I've only seen some of them. The next thing I was hoping to ask about is there's all of these different, fields of study that came to be at Zuzalo. And interestingly, I wouldn't really call this an Ethereum-focused event.

There were many, many Ethereum people here. But like you said, there was synthetic biology people. There was longevity people, network state people, AI people, public goods people, which were very much Ethereum people, ZK people who were very much Ethereum people. But I wouldn't really call an Ethereum event. What kind of thought went into the selection process of what kind of topics were going to be here at Zuzalu. Yeah. So I think there is definitely like an intentional motivation on my part to like have this also, you know, remind Ethereum people that there is a bigger role that they can be part of.

And so I personally, like I knew some, some, um, like, Ethereum and ZK people and I knew, um, like some longevity people and I knew some, you know, free city and network state people. But then, like, lots of other topics just, emerged organically on their own, right? Like, the AI group just kind of emerged by itself. The whole, even synthetic biology, like I did not really appreciate synthetic biology as a field. Like, I don't think I'd even seen that combination of words together before. And then people just came to me, and they're like, yo dog, we like literally made a brick out

of carbon dioxide. And like, we made a sweater out of carbon dioxide made by algae. Do you want one? And I'm like, sure. And yeah, so that was really fun. But I think just kind of go back to the question of selection. I mean, this was obviously like a round one experiment. And like I think we all knew from the start that like everything would be very imperfect in a whole bunch of ways.

But the, so there was, I think, an intentional desire to just like say, we'll pick a couple of different people. communities and we'll like pick some great people from those communities and you know out of those whoever is willing to come and actually stay for two months like you know great well and we'll have them and see what happens so we basically made followed this kind of approach of inviting the invaders like we yeah invited about 10 people and then each of those started forwarding the invitations along to some others and that kind of seeded the initial community so while i said there wasn't this didn't really feel like an Ethereum event. The undertones of this whole thing was very Ethereum.

The residents that stayed for two months were disproportionately like crypto people. And to say that, like, first there was synthetic biology week, and then there was longevity week, and then it was AI week, kind of doesn't do the service of talking about all the cross-pollination that happened. Right. Can you talk about, like, what happened from your experiences, the cross-pollination and the value that came out of having all of these different communities kind of churned together? Hmm.

It felt like, I mean, there's definitely, like, a lot of love between synthetic biology and Ethereum people at the beginning. Like, there's this strong desire to see that there are aligned values between these, between the communities. And it's good to, like, I don't feel like anything substantive has quite come out of that yet, but like it could, right? I think that, like, one of the challenges is always, like, converting this kind of, like, viable level alignment into substantive alignment. And I think in a lot of cases, the answer there is just, like, the public goods funding aspect. Like, there are a lot of tracks here where people talked about retro public public goods funding, impact certificates, you know, quadratic funding, you know, collusion-resistant quadratic voting, like all of these public goods funding ideas. And a lot of those are relevant to, like, any branch of science, right? So, like, I know Juan Bennett from IPFS and Filecoin, he's been for years, like, a very good bridge between the crypto and science communities.

And, yeah, so, but there's, you know, an increasingly growing decentralized science community, which is, you know, great. And, like, hopefully more things come out of that. There are some interesting connections that got made between some of the longevity people and some of the Nick City people. It seems like there's This kind of growing friendship between like some Vita Dell people and Prospera And I guess we'll see whether or not there's More bio stuff happening in Latin America soon One experience I had while all of these different seasons kind of came and go

Was learning that every single one regardless of what it was The longevity people, the network safe people, the AI people, the ZK people people, they all, there's all a very, like, practical and understood way that that connects to Ethereum. Every single one has like, oh, this is the way that these two industries could build together. And in this current moment in crypto, we are once again in a bare market. And in bare markets, we tend to soul search. Yet again, our meme coins dominating the Twitter's like geist of the moment, which has left a lot of the long-term believers, once again frustrated that this is what this industry is, at least at the cursory level.

the top-down level. And so the reflection, the learning moment that I've had, I'm wondering if you have felt anything similar, is that Ethereum seems to be, and crypto at large, I think is like the eldest of a bunch of frontier technologies that has grown up first. AI, I think, is now also coming of age.

But when we talk about, like, network states, where are all of these new charter cities or new network states or new coordinations? Where are they going to get their Wall Street? Where are they going to get their financial infrastructure? Right. It's going to be crypto. Right.

Decentralized science. Like, Ethereum offers a foundation for this industry. Same thing with synthetic biology and all of these emergent new technologies. They all seem to be a very good hook into Ethereum. And so one of the biggest takeaways that I've had from Zuzalo, for me personally, it's just like Ethereum and Crypto at large seems to be the eldest of many siblings, sibling technologies. And it's just looking around waiting for all the other ones to grow up.

I'm wondering if you have any reflections on that conclusion. Yeah, no, I think there's definitely something to that. And I think it's, like, it's important to remember that I think, like, Ethereum and Crypto, like, there are always this combination of a technological movement and a cultural movement. And, you know, they, like, it's also the, yeah, kind of, you know, the ideological continuation of the cypherpunk movement. It's, I mean, like, Balaji likes talking about, you know, the,

the international and the decentralized movement as a successor to the non-aligned movement. Just like open source software as a concept, like people from those communities often also find their way into crypto. So there is like this set of ideological things that it's also inevitably ends up being beside. And I think, you know, like to have a, you know, successful collaboration, like, I think you need, like, that idea level alignment and, like, that practical level alignment to exist at the same time. And I think, like, a lot of the time it's, like, there's definitely a lot of cases where, like, you have one and not the other, or you have the other and not the first. But try to find those opportunities where both exist is really important and really valuable when it succeeds. Zuzalu I would kind of bisect between

there's the the knowledge side of Zuzalo there's like the tracks that we've been talking about but then also like Zuzalo like you said two months is your life and so like there's a social life side of things and so I'm wondering what do you think for you personally everyone got to experience

Zuzalu their life as Zuzalo how Zuzalu would change their life for their own because it was a choose your own adventure for what you wanted to make out of Zuzalu how did the social milieu you and what Zuzalo is. How did that, what did you really get out of that personally? Huh.

And it's hard for me to compare because this is like literally the first time I've been with a large group of people for an extended duration basically since university. Right? Like I've been nomading for literally, I think, 10 years minus 10 days now. And like pre-COVID averaging 55 flights a year post-COVID a bit less, but still a bunch. And even during COVID, like, I was, I mean, I was stuck in one place for longer periods of time,

but I was not really with people. Yeah, so it's, like, different and nice, and it's kind of hard to compare to other things. Yeah, I think, like, the value that I think, like, a lot of people got is, like, just having this, like, very high density of value-aligned people around them and this perception that, like, they can just, you know, go out on the street. And, like, if they bump into someone, there's a high probability that that person is interesting to them. Yeah.

So that's something that, like, people generally do not get in other places. And it's, like, the sort of thing that's missing in a lot of online communities, like, I remember my own experience starting as a Bitcoin magazine person, right? and like I was just basically participating for a kind of from the sidelines I felt because I was I was just writing Bitcoin magazine from the internet and then I went to Bitcoin Miami in 2013 and that's when I realized like just like how big the community is and how much like it's an actual community that's like really actually capable of doing all of those things and like that really impressed me and that gave me a lot of motivation and so yeah like I think that's something that's always

important for those kinds of internet heavy spaces in general to have what were you able to achieve at Zuzalo that you wouldn't have been able to achieve without it I mean I had a desire to understand the experience

and like I feel like I have like a lot more understanding than before though it's like it's understanding that's hard to compress into a few words I mean yeah I you know I hope to learn to learn some more about cryptography and you know it's some to some extent I have, like I, you know, understood how to use, how to, like, actually use

recursive synarchs better than before. And I, like, I feel like I understand Nova better than before. But, so, you know, some amount of progress. Though I feel like, you know, if it were more structured, it probably could have been better for me. But also, like, there's just lots of people that were, like, bugging me with requests the whole time. So, like, there's definitely just... Is that anything new, though? Yeah, it is not. I mean, to be fair, for the first month, there was like, there was much less of that and like I felt so happy. Yeah, like, just being able to like go out and know that like if someone walks up to me, the interaction will be pleasant and won't be a selfie request. Like that's special.

Yeah, and that's, uh, but you know, then the second month of that act of like this, definitely, like started having more outside visitors and started to just like having more people here who are coming just because, you know, it's not, the tourist season is starting, and it's, like, nothing to do with Zuzalu, and, like, it's sort of normalized a little bit. And so, yeah, I'm, you know, looking forward to disappearing a bit again. Okay. Many people are getting on flights today and tomorrow when are largely going to be out of Zuzaloo. What are you going to miss the most about Susaloo? I mean, all of the friends I've made, definitely. So Zuzaloo's coming to an end. But there's this desire for everyone to see more of it. Do you have any aspirations or ideas about what Zuzalu could become?

What could Zuzalu be in its maxily manifested state? I think it depends on what the goal is. I think Zuzalo, as it was this year, is this convergence point, in that for a lot of possible journey, it's this kind of first experience. experimental step that makes sense as a first step on one of many different paths. But as each of those paths go forward, they divergent some different ways. So, like, one example of this is if you want to build a longevity-focused network state where people do frontier bio-research, then, like, you need infrastructure,

and that infrastructure realistically needs to be in one place. And, like, even if infrastructure was not a problem, you'd still need to be in one one place because it's hard enough to convince one country to adopt favorable regulations when and so like you know getting a convincing a new country every 60 days is just totally unrealistic right and but other people at the other hand like actually want a digital no bad village right other people want a similar experience but for a different set of communities or with a somewhat different focus right like there's just lots of spins of this to make a lot of sense right like one there's even people in Montenegro that wants a longer-term crypto city.

Like, one path is toward, you know, building some longer-term settlement with a particular goal. One possible path is toward doing these, you know, intensive boot camps with the goal of building something, right? So we talked about Zupass and, you know, how this kind of served as, you know, the boot camp for basically incubating Zupass. And then the question is, well, you know, what are other things? that this could serve as a boot camp for.

Like, I don't know, secure operating systems, secure smart contract wallets, decentralized social media. Like, I don't know, right? And then, like, that's all in the kind of, you know, the world of bits, sort of tech land. There's, I'm sure, equally many examples, you know, in the longevity and biospace, for example, or even just in terms of, like, cultural experimentation.

So, depending on, like, what the goal is, there's, like, the, like, different paths that you could take. And I think, like, my ideal goal is to find a way for all of the paths to be taken. And that, you know, my, like, might mean that, like, you know, the names is there's a low as, like, not going to represent, like, any particular one of those paths, right? And that's, yeah, like, there's still this challenge of, you know, what is the role of, like, you know, the core team? Like, does the core team split? Like, you know, do people take on different responsibilities? Like, what is, like, what kind of actually makes sense as an organization of this kind of ecosystem, especially as, you know, we have all of these different visions that then start going in different directions from here?

What do you want your role to be as Zuzzi? Zulu develops into something bigger? I mean, I hope that it doesn't depend on me, right? Because I think, I mean, anything that depends on me is not going to scale. And even before it fails to scale, it'll probably make me, you know, go crazy from multiple interview requests every day. So, you know. So, like I said, we're at the last day of Zuzalu.

People are packing up their bags. But yesterday, we had a community moment of reflection. and we all tried to come together to come to consensus about what are the values of Zuzolu? What does it mean to be a Zuzalian? So I'm wondering what your perspective is on that question. What does it mean to be a Zuzalian? Maybe it's not my place to answer the question yet. How do you think that answer should come about?

I'd love to see lots of other people writing about what their answer is. And like I feel like this isn't even modesty on my part. This is like actual curiosity. I'm looking forward to actually reading and, you know, seeing, like, what other people see as, like, this as being and, like, what kind of future they see it as driving towards. And I think there's going to be a lot of, you know, really valuable information in those answers, too. Well, Vitell, thank you for being trusting enough of humanity to be able to cast off all of these things into the hands of humans that can do a variety of things to whatever is thrown their way. So I appreciate it. And thank you, David, for, you know, continuing to steward the Bangladesh Nation.

You know, this is the West. This is the frontier. This is the absolute unknown. And you could lose all of your assets and all of your sanity. But, you know, for those of us who have been here, it is. And I expect we'll continue to be a wonderful journey. So thank you very much. Thanks a talk.

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