Ethereum Co-Founder Gavin Wood On What Web3 Is Actually Good For

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2022-05-26

YouTube video id: MUa7InAe3e8

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUa7InAe3e8

hello and welcome to the big technology
podcast a show for cool headed nuanced
conversations of the tech world and
beyond and we are coming to you from
davos this week in collaboration with
the web 3 foundation and unfinished our
guest today is gavin wood the co-founder
of ethereum and creator of polkadot
we've had a handful of conversations
about web 3 on this show but i don't
think any has been
uh as in-depth as the one you're about
to hear gavin welcome to the show thanks
for having me
so you're you're the uh co-founder of
ethereum creator polka dot two of the
most influential crypto projects um that
we have today
and both of them challenge the current
institutions and so i've heard two
legends about you
um
the first is that you decided to get
into this after seeing the revelations
from ed snowden
the second is that you decided to
make these moves after seeing the
financial collapse
in 2009. so which one of those is true
um
[Music]
i think the uh
the time that this happened was was
around 2013
um so i guess you know the uh the
snowden revelations were sort of pretty
timely back then
um and certainly uh you know i mentioned
this in the web3 um sort of
little document thing that i wrote back
back uh back in 2014
but that said
um the the the financial crash in 2008
was
uh it very much sort of set the scene
and it it it made me
uh increasingly aware that a lot of the
uh a lot of what goes on in the world
that is very um that is crucial for you
know the
uh continued uh functioning of of
everyday life
is uh is hidden and rather opaque and
not always in the best of hands
right and so it is great to start off
this way because we often hear about
uh people who are interested in web 3
and their desire to fix a broken system
but we don't really talk too much about
the broken system oftentimes it's
assumed so what about the snowden
revelations in particular made you think
that the system we had was broken and
that we needed to build a new one
um
the the the depth to which
um
you know i have expectations as a
citizen in a free society
and those expectations sort of
uh i you know i expect certain um things
to work in particular ways i expect a
degree of privacy
i expect that
um you know
random government employees cannot
arbitrarily snoop on my
video calls like without good cause at
least
preferably from a judge who is uh
entirely unbiased right
um
and when you know when it became clear
the degree to which um
this was really not happening in society
when it became clear that the
um
the social contract was not being
faithfully honored
on the side
of government
and in particular security services
government i don't you know i don't
doubt that there are um plenty of
government employees that are you know
uh great decent upstanding people keen
on um
on on honoring the the sort of social
contract but i think uh to a large
extent the security services
uh and certainly the snowden revelations
would would uh support this um sort of
consider themselves um uh you know
a power
uh um
that needs little um
uh judicial oversight little uh
little need for checks or balances and
this is um
uh unfortunate
that we the the that we live in a
society where
um
[Music]
on the face of it we have uh
statutes we have
um
uh
you know ethics we have um a rich
history of
of of
of
understanding and trying to keep in
place
and um and and be very vigilant of our
freedoms and yet
um
you know behind the curtain um it's not
all quite as it seems
so one of the things that i want to know
is why then go ahead and try to build a
new web
build something totally from scratch
that has technical difficulties versus
just try to reform the system as it
existed
back then exist today
yeah i'm
well firstly i'm a technologist not a
politician
and i i fear that to attempt to reform
the system begins in the world of
politics
a murky world at best
[Music]
secondly
i actually
i believe that to a large extent
technology
i wouldn't say necessarily created the
problem but
the the use of
of uh of you know internet of
this broad you know um
all-encompassing communication
technology
um
has
has facilitated this problem to exist
and
[Music]
i
am not convinced
or at least i am hopeful that
technology
is uh
is the means by which we can
um turn this technology
to a slightly better path
well i'm going to blow up my order of
questions now so so you've talked about
um communications that is the issue
communication technology can you expand
on that
i wouldn't say it's the issue i would
say it facilitated the issue what does
that mean um
i think i think there is a natural
tendency towards those in power to
consolidate that power
and i think
the internet
provided a
really effective means to consolidate
power on a scale not seen before
and
the
uh
we need a quite um revolutionary
antidote to that
um if we are to escape the consolidation
of power
and this is i'm thinking you're talking
about the facebooks and the googles
that's one element of it yeah okay and
so
the antidote is decentralization versus
maintaining this power essentially in
these big tech companies
decentralization is a means to an end
but it's a very powerful means yeah so
what what is decentralization
um essentially well it has a couple of
of different um meanings to a few
different groups of people
um
the meaning that i
that i use it in and that i think is
today the most important is uh what some
call political decentralization but it's
um
it's essentially reducing the amount of
um of power over a system that any
individual
economic actor
has
so most of our political systems
whether they're you know the military
government democracy even
as it's as it's implemented today
um
or corporates
they all have a relatively hierarchical
power structure whereby essentially
there is often times one or very few
individuals at the top with
decision-making capacity like over
at organizational level decision-making
capacity so we we kind of naturally
centralize and then there's like a
degree of delegation that happens to the
levels until you get to sort of the
bottom level where there's very minimal
decision making capacity and this is um
you know of course there are more novel
organizational structures that are being
proposed and you know at times um kind
of implemented at least flirted with
implementation most of the big ones
still are these very top-down
power structures
and decentralization
really is
um about trying to
remove that power structure at least in
a
structural way
like at least in a way that makes it
non-negotiable now not not to say that a
decentralized system cannot have small
versions of this power structure in it
um in the same way that a capitalist
economy can have um you know a company
that has a boss with with you know
employees and so on um
that's no problem but that doesn't make
it a command-driven economy it just
means that there is a
you know a component that exists under
you know notionally fair rules uh
competing with other companies um and
providing um services and selling goods
and that's
that's really what what we come down to
mean with these pat with political
decentralization it's about not um
uh placing all the decision-making eggs
in one basket or at least if we do not
doing so in a uh in a structural fashion
is it weird for you to be here in davos
where like all those people at the top
that you just mentioned are gathering
uh it's an it's an odd collections
walking down the street it really is yep
why are you here
why yeah um
i why am i personally here always well
it's very interesting to me that you
know if you're talking about how we need
to decentralize and you know it's a
political form of decentralization we're
down the block of course we're not in
the event but we're down the block from
all that centralization so
is it is it a political message to be
here or is it just like this is a
convenient gathering of people
um what what about
davos
made you want to come
um
i would be
i think it's an im i think overall there
are relatively few forums in the world
that collect together quite the same set
of people
um
i think that the message
is
important and i think that it's
there are sort of competing messages all
sort of going under the same banner you
know you walk up the street web 3 means
quite a lot of different things
depending on where in the street you
decide to
take off and go to a shop um and i think
it's uh it's i don't i wouldn't want the
message to become
um overly diluted or
otherwise misused so i think like with
any forums um
if
if there is something that you've that
if there is a point of education that
you that makes sense to get across to
people um
you know you you need to join the
conversation and you need to um to make
it clear and you know maybe um
maybe those some of those people are
somewhat um ideologically um not not
necessarily super aligned but i think
there's people here that have um
open minds and that have uh you know a
desire to understand where the world's
going and understand what um uh what
frameworks and toolkits will will exist
in the future to you know help the world
get to a better place
okay so let's let's continue on on um
the gavin journey so
you watch what happens with snowden um
you believe there's too much
centralization of power it's too easy
for the government to go in and listen
into what you're doing and you decide to
apply a technological solution to that
so what happens next
well i mean i didn't it wasn't quite as
like
step one to step two there um it might
it kind of set things up in my mind a
little bit it it made me um
i think over over the last 10 years and
probably longer but over the last 10
years i have
moved from a
uh a sort of let's say trust ambivalent
um
stance trust neutral stance like there
are there are banks and governments and
all this sort of thing and i i kind of
have to trust them and that's kind of
okay i you know they they can leave me
alone you know it's it's all good um
and over those 10 years i have felt um
that what my expectations what that that
which i have been given to expect
had been um have been had not been
honored by those who should be the ones
honoring it
and
[Music]
it's not that i sought to
fix
any specific
thing so it's not that it was like oh uh
you know here are the snowden
revelations uh government spying on
honors especially in the free world
um against what what appear to be the
law right the laws of the world
um
i will fix that and prevent them from
spying on me no i mean i could have
started encrypting all my stuff i didn't
i could you know there were concrete
steps i could have taken to sort of at
least fix it for me and maybe even help
fix it for others
that wasn't really the the path that i
went on but it helped um cement in my
mind that technology does need to be
created that will allow people
to or will allow the world in general um
to deal with this kind of trust issue in
the future like i don't believe we're
going to be able to anyone can wave a
wand and suddenly make everyone
trustworthy
suddenly make all organizations
trustworthy
um i don't believe electing a politician
is going to do that at all like not a
chance i reckon the world had a pretty
decent chance with obama and not much
changed right
um
he got through
you know a health care bill that was
really just u.s centric and um that is
you know increasingly being repealed now
it's like i don't
want none of our base still open
security still this is still run amok
there is increasingly little judicial
oversight of certain things so i don't
think politicians are the way to fix
um
[Music]
fix the trust issues of the world in
many respects i i think they're the
problem
um
and i think it would be better if
i i and so i'm looking for a
i'm looking to create new tools
such that um
we have alternative solutions to this
problem
and so
that's where ethereum comes in
yeah so this this kicked off in late
2013
um
[Music]
and um what for from the listeners that
are tuning in that don't fully know what
ethereum is you explain it simply
uh it's a um
[Music]
it's a
it's it's sort of a derivative in some
sense like
men like technologically speaking of of
the bitcoin protocol which is um you
know this this uh decentralized currency
so ethereum's like a decentralized
currency and it adds additional um uh
programmability to
that currency so you can build on it
you can um yeah you can
you can program the money right
essentially now we hear about this a lot
and for those of us that are not in the
space this is where the point of
confusion often comes in
because people know that there's you
know they hear about this new web and
they hear about the programming that you
could potentially do on top of
blockchains
but we don't have any
programs that most of us use that have
been built this way
so
what's going on is it a technological
problem or is the hype a little bit too
early where are the programs that are
supposed to be built
on top of this technology because it
sounds nice in theory you know
distributed the government can't spy
um you know and and maybe even users are
you know have some ownership through
tokens but you know that's what i where
i think the disconnect comes for the
general public and the web 3 community
where you know folks are trying to
look they hear all this it all sounds
good but they're asking where's the
cream filling like what's going on
inside
um it's uh
it's a little bit like uh sort of taking
the home computer revolution in like 80
81 82 and sort of asking hey you know um
where's uh
where's the ai where's the uh
where's the you know where's the vr
but the difference is we have much more
powerful computers now than we did back
then so is it a computing power issue
um
no no it's it's more of a
so we've moved up a couple of levels
since yeah
um
[Music]
so we've got powerful computers and we
have um pretty decent um connectivity
um we have um
a incredible level of like accessibility
so we can you know access all this um
you know the internet from all sorts
from from these tiny little devices that
we carry around with us we've come very
far in that regard but
there's still um a substantial amount of
um
of a gap
in terms of
um
the the higher level elements so
these basically boil down to software
so software libraries software
development kits
services
and integrations
so when i think integration i'm really
talking about you know integrating with
the the rest of the world services
whether they're digital or meet space
doesn't really matter so much
um
and
[Music]
we
would make you know we are moving slowly
there but it will take a while it's not
it's not um
it's not something where uh you can sort
of click your fingers
invest a billion dollars and expect like
in three months time everything to have
been changed over
um
it takes a lot of people to
understand
it's an education problem as much as it
is a technological problem people have
to like get their heads around what this
is
like a lot of web 2 could have been
built on the technologies that we had 5
or 10 years before web 2 arrived but
they weren't
web 2 didn't like
didn't come about until people had got
to grips with
the web the internet when they you know
they had the uh they understood you know
the difference between like a phone line
and a dsl line and uh all their you know
um they understood what what um
how to how to sort of connect to the
internet they understood the difference
between a computer that was connected
and computer that wasn't connected
there's a lot of
um
there's a lot of base level education
that has to go on the world has to come
around
to a new way of doing things
right
and so um
let's talk about how
in an ideal world when we get to that
point a web 3 application let's say a
web through communication application
um would solve some of those problems
that snowden had pointed out like is it
it won't be able to be hacked by a
government or you know what does it look
how does it look like different uh for
the user
as opposed to you know what we have
today
built on the blockchain or
um
the blockchain is one
very important component of this
but it's not the only one i mean
blockchains work largely through
um two sort of distinct technology sets
one of them is cryptography which just
basic mathematics
and the other one is game theory so
economics right
and these two together combine
to allow for what we what we call like
blockchain
um
trust free
computing but blockchain broadly
speaking there are a few avenues that
are sort of a little different um but
blockchain broadly speaking um is a very
transparent system it doesn't
help users keep hold of their data right
of itself right everything on bitcoin is
on them it's a public ledger you can see
all the transactions that happen same
with ethereum
now there are there are technology
avenues that are aiming to reduce
this um sort of public nature of the
information
but they tend to have a
an unfortunate side effect that it
centralizes the computation so it
actually ends up centralizing some of
the information flow as well and that's
kind of problematic but web 3 in and of
itself is about trying to reduce um
at a broad level how much we trust how
much we have to trust it's not that
trust is necessarily a bad thing but
that the requirement to trust
essentially means blind faith it's like
i have no choice but to trust that the
security services are not trying to
snoop on everything you know i have no
choice but to trust that the judge and
the court is actually unbiased
um
and this is like it's not a great
position to be in because if you have no
choice but to trust well that means that
you're basically powerless and that and
you have no way of actually ensuring
that you're not under an arbitrary
authority that can essentially tell you
what to do without any real reason um or
rational so
this is the the broad web3 technology
set is about building technologies that
allow us um to uh to not have to trust
and there are two that
roughly speaking cryptography and game
theory that allows us to do this
blockchain is like a composite
technology there's also um
encryption a branch of cryptography that
allows us to communicate in a way that
we don't have to trust an intermediary
communication
middleman
in order to have some credible guarantee
that um our our communication is private
right
and this is sort of one of the issues
with the internet pre 2013
was that we weren't using encryption by
and large services were http not https
and that little green lock symbol that
you see in the top right of the browser
wasn't there most of the time
these days it is and we have you know we
have a little bit more credible
expectation that we have privacy over
our internet communications great
um
web 3 is sort of saying well how far can
we take this can we gain more credible
expectation more credible guarantees
that our expectations will be met like
we had an expectation even pre-2013 that
we weren't being
massive
massly spied on right that mass
surveillance was not um was not being uh
sponsored by our governments and yet it
turned out that it was so
um
given that as a technologist it's like
it's my job to say well okay looks like
this was a step in the right direction
great
um
billions of people have
a little bit more credible guarantees
over their expectations of the world
but can we can we push things further
yeah and i want to ask you more about um
the ledger being public and how that
what that means for privacy but i'm
going to hold that for the second half i
want to conclude this half with a
question that's been puzzling me uh
since i started really looking into this
stuff so
i went to el salvador and just kind of
ran into the country's bitcoin
experiment where bitcoin is legal tender
there
and started listening to some of the
podcasts that were talking about this um
and how to how they were going to make
bitcoin the currency in el salvador and
i've heard you speak about it it seems
like it can be helpful to avoid some of
the fees with remittances
but when i s when i listen to bitcoin
people i don't know what the deal is
they hate web 3 people and the web 3
people can't stand bitcoin people it
seems like you'd have common ground
what's going on in that rivalry
um i'm not sure um i suspect that the
bitcoin people that are not super keen
on the web three people are probably
just on the web 3 movement
um maybe
um
think of it a little too much in terms
of the
uh you know the nft hype stuff rather
than
um the underlying
um
uh let's say social and technological
direction
um
[Music]
i certainly have very good uh you know
relationships very your friendships with
with people in the bitcoin space
um so i i don't know i mean i i i don't
know about the web three people who who
don't seem to get on with the bitcoin
people wow i think you know there's
probably um
some degree of of
you know it's kind of sad but some
degree of tribalism that happens here
um
but uh
i suspect that uh modulo a few
a few of the sort of
um
let's say less uh
less in it for for the movement more in
it for the money people on both sides i
think i think there is a lot of shared
um desire um to use this technology to
to really um you know help uh get
society onto a better footing yeah i i
would think there would be more common
ground and it is interesting for me to
see the bitcoin maximalists people like
jack dorsey for instance you bring up
web3
he says you know it's a fraud something
like that however
his idea is to use some of the same
technology for some of the same ends yep
we're here with kevin wood the
co-founder of ethereum and creator of
polkadot live from davos and playing on
the big technology podcast feed we will
be back right after this
and we're back here on the big
technology podcast from davos uh with
gavin with the co-founder of ethereum
creator of polka dot so we've spoken a
lot in the first half about the theory
of web 3 of blockchains and bitcoin
let's go to something more practical so
i was asking where is the cream filling
in the first half but
there's an interesting headline in
uh protocol this week it says ethereum's
co-founder thinks the blockchain
can fix social media
and not only is it a thought it seems
like there's something that's in action
right now so love to hear you expand
upon that
yeah i mean i think uh social media
suffers um from much many of the same
problems that we
we've already been discussing
um
namely opaque largely unaccountable
very centralized
entities
that are in charge of
the control services that a lot of the
world rely upon
and that have demonstrated themselves as
being either
uh
uh incapable or um uh
you know asleep at the wheel or or worse
uh in their duty
and um you know while i i think that uh
i think people should really be uh
the ones to um
to be responsible over their own choices
you know authority start authority and
responsibility start
start at home
nonetheless i think i think that
we need
better
frameworks and tools technologically
speaking to
allow people to make the right choice
and make a choice where they don't have
to trust these centralized entities to
um
to provide them with the services that
they rely upon
and so
tell me a little bit more about this
protocol that you're working on yeah i
mean this is a collaboration
um
and uh i'm happy to sort of uh uh
announce that you know polkadot is is
the you know sort of underlying um
technical framework um that uh you know
this will be uh implemented upon
um what is this
uh it's uh well it's a combination of
technologies like it's a stack of
technologies as all good technologies
should be right so you can choose where
or where on the stack you want to come
in and build uh but um essentially it's
a it's a very general social um social
networking protocol
um
sort of
conceptually a social graph protocol so
basically um manage it a means of like
managing the connections between
individuals humans on the planet um and
also managing um
the uh the information
that individuals have associated with
them and that potentially can be
associated between the connections of
individuals
so it's a very very kind of um
[Music]
uh
abstract
platform
on which
the sorts of applications that can be
built are those which we we sort of
today think of as the the big social
networking things but you know the hope
is that it will also as a platform
facilitate many more
kinds of applications and they won't
have to build up a social graph from
from the bot from xero
they'll be able to uh very easily users
will be able to very easily sort of
not migrate but sort of
um share or or copy or
utilize these additional products and
services um without having to uh sort of
do all of this horrible um signing up
bringing your friends over and all the
rest of it so the idea is essentially i
would go in build my social network on
this protocol and then be able to export
it to different applications
uh so
yeah
essentially yes and likewise you'll be
able to go in build your application on
this platform right and users will be
able to sort of come across on mass
relatively easily but it would be their
choice right you would still have to
kind of
pitch the application to them um but in
principle it would be an awful lot
easier to break these you know
incredible um
moats and barriers um that the social
networking giants put up around their
social graph you know i like this idea
in theory however i think about it in
practicality and i have some questions
so
the idea of okay build your social graph
on the blockchain and then maintain
control of it and give it to certain
applications as you see fit makes sense
but i think about the nature of the
different types of applications or the
different types of graphs that i have on
each application so for instance
facebook is my social graph linked in my
professional graph twitter is a
asymmetric file model where i am it's an
interest graph really
and then something like tic tac my graph
doesn't actually matter because the
application is looking only at my
behavior but the follow as somewhat of
an interesting signal and saying this is
what i should show you
so how does the fact that every
application has its own unique
graph
then sync with the idea of making a
graph portable because it seems like it
would only be useful in some cases and
not others
well the graph is um if we
if we think about a conceptual model
it's still just um nodes and connections
right individuals are the nodes and
there are connections between them
whether it's following liking um being
friends
and this is really this is why i say
it's very abstract um it's it's a model
that can
that be that can be used by all of these
applications but you're right each
application will use this model this
this this underlying data differently
now you say that uh oh well you know
linkedin is professional whereas uh you
know facebook is social i mean there are
plenty of there's so much overlap there
at least for me like
my work life and my private life are you
know
fairly heavily um uh overlapping and
there are many people that would exist
on both of them and it doesn't really
make sense for me to have to add them on
one and add them on the other similarly
with twitter like the the uh i think
like everyone on linkedin and everyone
on facebook are twitter followers as
well so why would i why would i want to
replicate these connections um so many
different times so with instagram
instagram it's like basically the same
as twitter um
[Music]
not all of them will use the underlying
data in the same way as you say tiktok
may take it as only a very sort of
in terms of the services it provides may
only take a relatively glancing look at
the um at the actual social graph and
use alter you know alternative means of
deciding what content it will show you
and when um but in principle there are
an awful lot of
applications out there that are using
the same basic data um but that data has
to be entered uh to every platform
and that data is under the control and
you know
who knows what they're doing with it if
you want to read their terms and
services they're usually pretty opaque
and most people don't um who knows what
they're doing with it um and so now
instead of having uh you know you have
control of your data you can sort of
decide this um
uh this application can use it for this
perp for this means this purpose
um and that application can use it for
that means and that purpose uh you now
have uh
10 applications plus maybe i don't know
depending if you're a big social
networking user maybe it's like 20 30 40
50 applications all working on kind of
more or less the same data all using it
the way that they want which means it's
uh you've got a multiplication of the
amount of uh trust that you're needing
to give for your personal data and i
think um and this came up in an earlier
conversation i think this
this turns a lot of people off like a
lot of people are not super keen on i
know i'm not on sharing you know
all of the information with all of the
providers
um and as such it limits what what kind
of products and services can be provided
like if there's not that much
information being being given
by by the user to the application then
the application can do accordingly
relatively little
um
if if we get to a model where um
where individuals are sort of happy to
in some sense
input their um their information their
data into the services because they know
they're not handing it over to a third
party but rather to a algorithm that's
been audited by many different entities
um at least one of which they actually
believe
that
is
is processed in a means that doesn't
allow for
an arbitrary you know some third party
to actually inspect it all and do
whatever they want to you know advertise
various stuff to them that they don't
want to advertise to them or conclude
certain uh socio-political things that
they don't want concluded about them
then uh
we're in a much better um
situation like it's much more likely
that person's going to sort of give up
more information i know i would um so
i think i think as long as we rely on
centralized service providers that have
absolute control and visibility into the
information
people are not going to give up as much
information as they would otherwise
so in the protocol article i reference
there's a line in there i think the
belief is that data disrupts the model
you know you change the way that these
companies hold and process data you end
up in a better society so i want to hear
your critique of what's wrong with the
social networks today and how changing
their relationship with data changing
our relationship to our own data might
fix it
i think what's wrong with them is pretty
much what's wrong with um all of this
sort of centralized
um
information uh communication
architecture
it's um
it allows
um
we as as uh decision-making
uh
independent sovereign decision-making
entities to be manipulated and if you
can manipulate people on mass then
the world doesn't turn into such a great
place
it's
you know i think the democratic is often
used as a means of trying to say
um
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we as sovereign decision-making entities
should should be empowered um
through
you know the ability to inform ourselves
about the world and through the ability
to sort of make decisions based upon
that information
um
and i don't think i think i think that
is
with the services that are being
provided to us at the moment through the
big social media
companies that's not being that's not
working so well
um
i think we are losing the ability to
inform ourselves well
and we are
increasingly being manipulated
and so is your idea that if we have
transparent algorithms out there that
you know maybe we can choose
then we'll be in a better better
position
yeah um i think that's yeah that's right
no that that's that's quite that doesn't
have to be web 3
versus allow the web 2 companies to
implement that um i mean
the issue is that we can't trust that
they have actually implemented that like
we can't trust that they're running
these algorithms on their servers and
providing us with the results in an uh
in an unfiltered format we don't know
what data they're running we can't see
that so it like the data then the data
needs to be um
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we need a trust free way of doing this
it's not enough to say oh well you know
i trust mark zuckerberg he wouldn't he
wouldn't uh you know do anything bad to
me you know i think you'll hear many
people saying that so
right and so we need web 3 is is really
just you know a proposition of a
technology stack um that can do exactly
this that allows us to have the data to
know that
maybe no individual person can see the
data because we have all of this great
technology that allows us to um
consolidate the data without an
individual person having the power to
actually look at it but we can run
algorithms on it if we all agree on it
if we all agree that yeah this is an
algorithm that we want to run on our
collective data and we want to see the
results
great then if we don't want to run that
algorithm collectively then
we don't run it it doesn't get run and
it's not that mark zuckerberg can come
along and say well actually i quite like
to know the results of that um i shall
run it anyway so your idea is that
people would collectively decide which
algorithm they would want to be run on
the whole platform versus pick
individually and maybe there's like a
rage quit option where before if you
really don't want the algorithm to be
run on on you know on on a consolidated
piece of consolidated data that would
include your data then you can rage quit
and remove your data from it before the
algorithm gets run right so yeah
the anything that that allows um
a collec a collector's information to be
processed
that there must be a collective
decision-making
um
effort to
uh to ensure that
that it's not being done without the
permission of of those those individuals
and if their permission is like give me
50 bucks and
you know have at it fine but you know at
least there's transparency
we had nick clegg in the space here
yesterday he's the vp no the president
of global affairs
for facebook and i try to explain to him
like listen people rate the amount of uh
enjoyment they get out of social media
and in recent studies it's been the last
out of every leisure activities in terms
of its ability to generate happiness
and what he responded was we have 3.5
billion people that use our products
every month clearly they're not that
upset so i want to ask you about the
willingness of people to actually jump
onto you know something like you're
proposing and leave facebook i mean it
seems like yeah well i'm curious yeah go
ahead i mean i want to hear you respond
to what craig said and and
how many smokers are there in the world
these days
okay three and a half billion as well
i'm not sure and they're obviously quite
happy with the product from marlborough
and
all of the rest of them
um look i mean people are hooked right
and they're hooked because of the
network effects with it's super there's
huge amounts of inertia
it's not that
it's not that the product is necessarily
um
is necessarily like
so amazing that the the individuals um
uh
are using it purely based on that it's
it's that um there is a a service being
provided that the individual has decided
that they now cannot do without um
classic addictive products right classic
uh
very similar to i would say like the
nicotine industry um and i think we
uh
that
if this can be like i don't know
some means of allowing people to get
there the same like social fix but
without the bad uh
i would say like potentially democracy
destroying elements of it um then great
you know this is uh this is uh this is a
good thing do you think people will
collectively vote to have an algorithm
that shows them more boring stuff but
less rage
filled things i don't think it's an i
mean i wouldn't say that
i wouldn't say that like everybody would
need to do this i would i look upon it
as like lots of different groups of
people
some of which overlap and these
different groups it's like i'm in a
group i'm in this this this this set a
social
set and i want uh i care about this
particular i care about like hey what's
the
average
uh give me the average political
considerations that this group has
concluded um give me the extremes i want
all the extremes right let me i don't
know there's all sorts of like potential
algorithms and products out there but
the point is that as long as we have
only you know three or four places in
the in the western world at least where
this discourse is happening um and
therefore three or three three or four
centralized uh organizations that get to
dictate the rules of the discourse and
the um the forum the mechanics of the
forum under which it happens then that's
that's really not a great way of of
allowing um technology to continue
innovating and continuing uh to uh
facilitate um healthy discourse
if we build social networks on the
blockchain
does that mean the posts that people put
there are immutable and permanent even
if they want to delete them
um this is uh
you know so at least with project
liberty this is the blockchain isn't
going to be used as like a means of like
a data depository um
it's uh it's really more as like a
permissioning infrastructure
um
and then all of the data stuff comes on
top of that like all the data stuff
happens largely off chain and this is
how you like have the ability to keep
things relatively um
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private like
solid
expectations that the that privacy will
be respected um
without uh having to put it all in the
hands of like a single trusted entity
that will
manage all the permissioning for you
in principle the technology is there
then able to handle you know manage the
encryption on your side so that the
people or the groups that that you want
to see certain elements of your data are
able to see it
while still having reasonable
expectation that that
the data won't be passed to a a broader
set of individuals yeah and i was going
to i teased it in the first half i was
going to ask you what happens in a in a
situation where
you're using the blockchain and a lot of
that stuff is public but
and so how does that deal with privacy
if you're using a social network built
on the blockchain but i think you just
answered the question that stuff will be
stored outside in the blockchain we'll
do some of the other stuff yeah so
the idea is of the blockchain that um
primarily it's it's about
uh permissioning so it's about managing
what what the arcs in the social graph
are what these connections are and what
what um privileges those connections
have and these privileges the set of
privileges uh and the structure and
sort of language used to describe these
privileges might be different for
different applications that's that's
that the whole point of that is that
it's meant to be sort of able to be uh
extensible
um
and the underlying technology ideally
you know that uses some of the more
advanced levels of cryptography so that
we can
store these the social graph um and
store the information the sort of
metadata of this social graph um in such
a way that um
it it doesn't
it retains still a substantial degree of
privacy now ultimately it may be
it may not be as simple as um
i share this information with this group
of people and
uh there is no way that that information
can ever get outside of this group of
people i mean you know for a start you
can always take a get your camera out
take a shot of the the screen of the
display and it's like yeah okay some
some photo can then be shared like
making it be completely end to end
absolutely 100 private is not really the
goal the goal is to give people credible
expectations um that their privacy will
be respected and uh and i think we're
you know
80 plus percent of the way there from
from the facebook model um um uh by by
you know using this technology
i have to go back one more time to the
will of the people question i mean it
does seem like it seems like all the
well-meaning folks on social media would
want to use your solution and all the
angry people who are getting clout from
being angry would want to stay
so maybe
i'm curious if you see that as an
adoption barrier maybe
enough of the
folks that the trolls want to troll will
move over
that they'll end up having a shell of a
platform and what's going to happen
there
um yeah i mean it's it's hard to say but
i mean
the
i would hope it's not a singular
platform i mean the whole point of this
is that it's extensible and that many
different applications can be developed
on top of it
um
and i i would i would expect that people
will will follow where the discourse is
you know
uh
is most enlightened is most enlightening
um
and uh and over time i you know if the
trolls are the ones that tend to stay on
the on the legacy platforms then sweet
leave them there yeah
um
so i also want to talk to you about um
transaction fees because the the big
barrier for building something like a
social network on maybe a blockchain
like ethereum has been that the gas fees
would be out of control to make any
transactions you'd have to pay thousands
of dollars so understand this is going
to be built on polka dot
which is the second second blockchain
you've created
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is it going to have the same issues in
terms of transaction fees and gas fees
that the others have no from the ground
up it's been built to have um you know
scalable decentralized security and that
was from the 2016 paper on polka dot
that i put out um that's really what the
uh what the premise of this is and um
you know
it achieves this through essentially
dividing you know division of labor you
know pretty pretty obvious stuff really
but uh the engineering behind like
ensuring that the labor is divided um
but we retain the security
of uh
the decentralized system provides is
that's the hard bit like that
engineering is uh is non-trivial and
it's sometimes mentioned but like i
think it does you know it does deserve
um a special point you know i i built
the original version of of ethereum you
know
like c plus plus ethereum
back in early 2014 i don't know i i got
something working after a month or two
right and that was pretty much just me
um
and it's taken me and a whole load of
of really great engineers
four plus years to build uh polkadot
and um
it's not that we we you know we had i
don't know some sort of terrible car
accident at the beginning and we were
just like
debilitated or something no it take like
the engineering effort required for this
plus we have a research team working
behind us um making sure that you know
what we're doing is is sensible what
we're doing is actually secure
um it it takes a long time and it's you
know i i would sort of extend the same
point to the ethereum too folks like
building it right getting it right takes
time and if you if you see people like
touting that hey we've got a solution
already you know it only took us six
months
that's very unlikely to be um to be the
breakthrough that they're that they're
suggesting it is
but yeah and and there's a lot more to
come as well like um
we already we opened the uh uh the sort
of labs division at parity at the
beginning of this year um parity company
primary company building polkadot at the
moment and uh this is like looking into
um super scalar super scaling ways for
uh super scaling methods for polka dot
so like we're really looking to push
beyond this like um
uh uh even thousands of transactions per
second that's uh
that's like a bit of a sort of a goal
right now i'm looking uh in the in the
next three or four years
um to be uh orders of magnitude greater
you know it was interesting to hear you
a couple of minutes ago talk about how
the blockchain would be the guts of you
know these potential social networks but
they would still build a lot of stuff
off of the blockchain just as you would
with a normal company
is that really is that kind of like the
the um where the best case scenario is
for web3 right an internet built on top
of the blockchain is that the blockchain
serves as some of the guts but we still
use regular
regular programmed programs as um
as the things that mediate most of our
experience you know there was this great
post from
uh moxie at signal that talked about how
i'm sure you've read it how no one wants
to set up their own server
in that we basically just want platforms
to do the work for us so it's the future
that you envision a future where
platforms will still do most of the work
for us but they'll just have a slightly
better architecture inside that can
assure us that they'll be a better
experience
or or that they'll take care of our data
in a way that the others wouldn't or is
it something bigger am i missing
something
um
the programs that are programmed will
still be
programs they'll still be programmers
right no one's i'm not i'm not
suggesting that there's going to be a
case of like hey
speaking to the microphone you know make
me a uh make me a new currency make me a
new
um
taxi service company like it's not going
to be like that like it's uh or at least
maybe it will but that's not going to be
the blockchain element
um
or all the web 3 element like i think
it's still going to require
normal software developers doing normal
software but the apis will be different
and the means that you'll think about
architecting will be quite different
when i went to university back in the
90s um
the you know the the way that we
architected a system was client server
like that's what was taught there wasn't
really we didn't have a single class on
peer-to-peer decentralization it was not
a thing in academia
and funnily enough when i went back into
my old university back in 2014 may 2014
and uh tried to show them what ethereum
was
they
zero interesting questions and um almost
zero interest
um
it's just like it didn't like
decentralization and and
uh you know a lot of a lot of the more
novel elements of cryptography a lot of
uh you know peer-to-peer um and game
theoretic stuff
it's just not really a big thing in
academia it's get it's getting there but
it's not really a big thing in an
established um
an established uh uh you know computer
science software um circles and i think
this is going to change i think it has
to change um people have to be educated
better on what it means to build a
system that is secure and appear to be
you know under peer-to-peer
circumstances and trust free
circumstances
um you can't just like uh
put the server code down now do the
client code your decline code just trust
the server code the server says that
this is that then it is that you don't
question it no and what moxie one of
mox's points that i thought was very
interesting was that you know um at this
point people are
still falling back on that model people
are still falling back on the client
server model even in web 3. if half of
the
more than half 98 of the dapps on
ethereum are not really decentralized
yeah a big portion of the logic uh sits
on the ethereum blockchain right great
but there's still uh you still have to
go through a centralized service to
actually use the thing right you still
go through inferior which runs an rpc
that's entirely trusted
right you this is this isn't
decentralization this isn't web 3. um
it's partly web3 you know this part of
the puzzle is done um and this is one of
the things that we're really pushing
forward in polkadot um and the polkadot
ecosystem is you know what we call like
clients which is essentially um uh
getting the sort of the complete picture
so that you can use a service and the
services is uh is hosted in a
decentralized fashion but also when the
user comes to use it uh it doesn't go
through an another just centralized
service provider to help you do that
um
and uh and yeah i i i fear uh that the
uh you know in the industry at large
it's you know it's it's patchy at best
this um you know this this attitude that
decentralization
um is either is you know absolute or
it's
worthless uh but i think
i think maybe things are changing at
least in terms of um the political
environment that this industry sits yeah
and i think a big part of that is um the
economic environment and i want to close
on this we're in the middle of a pretty
big economic downturn
so i have a couple questions for you
about that um the first is a couple days
ago
uh vitalik tweeted that he's not a
billionaire anymore
so
are you diversified or are you in the
same boat
for that i'd have to ask my family
office manager and i'm not sure he's at
liberty to say anything
let's get him on the line
want a friend um all right but the
actual stuff so ethereum is down 44
year-to-date bitcoin is down 34 35
year-to-date we just saw what happened
with tara and luna um
you mentioned that one of the things
that the folks uh the bitcoin folks
don't like about web3 is that there has
been a lot of like
you know
froth around things like nfts and scammy
projects
do you think that this downturn might
actually be a blessing in disguise for
the space where the things that were on
shaky foundations like terra and luna
fall apart and the things that have some
staying power are what remains and the
industry becomes more credible as a
result this is a very very big silver
lining
to that cloud yeah i think so um i mean
of course if there's less money floating
around then
there are a few doors that that get
closed um but overall i found you know
i've i've been in uh i've been in one or
two bear markets before
and overall um i find that it's
uh
in terms of in terms of building in
terms of the technology
it's quite a lot things make more sense
you know there's uh
fewer people are hyped up about nonsense
there's a bit less nonsense going around
um
and
there's uh
in you know other silver linings like
you know it's easy to
um to pick up
let's say more um
uh uh talented individuals they're not
being stolen away with a you know big
dollar signs in their eyes
um
things get up things get more real
and that's
that is a good thing for those who are
building real things
well gavin you know i've had a lot of
conversations about web3
and it's nice to have a conversation
with someone who's a proponent and who
will sit and talk about some of the
criticisms and help flesh out
where the opportunity and weaknesses are
without becoming defensive or dogmatic
and i i really do appreciate the
conversation thank you gavin thank you
thanks everybody
thanks everyone for listening uh it's
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