Towards a socially scalable Etherean future by Lane Rettig (Devcon4)

so I'm laying I'm a core developer on the e azam team and as you can imagine as a court developer I love technology very much but you know what I like people a lot too and I'm gonna here I'm here to talk to you guys about people today and in particular sort of the role that aetherium has to play and that we all in this community have to play in the world at large since I sort of got involved in the etherium and community about a year ago and I've been kind of exploring this ecosystem I've sort of found that the role that makes the most sense for me is asking the hard questions so these are questions like you know if your name is great the technology is great but like what's your deep why right why are we all here what exactly are we building who is it serving right what's the purpose what gets you out of bed in the morning and as I've kind of searched for a framework that's helped me understand in a broader context what we're trying to do with etherium I've found this thing called social scalability which has been the framework that's helped me understand the big picture what we're doing right beyond the currency aspect beyond even the technology aspect there's a so and you know I want to start with a confession as when I first elaborated or you know kind of described this talk and had a vision for this talk and wrote down the the title of it towards a socially scalable etherion future I initially wanted to talk to you guys about scaling aetherium right because if their aims great and there's a lot of like really smart people working on scaling the technological side of aetherium there's all kinds of talks here at DEFCON on that topic but we're hearing less about the social side of it you know overcoming challenges like UX and you know speaking a language the world can understand and of course governance which is big social challenge but as I went deeper and began preparing this talk I had a realization which is that to ask this question right what what can we all do for aetherium is actually not the right way to frame it so let me try to explain imagine that this is all the human beings in the world okay all seven point whatever billion of us how many lives do you guys think aetherium has touched up to now in some capacity how many people have you know coded for aetherium or have used it or even care about it or no but it exists can anyone anyone see up there which one is a little different let me help you out it's you know whether it's ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million or ten million like it actually doesn't matter because there's so many people on the planet it's like we're not at one percent we're not even at one tenth of one percent yet okay and this is why I'm saying to ask this question right what can we all do for aetherium is really selfish because no one cares about aetherium yet right the question we should be asking is the opposite question which is what can we do for the world so I want to lead here with a quote from president john f theorem and so my fellow in theory ins asking god what the world can do for aetherium ask what aetherium can do for the world my fellow citizens of the world ask not what etherium will do for you but what together we can do for the freedom of men so obviously this is a really powerful talk and a really powerful quote and i really didn't understand it until i saw it in this context so I want to turn the question around and ask what we can do for the world I have the next twenty-one minutes to do three things the first is try to explain social scalability the second is to try to somehow explain this etherion concept which I think we've all seen this word here and there but I'm gonna make an attempt to go a bit deeper today and the third is as if those things were not exciting enough I have a couple of fairly big exciting announcements that I want to share at the end so let's dive right in what is social scalability well before we talk about social scalability let's start with the question what is scalability right in brief something that is scalable is something that actually gets stronger as it grows bigger and I think Devcon is a great example of this you know they asked me four slides a week ago and I kind of said yeah sorry because this is I literally added the slide ten minutes ago like things move fast in this community right and as I was sitting in the main stage downstairs a few minutes ago I had this realization you know DEFCON has more than doubled we went from 1500 last year two more than three thousand this year and I don't know what do you guys think is DEFCON worse or is it better than last year better right so okay so first of all kudos to the people who organized the event because they're incredible and we have more than doubled this event in one year and it's scaling okay so again this is an example of scaling that I think we all have near and dear to our hearts so let's talk about social scaling this is a concept that was introduced by a computer scientist named Nick Szabo and it turns out that primates including human beings have cognitive limits and there's this magic number which I'm sure many of you've heard before Dunbar's number which is something on the order of about a hundred and fifty for humans this is the the number of people that you can you know kind of think about as knowing on a first-name basis or or trusting it's all kind of boils down to trust and there's a reason that tribes tend to be smaller than 150 people now that's all well and good right but there's a there's a limit to how much we can accomplish in a group of 150 people right what sort of technologies we can build and what happened is that throughout human history humans have developed a series of technologies to scale the size of the society what is the technology the definition of a technology is something which allows us to do more with less simply put right we can achieve more wealth more output we can do more with the same amount of let's say cognitive input and so a great example early example of this is language and writing if every tribe has its own language then we can't transact or interact with people down the road in the next tribe the language has allowed us to scale and there's a reason that there's a power law distribution and we have languages today that have hundreds of millions of speakers because it's a it's a powerful social scaling tool of course writing in books and the printing press took that even further and of course another example is money if you hand me cash right I don't need to trust you I don't need to know who you are I don't need to know where you're from this is a great example of a technology that scales society and scales the number of people we can transact with it's completely trustless theory Adam Smith actually wrote about social scalability almost 300 years ago right and what he wrote about was clothing something as simple as a single garment a single simple shirt or jacket does anyone in this room think that they could create a piece of clothing from scratch like truly from the raw materials ok I'm super impressed you guys have to show me how to do that later he wrote about so Adam Smith wrote about the hundreds or thousands of people even in the 18th century who were involved in creating and transporting and creating a market for a simple garment right from the shepherd who tends the sheep to the person who shears the sheep to the person who cards the wool and dyes it and creates the garment to the enormous supply chain again even hundreds of years ago the shipbuilders and the sailors and the merchants that were involved in bringing these garments to market the definition of social scalability is how little we all need to understand about the world because that's the point of society I don't need to know how to create a t-shirt because I trust it's about trust right I trust that I can go down the road to a shop and buy a shirt it'll be there it'll fit it'll work right and again this was the case hundreds of years ago now let's bring to the modern era right if it's that complex for a shirt 300 years ago it's just mind-blowing truly mind-blowing to think about the number of people involved in a technology as complex as a jetliner which of course brought many our most of us here to Prague tens hundreds of thousands of people involved in the design the manufacture the the operation of things like airplanes and Airlines and so this is testament to the power of social scalability not only is there no one person there's not even one organization that could do this on their own of course another great example is law in particular contract law right I don't need to know who you are to transact with you in the modern world because I trust that if you do something wrong I can take you to court and I can fix the problem I think the ultimate example of a social scaling to ecology is the nation state so this image is sort of of the the piste of the peace of westphalia average so we're now in the middle of the 17th century it's the end of the warring States period there were you know 8090 years of war of these these kingdoms that had been at war over things like religion and they came together and over a period of years and a series of treaties they hammered out this thing which has today become the international system right the concept of a sovereign state the idea that states can can communicate with each other and treat with each other and again this is the epitome today of social scaling we have countries with over a billion people in them just try to imagine that like a single system that you know I mean ok they're not perfect right but they've actually kind of worked and they scaled reasonably well up to now does anyone recognize this guy Thank You this is Alexi de Tocqueville right so he is a Frenchman who travelled in the United States in in the 18th century I'm sorry the 19th century and he wrote a book called democracy in America and he commented on the fact that America was unique in the world at that time because of the level of civil engagement and the fact that democracy had deep roots in American society and you know so I want to apologize for the very kind of America centric nature of these photos I'm from the United States I'm gonna own that right now but you know we have this version of the story which says that we have the civic engagement right we have these town hall meetings that happen in every local municipality we have people who come together and debate the issues on their merits and we have this lively participation which is what the Tocqueville was describing but as an American today and maybe many of you feel what I feel right democracy doesn't feel like this today it feels more like this you know it's it's it's angry entitled white men who feel that the system which has benefited them us obviously I'm part of this right I'm not angry for a very long time is beginning to change and they're beginning to lose some privilege and this is a huge topic right I could stand up here for the next hour and describe to you the rise of populism and demagoguery and you know the the wealth gap getting worse and the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer and the the lack of civil engagement and apathy on the part of voters the only point I want to make is that the nation-state is a technology and it's not that old okay it's it's less than four hundred years old and I intended to have my phone in my pocket I left it over there but you know I have this whatever this is a I don't want a clicker right so I went to the store and I bought this to serve a specific function right it's a piece of technology I can use it to move around and use a laser pointer and stuff five years from now this may be obsolete maybe this one but my phone will be right it'll be too slow the apps won't work it won't have enough storage so what do we do when a technology is outdated we upgrade okay and the point I'm trying to make is that the nation-state is a technology like any other and that that technology is beginning to show its age and we should be having this dialogue about how we can do better this is the Galactic Senate from Star Wars I had to throw a nerd reference in here right I used to have a vision that the future of humanity would look something like this you know that this is sort of the UN scaled by a couple of orders of magnitude you know you have all these groups of whatever humanoids from around the world or around the galaxy who come together in this gigantic centralized forum to like debate their issues but you know the nation-states kind of not working the UN is definitely not working and this is no longer how I conceive the future of humanity to me it looks more like this right we have these like autonomous groups of people who have these divergent interests at the local or municipal or in some cases the national level and you know maybe the solution is not a single centralized system maybe the solution looks something more like I don't know blockchain maybe we have a role to play in all this so ten years ago today right this this thing entered the world you know Bitcoin exists and I guess the question I'm asking is what role does the blockchain those things like Bitcoin and aetherium have to play in the future and and what can they do to change the narrative here there are projects that are actually doing this today right so there's many projects that are building governance high santi governance on the blockchain for blockchain projects which is great that's very important but there's at least one project that is trying to build governance of actual real human institutions like meat space flesh and blood human institutions using things like aetherium using tools like quadratic voting and liquid democracy so kudos to democracy earth project if you're not familiar with it check it out I think that we all can learn a lot from that project all right now let's talk about this etherion idea over the past week I've had incredible conversations about the technology behind etherium in Berlin and now in Prague here at DEFCON but more than that I've had a lot of conversations about the non-technical stuff in etherium so this is a gentleman named Harry Halpin who spoke at the web 3 summit about the mistakes of web 2 and lessons we can learn about like avoiding corporate capture for example of the technologies this is the de central node which was literally a conference within a conference at the web 3 summit that had three full days of non-stop programming including this talk on decentralized governance this is an event called the philosophers salon sorry the philosophers salon the etherium philosophers salon that was organized by Andy from status and several other incredible people this happened here in Prague a few days ago and it was an extremely moving you know personal conversation right people really opening their hearts and asking deep difficult questions like why are we all here what are we building how do we build a system for humans everywhere this is a town hall that the status team ran also a few days ago here in Prague and this particular this was not about technology that's the point I'm trying to make right this was about like vulnerability this is about embracing our failure and how that can make us better people and lead to better projects this is a workshop I participated in yesterday here on diversity and inclusion with an incredibly diverse group of people having a very deep open conversation about recruiting users and and builders from diverse walks of life I had the great fortune last night at dinner to meet this individual Eduardo and what are you here somewhere maybe Eduardo is a true revolutionary okay this this gentleman has been living exclusively on cryptocurrency for years in Venezuela and he just escaped Venezuela a month ago to Argentina and he's here with us today and it was let's get a round of applause that's an incredible accomplishment and you know we all opened this morning in the main room singing Kumbaya effectively and coming together as a community and embracing you know rainbows and unicorns and you know just goodwill so the point I'm trying to make is that it's time that we like face the facts right etherium is about technology but it's about so much more than technology if you ask me this looks I don't know what it looks like it's a social movement it's a political movement it's like that Town Hall image I showed you a little while ago right it's it's the people coming together to have these deep honest conversations about why we're all here and what we're doing I had a conversation with my father recently and he kind of asked me what are you are you a Democrat are you a Republican are you liberal are you conservative and you know in the world that he grew up in people fit into these neat boxes I don't know if this is true for anyone else here I suspect maybe it is right I don't really strongly identify with any of these labels there's things I appreciate and hate about Democrats and Republicans about liberals and conservatives you know another question am I an American or a citizen of the world you know I I'm patriotic I love my country I'm standing here before you as an example of the American dream my father is an immigrant he arrived in the United States with no money and no education and Here I am standing in front of you today at the same time I don't believe Americans deserve any special privilege over you know there's billions of people in the world as I said before right so again it's not either of these specifically you know I fought further am i I'm definitely I believe in the future I'm optimistic I believe in the power of technology and you know identity is a very complex multifaceted thing when I really paused and reflect asked myself honestly like what do I what is my identity I'm American I'm a technologist I'm a New Yorker the thing that I identified with the most strongly is all of you right I'm an etherion and I don't know what this means right again I don't is this this is a social movement it's a technology is it's not really a political party it's kind of all these things and sort of none of them at the same time and all whatever this is is is just what we as a community create going forward in a collective decentralized fashion so if you guys feel comfortable using this word I'm gonna stand up here now proudly and say I'm an etherion and I you know I shared this identity with many of you all right I said I was going to make a couple of announcements but I'm gonna do that so the first is in order to kind of kick off this conversation of you know understanding what is you know what does it theory and mean I've launched a website called etherion org this is live you can check it out right now it's just a discourse forum okay so you can go you can sign up I posted a couple of topics that we can start talking about some of the things I've spoken about today like the nation state and if this is something that's interesting to you please check it out join this conversation right as I said I don't it's not up to me and I'm not standing here I'm not trying to lead a movement right I'm just trying to what's the word I'm trying to steward something into existence I'm trying to recognize the reality on the ground which is that this is about a lot more than technology and you know very inspired by things like radical markets and the work that democracy earth and many other projects are doing and I'm hoping this can become a forum for that maybe a year from now you know we can have an etherion breakout session here at Def Con or something like that and the second thing is I've been extremely inspired by the work that Eric Posner in Clinton Weill did in the radical markets book radical markets is if you haven't read this yet please like go home after Def Con decompress read this book it's very powerful it's not just radical ideas as it says for uprooting capitalism and democracy for a just society it's actually it paints a picture right it actually has these hypothetical narratives these anecdotes of what a future world might look like I think the single most important thing that we as a community can do aside from building the technology itself is attempting to engage with the real world attempting to develop a dialogue that makes sense and and you know growing the impact of aetherium and let's say a theory uh including a theory ins to more than you know what we are today which is less than one tenth of one percent and I think a great way to do that is it's by writing a book so the working title is move slow and fix things and I'm sure many of you could help me come up with a better title but I'm gonna work this next year on on writing a book and trying to explain to the world what we're doing and what we're all about and and the impact that these ideas can have I'm happy to do this in a very open source fashion right we can have that conversation on the etherion org website and I really hope that a year from now I can stand on this stage and I can share maybe a first draft of that book and that many of you can contribute to it so you know so I want to say one thing first the move slow part here right this this is in recognition of the fact that we're not looking for a revolution we're looking for evolution okay we're looking to incremental e improve things and that's I'm calling that the youthful ooh see on here the last thing I want to leave you with is that over the next you know today tomorrow and the following day the next three days you're going to hear a lot of really incredible talks from a lot of very brilliant people and what I'd like you to have in the back of your mind the overarching question is what is this serve right how do these technologies make the world a better place and what role do we have to do in getting there thank you I think it's a really fascinating idea what do you think of sort of this whole idea of blockchain maximalism and things like that because branding out sort of etherion i guess in a way blocks out other block chains and other ideas potentially so I don't the short answer so sorry the question was like what do you think about blockchain maximalism and you know I guess the implied question is are you in a theory and maximalist ins that does that sort of cancel out other ideas the short answer is I don't believe in isms I don't believe in maximalism and no isms right it's not about etherium at the end of the day that's the point I was trying to make in the beginning I it doesn't matter whether aetherium succeeds or fails in the in the in the long run and in the grand scheme of things right what matters is that we move forward as a society and that the ideas and the values and the principles that we're doing this for you know they say you can't uninvent Bitcoin right you can't uninvent etherium you can't you you can you know you can the technology may not scale and you know you can you can spam the blockchain but like we're not going anywhere as a community and you know some other technology will come along and pick up that same flag and keep the progress moving forward so I am absolutely not a nationalist one question I have is how do you envision underrepresented groups getting more involved because I was at the etherium 2.0 workday on Monday and I was one of three women out of like 75 men which is atrocious like as a software engineer that's like the worst ratio I've ever seen so yeah how do you envision more underrepresented groups get involved and this collective feature awesome that's such a big topic and this thing says 29 seconds so I'm gonna I'm gonna give you a super high-level overview and then let's keep the conversation going because it's important number one diversity inclusion is freaking super important okay so Kelvin Victor gave a talk yesterday at the diversity inclusion breakout session he made this case much better than I could so if you weren't there check out the video one of the points he made is that even if you sort of on the surface don't care about diversity you should anyway even if you only are in it for the economics because diverse systems are more anti fragile and better and you know the economics will be a lot better if we can bring more diversity into the picture number two I don't have the answers I don't claim to have the answer is right this is the whole point of what I'm saying here is that this is a platform for us to have more dialogue about this and to learn from each other and you know we need to engage with the rest of the world right we in this room it's very hubristic of us to think that we can kind of build a system for all of humans the last thought I want to share is you know we we have a lot of focus about putting butts in seats which is important like I wish that you know 50% of the people in this room were female and that is important but I think that there's an upstream question here right so we need to talk about like you know going all the way back right how do we raise our kids and how do we instill men and women with different values and how to way from a you know very early point going back to let's say grade school get you know women more excited about technology and things like that and it will take a lot of time I think to get to the point where we are now with engage people sitting in chairs and events like this again thank you guys very very much grab me pause for lame [Applause] you