The Journey From Degen to Regen | Joshua Lapidus | Marcus Levine |

[Music] hey everybody great to be with you here at eth Denver thanks for coming to join me and Josh here as we explore Josh's Journey from being a Deen to being a regen just give uh Josh a second to get his buff corn settled awesome thank you this is a great turnout I didn't expect so many people to be here awesome so Josh I noticed you rolled up to the event today on a scooter uh and I understand your professional history uh prior to getting involved in web 3 uh involves some ride sharing stuff so I'm curious what first attracted you from the web 2 corporate world to get involved in web 3 how you first heard about blockchain technology a good question thank you um so I'm I was working uh at Lyft in the driver growth and uh onboarding Department uh I was the deputy to the east coast and we were responsible for uh basically beating Uber to IPO um uh 30 major markets taking us from 5% market share to 35 Market 35% market share and when the IPO happened um the drivers and the passengers basically got nothing and this is in the time uh I don't know if you guys remember like coinbase you could you could buy three things it was like Bitcoin Litecoin and eth uh and but there was so there was a wide world out there and uh I was in ride share and I started to get into tokens and I met this guy uh Tommy who was building uh Chaser a dentalized ride shair out of Austin um and I sent him a message and was like you're the ride shair stuff's not going to work uh and he's like but you don't really know much about crypto you should come help us out so we started writing this white paper uh and it actually ended up becoming a white paper on why decentralized ride chair doesn't work uh and that was eight years ago we still don't have decentralized ride chair um but a shout out to Tommy um he still a Serial entrepreneur he's got a taco truck in Austin El baracha tacos and they're trying to Ico so always trying to push the envelope yeah so when you first heard about crypto and blockchain it sounds like it was an exciting idea but uh maybe wasn't quite ready for prime time when did you see a professional opportunity to to jump into this and get involved in a project uh so uh I met this excellent guy uh Jacob who was working on on penala at consensus at the time um and when we finished this white paper I sent it to him uh and his feedback was so you you clearly know a lot about ride share but you don't seem to know anything about crypto very diplomatic and he recommended I take a consensus academy uh blockchain Essentials course uh and so when Li finally ipoed and they turned to us and said your Department's not allowed to exist anymore you can find another job at the company or you can off uh we were talking about things and I mentioned that and I that I'd finished the consens of the academy class he goes I've recommended this to hundreds thousands of people you're the only one who's ever like completed it and come back and talked about it you should come work with us a consensus uh like the things that you're complaining about with lift like we on ethereum can fix these things where the the people who create network people who create value in a network can own the network and that's that's what we're building here and this was like 201819 very early like Unis swap like barely didn't exist or just launched and like we didn't see a path for any of this stuff a lot of people saw a great path I didn't see it uh and that was the my entrance into the world of uh crypto yeah and and so after your your time at consensus what were some of the projects that excited you the most that made you feel energized about being involved in web 3 and um we're solving real problems for instance I know we're both uh employee members at opis and I think you got involved there around the same time yeah so uh yeah funny story actually six months after uh I had joined consensus they went through one of their uh like 20% like layoffs across the board board and uh I was on a team that was spinning out and I decided not to go with and I was going to go back to lift to do uh bikes and scooters and everyone's like no no no don't do that go to E Denver you will find another job uh and I I roll up to e Denver and I got my Cobra packet uh Americans will understand this people who are not American will not get this at all it's where uh you get your insurance uh but it's you have to pay full price for what the your employer was sponsoring and so I get this this like basically bill that says if you want insurance premiums not even care premiums uh you have to spend $2,400 a month and so I walked around eat them for the first few days going has anybody solved like web 3 Healthcare and every single person was like have you talked to John and the oppis team uh and I actually I went over to the booth and I met uh this guy Adam who's the CTO and Eddie uh and will and I didn't actually get to meet John because he was running around if you guys don't know he's the the founder of e Denver and it is very hard to like try to just get to meet him at the thing and um we set set up a meeting and I ended up working for opis and becoming a steart of Denver so this was five seven years ago now the industry changed a lot but in other ways things haven't changed that much I'm curious if there's any patterns or trends that you saw back then that you still see the industry struggling with or uh promises that were made back then that haven't quite been brought to fulfillment now have you read Geeks mops and sociopaths yeah but why don't you share for the class has raise your hand have you have any of you guys read Geeks mops and sociopaths all right it's a I do I share it prolifically it's a chapter from a book um but it talks about how subcultures evolve and uh there's Geeks at the center of any culture so like the older members of the audience may remember like Star Wars when it came out in the 70s 80 and end of the 70s it wasn't cool like we as we like oh Star Wars is great but at the time it was only for nerds uh and this is an example of something that successfully broke out of being a niche subculture thing uh and became like Mass adoption became part of the the mainstream it wasn't a I think also like music is another one that applies uh have you ever like found a song you love and then uh it become you hear it on the radio and you're like oh that's not cool anymore cuz now other people know about it this is the same same concept but so we've got amazing Geeks in ethereum and crypto and uh I mean so many great biders here right uh but the the pattern that I've seen repeat constantly uh is the sociopaths just keep kicking our ass they're kicking the Geeks ass so you've got Geeks and they're like the builders and then you've got mops which are the um members of the public or like actually a mop that gets swept around where they follow these Trends and the goal of the sociopaths is to come in and monetize the mops and extract as much value as possible from these members of the public and if that sounds familiar it's because we've been going through it like over and over and over it's a Marain like history doesn't repeat but it Rhymes and so you it sounds like you started out this journey pursuing some solutions to problems you faced in the real world in the corporate world um but you know we're we're here at the year of the regenerates at e and I'm curious to understand more about how you saw your own mindset shift toward regeneration toward projects that could have a positive impact uh are there any projects that you worked on uh back in the day that you want to uh share about yeah this is a great example so uh anyone who's around for defi summer it was like it was this amazing boom of all these different things you could do on chain uh and the but it was just basically gambling we were gambling like food tokens but it was like oh Apen to these smart contracts this is a D5 summer it was fantastic um but it was very PVP and it was like uh similar to now where people tweet an idea uh but they don't share the contract address and it's like oh I want to I got to find out what that is it's just gambling incentivizing gambling uh using like fomo psychological mechanics to try to get people to ape into things and uh defi summer was great and then it led into nfts and there was a group of folks uh uh Mo mostly out of raid Guild who we came together and we're like the nft entire ecosystem is just trash like people are they're making 10,000 copies of something changing the skin and it's selling for millions of dollars we should do the same thing except for we're going to say publicly we're going to give away 80% of all of it to public goods so we partnered with uh gitcoin and gith and rip medical debt and bank listow to uh raise and about $500,000 uh and we we gave it away and RP medical debt is like a debt collection agency where they buy medical debt at Pennies on the dollar uh and then they send the person the family a letter saying we bought your debt and we've waved it like you're in the clear and we did that for uh about 5,000 families um who got a letter that said your medical debt was wiped by an nft project on the ethereum blockchain uh and that was like in the in the hype and like like Jimmy Fallon and an ape and all this crazy celebrity these families first experience with nft was an nft WIP my debt and that was the first like using degenerate mechanisms to do regenerative things that we did yeah and picking on that same thread it's a really interesting use case where saw this Mania excitement and an opportunity to turn that Mania toward a positive outcome so I'm curious to understand more what does being a regen mean to you what a preent question margus um to me regen is about what when you look at an an an economy or an environment or industry whether the thing that is being built the thing that's being worked on the the whatever uh is it is it adding value in a way that's uh additive to a fly wheel that the rest of the ecosystem can benefit from versus is it being extractive it's like a lot of money is being taken off the table and it's not keeping the flywheel going so that more projects can build and more people can join the community that that's what regen means to me are we are we working toward positive some games together right so so in the example of the nft world Rainbow Rules you saw a bunch of nft artists launching these projects may or may not have artistic value uh you know taking that money and uh basically taking it off chain for their own benefit um whereas you were able to leverage you know 80% of that value uh to make positive impact on other people's lives it's it's pretty cool that and what we've done is we've tried to make it so that rainbow rolls holders which is about like 330 is people who are like Cil proof not proof but like it's 300 something individuals who've contributed this I try to make sure that they get onto as many like uh like allow lists and airdrop lists as possible so that the community can kind of keep giving back to that initial donation cool so I'm curious what you're up to now noways uh I know you're still a e Denver Steward um but I heard you're working on a new project that's focused on environmental action so could you share a little bit more about Asos sure yeah in this in the same vein uh so Asos is a stable coin that we're building it's kind of in the in the vein of of maker Dow uh where instead of eth and wbtc and usdc as collateral we're using climate Finance debt assets so uh starting with carbon credits green bonds renewable energy certificates uh also projects that work toward these types of things um like CLA we're talking to giveth about give like anything that is in the impact space uh and then also any uh debt that can be tokenized that is some sort of public good um I've had some really good talks with Cuba Joseph about um municipal bonds and they're like focusing on like local solutions for local government um and allowing people to buy into it and if we if we're able to use the defi mechanics and get people degenerates excited about like yield farming these things that help people at on on local levels or when you expand Beyond carbon credits to like water and air um biodiversity soil like the ebf 6 Equity um there's so much good that we can do without asking for handouts so it's not like oh please come use this Proto protocol it's uh come use this this def5 protocol where you're hopefully going to make money farming yield and the assets that are the target of this are benefiting X Y and Z yeah there's definitely a tension between the sort of do gooder mentality of wanting to um you know philanthropic initiatives that use donated money to try to have a positive impact um but I do agree it's really powerful to shift the mindset from profit being an inherently problematic uh notion to profit being redirected toward positive impact uh I think that's really powerful and uh in the carbon markets one of the things I've noticed is that there's a lot of project developers out there who want to go and take positive climate action they want to go Implement a carbon project or Implement a water purification project but they don't have access to Capital and so one of the things that excites me about Asos I think it's it's really cool what you guys are building is the opportunity to unlock some capital for these smallscale project developers to go out and take a positive action uh to have a positive impact on the planet and we've actually formed some really cool uh Partnerships in Brazil where uh this guy wants us to take um $180 million with a carbon credits uh create a market but then also use the the profit and liquidity from the protocol to continue buying more land for conservation to generate even more credits to create this ecosystem where the protocol which would then involve the local governments who are owning a piece of it because they're part of this protocol are able to use our our platform to buy up more land to generate more local wealth and that's that regenerative flywheel that for you is so intrinsic to what it means to be a regent we've got about five minutes left I'm curious if you have any words of wisdom for people out in the audience maybe they didn't think of themselves as a regen or you got into web 3 because they saw an opportunity to make a quick Buck or to get exposed to some new technology do you have any thoughts or Reflections about your journey that might be helpful as people are navigating this space and trying to figure out how they can contribute in a way that's aligned with their own values i' I think I'd like to talk about the regenerative Spork flywheel and how just being here is is part of this ecosystem of growth so um I'm I'm also the treasurer for sportd so I afterward if if you don't get the right amount of Spork I'm the person that you would complain to um I I GES are always open so uh but when you participate in E Denver which is this fantastic uh Global Innovation Festival that has been running since uh 2018 and even earlier um when you attend when you speak when you sponsor uh when you biddle biddle is the the biggest help uh when when you invested in BV um you're contributing to helping e them be free and I don't know if you guys all know this but like at least 50% of the attendees are new every year it's like don't have a wallet don't really understand how any of this works and we want the barrier of Entry to be as low as possible you get them in the door if all right if somebody's first experience with crypto is pumped out fun and they are one of the 98% that do not have a positive experience with walking into that casino what is the likelihood that they're going to come back and be a positive contributing member of the community like not pretty low I'd say yeah that like in addition to not having any money to contribute they are had a soured experience the vast majority of people who come through e Denver have a first positive experience in this ecosystem a lot of the the some of the teams that the BV invested in came back as sponsors uh the bidders end up becoming mentors attendees will come back as bidders and we've got a great graphic that I should have thought to throw up here that would have been good um um that actually C Bob who's here helped make that graphic um this flywheel of contribution that is like the The Core Essence of what regenerative means to me and so uh participating in all of the different things that eth has to offer uh part participating in the spork economy that would be the first yeah interesting so e Denver itself as an example of a regenerative fly whe uh we have about 2 minutes left I don't know if we have time for one question can we do one anybody have a question in the audience oh okay that's fine here you can take any questions yeah you ran out of questions Marcus all right we have a taker he not a plant I promise hey thanks for organizing this this is my first time here welcome uh you said something about shared uh car sharing can't work on web 3 do you have explanation for that why it doesn't work yet uh yeah a bunch um the the network effect required uh to build a ride share in a specific location is like tens of millions of dollars of VC money that's just being thrown down the drain uh and Uber and Lyft actually got a lot of their funding on the promise of autonomous and so if you're saying let's build a network on the backs of auton like autonomous vehicles like they didn't tell the drivers this when they were onboarding people with like here's $100 to sign up $200 to do your first few rides um so the the network effect is really difficult to build um uh the one I'd want to focus on here then as a second example would be uh impatience you guys are really impatient like super impatient like a driver if they have to go more than a mile will cancel the ride a passenger if they have to wait more than five minutes will cancel the ride and it just like breaks the network and so it has to be essentially a system of OTC deals constantly to grow this network um and then if you're and then you get into like this PVP situation where drivers are competing with each other for it's a I don't eventually we'll see somebody will be able to do it maybe like a like a Unis swap somebody who's got billions of dollars to burn and can just like lost lead until they've destroyed Uber lift I think that'd be the probably the only way to do it thanks for that question that was good okay thank you all for coming uh I'm I'm zerox Joshua this is uh Marcus aelius have a great e Denver