Protocols: Wars or Sharded Learnings? – Panel Discussion

okay great we made it all up here so we'll go ahead and get started this panel is protocol Wars or sharded learnings so I'm Karen Scarborough I'm gonna moderate us through this panel on a discussion on tribalism versus collaboration and working together in the space so let's go ahead and get started and I'll let y'all give a brief introduction of yourselves and what you're working on so my name is asif jameth panco protocol basically what we're working on is what we're working on is liquidity pools protocol automatic braking improving the way that you can convert between any token on a main system and also converting between block chains to block chains so move value from this so both value from different objects one to another at this point we'll work on material and on ears and you can basically convert value from E to Neos non-custodial way hey everyone my name is Julia and co-founder denier and we are trying to really solve kind of across-the-board problems of how to build applications of this new way you know open web blockchain web 3 which means we're kind of building a lot of pieces from layer 1 to developer tooling to even we actually launch the open web collective which is really helping people with bringing together their ideas fundraising and you know gaining traction for businesses on kind of top of the protocols James Watt our founder and the trim of DC labs we do two things the first is we have a core team managing their protocol efficient classic the second we are operating incubator which support 45 you know a year those canal project on top of PTC um Danny Ryan I work with a theorem foundation on 8th - we're building a scalable proof mistake infrastructure for the existing theorem and beyond all right I'm Josh by heart I work for a company called the electric coin company we invented and currently support easy cash great let's go ahead and dive into some questions here the first is how would you define true collaboration across protocols versus just participating in an open environment source environment what does it look like to truly collaborate versus just looking at what each other is doing I do I do think that even just reading and looking and being aware is a form of collaboration because we're all informing each other and we're all building better systems because everyone's pushing the envelope but if there is a distinction between just that there are there are a lot of a lot of collaboration going on in some like common elements across stack for a good example is let p2p is like a common p2p kind of infrastructure so there's a range but I wouldn't discount even just all being in the same environment having some conversations together and sharing like having work be in the public ok as you could say I look this up I looked up the definition of collaboration before we start good so I found two definitions it says 1 the action of working with someone to produce or create something and then two traitorous cooperation with an enemy so on the on the first one it implies that you have to actually do something right otherwise it's just a common conversation so if you're not actually building something together you're just conversing or maybe borrowing ideas so I addictions think so we've been running this whiteboard series which is a way to like where we interview actually other protocols and then pretty much that creates a lot of collateral for those protocols on how to actually work and in a way that's a form of collaboration because like we and all the ecosystem is learning more of what is the trade-offs of different people doing what is the kind of bras and cons and different systems and it actually Elsa opens up a lot of conversations because from there you're kind of starting to see where you have common things where you have different things we have you know conversations with the Syrian foundation we have conversations with lab 3 with all those folks and that's it like at some point there's like some open source care that being like worked on together right that's like you start with your learning about things you're looking at it as then he was saying and then you kind of like at some point you see oh we're actually working on the same thing and it is open sourced it doesn't actually make sense to you know do the same work twice so let's like log in and you know send the arts to each other right so like there's a progression there and like the more we can open out kind of you know couples a funnel for this the more I think we can get at the end like common Cod basis and like more code that's been reviewed by everyone and you know more secure at the end I think I think at this point the ecosystem is too young and too small to have anything but collaboration the situation is very very simple that you don't have enough audience and the technology is not mature enough to start competing against each other if you don't work together we will never be successful and succeed and this is the end game here we need to work together we need to reach out and we need to make sure that we know how to build better things together otherwise we'll just left stranded aside and the defy or the blockchain ecosystem will remain as small as it is now and almost irrelevant in the future this is something that no one was normal to see happening I think it's all about the weather you can you know build a real product together and benefit the ecosystem I think it's you know more Pianka of choice you know or giving the phone and supporting some research project or just give some formal announcement it depends on whether you know these kind of product or whatever you are building was benefiting their critical or the users or the miners or whatever a project in the ecosystem if there's a positive outcome and feedback I think that's ER you know good signal for the true cooperation but so it's nice to say that like we want everybody to work together on everything and all of those folks are kind of kind of gay we have different ideologies we have different kind of core belief system do we have different technology vents and it sounds like like a nightmare to try to get consensus among kind of all of these well it's not that we're looking for consensus on everything we discuss but if we look at Bangor and the ecosystem of automated market maker there are quite a few competitors and quite a few ideas that are being thrown in the air and and we need to speak to what we're doing bank where we reach out and we speak to everyone and try and make sure that there is a valid solution that technology is sound and the protocols themselves provide the best solution possible because at the end of the event of the game if we don't do that as a team together then again as I said before like the system is not strong and being big enough to survive this like battle that we can have among each other well you're certainly all somewhat fighting for the same resources the same participation you want the users and developers to be a your platform and protocols and using them and helping you to make it better but how do you balance the value of tribalism and bringing more people to participate versus quote-unquote having the best technology and actually building the best product so what's what's really the better proxy for influencer is it the the tribe or the technology practically speaking I mean it's a bit of both because the technology sometimes represents the tribe right a lot of these different echnology to have different design decisions different kind of ethos on how they develop different how issuance is managed how protocol upgrades are management and that that actually does represent an ideology like the technology and the the kind of the the immediate pieces around it represented an ideology and so a tribe thus also represents that ideology the tribalism that's like aggressive and nasty on Twitter is different than like people being into a vision of reality that like a certain technology is trying to build and I mean I think the benefit in this ecosystem is that people can actually be in multiple tribes because we indeed don't know what trade-offs and kind of actually like governance structures that will work so people can like look at all of this example and like participate in multiple ecosystems and I think like more and more people become like more open to this in general which like from our perspective like we take you know obviously like some other set of trade-offs and we also want to just test them so really like we want the communities that is interested in testing new ideas and your hypothesis and then this actually can like one or another propagates through the ecosystem brain so like in a way you're kind of looking for like different type of people to join at different stages of the project as well right like a seed room is pretty mature there's like very different type of people now for participating versus made the like people who were originally like starting when you know it was just an empty Network and the same is like was like a new project that they're launching the people who we want in the beginning are really people who will you know page the wave attract you know be like pioneers in choose a kind of building new things and then figuring out together with us what is a set of trade-offs it works and then going forward like maybe like you know tribes or whatever we'll start like merging into or somehow dispersing as we figure out like like in a you know a few years ahead of us when these things actually work and we start attracting more mass market adoption that's when we will have a very different community in general I think it's all about the the funny and master to make the final decision cause right now the problem has occurred there like a lot of different voice but you know everyone has his own opinions but you know it's very hard to reach out to agreement which you know that part you know that kind of our discussion delayed the project and later you know the process of making you know great kind of you know technology progress so it's all about after finding a ways to to make the decisions and make it more efficient about about you know or what kind of things we hear there which kind of things we shouldn't do you started off saying like is it tribe versus technology and the way I look at it is more of a solution versus technology so the way we see the echo system is that there is a problem and and we want to find a solution and there are a lot of different technological outlets that provides like a means for that solution and this is where I think sometimes we get caught up with the conversation that we have like for example Experian and we're here and it's like the leading blockchain but it's not the only blockchain sometimes and it's not the only technological solution that provides this and like end result for for what we're trying to solve and we need to be open-minded in that sense that we not just die hard for a specific technology provider or for specific like team team of people and more for the greater idea behind it of trying to find a solution to a problem right I think it's something that we can't discount though is that these systems are they're crypto economic systems and they have security because they're valuable and the tribe and thus like at the community and the network effect and and to an exactly yo okay try this maybe just a subset of the community in a subset of like the network effect of it I think the tribe that we are speaking about is like it it's like vocal aggressive entity a tied to these communities but like the community the network effect is crucial for any of these technologies to actually be secure and to exist and do what they're supposed to do and so I we can't discount that network effects have to occur for these technology even if you have a a better technology but you do not have a network effect you don't have a crypto economically secure system so point being we just we cannot discount that a tribe must be there to support like kind of a fundamental network of yeah I understand what you're saying it just may be the fact that sometimes we we want to maybe in my perspective is to look at the greater picture the bigger picture to take a step back and have a look and see what's the best maybe technology for that solution and you see a lot of technological partners here and you see a lot of different blocks change they're being like built and emerged and it's not necessarily this or that and I agree you need to be in a position and you need to develop your solution in the place where the the tribe exists or the people exist but it doesn't have to be a specific technology in and out in that sense so can you give an example that either your team or what you've seen in the space that's been your favorite example of cross-pollination collaboration of research that you've seen produce a great movement forward for the entire ecosystem I mean we're super excited to use whippy-tippy it's a it's a protocol developed by protocol labs which is kind of in conjunction with the wild coin protocol it's a protocol agnostic p2p stack that's very modular and pluggable and us to kind of coalescing on this on the stack has brought in a lot more interest in this it's just becoming a genuinely robust solution that people are more and more taking off the shelf there's many many language implementations down it's been a kind of a boon for us and just I think for the ecosystem in general the broader not even just a theory of ecosystem so we're we're headed towards e-cash aetherium interoperability and in it it happened first it through assemble so Blake to precompile was added as a contract so now you can have things like wrapped deck within aetherium and then that happens through kind of a series of relationships and Trust and things that are built over time and then the etherium community came together and said yes this would be fantastic we want this in there and this is not only good for d'caché but anybody that's using Equifax or equi hash can can can be supported within within the protocol and then there's a lot more kind of stuff that that's coming with a theorem community as well I should like that assembly because the assembly is not just technology coming from the sector system it's coming from a wider ecosystem there's actually a bigger community around it and at the same time like through the community of like protocols for spun contracts it all kind of starting to pretty much aggregate around this technology and most like what is the stacks to run it what is the kind of things built up on top of it this also like going forward may generate a lot more like cross protocol code that can run across different platforms so really it's just like trying to push together kind of notification around the programming model and I think like that's been a really good push forward on this and like removing sounds of tribalism on at least like oh my application run here not there or have a different like execution environment I will actually it would be a swamp project that you know was funded by a certain foundation a few years ago and we sponsor the party last year I think distributor Nigeria is kind of a good solution to solve this really really problem for for most of the projects so we are pretty excited about the project excellent so while we're talking about how we've collaborated to flip it on its head a bit are there any disqualifiers in this space that in the conversations of ideologies and like what we're trying to accomplish as a whole that you imagine that we shouldn't be collaborating in India in a particular area yeah I mean so there are all kinds of places right because not everybody's honest and not everybody's trying to do things for for the public good in some cases there's bad governments that want to fund the blockchain development to be able to do bad things and so no we shouldn't collaborate with with everybody you always collaborate the specific there's certain degree right it's like you're there but you always worried that you might not follow the right person well so I think it's important to have like selfish collaboration like you have your view of the world and your ideology and what what you want and you can't solve all the stuff and you're not going to coordinate all the stuff and you're not going to lead all of this stuff and so other people need to do their thing but you're you're setting a path forward for what you're trying to do and you engage other people that can help do what you want to do and it's selfish and it kind of works out because everybody's got kind of got their own lane I think the way we see the system is at this point that if we go back like two years ago you needed to do everything from scratch I'm Tomatoes that ready need to build everything for from the node infrastructure to get the in data from the blockchain up to the front-end that existed and now we see more and more people and companies are filling the gaps and you can cooperate in creating the Susy process that you don't own the whole process itself so each one has its own like little piece of the process that they take and this is like a more I would say mature ecosystem and we're getting to the point that this exists and then you start seeing more competition on the different plug-and-play like position so if you have someone with no infrastructure it used to be just in Fuhrer or you created your own oh there now you have like a bunch of different companies competing on the same space to provide that same service because more and more companies are using and utilizing these type of infrastructures because they don't need to build them yourself anymore good on those lines too how do you maintain like the the clarity of your original vision versus inciting more collaboration and drawing more into the space and perhaps aligning with somebody who isn't exactly saying it the same way you are how do you make sure that your original differentiator stays present and clear to your audience I mean from our perspective so like when we started our goal was to figure out how to really make it usable across the stack for building watching applications right like our team is coming from like building like systems and building applications and we like have you know struggle pretty much to build like we said we saw you know that building on this video would require you know building a full stack and that's not how you build in the modern world so there's no way this will attract you know developers from mass-market so like from this perspective like what we really looking for is how can we like help this kind of end developer like you guys and everybody else to actually deploy and get usage on their products right and like for this perspective it's kind of like the technology underneath and the platform is really like serving this purpose not you know trying to like create you know differentiator percent right so this is like that's why we're more interested in like how do we promote kind of this bigger message of like open the map across the board not like Oh specific you know technologists back is like the current one that you know everybody should use and then from our perspective we believe we can like at least try to aim for a better experience and then even if you're working with people for not building on us right now we can learn from that experience and figure out what is missing and how to improve it right so for us we like we have a clear TrueNorth right so our our mission is to empower everyone with economic freedom and opportunity and we're doing that with a privacy-preserving digital currency and that's what we're about and that doesn't change and it doesn't matter who we're partnering with and if somebody wants a partner that isn't aligned with that then is probably not a good alignment but we're not gonna lose our our true north I see a lot of application use cases where we can't ignore it cause you know to benefit their you know interest I think that's totally reasonable so what we are doing is try to be more comparable with other kind of infrastructure and protocols and see whether you know we can help them to you know build on I deploy on top of it so that is our you know things were we were working on and there's no copy without a protocol for like your foundation kind of things like represent a cure cure davia we won't change it and so more recently we've seen a billion dollars in b5 which is really exciting for everyone working in this environment so how do you think going forward really that that major milestone and movement is going to be affected by collaborations between different teams and different environments can I see I want it because like we're not easy cash isn't really used in defy that much right now but I would argue actually a billion dollars defy doesn't doesn't matter yet because it's a billion dollars of wealth ease people's money locked up in something and until the unbanked until the people that were trying to reach with this stuff are can actually use this stuff it doesn't matter until like I'm curious with what kind of collaboration is happening in those kinds of contexts not just kind of reaching out to the traditional people that we've already been reaching out to it is a milestone okay you need to keep that in mind as I said before it's still the system is still an early age right early stage the defy is still like about evolving and maturing yes the goal eventually is to get to the unbanked and to get to the mass market and billion-dollar is not a big number but it's still a milestone because two weeks ago in two months ago it wasn't even close to that so it is improving and we see more money coming in but this is what we need to keep in mind eventually I would say who are you solving for like lose your user I would say that I agree with you but it's also difficult and probably arguably irresponsible to show up to the unbanked and be like use these random tools we built no one's used them yet so you know we're I think that it the billion dollar milestone is like a we're crossing this threshold into these things are usable they're like increasingly working together and doing like interesting financial things and many of them don't have like critical bugs in them anymore so how do you know how do you know what the unbanked need so that I know the unbanked need I'm just saying that good luck showing up to the unbanked and be like no one's literally ever used this contract there's no money as everyone put it behind it maybe you should try it out so banker in that sense came from the unbanked they came from a community currency perspective and idea ideology and found a solution in crypto and blockchain to provide tokenized economy that allows people to benefit from like community currency type of money that can be transferable and exchangeable at any given moment this was the gist and idea behind it as we evolved and started developing into the ecosystem yes we've done tested tests and diploma implementation in in Kenya and and different third-world countries to see how this unbanked how these on bank can actually access the type of technology but there is still a gap unfortunately unfortunately and we know it all here in this room there is a gap between the technology that we work on and the mass users that exist outside the unbanked are still within that gap they don't have that barrier they don't have that access to that technology yet so we cannot really approach these type of audiences yet and we need to make sure that the technology is improving and that slowly slowly we get to the same users that we're trying to get but they're not gonna come they're not gonna be the first wave unfortunately so originally key management and transactions like first and foremost and private key management is not solved that's what I think what I think that's probably the biggest barrier to get to some people's hands so I originally from Ukraine and most of people there one way or another our banks including me at some point where I had $100 bills stored in you know quote unquote on as a pillow because I would not try starting it in any bank in Ukraine because will default at any point right and we just were in Argentina same thing right people like just collect dollar signs and the question is why because dollars actually a currency that everybody in the way trusts that it will like be there for next like reasonable period of time and I totally agree with you billion dollars in locks kind of finance assets is very little because what it actually represents is less than five hundred million or less effectual currency like maker which is like six seven hundred million dollars only issues like hundred million dollars of die this is very little this means that if I want to pay my you know my teammates or whatever in died is like you know reasonable scale like I would be moving market every time I'm buying like you know half a million million dollars of that right this is like so little in comparison to how much money actually like needed to really power the ecosystem that we're not there and I totally agree that the other side of this user experience is nightmare right like I personally like you know I know exactly how everything works I know like exactly math that works underneath right I still don't want to use that half of the times right so really this is like like growing tech the system grinds it like amount we can actually transfer is that moving to market all the time and solving like end-user experience is like two really important problems thing you know the fight is maybe not important to Z can to some of the protocol but it matter to like us I think you know or kind of a ECC support if aiyla you know we actually you know deploy working on the point I on top of you know a certain cassia now what are we seeing you know you know just imagine oh honey liqueur overall speaking it order the Cooper currency is surface that occurred finance ready so building the product on top of the network and make you know the cryptocurrency useful is definitely you know or the since we are you know aiming for and we are fighting for so defy in honoring and is very important for for most of the protocol and we think you know in the traditional finance industry we we see so many kind of you know institution didn't provide very good product and service to you know shooter you know the people don't have the access to tutor it's kind of like a product for example you know a lot of you know people in the polar region and you know areas they don't have access to these kind of like traditional finance you know or product so these kind of things are we are you know working on and to try to solve so to the point of whether or not you know we've really reached a massive milestone or not do you think what we really need to move the space forward is building the tribe or building the technology or how do you how do you balance both because we we say we want to reach more people but is our technology ready so what do you look what do you look for what how does that aligned with what you're looking to do you I mean so you guys you're experiencing some stuff firsthand right I mean you but you've got to be in context to really kind of understand the challenges in context so if if somebody if there's no mesh network in a place that's disconnected like how is this and how is this actually gonna work independent of the defy stuff that we're building hopefully on top of it and that's the kind of really interesting collaboration is not like defy project to defy project but like a core infrastructure to defy and how that fits within the the context we're trying to reach I mean I don't want to discount there's networks there like in most of the world right now the Internet is actually not bad it's actually better like internet in Ukraine and like many parts of like you know South America and many parts of like Southeast Asia is actually better than in San Francisco most of most of the time so you know like I have hundred megabits internet like like ten years ago in Ukraine and we barely have this right down in Silicon Valley like maybe like in few regions where there's like enough density for people right so I think like Internet even though it is important problem and like there's a lot of people actually trying to work on it because there's actually a huge incentive to bring in more people online there's actually 3 4 billion people already online that is like compared to like this the psycho system right now we have a future room to grow with people for the online who are unbanked who are like not using any you know like applications outside of like Facebook right now right so this is like our really audience and like figuring out what's the value crowd for them I think that that's the main important thing so so but the broader thing is the infrastructure and in some places it's not reliable or if you're in a place that is censoring the Internet and censoring what can happen right and we all know those places like are we and another like Oh am i open oh my I did some research in Venezuela and I think what they found was that most people had old Android devices like Android 7 or something I don't know but there's no wallet supported on those devices everybody's building for newer things nobody's building for the older things and you don't know that unless you have folks in context and so maybe maybe I don't know if they're researchers or folks like that that can go into these contexts to help inform what you guys are building listen eventually you need to identify your audience and this technology is cutting-edge right you cannot educate the market with every single every single thing you can't just bombard a new someone in unbanked come and an unbanked user with new money new technology new devices like everything in you you need to start step by step and this is where defy is actually helping the system it's helping the ecosystem to start pulling more users and getting more come more more awareness into this ecosystem you know to the technology it's also kind of like stress testing the ecosystem so helping it evolve and improve and it's not ready yet it's still in beta in that sense but in the next couple of years you'll get to a point where you can be big as big or even bigger bigger than Google and Facebook and the technology will be vastly adopted and you'll see it also evolving and rolling out in unbanked users and countries but it's not ready yet it's not there so I actually don't agree with that fully because I think if I being important is not everything there's a lot of other domains which Bose can like help us is adoption like gaining being what is it kind of major like cases where you can actually create mark like gaming already created a interesting market places around the world where you know people and like Philippines are playing World of Warcraft to mind some items to sell it to somebody know what West in us for for currency for dollars right that in this case the technology is not mature enough because you cannot really run a whole lot of games on the second system at this point yes I said yes so but that like but and there's like few others so like from our perspective really what we need to is empower more developers to build applications right and have clear business models there so they can actually do the research and go out and find audiences and you know bring them in right like I don't think like protocol at this point will be yet like if we go out and we say hey we're like a blockchain protocol everybody's like okay what like what does that mean like so like we are not at the level it's like you know if CCP IgE like communica media would go to like you know end-user in like hey so you want to send you know some packets around the around the world really fast we have a routing mechanism for you right so we're like a little bit different at a different level we need to empower more people who are like hey I'm solving this problem for you you will get paid you'll receive money you can send money across support you know you can you know avoid some of the censorship that's right now you under all those use cases are there like I think we are getting to a place where like they're possible and really we just need to borrow those people to like and make sure they have business models that's like the app developers right now have very like poor business model so overall and like making sure they have it and like we also kind of expand over not just that but in general like this application that don't need to be fully decentralized that rely on decentralized kind of parts to you know serve part of the value like making sure that this is clear visible communicated attracts people who actually wanna solve some of these problems I think that's that's the kind of part we should be focused on a lot on on collaboration part for sure especially if there's no business model you can collaborate do these okay well I know we're coming up on time here so if you have a 10 second sound bite that you'd like to leave the community here with on your thoughts of tribalism versus collaboration we can go from there and wrap up well I have a shell so we have two bounds use which I can near with if you do so we have a cathedral bridge which you can transfer all your defy and also called normal contracts as well and we have my EVM in execution environment so you can actually run all your sylheti code on there so really bridging sounds tribalism on technology side yeah we just announced a partnership with Bitcoin so if your guys are interesting build on top of you know etcs happy to you know you know talk to your guys and you know also you can go to click on website and see you know what we have their tribalism is gonna get us only so far but we're building networks and we built we need to kind of expand the scope of these networks and these users so again tribalism some being being some core group of people that are very into technology that's not that's not the focus I mean that's that's a very important part of these communities especially early days but growing the network beyond the tribe is gonna be where the real value and the real network effects are gonna be brought in the next few years so there's a something really cool happened within the zico zico system that got finalized yesterday and that's the long-term funding structure that aligns development work along with with the users there's a couple pieces in that and how that gets allocated but there's a new grants fund that got created that's 8 percent of the total block rewards for Z cash that will be launched with network activation for in November of later this year so that will be a pool of money traditionally ECC's worked on Z cash the Foundation's e-cash Foundation has worked on it neither one of them are eligible to receive this funds so it's a huge chunk of money for developers to be able to come up with ideas we're starting to release things as well like we released an SDK for shielded wallets it's now available so that people can download and start to use that so encourage you guys to check that stuff out so liquidity pools are the killer app at this point of defy bank words at the core of it we have a hackathon $2,000 worth of prize for the cause and just make them even more greater than they are moment great well I want to thank all our panelists and we'll wrap up from here thank you [Music] you