Decentralization: How to Talk About It vs. How to Do It | Jose Fabrega - MetisDisruption

[Music] okay so we are going to begin our chat today uh my name is FS and I will be the moderator for this uh conversation um today we'll be talking about decentralization how it is described in theory and how is really applied in practice um I'll be to keep it more grounded using the dimens of decentralization described by vitalic um the dimension Dimensions including architectural logical and the political aspects and we will then explore how it works in practice and how these theories manifest into the real world so before we begin our discussion I would like our panel to introduce themselves so I would go from my right starting with Jose hey everyone I'm Jose head of marketing at medis and I'm very excited to be here hey my name is Chris uh I'm from L2 beit if you don't know L2 beit we are the ones who are like watching over all the l2s what exactly are they doing and how how safe and secure they really are and I hope to share some insights from that in this panel hi I'm disruption Joe on the twitters and I am very interested in grand grand Frameworks and doing a lot of that work with arbitrum and Thrive protocol awesome and so just that we understand your kind of experience and the topic of decentralization how does decentralization play into the work that you currently do well into the work that into a work that medic is doing right now is going to have a huge role we are soon to decentralize or attempt to decentralize the sequencer which has been done previously by other layer twos we have been building up and uh exploring this for a long time and preparing ourselves for for this so plays a huge role in our day-to-day it's one of the goals that we are looking for and it's just going to be the first step into achieving full decentralization so for us decentralization is something that we are looking for in the projects that we are overseeing so why do we even care about decentralization we care because decentralization is essential for the security of the user funds so if you go to L2 beat you can you can Che check actually how safe and how secure all those different L2 systems are and also you can you can see some aspects of decentralization uh included there for example what can you do if the sequencer is down what can you do if there is no data like is the data available how data availability is addressed in any given project so stuff like that these are the metrics our risk framework basically we we don't say decentralization per se we look into the details we dig into the details but that's exactly what we are looking for when assessing projects yeah in my work you know with getcoin for a few years we were looking at how do we decentralize the review when somebody makes a decision around eligibility to participate in a gram program and or the review of did they hit a milestone did they do the work and uh you know we talk about decentralization a lot in the decision-making and a lot of times we don't think about the accountability processes that accompany it so directly I'm looking for a Frameworks that we can apply decentralization to the accountability side of the equation so just adding on to the accountability um in terms of decentralization sometimes it can be seen as like an exit to community so a lack of accountability really in terms of projects or in terms of dows um where do you see decentralizing ation aligning with a sense of accountability on the social or human layer I I could jump in on that one um you know what we're trying to do in decentralization isn't so new like we say decentralization like it's this like new word but you might remember a thing from like politics called liberalism and we were like Mar one person making the decision isn't always the best way to do it right and we want more people to be able to do this like you know there's a buzzword going around of like pluralism all we're saying is that there should be more than one person who has agency to affect the system right and uh in the human layer I think there's a fundamental belief that there's a lot of potential in the world that the gate kep systems that we have like hiring systems that just close out anybody without a degree or close out whatever it is those those exclusionary Frameworks don't allow a lot of people to get in and take shots at being the best person they can be right and whether it's like third world countries there's some kid on the south side of Chicago who like isn't being given an opportunity if they can access the opportunity without having to go through all those Gates that we've built just to save ourselves time we don't have the time to go out to reach out to those people and help them if they can just show up and they can get recog I for the value they're able to create that's going to create The Human Condition where I think we can all Thrive we can flourish absolutely I agree with that uh although like my attempt into social decentralization is in an oversight like I think that while decision making could be centralized and could be more efficient if it is centralized then the oversight is best if it's decentralized and if many people are looking into what other people are doing and going to the technical perspective as well like that's something what we are trying to do in L2 beit because decentralization is hard that is this is something that we tend to undervalue how hard it really is this is a one of the most challenging aspects of it real decentralization and distributed systems so it is hard and it's hard like it's hard on the the theoretical level but it's as well hard in the practic level on of how to actually Implement those ideas and like the topic of our of our talk is De centralization how to talk about it versus how to do it and that's exactly what we are like assessing in l2b because we are look we we never for example rely on projects documentation we don't trust those projects that their documentation is accurate and it's it's honest for example so we look into the code because the the code is the final judge in how decentralized are those systems so that's the reason why for every claim that we make on our website whether something is like whether there is an exit window for a project or whether that there is some mechanism that allows for for everybody to propose blogs from L2 every claim as such we try to back with the link to the source code of the mechanism that we looked to to be sure that it is exactly how it works because the the issue is that quite often even the teams themselves the people in the team themselves they don't know what exactly has been implemented polygon had this issue for quite a long time when marketing department said something and then the technical team had to you know explain the details on the Twitter because they didn't get it correctly or they were thinking that they implemented plasma but if you look into the code then the challenge mechanism is actually empty with a common TBD so this is the code that is deployed on chain everybody everybody can look into that so I think that this accountability especially in the centr systems that we have relies on us actually checking the claims of the projects not just L2 be but everybody else so I encourage everybody here listening to me to to fact check us as well if we claim that some system is solid that that it's green on our risk assessment go and check it and if you you know if you find out that we are wrong we would be happy to you know give you appraisal and Shout out that you actually corrected us to top it off I would just say that picking back from what Kristoff said the collective or decentralized overview makes a lot of sense and and this is something that blockchain itself is enabling for everyone transparency in this aspect and if we take it to day-to-day concepts for example in I'm personally from Latin America in Latin America a lot of countries and governments manage State funds in very shady ways and there will be contracts or payments exercised that no one can be aware of but and not because we don't have the right to be aware of but because they make it so that the public and the citizens can be aware of so I believe the idea or what blockchain is creating can contribute a lot to the idea that you described about that Collective overview and I think it's a very straightforward way to implement it at a global scale if I can relate to that because yes blockchain allows for it the transparency that blockchain gives allows us to actually fact check whether all the procedures go smoothly whether all the mechanism works but it only works assuming that somebody actually looks into it something that we were discussing with Joe just before this panel that in the Dow we we we quite usually have this glowback mechanism that we provide some funds for example and we allow the Dao a clack mechanism that if every anything goes wrong if those funds are being misused then the dowo has the right to Clow back those funds and stop the funding but this works only if somebody is looking into that if somebody checks that's why and I'm not just chilling out to beat right now but that's right we should make sure that we do have those checks B checks and balances mechanism actually working because without that everything else is just you know just our visual thinking great so moving on now to the political which is the idea that decentralized system should not be controlled by a single entity or a small group of entities so as both of you are really engaged in terms of governance and delegates yourselves we're starting to also see a growth in terms of apathy but also the same players kind of playing within governance um so if Dow governance is to be different than our current governance systems how can it Foster greater transparency accountability and participatory decision making I a it you know it goes right to what you were saying you know you got to pay somebody probably to do that review like what Bitcoin Learned was that decentralization didn't come from the goodness of people's hearts it came from a system where they took a little bit of INF inflation to pay for the people to run enough nodes that they'd hit minimum viable decentralization so like you know what we're thinking about with Thrive protocol is that how do we enable that same system where you're paying for minimum viable decentralization of the people who participate in reviewing things consistently so we can move away from you know delegated authority to either individuals companies councils and actually have a random selection of people in the community that's minimally viable decentralized that are being paid to review it because I agree with you if nobody's getting paid nobody's actually looking at that every day so what's the schedule that we have some people on that they're mobilized to review that in a decentralized way I think the name of the game is proper incentive alignment that's the name of the game every time yes but also I believe that this is a cultural thing so decentralization does not guarantee anything it's a possibility that we need to learn how to use and like coming to politics I'm from Poland and in Poland we've been given democracy just like 30 years ago so we we've been in a communism State and now we are in a democracy but even 30 years later I like I'm old enough to be like seeing this this conversion with you know from the front seat and I would say that we have to learn how to use this mechanism the mechanism itself does not guarantee that you will have the all the benefits of democracy unless you learn how to use it unless you take the responsibility of actually using your rights to vote to fact check your decision makers and to take them to keep them accountable and we are learning this after 30 years in Poland and I think we need to learn this also in De centralized systems because we with this power of decentralization with this voting power comes responsibility unless we learn how to use it it's meaningless yeah so I mean I think bringing on to that though is that in the real world a lot of people don't have this education on how they could actually be better citizens we have a social contract but we understand that those with money can have much greater influence and it's also seen in the Dow world with token weighted voting so in terms of using using onboarding as an example what is the pathway for onboarding for people to actually receive the agency to then understand that they can acquire the resources and tools to be better Dow citizens to participate in governance so that we don't end up in this current stage of apathetic individuals so I'm just going to make it kind of like a quick remark I think going back to the same point it's incentive alignment if we create a mechanism in which all the actors that should be playing a vital role for the system to be working are being incentivized in a proper way then the system will work correctly and will also bring more people from the outside one thing that or a way in which we're looking at sequencer decentralization is it's also we never think about decentralization being a factor for fueling adoption of blockchain or or layer of layer twos but by decentralizing in sequencer we're also creating this incentive alignment in which users or token holders can get part of these incentives Builders can also access these incentives through different initiatives of the ecosystem and can be rewarded accordingly and node operators are also being rewarded accordingly so node operators key for security we need the builders to keep the momentum going and to have the projects alive to create a healthy ecosystem and users by creating these incentives for users we could actually see a bigger inflow that we've seen in the past all of these inflows of users that we've seen have been because of monetary reasons even games they're mostly play to earn and this has brought a lot of users so I think that incentive alignment even tying it back to decentralization can actually fuel a very big influx of new participants in the market I I call it the the Big O in in the Dows right like we we talk about the decentralization in the technical aspect and autonomy is your ability to have agencies so that's really the political aspect and what we lose is that we actually want centralization in the O the organization right and Dows what they've done so far is maybe it comes bare market and they're running out of funds and they start thinking oh we need to be organized because we haven't figured that out you need to be organized to onboard somebody and say here's where you go to onboard and what we hear from almost everybody delegates builders Service Providers every Persona is that they don't know where to go to to understand what's going on in the Dow to keep context right they go to The Forum and they just need a nap and they know less so that's not a good answer right and then they don't know what their civic duty is so if they knew every week what are the votes they should do and here's five you know like you were saying if there's transparency only gives us transparency it doesn't give us accountability right so if you ask every citizen every day here's the 10 transparent documents I need to review you to review one of them a week that's your duty right and I'm going to reward you for that and if you get streaks of a few months of always doing that like you're going to get a special hat or whatever it is you know and people are going to know that you do your duty to that ecosystem and you're going to want to level up and you're going to want to flex how good you are for that ecosystem because that ecosystem is good for you yeah I I absolutely agree with what you said what I would like to add to it that those incentives that I absolutely agree that it's all about incentivization and providing resources so that people can actually do something but I would like to know that Financial incentives are not the only incentives we have being being able to have an impact being able to do some meaningful work is also an an an have an autonomy what you mentioned is also you know an incentive in itself we need to make sure that we provide people the possibility to do an impactful in contribution to the ecosystem that's when the kid from the subs of Chicago or from the subs uh in some small city in in in Poland can actually get involved in those systems this is the beauty of permissionless systems that everybody that can contribute something meaningful is able to but we need to provide them a path for a meaningful contribution and and of course this has to be linked with some Financial incentives as well but the most important thing is that after a month of contributing to this system this person can be proud of themselves and can can tell you know their friends hey this is what I did this is me this is what I contributed to this system there there's something super intrinsically meaningful there too like people think about the gamification and a lot of times the rituals in like gamification aren't about what the rituals say they're about right so when you level up and you can show your neighbors hey I'm a good citizen in this ecosystem that is something intrinsically more meaningful than the payment that you got right if you actually want to show that off and you take that badge and you put it on your coat that you wear every day you want to show that off right that you want to find those things that are intrinsically more meaningful than the actual price of the asset there is an absolute reputational value in all those ecosystems and being able to build your reputational value is something that our systems provide that's one of the most important things that we have in this uh web 3 and I fully agree with that and one of the things that excites me the most about web 3 attacking this specific problem is the lack of portability and composability that there is with reputation in the current world if I'm an Uber driver an Amazon Seller and I've been working for two years I have five stars and I get in a fight with the organization my platform is lost all of my history is lost in web 3 this doesn't have to be the case and so just really quickly just to add on to that is that there needs to be a culture shift so when I'm talking to people about crypto they're still always thinking about the monetary gain and so it's so what do you think could we shift in terms of The Narrative of onboarding people into crypto outside of the money kind of narrative you say bring impact and value impact and value doesn't pay the bills majority of the the the gigs in crypto are not ones in regards to impact or value so if that is to be a secondary or another type of incentive to keep people on on board them and to to the continual journey in crypto what is a culture shift then or a narrative shift then that we should apply in order for that to be true I'm not sure if we need a shift like the people I'm talking to they they they they do care about this uh non-monetary incentives out there and like I'm coming from the free software and open culture um ecosystem and you know 20 years ago we didn't have crypto we couldn't make money on creating free software like money is actually something that happened by accident if if ever in Creative Commons in free software in Linux and in free BSD and stuff like that and still we created all those huge ecosystems why because we had an impact because we were running the internet because like if I contributed to the source code of some platform I knew that this that that I could later tell my friends hey all those systems all those servers are running my code and that is my input to the society and this is hugely valuable this is something that you can't pay in money for so and like this is the shift that I would be looking for not just the monetary value but the value of the of the brick that you are putting into the future Society I that's a great point and uh I want to kind of like highlight that there will never be such a thing as like no monetary value involved I think there's always going to be at some extent but by being able to develop a solid reputation like he was saying being proud of what you do like you don't you are not looking to extract that monetary value per se but those achievements and that reputation can take you to obtain that monetary value in the end yeah I I'm really getting excited about this idea of minimizing friction actually it was something you said that kind of inspired me around it was like why don't we have a 100% of people being accepted for Grants and at first I was like well that's stupid how would we accept 100% of people and then I sat there for like a day as like usually I do with like comments like that it was like oh if we had basic requirements and a starting level and some Pathway to something at the end like I I was talking about yesterday with like the example of a leprechaun like everybody understands the idea of the leprechaun he wants the pot of gold at the end and there's a rainbow it's the pathway he takes to get there right and and usually our grants and everything that we do it's like this very transactional thing where we're going here's some money don't it up and we're not saying here's some money let let us help you grow and let us coach you and build you to be better and there is that like the pot of gold is whatever is Meaningful to that person right like it's not necessarily the money it's it's the autonomy it's the ability to travel and live the way you want to it's the ability for that that kid to go and participate without being you know gated out of the system be for reasons that are just like reversion to the mean like I'm going to take this stupid Criterion like cut out 80 of the applications because I need to cut out 80 of them because I don't have the human labor hour Sil them so I'm going to require a degree not because I think the best person's in there because I don't have the time to look through this right so we have all these gating mechanisms that's the culture change we need to change is that you can step in and get the value that you put in and we are the only ecosystem where some monkey or penguin could be more influential than some celebrity or a blueberry so our our time is up thank you so much to our panel for this Lively discussion thank you all to have joined um to listen in um and that's it