J1 PAIN 02 Bob Summerwill A call for an end to tribalism in Ethereum

[Music] it begins as an idea transforming into a problem that begs to be solved like a great cycle each answer yields another peak the Vista promises more beautiful ends and the new journey pushes us for we have our builders our visionaries the rebels the troublemakers and the dreamers then we arrived at a new peak with more dreamers or builders a few more rebels and of course we still have the tropics some journeys are coming to a noble end and some hello so that video is four years old and it's been quite an adventure so Vitalik posted this up a little while ago which was the earliest emails that you received from gaff you can see there December the 19th 2013 Johnny gave me the heads up I haven't determine who Johnny is anyone know who Johnny is I don't know who Johnny is I think I asked and nobody remembered but yeah Johnny gave me the heads up I can do C++ how far are you with aetherium shortly after that aetherium was launched at the North American Bitcoin conference in Miami and here is a young Vitalik where he's always young anyway but even younger he was mobbed after that initial session apparently everyone I was talking at some point to some guy who was the person presenting after him and the whole audience apparently left poor guys left on his own this again is in in Miami see see here what we got dog Ave got Vitalik Anthony D Oreo Taylor Goering who else we got here Oh Joe lube in there various other people but I've never met I don't think these are photos in Toronto at the bit coin Expo which was in April 2014 a couple of months later the the Miami meeting was the Miami conference was the first time that a lot of a lot of the team actually met for the first time in person so a spread around between Europe and North America but yes here is a vitalik Stefan toile Ian Michael here of graphic design of Fame's done many of the logos and things you'll see on the website that's Taylor there Jeff Wilker Marin and I can't quite work out who that is there Anthony having a little look at a little fragment of not even one solidity at that point was it it was that like it's probably like Matt on or something wasn't it in the background we have some curious figures that you may not know this is Amir shettrick who is probably the the biggest enigma of the founders never never seen again and then here is his Richards stopped who is now called Richard Wilde who's IOH Kay and I shot a jello lobe in there and what Steph hands up to I was told I think by Ian that Amir would would refuse to wear the t-shirt he was too cool to wear the t-shirts he wanted to keep his jacket on but as you can see pretty happy times you know people starting on out on a brave new adventure Antony Diorio again and then we hit the first schism which I believe was in about May 2014 where Charles Hoskinson became Emmanuel Goldstein I don't know how many people have not read 1984 anyway he's the the Trotsky figure in in 1984 you know you always have to have an enemy so charles Hoskinson has become the evil body of aetherium and there was the first schism between aetherium and well kadhai know and fear in classic and so on the second schisms happened in summer 2015 or there abouts when both joe Lubin left to form consensus and antony Diorio left well then really leaves because he wasn't so engaged he got less engaged and focused on on jackson decentral the third schism was when gaved which is really the route of death versus parity tensions that we see popping up now and again and i mean really the root of that tension I think is just that if you're outside the foundation you know the website just makes it look like you've just got Gothamist so not so great for anybody outside the fourth schism which I was involved in here's me with a silly beard and here we have Jehan cook Dameron and Joseph Chow here with Vitalik and amber bull day of JPMorgan and over here is brian behlendorf of hyper ledger so really the schism in this case was really about enterprise are terrible enterprises trying to steal a theorem away and subvert the project so we've got about six factions I think so we have the foundation you know Vitalik everyone knows is a dictator who bailed out the Dow single-handedly I'm sorry you know Charles is is Emmanuel Goldstein he is the devil we all know that Joe Lupin of consensus is an empire builder who only cares about money gavvers egotistical and non collaborative and antony Diorio is an opportunist who only cares about money as well and hyper ledger and the enterprise aetherium alliance are just they're trying to co-opt aetherium for the banks and to ruin the whole project of course all of these are not true they are demonization because that's what humans like to do it's very simple isn't it to think you have good guys and bad guys and if only people would stop being bad and do what you like it would all be fine right yeah not so much so I really came to realize that the story really of aetherium in it and starting with the founders is you know you you have people both in the founders in it and people coming along who are you know autistic sociopathic or could be labeled as egotistical chronic social anxiety severe depression suicidal greedy selfish but on the upside autistic which is a good thing in terms of thinking deeply about problems someone was saying to me at some point don't try and cure autism the planet will come to a halt nobody will solve hard technical problems anymore geniuses altruistic people visionaries selfless and fearless people because ultimately everyone is a mixture of good and bad whatever good and bad mean because those are value judgments as well so my truth is that diversity is strength you know everyone is a mixture we are all misfits myself included because neurotypical people would never have embarked on this project you do not have these kind of crazy moon shots and people just quit their office jobs and decide yeah that I'll go do that that'll be a good idea you know and really if you know the founders it's just a bunch of dudes it's just a bunch of dudes just trying to do an incredibly hard thing which may or may not even be possible it might be illegal but it could be awesome so you try many with poor interpersonal skills because it's just a bunch of dudes who don't really have good ways of resolving conflict so they just stamp all over each other and piss each other off and they don't know how to say sorry when they do that and now they hate each other and this is not an aetherium specific thing it's it's a very common thing throughout blockchain throughout technology throughout dudes but here's the thing you know aetherium it's it's it's kind of worked you know it's you know we're not all the way there but you know certainly when you look back you know if you could dream of where we are now four years ago ever we'll be delighted what a fantastic success you know the world is waiting the world is sold you know as Vitalik said earlier this year you know it's it's kind of a matter of execution now you know we've got you know that the supply and the demand have kind of matched up you know every you know every fortune 500 and their dog you know want to get to production you know could we can we just solve scaling can we solve privacy can we just go can we get to done could we get to feature complete and the thing is you know we've we've we've got gigantic amounts of resourcing now you know so we're seeing both on the public aetherium side and on the enterprise side you know giant you know giant teams starting to form and it's great so you know we don't need to hate each other you know everyone's everyone's played their role and we've all got a lot more in common than we have difference so let's all you know just work together so in terms of thinking badly about each other which was a note I had on here but I haven't got my notes up was was really that you know I think the route really of demonization is is thinking badly of someone that you've not ever released spoken to you don't really know personally you've just heard stuff about them secondhand what they did what they said because of so-and-so blah blah blah happened and and it's very very easy to have you know to demonize someone that you you've maybe never even spoken to based on secondhand opinion or rumor and I've done this myself so in 2016 I was working to see if I could get the C++ client relicensed from GPL to Apache to so a variety of people wanted to use it but the primary thing really was seeing if we could get an etherium client into hyper ledger so that our answer on our own enterprise would be you want to do public etherium great tortilla theorem foundation you want to do something with enterprise brilliant go to the Linux foundations a whole bunch of companies doing stuff there they can help you but it didn't work I spent five months doing the most boring paperwork ever chasing all this up and it did not go through because earth core blocked it Gavin Merrick did not sign the paperwork they were major contributors so it was just stalled yes let me read this here for anyone reading this is me writing and coming away confused from the experience it was at core who blocked it and Warren says I don't know how to feel about this I can totally see Gavin being a pompous prick at times but I can also clearly tell he has convictions and thinks I had a few steps of the average person he doesn't talk often here or really anywhere two-sided preferring to blog I think instead of engaging in debate that's neither good or bad but perhaps disappointing for many of us more vocal types but at the end of the day parity delivers it's been shown to be a very effective client and gavrieli did a ton of heavy lifting in the early days of the foundation right in the C++ client I can't really blame him for having second thoughts about what is a over 75% of his code it I think it was about 30% actually being wrapped up and closed sourced for the likes of IBM that's also incorrect it wouldn't be close source do recall IBM was awfully quiet about their debt platform anyway where are we where my aiming for this I got stuck oh there we go anyway so I said you know saying up front I believe that GPL is best for the community would be fine with me but that isn't what happened and anyway Enterprise our theorems coming our way soon enough and I think that we're going to see some heavy lifting from those resource rich companies but building a client is unlikely to be a priority so really the enterprise aetherium Alliance came around because of that licensing not going through it never actually have happened if that happened anyway that really affected me very seriously so I'll just read this through so on the 31st of December October sorry 31st of October 2016 I stood on Granville Island Bridge in Vancouver about 11:00 p.m. ready to throw myself to my death I felt so helpless and powerless I had seen what I thought was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a theorem to be the basis for all enterprise blockchain if we just completed the relicensing paperwork there was an army of IBM engineers ready to jump into action 30 of them in fact hold and bring that codebase up to the standard which it's so desperately needed to reach we could have bridged a theorem foundation and Linux Foundation all with no risk of control of the public protocol which was completely outside of any possibilities which relicensing of a specific codebase would have opened up we were a hair's breadth from glory we just needed gap and merit to sign and it was in the bag that was a hammer blow for me I'd been working 60 hours 60 plus hour weeks for months and months to help build this amazing dream I was being paid the equivalent of sixty thousand dollars with no vacation no benefits no nothing I'd actually got myself from my family into financial trouble doing so I'd spent five months working on the most dreary thankless paperwork during that process why because the upside would have been world-changing and at the time looked like a one-time opportunity my perception was that the answer had been no for selfish reasons but bad old gaff saw the revitalized C++ aetherium with the resourcing of the Linux Foundation and hundreds of companies behind it would have been a huge commercial challenge to his parity business and so he selfishly killed his first child to protect the second child the utter selfishness of that perceived situation in my mind together with my perilous financial situation together with my perception of permanent missed opportunity to aetherium was crushing combine that with my financial pain and the perception had failed my family and especially my wife in chasing this aetherium dream which had turned into a nightmare was it all delusion that this aetherium dream could happen it felt that way I felt a complete failure and that my boys would be better off with me dead than continuing to screw up again and again in a way which damaged my family and spiraled me into depression so yeah I had a spell of about about three months of depression how not my first depression many people have had depressions and I am one of them well I didn't do it and I'm so glad that I didn't the at Cancun a DEFCON 3 I got to spend some time with the parity team and even a few minutes would gather himself for the first time first time ever that was so you know been in contact with him I guess for about three years never meant until that point and it was lovely and I think that's really important that my impressions of gaff were based on online interactions not having met with him not having talked to him apart from a little bit online but pretty much second hand and I think that's a very very common thing for a lot of people working on open source projects is is it it's quite rare to have time in real life to talk to people to actually get to really know them as people and that's very important so over time I've come to realize that their actions in 2016 came out of fear that the beautiful etherium dream would be do real derailed and corrupted and they had to defend it even with the collateral damage that caused and I understand that now I really do so this this this blog post I think I wrote in in February early February of this year no I like mid mid-january so last week so yeah it would be 25th of January last week I went to Miami because I went to the I went to PTC Miami for the fourth anniversary of of the launch and I gave Chris DeRose a big hug I really did I really kissed him on both cheeks and gave him a big bottle of maple syrup and we did a podcast and it was lovely so Chris DeRose is a guy who I have argued with a hell of a lot but again never met him you know and it's easy to hate people on the Internet it's not so easy to hate them when you actually talk to them whoever they are because everyone in this blockchain ecosystem has got way more in common than they have differences even Chris DeRose and me amazingly and it's mainly shtick he's not actually that bad all we have to do is open our hearts and truly listen to others and if I can do that with Chris DeRose I can most certainly do that with gaff and with Charles and everyone else in aetherium and within blockchain as a whole so I was writing this in January On February the 5th and 6th I'm going to Berlin and I'm gonna give gaff that beautiful wonderful man who's been so instrumental to building this etherium dream a big hug and I did and I'm gonna kiss him on both cheeks I didn't do that actually I don't think he liked it I did give him the maple syrup because there's no more room in this space for hate for distrust for shit-talking and for judging people badly we've not spent quality time face to face with I will smoke the peace pipe and I'll revel in doing so because I love parity and I love gaff they have done amazing work for Humanity all free of charge often under heavy criticism which is so unjustified because they have changed the world for the better love not hate this was at DEFCON 3 Hudson who should be speaking here right now I'm filling in the gap he vacated this is Robert from parity Peter from the web 3 foundation Yuri gaffe and me and I went to and I met with GAF and I met with a parity team I spell of spent a full day with him spent about three hours talking together in the evening and I gave him maple syrup of course I did I have got bridge voiced by I am Canadian as well I'm jewel citizen anyway aetherium is just the start of what I'm talking about right the same behaviors have happen time and again a cross blockchain repeated tribalism across projects your project is a scam you are idiots this is an attack and we seem to have forgotten how science works and about facts not rhetoric discussion measured discussion just looking at Nick and thinking about bouncer iota as an example but yeah you know in a quest to build a perfect machine we've forgotten to be human because really what we're building is for the benefits of humans it's not really for the computers and you know you can't build a perfect machine which means that you don't have to talk to humans anymore those awkward humans that do things that you don't like anyway I really hope that we can have you know a new start within aetherium and that at this community conference and at the Fellowship of aetherium magicians we can really have you know the start of of really recognizing that that we are all one community and irrespective of you know what projects we're working on or what we're doing you know that we are all in it together Wonder Woman fantastic bit of stuff here if anyone has not seen the Wonder Woman movie is fantastic she closes the movie with I used to want to save the world to end war and bring peace to mankind but then I glimpse the darkness that lives within their light I learnt the inside every one of them there will always be both the choice each must make for themselves something no hero will have a defeat and now I know that only love can truly save the world so I stay I fight and I give for the world I know can be this is my mission now and forever [Applause] you so yeah I mean it might seem try to naive but the fact is all of us have got the power to change the world for real you just have to choose to do so anyway have fun at the conference be nice to each other be truthful be gentle and be fearless and you can make a real difference you know we are all brothers and sisters so let's make a better world thank you [Applause]