Decentralize or Die Trying: The Essence of Web3 - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2022

how is everyone doing got a good crowd out here again my name is Kyle Rojas which is uh and I work for engine node which is the founding team behind the graph and now just one of many core devs working on the protocol and today I'm going to talk about web 3 right it's Evolution how it came about and why I think it's probably the most important work that I could be doing within the graph ecosystem in the world right now and even why I'm here and my end goal is to make sure everyone knows what web3 is and how it differs from previous versions of the internet something I think is very misunderstood around the world and oftentimes even quite a bit within the industry so I'll start with a little background on me I was born and raised a crazy California Kid I joined the Air Force right out of high school at the super mature age of 17 after 12 years of serving around the world doing a bunch of stuff and intelligence and others I decided to choose family over a very successful military career at the time I then got my MBA in Houston to make the transition to the civilian world and actually learn how to be a civilian adult which was tough for me and then I got a great job at Goldman Sachs right actually did really well there I was living a very comfortable life but about two years into my almost seven years at Goldman so around late 2016 I started to dip my toes into crypto after a total black cat friend of mine has been putting the bug in my ears for years and I started as a volatility Trader then a Trader learner and then just a very heavy protocol user across the space uh and that's where my mind was right all the time I wasn't thinking about Goldman I wasn't thinking about how to get my next planet Goldman and how to make more money for my bottom line I would go go home and I would totally d-gen for 10 hours a day so that's in the end I just kind of realized I needed a mission more important than my bottom line so I finally ripped the Band-Aid off I weaned myself off the institutional addiction I'd had for at that point over two decades and I've been in the full Space full time since and I oversee beating Partnerships for edge of node in the graph which I'll talk a little bit more about later and where it fits into the web through ecosystem but when I told people I was quitting you know a high paying great quality of life where I got to eat and drink my way around the country with amazing people uh you know everyone thinks you're absolutely insane right and after they get over that if they do only then do they start to wonder what this space is all about right they ask what web3 is and what it means and you know think about what it doesn't mean right what is web3 and how do we Define it when someone asks uh I'd say there's a lot of things right to a lot of different people but what really sets web 3 apart from web one or web 2. let's see start with how we got here actually let's go back to web one the OG we could say started back in late 80s early 90s where companies made content for themselves and sometimes for people to view around the world there were static Pages no interactive features and we could just call this the read era where we as users could only View another way to encapsulate this is where companies created and companies profited and then fast forward almost a decade to web 2 where the read era changes the one where we can read and write so user generated content started to pour into the internet things like blogs and comments and likes and just social media Dynamics in general really started to take hold and it was arguably an essential step in the internet's Revolution because it changed how we as people were able to learn collaborate connect and interact but it's also where in web 2 everything we do online every social media and picture almost every aspect of our digital lives is owned and controlled by the platforms with which we are interacting another way to think of this is where we create content but the company's own control and profit almost everything and then Along came up three a decentralized internet platform where anyone with access to the internet with no gatekeeping of any kind just about where information is transparent and verifiable that's very important verifiable by anyone on chain not just a few wealthy people behind closed doors and this is where we can read we can write but we can also own our digital Footprints and our massive digital identities that come in today's age in general in other words we create content and we profit if we'd like to participate but again how do we Define web3 right how do we explain what sets it apart is a blockchain technology right with data living on a blockchain with people able to track something that they time Maybe but think of a social media company hypothetically in today's age and the recent shift into blockchain nfts and eventually the metaverse and now think of those nfts are stored on a private blockchain on private servers that the company controls and that the company can arbitrarily roll back and change things as it suits their needs so that's not only a possibility that's what's happening today that doesn't feel very web free to me what about ownership right truly owning your digital assets opposed to needing them to be custody somewhere else by a bank or a custodian of any sort which is a huge part of what I and a lot of other people are actually finding really appealing about the space again maybe that's it but you can have ownership in web 2 right and traditional finance companies could create tokens or nfts put them on a public blockchain and let you keep those assets in your wallet protected by a counter authorization but what happens when a government says that project and those assets are illegal potentially for no good reason what happens when a token or even a cartoon picture of an ape is deemed an illegal security a blacklisted form of art right or any other ridiculous thing someone might come up with you better believe that any company in the world that wants to survive will shut off their website and those servers in order to keep the company going so I'd say ownership is out and then what about shared governance and economics right another cool thing that people bring up often the ability for people to get together collaborate interact and decide about protocols uh of a platform or future of a platform entity and share all the profit and interactions uh with participants in the ecosystem that sounds extremely web free to me but people could hypothetically do that in web 2 in traditional corporations even in traditional Finance right now they just don't the incentives aren't there right and if the organization didn't fit perfectly into the world that it's supposed to when it's creating a company those people will get fined the site will get shut down and people can go to jail right so I ask again what is web three is it the memes answers obviously yes but what makes it so special and how can we Define it I'll start with the definition in short web3 is a new platform for decentralized applications right a new platform for decentralized applications so let's break that down like context uh or by definition rather in this context a platform is a technology upon which other things are built right for example the personal computer is a hardware technology that's allowed creation of music it is allowed us to create games and connect to the internet and the internet is a platform that's led to social media it's led to Global Communication interaction and everything else we do online but what's a decentralized application I think that's where the confusion sets in and the word decentralized it whereas is where it gets really really important in essence and this is important an application is not decentralized without a decentralized technology stack and what does that mean it means no private servers right no private or proprietary databases owned by any government any company or anyone else siled off from the rest of the world decentralization matters as we've seen many times in recent months and unfortunately most people don't care about decentralization until they need to without a decentralized tech stack adapt is just an app and an app is just more web 2 technology so that's something to really keep in mind and some people ask me you know why it is decentralization matter you know what does it do you just look at a couple very important stats that I've pulled though they're definitely not comprehensive this is a picture showing that six media conglomerates in light blue on most of the media content in the world where decisions are made behind closed doors incentives are to make more money as much as possible based on what sells not on providing the truth in quality entertainment we take what they give us we ingest their narratives based on their priorities they can shut down accounts and they do they exclude those people that they want and they do and there's pretty much nothing we could legally do about it in today's existing system in general but it goes beyond media seven big companies decide on how to curate what we wear and put on our bodies 10 big companies decide how and what we eat and five massive tech companies biggest companies in the world decide most of how the internet and surrounding Technologies evolve and our price ringing a lot of a lot of profitability out of the users which are us right not only because that's their incentive it's because it's their corporate fiduciary responsibility they are legally bound to do what's best for their shareholders not for us and half of the world that uses most of these platforms it's it's sad but it's also very true so this is what was plaguing my mind right when I was a silent a non-d-gen sitting in discords and telegrams all that Goldman and my incentives were to solely make myself more money by making other very wealthy people in corporations more money at the same time it was killing me so I quit because I realized that web 3 is essential for the world and I wanted to be part of it from the inside right not as a participant which I was not as an investor which I was but I needed step in dive in head first and start building it because web3 is essential for the world it's because the world deserves a verifiable and transparent information which would have definitely helped in times like Enron times like the financial crisis with the readings agencies it's because web3 reduces the incentives for a few large corporations to own everything and extract every ounce of data and profitability that they legally can from all of their users so it moves away from the incentives of value extraction in general that's going to lead their behavior because like as Charlie Munger says you show me the incentive also the outcome so you have to change the incentives it's because we deserve technology that is robust to failure and centralized control and because we finally for the first time in human history have a technology platform that allows us to take the power the control the ownership and the decision making from a few wealthy leaders sitting in Ivory Towers and giving it back to us as individuals and that is extremely powerful first time in human history and we get to build it and be participants in it and that it blows my mind and I sleep better than I ever have in my 20-plus year career so how do we build it right is truth web3 technology even ready and the answer is almost many blockchains are fairly mature in their roadmaps file storage is coming along with ipfs and our weave Oracle is like chain link have an amazing product Market fit streaming protocols like live peer are making amazing Headway in the space but I decided to join the ecosystem that's taking on probably the biggest challenge in the ecosystem and that's the graph which is indexing the world's blockchain data so not just one project not just one chain but the entire ecosystem and if web3 well I'd say when web3 eats the world's data the graph will be indexing the world's data in general that's what I get to work on and hope oversee in the graph ecosystem it's freaking awesome so quick overview the graph is an indexing and query layer uh pretty much the indexing inquiry layer for web3 one of the most used protocols in this space it's become the default way for over 30 000 Builders since the product launch in 2019 and this all relies on open apis called subgraphs that Builders use to organize and make blockchain data usable within their uis or user interfaces there have been over 70 000 subgraphs created over the life of the protocol and 36 000 are still actively used every day to power the user interfaces that all of us go to across multiple verticals across 37 chains it's incredible what the graph empowers as for what the tech does if you think of blockchain data as a massive football stadium filled of randomly identified transactions let's say represented by multiple colored candies this is what data looks like on the blockchain before the graph and this is what it looks like after powering pretty much every major defy amm and exchange uh right now across 37 chains like uniswap Trader Joe spooky swap pancake swap honey Swap and more uh powering Powerhouse nft protocols like decentraland uh foundation and many other nft based protocols and every other vertical like wallets Bridges data analytics oracles and more right it's really incredible what the graph does for the space it wouldn't work without the graph and I feel lucky that I got to uh come and work on it but this volumes on the hosted service right now which the graph foundation and Edge of node uh but let's say the engine node in general has been subsidizing and running and that we're in the process of deprecating and the hosted Services always been a temporary solution the decentralized network on the other hand is what the graph was meant to be from the very beginning a decentralized public or good that is resilient to anything the world can throw against it right where websites don't get shut down where narratives aren't just formed by those that win but by everyone it's just a more just Foundation to a more just internet the next version of the internet for the past years so I'd say only ethereum's been enabled on on the decentralized network but the graph Foundation who stewards the network recently announced that the the network is officially going cross-chain gnosis chain will be the first of many of those 37 chains to integrate with the network and then we'll be moving on to many more in the near future over the next few quarters but indexing and building across chains is no small feat there are hundreds of indexers that need to move from indexing ethereum to eventually 37 chains so to help make that possible the graph Foundation announced a program with 75 million GRT up for grabs over the next few quarters so a fully cross chain Futures in the near future and I know I got a few seconds left so you can and should get involved right this was a protocol for the world please take out your phones scan the barcode plug into the community apply for a job join the job Discord and telegram become an indexer curator delegator and I can explain those later apply to be a graph Advocate there's so many ways to come and get involved come and see why the graph is not only one of the most important protocols in the space but it's also one of the most exciting but for now before I get the hook off the stage I'll I'll just say thank you and I hope to see you all at the graph booth