Aya Miyaguchi I Growing the Infinite Garden | Ethereum Foundation I Pragma Tokyo 2023

foreign [Music] with that I want to Welcome All of You Again and let's bring on our very first interview for today our first speaker is ayam yaguchi Aya is the executive director of the ethereum foundation ethereum Foundation is the organization that currently Pioneers a lot of the developer ecosystem activity from the core development side of the ethereum protocol and a lot more things that we're going to discuss about what the EF does and what they would like to do moving forward we're going to talk about all the things that is on Aya's mind the opportunity in Japan and everything in between so without further Ado please welcome our first talk of today Aya to the stage [Applause] nice hat thank you hello everyone it's been four years since we had an official ethereum event in Japan back in Defcon Osaka I think it's for three and a half four I forget if I count Covenant 2019 2019 yeah almost four how does it feel to be back in Japan and what are some of the things that you've noticed about this ecosystem in the last four years um yeah so Japan I have like this weird relationship with Japan I am from here and and but I left the country um a while ago I think um 16 years ago but um yeah whenever I I guess when I'm outside of Japan I feel very Japanese but when I'm back to Japan I feel very not Japanese but anyway so I was very excited about they've gone back then like happening in in where I was from but and it was it was an exciting Gathering and a lot of developers came from many different places but I think Japan regarding I think the crypto or blockchain industry has been always here but uh when it comes to like especially because we this e3m community and focusing on building side um that that wasn't happening as much as I guess it's not just in Japan because it's him the protocol itself wasn't really as ready it's it's now today it's even more ready um so but I and then but I come here sometimes right and then I I've been I started to recognize some of this like a new momentum or an interest in so you notice the excitement in people do you notice students or companies or what what are some obvious things that feel yeah well obviously it's just similar to it in any other countries or especially in in Asia that the the bigger in biggest interest used to be like on trading and then a cryptocurrency side but not really much about you know like what you can build and what are the things that are already being built um so that side of like okay like developer community was there but it wasn't as visible and now like I see a lot of talents are happening here and then you know more developers are coming into even the protocol layer side it's from Japan which is very exciting and also um yeah businesses are interested I absolutely agree we because we do online events um also in addition to in-person hackathons we get to see what people are applying for for the online events and when we looked at the numbers for where we were seeing the Mills growth in new people Japan was number three on our list and it was just obvious to us that we had to be here for our first in-person event and it's so interesting because we have had the same information for the last few years and we do see the trend on more trading and more finance and currency related use cases but now people are excited about dows nfts payments as a means to solve different problems instead of trading and you notice that immediately too when we saw all the applications what we were building it was very refreshing and uh and I get excited about what the opportunity looks like because anytime you see a new country come in to this space you get to see what they care about and Japan has the most interesting problems that they're excited about that are different than what the US things or what Europe thinks and to me like that's what I get super excited for um you used to be a teacher here how has being a teacher influenced how you think about being a director at ethereum Foundation um yeah well when I left the teaching job I didn't really think about okay I will do this blockchain space right which didn't even exist the baby but [Music] um in a way it's funny I was just having conversation with some of the Core Labs on the way here to celebrate Japan to in person which never happens which is right and then they're like we just started talking about my history here but yeah I used to be a teacher and I used to be a high school teacher and and I was passionate about uh talking about kind of like letting students have critical thinking Minds and the problem is in the world and that's that's kind of the core thing of this how this technology was um like started right so it is in a way in my mind it is related and also I left the job because I didn't really like teachers don't really explore the word and then you just you know graduate from college and then you were called Sensei here right and then I just didn't like that title like I didn't even feel like like I I earned it possibly approving yet yeah and then also I was encouraging my students to go outside of reward and then see this is still tiny country and then mostly just Japanese and then um but I didn't really but I just had an opportunity to um back in when I was in San Francisco or my focus in my graduate was sustainable Business Financial inclusion and then that's when I met that was Bitcoin back then ethereum wasn't there so um yeah and then after ethereum was born like the potential with the technology became you know like more than 100x so that's fine we'll we'll dig into all of that so so let's zoom out a little bit what does the EF do oh yes yeah and then I didn't need to talk about what my teacher made but I maybe I can start with the ethereum foundation supports um the ethereum ecosystem and the important part is we don't own ethereum which I need to say because it's more confusing there are many blockchains now mostly run by a company and then also the project of ethereum is really meaning building the platform protocol even like today you saw the hard Fork happen that work is done by communities like community members and contributors so we are we stay as as a coordinator there are some research and developers also are who are belong who belong to the UDF but they also do a lot of coordination work among researchers among Developers so that the EF does that work but also since we support the ecosystem we we give grants and that's you know like financial support to uh of course like the work of protocol layer that doesn't have business model but also educational work Community Development work um events like you know we see that also as educational work like your hackathons um and yeah but then like it's not just financial support is is part of it but what we care is really how we maintain the values and vision of ethereum which I often describe as infinite Garden so tell us more about things in the garden yeah so that um the infinite Garden idea is like infinite the world infinite was inspired by the book finer and infinite game by James cars uh a planet game normally like regular games are played for someone to win so when when someone wins if the game ends but an infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the game so like I thought that is actually already in the special part of the ethereum community hey like we all work together like we often like not really don't really care about who is winning it's more like how do we get this hard walk a hard Fork heart you know get get to the goal all together Mass coordination at scale yeah Mass coordination and there are many multiple like client teams which are kind of like you know supported by businesses some of them are supported by businesses but they all work together it's not like one of them compete uh like wins within this game so and the garden is really this ecosystem wasn't really designed like was you know world map of the ecosystem like with the organically uh glue but also a lot of things in in the ethereum ecosystem likely happen organically without us doing anything so that's the beauty of it so if we don't really have to do anything that's great and then if something is happening organically without our support and also in a healthy way that's the best scenario so why don't we celebrate that so that's where when we identify some key players who are value aligned like ethical ball and then okay like we don't really have to run hackathons at DF there's someone who does it very well and and also making sure values are there so that's our work um yeah I think so there's two threads here so one is it's not like a company which everybody's used to I mean the second we go into a foundation or Dow model we don't even have good Frameworks to map this to um and you kind of share some of the things that you do if the EF doesn't own ethereum or doesn't have kind of similar behaves like a company there's definitely some positives and negatives of this what gets harder in this model and and what do you kind of feel like you get to improve or you want to improve but it's not easy because coordination now adds a lot more complexity or time and and how do you think about those types of problems and in common cases well there are many challenges like this is not just for EF for ethereum is because because we play Infinite games that as a whole ecosystem like things don't for example the work of hard work doesn't go as quick as as like um like you know one company running everything there's one CTO and then you can just show the world map and then like control everything so like sometimes the understanding that there is lack of understanding of like how this works even for the merge last year which um you know because because you said there are more like beginners here that is him shifted the consensus mechanism shifted from proof of work which was rely on um like mining to secure the network to prove a mistake so now um that reduced more than 99 of energy consumption but that that work was um you know like everyone wanted that to happen sooner than like the work which it took longer and then at the same time because Network was getting bigger the more people are using it more people are building things on application it's running already so the bigger it gets you have to make sure like the secure the level of security you have to make sure is it's very to do that in a decentralized way without one company controlling it it's such a don't I I didn't do it I just watched and then I supported but such a Dawning work and that is kind of hard for regular company people to understand because it's completely different how things work at a company so maybe one thing I think will be helpful for the audience to understand is is this well this is by Design not not this doesn't happen and now we're dealing with it this is how you wanted it to happen and that's what the challenges are because these are the trade-offs um why do you think that's the way to go like why not just have everybody in the same office and just get things done and offer everybody the best and quickest service for what they want instead of having everybody try their approach and coordinating it how should somebody think about these trade-offs yeah so I think I mean way to answer this but to me personally ethereum doesn't really compromise this neutralization and that's like you see that in the technology but also like the technical decisions are tied to the values right and then we do care about decentralization is one of the most important values that everyone in in same cares so like if you really try to build decentralized system in a centralized way they're like you you see a lot of like a different parts that it kind of start to to network um so that's why I we can really emphasize enough how much like I just realized recently because I talked to like I um in Tokyo I talked to non-living people or some government people like it's it's I just realized that I'm I'm in in a weird group it's either you're crazy so it's like if something is very very normal it's not normal for other people but people our people are very opinionated about decentralization and and to the point like even like I am the executive director of his hair Foundation because another regular like the management boss like position whether I want it or not I do I do want it this way lucky but but that's actually what's helpful with like me being used to be a teacher because it's kind of a similar like okay we let others have to deal with a lot of teenagers that's two we have a lot of diverse planes um that's a good thing neurodiversity but but also yeah and and then uh it's in every every way it's not just technology it is like how decisions are made and the people are very careful about you know like I guess that comes from like some people really care about um it's it's like we believe we're part of something that can make systemic changes in the world so culture defines all of these things and if if you don't want to compromise on decentralization the values or the opportunity it seems like that's the only outcome that you get for how you can do this without changing the original goal yeah and that's a really interesting way of uh putting that so I think if we don't do it this way it becomes like a product right and then once the the product is a good buy a company and I I think his name is way way bigger than that and then I think people like it's not just my this is like people know this and um that's why we have to be patient but sometimes the the world is not patient sometimes the more newer people we have so we the education is important um explaining things like that events is important but yeah um well I think it's an interesting thing that you just just said a couple minutes ago so most of us are Engineers that are part of these Global events or the hackathons they understand what's happening or they want to understand what's happening and even they sometimes struggle to understand some of these Concepts like what do you mean this is owned by nobody or a piece of code or this is not a company or this is a Dao that controls other companies that are Dows or all these things are just brand new Concepts and not only that it also Maps differently to different cultures and countries and and people of different Industries what has been some interesting observations you've made about telling everybody how the space Works in Japan oh in Japan in Japan got it um what are people weirded out by the most or what is the hardest thing you have to explain and clarify oh I see ICC I think it's uh in in Japan a lot of good developers belong to Enterprises and big companies um so there is less of this developer community like you know like a Freelancers and then that's like or even that the culture of the open open source is not the not a culture but it's kind of culturally it's also like being open doing things openly that's not that's not really common here so that different type of education like I needed to explain actually the mindset shift is is also important more than just understanding technology like people tend to think about the Japanese people are very diligent about okay they have 3D workshops or let's learn about the merge Workshop but the cultural side of thing like how do we learn like tomorrow then I'm going to talk about this open learning culture in ethereum but how developers in the museum like you know learn from each other or even like anyone can actually build tools for others to learn or that type of thing it's very not not just here but it's not easy for Japanese to understand what is the best way of thinking about helping them uh get more comfortable or understand or be part of the same culture I think well that's one of the reason why I'm excited about tomorrow like the hackathons happening tomorrow is put them in a centralized building and then have them see this for two days they can't leave is running around some drama is happening but um like yeah they get to see the vibe bye they're running from each other and then like okay like it's just that Japanese are very humble maybe I'm like some people might say I'm not Japanese but they're they don't you know they never say I'm good at some right so they they tend to be too humble and not to they don't even think they can share their uh like you know perfectionism yeah protectionism really is is something blocking like from them to learn English first of all but also like this is like a the beauty of ethereum is like it's permissionless meaning like how you participate is it's all anyone can participate like if you want to right at any layer um and then like you can write your ideas youth research page but then even that I think people are very intimidated to do that and it's okay am I is this the is this perfect idea to share we're already seeing some of that for this weekend so we kind of talked about Developers how do we make this easier as a country as you're talking to Regulators they're thinking about new policies right now crypto is just getting uh considered more seriously about how do we make it easy for more companies to start more people to come in um what do you think from all of your learnings from your previous work at Kraken to what you've seen about regulation and policies around the world how can Japan learn from all those things and and make it a lot easier for the people here yeah so Japan did a lot of things as I was more involved in the regulatory side of conversation with for my previous work uh I had to but the the the people from the government I often had interaction with from the regulator side meaning like Financial Regulators or that type of discussions and that was necessary back then but now it's not just about uh like making sure about things for bad things not to happen but it's it's about like making sure good things do happen for good things to happen and how can we do that or how can government support that it's I think it's uh again like mind shift but there are Regulators roles their role is to to make sure but for bad things not to happen uh but that there are other parts of the government um I think trying to like that this is a new momentum I'm seeing is like you're trying to [Music] um what is it catch up with what they have were not like you know catch up with saying that that maybe they haven't burned enough before and then also um I do want to encourage um not just government people but there any like more experts in in the in Japan including maybe web to companies or web to experts like how do they Embrace this um again like that there needs to be some mind shift like okay there were how do we support individual Developers for them to stay individuals to contribute to different things like open source um I mean of course like application layer like Developers for application there can happen as a startup or as part of big business or Enterprises um but I guess that they need to figure out how to embrace the diversity even in the developer community and I do want to encourage that how they that I think that's status of developers here there are a lot of talented Developers but it's not embraced enough like I've noticed enough so it's still like you're okay a company at a company normally if it's a big company management make the decisions and then they tell developers what to build but how the certain way is that you need to include these developers in the idea generation blame storming stage because that's very important to to really even come up with the idea so that that change needs to be embraced at many different layers at the company level but also at the government level they need to understand that do you think there's hope this is you feel optimistic about good policies being set up or do we need to do a lot more work or we just got to tell them to also see the hackathon tomorrow what's the best way to uh let them make great decisions I do I wasn't optimistic seriously um before but I am I am optimistic now um that's really good to hear from some conversations that's why I think this event is starting tomorrow is happening at the perfect timing to to boost that momentum that's here and I really also personally hope you know Japan can be a good example of one thing Japan is very good at that they never say they're good at anything but they're good at Teamwork um so they are good at Teamwork so they know actually know how to work as a team they just need to open that to do more different styles of openness not just within a company not just within the government like can you create a teamwork with more open Community open society and that's something I think the ethereum community can teach or can Inspire or show by example yeah yeah so the hope that that happens at hackathons and also a lot of different things happening this week um I I personally resonate with this one of the reasons we started eat Global was when you looked up anything about crypto all you would see was the negative news and if you were in this space you could tell that that's not true or the the weight of what they're emphasizing is way less significant than all the good stuff that's happening and we wanted to just make sure that anytime something happens in this space we also equally if not more cover the good things and not have that overshadow the bad things and and that is very helpful in policy that's very helpful in getting people excited that's very helpful when people are thinking about changing careers and uh and getting into this space they want to see potential and uh and we hope that uh some of these conversations you've had some of the real life things that will come out this weekend from people they'll get to see all the good and uh and make better better decisions one interesting thing that you talked about on how culture in Japan works for companies is that it's a very top-down approach whereas what we've seen firsthand in this space is more Bottoms Up and individuals have sometimes very strong opinions or sometimes they want to just make sure they're working with everybody to make a collective good decision you effectively are describing coordination you talked about your goal for the EF is to be a bigger coordination layer what does that actually mean in practice what is the time Horizon what do you do now that you don't want to do in the future or what are you not doing now that you want to do in future what is the next five years of EF look like [Music] um yeah so like I said currently the coordination type of coordination we're doing is really we figure out like who to empower uh who needs more empowerment right and then we also want to make sure that that we empower the right ones and the reason why we do care is not just specifically about whether that team or that project we support succeeds or not but it's uh EF still does carry part of the part of the legitimacy of ethereum or even blockchain space um and and then by empowering someone like we keep piece of legitimacy to that team and so we hope that project or the team to be a good example like to do again like like to show how uh how these things how we work together in this how we play Infinite games in in this ecosystem and and then I think it's like the ordinary the ethernet Foundation used to be the Hub of like the place to house developers and researchers who are building um the protocol Museum and yeah what's the only place but then I gradually and then it's just a um because it is an open source project anyone can participate gradually that the participants and contributors to the to the political work uh increased and and so when I joined it was already that the contributors were way bigger than EF right and also like someone needs to support that like other other contributors and then I we added that supporting role and then coordination role and then gradually they think it's just it's naturally we stay as a coordinator so when I showed it the other day I showed this my my poor hand drawing um picture of like there are trees and plants in the in the garden and Rose plants and trees are the ones we support but we want to make sure is there are they they get water and sunshine right that's more obvious like a financial support it's a great analogy yeah but then actually the lose of each plants and trees whether they carry the values that's very you don't even see that from outside so we do this like kind of like a in the soil whether there's good nutrition or bad nutritions because that can be replaced and so that work is is becoming more important it's going to be the most important thing for us I believe that's my again like EF we discussed with everyone it's I don't really get to or don't really try not to force my idea but that's how I see it's it's increasingly or it will all be the most important things for us to for us to do and the reason why is that is because everything else is happening um nicely already you know even the one that give sunshine and water meaning financial support it's not only EF anymore which is great and we Embrace that we would love for others to participate it's a good sign of an ecosystem too it shows growth it shows potential and yes and excitement yeah so there are other funding mechanisms happening in the ecosystem and then that is it's going to increase so that's why in the future we stay as we keep staying as a coordination and maybe at some point that it's not like coordination is the the level of coordination that's needed and then that needed to be done by us will decrease and another way of explaining is that we take it often it's how the easiest way to describe how ethereum is different and how that that vision of BF is is that we hold uh less than one percent of entire ether right 0.2 8 or less and percent of all the supply yeah all this apply and and then like that the asset the value of asset in the field value which you know I think the biology is going to talk today so is it changes or you know like it's increasing now but but but that the important part is that ratio goes down and that shows how we're committed for us to to grow the ecosystem to grow the ecosystem and it doesn't mean like this this something that's there will decrease it's more like it will be be distributed and but then like like I we want to make sure if you okay you guys carry a little bit of right whatever like you yeah then I'll be nice make sure make make sure that okay you just don't only receive ether or you don't need to see that like you are accounting the values that you are counting the legitimacy so you are also responsible effectively creating math skills shareholders that care about the same thing and are aligned in yeah that's a really big company Yeah well yeah I don't know the weekend either but it is it is is the part that it's how it's different yeah everybody opts in to care about the same values and and that's how you grow this this Garden yeah uh we're nearing at the end if anybody has any questions please uh please come over here to the mic um we we have a couple minutes for a few questions so if we have any we'll just do that otherwise uh we'll try to wrap this up in a couple minutes one interesting piece that at least I took away from what you just said is I don't think we've seen this done before so not only are you going to be one of the first people to actually try this but you're going to be doing this thing at a massive scale uh it's ethereum is now a huge project especially with after the merge there's uh thousands of people involved and even for the future of EF as you think about becoming a better coordinator there's going to be pieces that you have to figure out in real time how do you think about doing that and and how do you think about not making mistakes or making mistakes and learning from them yeah yeah so so more guiding principles and and we often use is subtraction and that can be also misinduced is that uh it doesn't like it sounds like we we do less right and actually the amount of work we have to do by making sure we distribute the power but at the same time making sure values are there it's actually there are a whole lot of I call it Ninja work under the ground that we have to do like we talking to different teams and then asking the right questions so likely I have some EF people around there but they're they do a lot of hard work uh when it's actually more than it will be a lot easier easier setting okay I'm the Ed here's the CEO and everyone reports to like do this this way but we can do it that way so it's a really a lot of more work to do and then also subtraction is all about uh seeking the right balance so if someone has it's not just like it just cannot be done by Mario like if we look at some part of um infrastructure or public goods or the entire ecosystem what's missing but within some domain domain what is the what is the balance there like it do people know enough about for example like among layer twos the people enough about this layer to this layer too like we have to watch how um things are happening in the ecosystem and and also making sure we support with to to to maintain the value sorry maintain the values but also maintain the balance and that's that's really not an easy work and then I really appreciate the hard work our EF people are doing and I have great people in the team that um who we understand this uh I'm the one who is making sure they understand it but once they understand they are the one that who is doing the hard work absolutely I think because a lot of the people at the EF are not always on the spotlight because they're not the next project a million people are flocking to immediately or or the the loudest on Twitter or something they don't get enough credit and I want to kind of just thank the entire ethereum Foundation team for making this entire space possible and pushing forward everything that's happened that we are excited about and we get to use and talk about on a day-to-day basis so um I think they deserve a big round of applause yeah it's not I'm more a visible one but there are and a lot of them are there so thank them in person too a few here everybody is sitting there Chris from ESP is yeah he's he's the one from the ecosystem support program so if you have any questions about grants and how the grants work that uh have like the question that I mentioned like what kind of questions they would ask God to talk to him um but uh yeah and this is kind of the setup that we want which is everybody is here you get to have a natural conversation where both parties are interested in helping each other I think this is a perfect thing to end on we have two questions here we'll we'll kind of Jump Right In and then we'll move on to the rest of the talks please hello yeah uh first I want to say thank you for all the work that you're both doing to empower people and teams in the ecosystem and I wanted to know what your uh what your vision is for ethereum playing a role in um Charter cities pop-up cities uh Network States like what what role do you think it can have in the development of those cities what little ethereum please uh well I think it's uh it's it's it's one of the tool that is helpful for for everything you said but uh but it's again it's you can build applications in any way like if that you can build the governance in any way so that's like a lot of governance challenges that are happening in normal state or governments um like hopefully they can do interesting experiments for regular governments to learn or yeah so I I think there's a lot potential there thank you so much yeah yeah test one two three it's working yeah so I just had a question um in terms of like adoption and adoption specifically in Japan what what applications do you believe will be successful like um some ideas I have or maybe like public goods for like philanthropy or maybe vending machines or some other like iot robotics projects I was just curious about that um do you live in Japan no oh okay I thought you already have more idea than than me um so that's something actually thank you for a good question because we didn't get to cover it's I I do think Japan has originally I thought okay there's a there's trust here already do you even need blockchain right that was a question that's really good question uh there's an honest question that I had but then like I realized that this like that there is is sort of the part sorry surgeon talents that are very unique in Japan like things like I don't know what you're fascinated about Japan like you know it could be game gaming or even anime or like a creative side of things or pretty uh you know like a great year so like they can but that doesn't have to be in that industry but also because there's already some kind of trust and like I said the good coordination and teamwork people are pretty good at that here so I think even the Innovations in Taos are going to be uh you know like more unique and different even like yesterday I was joining some this Tokyo priority event and then you're talking like they were explaining some some vowels that some teams are working on and then and then what's what's what's interesting is it's just actually Japanese people let's get about commercial things uh in their the Deep culture there are a lot of blog posts like uh profit making and businesses are there of course but the culturally people care about quality over a profit and so I so that's something I'm hoping that I can add or teach something to to to this ecosystem is um and I'm I'm already seeing some other interesting project data oh I don't think this can work outside of Japan yeah I think one thing we were discussing a few days ago was um just the notion of a lot of clubs here uh in the sense that there's a membership or being part of a community is a very common pattern that's too yes and that's defining a Dao basically in in in a lot of terms of just being part of an ecosystem yeah one one interesting is there are many point systems that already well developed like if you go somewhere like you you ask that do you have this point card um so there are other things like web3 can help and improve existing things um and then that that if if because because there's already existing structures that you know Improvement is will be interesting to happen I don't know if I answered to your question yes thank you thank you I personally love sending it to green tea that Ethan just something coming out of a vending machine so if you're going to work on that they'll be they'll be great yeah yeah if that's like actually because I'm Japanese I may not be paying attention to something that is very unique if you come out from outside so that's like uh I love hearing those ideas and that might be maybe you can teach Japanese hey this is actually unique yeah prototype for something like this called like buy gold and with ethereum it has like a pair for it so cool awesome awesome thank you well thank you so much for for joining us Aya and uh thank you for kicking off this with me yes amazing thank you thank you thank you everyone