Network Goods: Digital Infrastructures for the Common Good - Bangkok 2024

[Music] I do I always have questions so it's a good uh it's a good segue while we're seeing if we can get a chair um as to what exactly Network goods are what are public goods what is life anyway um and I think the best way to explain at least the possibility of network Goods is just to sort of introduce what everybody here does because we're all in some part or parcel uh part of the filecoin network and uh the filecoin network as well as creating the public good that underlies all what we do which is the open source software that is a complete stack uh from uh lip P2P to ipfs if you've heard of to the decentralized uh uh Global uh resilient storage system that we've built um we also try and provide for and execute on a lot of public goods that are necessary both for our goals to to uh succeed but also for uh hopefully the rest of the world so what I'll do is kind of hand over to each person and they can describe uh I guess what what you do uh who you're with and what you are sort of contributing to The Wider Network and you're entirely allowed to imagine what that is in any anywh you want so up to you straight thank you Daddy um hello folks I'm Shia I am chief Economist for H one and with hudo one the way that I approach the designing the economic protocol is I really view it as I really view our base Community commodity which is essentially drtc data drtc data stands for realtime synchronous data so any data that gets transmitted when you're actually communicating in a real-time fashion with your peers so um for example if you're communicating by Zoom that's real-time data the way that we measure it is essentially just uh a combination of bandwidth and the quantity of data so the lower the latency there is the better your bandwidth and the more real time the data um this particular commodity is I view it as a public good and and the way that we have designed our economic protocol is with this View and we also design it in such a way that this kind of um public good mechanism um can be sustainable in the long long term as well and the sustainability um is really um brought about by adaptability of the protocol and the way that we do adaptability is through hyper organic minting and burning of um of the tokens itself and when we do this we're able to introduce quite a few interesting um interesting effects in terms of the way that the token grows in value and as well as how we can actually capture value um that is being being generated by real world demand of the commodity itself um so I know this was a little bit of a long spiel in terms of like um our our protocol is designed um just from purely from an economic coordination protocol perspective but um essentially just want to lay the groundwork for um for our perspective and how we're actually designing um this type of you know in the simplest terms it's literally just a Marketplace but um with this view we're able to introduce a few interesting mechanisms so just to put a sort of finer point on that for those of you who haven't used um huddle um uh on the face of it it looks like a a really well executed sort of Zoom video chat thing we use it in a lot of context of that but also because it's a decentralized system with its own internal economy you're essentially using that untapped bandwidth of everyone's devices in a way that kind of the the dream was supposed to be you weren't supposed to be piping everything through Zoom servers you were supposed to be using web RTC and things like this to communicate one to another so we're sharing this Global pool of bandwidth that we've already paid for rather than uh um to Central provider that we all rely on and you're chief Economist at hudle right yes uh Danny you explained that so beautifully well one of the reasons I've left this to everybody else is that each of these ideas and we're again we're all part of this wider filecoin network is incredibly complicated and I'm never entirely sure that I've got it myself so I'm just going to repeat back to people what I think they've heard so Sarah if you can describe what your independent organization does in this network um cool thanks thanks Danny um incredibly complicated is is is a good view uh good point of view uh my team is created to kind of solve that so my name is Sarah uh I lead a team called Phil Builder uh short in short it's called philb Uh previously we used to do developer experience for filecoin um as a whole big organization and now we've branched out to be our own developer experience service um we consider ourselves a public good um educate there are three main buckets that we cover education tooling as well as community so in the education bucket uh as Danny has mentioned um there's a lot of explanation for filecoin to do especially on a technical level uh my team tries to well we try not to oversimplify but we try to put it in a eli5 way um so people can understand it we contribute heavily to the docks um we also do a lot of workshops as well as fun Social Challenges so that people find FAL coin a little bit more fun other than the heavy protocol stuff that is really cool but can be a little dry um and then in the tooling space we work a lot on making it super easy for early earlier Builders to intermediate Builders to use fcoin um we've expanded a little bit more into the advanced space but on the early to intermediate side it's mostly around SD case easy dep starter kits we're working on one right now that just got a ton of comments downstairs at philadelph Summit um and now we're working a little bit more on expanding that to cross chain data Bridges um experimenting with deploying on the linear allowing different commun different ecosystems to then store data and retrieve from fcoin um and then lastly on the community side of things uh there's a ton of work that goes into Community as all of you know um we do a lot of like making friends um getting into new death groups like crypto girls herow um the Phoenix Guild all these different groups that we try to have Partnerships with and support and then also have them to Champion fcoin in different ways and also to give feedback into the fcoin community and find it easy to participate so tldr that's what my team does um and we hope that that's a useful public good for the Falin ecosystem especially as more teams built on fcoin we also give them some light advisory and help them with their docs so that's how we see ourselves as a public good yeah and again one of the things here is these are all independent organizations operating so one of the ways that that that I mean not completely exhaust inexhaustable public good here but like one of the things is that all of these parties uh uh benefit from Phil B Because Phil B is creating this Builder's funnel that is linking together all of these these different parts uh so Clara what part do you play in this giant spiders Network so um my name is Clara I cun the fileo foundation and how many people in this room know actually what file coin is have some good understanding okay great I just wanted to always check the RO um so F coin is the world's largest decentralized storage Network we have over 3,200 storage providers all around the world running data centers and uh tons of X spikes of available storage and our mission is to preserve Humanity still support information because today as you know the internet is not Democratic and usually results show up by who pays the most money in advertising that fact is controlled by and our role in the F ecos system is really looking at long-term govern Network and really making sure we can invest in the right things to make sure Tove so some analogies I usually say is if you wanted to build a city and you needed people to come in to R the switch system someone has to build the pipes for that economic mechanism to happen for private companies to come in and we think about our V we think about our v um sorry I didn't even know you guys can hear me I I think about my role um with with others at Foundation as making sure that we can deploy resources in the best way possible so that one day we can be as involved as little as possible because we've created the mechanisms for other companies to come in and build on top of filecoin but there's always going to be work to do you have to lay the plumbing you have to get the mechanisms to work and we did that through a number of ways we actually have a nonprofit arm called fileo foundation for the decentralized web where we work with a lot of amazing groups like MIT um open courseware we work with a lot of universities like Stanford University of Maryland um organizations like CERN to store Humanity's most important information so we store huge data sets that normally would cause cost a lot of money if they were to maintain and keep it an centralized provider we also think about important issues like we just had the elections and a lot of people today are questioning the security of election data whether that's tampered where it's stored whether people are going to go back and edit information so we have a whole initiative called democracy's Library where we are working with different governments to back up their data and make sure that open in public data sets everyone can access and I also see that as a public gut making sure that information on the web that is supposed to be for the public doesn't just get taken down whether that's environmental data or other kinds of data or whether that's a mayor in a city with high police crime and the next mayor may not want to show that data right we want to make sure that's preserved we also work with similar groups like internet archive to um to also look at other kinds of data sets so this is um this is something that's really important to us um we also give traditional um grants developer grants and other building block grants to make sure our ecosystem system can be successful so um I'll pause there so again I'm just sort of highlighting how these things so huddle sort of works in a a a somewhat I think the DNA of huddle there's sort of a startup uh philb is sort of a network supported uh organization uh the Falin Foundation I know this CU I also work there um is actually uh funded through the Genesis block of uh of fcoin it got an allotment of the uh of the total amount so these again are different funding systems for different parts of this overall commment now we don't usually we don't usually um break the fourth wall quite here but Beth I think that like we see funding the commons as part of this of this this family and this community so maybe you can talk a little bit how those two things connect um yeah definitely and so the reason that I was interested in bringing um you guys together yeah Danny is touching on really perfectly as um as everyone has probably heard uh too much about today um at funding the commons then um we grew out of the network Goods um I guess Department of protocol labs and so I came at the tail end of us being part of protocol laab so in terms of exactly how it fit into the Super structure I um have had my own interpretation but that one has been a really interesting guide for me in my role here which is as program director at funding the commons and uh leading experience design and program curation for um all of uh these type of conferences and events that we've had and so what I have tried to do is continue what I understood the network Goods um kind of narrative um conceptual framework to be which is you know you guys are building um a lot of different open source software building um you know services on top of that um doing you know kind of financial um like interventions on top of that and kind of having um this complex system related to um like open- Source uh infrastructure rails so thinking about um what does that mean placed um in the concept of you know not just public goods that are serving an individual um like yeah an individual function but also um building together into this uh complex system of the network um so yeah I was very curious to hear the perspective from each of y'all as somebody who is building um some of those infrastructure rails yourself as a person who is um actively involved in building those and then as like Visionaries and funders behind that so so in case it isn't obvious we also kind of uh walk the work as well as uh discuss how to uh fund these things and create network Goods uh funding the commons came out of protocol Labs which I think still has their logo protocol Labs was yes protocol Labs was was the organization that was sort of gathered together to create um or uh coordinate the production of uh fcoin back in the day and then because this is what we live and breathe um uh FAL uh protocol Labs essentially nucleated into all of these organizations so Falcone Foundation was perhaps one of the first versions of that that was always wired in to the original uh FAL coin paper we were pretty much independent uh uh before and immediately after uh main net launched Phil B came out of um uh protocol Labs as we sort of Unwound all of the different parts huddle you're sort of someone who kind of we we supported for a long time we were extremely excited to have this sort of synergy and again funding the C cin came out of us wanting to I I mean I'm saying us as though like we were all in a room together pling this right but these all dependently came out because we definitely wanted to widen and encourage this conversation to go more widely so talking about encouraging the conversation to go wider so I I admit that I completely pulled Beth in because Beth was like I have questions and I was like okay we'll give you a mic can't tell whether it'll work or not but we'll give you a mic um uh and I also want to ask anybody here who is uh curious about the um the pros and cons the things that work and the things that don't about living and working and getting money uh to live in an entirely networked uh won't say Network State that's copyright BAGI but uh network network he'll send a country after me um uh uh a network economy as well so be Beth can I put you on the spot and ask you to ask the first question if you have any and then the rest of you can think of questions well yeah so when they that um was really cool exploring um with some of you guys in um our conference in San Francisco and one that's really been a guiding principle for uh David and me as we've been thinking about um yeah what we want to focus on in um these event series is uh really focusing on the different elements of Open Source development and what that means um from all these different perspectives of privacy toward um you know sustainable funding for projects over time and also as an ideological principle underlying a lot of work we do so I would love to hear for each of you in your different area how um open source development impacts your work and um yeah what that looks like for you yeah absolutely so one thing that's um if you've ever applied for any grants in our um for funding out of the foundation what of our requirements is everything be open source I mean we want to make sure that uh when people build software and ship it everyone can add to it and make it even better and that's something that we think is just just so important as a principal um we also a lot of people actually ask me about funding the commons because they don't quite understand what it means and I go well actually it makes a lot of sense if you understand the history of Open Source software development but I'm also actually curious Beth and others in this room what open- source software means in today's Century for someone that is born in in in today's new generation because now the internet is built off of so much open source so some people may not even remember a time when things were close Source right so um this is something that we also think about as the web evolves with AI and um and other emerging technology how to really think uh about each Evolution and how to also bring the right stakeholders and Community together to understand that because um you know a lot of a lot of our next generation of public good activists they also have to understand the history and DNA and growth of the web and how software just became better when we opened it up and how it's also opened up other ways to think about funding mechanisms in the world yeah and um so that's a good question I think from both Beth and Clara so you guys were asking about open source development and how that is impacted by public goods funding um this is something that I do think about I think especially in my role so um my team works on a bunch of different tools that many like maybe teams that become startups later on or are trying to become startups will then use the underlying technologies that we built so for example we built some contract templates and all of that and people do use that within their architecture and then go on to fundraise which is awesome right and we also give them technical guidance along the way so that that in a way is open source development um we also work with for example protocol Labs de guilt which is a recent program that came up and so we have a bunch of like younger devs or solo hackers that want to come in and contribute to this open source software and I'm really happy that they're getting paid while they uh compensated for their time while they help out on the pl def Guild um now it I think in a way like that is kind of a new sense of Open Source development where we get compensated well enough for the work that we do and we are producing Tech based technologies that then teams can go take on and then build a startup from I think one thing that we do need to figure out later on and I think this is especially where retr pgf comes in as a very important program is that once these startups build what they're building and if they find success if they find product Market fit they find impact if if they go into Retro pgfs how do we then you know through a through a good measurable way and I was talking to some of the either counteract folks or some of the impact rating folks how can we then have a rating system that tracks back everyone that has contributed to that project cuz even sometimes when we build based Technologies there is an even de deeper base from our protocol R&D team fill us I'm like I don't want to go get a grun and then not um give them back some of the contributions from what we got our ground for so how do we how are we able to trace that all the way right and again this applies to even the art industry right when you create something new people are building off the idea so that is something super interesting in my space that we think about but I think protocol lapse is moving in the right direction to make sure that we do fund some of the contributors that come in and we're trying to catch that as much as possible along the way yeah um I think there are so many interesting perspectives in this room regarding um open source I want to also sort of motivate as to why we need to actually open up um digital Goods and treat them as public goods as well um certainly you know there has been a progressive positive trend when it comes to opening up software but we also see a lot of counter forces as well you know um a lot of what we have as open source software today has been built on open data so that's the very bottommost layer we have open data that has enabled us to actually build out open models and then on top of that we're been then able to build open software as well and you know so is really at the very top layer where we're actually considering applications of the utilities that we can build from data from um from models and infrastructure as well um but what's happening now is what we're actually seeing rapid centralization of infrastructure um similarly to how we saw centralization and close closing of uh models as well uh we're seeing well we have been seeing um for the past decade actually closing of infrastructure and um consolidation of infrastructure in the hands of a few proprietary entities and um that's where I think that we need to um really change and make infrastructure be able to be decentralized as well and um that's one of the things that's really interesting about um a lot of these physical infrastructure networks decentralized physical infrastructure networks as well particularly filecoin uh what we do with h one as well we are um we are decentralizing the infrastructure that has to do with um with data Ingress and agress and so essentially that's um anything our competitors aren't Zoom our competitors are indeed AWS and the Google Clouds Of The World um that actually power the infrastructure that um supports all of the media on top of it all of the communications on top of it similarly to how um a filecoin might be actually um you know their equivalents in the centralized world are essentially um all of the storage providers as well right so um I think there's a real need for us to be able to dismantle all of these centralized systems and um remove the consolidation of it as well um like to site one example one of the things that we've seen in very recent times is the closing down of a lot of um artificial intelligence companies such as open Ai and um the the the process of them having to go from being open and having uh a very Democrat Dem martized view of um of their products those business models were unsustainable because of the fact that um all the infrastructure that they were running on became too expensive for them to be able to support in this free fashion and as a result they've had to go closed um similarly we've seen a lot of companies in that space go defunct as well such as stability and so on um for this very reason um so I think that it's the system overall when it comes to software development has really reached that Tipping Point where you know previously we were able to support a lot of Open Source um models open software because we had this wealth of open data and open models but now I think that um we need a counterforce to be able to again go go back and decentralize and redesign the system in such a way that all of the participants are awarded in that fashion as well so I just to sort of to all of these things I think one of the reasons why we work so hard to Red decentralize uh these networks is so many of the support systems both in society and both in in the open source environment have ended up being diverted into these centralized systems I talked to a lot of uh I guess a sort of millennial sort of generation of folks who came into the open source environment and many of them came through the Google summer of codee and I saw it as a real warning when some of the creators of the Google summer of code program which was this sort of nurturing uh uh uh program for uh uh entry level sort of open- source developers the fans of that were one of the people that were kind of quietly pushed away from Google as it as it tries to Pivot to a more sort of aggressive profit making environment and one of the reasons why if you have anybody in your community who is interested in making money in open source or creating Network Goods we'll Point them to the pl Dev Guild uh which is a great project and very specifically founded by some people who went through that process and we want to make sure that that funnel not only still exists when uh the Googles of the world kind of turn their back as they have on the commons uh but directs people into into the right direction okay so uh we've just got a few more minutes so I'd love to sort of open up this if anybody has any questions um including where I get grants to do these cool things I know what you're secretly thinking anybody have any questions go on Beth yeah I thought you might so I can ask infinite questions they might get you know increasingly repetitive but uh so yeah um the other thing that I thought was super relevant to hear from each of your perspectives is um you know as we are thinking about software as a common like I think that has a lot of different interpretations to everyone so for me the first thing that brings to mind is how um you know all of our collectively generated data you know feeds into AI models which then um you know impacts all of us you know as a Commons and kind of that feedback loop but then you know there's also um the um infrastructural rails you know which some of you guys are building um and um you know certain levels of software you know like uh web one that's kind of considered this public good for everyone um and uh something that's kind of like collectively owned and utilized by or not owned I guess like yeah utilized and enjoyed by The Commons so yeah I'm curious to hear um what uh yeah how concept of Commons intersects with software development and um yeah tooling for you guys yeah I I I think the beautiful part about the web and also a decentralized web is we get stronger the the more we decentralize and the more that we can have different communities pop up in our ecosystem and we've seen that year over year in the filecoin ecosystem as we have lots of storage Parts this year is especially exciting because we have a lot of startups that are all ready to build for different kinds of storage categories we spent actually the last 3 days the Phil do Summit which is right next door to here just talking about all the possibilities of yeah we C downstairs 2 floors all the possibilities of what we could store on a decentralized web and I think that's um that's an example of you know when we have the building blocks there now everyone can use the technology to be able to optimize for different kinds of use cases um I personally fell in love with decentralized storage because I spent more than a decade of my career looking at content Integrity online and um when you look at online disinformation and all these challenges whether it's terrorist attacks terrorist attack just happened 2015 down the street that was linked to Islamic terrorism the web is a fueling ground for a lot of rabbit holes of terrible things to gather together that are polarizing society and we're seeing the offline effects of that as well I think everyone can feel it whether that's during the pandemic or in other Extreme Ways and the way that we're going to end up being able to take away the business models that are going that are creating these rabbit holes are um are to really think about how we can do it better and remove that incentive structure every company building on web 2 they will go bankrupt to their investors if they don't sell advertising and that same algorithm that gets people to get addicted to content it's not only making our world less uh smart um it's creating these feedback mechanisms that actually encourage really malicious and bad behavior and so when we can solve content integrity and also look at better ways of doing it where profit doesn't belong in the hands of one centralized company but in the hands of all the beautiful startups and players in our ecosystem and beyond that I I think that uh that is really the common for me where people uh users at the end of the day really get to own their own data and they get to choose what they do with it and they get to choose where it's stored and they're not going to be necessarily handcuffed by um by a Google or a apple to pay another $10 a month for storage um and and just building on that real quick I know we're almost at time uh I would like to share a technical idea on this right so uh we prototyped something called a data da last year basically it's a bunch of smart contracts that allow you users to upload like B like crowdsourcing data right you can upload your data but you're incentivized to do so um you're you're incentivized to upload your data you're incentivized to upload good data and you're also incentivized to continue paying so that or maybe dripping funds in some way or figuring out a way that your D data D can create a treasury for the usage of that data so that it can continue the Perpetual storage of that data um that was actually a pretty interesting idea we've been talking to a few teams about possibly putting it into motion um we love to talk to anyone that is interested to build something like this but I think that's something that can help to build data Integrity which is what Clara was talking about realistically too I will say that D web and doing this we are on the trajectory where it's going to be a really painful path to do so it's not easy there are like a lot of ux issues to work through right so I'm not selling a dream here I'm selling an idea that we really need to work at um but I think it's a good idea to think about yeah well time is up but um I would like to leave you all with a question um which is that how might we keep decentralized systems decentralized and well I I think that um Let me Give a Little Bit of context um the state that we find ourselves in right now um with traditional systems like the traditional economic system is due to preferential attachment it was decentralized and it was conceptualized as being a decentralized system at the start however it has um progressively become more centralized due to consolidation and preferential attachment so you know you might have heard of power lws and scale-free networks um if you're not familiar with scale free networks really encourage reading up on network signs um particularly barbar rasi and Albert um and what these systems do is they um the nodes that actually have a high quantity of something they preferentially are able to attract more links to them and thereby these these decentralized systems start to become centralized um and you know it might seem like a very natural phenomenon that decentralization always some with some time it does lead to centralization um but I'm sure that there are some system designs that we can Implement in order to counter this force and um we have Smart contracts now which are machine enforceable so I think this is the perfect environment for us to implement um these types of mechanisms my favorite topic well that's a great moment of of optimism and uh warning to end on um thank you all very much for um sticking with us there Beth is there anything on after us or is there is it I thought we might have a goodbye from David but we will have to hear from him tomorrow morning okay well in that case we won't stop you going out and mixing um you can probably Gate Crash hour if you can work out how to get to the dev Summit it's two floors down you have to go through a long complicated route but you can do it I just wanted to thank the AV team for um really um thank [Applause] you let's also have a thank you to Aron who's been a very delightful MC and came back early from changai to help us and has been so sweet so thank [Applause] you you want to have the last word now you have a question question now everybody's like finally we can drink now you have a question okay show them the one minute what's your question is the power dep still open right now or are you guys done I think we're Miss there are two parties going on simultaneously so uh like I say you can try and Gate Crash but there's really interesting people here there is a our our ven closing in like oh yeah drinks there're are public goods um I think that there are parties going on I also know there's a PLM Network Dev Summit going on uh in the next weekend there's after hours tonight for anyone that's in the protocol Labs Network which I'm sure you guys can I'm now officially blessing you with the you all part of our Network good and Clara will either tell you where it is or uh um if you're feeling guilty about crashing of an equal guilty oh great it's uh it's in the Hotel it's an anatara Hotel just down the street around a 7 minute walk but honestly the conversations I've had here Vin so wor well there we go all right these are some kind of like I original predecessors coms before yeah before a lot of us existed so thank you that that makes it seem old but I do remember the first ones that the first fun in the Commons and it was really exciting to see a community uh come together on these ideas and remote I remember yeah it was Co was it yeah um and I've just been blown away with the conversations and the organization so uh thank you thank you okay [Applause] [Music] n