Agency Through Crypto, Education, & Community - Darya Kaviani

hello hi everyone hello hi jay um alrighty let's go ahead and get started the name of our talk is called educate enable and empower and we're incredibly excited to be speaking to you all here today we'll start off by giving you a little bit of an introduction about ourselves as well as our organization starting off with ourselves my name is daria i'm from san jose california i'm studying electrical engineering computer science and minoring in ethnic studies at uc berkeley and i'm currently the co-president of blockchain at berkeley hey everybody i'm rotten i'm the other co-president of blockchain berkeley i'm out from virginia any virginia homie's out here um i'm also an east major so yeah alrighty perfect to give an overview of blockchain at berkeley itself blockchain in berkeley is a student organization based out in california specifically uc berkeley and blockchain berkeley focuses on driving innovation in the blockchain space by building an ecosystem that empowers students through practical education creating impactful blockchain projects defy governance as well as conducting open source research so i want to start off by talking about the trifecta and by the trifecta i mean the educate enable and empower three factors and why we're really excited to be chatting about them today the first one is educate and this is the first way that we believe you need to be getting students and young minds into the blockchain space by educate we mean introducing students to the space via accessible enticing and creatively distributed content after people are in the space introduced at the very least you need to give them the actual tooling they need to be able to create meaningful projects and that comes from resources so the second component we want to highlight today is enable how do you give students vital resources funding teams and ownership opportunities so then after they get introduced to the space and now they're creating in the space after they've been able to do so finally we want to focus on how do we empower students to stay in the space in the long term so that they can actually make meaningful impact and that comes from providing students with the community and the culture they need to stay create and build the space so then what's the issue if all these three factors exist and supposedly blockchain to berkeley is also activating these three facets why are we here talking about this today the problem we're trying to address through blockchain at berkeley and other similar organizations is that we agree they're incredible initiatives right now in the crypto space that educate folks if you are a student and you want to learn the barrier to entry is incredibly incredibly low for you to get out there and get what you need to know there's also incredibly powerful tooling for people to get resources in order to actually build in the space and finally there are very very diverse communities popping up all around that empower individuals to stay within the space so yes educate enable and empower each exist the problem is as it exists today they are ostensibly disjoint from one another so what we want to emphasize today is what can we create what can we build and what can we achieve when you tie them together in one collective community blockchain to berkeley's organizations that have come out over the past five years are a prime example of this in the past five years one of our past presidents gloria zhao actually went on took her passion for turning something that was a revolutionary technology starting from 2008 and turned that and it's something she's turned into her career starting out as one of the first brink fellows now i become core developer gloria has truly embodied what it means to take that initiative that passion that education and turn it into into reality but it doesn't stop there oh maybe the presentation does oh wow that was that was a that was a bar um i'll get a second i could do this presentation without the presentation but i feel like that would kind of ruin the point of it so i'm gonna try to get this wi-fi working again that's pretty funny let's see here give me a sec wow i've been dirty by this go for it awesome okay now that i'm back um but it doesn't stop there right students can go on and create great things within existing institutions but really where that passion gets elevated is when they turn it into their own ideas over the past month the open team one of the first teams building options trading infrastructure on ethereum released squeeze demonstrating when students see the potential for opportunities that don't currently exist they can go out and create them beyond that osmosis the first ibc interchain amm recently launched over the past couple months on cosmos we've even seen that evmos the first evm-based chain on cosmos launched as well demonstrating the potential that exists within new ecosystems to build new things for students additionally alio another alumni company raised over 200 million dollars to build a zero knowledge application toolkit but students creating is not where that cycle ends we have it upon ourselves to take this mission this vision and turn it back into a place where we can empower future students to go out and create for themselves decrypt capital which got launched in 2018 has been investing in blockchain infra and blockchain students buildings in the blockchain space over the past four years very effectively even beyond that she 256 an organization that's been dedicated towards promoting significant diversity within the blockchain space has taken that mission on and really pushed it forward over the past two years alone but where does it all begin it begins with a trifecta this idea that students when given the opportunity to develop these technologies in a way that is coalesced under these ideals of educate enable and empower can turn these ideas that they have and these thoughts and this vision to learn into actual reality and that's where we want to begin and so begins with education how do we take students who know absolutely nothing about the space and give them the tools they need to learn and to create in an effective manner it begins by teaching students in a way that's accessible engaging and creative people don't want to learn unless you give them a reason to and we have an incredible technology in front of us and the only way to truly get it out there is by giving students a reason to go out there and learn it that begins for us on campus since 2017 we've taught over 1500 students about blockchain from fundamentals to developers about what it means to not only learn about this space but build within it beyond that this space doesn't stop at the fundamentals how do we take new and emerging technologies and trends such as d5 nfts creator economies metaversus and turn that into actually engaging content that students can take over the course of semester know absolutely nothing and turn those into startups ideas that can then go impact the world that they want to learn about beyond that our vision and our mission isn't just local we know that the blockchain movement is not one that's isolated to just denver to just berkeley to just the united states but it's global how do we take content and put it in places where people who don't have access can actually learn about it since 2018 we've taught over 200 000 students around the world in 193 different countries 193 about blockchain about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies about blockchain technology and taking this technology turning it from a local movement one that's isolated here to one that's global beyond that we want to take students who now have the vision the ability to learn about this technology and actually enable them to go create how do you give people the ability to take ownership and to make impact that's why we're here today and so for us that begins with resources it begins with funding it begins with putting people in teams where they can create and giving them ownership opportunities without that it's impossible to know where to begin and so here on campus that starts with an ecosystem hub right if you're a student you want to learn more it's very difficult to find resources you know you can go on youtube you can go look at random videos but that doesn't really give you a good guide of where to start and so what we really want to do is make sure that there's a place where any student any person around the world who wants to learn can go somewhere look at one website find that information coalesce it and go to a variety of different places diving on those subtopics and finding that passion that they so truly want to find beyond that students now given the ability and the resources to learn and pick up on those technologies need to be able to build building is the reason why we're here this technology wouldn't exist if it wasn't to be meant to be built on top of and so by giving students the freedom to explore within this broad set of spaces everything that we know that's developed over the past 13 years and turning that into a specific space that they care about giving them that vision and that passion for something within this space that they know that they care about and that they can make an impact in is what matters by making sure that happens in an open collaborative manner making sure that every single student around the world has the passion the vision and the ability to make impact on the society and so over the past few months we've actually taken that and turned that into something where it's not just students creating with other students it's students empowering other students to really go out there and build one of the biggest issues that we've seen is students have great ideas but they have a very difficult time turning those ideas into reality you know you spend hours talking about ideas with friends but how many of those are actually turned into concrete ideas the hackathon here is a great example but once that hackathon happens how do you give those ideas and turn them into places where students have the ability to create that on a six month to one year time scale and go out and build those projects so starting out with open source contributions research projects and early stage startups where our aim is really not only to enable people within our campus but any student around the world regardless of berkeley affiliation can go out apply to our grant program get a grant go out and build and then turn that into something that changes not only what's happening here but what's happening in the crypto space at the forefront forever already so now the the final component of the trifecta that i personally deem to be the most significant in creating lasting impact in the space driven by students is empower so we've started off with the basics we've given people the introductory knowledge via the educate component which we very much pride ourselves in we've accessed many people through a very wide funnel we've brought them into the space once they're in the space we've prioritized giving them tooling and resources so now they're already building unfortunately here's the problem students have the attention span of a goldfish and so after the period where you've built something for about five minutes how do you entice people to stay in this space and that's what we truly prioritize here with the empower component because you need to provide students with the community and the culture they need to stay create and build the space so in order to empower students to take that initiative for change we really take a two-pronged approach the first here is inspire students with powerful values we need to show young minds in the blockchain space that this is not just another innovation cycle the social issues came first and the technology was built on top of it and we always start with the basic problem of centralization this is what we emphasize to every single student that comes through our pipeline within blockchain at berkeley from the get-go you have an over-reliance on large centralized institutions when people aren't given other options people end up turning to these massive third parties giving them massive leverage over our daily lives and then we tell them that's really really dangerous because of the amount of control that these centralized entities then have because governments and institutions begin to work together and the result of that is they end up serving an incredibly small class of people and unfortunately because they have so much power they can be incredibly irresponsible at that point risky practices cause them to try to maximize profit creating very very dangerous situations that they're trying to be able to serve with their centralized infrastructure but it goes beyond just the problem of centralization another issue we really try to emphasize is the political roots of blockchain technology we always take it back to the very beginning with the cypherpunks and cryptoanarchists these libertarian groups that were incredibly concerned with privacy and who advocated for cryptography as an incredibly important tool in order to achieve that and we take it back to connecting that to the culture and the values that these students already know for example eric hughes who was the author of the cypherpunk manifesto was actually a berkeley alum and so when i try to inspire and empower students i like to read this quote privacy is necessary for an open society privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world so yes it's been three decades but we are still building with these same values with these same intentions and with these same priorities but it doesn't just stop at the 30 years ago mark when we talk about the latent breaking aspects of blockchain technology we also need to make sure we're taking a value-centric approach and so when we teach students about defy we start off by teaching them about the five values behind it and why it's so groundbreaking the first component is transparency we tell people smart contract code is open source and publicly verifiable there's also the value of experimentation you can write code you can fork projects you can deploy quickly creating a limitless sandbox of opportunity the next value we emphasize with d5 is accessibility borderless systems are accessible to anyone with an internet connection and that is revolutionary when it comes to the technology that we're talking about and next you have composability this incredible interoperability between different on-chain platforms creating what we like to call money legos and finally you have the factor of permissibility because when you have open financial platforms there's no permission necessary in order to take part in the network and so at that point when it comes to blockchain technology it's not only important to emphasize the values from the past and how this technology was built up but also the latest cutting edge applications of it to this day so at the end of the day it's incredibly important to make it unmistakably clear to these students whether it's the crypto anarchist or whether it's the five pillars of d5 that blockchain is a technological solution to a social problem the social problem came first and the technology was built on top of it so while yes you can have the attention span of a goldfish when you're talking about some of the different innovation hype cycles of modern day the reason to stay and build in this space in particular is that you have the ability to impact the world at a large scale and finally most importantly it's important to give students a family and a community because in the crypto space not only are we constantly building with people that have the same values as us but we're also building alongside incredibly cooperative compassionate and excited folks that we like to call our best friends so yes it's incredibly important to educate to enable and to empower but most of all it's important to intertwine these incredibly indispensable components to create one unified community thank you