The State of Decentralization in Web3 - Panel feat. Julia Szyndzielorz , Brian Trunzo and more...

hello everyone welcome to all of you who came to our panel and also those streaming on twitch hi i'm i'm julia i work uh i lead the communications for the web 3 initiative at opera and we have some awesome panelists with us today first let me introduce tessie mechrein the co-founder of the quality wallet and the founder of women in blockchain [Applause] and we also have brian trusnote the metaverse lead at polygon studios give it up for brian please and last but not least we have louis goodman the ecosystem lead at starkware and um so i'll start i'll we have um some really cool questions coming up to draw and pick on the brains of our awesome panelists but let me just start by providing some intros so um our panelists entered the web3 space a few years back when it was more crypto was more niche blockchain was like just for people in the know and in 2021 and this year we've seen this exponential growth of interest in crypto and web 3 and metaverses and we've also had some big corporations enter the space as if like with visions drawn from watching ready player one a few too many times and um so what we want to discuss is here the state of decentralization of web 3. but before we go into the challenges and the the how the projects of our panelists are fixing them i wanted to pick your brains and hear like how you entered the web 3 space what was the landscape like then what made you interested in the first place and what the key challenge was when you entered the space we can maybe start with brian okay great um i entered the space in the first quarter of 2017. um i remember the first time i heard about ethereum it was like a out of body experience i felt as though i could finish the sentences of the person who was explaining it to me it just felt like i knew everything he was saying to be true and that i had heard it before um i was in a weird place at that moment in my life i had exited two businesses i felt very empty and i was looking for meaning i was doing trend forecasting for fashion companies i was explaining to them concept design consumer insights what they should be thinking about and designing for the next wave of consumers and ethereum really captivated me and and really got my imagination going and i started basically uh trend forecasting uh how the erc 721 contract and this concept of digital scarcity would become extremely important for fashion brands that were looking to create wearables uh inside these metaversal worlds so uh i launched a metaverse in web3 consultancy teaching brands how to get into web3 and that eventually led me to polygon and polygon studios and what was the challenge you noticed then like what was the key key element just mass confusion um you know especially at multinationals especially at large consumer brands the cfo for instance doesn't know how to mark to market fiat to ethereum transactions for instance right um so it's really getting people aligned and on the same page and educating them and motivating them to want to explore this new business unit for them okay let's um let's hear from tessie how there's a burning man story in there yeah i probably had the most dramatic entry into into web 3. um but yes where did i come from um i was building uh trading applications and investment bank jp morgan's investment bank for about six years during the financial crisis and of course we all know uh that was a pretty tough time for many and that got me interested in how financial systems could be done differently and better and at the same time being in new york we also had occupy right in front of the door and that got me interested in the alternative banking group and i started working with them and exploring different um models um and ended up at uh sharing economy this that in the other and was at burning man that's where burning man comes in when i went to a talk and at that talk which was during a dust storm so a lot of people didn't make it including my friends we set out on a bicycle got there and somebody was talking about ethereum and it totally like hit me like like yours and it was very dramatic the storm and everything but there were two things that i felt um one was like wow this is like the opportunity in creating a different system that is neutral and open and that has collaboration is a great opportunity and at the same time the idea of reward systems was scary because i thought wow you know already even there um there were like three women and a bunch of guys i thought well you know we we might actually reproduce the same system we already have and those two um initial feelings i had about this web 3 movement that has actually been confirmed and is still there and those are both my motivations to work so that kind of you're building on these two challenges with your projects right you have the quality wallet which is chain inclusive and then women in blockchain are for exactly women and blockchain let's uh let's hear about your uh path louis um i guess sorry i guess i have a much boring path than those those two folks here um um so like most people that came into crypto through trading uh so i started first time i heard about bitcoin 2012. um first bubble 2013 my credit card didn't pass you know why i was kid so i guess it didn't pass and then i decided to sort of buy my first bitcoin for real in 2016.

um just to track the price like probably one year on coinbase and and you know when to work for a company if became big at the same time of the dow you know all the company was investing investing you know all of them and then next week follow me the dow the hack all of a sudden everyone cries losing money was like okay you know i'll leave it there and so i left it for six months early 2017. january 2017 i looked back at my kraken account it was like oh it came back to three times what i invested that's cool uh let me read about more and then i started to just read the bitcoin paper and read peer right away and started reading the ethereum paper and a lot of things that coming out like that and by the end of 2017 was like sorting into cryptography the proper cryptography side of things and the entire year of 2019 i studied cryptography by myself up to a point where i started meet up called dk global which was like expanding to tel aviv paris london toronto and seoul and started to work with the building foundation on crypto stuff versus the case roll up and stuff and by me 2019 uh through a set of circumstances i um basically start where reach out and say oh we are hiring like this is you have a good profile for what we're building and so this is my story to crypto okay great so let's move to the second part uh decentralization has been described on a as a spectrum spanning from a fully functioning trustless system to trade-offs for certain aspects and all kinds of compromises so what's the current state of decentralization in web 3 and how are your projects working towards fixing the challenges that exist we can maybe start with tessie whoa that's a big question right um so there may at several layers here uh one is like um yes my project uh liquality it's a multi-chain multi blockchain wallet um so where you can trade and hold everything uh from bitcoin to ethereum it's not just ebms and you can also access the web3 so what's different here it's like basically the one place where you can have your window into web3 the promise here is that we make it easy for people to access and make it easy for people to hold their value how this started is actually quite interesting because we started with atomic swaps and atomic swaps between bitcoin and ethereum and this goes back to what you said about trustlessness so atomic swaps are one technology that allow uh trustlessness um it's a technology for those who don't know just google it or come to the equality website to the blog it's explained um and what we did is we made bitcoin and ethereum compatible through a chain objection layer so that was the innovation right so um so this is one part this is trustlessness but you know probably not everything needs trustlessness the same way or sometimes you know there's certain inconvenience coming along with that and we all know about web3 and usability that being sometimes uh you know a hindrance waiting for confirmations and all these things so equality is chain agnostic and we treat everything the same and we want to make it easy for everybody the state of um web 3 today is it's interesting because with nft community a whole other um vibe came in right we started out with the cypherpunk thinking of trustlessness but there are so many other chains that have different promises and so what i think is really important is we have to keep in mind why do we do this right what is what is web3 about and uh even here i have heard a lot of people talk about the better world all inclusive but truth is you know we have to really think about that is that true can everybody join this um how do we decentralize power because it's really decentralization of uh power and a power shift and i feel we we are at this point where it's going very commercial uh and we have to really think about this and be very aware sorry it took a couple of minutes that's okay uh maybe we can hear from louis and how starkware is solving current challenges in web 3 like are you making it web 3 a better place are you keeping it decentralized everyone's pretty excited about your technology yeah i'm happy to to discuss that so what do starkwear bring to web3 the very simple answer short answer is scale so you know starknet scales darkware enable scaling zkp enable scaling but the truth is uh is that this tech this ekp tech is you know everyone talks about privacy usually when talk about zk from my perspective the the validity proof the fact that i cannot lie when i'm running a proof i cannot lie to you if what matters it was really interesting and so when it comes to decentralization is decentralization is not a goal it's a target moving target the goal is trustlessness the goal is transparency the goal is self-custody this is what are the goal of blockchain ownership and so what starkware brings to the table when it comes to zkp that it enables to have environment which are easier to use for which are less decentralized because they are they provide the same trustlessness and you know a purely centralized network but they also enable centralized entity to make environment which feel like web 2 and that enable also um web3 to regular web 3 folks to enjoy a more scalable environment with respect to the principle which are inclusivity of you know electricity means something specific when it comes to crypto so this is what stock we're bringing to the table and i guess faster transaction speeds lower uh lower gas fees through the layer two so yes obviously but the thing is it's very funny people keep you know talking about l2s and lower fees um i'm going to take a bring a hot take here which is uh there is no way for a successful blockchain with defy activity with financial activity to be cheap in the long run and what the way we see at least from my perspective i'm not i know if i'm talking for start where here the way i see cheap in the long run is through usage something we published something called fractal l3 recently where we not only do you know enable an l2 but we enable using our tech using the trustlessness to build all the layers on top of the l2 and so where are maybe more centralized but more cheaper to use for users and at the same time for the regular folks you can also enjoy you know faster transaction cheaper while respecting with the principle of blockchain which is inclusivity and what it means when it comes to the tech of blockchain what does it mean inclusivity means you should be able to verify the chain on your phone you shouldn't rely on infira we have to today but that's the end goal and this is what starkwear brings thank you i'm going to add a different question to brian here is [Music] also allowing you to talk about polygon of course but maybe we could also sum it up like what do you think the response the responsibilities of this community here uh are like you know are we okay to make compromises for you know scale or further reach or should we just you know make crypto weird again as you said earlier that was something that we were discussing earlier this keep crypto weird sort of meme uh sort of like when a neighborhood gets gentrified and people say let's keep the neighborhood weird that sort of thing um but bringing it back to a more serious place i think it's everyone's responsibility in the space never mind um you know the daps and the protocols to pay it forward and to evangelize and to onboard as many users as possible uh and i think you know speaking for polygon and polygon studios that's precisely what we're trying to do uh both on the tech side but also on the culture side so bifurcating the two you know for polygon it's addressing the speed the scalability uh transaction throughput through everything from our sdk capabilities of spinning up validator sets for uh public companies and companies of a certain size that want to run their own validator and have their own side chain through our proof of stake sidechain which is battle tested for years now uh and straight through to zk roll ups and data availability so really giving a modular sort of approach to evangelizing and onboarding people into a decentralized web 3. on the polygon studio side of things you know we we look at it this onboarding and this evangelizing in a different way and that's through cultural relevance right we take the view that anyone who's crypto native uh is already onboarded there are no more crypto native folks right if you're a crypto native you're here um so how do we get the next 100 million or billion wallets onboarded into web3 and that's through cultural relevance that's through excellence with uh fashion celebrity entertainment lifestyle sport uh creating really exhilarating experiences uh that are uh based in nfts uh based in blockchain based gaming and also based in metaversal virtual open world so uh that's really how we look at it from uh both the polygon and the polygon studio side i don't know if we have any time left no one's kicking us out so uh let's also hear from tessie absolutely yes um yeah from the equality perspective um very much aligned with you uh equality is liquidity and equality so equality is something super important to us it's in our name and we're pushing for that um and how can technology do this web three is actually always that's the value proposition equality right and so um what i think is really important to keep in mind for everybody working is like what are our value propositions we have to do things with intention and intention means like different things at different times right now in this in this web 3 environment we're still dealing with the basics right we have to build the basic tools now the next level is like multi-chain make it easy to bring the different communities together in one wallet right our wallet allows other communities to to basically access each other's dapps and that's that's amazing right you have a whole community the art sky community can go to the ethereum adapts and and make this very easy can exchange value across and the next step is a is a dow right and so the future is really is constantly moving and this community here in in east denver is always just like you know very um open and um explorative community so what i would say what's really important to um to do is keep talking about our values and make sure that we are really on on top of what we're promising right because we do say um you know we do this for all but truth is um decentralization means um you know a power shift there are laws there are regulations we all get to these edges at some point building taos building those in different jurisdictions building um defy products and having to talk to lawyers so what's really important is to also not forget that side of policy and make sure that we really lift the opportunity and realize the opportunity of bringing people in that have been excluded so far so we have brian's point keep it culturally relevant make it exciting your point keep it decentralized maintain the principles talk to legislators what do you add to that lewis and i think that will be some of the final remarks i mean i guess like to i mean could be exciting like the the thing that growing me you know gets me excited right now when it comes to what three and i mean obviously i'm very involved with starknet so so i will talk what i know is seeing new folks coming in and bringing new things things that didn't exist before things that were imaginable before either because the tech wasn't there and this is what you know there is my opinion there is like sort of three breakthrough in the space of blockchain there was like bitcoin the solution that commodore paper that going to consensus the ethereal bringing smart contract and the k um don't have to be stock where it could be other players in the space and we are just very early in the stay in this case space and we are seeing starting to see people being creating things that we never didn't exist before in the space like doing proper decentralized gaming unstoppable games and you know achieving vitalik's vision of of gaming right um so this is like what i'm good advice to people and you know what i want to see more is like go crazy try add the new tag go crazy build the thing that you want to see and yeah bring that awareness i guess thank you um i'm just gonna add that maybe like from the opera side of a browser and an app that started in web one went to web 2. now is heavily shaping web3 at least that's what we say and um so you know you said like make the app you want to see and i would add like make the solution the app that like will make large audiences go crazy because i think that's also what polygon is starting to achieve is like built this whole ecosystem of exciting games exciting dapps that that will finally are on this cusp of reaching mass adoption so like as the browser company we see our role like we this qr code here if anyone wants to try the beta before we launch in march it's like it's just our vision of yeah three minutes left so it's kind of the realization of our vision like how to make crypto understandable to non-crypto natives to make to keep it exciting for crypto natives but also make it understandable provide a safe like wallet browser web three browsing features so i think there is uh yeah tessa you wanted to say yeah so i'm saying it's just like i think it all comes together and i'm hoping i'm really rooting for web 3 to to just like go into the mainstream and become a staple yeah i would like to add to that um yes we will all want to be excited here and we're all here and we're all privileged because otherwise you wouldn't be here right but the real innovation in my point of view is happening in the edges in these folds in these places where people have been excluded in countries in the global south where people actually building solutions right now here we're building the the path we're building the tools to to actually you know even have web three like the wallets and and all the infrastructure but we have to really be intentional about including the global south because there are lots of solutions there that in the end will also be very beneficial for everybody yeah i think we've actually run out of time thank you very much for coming here's to web3 thanks everyone for watching us here and in the metaverse