Practical Application of Ethereum for the Sex Worker Community with Ameen Soleimani, Janice Griffith

yeah yes all right great welcome back from the break we're gonna kick off we have as you guys can see a panel discussion the title is practical applications of aetherium for the sex industry so if you're triggered by aetherium or if you're triggered by sex then hide in the corner or something yeah so we have the one and only Maria Paola interviewing for members of the spank chain team so I'll let you guys introduce yourselves welcome hi I'm MP are you shy no so hi I'm MPI I work for column and I also help organize this event and in East Berlin we believe that we should push education further and education includes diversity and includes people from all walks of life as well so spine chain is one of those project that really a fix these issues in the space and sorry in in the world that haven't been fixed before so I think it's really worthwhile to present how how this particular project is helping sex workers so um yeah so maybe you can intro for a short while sure I my name is Minh Soleimani the CEO and co-founder of spank Shan it's a platform where we build economic infrastructure to migrate the adult entertainment industry onto aetherium so that they have more secure financials and transactions that don't get censored that's what we do so far we've built a bunch of payment channel technology and we have a camp site up and we just launched the spank bank hi I'm Brenda sparks and I'm an advisor and Ornstein first Michi hi I'm Janice Griffith I am an adult former writer and co-founder of spank chain and currently work is the adult industry liaison hi I'm Ally Eve Knox I am a fetish performer and I also work at Spanky okay thank you all for coming here and I will explain you shortly how the outsourcing the question the questions work so actually because right now span chain a I'm here expect especially has female models so then we decided to ask you know female technical people to look into the platform and also girls that were interested on your work and your what you go through and you know on the motivation to join Spanky and then we we put together all these questions amazing design is in here so um well let's let's do but one by one so maybe Brenna you can explain us if you ever have faced issues with any middleman and how you came into you a spanking oh just recently I've had my bank account shut down it was US bank and they didn't want to say why but the second time I came there you know I threw a fit and then I was like they decided to call the cops on me it was like demanding my money and like where's my money whatever and I was like listen I and I know why you guys found my banks because I've cryptocurrency and because of the adults industry and you know most normal people do not know that until they read the Terms of Service and so anyways I decided to post on Twitter what happened and then they immediately said my money within like 24 hours that way well Twitter works by all means exposing people also works you know people have to know these problematic exists mm-hmm and could have been these being solved in like a platform like spanking yeah a lot of the banking issues that we have pretty much thank you yeah so um and maybe John is you can explain me more about the platform so when checking out a conventional camera sites and spank chain we discovered that there was a no labeling so people could enter whatever room and then demand things to the girl that maybe that you didn't do you know so what's going on there and where are the rooms no not classified and so the users can enter a specific room and the girls are you know we want we would like to see the girls not confronted with you know facing things sorry to interrupt you but we it's not that our rooms aren't classified you know who the model is based on you know their user name we just haven't decided to categorize people by gender or race or you know any of those other traditional identifiers and I can't control what someone on the internet tells me to do we have no you know every other campsite that you can go to will have people telling models to do something that that model does not offer that is not maintained exclusive and it's something that happens within the sex industry all the time I have people that ask me to mail them containers of my excrement and it doesn't mean I do it but it happens the Spanx chain model for our campsite I love because our support team is on 24/7 we always have someone there ready to answer questions and our community is actually so much more positive in general than the other campsite communities that I've been a part of our users are friendlier our models are more helpful I'm not sure I a hundred percent understand what your question was because it seems as though it revolves around people coming in to cameran's and asking for things but correct me if I'm wrong no no you're right you know obviously I don't work in the adult industry I work on the tech side so I would like to also learn more so this is actually very helpful you know you know it's important also to know that you girls are prepared and if you feel comfortable and you know you know how to say no obviously as everyone yeah exactly and the biggest one of my favorite things about the sex industry is that we have all of the power and you know I'm speaking from my personal experience which is very privileged I'm not a survival sex worker I you know exist on screen and not you know on the streets but I can say no and that is one of the biggest privileges and perks of my job but I'm sure sorry I'm sure that Ali can also agree and attest to that immense privilege that we experience of being able to say no and having that power that's perfect Ali actually I have a question right for you what's your experience with heckler hecklers and trolls were incoming how do get past these incidents yourself and do they affect you I'm the wrong person to ask because things actually don't affect me I was born without shame and I honestly don't give a [ __ ] where people say to me so I'm I think I'm probably a minority in this so when people come in and they say things that I don't want to do it's kind of a well whatever you're out of here I don't care peasant thing so it affects other people though I think that maybe you've watched when you were on the site when people come in and they say things that make a model uncomfortable just to try to do that it's some models know how to handle it because they've been in the business for so long some models are new and it really kind of changed her experience so I hope that it makes you think about the things that you say to a model who is opening up giving you their most intimate moments being very honest and real and I hope that no one in this room will go into a room and do that to someone who's performing for you with you a lot of people feel more comfortable saying things online that they would never say in real life or they think that there's not a real person on the receiving end and it's incredible to see the extremes that people will go to when they think there are no repercussions I like Ali was born without shame or care for anything nothing anyone says on the internet really matters to me because I'm still getting paid at the end of the day and also it's it's so I I have this cynical view where I think it's pathetic that someone would do something like that so I I don't even I their words hold no weight to me because I'm like oh you're that kind of person what do I care what you think but you kind of piggyback off of that too we're so I mean in the camera what you experienced in addition to our money I mean everything I do is legal there's nothing wrong with what I do despite the fact that my Amazon shut down my coin base is shut down the things that I'm doing yes I violated the terms of service because it said don't do sex work but I'm taking a tribute for showing my feet I mean come on all this isn't like a big thing their Terms of Service are really just vague up to their discretion based on you know whatever opinions they might hold as a company because I've also had my bank account shut down and they were just like you violated our Terms of Service which are you know it's up to our discretion to decide whether or not you have done so or not so we decided that you did and that's that that's [ __ ] up sorry yeah and that makes me very angry but a candy audience to give a round of applause for being born with no shame all right to our next question maybe I mean you want to take it so do you do you plan to bring in more users to the platform people need animation and the end an initial effort to be able to buy funky booty so if the question is do we plan to bring more users on the network then definitely yes if it's about how and reducing frictions and and creating ways to buy booty we are working on that I mean I'm we're we're still in the camp of hoping that like somebody takes on the gargantuan task of putting the whole crypto team on their back and figuring out how to do you know token token purchases with cards because that would make our lives and many of you in the room lives easier but in the absence of that we've just launched the spank bank to allow tipping in that and so you'll be able to buy our booty tokens and ether it'll be a stable coin and we want to hold hands for the new users that come to our site make it easier right now it's like so far we've been designing for your you know everyday crypto veteran they're gonna come and complain if they can't check like the whole address stuff like that and we're sort of selling out a bit sorry but we're trying to cater more to the you know user who it's their first literally their first crypto experience ever and so we have to make it easy for them to come in and understand and eventually figure out how to you know see the address checking all the rest of it so this is all gonna happen in about a month pretty excited about that just a sort of sneak in there I think it's really cool the way that we do it because it maintains the integrity of our users I think that you know the people who are invested in watching spank gen grow from the beginning are people who are really committed to the cause and understand what's you know going on and like I mean said it's people who are like oh I've never used crypto before what do I do and sort of moving away from this idea that you have to understand every single process that you're taking part of and instead just knowing enough to be able to use it because something that I go back to a lot is I don't understand how regular money works but I still use it every day so I don't need to understand the every single Bell and whistle of trading crypto to be able to utilize it for my life in my business well thank you that's really cool so Brenna what's your experience in the cerium tech community do you like us lately you've been doing a lot of doing a lot of interviews and articles currency and it seems like that's like the path I've been moving towards and every single day being gaining new crypto followers and yeah I love it they do disagree a lot but I have more people that support me then hate that I a sex worker yeah I find it so long trigger warning so um Janis so this is a question for you basically one of the reviewers off spontaneous really interested on getting male porn there so how are you thinking about doing this hey how are you gonna do this how are you gonna know what we want can we get like a women who also want to spank survey or something so right now we have our models like you can just apply to be a model and we're accepting every kind of body gender in person we have you know some trans performers we have some non non-binary performers and we have female performers as well I'm not 100% sure we have any male identifying performers that's a chase question yes we do so also the idea that women only want to see men I think is something that I'm trying to have people grow away from because there are queer women out there who actually want to you know consume the same kind of content that a man a heterosexual man might want to consume our campsite is still in beta actually like we were in our public beta so it makes sense that we don't have a ton of variety and the kinds of performers that we have but there are definite plans to be as accepting and open as we can possibly be to every identity gender orientation race etc we don't discriminate except for you know hate that's that's where we draw a line so yes we do plan on inviting more kinds of people and creating as much diversity within the world of pornography as we possibly can nice that brings me to my next question actually either you or me know you can take it so can you explain us a little bit about the structures that are being put in place in your company to combat social issues like discrimination and harassment and all the other good stuff well I can start a little bit because coming on I co-founded the company with immune and our other co-founder who is not here but the beginning stages of it was just us sitting there talking about the problems within the sex industry and how we could fix it and how the discrimination that you know I face being a sex worker affects my life and they were like hey we have this idea where we could change that I was like oh that sounds interesting tell me more so in the beginning stages of our company forming we really have tons of open dialogue of like hey this is who I am these are problems I experienced this is a community that I'm in touch with these are the problems they experienced how do we make sure that we are making every single person feel comfortable unless they're actually wrong and by wrong I mean you know racists or homophobic people people with true hateful intentions and we really go out of our way to make people feel cared for and comfortable and genuinely safe on our platform I'm sure Ali can add to this we also have a code of conduct which we expect models and viewers to follow we enforce rules we have tons of moderators chase and I are in rooms all day helping our viewers have been really good and supportive they maybe we're not so interested in the sex work portion of this project before and I think that now they're starting to get it they're starting to actually make friends with the performers and really understand that we're people and we want just the same rights and opportunities others so we've been really lucky so far to not have a lot of issues okay thanks a great answer honestly Ali where do you see where do we still as a community need to make progress to make various types of crypto more useful in your daily life and in your work I'd love to be able to freaking use coinbase but yeah that'd be great um yeah I guess it's like what what I mean was saying earlier being able to use and get our product more easily we need some more education in the space because a lot of our users are brand-new to this so I think if we can band together and really support each other and help each other through this and bring more people into this community we're really gonna prosper I think a big part of oh I'm sorry I I was just gonna say I think a big part of it as making people feel comfortable to ask questions because a lot of it feel a lot of the tech world can have an air of elitism or classism to it where you know if you're not the smartest person around it you feel a little scared to ask a question or if you don't understand something it's like oh yeah you don't understand that I think making people feel comfortable with not knowing something asking questions and having that open dialogue could really like move us forward so quickly Thanks Brenna is the audience in Spain different to other camp sites I came in there a few times and I've noticed the clientele are a lot different they like to talk crypto and I've been playing crypto games where I've been guess which cryptic way it is so like yeah they're a lot different and all I want to talk about is crypto one time I was trying to make ribs I was trying to cook ribs and they're like no watch me make ribs so the clientele is a lot different they're smarter they're really really into crypto and they like girls that talk about crypto as well and I don't like to say it's fun cameo in there and you know thank you so I mean um how much saying do the performers have in the changes in the platform or for example do they get like governance right so we haven't like formalized any sort of tokenized governance but so far you know we're trying to build the platform that they want and so they have open communication channels to voice there's you know the features that they want or bugs that they need fixed they come on on to the discord group and they'll let chase or how they know and we'll talking to the devs and add it to the priorities and big things that they're still you know looking for is like private shows it's obvious one we added IP blocking there's a bunch of moderation tools that we had to add when 4chan rated us it's pretty bad so yeah stuff like that I mean we try to do our best to stay on top of the tool building the tools that they need to make a platform that they're comfortable with listening to the community is are like number one thing it's how how can you build something for someone that you're not listening to amazing so Ellie how did you find out about this area - there's something that excites you the most about the platform I started taking Bitcoin in 2014 I had my ass shut down in 2015 so I was really looking for a solution so I was taking things in different wallets hiding money different places so it wouldn't shut me down and then I came across spanked Shane right prior to the ICO and thought this might be it this might be somebody that's actually gonna pull for us and be on our side and it's been really wonderful I think to go back to the last question unfortunately for I mean we're really loud and we talked a lot and we give our opinion a lot so he can't not hear us unfortunately for him a lot but fortunately for literally everyone else we all need to be louder you know oh yeah so Brenna maybe maybe you can explain this better so so you have been using a spanking for how long I would say I've been coming on the site for at least two months and did you find it easy to get on boarded the the DD team help you which are which were the biggest pain point a it's definitely easy to use they give credit to a lien chase there you think she gives basically how to just basically do how to move around the site and it was really easy and he just moderates the whole thing and the whole website is really nice compared to other sites I've cams on like I'm FC charter Bay it looks really really crappy and it's difficult to use like they make this completely just very simple and they also explain like what it's thin and everything so they make it very simple for performers to use nice that's it that's a lot more than regular campsites I believe right mhm it's way more user friendly than any other site even just aesthetically if you take a look at my free camps it looks like late-1990s website it's [ __ ] hard and what would you like to see in the next months wheels in the platform and you know for you to use and enjoy and what what what what awaits there okay I would love someone to pair up with us and make a card where performers can cash out so instead of having to transfer to this wallet or to go to this exchange they can just go to the card go to the ATM take their money out that would be great I think performance really like that especially when a lot of them are making rent or trying to pay that bill tomorrow it's it's very important that they get their money quickly I totally right there with you I'm in a similar vein I would love something along the lines of what we did with crypto titties where it's just direct tipping to a performer but on a better like on a better her bigger and better scale that works and God cashing out would be so nice yes some thing we also didn't mention is while we're in beta our models get a hundred percent so we're taking nothing as a matter of fact we actually it's actually actually costing us money because we pay our performers to be on the site so they're getting all of their money whenever we start taking a fee will take about a five percent fee so they're gonna get ninety five percent which is the usual fifty percent is what they were getting so this is insane it's changing lives honestly other campsites literally take fifty percent of what you earn like if I make $200 on my free cams only 100 of those dollars is mine and then we pay taxes on that I don't have anything else to say and for you Brenna that's [ __ ] I'm done just recently you started talking about this on Twitter where it would be cool if you can make because you know I know there's tipping bots that people make it would be kind of cool where people can just buy adult performers videos or Skype shows and just tip through Twitter and just at actual kind of video they would want I think that would be really really cool cuz I've been seeing a lot of Twitter bots that people play and any volunteers customs for you except spank she talked to us of hackathon project well let's try to [ __ ] let's let's try to us have made an issue after these talk times thanks for the best applicator I'm on I mean sorry so yeah finally you know and obviously this this community is way more open-minded than any other community or like even the world so you know is there something that we still need to work on or how can we help you and include you more we need more women in tech spaces a hundred thousand percent I I did a keynote speech at da home and I felt like a lot of the audience was just snickering they were men and they were like mm-hmm oh my god I'm poor answer like it was really weird to be discounted because these men couldn't fathom a woman being in their space I think that we could grow so much as a community like in the tech world by making women feel more comfortable in the space and not just as like tokenized like sexy faces you know like I'm technically kind of doing up here like yes I am a co-founder of the company but I'm also an adult-film performer like I make pornography so I'm still toeing the line I want women who don't do that to feel comfortable in these spaces because I think there's a lot of blind spots that could be fixed by just another set of female eyes or non male eyes really I think taken more seriously I think we do a lot of talks and we've done it through the adult space and everybody's like oh I get it we're for it you know they they understand they know us they but in this tech space we've just been kind of disregarded for sure this project - it's kind of been a joke and we're the ones doing stuff we have tactical applications so it's a good joke joke's on all of you so brenda helton hey what can we do to make your life C easier make my life easier honestly blockchain offers freedom for world that does not want me you know this is why I support it make it easier to take money I mean I don't think we asked for anything unreasonable I think those we're all think things in a regular space we just want to be part of it we just want to be equal we just want the same rights like if if you don't like what we're doing just don't log in don't search us that's it I don't think that we need to you know you don't have to come and hate us and tweet at us because the problem that we're fixing is there are tons of people who want to give us money and we can't accept that money which seems like a very silly problem when you really think about it so something that could make our lives easier is focusing on the value that the sex work industry holds and has held since the beginning of time as you know the oldest profession starting from you know prostitution and stripping phone sex selling nudes private snapchats all of these things like there's so much money to be made if you would just suck it up and stop being babies and it's okay if you're like not into sex stuff you don't have to be it's just tech so and like from taking like from people not taking your your project seriously you know actually behind the project there's amazing state channels work so maybe I mean kind of just like briefly update us on this because you know if they don't take sex if they don't text it take sex seriously maybe they take take these seriously yeah so I think Vitalik actually put it really well when he said he's saying that he loves our marketing strategy which is like make technology that's so good that everyone has to talk about it and some first first thing we did was April 2nd we launched the beta which had the first functioning payment channels on maintenance oh that was custodial you were had your you know viewer open the payment channel with the hub but the hub held on to the money and then the one that performers wanted we would cash them out last week we upgraded that to the first-ever non-custodial payment channel hub on the ethereum maenette where uses sort of leapfrogged over hash lock technology and implemented the per in style virtual channels and so you know what that does is it creates like fully peer-to-peer money streams essentially that go from the user to the performer that just like relay through the hub and yeah probably an open source that pretty soon so everybody can have it and then it'll also have a URC 20 support in 30 days and we launched the spank bank which is our algorithmic central bank that we're trying to launch without attracting too much attention by shrouding it enough obscenity that nobody asked him any questions yeah so we moved I don't know something like fifty thousand dollars through the site ten thousand last month and so yeah we'll have the first wallet that like uses ether properly because it'll have a little gas station icon and you'll have a little you keep in reserve and use that to pay your transactions than all the rest of it doesn't matter what's going on those token transfers and stuff so okay sorry there's just way too much stuff to like cover we just launched so much more stuff and then so much more stuff is coming like we're gonna build a state channel exchange called come swap except it's gonna be CEO Emmy because well originally we were thinking about doing see um but decided that would be vulgar so we're not gonna do that come come swap with us that's pretty serious to me does anyone have any doubts that spunk to any serious like please stand up and ask a question this is for you I mean okay what made you get into this I mean I have three theories in mine I don't know which one's the right one one either your love for the sex industry or two because it makes very clear financial sense there's a vacuum in that industry which you're trying to fill all three was it something more personal you start out to help a friend and then graduated to what you're doing now yeah it's a good question and good framing so it's a combination so it started out where you know I was the the payment channel expert at consensus for about a year and then I left and I was like I wonder where the best application of payment channels is gonna be right and you know to be fair like I'm not a prude per se like I watch a healthy amount of pornography you know enough to understand the market and and whatnot I wasn't like shying away from it and I was also aspiring rationalist which is that you try to do the thing that makes sense despite what you know other people might think or what have you and so we started out and I was like this seems like a good application for payment channels and then started doing real research and then realized that like no this industry is actually like totally discriminated against by the existing financial system and if luck chain is going to work anywhere it's gonna work here and like in fact if we're true to like all of the things that we actually hope to achieve like this is the community that needs it the most and we'll move on it fastest and so we can by building for this community learn the most about how to bring this technology to everybody else sees function a serious any other questions Dean I'm I have a marketing question for you when it comes to our pronoun trophy consumption we're still you know on a general level was still prudes you know we don't open the advertiser and this way you were missing on a big chunk of you know where the mouth marketing and stuff like that for example I signed up for PIPA and I went on Twitter and brand bragged about it but a lot of people probably don't go and advertise you know their pronoun grafite preferences on social media or you know talk to their friends about that is that hindering your your mass adoption is that an issue for span chain I don't think so because somehow you guys all know who we are things where you know people talk about it and you know behind closed doors but enough people talk about it behind closed doors that they may as well be talking about it in public because if you have the same conversation over and over with different people you're still spreading the word you know you don't have to talk about the kind of porn you're watching to be like hey look this payment processing solution helps fix discriminatory practices against a group of marginalized people you don't have to talk about sex to be like wow we're helping people who need help and who have been discriminated against by these financial institutions since the beginning of time so our marketing is cool in that like it appeals to people who just want to help and it appeals to people who love to watch people [ __ ] and otherwise you know true sex positivity is like I support you if you want to have all of the sex in the world or none of the sex and you never want to see naked people ever that's what real sex positivity is and I'm proud to be a part of a sex positive company where we don't try to force-feed you things it's like you can take part of in whatever part of this resonates the most with you you just can't hate us for it any other question law school since performance in the face of problems with bank accounts and is literally every single one of them it's every single performer has had a problem with the financial institution so that solution every time that's like a few weeks it's not but mine was solved within 24 hours only because I post and I was retweeted a lot I left one bank because they were shutting down my colleagues accounts I was kicked out of another bank because they decided that you know they didn't want my money anymore and I try to keep all of my transactions very secret very you know like I'm incorporated under a name that has nothing to do with my stage name it's a lot of time work and energy to stay under the radar for these traditional financial institutions I literally could not put a time like an amount of time on how much I've spent trying to get my cash out back trying to get my venmo back trying to get square cash or Shopify or Big Cartel or stripe or PayPal to just answer a lot of these people don't even care if we appeal they're like oh no you're a [ __ ] goodbye okay what your ally can yeah I certainly can think of three of those ones that you name that I never got money back on and it's not that I'm doing anything illegal again everything I'm doing is legal it's just sometimes I show my tits and sometimes I show my feet but is that a thing that I should be discriminated against and we're also talking about like the United States personally for us when you know in other places in the world prostitution isn't even illegal and payment processors or processors are still discriminating against us and even in the United States we have legal prostitution in one County in Nevada and we still are criminalized for everything it's you would think that we were killing people out there well thank you so much first of all thank you so much I lead Danny's branagh you have been great and yeah thanks I mean - you're fine I guess [Applause]