back to indexSergey Nazarov: Chainlink, Smart Contracts, and Oracle Networks | Lex Fridman Podcast #181
link |
The following is a conversation with Sergei Nazarov,
link |
CEO of Chainlink, which is a decentralized Oracle network
link |
that provides data to smart contracts.
link |
He and his team have done seminal research
link |
and engineering in the space of smart contracts.
link |
Check out the Chainlink 2.0 white paper
link |
that I found to be a great overview
link |
of their technology and vision.
link |
It's 136 pages, but very accessible.
link |
Quick mention of our sponsors.
link |
Wine Access, Athletic Greens, Magic Spoon, Indeed,
link |
Check them out in the description
link |
to support this podcast.
link |
As a side note, let me say that
link |
externally connected smart contracts
link |
that combine the ocean of data out there
link |
with the security of the blockchain are fascinating to me,
link |
both technically and philosophically.
link |
Data is knowledge, and knowledge is power.
link |
I think the more reliable data sources we integrate
link |
into our decision making,
link |
especially when those decisions are executed by programs,
link |
the more efficient and productive our decisions become.
link |
There are interactions between humans
link |
that should not be formalized digitally,
link |
like love, for example, but for all the others,
link |
there's no reason for smart contracts
link |
not to automate away the menial parts of life,
link |
making more room for good conversation over brisket
link |
and maybe some vodka with old and new friends.
link |
This is the Lex Friedman podcast,
link |
and here is my conversation with Sergey Nazarov.
link |
Is that Jozsik there?
link |
So I gave away everything I own a few times in my life,
link |
and he accidentally survived,
link |
and I don't like stuffed animals.
link |
What I really liked about, I got him in a thrift store.
link |
What I liked about him is,
link |
because I'd never seen a stuffed animal
link |
that looks pissed off at life.
link |
Like they're usually smiling in the dumbest of ways,
link |
and this guy was just pissed.
link |
Yeah, I gotta tell you, that's actually pretty funny.
link |
If you had to live only in the digital world
link |
or the physical world, which would you choose?
link |
So I think this is actually a question
link |
more about what the fidelity of the digital world would be
link |
versus the physical world.
link |
I think this type of question,
link |
this whole simulation thing actually comes from papers
link |
about 20, 30 years ago in the philosophical world
link |
where people tried to make this thought experiment
link |
of would you be comfortable
link |
if everything that was happening to you
link |
happened in a simulation?
link |
What they were trying to do
link |
is they were intuitively trying to understand
link |
is there some kind of intuitive personal connection
link |
we have to something being the real world, right?
link |
And then the Matrix movie actually came out of these papers,
link |
and then these ideas made their way
link |
into the public consciousness.
link |
I personally think that if I had the choice
link |
to be in the digital world at the same fidelity
link |
as the real world with immortality,
link |
I would absolutely go with the digital.
link |
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
link |
How'd you add the immortality part?
link |
That's a, you don't get immortality.
link |
If you think about how we would go
link |
into the digital world, right?
link |
Our brain patterns would be mapped
link |
onto some kind of probably virtual machine, right?
link |
And that would mean immortality, right?
link |
Because the virtual machine has no limit
link |
to how long it can exist.
link |
So don't you think there'll be like a versioning system?
link |
Like there'll be, this is a soft fork
link |
versus hard fork question.
link |
Whether Sergei version 2.0 would be different
link |
from Sergei version 1.0, there'll be an upgrade.
link |
So that's a mortality.
link |
Sergei 1.0 would die in the digital world.
link |
And you get like a software update, and then that's it.
link |
Well, yeah, when people go into the Star Trek transporter,
link |
are they killed or are they transported?
link |
I don't really know.
link |
I haven't written any papers on this.
link |
I haven't really thought about it too much.
link |
There's no white paper on the transporter.
link |
Not at this point, so.
link |
Well, what does fidelity mean exactly to you?
link |
Is it like strictly, so the fidelity of the physics world,
link |
the physical world is maybe now questions of physics,
link |
quantum mechanics, what is at the bottom of it all?
link |
Or do you mean the fidelity of the actual experience?
link |
Like the original state? It's just perception.
link |
It's just perception.
link |
But that's limited by human cognitive capabilities.
link |
It is, but I don't really have anything else, right?
link |
I think all of these papers
link |
that brought up these questions of assimilation,
link |
they were like in epistemology and metaphysics.
link |
And what they were trying to do, I think,
link |
was they were trying to put people
link |
through a thought experiment
link |
where they would come out on the other end
link |
and say the reality of life is really worth something.
link |
And I don't, you know, ignorance isn't bliss,
link |
which is that consistent statement in the matrix, right?
link |
Ignorance is bliss is that that's what one of the guys says
link |
when he's like, you know, doing something wrong
link |
and trying to get back into the matrix.
link |
And the question is, is ignorance bliss?
link |
And it's like a different version of that.
link |
I think from a perceptual point of view,
link |
if my perceptions aren't in any way different,
link |
so fidelity is very good, it doesn't matter.
link |
I don't know, right?
link |
So if I don't know something, it doesn't really exist.
link |
And if it doesn't exist in my perception
link |
or my consciousness, then it doesn't exist,
link |
period, for me, at least.
link |
And then whether it exists in some, you know,
link |
more metaphysical version of things,
link |
I personally never really got into the metaphysics stuff
link |
because I could never really,
link |
I couldn't understand what the point of it was, right?
link |
It's one of these things where I couldn't really get
link |
what the practical application of it was.
link |
And this is from those realm of questions, right?
link |
Like if there was something about the world,
link |
but you didn't have a capacity to perceive it,
link |
would it matter to you?
link |
To me, it wouldn't matter.
link |
Right, to me, by the way, the simulation thing
link |
is a really interesting engineering question,
link |
which is how difficult is it to engineer a virtual reality,
link |
a digital world that is sufficiently of high fidelity
link |
where you would want to live in it?
link |
I think that's a really testable
link |
and a fascinating engineering question.
link |
So my intuition says like,
link |
it's not as difficult as we think.
link |
It's not nearly as difficult as having to create
link |
a quantum mechanical simulation that's large enough
link |
to capture the full human experience.
link |
Like it might be just as simple
link |
as just a really nice quake game,
link |
like with a nice engine,
link |
with just creating all the basic visual elements
link |
that trick our cognitive, our visual cortex
link |
into believing that we're actually
link |
in the physical environment.
link |
And I think that if that's true,
link |
then that's quite a high fidelity digital world
link |
is actually achievable within a century.
link |
And that changes things.
link |
Yeah, yeah, maybe in our lifetime.
link |
I'm really hoping for that.
link |
I'm hoping somebody can copy my brainwaves
link |
onto a virtual machine and allow that consciousness
link |
to continue to exist.
link |
Whether that's death or not, I don't know.
link |
But I think it's actually gonna require some serious leaps.
link |
Like even the VR headsets, right?
link |
They don't work if they go below 90 frame rates, right?
link |
People start getting freaked out.
link |
So you have to go from one gaming screen
link |
of 60 frames per second
link |
to two screens of 90 frames per second.
link |
And so people's hardware today can't even handle that.
link |
And that's for these two little screens by your eyeballs.
link |
What it's gonna take to completely trick my consciousness
link |
into not knowing the difference
link |
in terms of like all the sensory inputs.
link |
I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
link |
Whoever does that and is close to doing that,
link |
they should contact me.
link |
I want to have my brainwaves turned into a virtual machine.
link |
Would you in that context, if Morpheus came to you,
link |
would you take the blue pill or the red pill?
link |
Meaning, would you be happy just living in that world
link |
and not knowing that you're living inside that virtual world
link |
that's running a computer?
link |
Or would you want to know the truth of it?
link |
Well, actually I think that's a very different question,
link |
There's a actually moral ethical question there
link |
about whether you should allow a bunch of people
link |
to get manipulated and killed and slaved,
link |
because in the matrix they're all enslaved
link |
as like a AAA battery
link |
to turn a human being into the battery, right?
link |
So I think the moral and ethical question of that,
link |
fascinating enough, isn't actually different
link |
than the moral and ethical questions we face today
link |
in modern daily life.
link |
But I probably have given the choice
link |
of just completely going along or going against it.
link |
I would probably go against it
link |
if I had to make this kind of binary choice.
link |
Because going along with it,
link |
I think at that scale of scary stuff happening to people
link |
is probably something really, really, really difficult.
link |
But for your individual life,
link |
it's way more fun to go along with it.
link |
So you're saying you value the opposing a system
link |
that includes the suffering of others
link |
versus just for yourself enjoying the ride.
link |
I mean, if there is such a binary choice,
link |
why choose to oppose the system?
link |
I think it's the nature of kind of the ethical dilemma
link |
that you face in that situation.
link |
There's kind of some,
link |
this is obviously not something that's happening now, right?
link |
We don't know this, right?
link |
No, we don't know this.
link |
At the end of the day,
link |
at that scale of something like that happening,
link |
yeah, that scale of people being manipulated and harmed,
link |
then I think pretty much almost all people
link |
have an obligation to go against it.
link |
Probably that's what that looks like in my opinion.
link |
So you've talked about the concept of definitive truth.
link |
And in general, what is the nature of truth
link |
in human civilization?
link |
And just talking about the digital age,
link |
the nature of truth in the digital age.
link |
So the interesting thing about definitive truth
link |
is that it actually exists on this,
link |
at least in my mind on this spectrum
link |
between objective truth and just somebody made something up
link |
and nobody else agrees.
link |
So what I think definitive truth is,
link |
is it's somewhere in the middle on that spectrum
link |
where if you and me define what truth is, right?
link |
Like if you and me have an agreement of some kind
link |
and we say, as long as the weather is sunny
link |
or the weather isn't, there is no rain on that day,
link |
then there'll be an insurance policy that results
link |
and you and me both agree that as long as three sensors,
link |
three weather monitoring stations all say that,
link |
then the definitive truth for us and for that agreement
link |
is the result of those systems coming to consensus
link |
about what happened out in the real world.
link |
I think the objective truth definition
link |
from kind of the philosophical world
link |
is really, really stringent and very, very hard to attain.
link |
And that's not what this is.
link |
And that's actually not what commerce
link |
or the ability for people to interact about contracts needs.
link |
What I think the world of commerce needs is an upgrade
link |
from someone can unilaterally decide what the truth is
link |
to there can be a pre agreed set of conditions
link |
where we define what the truth is under those conditions.
link |
And then you and me basically say,
link |
if these 20 nodes or of these 30 data sources
link |
come to consensus within this method of consensus
link |
with this threshold of agreement,
link |
then definitive truth has been achieved for you and me
link |
in our relationship for this specific agreement
link |
and the specificity and our shared agreement
link |
to that kind of truth or that definitive truth
link |
being acceptable to both of us is probably
link |
what's kind of necessary and sufficient
link |
for everything to move forward in a better way.
link |
In any case, much better than,
link |
I'm a bank or an insurance company,
link |
I'm gonna unilaterally decide what happens.
link |
It's definitely an upgrade from that.
link |
Do you think it's possible to define formally in this way,
link |
a definitive truth for many things in this world?
link |
Like you talked about weather,
link |
basically defining that if three sensors of weather agree,
link |
then that we're going to agree that that is a definitive,
link |
useful truth for us to operate under.
link |
So how many things in this world
link |
can be formalized in this way, do you think?
link |
So there's actually two things going on here.
link |
One thing is the amount of data that already exists
link |
and the pieces of data coming off of markets,
link |
IOT, shipment of goods, any number of other things.
link |
Like even your YouTube channel has a certain amount
link |
of likes or a certain amount of clicks
link |
or a certain amount of views
link |
and even that's quantifiable.
link |
So even to a certain degree, what we do here today,
link |
you and me right now can be quantified
link |
as far as the amount of views, the amount of clicks,
link |
the amount of any number of other things.
link |
Yeah, you, the viewer, have power of data in your hands
link |
by clicking like or dislike right now
link |
or the subscribe button or the unsubscribe button,
link |
which I encourage you to do.
link |
Anyway, okay, so there's data flowing
link |
into all interactions in this world, there's data.
link |
There's more and more data, right?
link |
More and more data.
link |
More and more data.
link |
That data is more and more accessible to everybody
link |
and that accessibility and the fact that there's more of it
link |
means we can form more definitive truth proofs.
link |
We can form more and more proofs
link |
and as we form those proofs, well, we can provide them
link |
to these blockchains and smart contract systems
link |
that consume them and then they're tamper proof, right?
link |
So they can't be manipulated.
link |
And so now we've combined a system that can prove things
link |
with a system that guarantees a certain outcomes
link |
and we have a better system of contracts,
link |
which is actually an unbelievably powerful tool
link |
that has never existed before.
link |
Can we talk about the world of commerce and finance,
link |
decentralized finance?
link |
What is it, what's its promise
link |
from both the philosophical and technical perspective?
link |
If we just zoom in on that particular space
link |
of the digital world.
link |
Sure, so the decentralized finance is the instantiation
link |
of a specific type of smart contract, right?
link |
Or what I call hybrid smart contracts,
link |
which are these contracts that combine the on chain code
link |
together with the off chain proofs that something happened.
link |
They're called a hybrid
link |
because they basically use both of these systems, right?
link |
The blockchain and the proofs about what happened.
link |
And what DeFi is, is one specific type
link |
of hybrid smart contract that is taking
link |
on the contractual agreements you traditionally find
link |
in the global financial system, right?
link |
And that's basically the world of lending,
link |
the world of yield generation
link |
for people giving me or giving whoever their money
link |
and somebody giving back them yield back to them,
link |
which is what bonds do and what treasuries do
link |
and what a lot of the global financial markets do,
link |
as well as the ability to gain exposure and protection
link |
from different types of events and risks.
link |
That's a lot of what derivatives do, right?
link |
Derivatives allow us to say, hey, something's gonna happen.
link |
And I'm either gonna protect myself
link |
by getting paid if it happens,
link |
or I'm going to benefit from it happening
link |
by basically saying it's gonna happen,
link |
putting money down on that,
link |
and that prediction will get me a return.
link |
Now, that's a very large part
link |
of the global financial system,
link |
excluding all the stuff for global trade
link |
and letters of credit and all the stuff
link |
that facilitates international trade.
link |
So excluding that at least for now.
link |
So if we look at what decentralized finance does,
link |
it takes all of those agreements
link |
about generating yield, lending,
link |
and all of these types of things you find in global finance
link |
and the world of derivatives
link |
and a few other types of financial products.
link |
And it basically puts them into a different format, right?
link |
So the format you have for centralized financial agreements
link |
is that you go to a bank,
link |
even if you're a hedge fund,
link |
even if you're like the richest people,
link |
you go to a bank, they make a product for you,
link |
and you hope that they honor
link |
the product that they made for you.
link |
Or you do a deal with another hedge fund
link |
or whoever, some counterparty,
link |
and you hope that that deal is honored.
link |
And then a number of very freaky things start to take place.
link |
One of them is people don't have clarity
link |
about what the agreement is, right?
link |
So a lot of people don't know exactly
link |
what the agreement is between those parties
link |
because they can't actually see it.
link |
Sometimes agreements are kept very private
link |
or parts of them are kept private.
link |
And that keeps other counterparties,
link |
other people in the system
link |
from understanding what's going on.
link |
This is actually partly what happened
link |
with the mortgage crisis.
link |
The mortgage crisis in 2008 was basically,
link |
there were a lot of agreements, there were a lot of assets,
link |
but because the centralized financial system
link |
worked in such an opaque way,
link |
it was so unbelievably difficult
link |
to understand what was going on, right?
link |
And so that lack of understanding
link |
for the global financial system
link |
basically led to a big boom,
link |
and then correspondingly, very, very big bust,
link |
which amazingly enough had a huge impact on everybody,
link |
even though they didn't participate
link |
in the boom part of the equation.
link |
In any case, what decentralized finance does
link |
is it takes these financial contracts
link |
that power the global financial system,
link |
it puts them in this new blockchain based format
link |
that basically at this point
link |
provides three very powerful things.
link |
The first thing that it provides is complete transparency
link |
over what's going on with your financial product.
link |
So this means when you use a financial product
link |
in the DeFi format, you, and you as a technical person
link |
actually can drill down very, very, very deeply,
link |
and you can understand where the collateral is,
link |
you can understand how much collateral there is,
link |
you can understand what format it's in,
link |
you can understand how it's changing,
link |
you can understand this on a second to second
link |
or block to block basis, right?
link |
So you have complete transparency
link |
into what's going on in the financial protocol
link |
that you have your assets in,
link |
which is because blockchains and the infrastructure,
link |
all of these things are built on, force that transparency.
link |
Whereas the centralized financial system
link |
is very, very good at hiding it.
link |
It's very good at hiding it
link |
and packaging things in a glossy wrapper,
link |
creating a boom, then a bust.
link |
The centralized finance is built on infrastructure
link |
that forces transparency such that everyone can understand
link |
what the financial product does from day one.
link |
And in fact, escaping that property is practically impossible
link |
or if someone tries to escape it,
link |
it becomes immediately obvious
link |
and people don't use their financial product.
link |
So that's number one.
link |
Number two is control.
link |
So if you look at what happened with Robinhood,
link |
everybody thought the system worked a certain way, right?
link |
Everybody thought I have a brokerage account,
link |
I can trade things under a certain set of market conditions.
link |
And then the market conditions changed
link |
within the band of what people thought they could do.
link |
And everybody was fascinated to find out that,
link |
oh my God, I thought my band of market conditions
link |
in which I can control my assets is X,
link |
but it is actually Y,
link |
is actually much, much smaller band.
link |
And the reason it is a much, much smaller
link |
group of market conditions
link |
is that the system doesn't work
link |
the way people think it works.
link |
The system was wrapped up in a nice glossy wrapper
link |
and given to them to get them to participate in the system
link |
because the system requires and needs their participation.
link |
But if you actually look at how the system works underneath,
link |
you will see that it does not work
link |
the way people think that it works.
link |
And this is actually another reason that DeFi is so powerful
link |
because DeFi actually, and these blockchain contracts,
link |
give people the version of the world
link |
they think they already have,
link |
which is why they don't beg for it, right?
link |
So everybody thinks they're in a certain version
link |
of the world that works in this reliable way,
link |
transparent way, they're not.
link |
They don't realize it.
link |
And so they're confused when you tell them,
link |
I'm gonna make the world work this way
link |
because they think they're already in that world.
link |
But then things like Robinhood make it immediately,
link |
painfully clear that that's not how the world works
link |
so that the second real property of DeFi is control,
link |
which means that you control your assets,
link |
not a bank, not a broker, not a third party, you.
link |
You control your Bitcoins,
link |
you control your tokens in the finance protocol.
link |
If you don't like how something's going in that protocol,
link |
you can remove it, you can send it to another protocol,
link |
or you can use a feature of the protocol
link |
to do something it's supposed to do.
link |
Nobody can just say, oops, that feature,
link |
that isn't so good for my friends over here.
link |
That feature is actually,
link |
we're just gonna pause that feature in the critical moment
link |
when you need it to execute your strategy,
link |
which is why you took all the risks to begin with.
link |
And then the final reason, the final thing to know about DeFi
link |
is that DeFi is inherently global,
link |
and actually right now provides better yield globally.
link |
So if you go to a bank right now with the US dollar,
link |
you get 1% or less.
link |
If you go to DeFi with the US dollar, you get 7% or 8%.
link |
So if we think about that in a world
link |
where there's a lot of inflation coming down the road,
link |
and we think about, well, a lot more systems
link |
might be failing soon,
link |
and they might be highlighting these types of problems
link |
that were there for, or as a result of the type of control
link |
that you see in Robinhood,
link |
and people are more and more concerned
link |
about both transparency and control,
link |
and they're looking for yield to combat inflation.
link |
I think that's what DeFi is about in a practical sense.
link |
It is this clarity about your risk.
link |
It is control over your assets.
link |
And amazingly, at the same time
link |
as having those two unbelievably useful properties,
link |
it is actually superior yield,
link |
which just leads me to the very obvious conclusion
link |
that the only reason DeFi is more used
link |
is because more people don't know about it.
link |
And by virtue of this long kind of explanation
link |
here and elsewhere, more people will know about it.
link |
And it's just such an obviously superior solution
link |
that I haven't heard a single explanation as to why.
link |
No, no, don't earn 8% and take less risk
link |
and have more transparency with your assets.
link |
Earn 7% less, take more risk,
link |
and give people the ability to change the rules on you
link |
at their discretion, go do that.
link |
Who's gonna do that?
link |
And in general, on the first two of transparency and control,
link |
first of all, I do think, maybe you can correct me,
link |
but from my perspective, they're deeply tied together
link |
in the sense that transparency gives control.
link |
Transparency creates accountability,
link |
and there's this kind of game being played,
link |
game theoretic game, where if I know,
link |
if you know I'm gonna discover your deviation,
link |
you're not gonna deviate.
link |
Yes, this could be a whole nother conversation,
link |
but just as a small aside,
link |
on the social network side of things,
link |
which I've been thinking deeply about in the past year or so,
link |
of how to do it right there, how to fix our social media.
link |
And I tend to believe that human beings,
link |
if they're given clear transparency
link |
about which data is being stored, how it's being used,
link |
where it's being moved about,
link |
just all a clear, simple transparency
link |
of how their data is being used,
link |
and them having the control at the very minimal level
link |
of being able to participate or to walk away,
link |
and walk away means delete everything
link |
you've ever known about me.
link |
That will create a much, much better world.
link |
That currently there's a complete lack of transparency
link |
on social media, how the data is being used
link |
for your own protection.
link |
I mean, there's a lot of parallels
link |
to the central bank situation,
link |
and there's not a control element
link |
of being able to walk away.
link |
Like being able to delete all your data,
link |
delete your account on Facebook is very difficult.
link |
It doesn't take a single click,
link |
which I think is what it should take.
link |
There should be a big red button that says,
link |
delete everything you've ever known about me,
link |
or like forget me.
link |
So I think that coupled together can create
link |
a very different kind of world and create
link |
an incentivization that will lead to like progress
link |
and innovation and just like a much better social network
link |
and a really good business for the future social networks.
link |
But so I tend to see like control as naturally
link |
being a sort of an outgrowth from the transparency.
link |
It should all start at the transparency,
link |
which is why the smart contract formulation is fascinating.
link |
Because like you're formalizing in a simple, clear way,
link |
any agreements that you're participating in.
link |
And as a side comment also, what's really inspiring to me
link |
is that I think there's a greater,
link |
I don't know if this is always the case,
link |
but it seems like from having talked to people
link |
on the psychological element,
link |
there's a hunger amongst people for transparency
link |
Like transparency, another word for that is authenticity.
link |
If you look at the kind of stuff that people hunger for now,
link |
they want to know the reality of who you are
link |
So that means you can create businesses,
link |
you can create tools that are built on authenticity,
link |
And then the same, I'm inspired by the intelligence
link |
of people, if you give them control,
link |
if you give them power, that they would make good choices.
link |
That's really exciting.
link |
Of course, not everybody, but that means that
link |
decentralized power can create effective systems.
link |
So couple that, there's a hunger for transparency
link |
so we can move to a world where everyone's being
link |
just like real, conveying their genuine human nature.
link |
And people are sufficiently intelligent
link |
that if they're given power
link |
in a distributed mass scale sense,
link |
that we're going to build a better world through that,
link |
as opposed to centralized supervised control
link |
or only a small percent of the population
link |
know what the hell they're doing.
link |
Everybody else is clueless sheep.
link |
So those two coupled together is really to me inspiring.
link |
Just to really quickly comment on this stuff
link |
that you just said, which I think is super,
link |
super, super fascinating.
link |
I think that's all exactly right.
link |
I think everything that you said is right.
link |
And I think it's actually going to be the same
link |
for social media and banking and every other type
link |
of contract, is that all of those systems
link |
that house people's value for them
link |
and take control of either their social media value
link |
or their financial value or whatever for them,
link |
all of that is going to be made available to people
link |
in like this autonomous piece of code
link |
that does the same thing
link |
that the centralized entity used to do.
link |
So they get all the features,
link |
but the autonomous piece of code gives them the ability
link |
to have control while getting all the features, right?
link |
So banks give you features,
link |
social media sites give you features,
link |
whatever other system that you use online
link |
gives you features, and then it takes your data
link |
and it takes control of your assets from you
link |
in return for those features, right?
link |
I think the whole big difference here,
link |
partly in line with the definition of smart contracts
link |
and its evolution is that there's this,
link |
now there's this autonomous piece of code
link |
that's giving you all those features
link |
without requiring the ownership and lock in and control
link |
and unilateral kind of ownership of your data
link |
or your value or whatever it is that you're giving it, right?
link |
And I think what this will lead to fundamentally
link |
is just more of a free market dynamic
link |
among how people make,
link |
I think with the social media folks,
link |
you should just make some kind of law or something
link |
where you can just export all your data from them,
link |
everyone should be able to get their data exported
link |
by another application,
link |
and then the network effect of all these social media sites
link |
will kind of crumble
link |
because people will just combine your Twitter data
link |
with your Facebook data, with everything else
link |
into an application that you control,
link |
and there'll just be thousands of different interfaces
link |
competing for how to consume all the social media data
link |
because it isn't locked in
link |
in one centralized actor's control.
link |
And so this is just the recurring pattern
link |
of what I think all of this will do
link |
is it'll give people, it gives people a better deal, right?
link |
It gives them features without ownership of data,
link |
without ownership of value,
link |
and that's really the difference.
link |
So I think this is a good place
link |
to talk about smart contracts then.
link |
Can you tell me the history of smart contracts
link |
and the basic sort of definitions of what is it?
link |
Sure, so I think smart contracts as a definition
link |
has actually gone through some kind of changes
link |
or small evolution.
link |
Initially, I think it was actually a conception
link |
of a digital agreement that was tamper proof
link |
and could know things about the world, right?
link |
So it could get proof
link |
and it could define that something happened
link |
and it could conclude an outcome
link |
and release payment or do something else.
link |
That's actually the definition of smart contracts
link |
that I began working in this industry with
link |
seven or eight years ago
link |
when I started making smart contracts.
link |
That is the conception that I had of a smart contract.
link |
Then what happened was that was really hard to do, right?
link |
Building that type of tamper proof digital agreement
link |
that could also know things about the real world
link |
and release payments back to people about those events
link |
that were codified in this tamper proof format
link |
was actually a very tall order.
link |
Turns out it's consistent of three parts.
link |
It's consisting of the contract,
link |
the proof about what happened
link |
and the release of value.
link |
The way things have evolved so far
link |
is that the definition has now come to mean on chain code.
link |
So it's come to mean the codification
link |
of contractual agreement on a blockchain, right?
link |
So there's some code somewhere on some blockchain
link |
that defines what the agreement is.
link |
Now that eliminates the part of the definition
link |
that's related to knowing things about the world
link |
and it partly eliminates the definition about payments
link |
and stuff like that.
link |
But basically it's on chain code, right?
link |
We in our recent work on a second white paper
link |
have actually put out a different definition
link |
that we call hybrid smart contracts
link |
that actually tries to go back to the initial definition
link |
that I started with seven or eight years ago,
link |
which basically says that there's some proof somewhere
link |
that's proven to the contract
link |
and the contract can know that
link |
and the contract can gain proof.
link |
Then it can use that proof to settle the agreement
link |
that's codified on a blockchain.
link |
So you both need a mechanism to provide proof.
link |
You need a mechanism to codify the contract
link |
in a tamper proof way on something like a blockchain.
link |
And then as with all contracts,
link |
there's a presumption that there's
link |
some kind of release of value.
link |
So I think a smart contract in our industry right now
link |
means on chain code,
link |
which limits it to whatever can be done on chain only.
link |
And then in our internal definition for us
link |
and for us at Chainlink and for me,
link |
it's hybrid smart contracts,
link |
which is actually the original definition.
link |
It's the idea that a contract can both know what happened
link |
and automatically resolve to the proper outcome
link |
based on what happened.
link |
So you're referring to the Chainlink 2.0 white paper,
link |
which is a paper that I recommend people look.
link |
It's a very easy read and very well structured
link |
and very thorough.
link |
So I really enjoyed it.
link |
Very recently released, I guess.
link |
Can you dig in deeper?
link |
What is a hybrid smart contract?
link |
You mentioned sort of this idea of data
link |
or knowing about the world and on chain and off chain.
link |
So what are the different roles in this?
link |
So hybrid, by the way, refers to the fact
link |
that it's on chain and off chain contracts.
link |
So maybe digging deeper of what the heck is it
link |
and what does it mean to know stuff about the world?
link |
Like how do you actually achieve that?
link |
So the on chain part is where the agreement itself is.
link |
That's the smart contract itself.
link |
And that's where you codify certain conditions,
link |
such as the conditions under which an interest payment
link |
is made or the conditions under which the contract pays out
link |
the full amount that it holds to someone based
link |
on a derivative outcome or something like that.
link |
Now, what the on chain code is very good at
link |
is creating transparency about what the core conditions
link |
of the contract are.
link |
It's very good at taking in money from other private keys
link |
that send it tokens and send it value to hold.
link |
And then it's also very good at returning money
link |
or returning value back to other addresses
link |
or other private keys.
link |
It can also be involved in governance.
link |
It can be involved in a few other private key signature
link |
But primarily the on chain part of a hybrid smart contract,
link |
from what I've seen so far, defines the agreement,
link |
takes in value and returns value based upon the conditions
link |
codified in the agreement on a blockchain.
link |
The second and equally important off chain part
link |
is where the term oracle and an oracle comes in
link |
or an oracle mechanism or a decentralized oracle network
link |
as we describe it in the paper.
link |
And this is another decentralized computational system
link |
that has a different goal, right?
link |
So blockchains have the goal of packaging transactions
link |
into blocks and connecting them
link |
in a cryptographically unique way to create security
link |
and assurance about that chain of transactions.
link |
Oracles and decentralized oracle networks
link |
achieve consensus and they achieve decentralization
link |
about the topic of what happened, right?
link |
So blockchains structure transactions.
link |
Some of those transactions might be the state changes
link |
in different pieces of on chain code.
link |
And then those on chain pieces of code require input.
link |
I think the thing that people get kind of a little bit
link |
thrown by is despite being called smart contracts,
link |
the on chain code on a blockchain
link |
cannot actually speak to any other system.
link |
So blockchains are valuable and useful
link |
as far as they're tamper proof and secure.
link |
And to be tamper proof and secure,
link |
they're made this kind of walled garden
link |
that is able to know and interact
link |
only with the highly reliable information
link |
that's within that system,
link |
which is basically tokens and private key signatures.
link |
All the other world's information is not available
link |
in a blockchain inherently.
link |
And a smart contract or a piece of on chain code
link |
can't just say, hey, I'm gonna go get some data
link |
from over here because the API they would get it from
link |
creates a whole bunch of security concerns
link |
for the blockchain itself
link |
and a whole bunch of consensus issues
link |
about how to agree on what that API said
link |
or what the truth of the world is, right?
link |
Because it's not even agreeing on what one API said,
link |
it's more so creating a reliable
link |
form of decentralized computation
link |
that can give you a definitive proof of what happened
link |
and not just what one API said.
link |
So for example, some of our most widely used networks
link |
have well over 30 nodes and well over 10 data sources
link |
that are all providing information
link |
about the same type of data.
link |
And then there's consensus on that one piece of data,
link |
which is then written in and essentially given back
link |
into the on chain code to tell it what happened
link |
because you can't really make an agreement
link |
unless you know what happened, right?
link |
If you and me were to make an agreement
link |
and set some contractual conditions,
link |
but our agreement could never know what happened,
link |
it would be completely useless.
link |
However, if you and me made an agreement
link |
and there was another system called an Oracle mechanism
link |
or decentralized Oracle network
link |
that proved what happened definitively
link |
and you and me pre agreed
link |
that whatever this mechanism says is what happened,
link |
then we can achieve an entirely new level of automation.
link |
We can suddenly say, there's this piece of on chain code
link |
that's highly reliable.
link |
We can give it millions, billions,
link |
eventually trillions of dollars in value.
link |
And it is controlled by this other system over here
link |
that's also highly reliable
link |
under this configurable set of definitive truth
link |
and decentralization conditions,
link |
which we all agree are sufficiently stringent
link |
to control that much value.
link |
And therefore the combination
link |
of this tamper proof on chain representation of a contract
link |
and this mutually agreed upon definition
link |
of a trigger or a proof system combined
link |
is a hybrid smart contract,
link |
which as you can see probably already
link |
does a lot more than just a contract on chain, right?
link |
Can you talk about this consensus mechanism,
link |
which by the way is just fascinating.
link |
So there's the on chain consensus mechanism
link |
of proof of work and proof of stake.
link |
And then there is this Oracle network consensus mechanism
link |
So how do you, can you compare the two?
link |
Like how do you achieve that kind of consensus?
link |
How do you achieve security
link |
in integrating data about the world
link |
in a way that's definitively true
link |
in a way that is usefully true,
link |
such that we can rely on it in making major agreements
link |
that as you said, involve billions of trillions of dollars.
link |
Right, so this is the challenging,
link |
this is the challenging question, right?
link |
This is the challenging problem that Oracle networks,
link |
Oracles, we at Chainlink that we work on
link |
in order to create this definitive truth
link |
to trigger and create hyper automation
link |
in this more advanced form,
link |
more advanced form of hybrid smart contracts.
link |
The reality I think of this problem
link |
is that it is very specific to each use case.
link |
And it, and this is actually how we've architected our system
link |
is in a very flexible way.
link |
So for example, you need an ability for an Oracle network
link |
to grow in the amount of nodes that it has
link |
relative to the value it secures, right?
link |
So if you have an Oracle network
link |
that secures a hundred thousand dollars
link |
in like a beta of a financial product,
link |
maybe it can be fine with only seven nodes
link |
and only two or three data sources, right?
link |
Because the risk to that Oracle network
link |
is relatively low based on the value it secures.
link |
So the first question is actually
link |
how do you scale security relative to value
link |
secured by that Oracle network?
link |
Because it wouldn't be very efficient
link |
to have a thousand nodes securing $100,000 worth of value.
link |
So one of the first questions is how do we properly scale
link |
and how do we compose ensembles of nodes
link |
in a decentralized way where we can know that,
link |
okay, we're going from seven nodes in a network
link |
to 15, to 31, to 57, to 105, to a thousand, right?
link |
So that's one dimension of the problem.
link |
So you have to be scaling the number of nodes
link |
relative to the value that's derived
link |
from the truth integrated into those nodes.
link |
Well, that's not the only problem, right?
link |
The other side of this is that you're trying to create
link |
a deterministic result, a deterministic output
link |
from a set of non deterministic disparate systems,
link |
data sources, or places that prove things.
link |
Can you also, just as an aside, what is an Oracle node?
link |
What is the role of an Oracle node?
link |
Sure, so an Oracle node essentially exists in both places,
link |
it exists in both worlds.
link |
It exists as an on chain contract
link |
that represents either an Oracle network or an Oracle node.
link |
So there's an on chain interface in the form of a contract
link |
that says, I exist to give you this list of inputs.
link |
You can request weather data from me,
link |
you can request price data from me,
link |
you can ask me to send a payment somewhere.
link |
So it's like an API, so it's a pointer to a API
link |
that provides truth about this world.
link |
It's an interface, so just like an API
link |
is an interface for Web 2.0 engineers,
link |
Oracle networks and the contracts that represent them
link |
or individual nodes are the interface
link |
of Web 3.0's use of services.
link |
And services includes all services,
link |
data, payment systems, messaging systems,
link |
whatever Web 2.0 or any kind of computing service
link |
that you can conceptualize,
link |
needs an interface on chain in the form of a contract
link |
that says, here are the services I can provide for you,
link |
here are the transactions you need to send me
link |
to get back this data or that computation or this result.
link |
And then what you actually see
link |
is that decentralized Oracle networks,
link |
because they're uniquely capable of generating
link |
their own computations in a decentralized way
link |
around the data that they have access to,
link |
you actually see decentralized Oracle networks
link |
generating a lot of these services.
link |
So for example, we have a randomness service,
link |
a verifiable randomness function service
link |
that basically provides randomness on chain
link |
and that randomness is then used in lotteries
link |
and various other contracts that need randomness.
link |
But that randomness, it's not a piece of data
link |
that comes from somewhere else.
link |
We don't go to another data source and get it.
link |
We generate it within an Oracle node
link |
that then provides it over into Oracle node
link |
or Oracle nodes that provide it
link |
into the contracts themselves.
link |
So why do you say Oracle nodes are non deterministic?
link |
Well, they are as far as they come to consensus,
link |
but there's this kind of different problem here, right?
link |
The blockchains are very focused
link |
on generating blocks of transactions
link |
within a smaller universe of transaction types,
link |
a certain block size and a certain set of conditions.
link |
And then they have a economic system that says,
link |
I will perpetually generate blocks of this size
link |
with these transaction types in this kind of limited set
link |
of transaction types, whether those are UTXO transactions
link |
or scripted solidity or whatever it is.
link |
Oracles and Oracle networks,
link |
we don't have a blockchain, for example.
link |
There is no chain link blockchain.
link |
Our goal is not to generate a certain set
link |
of very clearly predetermined transaction types
link |
into a set of transactions that are put into blocks
link |
and it will infinitely be done that way.
link |
Our goal is actually to create what we call a Meta layer,
link |
a decentralized Meta layer between the non deterministic,
link |
highly unreliable world
link |
and the highly hyper reliable world of blockchains
link |
so that the unreliable world can be passed
link |
through this decentralized Meta layer.
link |
And it can coexist with a reliable on chain world.
link |
Exactly, it can coexist and in some cases,
link |
the Meta layer might generate it.
link |
So the problem in giving you this straight answer
link |
is that there's just such a wide array of services.
link |
If you were to say,
link |
well, Sergey, how do we generate randomness
link |
from a data source?
link |
Well, we don't use a data source to generate the randomness.
link |
That's the type of service that can be generated
link |
in an Oracle network itself.
link |
And so there'll be certain computations
link |
that Oracle networks themselves generate themselves
link |
to augment and improve blockchains.
link |
And it is actually the goal of Oracles
link |
to consistently do that.
link |
So if you were to think about the stack
link |
in a very generic high level,
link |
you would see blockchains or databases.
link |
They're basically the data structures
link |
that retain a lot of information
link |
in this transparent, highly reliable form.
link |
Smart contract code is the application logic.
link |
It is the logic under which all of this
link |
kind of activity occurs,
link |
storing data in the data structure in the blockchain
link |
as a database in a certain conceptualization of it.
link |
And then Oracles and Oracle networks
link |
are all the services that are used by the application code.
link |
So, you know, by analogy, let's take Uber.
link |
Uber initially, some core code goes and gets the GPS API
link |
from Google Maps about the user's location,
link |
sends a message to the user through Twilio,
link |
pays the driver through Stripe.
link |
If those services weren't available
link |
to the people who made Uber,
link |
they wouldn't have made Uber, right?
link |
Because they would have written their core code
link |
and then they would have had to make a geolocation company,
link |
a telecom messaging company,
link |
and the global payments company.
link |
And they wouldn't have done that because it's too hard.
link |
And that's the weird scenario
link |
that a lot of people in our industry are in.
link |
And that's the problem that Oracles and Oracle networks fix
link |
is they provide these decentralized services
link |
to take this developer ecosystem,
link |
the blockchain and smart contract developer ecosystem
link |
from, hey, I can have a database
link |
and write some application logic
link |
about tokenization and voting and private key signing,
link |
all of which is super useful and is a critical foundation.
link |
But now, if you just layer on all the world's services,
link |
whether that's market data, weather data, randomness,
link |
suddenly people can build DeFi, fraud proof gaming,
link |
fraud proof global trade, fraud proof ad networks.
link |
And that's why this world of decentralized services
link |
and decentralized Oracle networks
link |
is particularly, in my opinion, important to our industry.
link |
And you talk about the currents of a decentralized world,
link |
decentralized world, DeFi,
link |
but decentralized services world is primarily just tokens.
link |
And it's basically just financial transactions.
link |
And the kind of thing, the reason why it's super exciting,
link |
the kind of thing you do with Chainlink and Oracle networks
link |
is that you can basically open up
link |
the whole world of services
link |
to this kind of decentralized smart contract world.
link |
I mean, you're talking about just orders of magnitude
link |
greater impact financially
link |
and just socially and philosophically.
link |
Are there interesting near term
link |
and long term applications that excite you?
link |
Yeah, there's a lot that excites me.
link |
And that is how I think about it,
link |
that it's not just about
link |
we made a decentralized Oracle network.
link |
It's about we made a decentralized service
link |
or collection of services
link |
that's going from hundreds to thousands.
link |
And then people are able to build
link |
the hybrid smart contracts,
link |
which I think will redefine what our industry is about.
link |
Because for example, for the people
link |
that only learned about blockchains
link |
through the lens of NFTs,
link |
they understand blockchains through NFTs,
link |
not through speculative tokens or Bitcoins, right?
link |
And I think that will continue.
link |
I think the use cases that excite me,
link |
they vary between the developed market,
link |
the developed world's economies and emerging markets.
link |
I think in the developed world,
link |
what you will see is that transparency,
link |
creating a new level of information
link |
for how markets work and the risk that is in markets
link |
and kind of the dynamics that put
link |
the global financial system
link |
at systemic financial risk like 2008.
link |
And my hope is that all of this infrastructure
link |
will soften the boom and bust cycles
link |
by making information immediately available
link |
to all market participants,
link |
which is by the way, what all market participants want,
link |
except for the very, very, very small minority
link |
that are able to game the system and their benefit
link |
and benefit from booms but avoid busts
link |
because of their asymmetric access to information,
link |
which really everybody should have
link |
and which this technically solves.
link |
I think in the process of doing that
link |
and which is happening, I think right about now,
link |
you see a polishing of the technology
link |
such that it can be made available to emerging markets.
link |
And on a personal level,
link |
I feel that the emerging markets will benefit much more
link |
from this technology,
link |
just like the emerging markets benefit much more
link |
from the internet or from those $50 Android phones
link |
that people can have,
link |
because it's such a massive shift
link |
in how people's lives work, right?
link |
I have always had access to books and a library,
link |
which has been fantastic and very important.
link |
But there are places in the world
link |
where people don't have libraries,
link |
but now they have the internet and a $50 Android phone
link |
and they can watch the same Stanford lecture that I watch.
link |
I mean, that's kind of mind blowing realistically, right?
link |
They just went from zero to one in a very,
link |
very dramatic way.
link |
I think all of these smart contracts,
link |
and in my case, I think the one
link |
that I seem to keep coming back to is crop insurance,
link |
where partly because it doesn't have
link |
a tokenization component,
link |
partly because it's actually much more important
link |
than it might seem.
link |
What is crop insurance?
link |
Right, so this is the nature of why it's sometimes hard
link |
to see the full value of what our industry does,
link |
because it solves all these kinds of backend problems
link |
that we don't have, right?
link |
So crop insurance is if I own a farm and it doesn't rain,
link |
I get an insurance payout,
link |
so I don't need to close down my farm,
link |
because if it didn't rain, I don't have crops, right?
link |
So people in the developed world can get crop insurance
link |
and there's all kinds of systems
link |
that basically pay them out,
link |
and then they can argue with the insurance company
link |
if they don't get paid out properly and whatever.
link |
And this allows people to smooth out risk.
link |
In fact, a lot of the global options markets
link |
were about this, right?
link |
They were initially about people selling their produce
link |
or their crops ahead of time,
link |
so that if there was a risk of drought,
link |
they weren't impacted by it, right?
link |
And that's where a lot of options trading
link |
and all this kind of stuff came from,
link |
even though it's now turned into this kind of global casino.
link |
But in the emerging market,
link |
there are literally people that,
link |
if they don't have rain for two seasons,
link |
they need to close down their farm
link |
and become a migrant worker of some kind.
link |
And now they have a $50 Android phone
link |
where they can read Wikipedia,
link |
but they're still decades away from an insurance company
link |
coming to their geography and offering them insurance
link |
because their local legal system simply doesn't allow
link |
that type of thing to exist.
link |
No insurance company is gonna go and create insurance entity
link |
and offer them insurance because the levels of fraud
link |
and the ability to resolve that fraud through courts
link |
would just not exist.
link |
So now these people have to wait for decades
link |
to have this very basic form of financial protection
link |
or something like a bank account even.
link |
And with this technology, they don't, right?
link |
So with this technology, if I have a $50 Android phone
link |
and the smart contract has data from satellites
link |
or weather stations about the weather conditions
link |
in the geography that my farm is in,
link |
I can put value into the smart contract
link |
and the smart contract will automatically pay me out back,
link |
pay me back out at my Android phone.
link |
I just leapfrogged past my corrupt government
link |
not being able to provide a legal infrastructure
link |
to create insurance.
link |
I just leapfrogged past dealing with insurance companies
link |
that'll probably price gouge me and often not pay out.
link |
And I leapfrogged into the world of hyper reliable
link |
kind of guaranteed smart contract outcomes
link |
that are as good or in many cases better
link |
than what farmers in all parts of other parts
link |
of the world have.
link |
And this type of dynamic for the emerging markets
link |
of creating a way for people to control and manage risk
link |
in their economic life, I think extends way past insurance.
link |
It extends to them having bank accounts
link |
to combat local inflation.
link |
It extends to them being able to sell their goods
link |
on the free market of global trade without middlemen.
link |
It extends to all these things
link |
that we don't really care about, right?
link |
Because we're not farmers,
link |
but are unbelievably impactful for people
link |
that don't have a bank account
link |
and their inflation rate in their country is double digits
link |
or their farm completely depends on rain
link |
or their livelihood completely depends
link |
on their ability to sell goods.
link |
And they can't sell those goods because there's a middleman
link |
who essentially controls all the trust relationships.
link |
But now we have the internet and smart contracts
link |
and that might not have to be the case
link |
in the next five or 10 years.
link |
Yeah, so that definitely has a quality of life impact
link |
on the particular farmer's life,
link |
but I suspect it has a huge like down the line ripple effect
link |
on the whole supply chain.
link |
So if you think about farmers,
link |
but any other people that produce things
link |
that are part of a large like logistics network,
link |
like supply chain network,
link |
that means when you increase reliability,
link |
you sort of increase transparency and control,
link |
but like where any one node in that supply chain network
link |
can formalize the way it operates
link |
in its agreements with others,
link |
then you could just have a very like at scale
link |
transformative effect on how people that down the line
link |
use the services that you provide,
link |
the products that you create operate.
link |
So like, it's almost hard to imagine
link |
the possible ways it might transform the world.
link |
I wonder how much friction there is in the system,
link |
I guess, currently that smart contracts might remove.
link |
That's almost unknown.
link |
You can sort of hypothesize and stuff, but I wonder.
link |
I've seen enough bureaucracy in my life
link |
to know that smart contracts in many cases
link |
would remove bureaucracy.
link |
And I wonder how the world will be
link |
once you remove much of the bureaucracy.
link |
Coming from the Soviet Union,
link |
where I just have seen the life sucked out
link |
of the innovative spirit of human nature by bureaucracy.
link |
I wonder, the kind of amazing world that could be created
link |
once bureaucracy is removed.
link |
Yeah, I think it's fascinating how the world can evolve.
link |
I think this extends a lot further than people think
link |
into many, many different parts of the global economy.
link |
It might start with NFTs for art,
link |
or it might start with DeFi, right?
link |
Or it might start with fraud proof ad networks next.
link |
We don't know what it's gonna go to next,
link |
but I think the implication of people being
link |
in a system of contracts that holds them accountable
link |
and guarantees contractual outcomes,
link |
regardless of a local legal system,
link |
is something that I think extends to the supply chain.
link |
You can prove that goods were sourced in an ethical way,
link |
and you can prove that in a way that can't be gamed.
link |
That'll change buying power and supplier power
link |
and how people produce goods that we all consume.
link |
And then on the political level,
link |
I personally think that in a number of decades,
link |
we could literally be in a place
link |
where politicians can commit
link |
to a certain set of smart contract kind of budget,
link |
definitional kind of results.
link |
For example, we discovered oil.
link |
I promise as a politician, I'm gonna take the oil
link |
and I'm gonna redistribute it to all of you.
link |
Well, that's wonderful.
link |
That's a great idea.
link |
Sounds very nice when you're running for office.
link |
Why don't we codify that in a smart contract?
link |
And why don't we put those conditions
link |
very solidly on a blockchain?
link |
And then once you've been elected,
link |
we'll just turn that one on
link |
and it'll distribute the money just like you said,
link |
and everything will be fine.
link |
I personally think that this new level of systems
link |
that allows trustworthy collaboration between everybody,
link |
between supply chain partners, ad network users,
link |
the financial system, insurance companies, and farmers,
link |
all of these are just interactions
link |
that require a trusted entity,
link |
or in this case, a trusted piece of code
link |
to orchestrate the interaction
link |
in the way that everyone agrees.
link |
Yeah, one of the things that makes the United States
link |
fascinating is the founding documents.
link |
And it's fascinating to think of us moving into the new
link |
in the 21st century to a digital version of that.
link |
So the constitution, a smart constitution,
link |
no offense to the paper constitution,
link |
and that would have transformative effects
link |
on politicians and governments,
link |
holding people accountable.
link |
Oh man, that's so exciting to think that
link |
we might enforce accountability
link |
through the smart contract process.
link |
Exactly, why can't that happen?
link |
Anything that we could codify into a smart contract,
link |
and anything that we all agree
link |
is the way the world should work.
link |
And then anything that we can get proof about, right?
link |
Anything that a system somewhere could tell us happened,
link |
those are the pieces of the puzzle, right?
link |
We need a trusted piece of code,
link |
we need to have agreement
link |
that that's how the world should work,
link |
and we need a system that'll tell that trusted piece
link |
of code what happened.
link |
As long as we have those three things,
link |
we can theoretically codify any set of agreements
link |
about anything where those three properties take hold.
link |
I wonder if you could apply that
link |
to like military conflict and so on.
link |
Recently, Biden announced that we're going to pull off
link |
from Afghanistan after 20 years in the war.
link |
I wonder, there's a lot of debacles around war in Afghanistan
link |
and invasion of Iraq, all those kinds of things.
link |
I wonder if that was instead formulated as a smart contract.
link |
Like that might have actually huge impact
link |
on the way we do conflict.
link |
So you think of the smart contract
link |
as a kind of win win situation where you're doing
link |
like financial transactions or something like that.
link |
But you could see that also about military conflict
link |
or like whenever two nations are at tension with each other,
link |
different scales of conflict,
link |
that you can have conflict codified.
link |
And that would potentially resolve conflict much faster
link |
because there's honesty, transparency and control
link |
within that conflict, because there's conflict in this world.
link |
And I, again, very, very inspiring to think
link |
about the kind of effects it might have
link |
on the negative kinds of contracts,
link |
on the tense, painful kinds of contracts.
link |
I haven't thought about that as much.
link |
It's actually kind of scary,
link |
the stuff you're thinking through now
link |
with like the war contracts or something.
link |
That's not in the white paper.
link |
We don't have anything about war contracts or anything.
link |
Again, this is the Russian, we're both Russian,
link |
but I'm a little more Russian in the suffering side.
link |
Maybe I read way too much Dostoevsky
link |
and military kind of ideas.
link |
But anyway, holding politicians accountable in all forms,
link |
I think is really powerful.
link |
Is there something you could say as a small aside
link |
on how smart contracts actually work if we look at the code?
link |
Is there some nice way to say technically
link |
what is a smart contract?
link |
What does it mean to codify these agreements,
link |
the actual process for people
link |
who might not at all be familiar?
link |
I think you just write it into code
link |
that operates in this kind of decentralized infrastructure.
link |
You usually write code
link |
that runs in a central server somewhere.
link |
Now you write code that runs across a lot
link |
of different machines in this decentralized way.
link |
And then after you write it, you need services.
link |
And that's where oracles come in,
link |
they provide all the services.
link |
So just like you would be writing code in web 2.0 land,
link |
running it on a server somewhere
link |
and using an API, here you'd be writing code,
link |
putting it on a decentralized infrastructure
link |
like a blockchain or a smart contract platform like Ethereum.
link |
And then you would be using various services
link |
in the form of oracles.
link |
So they'll just be called oracles
link |
or decentralized services instead of APIs.
link |
And you're basically composing the same type of architecture
link |
except it's hyper reliable.
link |
At the moment, it's a little bit less efficient
link |
because there's an early stage to our industry.
link |
But it provides this extreme level of reliability
link |
and transparency, which for certain use cases
link |
is an absolute critical component
link |
and is completely reinventing how they work.
link |
So I think people should look at what are the use cases
link |
where that trust dynamic can be so heavily improved.
link |
And that's probably the ones
link |
where this is maybe initially useful.
link |
But I mean, just to emphasize,
link |
I don't think people realize when you say code
link |
that we're talking about non obfuscated actual program.
link |
Like you can read it, you can understand it.
link |
And there's something about,
link |
maybe this is my computer science perspective
link |
of like software engineering perspective,
link |
but there's something about the formalism
link |
of programming languages, which enforces simplicity
link |
and clarity and transparency.
link |
And because it's seen to everybody,
link |
I mean, simplicity is enforced.
link |
There's something about natural language,
link |
like language as written in the constitution, for example,
link |
where there's so many interpretations.
link |
With the nice thing about programs,
link |
there's not going to be a huge number of books written
link |
about what was meant by this particular line
link |
because it's pretty clear.
link |
Like programming languages have a clarity to them
link |
that natural language does not,
link |
and they don't have ambiguity, which I think it's important
link |
to pause on because it's really powerful.
link |
It's really difficult to think about.
link |
I think we live in a world where all the philosophers
link |
and legal minds don't know how to program.
link |
So I think, not all, most don't.
link |
And so we don't often see the philosophical impact
link |
of this kind of idea that the agreements
link |
between humans can be written in a programming language.
link |
That's a really transformative idea.
link |
That, I mean, yeah, it's an idea that's not just technical.
link |
It's not just financial.
link |
It's philosophical.
link |
It's rethinking human nature from a digital perspective.
link |
Like what is human civilization?
link |
It's interaction between humans.
link |
And rethinking that interaction as a digital interaction
link |
that is managed by programming languages,
link |
by programs, by code.
link |
I mean, that's fascinating.
link |
That we'll look back at this time potentially
link |
as one where us little descendants of apes
link |
did not realize how important this moment in history is.
link |
Like human beings might be totally different
link |
a century from now because we codified
link |
the interaction between humans.
link |
That might have more of an impact than anything else
link |
You think about the impact of the internet,
link |
one of the cool things is digitization of data.
link |
But we have not yet integrated the tools,
link |
the mechanisms fully that use that data
link |
and interact with humans yet.
link |
And that's what smart contracts do.
link |
I wonder if you think about the role
link |
of artificial intelligence in all of this.
link |
Because your smart contracts are kind of agreements,
link |
maybe you disagree with this,
link |
but at least the way I'm thinking about it
link |
is agreements between humans or groups of humans.
link |
But it seems like because everything's operating
link |
in the digital space that you can integrate
link |
non humans into this.
link |
Or AI systems that help out humans,
link |
managed by humans.
link |
Like what do you think about a world
link |
of hybrid smart contracts,
link |
codifying agreements between hybrid
link |
intelligent being networks of humans and AI systems?
link |
Yeah, I think that makes perfect sense.
link |
In terms of AI, I'm not an expert, right?
link |
So it might be a bit simplistic or naive,
link |
my ideas in this field.
link |
I think everyone saw the Terminator movie, right?
link |
Everybody kind of saw the Terminator movie in the 90s.
link |
And it was like, this is really scary.
link |
I personally think AI is amazing and makes perfect sense.
link |
I think it will evolve to a place where people have...
link |
Just to understand,
link |
I work in the world of trust issues, right?
link |
I work in the world of how can technology solve trust
link |
and collaboration issues using encryption,
link |
using cryptographically guaranteed systems,
link |
using decentralized infrastructure, right?
link |
So that's the world that I've been inhabiting
link |
for many, many years now,
link |
building smart contracts for seven or eight,
link |
doing stuff before that.
link |
It's kind of what I'm focused on.
link |
So I view AI through that same lens.
link |
And my brain naturally asks,
link |
well, what is the trust issue
link |
that people might have with AI?
link |
And my natural kind of response is,
link |
well, let's say AI continues to be built and improve.
link |
At some point, I have no clue where we are on this now.
link |
I've seen different ideas that were very far from this.
link |
I've seen other ideas were very close to this.
link |
At a certain point, we'd arrive at a place with AI
link |
where we would be a little bit worried
link |
about just how much it could do, right?
link |
We might be worried that AI could do things
link |
we don't want it to do,
link |
but we still want to give AI
link |
a level of control over our lives, right?
link |
So in my world, that's a trust issue.
link |
And the way that that trust issue
link |
would be solved with blockchains
link |
is actually very straightforward.
link |
And I think in its simplicity, quite powerful.
link |
You could have an AI that has an ability to do
link |
and control key parts of your and our lives, right?
link |
But then you could limit it with private keys
link |
and blockchains and create certain guardrails
link |
and firm kind of walls and limits
link |
to what the AI could never go past,
link |
assuming that encryption, right?
link |
That encryption continues to work, right?
link |
And assuming that if it's not that AI's specialization
link |
to break encryption, that it wouldn't be able to do that,
link |
So if you have an AI that controls
link |
something very important, whatever it is,
link |
shipping or something in defense
link |
or something in the financial system, whatever it is,
link |
but you're sitting there and you're kind of worried,
link |
hey, this thing is unbelievable.
link |
It's coming up with things
link |
we wouldn't have thought of in a hundred years,
link |
but maybe it's a little too unbelievable.
link |
How do you limit it?
link |
Well, if you bake in private keys
link |
and you bake in these kind of blockchain based limitations,
link |
you can create the conditions
link |
beyond which an AI could never act.
link |
And those could once again be codified
link |
in the very specific unambiguous terms
link |
in which you described,
link |
which once again, in my trust issue focused world,
link |
would solve the trust issue for users
link |
and make them comfortable with using the AI
link |
or ceding control to the AI,
link |
which I think in more advanced versions of AI
link |
will continue to be a concern, right?
link |
This is fascinating.
link |
So smart contracts actually provide a mechanism
link |
for human supervision of AI systems.
link |
With encryption, very encryption heavy.
link |
So it's not about like, is it smarter than us?
link |
It's about will the encryption hold up?
link |
So that's based on the assumption that encryption holds up.
link |
I think that's a safe assumption.
link |
We can get into that whole discussion,
link |
but from quantum computing,
link |
but cracking encryption is very difficult.
link |
That's a whole nother discussion.
link |
I think we're safe on the safe ground
link |
for quite a long time, assuming encryption holds.
link |
I, there's a space that is at the cutting edge
link |
of general intelligence research in the AI community,
link |
which is the space of program synthesis
link |
or AI generating programs.
link |
So that's different than what you're referring to
link |
is AI being able to generate smart contracts.
link |
And that to me is kind of fascinating
link |
to think of, especially two AI systems
link |
between each other, generating contracts,
link |
sort of almost creating a world
link |
where most of the contracts are between nonhuman beings.
link |
I think an AI system, as I think about it,
link |
and once again, this is not my field.
link |
This is something I might watch a YouTube video on
link |
or just see something interesting about at some point.
link |
I think if I were to just reason through it even now,
link |
I think the highly deterministic
link |
and guaranteed nature of smart contracts
link |
would probably be preferable to an AI
link |
because I'm guessing an AI would have a lot of problems
link |
with dealing with the human element
link |
of how contracts work today, right?
link |
So an AI, for example, couldn't pick up the phone
link |
and call Dave at a bank to do a derivative
link |
and kind of discuss with Dave and have a call with him
link |
and kind of have a conversation and get him comfortable
link |
and tell him it's gonna be fine
link |
and kind of smooth out all the weird social cues
link |
that have to do with making certain derivatives.
link |
I'm assuming that that's a pretty complicated
link |
neural map AI kind of problem.
link |
Yeah, so if I think about it,
link |
the deterministic guaranteed nature of smart contracts
link |
probably would, and if, assuming they're accessible to AIs,
link |
could actually, interestingly enough, be the format
link |
that they prefer to codify their relationship
link |
with non AI systems and very possibly other AI systems,
link |
right, because it is very,
link |
I mean, it's pretty guaranteed, right?
link |
All the other types of contracts
link |
that an AI could go out there and seek to do
link |
would require some language processing around the law.
link |
And I think, I don't know if this is a term,
link |
but probably not a smart AI or a good AI
link |
or whatever the term is for a high quality AI,
link |
would probably realize some of the limitations
link |
Yeah, yeah, AI definitely dislikes ambiguity
link |
and would prefer the determinism,
link |
the deterministic nature of smart contracts.
link |
I do wonder about this particular problem
link |
and maybe you could speak to it of how smart contracts
link |
can take over certain industries in a sense
link |
or how certain industries can convert their sets
link |
of agreements into smart contracts,
link |
which is, you mentioned sort of talking to Dave
link |
from the bank, many of our laws, many of our agreements
link |
are currently through natural language, through words.
link |
And so there is a process of mapping that has to occur
link |
in order to convert the legal agreements,
link |
legal contracts of today to smart contracts
link |
that by the way, AI may be able to help with.
link |
But by way of question, how do you think we convert
link |
the legal contracts on which many industries
link |
currently function today or not even legal contracts,
link |
but ambiguous kind of agreements,
link |
maybe they're loose sometimes into more formal
link |
deterministic agreements that are represented
link |
by smart contracts?
link |
So I think there's two, maybe two sides to this.
link |
I think the first one is actually not a huge problem
link |
where you have things like the is the master agreement
link |
for derivatives or you have these agreements
link |
that basically already reference a system somewhere,
link |
like for example, many legal agreements
link |
already accept eSignature.
link |
And so they're saying, hey, I'm gonna use
link |
this computing system over here around signatures
link |
and I'm gonna consider, and there's laws around that
link |
and there's clauses that say eSignature is good enough
link |
for this agreement.
link |
I actually don't think this is a big problem
link |
for the vast majority of legal agreements
link |
that use systems already.
link |
So what you'll do is you'll swap out one repository
link |
or one set of system of contract settlement.
link |
And you'll just say, hey, this blockchain system over here
link |
is my new system of contract settlement.
link |
Whatever it says is the state of the agreement
link |
instead of the centralized system over there.
link |
And so there's actually a huge amount of agreements
link |
that are already able to do that
link |
and I think we'll do that.
link |
I think there's another side to your question,
link |
which is the amount of agreements that are very ambiguous
link |
that can be turned into smart contracts.
link |
And I think the limitation there is twofold.
link |
First of all, like you said earlier,
link |
the highly reliable smart contract
link |
and the lack of opaqueness and the clarity
link |
of smart contracts is very high and very powerful
link |
and very clear and it's, in my opinion,
link |
gonna be much, much easier to take a smart contract
link |
and turn it into a set of natural language explanations
link |
and just say, hey, this is what this does, right?
link |
So I think that many contracts are,
link |
and even now in decentralized finance and DeFi
link |
and in decentralized insurance,
link |
they're basically being rebuilt in this format
link |
and that rebuilding will make them clearer, like you said,
link |
and then restating those in natural language
link |
and explaining to people, well, you know,
link |
whether it is this, I think it'll actually be a lot simpler
link |
to explain to people what the contract is about.
link |
Mapping smart contracts into natural language,
link |
I didn't even think about that.
link |
So that's, you're saying that's doable
link |
and natural and easy to do.
link |
Because there's so much clear, right?
link |
There's that forced clarity that you talked about.
link |
I think the second aspect of this problem
link |
is the nuance around what contracts can be made unambiguous
link |
and I think that comes down to,
link |
often comes down to proving what happened,
link |
which is where Oracle networks
link |
and decentralized Oracle networks and Chainlink would come in
link |
and our experience there is quite extensive
link |
over the many years that we've worked on many different
link |
I think what it fundamentally comes down to
link |
is whether there is data.
link |
So we're not gonna be able to make a hybrid smart contract
link |
about whether somebody painted your house
link |
the right color blue.
link |
We're just not gonna be doing that
link |
because there's no data feed that tells us
link |
that your house was painted blue
link |
or that it was the right color of blue.
link |
You know, unless somebody sets up a drone
link |
with a color analysis tool and they generate that data.
link |
Which by the way, it could be possible, right?
link |
They could, there could be, if there's enough demand
link |
then the service would be created
link |
that has drones flying around
link |
that's telling you about the colors of, you know,
link |
all this kind of stuff.
link |
So if there's actual demand that that would be created
link |
and because there'll be value to connect that data feed
link |
to the smart contracts and so on.
link |
I think you have it unbelievably right
link |
because there are already insurance companies
link |
that use drones to monitor construction sites from overhead
link |
and see how many people are wearing hard hats.
link |
And if the percentage of people wearing hard hats
link |
isn't sufficiently high, then, you know,
link |
the policy is voided.
link |
And so in that case, there is a data source
link |
and that data source can be put
link |
into a hybrid smart contract.
link |
So the limitation of hybrid smart contracts is,
link |
is there a data source or a set of data sources
link |
to create definitive truth,
link |
to settle the contract and eliminate ambiguity.
link |
And then as you said, I think as people realize
link |
that smart contracts are a format
link |
in which they can form agreement about things
link |
like that insurance product around, you know,
link |
how many people are wearing hard hats.
link |
If I'm the construction site owner, well, you know,
link |
I would really like a guarantee
link |
that your insurance policy is gonna pay me out
link |
if everyone is wearing hard hats.
link |
And in that case, there is demand for the data
link |
and people will generate the data.
link |
And I actually think the insurance industry
link |
is interestingly a precursor of this
link |
because they're so data driven.
link |
You already see insurance companies paying IoT companies
link |
to put data into their customer's infrastructure
link |
at the cost of the insurance company
link |
to generate the data that the insurance company uses
link |
to make a policy for the customer.
link |
So you basically already have people
link |
who really want to price data into their agreements
link |
when they're of sufficiently high value paying
link |
for their own customers to get data sensors
link |
into their infrastructure.
link |
And I think as smart contracts become more
link |
of a requested format or data driven contracts
link |
become more of a format,
link |
there will be a growing demand
link |
about proving what happened through data.
link |
So it'll be motivating totally new data feeds being created.
link |
By the way, the insurance industry broadly,
link |
the revolutions there, it would be huge.
link |
I've worked quite a bit with autonomous vehicles,
link |
semi autonomous and just vehicles in general.
link |
The insurance industry there, by the way,
link |
makes a huge amount of money,
link |
but is using very crappy data feeds,
link |
revolutionizing how like not by crappy,
link |
I mean very crude.
link |
Like literally the insurance is based on things like age,
link |
gender, like basic demographic information
link |
as opposed to really high resolution information
link |
about you as an individual,
link |
which you may or may not want to provide.
link |
So you can choose from an individual perspective
link |
to provide a data feed.
link |
And there like the power of insurance
link |
to enable the individual,
link |
to empower the individual could be huge
link |
because ultimately smart contracts motivate the use of data,
link |
the creation of new data feeds,
link |
but leveraging the whatever service it provides in truth,
link |
as opposed to some kind of very loose notion of who you are.
link |
So that I'm not, again,
link |
not sure how that would change things,
link |
but in terms of the fundamental experience of life,
link |
because I think we all rely on insurance,
link |
not just in business, but in life
link |
and grounding that insurance
link |
in more and more accurate representation of reality
link |
might just have transformative effects on society.
link |
Well, just to mention one quick thing that you said,
link |
where I noticed another trust issue,
link |
you said the user might not want to share their data.
link |
So what you could actually do,
link |
and what we've already worked on is,
link |
you can have a smart contract that holds the data
link |
and evaluates the data of the user
link |
without sharing it with the insurance companies.
link |
And the insurance company knows that the smart contract
link |
will evaluate it according to the policy.
link |
They don't need the data.
link |
And the user can provide the data
link |
knowing it'll never touch the insurance company
link |
because it's only provided to the smart contract.
link |
And suddenly you've solved another trust issue
link |
because the autonomous piece of code
link |
can evaluate information separately from the interests
link |
of both of the counterparties.
link |
And so this is the recurring theme.
link |
I think you're seeing this recurring theme
link |
where there's a trust issue,
link |
people can't use the system, they can't collaborate,
link |
they can't share information
link |
that would make a better agreement for both of them,
link |
they can't solve a risk in their daily life,
link |
they can't participate in a market,
link |
they can't have a bank account
link |
because nobody will give it to them
link |
because they can't give it to them in that legal system.
link |
And once you have an autonomous piece of code
link |
that can also know what's going on,
link |
thanks to Oracle networks and that combination of the code
link |
and the Oracle network for the hybrid smart contract,
link |
the same pattern just recurs.
link |
It's really the same pattern.
link |
And this is why I keep saying trust issues.
link |
It's because I basically,
link |
almost every contractual trust issue that I see
link |
where there is a piece of data to prove
link |
and settle the trust issue
link |
in a way that works for both parties,
link |
there is no reason not to use an autonomous,
link |
highly reliable contract and piece of code.
link |
And I have to tell you,
link |
I've seen this in a lot of different industries.
link |
I've seen it insurance, ad networks,
link |
global finance, global trade,
link |
those are all multi trillion dollar industries.
link |
And then there are other smaller industries.
link |
Like even one of the first smart contracts
link |
we worked on many years ago
link |
was for search engine optimization firms
link |
where they would tell you,
link |
hey, I'm gonna raise your search engine ranking,
link |
give me the money.
link |
And people wouldn't wanna give them the money
link |
because they never knew if they were gonna do it.
link |
And then the search engine firm
link |
doesn't wanna do any work
link |
thinking they'll never get any money.
link |
So we just initially even came up with a system
link |
where you could put Bitcoin into a smart contract
link |
and it would be released based on whether the search rank
link |
of a website got to a certain level on Google
link |
for a certain keyword, right?
link |
And so the trust problem was solved.
link |
But it's just the same story, right?
link |
It's kind of like trust issues around AI,
link |
trust issues around financial products,
link |
trust issues around insurance,
link |
trust issues around social media, whatever it is.
link |
I think that's what people looking at this industry
link |
really need to understand.
link |
And once they do understand,
link |
they realize what this is all about.
link |
This is about redefining how everyone collaborates
link |
with everyone about everything
link |
where we can prove something through data.
link |
You've mentioned confidentiality and privacy
link |
that the parties don't need to necessarily know private data
link |
in this interaction.
link |
You talk about confidentiality in the white paper
link |
for Chainlink 2.0.
link |
Can you talk more about how to achieve confidentiality
link |
Sure, sure, absolutely.
link |
So I think you once again need to think of the contract
link |
as existing in two parts, right?
link |
You have the on chain code
link |
and then you have this off chain system
link |
called the centralized Oracle network.
link |
So the question is really what portion of the contract
link |
should live in what part of these two systems, right?
link |
So if you wanna create transparency,
link |
you should put more information on chain
link |
because that's what blockchains are very good at.
link |
They're public, transparent,
link |
but they don't necessarily have privacy.
link |
Well, you can see how those two things
link |
are a little bit kind of completely diametrically opposed.
link |
So I do think and I do see blockchains working
link |
on on chain encrypted smart contracts.
link |
That's very inefficient.
link |
It has a lot of nuances around it.
link |
That I think will appear at some point.
link |
I think until it appears,
link |
you have an option of taking a part of the computation
link |
and putting it into the centralized Oracle network.
link |
We actually did an entire paper about this
link |
that we presented at Stanford in February of last year,
link |
something called Mixicles,
link |
which basically talks about how you can take
link |
an Oracle network and you can put a portion
link |
of the computation into the Oracle network,
link |
assuming that you're comfortable with that limited set
link |
of nodes knowing what the computation is.
link |
And you could actually provide additional confidentiality
link |
through special hardware
link |
called trusted execution environments
link |
that all those nodes are forced to run.
link |
So they won't even know what they're operating.
link |
And so at the end of the day,
link |
if you look at a hybrid smart contract
link |
as gaining functionality from its on chain code
link |
and gaining other functionality
link |
from its off chain decentralized Oracle network component,
link |
you can place the part of the computation
link |
that you would like to be private
link |
in the decentralized Oracle network,
link |
because you can control the set of nodes.
link |
You can control the committee of nodes
link |
and you can require that they run certain hardware
link |
to keep the information private, right?
link |
So you could basically make a derivative that,
link |
or a binary option is the example used
link |
in the Mixicles paper where the payout happened on chain,
link |
but it was actually impossible to tell
link |
what the outcome of the contract was.
link |
So the outcome of the contract was computed
link |
in the centralized Oracle network.
link |
And then there was a switch that triggered
link |
who received the payment,
link |
but from the point of view of analyzing
link |
the on chain transactions and seeing who received
link |
the payment or what the outcome of the contract was,
link |
you couldn't derive that,
link |
you couldn't backward engineer what that was,
link |
but the users of that hybrid smart contract
link |
still had on chain code that guaranteed them
link |
that as long as the decentralized Oracle network
link |
found a certain outcome, right?
link |
Determined a certain outcome
link |
that the relevant user would get paid
link |
and there was still a place to put value, right?
link |
So there is this kind of fundamental tension
link |
between confidentiality, privacy,
link |
which is very important for many contracts,
link |
which is critical to many contracts
link |
and the public and transparent nature of blockchains,
link |
which I think eventually will be solved
link |
through encrypted on chain smart contracts.
link |
That'll take some time,
link |
I think that'll take years in my opinion.
link |
And before we arrive there,
link |
I think people will put the private portion
link |
into the centralized Oracle network.
link |
Once again, going back to what
link |
the decentralized Oracle networks do,
link |
they seek to provide these services, right?
link |
So the ability to do a privacy preserving computation
link |
is perhaps a service without which
link |
a certain type of contract might never come into existence
link |
in the form of an on chain hybrid smart contract.
link |
And so this is once again,
link |
what we see the centralized Oracle networks
link |
and decentralized services doing
link |
is providing people these tools and building blocks
link |
to compose, like I'm great at making
link |
these derivatives contracts,
link |
but I can't make them unless I can retain
link |
the privacy of them.
link |
And our goal is to provide the infrastructure
link |
that gives you as a developer
link |
and as a creator of smart contracts, that capability.
link |
And what we've seen is that as we provide that capability,
link |
people create more,
link |
which is also really the story of the internet, right?
link |
The story of the internet is it was really tough
link |
to do eCommerce while everything was an HTTP
link |
and credit cards were transmitted publicly.
link |
And so eCommerce was kind of tough
link |
because how am I gonna send my credit card
link |
over public on encrypted channels, right?
link |
But the second HTTPS appears,
link |
eCommerce becomes a lot easier
link |
because I can put in my credit card number
link |
and it can be sent over an encrypted channel
link |
and it's not at risk.
link |
And so I can participate in eCommerce
link |
as long as I have a credit card.
link |
I think those types, and I'm sure that was unexpected,
link |
right, I'm sure at the time that was an unexpected outcome
link |
from that technology.
link |
And so I think this is why we sometimes have this focus
link |
on privacy because in our work with contracts
link |
and their transition into this hybrid smart contract form,
link |
we see a substantial amount of need for privacy
link |
as an inherent property of these contracts.
link |
And it'll take a while before that's possible
link |
to create the kind of technology innovation required
link |
to do that on chain.
link |
I know there's a few ideas that are being floating about,
link |
but so the currently distributed Oracle networks
link |
provide that feature, which is essential to many contracts.
link |
What brings to mind in this whole space,
link |
again, it might be outside of your expertise,
link |
but within the world which I'm passionate about,
link |
which is machine learning,
link |
and it seems like very naturally
link |
because current machine learning systems
link |
are very data hungry
link |
and much of the value mined by companies
link |
in the digital space are from data.
link |
They often want their data to maintain privacy.
link |
So you think about an autonomous vehicle space,
link |
Tesla is collecting a huge amount of data,
link |
Waymo is collecting a huge amount of data.
link |
It seems like it would be very beneficial
link |
to form contracts where one could use the data
link |
from the other in some kind of privacy preserving way,
link |
but also where all the uses of data are codified
link |
and you can exchange value cleanly,
link |
basically contracts over data,
link |
over machine learning systems use of different data.
link |
I don't know, do you talk to machine learning folks
link |
that use ideas of smart contracts
link |
or is that for outside of your interest?
link |
Because it seems like exceptionally applicable set of,
link |
when we talk about different services
link |
that might be created and revolutionized by smart,
link |
especially hybrid smart contracts,
link |
I think machine learning systems comes to mind to me
link |
in all industries.
link |
I don't know if you've gotten a chance
link |
to interact with those folks, with those services.
link |
I think what you're talking about is more data marketplaces
link |
in the data marketplace side of things.
link |
Well, this is actually once again, very applicable
link |
because there's a trust issue.
link |
At the end of the day,
link |
let's say I'm trying to sell you some data.
link |
You don't know the quality of the data.
link |
So you don't know what you wanna pay for it.
link |
And I can't give you the data for you
link |
to determine the quality
link |
because I've given you the data, right?
link |
We need an autonomous impartial agent.
link |
We need an impartial computational kind of agent
link |
and on chain smart contract with an Oracle network
link |
to assess my data to write,
link |
to basically take random cross section samples of the data,
link |
assess it for quality, assess it for signal
link |
from the algorithm you have,
link |
which you don't wanna share with me
link |
because you don't wanna know the algorithm
link |
you're working on, right?
link |
You don't want me to know what you want the data for.
link |
So now the autonomous agent takes your algorithm,
link |
keeping it private from me and takes my data,
link |
keeping it private from you,
link |
assesses it on a random cross section sampling
link |
for quality of data, returns the scoring back to you,
link |
allows you to determine a price.
link |
And now both you and me know that we've arrived
link |
at a fair price for the quality of my data
link |
for what you wanna do with it.
link |
And that's once again,
link |
from what I've seen in the data marketplaces,
link |
which are full of people who want that data
link |
for these learning models, often for financial markets,
link |
often for other reasons,
link |
this is their fundamental problem,
link |
which amazingly enough,
link |
there's a trust issue that is getting solved.
link |
And I think you can see even on the face of it,
link |
once that trust issue is solved,
link |
those markets can work a lot better, right?
link |
I don't need to know your algorithm.
link |
You don't need to know my data.
link |
We both know that the autonomous agent
link |
is not under either of our control
link |
and gave us a fair assessment and a fair price.
link |
And we're all very comfortable with that.
link |
I could even make conditions
link |
that your algorithm isn't analyzing the data
link |
for something I don't want you to analyze it for,
link |
or you could make conditions
link |
that the data has to have any number of properties.
link |
And once again, you haven't leaked any signal to me
link |
and I haven't leaked any data to you,
link |
which is once again,
link |
just another type of trust issue that all of this solve.
link |
So it's the same pattern.
link |
If you work in this industry long enough,
link |
or if you really look at these use cases long enough,
link |
you'll simply come to the question,
link |
and this is the useful question,
link |
what is the trust issue this is solving?
link |
And then if you can get an answer to that question
link |
on a case by case basis,
link |
that's when you'll understand why blockchains are relevant.
link |
And then once you do that with enough use cases,
link |
it becomes a little bit mind blank.
link |
You've mentioned trust quite a bit.
link |
You also mentioned trust minimization
link |
in the Chainlink White Paper.
link |
Can we dig into trust a little bit more?
link |
What is the nature of trust
link |
that you think about in these smart contracts?
link |
What is trust minimization?
link |
How do we accomplish, achieve trust minimization?
link |
I think it's important maybe to have a conception
link |
of what the alternative is, right?
link |
What is highly reliable trust minimized off chain
link |
and on chain computation and alternative to?
link |
So this is just kind of how I see the world
link |
in these two camps.
link |
One camp is the traditional,
link |
what I call brand based or paper guarantee camp.
link |
And this is the world as pretty much most
link |
or all people know today.
link |
This is the world where there's a bank logo
link |
or an insurance company logo, or some kind of logo.
link |
There's a very big building with marble arches
link |
and columns, it's the biggest building in the town.
link |
It's bigger than the church.
link |
And everybody feels very good.
link |
Everybody's got such a nice logo.
link |
It's such a big building.
link |
Why don't I give them my money?
link |
Why don't I interact with them on the basis
link |
of any kind of agreement?
link |
And that is definitely better than that not being there.
link |
And that is definitely a huge improvement
link |
for how people conduct commerce.
link |
Letters of credit from branded entities
link |
are very important for global trade to take place
link |
in the early stages of global trade.
link |
So that's good, but it is fundamentally
link |
just a paper agreement with a legal framework behind it.
link |
And if the paper agreement you have would say Robinhood
link |
or somebody else suddenly has to change,
link |
well, it changes and you can't really do anything about it.
link |
You won't be able to change anything
link |
about what happened there.
link |
There's some long terms of service.
link |
There's some other agreements around all this stuff.
link |
At the end of the day,
link |
that's the brand based and paper guarantee world
link |
where it's all very vague and opaque
link |
and you're kind of hoping for the best
link |
because there's a nice logo.
link |
It's been around a hundred years.
link |
There's a lot of marble.
link |
Put a lot of marble.
link |
Big building, lots of marbles.
link |
This is why banks have such nice buildings, right?
link |
It's not because they want to spend money on buildings.
link |
It's to create confidence in them as an entity
link |
in order for people to transact through them, right?
link |
This is why all these kind of go to cities
link |
that had gold rushes, go to cities
link |
that needed banking as a service in certain time periods,
link |
they're the most beautiful buildings
link |
at least in the United States.
link |
So this is the brand based paper guarantee model
link |
for which up until now,
link |
there has never been an alternative, right?
link |
So up until now, if you had a bad experience with a bank
link |
or insurance company or some logo somewhere,
link |
you would only have one option.
link |
Your option would be to go across the road
link |
and down the block to another building
link |
with another color of marble
link |
and another set of agreements
link |
that are fundamentally still paper brand agreements, right?
link |
Now for the first time, you have mathematical agreements.
link |
You have mathematically guaranteed encryption secured,
link |
decentralized infrastructure powered agreements, right?
link |
This is really the shift.
link |
This is really the comparison and the alternative
link |
through which people should view all of this in my opinion,
link |
because there's once again, this conception
link |
that everything is fine, everything works very well.
link |
Well, it does, it works fine and very well
link |
as long as nothing goes wrong.
link |
And then in the cases when things go wrong,
link |
which they pretty much invariably at some point do,
link |
then you find out that, well, you know,
link |
turns out they don't have to pay me
link |
or turns out I can't trade
link |
or turns out the ATMs can be locked up
link |
and only give me 66 euros per day,
link |
whether I'm a business or an individual,
link |
like what happened in Greece a few years ago, right?
link |
And the reality is that once that becomes a strong enough
link |
kind of realization for people,
link |
I think they will all just migrate
link |
to mathematically guaranteed contracts
link |
because why wouldn't you?
link |
So in the world of mathematically guaranteed contracts,
link |
kind of how do we, and cryptographically secured
link |
and decentralized infrastructure powered,
link |
how do we evolve into that world?
link |
Well, at the end of the day, it comes down to consensus,
link |
right, it comes down to a collection of independent nodes,
link |
a collection of provably independent computing systems
link |
arriving at the same conclusion impartially.
link |
That conclusion might be the transaction
link |
is valid between address A and address B,
link |
address A has one Bitcoin,
link |
wants to send it to address B,
link |
now address B has one Bitcoin, right?
link |
So that's one degree of validation.
link |
It has certain cryptographic primitives
link |
that are used, certain levels of cryptography,
link |
encryption, and other methods
link |
that basically provide clarity and those guarantees.
link |
But fundamentally, it's this level of consensus
link |
that multiple independent computing systems
link |
came to the same conclusion, verified that conclusion
link |
and created a sense of finality,
link |
created a final state that is globally considered
link |
to be the state of a transaction.
link |
And that is how it's achieved, right?
link |
So it's achieved by users looking
link |
at these mathematical contract systems and saying,
link |
you know, if I have money in a bank,
link |
there's one single person who controls that money,
link |
they could choose to give me my money
link |
or choose not to give me my money.
link |
but maybe there's a percentage of what I own
link |
that I wanna put into another system
link |
where there's thousands of independent computing systems
link |
that are promising me, you know,
link |
with the help of cryptographic primitives,
link |
that I will be able to always have access to this,
link |
whatever this is, whatever this token is,
link |
I will at least, or at the very least,
link |
I will always have unfettered,
link |
complete control and access to it.
link |
So, you know, that's one example.
link |
Another example is, hey,
link |
we have a hybrid smart contract
link |
for something like crop insurance.
link |
I, as the user, evaluate where this smart contract runs.
link |
Oh, wow, the smart contract runs on Ethereum.
link |
Great, thousands of nodes,
link |
lots of computational security,
link |
hash power, so on and so on.
link |
Then I look at, oh, well, what triggers the contract?
link |
Oh, there's this Oracle network.
link |
Okay, it's composed of 25 nodes or 15 nodes,
link |
gets data from five different weather stations.
link |
You know, I'm comfortable with that.
link |
I have a certain level of comfort
link |
with that hybrid smart contract
link |
and its ability to provide me consensus
link |
about the transaction
link |
once the contract knows what's happened,
link |
and I'm comfortable with the consensus around the event
link |
that controls the contract, right?
link |
Because once again,
link |
that event is what determines
link |
what happens with the contract.
link |
And if the contract is super well written,
link |
it doesn't matter if the event isn't reliable, right?
link |
So now I've made this determination.
link |
I've gotten all this clear, transparent information
link |
about this system that combines the contract code
link |
with a decentralized Oracle network.
link |
And I've made my decision to participate
link |
in this decentralized insurance,
link |
kind of crop insurance policy.
link |
I've sent the Bitcoin or the stable coin
link |
or whatever I have on my Android phone.
link |
And then time goes by and let's say it doesn't rain,
link |
lo and behold, the smart contract returns
link |
the relevant amount from the policy back to me.
link |
I continue my life as a farmer.
link |
And by the way, the fact that that happened
link |
contributes reputation and contributes proof
link |
back to both the contract
link |
as something that can prove to other people
link |
that it has settled and the Oracle network
link |
as something that can prove
link |
that it has properly assessed reality
link |
or properly triggered a contract.
link |
And this is where there's one of many network effects
link |
where the more that smart contracts
link |
and Oracle networks are used,
link |
they themselves generate this immutable on chain data
link |
that proves their value and reliability.
link |
And improving more and more of that
link |
in more and more kind of use cases
link |
and more and more variants of the same contract,
link |
they arrive at a greater body of proof
link |
that they like, I am the decentralized crop,
link |
the decentralized insurance contract for crop insurance
link |
used by a million users.
link |
And my failure rate is non existent or really low.
link |
And here's my Oracle network.
link |
And by the way, it's also settled a million of these.
link |
And so it's not the logo, right?
link |
It's not, hey, what a nice logo you have
link |
on top of a building above a train terminal or something.
link |
It's much more, hey, there's a million people,
link |
there's a million separate contracts
link |
that got settled correctly.
link |
I have all the proof that I could ever need about that.
link |
And it's not something that's very easy to gain, right?
link |
Because real value was at stake, real value was moved around.
link |
And so I think once again,
link |
the transparency aspect comes in where you're able to prove
link |
that the cryptographically enforced contracts are better.
link |
That said, you can still integrate the traditional banks
link |
as long as you create a data feed
link |
on the amount of marble that's included.
link |
So if that's valuable to you in terms of reputation,
link |
you could still integrate the marble, the amount of marble
link |
that and the size of the logo.
link |
We could still keep the banks around.
link |
I think what'll happen with the banks
link |
and all the insurance companies, by the way,
link |
is not that they'll all just die or something.
link |
I think it'll be just like the internet.
link |
There'll be some of them that adopt this
link |
and some of them that don't,
link |
and some of them that do it faster,
link |
some of them that do it slower.
link |
And that's an economic decision that they'll make.
link |
I think their whole question is,
link |
is this a foregone conclusion?
link |
I mean, I think my answer is yes,
link |
this is definitely gonna be happening.
link |
I think they still have a question of,
link |
is this gonna change my industry?
link |
But I'm seeing a definite shift in people's understanding.
link |
And I think that shift is gonna accelerate rapidly
link |
as one or two of them of their competitors
link |
throw their hat in the smart contract ring
link |
and say, well, I have smart contracts.
link |
I guarantee my outcomes to you.
link |
What do they do for you?
link |
It's risky, just use mine.
link |
And the second some of them start losing business
link |
because of that, they're gonna move very quickly
link |
because that's what all of their compensation structures
link |
and all their goal planning structures are based around.
link |
They're based around what is losing us business
link |
or getting us business.
link |
Yeah, it's fascinating organizationally though,
link |
to think about banks, they're very old school
link |
and their ability to move quickly is questionable to me.
link |
I just look at basic online banking,
link |
like how good banks are creating
link |
a frictionless online experience.
link |
And I think they're not very good.
link |
And so that speaks to the kind of people
link |
who are in leadership positions at banks,
link |
the kind of people they hire,
link |
the kind of culture there is.
link |
So I do wonder if banks will from inside
link |
revolutionize themselves to include smart contracts
link |
or whether totally new competitors will have to emerge
link |
that basically create new kinds of banks.
link |
Whether, what is the company square?
link |
I think it comes up out of nowhere really with Cash App
link |
and they have Bitcoin on Cash App,
link |
whether they will start incorporating smart contracts
link |
and they will revolutionize the whole banking industry
link |
or whether Bank of America will revolutionize themselves
link |
I'm skeptical on Bank of America, but you never know.
link |
In general, I'm fascinated by how big organizations,
link |
whether it's Google or Microsoft or Bank of America,
link |
pivot hard in a world that's quickly changing.
link |
I think that takes bold leadership and a lot of firing
link |
and a lot of pain and a lot of meetings
link |
where the one asshole brings up the
link |
from first principles idea that, you know what,
link |
the ways we've been doing stuff in the past require,
link |
we need to throw that out and do stuff totally differently.
link |
I know a lot of those assholes
link |
in a lot of these different industries.
link |
First of all, I think they're getting listened to more
link |
and second of all, I think all of these places,
link |
as I look at it more and more,
link |
I think they have a fundamental line of business
link |
that they try to protect
link |
and then everybody's compensation
link |
and everybody's metrics and goals
link |
is focused around that line of business.
link |
So the second that things begin to impact that,
link |
then everybody will be in a senior meeting
link |
and that asshole will be quite listened to
link |
because he will have the only thoughtful explanation
link |
as to why this is happening.
link |
How things will evolve from there, I actually don't know
link |
because that hasn't been the case yet.
link |
But my thinking is that there will be people
link |
who don't wanna cannibalize certain parts of their business
link |
or don't wanna change certain parts of their business
link |
and then there will be people who say,
link |
look, I think this is how the world's gonna work.
link |
We're gonna make a very, very heavy
link |
kind of set of commitments to put resources towards this.
link |
I already see that with a few banks
link |
working on various blockchain based systems,
link |
but granted, they've been working on those for years.
link |
So I think all of this comes down
link |
to these kind of quarterly earnings calls
link |
where somebody asks them, hey, I saw that bank over there
link |
once the blockchain bond
link |
or a smart contract derivative platform.
link |
And I also saw that they made $10 billion in revenues
link |
or $10 billion in volume or whatever it is from that.
link |
What's your plan on the earnings call?
link |
And I promise you by the next earnings call,
link |
And then the question on the next one is,
link |
well, when's the plan gonna happen?
link |
And then by the next earnings call,
link |
it's a plan is happening.
link |
And that's what these people are sensitive to.
link |
That's what these organizations are structured around.
link |
It's not completely economically like disconnected, right?
link |
They have this core business, they wanna protect it.
link |
I understand that idea,
link |
but I think that the problem with that
link |
is sometimes it requires this myopic focus, right?
link |
And that's what all the innovation stuff is about.
link |
Every time somebody at a corporate entity
link |
is about innovation, they're trying to sidestep this.
link |
But once again, the incentives to maintain
link |
whatever the core businesses is so strong
link |
that the innovation people, even though they are there,
link |
I think they get a phone call and go like,
link |
what are we doing for this?
link |
And the ones that actually did good work
link |
and got ready to do something for this
link |
have done their employer and their organization
link |
a very positive service.
link |
Whereas the ones that aren't ready,
link |
I mean, they'll make up something
link |
and maybe they're really smart and they'll get it together.
link |
Can we talk about tokens a little bit?
link |
Generally speaking, there's been a meteoric rise
link |
of a bunch of different tokens.
link |
We could just talk about Bitcoin and Ethereum as examples.
link |
Bitcoin I think crossed $60,000 in value.
link |
What are your thoughts in general on this rise?
link |
What's the future of Bitcoin?
link |
What's the future of Ethereum?
link |
There's the total value locked metric
link |
that I think generalizes the different kind of value
link |
What does the future value and impact
link |
of cryptocurrency look like
link |
if we look through the lens of these tokens?
link |
I think valuing all these tokens
link |
and determining that isn't something
link |
I'm particularly great at.
link |
I haven't spent a lot of time on that.
link |
I've spent the vast majority of my time
link |
on building these systems and architecting them
link |
and getting them to fruition and getting them to a place
link |
where they operate properly on both the technical
link |
and the crypto economic and in every other sense.
link |
I think with Bitcoin,
link |
there is a certain conception
link |
of non governmental fiat money
link |
that Bitcoin is really the first creator of, right?
link |
So there's this very powerful idea called fiat money.
link |
It's basically more or less a kind of 40 year experiment.
link |
I think on August 15th of this year
link |
is maybe I think given the 40th anniversary,
link |
government can say, hey, I have a currency
link |
and it's worth something and here it is.
link |
In terms of the way that governments have stopped that
link |
in the past is if anyone tries to make
link |
another fiat currency in their country,
link |
they immediately shut it down, right?
link |
They immediately say, hey, this is really bad.
link |
You've done something really bad.
link |
It's time for you to stop.
link |
Don't do it anymore.
link |
And it stops, right?
link |
That's been the history of non governmental fiat currency.
link |
Bitcoin is really due to its decentralized nature,
link |
the first and possibly in some cases,
link |
in many people's minds,
link |
it's still the only true non governmental fiat currency.
link |
Now, how powerful is non governmental fiat currency?
link |
I have no idea, right?
link |
This is why so it's really as powerful as the ideas
link |
that people ascribe to it are, right?
link |
So let's say people start saying,
link |
like right now people are saying,
link |
hey, it's internet money.
link |
It's the money of the internet.
link |
What's that worth?
link |
It's probably worth a lot.
link |
I have no idea what it's worth,
link |
but as an idea, as a concept to underpin the fiat money,
link |
the let there be aspect of fiat and of Bitcoin,
link |
you basically look at it and you say,
link |
yeah, internet money.
link |
Okay, that could be worth whatever,
link |
60,000, 600,000, great question, right?
link |
There are other versions of the world, right?
link |
there are countries that don't have a good fiat currency
link |
and I see a lot of people using Bitcoin.
link |
So Bitcoin isn't internet money,
link |
it's countries without a good currency money.
link |
So all the countries without a good currency
link |
now use Bitcoin and let there be,
link |
Bitcoin as this, right?
link |
As this conception of Bitcoin.
link |
What's the value of that?
link |
That's a great question.
link |
Probably huge amount of value.
link |
Then there's a further conception of Bitcoin
link |
as some digital gold.
link |
There's a scarcity dynamic.
link |
There's all these other kinds of dynamics.
link |
What is a portable version of digital gold
link |
with some kind of built in scarcity worth?
link |
You know, kind of artificially created scarcity.
link |
What's that worth?
link |
That's a great question.
link |
I haven't done the analysis on that is the point,
link |
might be worth a lot.
link |
What is it all worth if all three of these things,
link |
you know, flow into the same fiat,
link |
kind of let there be Bitcoin
link |
as these three things conception of Bitcoin?
link |
I don't know what that's worth.
link |
I also don't know what that's worth,
link |
but could be worth a huge amount.
link |
So I think it's not,
link |
I don't think it's,
link |
I personally don't think it's super important
link |
what I think it's worth
link |
or what many other people think it's worth.
link |
I don't think that's really that important.
link |
I think what's probably important
link |
is understanding what the societal conception of Bitcoin is
link |
and how does that societal conception evolve over time.
link |
And that interestingly enough,
link |
doesn't just depend on, you know,
link |
you or me or the people who made Bitcoin or anything else.
link |
It actually depends on current events.
link |
So for example, if people suddenly say,
link |
I'm more and more worried about fiat currency.
link |
I'm more and more worried that governmental fiat,
link |
even if it's the most reliable version of that
link |
is not as good as I thought it was.
link |
Maybe I should go on the PayPal app
link |
and maybe I should get some Bitcoin just in case.
link |
What's the world where Bitcoin is a certain percentage
link |
of everyone's ownership as a hedge
link |
against governmental fiat money not being so good?
link |
Haven't done the analysis, but another example, right?
link |
Here's this conception, that's the conception.
link |
So when I look at Bitcoin,
link |
what I see is a lot of these fascinating conceptions
link |
of what the fiat, let there be value of Bitcoin is.
link |
By the way, all of them could be true.
link |
Maybe some of them are true.
link |
Maybe some of them aren't true.
link |
And the fascinating thing is that
link |
I've seen this conception change, right?
link |
So when I started in the Bitcoin space,
link |
the conception was micropayments.
link |
The cost of Bitcoin is low, we'll have micropayments.
link |
Micropayments are wonderful for machine to machine
link |
transactions, micropayments are wonderful.
link |
The emerging market, and that's fine, right?
link |
And that was one conception of Bitcoin
link |
as let there be Bitcoin as micropayments platform, right?
link |
But then the value rose and things changed.
link |
There wasn't enough expansion in certain ways.
link |
And now the conception has evolved
link |
into this other conception.
link |
But at the end of the day,
link |
I think governments have a very clear set of steps
link |
for directing the public's conception of their fiat, right?
link |
They say our fiat is worth this for these reasons.
link |
Bitcoin doesn't have that.
link |
Bitcoin doesn't have an official Bitcoin spokesperson
link |
that goes out and says,
link |
the non governmental money called Bitcoin,
link |
the non governmental fiat money called Bitcoin
link |
has value on the basis of this, this, this and this.
link |
Here's our fiscal budget, here's our future plans.
link |
Our money will continue to be safe and secure and reliable.
link |
And so what that hole creates
link |
is a hole that we all fill, right?
link |
We all basically come to some vague kind of
link |
group understanding that Bitcoin is worth this
link |
because it is tied to,
link |
let's say all non governmental fiat money comes
link |
into question, everybody doubts it,
link |
possibly due to inflation.
link |
And everybody says, you know, this is nice,
link |
but I'd like to keep 10, 20% of my wealth
link |
in non governmental fiat, just in case,
link |
you know, what are those numbers?
link |
I mean, if that happens, you know,
link |
I'm guessing you can add a few zeros.
link |
I like how you say I haven't done the analysis
link |
as if I'm sure a lot of people have done
link |
quote unquote analysis, but it's not,
link |
it's still speculation.
link |
Nobody can predict the future,
link |
especially when so much of it has to do
link |
with a large number of people holding an idea
link |
in their mind as to the importance
link |
of a particular technology like Bitcoin.
link |
There's a lot of excitement by its possibilities,
link |
but the number of zeros you add is an open question
link |
and nobody can do a perfect analysis
link |
except whoever created this simulation.
link |
Let me ask you this question.
link |
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?
link |
There's quite a few people who suggest that person is you.
link |
Who do you think it could be?
link |
I don't know who it is.
link |
I think if I had to guess, it's probably a group of people,
link |
some of which might not even be around anymore.
link |
You know, obviously I'm very grateful to,
link |
if this is a singular or a group of people
link |
for kicking off this entire industry
link |
and making this amazing change in the world
link |
that I have the privilege and luxury
link |
of being part of in some small way in the work that I do.
link |
I think also this kind of focus on who is Satoshi
link |
or who isn't Satoshi,
link |
shouldn't in my opinion matter so much
link |
because regardless of who it is,
link |
that in my opinion should have no substantial
link |
significant effect or bearing on the functioning
link |
or the value or the use
link |
or the security of the Bitcoin system, right?
link |
So I think whoever it is,
link |
they're probably better off not making that public.
link |
And I think beyond that,
link |
whoever it turned out to be shouldn't matter
link |
because it has nothing to do
link |
with how the system is made useful
link |
or secure or anything else.
link |
And so I think that's the point of view that I have.
link |
Now, if you were Satoshi Nakamoto, would you tell me?
link |
Because you said they shouldn't,
link |
whoever Satoshi is, you should keep that private.
link |
So would you tell it to me or no?
link |
We're in some kind of weird like thought experiment here.
link |
If I was this guy, let me think about this,
link |
which I'm not, by the way, I am not this person.
link |
But if you were, would you say it?
link |
I think probably not.
link |
I think that they would cause a lot of distraction
link |
and a lot of weird stuff.
link |
And so realistically, I don't think it would help anybody
link |
or even the person who discloses it,
link |
but just to be clear, I am not.
link |
And whoever it is, I think they haven't said anything
link |
because they don't want the attention
link |
and they don't want the distraction
link |
and they don't want all the problems from this.
link |
And that makes sense to me, conceptually.
link |
It's fascinating to think if they're still out there
link |
and part of the Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency community,
link |
and it is inspiring to think that if they're out there,
link |
that they're not revealing their identity
link |
because it would be a distraction.
link |
That's kind of inspiring that people are like that.
link |
Just like George Washington,
link |
a relinquishing power is inspiring
link |
because it's ultimately about the progress of the community
link |
and not some kind of ego driven attention scheme.
link |
Again, very inspiring.
link |
The humans at their best are inspiring.
link |
What do you think about the certainty
link |
that people in the Bitcoin Maximus community
link |
have about this particular piece of technology, Bitcoin?
link |
Is there something interesting that you think
link |
that you might wanna say about this community
link |
or is it just is what it is?
link |
I think at the end of the day,
link |
results speak for themselves
link |
and Bitcoin has had an amazing impact on our industry
link |
and has had an amazing impact on the world.
link |
And I think the result is still
link |
that Bitcoin is very widely adopted
link |
and driving the adoption of our industry in many ways.
link |
So I think it's very difficult for people to say
link |
that Bitcoin maximalists don't have something
link |
that they can latch onto and say,
link |
hey, there's something very real here.
link |
I think there's been decisions made
link |
by the Bitcoin community
link |
and the people who made the Bitcoin protocol
link |
to focus it on Bitcoin
link |
and to focus it on the kind of storing
link |
of the ledger of Bitcoin
link |
and the information about Bitcoin
link |
and the transaction of Bitcoin
link |
and to focus on securing that.
link |
And I understand why that decision was made
link |
to a certain degree, right?
link |
It was about focus.
link |
It was about getting something worthwhile right
link |
without adding additional features and additional risk.
link |
And that decision is a decision that was made
link |
and has kind of the benefits of focus
link |
and the benefits of a certain amount of security
link |
and a certain amount of guarantees around Bitcoin
link |
and what that is and the value of that.
link |
And then it has certain limitations
link |
as a consequence of doing less
link |
or having the system hold data
link |
that isn't related to Bitcoin
link |
or not having the system hold contractual outcomes
link |
or smart contract code.
link |
So I think it's just kind of a decision, right?
link |
And I understand why they're excited
link |
and I'm very excited.
link |
I started in this industry going to Bitcoin meetups
link |
and I met a lot of fantastic people,
link |
libertarian people that wanted
link |
to see the world work differently
link |
and shared a lot of my beliefs
link |
and a lot of my points of view.
link |
And so anyone who's been in the industry
link |
as long as I have has had to come
link |
from the Bitcoin ecosystem
link |
by virtue of kind of starting out that early.
link |
So I have an unbelievable amount of respect
link |
and admiration and gratitude for Bitcoin
link |
and that it exists and everything that it's done
link |
and that it birthed this industry.
link |
There's absolutely no doubt about that.
link |
At the same time, whatever design decisions people make
link |
are the design decisions they make, right?
link |
And so if you've made a design decision
link |
that this ledger and this thing will be about Bitcoin,
link |
it won't be about colored coins,
link |
it won't be about op return at 80 bytes,
link |
it won't be about these other kind of nuances
link |
that you don't want this to be about, then that's fine.
link |
That's fine and that's a logical decision
link |
and it's called focus.
link |
And focus has a lot of value
link |
and a lot of great technology products
link |
have focused on something and done that.
link |
And then there's a lot of smart people around Bitcoin
link |
building kind of additional systems
link |
that anchor their security within Bitcoin.
link |
And I think that's an interesting approach
link |
that could bear fruit.
link |
I think it'll eventually require an interaction
link |
with a Bitcoin protocol in more advanced ways.
link |
And then there will be another question of,
link |
what is the design decision for Bitcoin?
link |
Is it that Bitcoin will be just about the Bitcoin ledger?
link |
Or does Bitcoin want to evolve
link |
into an anchor for all these other systems
link |
and maybe create additional data store,
link |
kind of more data on chain,
link |
on the Bitcoin blockchain related to that?
link |
So I'm excited to see how that evolves,
link |
but until then kind of results speak for themselves
link |
and the results that Bitcoin has achieved
link |
for our industry and for itself
link |
as kind of the dominant cryptocurrency
link |
and the conception of our industry
link |
that people interact with first
link |
is obviously very important and something
link |
that I think really everybody in our industry
link |
is grateful for, right?
link |
Because without Bitcoin, where would our industry be?
link |
And that's obviously something that we can't forget.
link |
What are your thoughts about Ethereum
link |
in the chain link distributed Oracle network world?
link |
Is it competition?
link |
Is it collaboration?
link |
Is it complimentary technology?
link |
What do you think about Ethereum?
link |
How much do you think about Ethereum?
link |
What role does it have?
link |
Yeah, I think about a lot.
link |
I think we're completely complimentary.
link |
So there's no competitive dynamics in my opinion.
link |
We are completely collaborative and complimentary
link |
with Ethereum and all other blockchains
link |
and all other layer twos that operate a contract, right?
link |
So we do not seek to operate a smart contract.
link |
We seek to augment and enable smart contracts
link |
to go further in what they're able to do.
link |
In fact, Oracle networks have some value,
link |
but they don't have nearly as much value in what they do
link |
if there isn't a mission critical system
link |
like a smart contract that needs their data, right?
link |
So we've made our own explicit design decisions
link |
in our own and created our own focus
link |
around guaranteeing that smart contracts can go further.
link |
We've already done that, right?
link |
Decentralized finance, the rate at which we put data
link |
is to a degree the rate at which certain
link |
decentralized financial markets grow.
link |
And as we put more data, we see more
link |
financial products go live, gaming, we provide VRF.
link |
So we have this kind of focus and it's a very useful
link |
and valuable kind of, valuable for our industry focus.
link |
At the end of the day, I think that smart contract platforms
link |
like Ethereum made a different set of design decisions
link |
from Bitcoin and others.
link |
And they focused on creating the smart contract capability
link |
and they kind of wanted that functionality to exist.
link |
And I think since then, there's been a number of people
link |
that try to improve on that or try to make variants of that.
link |
From our point of view, we want to support smart contracts
link |
in all of their variations and in all of their use cases.
link |
So one of the things that I personally like about Chainlink
link |
is their ability or Chainlink's ability
link |
and the Chainlink network's ability to be useful
link |
to many different chains and across many different use cases.
link |
I'm personally a fan of Ethereum.
link |
Ethereum has done a huge amount for our industry as well.
link |
Ethereum took us from a world where it literally took months
link |
to make a new smart contract by being forced
link |
to code it into a protocol.
link |
You had to go to the protocol developers
link |
and you had to say, hey, I need a DEX
link |
or I need some kind of smart contract.
link |
Put it in the protocol itself.
link |
Put it in the actual blockchain mining
link |
and kind of block generation, transaction generation protocol.
link |
That would take months or sometimes even over a year.
link |
That was a horrible experience
link |
and obviously very few people wanted to participate in that
link |
and so very few people made smart contracts,
link |
which I was not a fan of, right?
link |
And then Ethereum came along
link |
and really did a lot of innovative things
link |
and introduced this approach to scriptable smart contracts
link |
where you could script all of these different conditions.
link |
And I found that fascinating before Ethereum.
link |
I found that fascinating once Ethereum
link |
arrived, I found it fascinating after Ethereum launched
link |
and I still find it fascinating.
link |
And I'm also very grateful to Vitalik
link |
and the Ethereum community and all the core developers there
link |
for taking our industry a step further.
link |
So I think they absolutely deserve a huge amount of credit
link |
for taking our industry from it takes months
link |
to make a really small smart contract
link |
to it takes weeks to make a relatively secure,
link |
relatively advanced piece of on chain code
link |
that anybody can script and people can do audits on
link |
and that's an unbelievable leap forward for our industry
link |
and I'm genuinely grateful to them for that.
link |
I think the next step in line with our body of work
link |
is how does that scriptable on chain code
link |
become more advanced in its interaction
link |
with all of the systems and events in the real world,
link |
which is in my opinion, the final missing piece
link |
of the puzzle, right?
link |
So my body of work, the body of work that I'm involved in
link |
would not be where it is right now
link |
without Bitcoin by any measure.
link |
It wouldn't even be where it is now without Ethereum
link |
and the growth in smart contract development
link |
that they've created.
link |
And now what I think is gonna happen next
link |
is there'll be a lot of different smart contract platforms,
link |
a lot of different layer twos,
link |
some of them will be private for enterprise,
link |
some of them will be public,
link |
there'll be some public winners in certain geographies
link |
for maybe regulation reasons, maybe other reasons,
link |
there'll be other public winners, the larger internet,
link |
and there'll be a number of different people
link |
building smart contracts in different languages.
link |
We are excited and I am excited
link |
and the Chainlink community is excited
link |
and basically there's a lot of,
link |
I mean, for lack of a better word, excitement
link |
in seeing our industry graduate
link |
to providing more use cases,
link |
more usable hybrid smart contracts, right?
link |
Because once again, it's absolutely amazing
link |
that Bitcoin created non governmental fiat money.
link |
It's an unbelievable innovation
link |
and invented decentralized infrastructure
link |
and birthed our industry.
link |
It's an unbelievably great achievement,
link |
an amazing achievement that we now have
link |
scriptable smart contracts through something like Ethereum.
link |
Once again, monumental achievement in my opinion.
link |
Once again, we still need to look to the future.
link |
We need to look to how do we take
link |
the decentralized infrastructure concepts
link |
that Bitcoin initially put forward,
link |
that Ethereum then improved upon
link |
and created into these scriptable smart contract formats,
link |
and how do we expand that into the world
link |
of real world outcomes to change
link |
the global financial industry, the global trade industry,
link |
the global data marketplace industry,
link |
and many other global industries.
link |
You mentioned results speak for themselves
link |
and how design decisions have consequences.
link |
The Chainlink community have come up
link |
with a lot of brilliant designs.
link |
So how do you think through the design choices
link |
that you're facing where you can't predict the future,
link |
but you're trying to create a better future?
link |
Is there something low level introspective advice
link |
that you can give or describe
link |
as to how you think through those decisions
link |
or high level how you think about those decisions?
link |
I think that's a great question.
link |
And I think that actually gets to the core
link |
of what the Chainlink network is supposed to achieve.
link |
We are supposed to achieve a maximally flexible system.
link |
So once again, this is the big difference
link |
between Chainlink and Oracle networks in general
link |
and blockchains in my opinion.
link |
Blockchains do not seek to be maximally flexible, right?
link |
They say, here's my block size,
link |
here's the transaction types you can put in those blocks.
link |
Here's the contract language I have.
link |
Here's kind of my blockchain system, right?
link |
Here's the fee structure for those blocks.
link |
They're gonna keep getting kind of composed,
link |
transactions are gonna get put into blocks,
link |
blocks will get connected and it'll continue, right?
link |
And that's a very focused type of system.
link |
And that makes sense because it's focused
link |
on creating security for that category
link |
of on chain activity, which is once again,
link |
a critical, critical part of building
link |
a highly transparent system and something
link |
that Chainlink enables and doesn't compete with
link |
and just enables to do more.
link |
Oracle networks, conversely, have to interact
link |
with all the world's data and provide all the services
link |
that blockchains don't provide, right?
link |
So there's kind of a spectrum.
link |
On one end of the spectrum, you have blockchains
link |
that are highly secure, highly reliable,
link |
highly tamper proof, highly transparent,
link |
but are not very feature rich.
link |
For example, they cannot talk to an API.
link |
Many of them can't generate randomness.
link |
They cannot do some kind of privacy preserving computation.
link |
So they're very secure.
link |
And there are these kind of data structures
link |
and smart contract platforms to hold on chain code
link |
that can define conditions, receive value,
link |
pay value back out under conditions
link |
and create transparency around all that,
link |
which makes perfect sense.
link |
And then there's oracles and oracle networks.
link |
That is all the world's data, right?
link |
We're talking about taking all the world's data
link |
and making it consumable for all the world's use cases
link |
that have trust issues.
link |
So the amount of variability there is absolutely massive,
link |
It's like the decentralized oracle network
link |
and the conditions that that decentralized oracle network
link |
needs to meet is gonna vary very widely
link |
from an insurance contract to a lending contract
link |
to an ad network contract to the data sales contract
link |
that we discussed to any number of other smart contracts.
link |
So really the ability of a decentralized oracle network
link |
to flexibly address all of those requirements
link |
is what's necessary.
link |
So flexibility is the goal,
link |
whereas with on chain like Bitcoin,
link |
flexibility is the enemy in the sense
link |
that you want security, you want the focus there.
link |
And in that kind of world,
link |
design decisions have huge consequences.
link |
And then if you look at the distributed oracle network side,
link |
you want to remove the restrictions of design choices.
link |
You want to provide maximal flexibility then.
link |
So it's a completely separate kind of a design framework.
link |
It's a slightly different problem, right?
link |
Because we're not trying to define transaction types
link |
fitting into blocks on a certain timeline
link |
of those blocks being generated.
link |
We're trying to say, hey, there's this world of services
link |
or this world of data that's not very deterministic,
link |
but it's unbelievably useful
link |
to these smart contracts over here.
link |
And actually they need it to even exist.
link |
And we really want them to exist because once they exist,
link |
it's gonna completely redefine
link |
what our whole industry is known for, right?
link |
And defined NFTs are not even the tip of the iceberg.
link |
They're like the snow coming off the top of the iceberg.
link |
And so our goal is to create a framework
link |
and an infrastructure and a software
link |
that allows people to compose
link |
decentralized oracle networks, right?
link |
So initially you can compose a decentralized oracle network
link |
of seven nodes that goes to three data sources
link |
to trigger your contract worth a million dollars.
link |
And that's where you could start.
link |
And then let's say your smart contract,
link |
your DeFi smart contract goes to a billion dollars.
link |
Well, then you need to make some changes, right?
link |
You need to go from seven nodes
link |
to 15 or maybe 31 nodes.
link |
And you need to go from three data sources
link |
And you maybe need to create some kind of
link |
what we call circuit breakers and some other checks.
link |
And you need to make sure
link |
that the decentralized oracle network
link |
comes to consensus around those checks.
link |
Because now the centralized oracle network
link |
isn't controlling a million dollars,
link |
it's controlling a billion dollars.
link |
And we have decentralized oracle networks
link |
that control well over a billion dollars,
link |
multiple billions of dollars.
link |
And we see them growing and getting more advanced
link |
data sources and more advanced features.
link |
And then if somebody else comes and says,
link |
well, I don't really wanna make a DeFi product,
link |
I wanna make crop insurance.
link |
And I have a completely different set of conditions.
link |
I want this method of consensus
link |
and I want data to be aggregated in this way,
link |
but not the way that you do
link |
for decentralized financial products.
link |
I mean, what are we supposed to tell them?
link |
We're supposed to tell them, no,
link |
our decentralized oracle network can't let you do that.
link |
And you can go and wait another five years
link |
until somebody builds it for you.
link |
That's not what we wanna do, right?
link |
What we wanna do is be able to say,
link |
absolutely, here's an example of how somebody else
link |
made a decentralized oracle network for weather insurance.
link |
Here's a template, change that template,
link |
evolve it to meet your needs.
link |
And then someone else comes and says,
link |
hey, I have some other use case in gaming, right?
link |
I wanna make NFTs related to real world sports events,
link |
or I wanna do whatever I wanna do
link |
with some kind of sports related data.
link |
Wonderful, here's the framework,
link |
here are your risk dynamics,
link |
here's a collection of node operators,
link |
here's a set of preintegrated data sources,
link |
here's a reputation system to assess
link |
the quality of your ensemble of nodes,
link |
here's a way to scale that up
link |
as the value in your contract scales.
link |
Here's all the tools that you need to build this contract.
link |
And what we actually see now as there are multiple types
link |
of computations and data sources that are provided
link |
by different decentralized oracle networks,
link |
of which there are now hundreds,
link |
we now see that a single hybrid smart contract
link |
might use multiple decentralized oracle networks.
link |
So there might be a hybrid smart contract
link |
that uses a price data, decentralized oracle network,
link |
a proof of reserve oracle network,
link |
a randomness oracle network.
link |
And I think we're gonna continue to see
link |
this dynamic that more and more advanced contracts
link |
compose various decentralized oracle networks
link |
into more advanced use cases.
link |
And this is the dynamic that we're focused on enabling.
link |
And I think it's actually a very virtuous cycle
link |
for everybody because the more of these
link |
hybrid smart contracts we enable on Ethereum
link |
and other blockchains, the more our industry
link |
provides real world outcomes to the market.
link |
To the larger world, which is at the end of the day,
link |
what I think everybody in our industry wants.
link |
Everybody in our industry wants hybrid smart contracts
link |
to become the way that global finance works,
link |
global trade works, global insurance products work,
link |
because they will inherently need both a blockchain
link |
on which the contract itself lives
link |
and an oracle network that powers
link |
all of the other interactions, right?
link |
As a developer, how would you recommend
link |
somebody listening to this, but also me,
link |
to get started with smart contracts
link |
and to get started with hybrid smart contracts?
link |
Well, for hybrid smart contracts,
link |
I'm gonna have to do some kind of shameless promotion.
link |
Please, let me twist your arm.
link |
I think you can go to our YouTube.
link |
We have a number of developer tutorials.
link |
Chainlink YouTube?
link |
I think if you just search Chainlink on YouTube,
link |
you should find it.
link |
Beyond that, we recently had a hackathon
link |
where we had a huge amount of very kind of
link |
advanced hybrid smart contracts getting built.
link |
To elaborate on that, you had a hackathon.
link |
Is that something that people can follow along
link |
like a video or there's web page traces of what happened?
link |
Or is there a future actual hackathons
link |
that people could literally participate in?
link |
There's plenty of more hackathons coming up.
link |
We wanna enable as many developers in web3 and web2
link |
to build hybrid smart contracts
link |
as a way to redefine our industry
link |
and kind of make all of these smart contracts come to life.
link |
There are definitely gonna be more hackathons.
link |
So people should go and preregister or register
link |
on a list to get involved in that.
link |
That's a great resource where we have a lot of speakers
link |
and a lot of educational tools.
link |
They happen over a course of weeks, not days.
link |
So there's a long time for people to work on these things
link |
at the speed that they find comfortable.
link |
One, is there a kind of hello world entry point
link |
for hybrid smart contracts?
link |
And two, on the hackathon side,
link |
what kind of stuff do you see people building at first?
link |
Just kind of getting their feet wet
link |
in terms of the kind of applications that could be enabled.
link |
I mean, there's unbelievable things
link |
that we see people building.
link |
I think how to get your feet wet,
link |
I think the hello world is probably DeFi
link |
because it's pretty straightforward.
link |
And there's a large amount of data sources
link |
that we already have putting data on chain on test net,
link |
which is the test environment in which people would build.
link |
So I think DeFi is probably to a certain degree
link |
the most exciting for certain people
link |
and pretty expansive in terms of the tutorials
link |
and the amount of contracts
link |
to see how people have already built it.
link |
I think beyond that,
link |
we see people building amazing things at these hackathons.
link |
In the previous hackathon,
link |
we saw somebody build a smart contract
link |
that allows someone to rent out their Tesla.
link |
So it allows the Tesla API to give someone else access
link |
and rent out someone's Tesla
link |
on the basis of a smart contract kind of coordinating payment,
link |
which was kind of amazing.
link |
The more recent hackathon,
link |
we saw something called Dbridge,
link |
which is a cross chain solution that uses Oracle networks
link |
to confirm data on different chains.
link |
So I think the things that people build
link |
will just become expansive and varied
link |
in ways that I can't even imagine.
link |
But I think this recent hackathon saw a huge, huge list
link |
of different kind of winners in different categories.
link |
And there's so many different categories.
link |
We even have a GovTech category
link |
and a whole bunch of things.
link |
If people wanna see what's possible,
link |
they can go look at the winners.
link |
I think that's probably a good idea.
link |
Yeah, that'll be on the side of the hackathon.
link |
There's a blog related to that,
link |
and we're gonna have more of these.
link |
And once again, our explicit goal
link |
is to take our industry into this world
link |
of hybrid smart contracts, which just benefits everybody.
link |
It makes more on chain activity.
link |
It helps provide real world value to the average person
link |
from all of this infrastructure period.
link |
And at the end of the day,
link |
I think that it just redefines what our industry is about
link |
through use cases, right?
link |
Because if you only learn through our industry
link |
from the point of view of a single use case,
link |
like the NFT use case or some other use case,
link |
that's what our industry is about.
link |
And the more of these use cases
link |
that people can make available to the average person
link |
or to the FinTech world or to the insurance world
link |
or wherever, the faster our industry will not just be
link |
about Bitcoins or tokens,
link |
it will be about changing global finance,
link |
changing global insurance, changing global trade.
link |
And that's the change in the world
link |
that I and a lot of other people in this industry,
link |
I think, got into this for.
link |
Now it's funny, you've mentioned about,
link |
you've had a lot of kind words to say about Bitcoin
link |
and Ethereum as important technology
link |
that paved the way for the future.
link |
And you somehow did not mention
link |
one of the most profound pieces of technology,
link |
which is Dogecoin.
link |
What are your thoughts about this particular
link |
revolutionary technology?
link |
And what are your thoughts about Dogecoin
link |
going to the moon, to Mars,
link |
and outside of the solar system?
link |
I think Dogecoin is a very interesting kind of,
link |
probably closer to a social experiment than anything else.
link |
Isn't everything a social experiment?
link |
Yeah, I guess that's fair to a degree.
link |
I think it's fascinating how that's evolved.
link |
I think the people that made it
link |
with certain goals in mind
link |
and then it's kind of taken on a life of its own.
link |
I don't fully understand exactly why it's taken on a life
link |
of its own at this point.
link |
I once again, I don't spend too much time
link |
thinking about different tokens and how they're evolving.
link |
I'm much more focused on the launching and...
link |
The technology around trust and all those kinds of ideas.
link |
But I think one of the fascinating things about Dogecoin
link |
is how technology that leverages social dynamics,
link |
that technology's ability to utilize fun and memes to spread.
link |
I think it's really interesting.
link |
I don't think it should be discounted as a...
link |
I think I tweeted today something
link |
about like the fundamental force field of fun.
link |
That fun has an effect on the space time.
link |
So general relativity describes how mass and energy
link |
can curve space time. And I was just giving an example
link |
that when life is fun, it seems short.
link |
When life is not fun, it seems very long.
link |
So fun has a very similar effect on space time,
link |
like in curved space time.
link |
In that same sense, there is a power to the meme.
link |
And I think Dogecoin illustrates that.
link |
I think Elon is an example of somebody that uses Dogecoin.
link |
I don't know his philosophy in particular on this aspect,
link |
but he does use Dogecoin.
link |
But he does use it effectively to excite the world
link |
in a fun way about the possibilities
link |
of future technologies like cryptocurrency.
link |
I think the Bitcoin world is very serious right now.
link |
We've spoken about Bitcoin maximalists.
link |
There is very little space for fun and joking
link |
in the Bitcoin world, but there's still a little bit of fun
link |
and humor left in the Dogecoin world.
link |
In that sense, I think it's exceptionally powerful
link |
to inspire, to excite, to be able to talk about stuff
link |
without the seriousness of financial impact
link |
that now certain cryptocurrencies have like Bitcoin.
link |
So I keep an eye on, I've previously mentioned
link |
that Dogecoin I think is a fascinating piece of technology
link |
because I do think cryptocurrency is much bigger
link |
than the technology that you focus on.
link |
There is also a social element that you also spoke to
link |
that's I think not quite yet understood
link |
and it's fascinating to watch, especially as it covalls
link |
with the different tools on the internet,
link |
the different social networks,
link |
social network mechanisms on the internet.
link |
So I'm a huge supporter of Dogecoin
link |
because I'm a huge supporter of fun.
link |
I'm fascinated to see how it'll work out.
link |
You think it'll go to the moon?
link |
You think it'll be the first cryptocurrency
link |
to land on the moon?
link |
I haven't done the analysis as I've said before.
link |
I haven't done the analysis.
link |
Well, yeah, no matter what,
link |
I do hope we will get humans back on the moon
link |
and hopefully get humans on Mars soon.
link |
Dogecoin, Bitcoin or not.
link |
Let me ask you about books and movies.
link |
What books and movies in your life long ago
link |
when you were a baby Sergei or today had an impact on you?
link |
Maybe you would recommend to others
link |
and maybe what ideas you took away from those books,
link |
movies, coloring books, children's books, blogs, whatever.
link |
So I think one of the things that had a very big impact
link |
on me were Plato's dialogues
link |
and particularly Protagoras and Gorgias
link |
as some of the two initial ones.
link |
I think what Plato's dialogues do very well
link |
is they give people a clear picture of what dialogue looks
link |
like and what the assessment
link |
of information probably should look like, right?
link |
And how the dissection and analysis
link |
of an idea is very important
link |
and how it can actually be taken in either direction.
link |
But at the end of the day that the process
link |
of eliminating kind of this fuzzy thinking
link |
and arriving at whether it's an external dialogue
link |
or an internal dialogue about an accurate picture
link |
of reality is actually very important.
link |
And so I think I'm very lucky to have read the dialogues
link |
when I was in my early teenage years
link |
and it had a very large impact on me
link |
because it kind of showed me that nobody knows
link |
what they're talking about.
link |
I would play out dialogues in my mind
link |
and I would engage in certain dialogues
link |
with different people.
link |
And what the Platonic dialogue showed me was kind
link |
of how to tell when someone has no clue.
link |
And a lot of people are very good
link |
at kind of say they have a clue, right?
link |
Saying like, here's how the world works.
link |
Here's what you should do with your life.
link |
Here's what you should do with your time.
link |
Here's what you should do with your money.
link |
Here's what you should do with your attention.
link |
Here's what you should do with all these things.
link |
And I think the ability to evaluate information
link |
generally is something that is surprisingly under taught.
link |
I don't actually understand why there isn't a course
link |
in like high schools or universities
link |
that's just like, here is how you evaluate information.
link |
Here's how you engage in external dialogue
link |
and internal dialogue to arrive
link |
at an accurate picture of reality
link |
rather than the picture of reality
link |
that other people want you to have
link |
for their benefit most often, right?
link |
And at the end of the day,
link |
I think that put me down a path
link |
to really try and understand.
link |
Beyond that, I think biographies
link |
have had a very large impact on me.
link |
Plutarchs, Greek and Roman lives.
link |
After I read Plato,
link |
I started reading a bunch of stuff, Greek stuff.
link |
I was just like, these Greek guys,
link |
they really know how it is.
link |
They did this 2000 years ago and they still got it right.
link |
There's something here.
link |
It's kind of this like a theory of time around them,
link |
the value of intellectual ideas, right?
link |
If an intellectual idea has survived the test of time,
link |
it's much more valuable than the intellectual idea
link |
that I just came up with 10 minutes ago,
link |
I haven't told anybody and hasn't gone up against
link |
all of the kind of rebuttals.
link |
So what's your favorite,
link |
what would you say would be a most impactful biography
link |
that you've come across?
link |
I don't think it was those Greek or Roman biographies
link |
because they were very far away.
link |
I think that probably one of the most impactful ones
link |
that I can remember recently is around Vanderbilt.
link |
And so Vanderbilt was this guy who basically,
link |
without that much of an education,
link |
he would invent or work with people
link |
to make these steamboats.
link |
And then he had a lot of acumen
link |
around creating certain monopolies,
link |
regardless of what was right or wasn't right.
link |
Right or wasn't right.
link |
And then fascinating enough,
link |
it all hinged on like a Supreme Court case
link |
that decided if monopolies were acceptable
link |
in the form of state created monopolies or not.
link |
And if it was deemed that state created monopolies
link |
were acceptable, he would have had a huge problem, this guy.
link |
But it was deemed that state created monopolies
link |
through these licenses for steamboat routes
link |
was not acceptable.
link |
And that did two interesting things that unseated
link |
some kind of old time landed gentry in the Americas
link |
in like the 1830s and 40s.
link |
And it basically made him right
link |
and he saw it before other people.
link |
So I think Vanderbilt was a very interesting personality,
link |
first of all, of all the biographies that I read
link |
is somebody who really took the situation in hand
link |
and kind of took action to achieve an outcome,
link |
which I think was an amazing result.
link |
The fascinating thing, by the way,
link |
is, or amazing way of looking at things.
link |
The fascinating thing, by the way,
link |
is that the ferries now in New York Harbor
link |
are all run as a public good.
link |
So the fascinating thing is that the guy,
link |
he focused on an industry and he worked on something
link |
that was so important that it ended up
link |
becoming a public good.
link |
And I think that that's an interesting conception
link |
of how to look at this industry.
link |
I think there's a lot of economics dynamics
link |
around this industry,
link |
but I think I might've said this somewhere else before,
link |
but really the success of someone in this industry
link |
is whether they're able to make a Linux or HTTP
link |
or an HTTPS like system that lives on for a very long time
link |
and is essentially a kind of public good.
link |
It's a success of an idea,
link |
even if that idea is originally sort of a capitalist idea
link |
above that's grounded in financial benefit.
link |
Success of it is if it becomes a public good.
link |
It is so universal.
link |
It is so fundamental to the quality of life
link |
that it's a public good.
link |
It is deemed to be so valuable
link |
that it should be a public good.
link |
I think that's a pretty,
link |
a pretty good definition of success that you work
link |
on a body of work and that body of work
link |
isn't just some commercial enterprise.
link |
It's a body of work that whatever commercial aspects
link |
or economic incentive aspects it might have,
link |
it eventually is so important
link |
that it becomes critical to how society functions.
link |
I'm personally quite lucky and grateful to be,
link |
in my opinion, working on something like that
link |
with an amazing team and an amazing community
link |
that seems to really very much care
link |
about this hybrid smart contract transparent world
link |
that a lot of people on our industry,
link |
realistically, I think this is why a lot of them signed up.
link |
This is why I came into our industry.
link |
It wasn't because Bitcoin,
link |
it was because Bitcoin was a picture
link |
of how the world could work in so many other ways.
link |
And that picture of how the world could work
link |
in so many other ways attracted me a very long time ago.
link |
And I think that all of this stuff
link |
will eventually become a public good.
link |
I think it will become so critical
link |
to how societies function internally and internationally
link |
that just like there are systems,
link |
like the Federal Reserve, like global payment systems,
link |
like all these types of things,
link |
I think eventually all of this technology
link |
will be baked into these societally critical systems.
link |
And if I, in our community and the people I work with
link |
and the body of work that we're working on
link |
can make some kind of contribution to that shift
link |
towards a fairer, economically fair, transparent society,
link |
from my point of view, it's a very worthwhile body of work.
link |
In terms of the show, you also mentioned the show,
link |
one of the shows that I really seem to like more and more
link |
for some reason is Star Trek, not the old Star Trek.
link |
I don't really get the old Star Trek.
link |
The special effects aren't good enough.
link |
Star Trek, like The Next Generation and Voyager
link |
and Deep Space Nine and all those.
link |
I think whenever I happen to watch a Star Trek show again,
link |
I have a very simple conception in my mind
link |
that I really didn't have whenever I saw it way back when.
link |
It's that I'm not a fan of Star Trek.
link |
It's that this is what the world looks like
link |
if technology takes us towards a utopia, right?
link |
So I think there's this fascinating thing
link |
where technology can take us towards a utopia
link |
or towards a dystopia.
link |
And in my mind, those kind of three Star Trek shows
link |
are a picture of what human civilization looks like
link |
if everybody's technological ambitions
link |
successfully take us towards a utopia, right?
link |
Because in the Star Trek universe,
link |
you're not seeking money or you're not seeking safety
link |
or you're not really seeking anything for yourself.
link |
Everybody within Maslow's hierarchy of needs
link |
has gotten so many things for themselves
link |
that their goal is learning and discovering and or helping.
link |
And I think there is this conception of human life
link |
once the baser needs are satisfied.
link |
And at the end of the day,
link |
I think that's what technology generally can elevate
link |
all of human civilization to, right?
link |
It can elevate us to Star Trek world
link |
where if people want to invent,
link |
they can do that all day and nothing else.
link |
If people wanna explore the stars,
link |
they can explore the stars
link |
and they don't have to worry about economic scarcity
link |
or any number of these other conceptions.
link |
So I don't know what the most impactful on me shows have been
link |
but for some reason recently Star Trek
link |
in the newer variant,
link |
not the most new Star Trek shows.
link |
Those shows are a little strange.
link |
The kind of middle Star Trek universe
link |
where everybody is doing something
link |
with like a very important purpose
link |
and nobody's thinking about like,
link |
where's my paycheck or where's my whatever.
link |
They're all kind of like,
link |
we have to discover the formula to this
link |
to save the planet over there.
link |
And literally every episode you're discovering a formula
link |
to save a planet, right?
link |
Of some kind or a universe or ecosystem or whatever.
link |
And you're looking at it, you're like,
link |
you know, this is like,
link |
this is a pretty good place to end up.
link |
This is where we might wanna end up.
link |
So it gives you hope.
link |
I mean, it's funny that we don't often think about the,
link |
I think it's very useful to think about positive visions
link |
of the future when we're trying to design technology.
link |
There's a lot of sort of in public discourse,
link |
a lot of people are thinking about
link |
kind of how everything goes wrong.
link |
It's important to think about that sometimes,
link |
but in moderation, I think,
link |
because there's not enough in my little corner
link |
of artificial intelligence world,
link |
people are very kind of fear monger centered.
link |
There's a lot of discussions
link |
about how everything goes wrong.
link |
Important to do, but it's also really important
link |
to talk about how things can go right,
link |
because we ultimately want to guide the design
link |
of the systems we create to make things right.
link |
And I think with hope and optimism,
link |
not naiveness, but optimism,
link |
you can actually create a better world.
link |
Like you have to think about a positive,
link |
a better world as you create,
link |
because then you can actually create it.
link |
Yeah, I'm one of the people that thinks
link |
that having an optimistic view of the world
link |
is better for design and creativity
link |
than having a pessimistic one.
link |
It's hard to design when you're in fear.
link |
Do you have advice for young people,
link |
speaking of being excited about
link |
and hopeful about the future world,
link |
do you have advice for young people today
link |
in computer science world,
link |
in software engineering world, in crypto world,
link |
but maybe in any world whatsoever for life,
link |
how to pick a career or how to live life in general?
link |
I think the thing that young people should do
link |
is not any one specific thing
link |
for any one specific young person.
link |
I think what they should do is what they won't be able to do
link |
in the later stages of their life.
link |
And the way, in my opinion,
link |
from a framework point of view to think about that
link |
is that the amount of obligations
link |
and the amount of time that a person has
link |
seems to just diminish over time, right?
link |
So the amount of free time they have, right?
link |
So you start your job,
link |
you get a bunch of responsibilities,
link |
something with your partner or spouse,
link |
more responsibilities,
link |
kids, probably even more responsibilities,
link |
and soon enough, the time that you have to educate yourself,
link |
to travel, to experience the world however,
link |
create whatever creative endeavor you're interested in,
link |
slowly but surely disappears.
link |
I think this is something
link |
that young people don't fully realize.
link |
They assume that the world as it is now
link |
and the amount of free time that they have to travel,
link |
to educate themselves, to make new friends,
link |
to do all these things,
link |
will somehow maybe diminish by 10%.
link |
It won't diminish by 10%, it will diminish by 90%.
link |
And the 10% that you have,
link |
you'll be resting to get back to work and get things done.
link |
So what I think young people should do,
link |
and this is why it's very different for each of them, right?
link |
I can't tell young people,
link |
hey, you should study philosophy, travel,
link |
and start your own enterprise to achieve something
link |
worthwhile in the world, right?
link |
That might be something that's good for me
link |
with my values and my kind of worldview,
link |
but for other people might be something else.
link |
I think the way that they should conceptualize it
link |
is imagine if over the next 10, 12 years,
link |
the amount of choice that you had about what you could do
link |
was cut down by 90%.
link |
What would you, and this is copying from this kind of
link |
Jeff Bezos regret minimization framework.
link |
In that framework, it's like,
link |
what would I regret not doing at 80?
link |
And that's kind of meant to create this longterm view
link |
and make these decisions now that'll get you
link |
to a longterm future that you can look back on
link |
and be proud of your life, right?
link |
What I think young people should do
link |
is they should say to themselves,
link |
look, if I never get the chance to travel
link |
for as long as I live,
link |
assuming that after 25, after 27, after 29,
link |
that's the case, how will I feel about that?
link |
If I never get to start a company after 25,
link |
after I get married, after I have kids,
link |
how will I feel about that?
link |
And whatever they feel the worst about
link |
is what they should do.
link |
Whatever they feel like when they say to themselves,
link |
you know, if I don't travel now, I will never travel.
link |
And they feel horrible about that.
link |
They just have an overwhelming fear
link |
and disgust at themselves in that type of state
link |
at 25, 27, 29, that's what they should do.
link |
And they shouldn't listen to anybody else.
link |
Let me put it to you this way.
link |
If you're really smart, you're gonna make it anyway.
link |
There's a lot of people putting a lot of pressure on you
link |
because they're afraid whether you're gonna make it.
link |
If you're really smart, you're gonna make it anyway.
link |
If you're not really smart, you're screwed anyway.
link |
So at the end of the day.
link |
Either way, just relax with it and use your time well
link |
to do the things you would most regret not doing.
link |
That's really fascinating.
link |
I wouldn't say relax.
link |
I would say very much cherish the free time,
link |
the discretionary time that you have
link |
from the age of 18 to maybe 25.
link |
Because at 25, everyone's gonna start looking at each other
link |
and asking, what have I achieved?
link |
Like my friends have achieved, I haven't achieved.
link |
And then by the time you get to 30,
link |
you're gonna look at each other again and go,
link |
well, my friends have a family or a company
link |
or a PhD or a whatever, what do I have?
link |
And the pressure will just increase.
link |
And it'll increase so much that even if you want to go
link |
and do the fun thing, it will not be fun.
link |
Because the pressure of comparing yourself
link |
to your friends at 25 or your peers at 30
link |
will be so great that it will no longer be normal
link |
for you to be in a hostel at 30,
link |
kind of like living it up.
link |
And this is why I also can't tell you
link |
specifically what it is.
link |
For me, it was getting an education in philosophy
link |
that was rigorous and in depth.
link |
It was traveling and it was starting an enterprise
link |
that I thought that was worthwhile, that I directed,
link |
that I could make into something great.
link |
That's what it was for me.
link |
For other people, it might be something with a band,
link |
it might be something with painting,
link |
it might be an education.
link |
You, by the way, also should not assume
link |
that your ability to get an education will improve.
link |
All of those responsibilities will take away
link |
your ability to get an education.
link |
So if you value having an education,
link |
if you value being a deeply educated, well rounded person
link |
with a wide array of knowledge on a wide array of topics,
link |
capitalism will force you to specialize.
link |
That's what it's good at, it's gonna take you,
link |
it's gonna fashion you into a very specific tool
link |
for a very, most people, into a very specific set of tasks.
link |
If you want to have an education in something, get it now.
link |
If you wanna travel somewhere, travel there now.
link |
If you wanna do some kind of creative endeavor
link |
that you doubt whether you'll have time for in the future,
link |
You won't have time for it in the future,
link |
you won't have time to read philosophy books all day,
link |
unfortunately, you won't have time to fly to Italy
link |
and kind of hang out with people.
link |
If you're serious about your life,
link |
you're gonna get more responsibilities,
link |
you're gonna get more stuff to do.
link |
And so my advice to you is do not piss away
link |
this rare, unique, discretionary time.
link |
And if your friends are, get new friends.
link |
Get smarter friends, get people who are using
link |
the limited time they have better.
link |
So it's just a quickly comment, it's brilliant.
link |
You know, to reframe high school
link |
and undergraduate college education,
link |
sometimes people wanna quickly get it over with.
link |
But one thing I remember thinking,
link |
and it's very true about high school,
link |
is one of the only times in your life
link |
you'll get a chance to truly get a broad education.
link |
You don't often think of it that way,
link |
but it's a chance to really enjoy learning things
link |
that are outside of the specialty
link |
that you'll eventually end up with.
link |
And that's how college education is.
link |
And on a more fun side, I played music,
link |
I did martial arts, and we offline mentioned
link |
played video games.
link |
I find it fascinating and brilliant what you said,
link |
which is the world will not give you a chance
link |
to truly enjoy many of these things
link |
and truly get value from many of those things
link |
once you get older.
link |
I find it exceptionally difficult to enjoy video games now.
link |
There's so much stuff to do,
link |
there's so much responsibility.
link |
And I, at the time when I played Elder Scrolls
link |
and Baldur's Gate and Diablo II,
link |
and at the time I thought maybe that was a waste of time.
link |
But now looking back, I realize,
link |
because I always thought,
link |
let me get the career first
link |
and then I'll have a chance to play video games.
link |
That's the way I was thinking.
link |
It was a waste of time
link |
because I should really progress on the career
link |
and then I'll have time to play video games.
link |
No, the reality is that was really fulfilling.
link |
Those are some of the happiest travel experiences
link |
of my life is me traveling to those virtual worlds
link |
and spending time in them.
link |
And it was really fulfilling
link |
and they stayed with me for the rest of my life.
link |
And I get to experience echoes of that
link |
when I play video games these days
link |
for an hour here, an hour there,
link |
like one hour a month or something like that.
link |
But even those experiences, as silly as they are,
link |
they seem like a waste of time at the time,
link |
enjoying them fully, unapologetically.
link |
And in a framework exactly as you said,
link |
would I regret being the kind of person
link |
who've never played those video games?
link |
And I can, for myself, honestly say that yes.
link |
Look, when I'm on my death bed,
link |
I'm glad I built Baldur's Gate 2
link |
and all those arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind
link |
and all the Elder Scrolls games.
link |
And yeah, the things that don't necessarily fit
link |
into this kind of storyline
link |
of what a career is supposed to be,
link |
travel and all those experiences that you mentioned.
link |
I think I'd just like to say one final quick thing on this.
link |
I think this extends to really hard things as well.
link |
It extends to the things you wanna do,
link |
but one of the best pieces of advice
link |
one of my mentors gave me early on in my career
link |
around this time is that it will actually become harder
link |
to start a company as you get older.
link |
Once again, because you have more responsibilities,
link |
you're responsible to your partner for some kind of income
link |
to create a life together.
link |
Once you have kids, you're responsible
link |
for an even greater income to create a life for kids.
link |
And startups do not generate income, right?
link |
They take many, many years before anything happens.
link |
People are getting evicted, people are eating ramen noodles.
link |
That is a thing, that happens, that will happen.
link |
So I'm not saying that you should do the fun things
link |
or the enjoyable things.
link |
I'm saying the things that you would regret not doing,
link |
that you can uniquely do in the time span from 18 to 25.
link |
Which one of which is, if you plan to have a family
link |
and start a family when you're 25,
link |
you should start a company now.
link |
You should not wait until a bunch of people depend on you
link |
for income to eat, to start a company.
link |
The amount of pressure that will be on you at that point
link |
will be monumental.
link |
You should start a company when nobody depends on you
link |
and you can sleep on the floor eating ramen noodles
link |
and still have a great time and show up
link |
with a lot of enthusiasm and be excited.
link |
So I just mean whatever you want to really devote yourself
link |
to and really do, don't put it off.
link |
Don't go to consulting or banking or any other industry
link |
and say, I'm gonna do this for three years
link |
and I'll get experience.
link |
The only way you get experience is by doing something.
link |
You go, you do it, you fail, you do it again and again
link |
and again and again and again and then you have experience
link |
and then you can do it right.
link |
That's the only way experience happens.
link |
There is no other way short of mentorship.
link |
If you're lucky to get mentorship,
link |
99% of people don't get mentorship.
link |
And even though we're talking about young people,
link |
I feel like you're speaking to me as somebody who spent
link |
the last two weeks sleeping on the floor
link |
because there's no mattress and somebody who is single
link |
and somebody who's thinking about doing a startup,
link |
I felt like you're speaking to me as a fellow young person.
link |
Let me ask you about this whole life of ours
link |
to zoom out on the big philosophical question,
link |
the ridiculous question.
link |
What do you think is the meaning of it all?
link |
Do you think about this kind of stuff
link |
as you're creating all the technology,
link |
as you're thinking about this future?
link |
You ever zoom out and think like, why?
link |
Why are you surrogate striving?
link |
Why are we the human species striving for the stars?
link |
So I think it comes down to whether people
link |
wanna live in society.
link |
So if people decide to be part of society,
link |
they have a certain set of conditions
link |
that they decide to take part in, right?
link |
So I think what this comes down to is a lot of
link |
really involved conversations.
link |
But if we assume people have free will and choice,
link |
if we just kind of make that blanket assumption,
link |
then the question starts to become,
link |
well, what choices do we make?
link |
And how do we live with those choices?
link |
And I think probably the most fundamental choice
link |
is whether we exist in a society
link |
or we choose to leave society.
link |
And there are people that do this.
link |
There are people that go live in the woods.
link |
There are people that immigrate to other societies
link |
and they make a choice, right?
link |
And as they enter those other societies
link |
or they choose to leave society and go live in the woods,
link |
they adopt a certain set of values, right?
link |
They adopt values that the society prescribes,
link |
they compromise their own values,
link |
they define their own values,
link |
and they create a set of values for themselves, right?
link |
I think at the end of the day,
link |
if you're going to choose to live in society,
link |
in addition to all the minimums of not throwing garbage
link |
on the floor and doing nice things for people
link |
that need help and doing any number of things
link |
to just be a normal human being within society,
link |
you have to ask yourself,
link |
what am I doing as part of society, right?
link |
You can always say, hey, I'm going to leave society.
link |
I'm going to live in the woods.
link |
I did that, right?
link |
I went and I lived in the woods and I gave it a shot,
link |
realized a ton of stuff, huge amount of clarity from that.
link |
But when you decide to live in society,
link |
you take on, first of all, certain minimal agreements.
link |
You mold your values a little bit to that society.
link |
That's another choice that people inherently make.
link |
And then there's a question of,
link |
well, what am I doing here, right?
link |
What am I doing in society, right?
link |
So when people say the meaning of life,
link |
I don't know what the meaning of life is.
link |
It's the meaning of life in society.
link |
Right, what's the meaning of life for the choice
link |
that you've made within society, right?
link |
Because that's maybe the first fundamental choice
link |
You made a choice and you continue
link |
to make a choice to be part of society
link |
and a specific society, right?
link |
So you've made this choice.
link |
You're part of a society.
link |
And now you kind of have a life and you have people around you.
link |
And then the question is, in my opinion,
link |
the question is, what is the body of work
link |
that you want to make, right?
link |
I think, personally, that life is kind of so short.
link |
And the ability to get enough resources for yourself
link |
in at least the developed markets
link |
where we're lucky to be in is so relatively abundant
link |
that we, you and me, have the luxury,
link |
by your pursuit of a PhD, you've had this luxury,
link |
I've had this luxury through the work
link |
that I've been doing, to pursue something
link |
that makes society better.
link |
So this is kind of the question, I would say.
link |
The question is, am I going to live in society, yes or no?
link |
Most people choose yes.
link |
I understand why, to a degree.
link |
I understand why some people choose no.
link |
And then what is the but?
link |
And I'm going to be in society.
link |
If you choose to be in society, you're
link |
just choosing to abide by the rules.
link |
You're choosing to just do the minimum, right?
link |
That's what being part of society means.
link |
People that choose to be part of society
link |
but don't want to do this, it's very confusing.
link |
They should just leave.
link |
They should just go, look, I don't like this deal.
link |
I'm going to go somewhere else.
link |
I'm going to live in Tibet.
link |
I'm going to live in the woods.
link |
I'm going to live wherever the rules are to my liking, right?
link |
You've chosen to be in society.
link |
Next question, kind of final question,
link |
is what is the body of work that I'm going to be involved in?
link |
Because in looking at that Jeff Bezos kind of regret
link |
minimization framework thing, I think
link |
that's what a lot of it really comes down to,
link |
is you kind of, the framework is at 80 years old,
link |
you look back over your life, what would you
link |
What would you regret not pursuing?
link |
I think there are a number of things on a personal level
link |
each person has, but I think, at least for me,
link |
and probably for many of the other people I know,
link |
there's a question of what is the body of work
link |
that I was involved in?
link |
What happened, right?
link |
What was I involved in?
link |
And in my opinion, you should have a good answer to that.
link |
You mentioned the body of work in relation
link |
to whether it helped make a better world.
link |
And the fundamental question there is,
link |
what does better mean?
link |
So it's our striving to understand what is better.
link |
What kind of world would we love to exist after we're gone?
link |
And I think that's another thing,
link |
almost unanswerable question,
link |
but it's one we can strive towards,
link |
is what is a better world?
link |
Right, I think that's once again,
link |
that's a very personal question.
link |
I'm not sure if there's an objective moral truth
link |
that's gonna suddenly give us all an answer.
link |
I think it's actually quite fascinating to me
link |
when people feel they have this objective moral truth,
link |
they're so sure in their opinions,
link |
this is what we do, we should go hurt them or help them
link |
or kill them or rescue them or whatever, right?
link |
There's all these kind of very situational specific
link |
kind of like, this is the right thing to do,
link |
the objective moral truth told me that this is it.
link |
But maybe there's a definitive truth
link |
that we can arrive towards sort of a consensus
link |
of what that is within the little local pocket
link |
of society that you're in.
link |
Yeah, that's the point.
link |
That's what happens.
link |
People just then mislabel it
link |
and they go like objective moral truth.
link |
This is not our idea.
link |
This is coming up from on high here.
link |
This is the objective moral truth that,
link |
I think exists in some metaphysical form somewhere.
link |
And then you build a building with marble and it's big
link |
and usually what happens.
link |
And then you convince yourself
link |
that that building represents.
link |
I think those people actually,
link |
the people who build those buildings
link |
probably understand that there is no metaphysical objective.
link |
They're just like, we're all just coming to consensus.
link |
I'm gonna build the biggest building and you're like me
link |
and that's what we're gonna do, right?
link |
They just look at it that way probably.
link |
I think what ends up happening with all these values is,
link |
yeah, people should determine that for themselves.
link |
I agree that there's a second order question here
link |
of what is the best body of work to work on.
link |
Personally, I think that's probably a mix
link |
of what could you realistically achieve?
link |
Is that gonna have an impact on society
link |
that you feel good about?
link |
So these are probably the two aspects of this question
link |
and is this gonna have a good impact on society
link |
that you feel good about?
link |
Obviously very subjective, right?
link |
Some people save animals, some people save forests.
link |
We and I are creating this system of economic fairness
link |
I feel that I'm in a good position to enable that.
link |
I feel that I have a good chance of succeeding at that.
link |
And I think that the impact will be quite meaningful
link |
for a large number of people.
link |
And so I'm completely happy to look back
link |
once I made it and see a body of work that achieved that
link |
and be very proud of that, right?
link |
Because I think that's what I'll be doing
link |
when I'm looking back.
link |
Well, I agree with you.
link |
The scale of impact as a hybrid smart contracts,
link |
this whole idea that you're working on
link |
has a potential to transform the world for the better
link |
at a scale that I can't even imagine.
link |
So speaking of which means even more
link |
that you would waste so many hours
link |
of that exciting life with me.
link |
Thank you so much for talking to me, Sergei.
link |
This is a really fascinating conversation,
link |
a really fascinating space, and I can't wait to learn more.
link |
So thank you so much for talking today.
link |
Thank you for having me.
link |
It's been an absolute pleasure.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Sergei Nazarov.
link |
And thank you to Wine Access, Athletic Greens, Magic Spoon,
link |
Indeed, and BetterHelp.
link |
Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
link |
And now let me leave you with some words from Copernicus.
link |
To know that we know what we know
link |
and to know that we do not know what we do not know,
link |
that is true knowledge.
link |
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.