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