# The Infinite Knowledge Machine with Shady El Damaty

- Speakers: Shady El Damaty
- Channel: [Ethereum Denver](https://streameth.org/ethereum-denver)
- Date: 2023-10-07
- Duration: 11:16
- Topics: Entertainment
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-EeJIUg1N6Lw
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeJIUg1N6Lw

## Description

It's 2030 and the US government has replaced NSA server farms with Ethereum staking nodes. We've made it, but have we really? How do we avoid a doomsday scenario of immutable dogma enforced through a blockchain plugged into every aspect of life? My perspective on Ethereum as a technology is very different from technologists, degens, regens, and the anons in between. As a scientist, I immediately recognize Ethereum for what it is, an autonomous knowledge machine. In this talk, I will cover how the scientific method enshrined as a set of smart contracts will act as a safeguard from dystopian future scenarios. How discovery is a recursive arc, drawing from historical examples, the history of decentralized science (DeSci), and where we're going from here 🚀

https://twitter.com/hebbianloop
Shady El Damaty
Co-Founder
Holonym
Shady El Damaty, Ph.D., is a co-founder at Holonym, a zero-knowledge identity protocol for producing private proofs of verified credentials, and founded OpSci, a non-profit developing tooling for web-native open science practice. Shady has a Ph.D. in neuroscience with expertise in MR pulse sequence development and ML/AI for neural signal processing. Shady was awarded a 2023 Foresight Fellow in the Intelligent Cooperation and Neurotech tracks. Previously, Shady was the principal investigator on a Department of Justice (DOJ) grant to track the neural correlates of violent outcomes in young adults. He is also a Mistletoe Fellowship alumnus, providing consulting for hardware start-ups. Currently, Shady is based in Washington, D.C. and can be found tapping to the beat at local jazz clubs, or practicing other languages at neighborhood cafes.