# Building Parallel Economy Using Ethereum by Mario Havel | Devcon Bogotá

- Speakers: [Mario Havel](https://streameth.org/speakers/mario-havel)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2023-10-07
- Duration: 28:24
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-NSAw2b9V6gU
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSAw2b9V6gU

## Description

Visit the https://archive.devcon.org/ to gain access to the entire library of Devcon talks with the ease of filtering, playlists, personalized suggestions, decentralized access on Swarm, IPFS and more.
https://archive.devcon.org/archive/watch/6/building-parallel-economy-using-ethereum/

Ethereum is one of the most important tools enabling us to build free parallel structures. Parallel Polis is a humanitarian concept popularized by Czechoslovak dissidents and carried on by cryptoanarchists and cypherpunks in recent years. From their experience of living solely in cryptoeconomy for past 8 years, we learn how Ethereum is an irreplaceable tool for crypto native life, business and social structures.

Speaker(s): Mario Havel
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Opportunity & Global Impact
Keywords: parallel,economy

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Learn more about devcon: https://www.devcon.org/
Learn more about ethereum: https://ethereum.org/ 

Devcon is the Ethereum conference for developers, researchers, thinkers, and makers. 
Devcon 6 was held in Bogotá, Colombia on Oct 11 - 14, 2022.
Devcon is organized and presented by the Ethereum Foundation, with the support of our sponsors. To find out more, please visit https://ethereum.foundation/

## Transcript

foreign [Music] for those of you who are just walking back into the room we're switching it back up to the opportunity and Global impact track next up we will hear from Mario Havel and he will be sharing what he has learned from building a parallel economy using ethereum before I introduce Mario do we have friends in the audience from Central Europe today raise your hands Central Europe cool cool cool okay Mario is someone I've had the great pleasure of hanging out with and also learning from he is a protocol supporter and researcher working with the ethereum foundation co-founder of the bordell hacker space a bit louder [Applause] um Maria has been building and educating local communities in Bratislava Prague Barcelona inspired many people to live crypto native and contribute to the free and open source software ecosystems please join me in welcoming Mario um thank you very much thank you so much for the lovely introduction uh I really appreciate that uh and I'm excited there is so many friends from Central Europe here because so um what I'm planning to do here today is actually to share a bit of experience from Central Europe uh experience of building local parallel police so the name of the talk in the in the schedule is building Pearl Academy but uh that's two narrow uh topic and it will be actually uh more about parallel Society but all structures in general so um yeah so that's the first question I guess what is the spiral Society what are these parallel structures I'm talking about and um yeah let's see where where it leads so first of all to to somehow Define somehow explain what is what are the parole societies um let's talk a bit about theory of social change I believe that many people in the world but especially all of you folks here have ideas how to make World better uh how to improve societies how to make uh betterment for everybody because well there are many issues in the current Society in the governments in the in the cultures and um there are there are a bunch of Utopias but especially there are various ways how to achieve the change how to achieve this Improvement um uh and I will very oversimplify the social change theory I'm very sorry about that but uh to sum it up uh we have some top-down approach uh to changing society which is uh we can imagine some politician creating uh better rules which will improve the life um we have uh or like also I vote right I'm giving my voice to to somebody speaking for me so so um uh he has uh he has then took down power uh the bottom-up approach coming from communities coming from people from activists whether it's entrepreneurial uh non-profit activism and uh people actually uh building projects which are permissionlessly changing the world and uh uh we're gonna social change I also have to mention uh revolutions which are another maybe kind of sudden uh kind of change in society I hope you can see the slides through me actually um yeah nice and um I mean we can argue about many issues of these of these uh of these approaches uh first of all uh there is uh there is a the violence uh involved uh especially in the top-down approach uh when we have government enforcing rules it uh requires coercion um also Revolution can be can be kind of violent and uh there might be hidden violence even some uh in some bottom-up approaches so that's that's one of the critique and the second thing is effectiveness of these of of various approaches to social change and the effectiveness in the terms of uh social context I would say so the problem with uh for example the top-down approach is that the politician or somebody who is creating these rules for us needs to follow the Zeitgeist of society the side case of society the the social context uh for example the politician in very conservative country cannot make very liberal reforms right so he always needs to follow what the electorate wants but also in the bottom up our systems uh we are limited by the social context in multiple ways uh like uh when I'm when when you're creating a movement which is two outside of the the overturn window uh it's hard to gain traction and um and uh you might be even you know out censored and um uh also in the in the in the activism uh we see uh we see this uh limits where I'm putting my productive energy uh to something I believe in but it might be used completely differently in the current social context so for example I'm building some open source tools I'm contributing to to some open source ecosystem and uh now government takes this takes this open uh open program and use it for an army for example so I'm actually contributed to something I didn't want it at all so yeah so we can argue about like Effectiveness and issues with the social change uh but the the main issue here or what I want to mention is that none of these work in totalitarian regimes so in the in Australian regime where you well cannot really vote so the top down doesn't work at all you don't have freedom of expression you people cannot uh cannot do any forms of activism this is this is not possible and so what would I like to share here is uh the experience from Czechoslovakia which experienced um Decades of the italianism after Communist Regime which started after second world war and in late 60s uh there was a kind of a liberal wave uh in the in the Socialist Communists around uh Czechoslovakia which uh argued for opening borders so people can actually travel to the West for example argued for certain free market principles and and so on and so on and of course uh the big Soviet brother didn't like that and um as a part of the Eastern Bloc uh it was it was something which was very discouraged and uh it resulted in invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and uh yes so the version of Pac the the Soviets just sent tanks and well compared to Ukraine these days uh Czechoslovakia wasn't able to fight back so for coming years uh it experienced strong uh a soviet-run Communists totally totally damn it Authority and regime and uh and uh especially in the 70s in the coming years there was Era of so-called normalization which was a wave of a strong totalitarianism and this this resulted in uh in intellectuals in people in scientists in artists being persecuted being uh forced to uh become just Workforce not the intellectuals and uh and uh people were persecuted uh spied on and uh of course this kind of totalitarianism results in some opposition in some distant movement and um there was so around the whole Eastern blog there were many interesting and and uh courageous um uh distant movements and in Czechoslovakia there was also uh various of them for example like second culture which was for example false folk singers um artists like uh uh but uh but one important one important and probably the best renowned this isn't moving from uh from Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia I need to mention is a charter 77. 77 was um well it was a collection of essays it was petition which was appealing uh to government so it starts to comply with basically what it promised with uh of um to stop violating human rights uh Civic rights um and uh as peaceful as as uh humanitarian this this uh uh this movement was the government really took it back uh government started to chase people behind 277 and and uh publicly destroyed uh destroying their figures and uh basically uh it was yeah so there are there are many interesting people on this picture you might know on the very left uh that's of Hudl who later became the first president of Czech Republic and he's world-renowned humanitarian uh liberal and um uh so the charter it was collection of essays it has had few spokesmen and uh uh one of the one of the colleagues of that sofa one of the one of the leading uh personas in chapter 77 on the right here was vasov Bender and he uh within within this recent movement he actually focused on um exploring how is the movement itself evolving how it's how it's How it reacts to the persecution from government and uh he uh described it as uh parole police uh he he noticed that this Contra culture dispersecuted uh subculture or movement is building brow structures its own culture its own uh education right we had there was there was many books which were just prohibited and these were distributed uh you know hand rev written uh Within These communities so he described it as could be defined as set of strategies um for uh creating some independent Society uh this is this is outside of the context this this big uh big uh uh quote here by Irby Fuller but it kind of kind of uh sums up the idea uh that I have there uh basically let's when I'm in the society like the Communist Regime right I cannot fight against it uh we cannot have uh protests because we will be violently punished we don't have any freedom of expression we cannot write freely we cannot there is only single party the Communist party we can vote we cannot change anything so we are forced to uh building free independent parallel structures and um and uh it's also it's not just uh like out of the necessity but I believe that it's also effective and moral approach uh does this this is something similar to what Gandhi says right uh be the change you want to see in the world and um so yeah parallel police uh is to me uh set of strategy set of uh various spiral structures uh and here are some examples so the pillars of pearl police would be uh not just the name of the talk is the parallel Academy but here it's just within the context right so it's parallel education uh parallel economy culture uh Civic rights protection which was actually uh the main reason behind the charter 77 uh but all infrastructure governance systems for these people and this is not something which is strictly defined which is uh like okay this is the power of police these structures uh it's these are just examples it's always uh based on the circumstances uh what the independence Society actually requires in that moment and uh it's uh it's uh completely up to you right okay the community what it what it needs in that context and uh yes being able to social context when I when I mentioned before so here is a beautiful thing which parallel police enables and that's uh actually having these let's say design principles are rooted in the in the itself so when we are building these problem structures we are building them on the on the basis of uh positive social context and we can uh feel free to put our uh our uh productive energy towards uh para police chigoslovak dissident invented uh it's something there described but I would say it's uh anthropological constant through the history uh we see people creating parole structures out of necessity throughout the whole history uh whether it's Christians who were persecuted in the Ancient Rome or in the in the recent history uh maybe hippie movement or LGBT and similar uh Contra cultures uh ended up actually building their own parallel structures okay now where ethereum fits in all of this and ethereum uh or like speaking about these Technologies I have to go all the way back to cypherpunk and um server Punk is another movement which actually uh comes to life in late 70s and 80s um and this was a this was a movement community of various interesting people uh many programmers scientists mathematicians entrepreneurs uh people who uh at a time where internet computers and encryptions started to spread the governments well willing to fight with it right uh the the government said the encryption is a weapon it's something which only Army can have and only to limit what people can do with their computers what can actually happen um what kind of encryption we can use and cyberpunks were people who stood against this who cre uh not just build tools as it's described here very nicely by Eric use um it's uh build the tools but also created residences against uh against regulation of cryptography for example uh uh filmor who started eff altering Frontier Foundation very renowned until today and so is different banks so the first part here it's a it's a part of a cypherpunk Manifesto by the by Eric Hughes and the second part is a Manifesto of crypto Anarchy which is a movement coming out from the uh growing from The Cypher bank and the manifesto was written by Timothy May uh the left guy on the left in the picture and uh Timothy May took the idea of The Cypher Punk even further not just to protect ourselves but to actually achieve Freedom through the digital Technologies uh it's like 30 years old it was further distributed on a conference crypto88 in 1988 and I have to say it's very prophetic if you read it and he said during basically about what we see today I believe that today when you look at the world uh when you look at the digital world the digital realm is uh well I would say bigger than the physical one it's maybe even even more important and we can leverage these Technologies because the government the authoritians will have the power the the coercion power in the physical world but they are losing it and maybe never really had it in the digital one and that's thanks to tools of crypto Anarchy the crypto networks a bit like something something ideological like it's some political political idea like anarchism based on crypto I don't know uh to me Anarchy acrylicism is a set of tools it's a toolbox which allows for many important things generally I would say that crypto Anarchy allows uh to build uh to build human interactions uh more voluntarily rather than based on coercion and uh it comes with many important tools with those four anonymity in the internet digital money uh encryption and privacy which uh I believe is the fundamental uh fundamental uh a building block for freedom so we have this parabolis which is set of strategies for building independent parallel structures and now we have crypto Anarchy which is a set of tools for building independent communities well and it kind of fits to get together doesn't it um so there is this lovely building in Prague called paragonipolis as you can see is the script Anarchy and I would say this this building is actually like the manifestation of the connection between the physical and digital world and um and this is where it comes together uh in the idea that we can build these parallel structures this independent uh communities thanks to the tools of the crypto Anarchy and parole near police has been running for over nine years now uh educating about these Technologies and experimenting with them and so in the talk I would like to actually later explain some some examples of how we uh how we experiment with ethereum as two of crypto energy for building parole societies but but uh one one uh one uh piece that get polynomial is famous it's actually this little place bordel and many of you who followed the merch might heard about Borel WTF but it's named after actual physical place which is in basement down there uh of this building and the basement is called bordelon and you might know these memes about the robsten merch with the whole get team which happened there so uh the paralleling police is like open platform uh talking about a specific project it's open platform for various communities to meet uh because like when when various communities I'm now talking about the crypto not just ethereum but we have bitcoiners monorail people I have Monaro stocks here uh and uh and all the people who are actually building privacy tooling and an encryption tooling and artists and so on meeting this place and create beautiful things so there are a few things we experimented with in parallel police uh considering ethereum So like um I I mean I don't really have to explain this I believe that you folks who understand ethereum know that it's such a strong tool for what I explained because it enables permissionless coordination and uh I would say it's uh it's a Cypher Punk solar panels each bank and pixel Punk Tool uh very versatile tool um kind of a when I have a toolbox uh in the crypto of the crypto energy tools ethereum would be a Swiss knife which can which enables me many things and these are some of those few important things that we uh we use in our little experiment with pearl police and first of all the D5 or the open finance the permissionless finance which ethereum enables this is something which is which is necessity for uh well uh I would say dissidents or for people who are who don't have access to the traditional Finance or don't agree with uh immoral morality of the traditional finance and and want to explore the permissionless Alternatives and paropolis uh this building that I showed accepts only cryptocurrencies for the whole of its existence there is actually a Bitcoin Cafe it's a place with this Cafe which accepts only crypto there is a co-working there is many people coming to this building and they are forced to pay with crypto so all the income is actually only in cryptocurrencies and it's kind of a mess to live crypto natively because of the volatility because of uh because of the bear markets which will come always right so uh thanks to ethereum we have tools like stable coins we have tools like collateralized loans uh so the defy here is not about chasing yield farming but about actually using this to to survive economically in some parallel economy so uh and uh so so uh as an individual who is living without banks it's uh it's a tool which is which is a necessity uh to be able to to survive um with uh just crypto uh but also as the organization as police it's uh it's great we have the tool like loans and there are it's not just using the tools but there are also uh people coming from paraple is who are creating these tools there is pwn Pawn Finance which is aiming to bring mortgages for crypto natives for people who don't have or don't want to have can have access to the traditional Finance uh public goods uh I also don't have to go deep in those because you folks are here you understand what public goods meme ethereum is uh but uh it's the realization here how it clicks it's it's super it's really amazing right I mean we have the the whole the parallel Society the parallel structures which are mostly all public goods the whole building ratio it's not it's probably good which provides education it provides platform and and it's a something which needs to be funded not via coercion via taxes or or so on but uh by uh but alternatively regeneratively and um uh would we uh would we experienced is that parole police get uh uh uh get uh successfully uh crowdfunded multiple projects uh not just for itself but for example the the other tough coveted winter uh paropolis took uh the volunteers from peropolis had a track with Bitcoin Cafe on the wheels and provided coffee for doctors uh fighting the coffee in the hospitals and this Cafe was free for them it was crowdfunded mostly with Bitcoin and Fiat little 50 room to be honest but uh still the crowdfunding and the public good funding ethereum tools are much stronger but our police access donation on bitcoin on give it and um and uh generally if you we want parallel structure they need to need um this kind of funding uh running out of time but uh yeah the governance uh uh another another important part uh we need uh reputation systems and governance what do we experimented with is for example tokens for people who are contributing for volunteers who uh get awarded with our own token and based on this you can you can track the contributions in the physical space right in the local community but also in the in the digital one uh like example of the digital parallel police would be for example the network states there is balaji's book about it uh vitalik has a good article on it and uh or like uh Network States or parallel or Cloud Societies or parallel societies it all sounds same to me and this is these are uh local or or digital communities which need governance and repetition systems and ethereum provides that um the specific project in Prague created these beautiful silver coins or metals as a tribute to uh to Alan Turing uh the certificate of these is nft on ethereum uh but also before we uh uh there were uh coins silver and even some gold ones with Aaron's words um Russell breach uh and and others and these These are certificate on bitcoin as a multi-second Bitcoin so it was kind of like a technology but still uh this is something which sends crypto weddings were a cool idea which which almost got materialized in the Slovak version of paraple is in Bratislava where a lawyer I was working on basically this parallel kind of wedding where uh so as a homosexual he was fighting for uh having uh same-sex marriages which are not possible in this country but he created as a lawyer he created a contracts peer-to-peer contracts which enables similar uh similar things as uh having the normal legal marriage and the certificate of these can be a contract on ethereum um it was yeah uh yeah security system this was this was a concept which didn't get materialized but there was a nice nice idea a nice concept about having like parallel Uber kind of police based on ethereum in a way that I have a fountain I have a physical device in my home which uh I found through a contract and when you come you beep your NFC card like you have these uh these cards with your with your ens and you get rewarded by basically securing the perimeter um as a proof of concept of these uh we had there was a bird feeder are in parallel police it's a cute project which does this incentivization for uh this like this kind of instrumentation for feeding birds so we have like a bird feeder with a device where you tip your cart you put there uh you put their uh bird seed and you get paid from a contract where everybody can some money right uh for for feeding the birds so incentive systems and Environmental Protection another important thing which uh ethereum also helps with uh in free independent manner there is a there is a project which was also funded thanks to quadratic funding which was at eat Prague in parallel police uh and if Turtles and these are folks from environment apps from parole police who another piece of community which came and learned about this ecosystem and these folks are coming to Indonesia saving Turtles and the thing is that each turtle is unique they have unique faces like people so they make nfts under them and you can adopt them you can buy them and support uh the actual the actual protection of the turtles because it's a lot of work to be on the beach all the time and make sure that they are they're right uh yeah good I think I went through it um and uh so the motor that we use in parallel police is enter the outside ADI here is that thanks to these Technologies thanks to these parallel structures um we can I don't want to say opt out when people often say this opt out from the system use crypto you are opting out but it's not like opting out to some vacuum because you are actually entering something right so you enter the polar police but at the same time you are entering outside uh and whether in English I like it in Spanish or Czech and so uh yeah enter the outside I guess I guess that's it thank you so much I can't believe I made it on time and I'm sure if we have room for some questions anybody it's all right thank you so much for coming folks I really appreciate all of you here hope you liked it and I will be around here you can find me if you see masked Anon it's still me uh just leaked it but uh whatever yeah and can yeah normally I work in the protocol support this was totally out of EF stuff but uh there is my email feel free to contact me or Twitter yeah thank you so much again [Applause]