# Ethereum a Force of Good by Stani Kulechov | Devcon SEA

- Speakers: [Stani Kulechov](https://streameth.org/speakers/stani-kulechov)
- Channel: [Devcon](https://streameth.org/devcon)
- Date: 2025-10-07
- Duration: 26:11
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-Z86QO0WgWtE
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z86QO0WgWtE

## Description

Ethereum as a Force for Good
What does it mean for Ethereum to be a force of good? How can real-world applications of Ethereum such as RWA, DeFi, and Web3 social right current inequities in the world? What are key blockers that we need to overcome to bring Ethereum into the mainstream? In this talk, Stani will elaborate on how Ethereum is a positive force of change in the world.

Speaker(s): Stani Kulechov
Skill level: Beginner
Track: Real World Ethereum
Keywords: RWA, Ethereum for Good, Economics, micropayments

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Devcon SEA was held in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov 12 - Nov 15, 2024.
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## Transcript

[Music] hey everyone um it's going to be a talk about how we actually can use ethereum uh to build not just great things but really uh good things for the uh humanity and I have today roughly uh 50 slides and 20 minutes so it's going to be really fun um so if there's something that you like um you have to be very quick to take a picture um and I know tonight it's going to be raav so um I'm trying to and I'm the last uh speaker here uh today so I'm trying to be as efficient as as possible so you can all have uh your discone app in later today before a um it's really interesting question is is that what is Force for good so why what kind of things create positive outputs for um for the society for the community and and and humanity and I personally been building here uh in the ethereum um Community for the past uh seven years and I started by building uh mainly as a hobby and experimentation while I was still in in University um in Helsinki Finland when where I'm from um a project that started really just by uh enthusias enthusiasm and became um one of the biggest um defi protocols uh in our space and hopefully a technology that is going to be used by everyone and I think the same way across all these protocols that we're building here together um now and in the future um and ethereum is fascinating because it's a really open design science bace so you can really build anything um but the key ingredients is that how you put things together in a way that it creates the output that is beneficial uh for everyone in overall when you think about um technology um and and the purpose of technology and what it really uh helps um it's about actually lifting the the standards of of of living um in our communities and and in in wider uh Society so when we go back in history and look at all these technological innovations that we've we've seen um and and they typically tend to compound so let's say um there's innovation in um Electronics um that compounds different types of uh new innovation if there's Innovation that enables the internet uh you have applications and you have access and and that's a compounding uh innovation but also in the flip side of the coin is that technology can also uh do a lot of harm if it's designed in a wrong way um or without the certain values as well so um technology can actually also create um unequal access information asymmetry um the more you actually know the better um execution and the better opportunities you can you can have it can create uh worker displacements uh pollution um and increase the climate uh change so technology always um is really neutral to the outputs and it's up to really the people behind uh that are building the technology to decide what's the outputs are going to be so these interest Technologies are built in a way that they're accessible and open and a big question remains is that can these Technologies be uh a force of good that actually can uh lift up the the society and and Humanity um I believe that ethereum is is is a really powerful uh set of Technology especially because not purely from the technical perspective but also the choices we have made um as a community being able to build on open sour Source stock ensures accessibility open contributions um and actually access to to building these protocols and and networks in in a way um uh for ourselves uh to live in in that future um as well and the very interesting idea about decentralization is that it really removes the central point of failure or um gatekeeping that we've been trusting uh in society for for centuries um now so this is something interesting obviously the internet itself has been built um by relying on decentralized Technologies so we have IP protocol HTTP um different email protocols and and then the ethernet uh protocol um so the actual internet itself has been built in in a decent just way but over time um became more centralized and open internet has fostered a lot of Innovations uh over the years and that Innovation is just accelerating uh over time and this centralization um started more recently and and I would say more two decades uh for now um even though the actual original architecture was was more decentralized and and I think what happened here is that humans um and and people who were using the internet wanted more accessibility wanted everything at the same time it's an open environment to build but at the same time we sacrificed uh ownership over um or use experience over over ownership and I think truly after a couple of decades actually living building on online um we started to effectively gravitate towards these interest Technologies like the blockchain and and ethereum specifically because that can actually be a game changer you can bring a lot of those that decentralization uh into your application Level and bring open protocols uh into the everyday uh interfaces um and really main thing about the safeguards is is that what we can provide is is effectively rules over data ownership data sharing neutrality openness and and security and security here uh effectively means the security that the the ethereum as a network provides for different types of applications that have really core um functionality whether it's Finance or other types of uh use cases and ethereum by itself uh by its design is censorship resistance and obviously that's a spectrum than anything else because sensorship resistance depends on actually the the um rules we're setting uh around ethereum and how we actually prevent uh centralization within the existing rules how ethereum operates but it also ensures individual Freedom effectively for developers to express with code and and build things that makes uh a better society and it enables uh programmable trusters agreements and I think one of the biggest uh challenges today is that every day we actually are relying um upon agreements so when we walk on the street we have a agreement um social agreement economical agreement legal agreement that for example at certain point during the day in the evening um there's going to be lights on the street um we're trusting when we open the faucets um in our kitchens that there's going to be water um we have other types of agreements between people uh that are based on on on different kinds of norms or legal agreements as well and ethereum provides this ability to actually formalize rules that can actually be really good for everyone this is interesting to think about um when we compare something like how ethereum and the blockchain has progressed um over the um years and and compare it to something something like the the internet progression I think even before going that we started pretty much with the most basic type of uh functionality moving value across different users and and trying to create trying to tackle one of the most centralized most centralized um aspect of it which is which is the uh value movements and and finance and over time obviously as we had a programmable machine the ethereum virtual machine we were able to actually program different kinds of function functionalities that are that go beyond uh moving funds from one account to another so some of you who been uh in the space for uh years now remember the days of icos when Capital allocation um and capital formation was was done in an open uh way in in based on ideas that could funded um a lot of interesting Innovation happened there there and a lot of things that didn't work and that mimics pretty much how internet started there was lot of ideas where um that sounded really interesting but then eventually didn't work and at the same time there were ideas that actually worked and and became success stories of the whole internet era and now I think we're moving towards uh a phase where um we're starting to validate uh lot of the ideas that actually work on chain um decentralized Finance is is one good example where we have a decentralized financial protocols that are functioning well providing High utility and at the same time are making also revenue and are organized uh in decentralized organizations which is really fascinating U concept and I think we're moving towards a path where we have scalability and we can actually move towards more consumer facing level so obviously ethereum isn't uh perfect um it never will be because we have a lot of programmers here we have a lot of contributors that are constantly innovating and the world is constantly changing and that's the challenge of ethereum to keeping up with things that we learn on on the way and also figuring out how ethereum actually um progresses and and improves over time as we learn but one thing is really important to realize is is that with scalability and ethereum transaction costs going down with with scaling uh whether it's L2 or the improvements in the actual main architecture on Main net we can achieve um scale of economics in the sense that the more of these transaction costs are going down we'll see more actually adoption of the technology and this happens uh in every uh industry as the technology progresses obviously l2s is a really great example of finding a solution how ethereum could actually scale in a way where we're focusing on getting transaction cost to a minimum and opening the doors to a new types of uh applications and this is just one kind of like a main scaling strategy uh that we're seeing at the moment we we're seeing also alternative blockchains and it's always kind of like uh interesting to put yourself um an ethereum in competition to other um networks and other opportunities that are there to to either to use or build and I think competition in general is is is healthy um it creates inspiration and and and creates more um Innovation but the main thing why also we are here because we're maybe thinking that ethereum has an advantage some something that doesn't exist somewhere else and I truly believe in that so first of all I think ethereum has the best developer Community ever and I've been part of developer communities outside of the web3 uh in in web3 um and there's nowhere else so much of energy that really wants to move the space forward innovate and actually create something good for for the people there's obviously aspect of being a battle tested Network in the sense that ethereum has gone ups and downs and has actually um been progressing on on scalability but also learn over the time what actually what path to take uh in the future and there's ongoing improvements these improvements haven't are something that we don't see every day necessarily but there's a lot of work that actually goes into the ethereum um ecosystem and infrastructure improvements over time and I think more more importantly there is a commitment to decentralization um as well and I would say that first applications were a lot related to finance because that was obviously very straightforward use case as blockchains in the first place were trying to solve a Financial uh problem and for me personally um I basically moved uh into Finland uh in my '90s um I grew up there uh it was a big recession back in the days and lot of unemployment Capital dried up and I grew up in a society where basically you could feel in families the pain of lack of access to finance um and just economical uh depression and for me building Financial protocols that create accessibility transparency and mitigates what actually Banks can do today as a centralized Authority has been very important to me but good question remains on how do we make Financial systems accessible uh to everyone because we know that there might be still access to finance uh in Europe and in the Wern world but when we look at the whole landscape globally um we still have quite a big number of unbanked and unbank is a team that always um circulates across the um onchain Innovation because ethereum um has this unique opportunity where you basically need an internet connection in a device and you pretty much have a uh distribution of of uh value at that point and I think there's been a lot of progress that we have to celebrate as well especially in the space of stable coins as they minimize geographical disadvantages especially in countries where there there's a lot of uh inflation Argentina where recently visited and turkey and and lot of other countries and remittances are still a big topic to solve when we compare traditional banking uh we look at what stable coins can actually offer that's going to be a big U area that's going to move forward rwa as is a way to actually put value on chain that has been maybe really difficult um to achieve and and and maybe borrow against uh or monetize and that's going to be a big um category um and social media I think there is a lot of people using social and this is a very interesting topic and close to me as well with lens um especially because centralized uh platforms own all the data and and the connectivity and there's no ownership at the moment while all the users are creating actually the the value um onchain puts people first so everyone has a social capital they should be able to own it you should be able to access protocols without middlemen we actually have technology that can provide true access and fair access and and transparency as well there's definitely other sectors that we haven't touch upon um supply chain is very interesting there's still 27 million people in slave labor at the moment there's a lot that we can do in agriculture carbon credits and of course importantly when you're thinking about building and use cases there's a lot of values that you can actually tackle um there's obviously 16 areas that you can focus and these are the sustainability goals from un um in most cases if you're building already on chain you actually tackling some of these values question if we are moving too slowly when you compare to the adoption of of the internet you can actually see that the the growth that is happening now on and within the ethereum ecosystem um is actually in line how we're growing with online uh there's little bit of differences there but there is significant growth happening even if you don't feel it every day we have we are still very small compared to the bigger pie of the internet users as active users on chain in terms of developers compared to the main Web Two world but to grow actually from here onwards events like these are perfect because we're welcoming more developers into ethereum and build more and expand and there's challenges when you come and build learning a new technology smart contracts um the technology moves fast tools are moving fast Dows are very um un you think there's not many models we're still very early in the space and there's so much to do actually there's so much to do so much to build and contribute and ux is a big bottleneck so for ux we have to do a lot and I think this is the time as we have solved scalability and progressed uh quite a lot on that aspect being able to have good U act and build good applications that are on chain is is going to be the next chapter so where we are in the progress of of uh adoption I think we're somewhere in the middle in terms of the usage if we compare it to the time as Internet started to grow it doesn't feel that it's moving fast but we're growing there's more and more users and Builders uh in the space poly Market is an interesting example as well where you can build something that is actually really valuable in terms of uh information and can predict we're able to predict election results uh on chain we can build anything it's just about how we imagine and think about it and I think we're in this moment because we want to shape the future where we want to live in and we're just getting started it's very early I've been here for seven years and I feel that there's there's still two decades just to build every fundamental infrastructure and accessibility for users thank [Applause] you thank you stany that was wonderful lots to think about Okay so we've got three minutes for some questions what is the code so the code is Force for good [Laughter] [Applause] okay as a developer sometimes is haunting to tackle the adoption challenge what are the baby steps we should take if we make Financial tools that Mak use of crypto and apply it to our community I think you should always start from the user and and actually how you can help by building a product I think when I was building on on ethereum and and and even a little bit of today it started from a lot of the technology side the protocol aspect but I think today if I will build something new I will start from a product and a and actually what how we can solve a users problem okay yeah what's the avara end game how do you want to [Music] it's gone hang on okay let's go to the top one how can we protect defi from unhealthy incentives schemes uh and continue growing it as a better Financial system I think it really depends obviously on what we're building in overall incentives are extremely good way of Distributing ownership of a system that can be governed by a community uh with the said rules in the community transparently that's a big valid proposition that is why the a DA uh exist or the sky da exist or Lio da exist because they're able to create these rules and actually benefit the community and build better outcomes uh effectively I think incentives come when there is actually a meaningful Traction in a in a protocol Market fit and that's the place where incentives are more interesting where it's more about decentralizing a valuable infrastructure that has actually High utility on chain and the another question about the avaras endgame so obviously we started with um within a Labs building Defi and the a protocol um our ing game with avara is to build a people powered internet we think that blockchain is as a technology it's use case neutral meaning that we will see Financial use cases um but also ethereum is going to be used for non-financial use cases as well and avara is something that provides access to that infrastructure and these use cases with family and extends with with defy with a and go and and in Social uh with lens cool 25 seconds as a developer sometimes is haunting to tackle uh oh we've done that one haven't we yes as a builder of both Network consumer apps and protocols what's your view on scaling improving on L okay I got it yeah so let's call it a day I give up okay we're just about finished now I think scaling should be a really kind of like a open-ended uh space so you should be able we should be able to see scaling happening within the main architecture of ethereum in in mainnet I think there should be a lot of innovation happening which is going to going to happen um but scaling also should happen on these l2s specifically and we should keep exploring new ideas and and ways to scale Beyond uh what we know today and this is a ever ending research topic where uh developers can actually uh contribute I do think that we should apply the exact amount of security that we need based on the use case D5 for example might need the highest security where social might need uh the least amount of uh security but some security to enable guarantees for the users okay we're out of time thank you very much Danny big round of applause awesome thank you [Applause]