Why the hell are we doing this panel - Miros, Lazar Travica | Privado, Route3

So yeah, I mean as we commented before they started, this is like completely unconferenced thing. So Lazar here and I many times had these kind of conversations that never actually got recorded which is probably a good thing. So we decided to to change it now and um as as said um talk about our existence our as a community in this space. Why the hell are we doing all this if it hurts so much? Right.

So um maybe you can just start with like how do you see the current

how does it hurt? Where does it

exactly? Where does it hurt? So

uh yeah

don't lift your

No no no I won't I won't uh uh I I I think that as as most of us here we got in for the tech, right? Am I speaking for both of us?

Yeah.

So the tech is awesome. Let's take it to the big man. Let's uh let's do something that uh I I myself I spoke about this numerous times like uh crypto web3 gave me the opportunity to work on things that uh I could have only done if I was an early contributor uh to the kernel source code if I was uh making a new database engine from scratch which I knew nobody who was doing that. So too young.

Yeah,

you're too young.

And that's true. But I knew a couple of guys, you know, who were doing interesting stuffs in crypto, low-level stuff, and yeah, it appeased to me to to get involved with that. So, it was the tech first, but the tech uh answers the question, you know, it hurts because it's hard. You like the pain. You got in, you get into it

like mazoism, right?

Yeah. Masochism. Uh but then the pain wears off. You get used to it and then you have to answer the question, okay, why? Why?

Why are we doing it besides it being hard?

I mean, why

why?

No, I mean I I agree with you, right? I mean, we came for the tech, but what I'm I will I will take the my depression hat on. Um I'm constantly asking myself and actually quite a few people challenged me on this like in last two days about this. Um does anybody really besides of us that are inside cares about the tech? So, you know, then you look at yourself in the mirror and say like, you know, does this really matter to anybody else than us, right?

Um it's a nice bubble to be in.

There there's a we have this camp we organized for students and uh one of the last uh I like to finish off it. It's for 10 days and they all they hear about is how cool the tech is and they get I hope they get in love with it. They're not just saying it. But then I find it essential at the end of it to to you know to talk about the why.

I myself figure out the why like not that long ago. Um, and I love to uh put on a YouTube video of our friend and colleague from Protocol Labs uh Marco Vulich. You you know him. He's an amazing guy. Uh in the talk he's doing a critique of Ethereum's proof of stake.

So we'll we'll forget about that.

Well, yeah.

Well, yeah. This being Ethereum Belgrade. Um uh the the thing about the the entire talk is that uh he gets back all the way back uh to these guys uh John Kanes

the founder of Keynesian economics I don't know how to pronounce it

and uh John Simmons uh which uh they reminded me of uh our own struggle uh in in the late uh 19th century Italy, the people who tried to make a constitution to limit the king's rights and stuff like that.

We tried to externalize for the greater good even after we're long gone. We tried to externalize some rules that we're sure are going to make sense and protect us from any future sovereign in a document we call the constitution. Right? So that was the first time I heard the connection between web 3, a digitally sovereign

rule set that can you know uh be safe from us

from from yeah that that's

I mean we need to protect it from ourselves first. They talk about the AI, right? It's funny when you think about it, but yeah,

but I mean what I'm every now and then and it becomes more every now and then asking myself is does it really work? I mean did we actually achieve that right? I mean I you know I'm trying more and more to to get the perspective from the outside. I'm not talking about narrative about casino about you know like all all this stuff

but um you know there there's a new shiny toy in the town which is AI suddenly the the focus from you know the the IO the Sauron right moves from from web 3 to to AI which I think is a good thing because it will force us maybe to just be more exposed and to actually do a bit of retrospective. I would I mean you know like uh the usual stuff like the crypto of winter is good because you know it's a purgatory right

everyone will hate me I will hate myself for saying this but maybe uh an an crypto ice age would be good to actually really look at all this does it really make sense right can we actually achieve something with this I mean you know there You you made a parallel with the constitution. There are numerous constitutions in different states in the world that failed, right? Just they are just piece of paper that it happens today, right?

Let's not go that way.

Let's not go that way. Okay. But we need to try.

Yeah.

Or die trying.

Okay. I will take off my pessimist head. Um or take a bit more raia. Um,

where's my rocket?

Oh, okay.

But look, it did help us achieve a lot like nobody

what what what do you consider like the what for you when you think about big achievements? What's the first thing that crosses your mind?

Big achievements. people being able to invest as retail investors even from from any part of the world. That's a big achievement. The second is AMMs

and that's it. And a lot of people a lot of people got crazy rich, which is definitely a good thing for them, right?

Of course.

Yeah. So it's an achievement but I think we can still you know

we can be we can be these persons maybe.

No next cycle you know

next cycle the two of us. Um no but really I think we can still keep eyes on that goal which is how do we keep something safe from ourselves safe from AI where the eye of Sauron is

malicious any kind of malicious

it's getting more and more important so but uh I don't I don't come from it a lot of people uh I know a lot of projects I myself went down that rabbit hole like there's a lot of things that you can do with just dig digital signatures and

that you don't need we don't need blockchain.

Yeah. Yeah. Like but yeah you can have the completely audited ledger of you just don't need the ledger part of it. You just need digital signatures but it's tamperproof but because it's blockchain you just need a digital signature you know. Um but the part of it that uh does make sense is the crypto economic guarantees.

Like you can feel the pain if you misbehave.

If you misbehave. Yeah.

And you can bring down the whole, you know, house of cards if you misbehave. Like why would you the nothing at stake uh the nothing at stake argument? You know, I'm going to take two/ird of Ethereum stake and attack the network, but it would cost so much that

but I cannot do it. That's What's your what's your motivation?

Yeah. What's your incentive behind?

So,

yeah. No, I mean I agree like it's it's it's the way to go forward, right? I mean, and I like what you said about the the signatures and you know, we don't need blockchain, but I honestly see at least from my perspective that um let's call it like a blockchain space is a very good playground for cryptography. that cryptography advanced super fast since it got, you know, like a lot of people playing with it

to get filthy rich or or whatever reason is behind that. And and I also like that there's there's still a lot of people that are not doing it for money, right? They are doing it for for for a purpose, which is which should be the thing, right? Um and thank you for, you know, um helping me go out of my depression. So now now I have a why.

The thing is the funny thing about and I'm again I'm getting back to Marco but he finished uh his uh PhD in uh Loausan in 2009 like he was super convinced this is a part of the talk as well. I'm not sharing any private information. Uh he he was literally thinking okay I did a PhD in distributed systems. What I'm going to do for the rest of my days is, you know, uh, uh, try and create better versions of Amazon S3 and try to do industrial control systems that depend on consensus algorithms. Trying trying to do all of that.

It's super interesting, but or be a bookworm and stay in academia for the rest of my life. And suddenly there's this thing called crypto

where you can

man apply that for class of problems we didn't know even existed.

Yep. So definitely a catalyst for that for a lot of branches of computer science cryptography distributed systems. I feel like the stuff that we did with the runtimes that's happening in Ethereum right now it it is even for compilers quite interesting. You have such a constrained system. You're trying to squeeze

the last bit of performance from it trying to

look what we did with hardware right as well. Right.

Yeah. with with with the idea, right? I mean, whatever the driver is, but I mean, this is the playground for that as well. So, yeah, a lot of a lot of good things. Game

who else can think of something

there there there were some comments I think

sorry,

not having to use the

not having to use the banks.

The bank.

Oh, yeah. So I for me uh one of the what I consider the big victory of of the movement so far is that so for example last four years I didn't use the bank at all and it feels amazing UX is so much better and you know my transactions are not somewhere kept and I'm not being surveiled so for me even so besides I understand all the pessimistic view I heard it quite often but for me if the only thing that we have achieved is that people can opt out of the banking system for me it's a massive massive victory and it's like we did a great thing but of course uh you know there's so many cool things happening and uh this is just the base layer and we keep building on top of that but yeah it's uh

totally I mean I don't think that we can disagree with this in any way but what what what I'm missing right is that it needs to be an a possibility worldwide right for the for for the masses right you are you know one they very small am number of people that can do that right they are able if I mean you know now coming back to to UX and to adoption and to these kind of things but it is that right if we are just doing this to play between us whatever limited number of people it is it's not actually still making the the impact in the in the bigger world but having that as a goal amazing

but it's necessity that to drive that obviously So I just returned from Southeast Asia and and you know there are people who use crypto more because it's

that's what uh like their system is not good enough. So more and more people gravitate towards that. So for me I could do in Vietnam right now uh OTC changing crypto to local fiat without any commission because people want crypto there. Whoever changes you know they want it. So there are places like that and indeed just because in this part of the world people are maybe more comfortable with the existing banking monitor system doesn't mean that not more and more people are getting awakened to that and saying hey I could opt out of it.

Yeah I can still use the legacy system but

I have an opportunity to use something else. No, of course, of course. I mean, there are there are places where where you are limited, but there are places where where you I don't know, Lazar, what do you think? Maybe you know you know what what happened in Africa, right? Empa and stuff, you know, you jump from nothing to mobile banking.

Maybe something similar can happen in

some I agree with the bank part. I mean, there's a lot of things that banks do, not just, you know,

it's not only Yeah. It's not only payments. It's not only interest on savings. It's not only

it's a lot of things. They are bridges in a sense and all of that. If your role in a system is as simple as can be explained by a smart contract, for example, I mentioned AMMs like being bank or unis swap being like the the for me

one of the few times in this industry when I said, "Oh my god, you can do this. you this is a real application of something that I always thought you needed the people you needed the people with two-sided books you know taking care of or sell and buy orders so in that sense if we can explain it is if your role as a bank is as simple uh as smart contract code then you will cease to exist definitely so I agree with that I think that's a that's a good thing I think that uh institutions like banks should focus on different things like I can imagine banks of tomorrow if web 3 eats the world banks of tomorrow being like wallets like I lost access I and just a regular human being who cannot keep track of my social security number let let alone a private key

I need a mechanism I need a

I need a safety net that's as much as I would love for everything to be hosted on IPFS and everything to be in self custody. We still have a lot of work to do on that side. Yeah. But um yeah, I don't know. Uh definitely we've outgrown just the concept of blockchains.

That's a good thing. There's this article that I go uh Malisha sent me this article years ago. It's called laboratory for complex problems. uh it remind me of the thought that you had and it's a really interesting read whenever I feel down I either take a look at Marco's uh Marco's lecture or or that article where you know being as chaotic as unregulated as dangerous as the space is also opened

it's a field of opportunity I mean

and it's super super super to be honest it's super uh exciting. Like exciting is a word like awesome. You know, everybody says, "Oh, excite. It's so exciting to be on the fire side."

No, but I mean, but we we we wouldn't we wouldn't be here, right, if if we didn't like this.

Again, it hurts.

But I mean, um it needs to hurt. Yeah. To to to to achieve some good things.

What was your aha moment like I had with you? I think I had it with unis swap, but I know that unis swap wasn't the first. for me actually was I mean maybe not an aha moment but like the the moment when I said like okay this this this makes sense right I as you said I see why um maybe it's a bit local right to to to Spain to Catalonia you know speaking with with Jordi Mina who is behind and all this stuff and like with the vision of u of liquid democracy of an opportunity for people to to be able let's say to decide not only to vote it can be different things right to make decisions um it's basically to empower people right so it's like take taking power again it's maybe a good good parallel with the constitution right um it's it's lowering power down right from from the center or from wherever it is like trying to lower it down as as as much as possible and um you know it's like libertal opportunity to people and and you know as much as idealistic you know and and probably we cannot we can never achieve that but we need to try right it's a goal that we just constantly need to to to to go towards and um maybe also having the experience right from from living in a in society I'm talking about you here you know whatever the name was of the country they're just you know sitting in the same place and the the name of the country just changed um we've seen a lot of things how not to do you know what when we could try to avoid if possible and these kind of systems, right? When you actually try to empower people and and give them their sovereign identity back to their own like ownership, that can open a lot of a lot of different things. It's an ideal, but the one that is worth suffering for.

So, web 3 is inherently a political thing.

Of course, everything is politics, man.

Okay. So maybe it's great to end of this

on this note. We still have a couple of minutes for questions. So I'm sure there are some.

Just wanted to to to make a joke about this. It will not be funny. But whenever there is Rakia involved, we always go back to politics.

Exactly. Exactly. It's it's the way. Uh so any questions, comments or maybe someone has insight on why the hell they are doing it. So

and what was your aha moment? What? That would be nice to hear.

What we want to hear. Yeah.

I think uh you guys lied at the beginning a little bit, you know, when you said, you know, what'd you get into it? You know, why did you get into it? I think we all got into it for the money. Stayed for the tech, right? You got you said you got in it for the tech.

Really? That was the first thing that kind of got you? Because I'll be honest, back in 2017, I got into Ethereum and Bitcoin, right? And it was of course you know money number go up uh and then 218 219 was when I dived in deeper and then 2020 went fulltime into crypto. So that's why uh I don't know maybe somebody yeah really got in for the tech uh but yeah uh usually I think the normal transfer is uh interested for the financial aspect but for me the aha moment was actually bitcoin but I don't know not a lot of people say it and it's a lot about everything Ethereum but I think bitcoin is still a very good foundation to think about per permissionless money or permissionless store of value so uh I don't think we should exclude it just because No.

Uh, this is Gear Mort Ethereum. Yeah,

if I can just build on that as his fiance, I can guarantee that he went into it for the tech and very little money has been made in our house on crypto.

It's funny because it's true.

Luckily for Midos, his wife is not here.

I'm in red. I'm in red. No, I mean um right um as a person working in IT in programming in Serbia, you get 20x the average salary as you know a meteor. You had that like 10 years ago as a person just new on the job market. So, it really wasn't for the money because money was so relative.

Like in your first year of uh professional life, you're making what your parents might make in a few years in one year. So, it's it's it's

outside of crypto, right? In

outside of crypto. Yeah. So it it really wasn't like being just in IT in Serbia back then was more than way way exciting altogether. You didn't need crypto for that. So I'm not trying to appear humble.

I'm just trying to explain our our position back then.

Okay. Uh any other questions, comments, well wishes? Uh if not then we can do another round of applause and thank you for the participation.