Speaker 1: Hey, folks, I want to take a minute to ask
Speaker 1: for your help. This show is a labor of love
Speaker 1: for all of us here on the team at calling BS.
Speaker 1: We debate which organizations to investigate. We carefully consider how
Speaker 1: to best tell these stories. Our goal is to create
Speaker 1: a show that exposes purpose washing and the real harm
Speaker 1: it does in the world. But we also want to
Speaker 1: create a show that's fun to listen to and serves
Speaker 1: as a practical guide for entrepreneurs and leadership teams about
Speaker 1: how to do purpose right. We're really proud of what
Speaker 1: we've made so far, and we're super excited about getting
Speaker 1: season three into production so we can share it with
Speaker 1: all of you now to the help we need. So far,
Speaker 1: we are self funded. We need a sponsor or sponsors
Speaker 1: to help us with the cost of production. But, and
Speaker 1: this is important, we feel like it would be disingenuous
Speaker 1: given the theme of the show to accept money from
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Speaker 1: are purpose lead themselves, Companies or organizations that truly walk
Speaker 1: their talk. Companies who understand the harm that purpose washing
Speaker 1: does and who understand how important it is for all
Speaker 1: of us that more companies embrace the path to purpose.
Speaker 1: If you're a part of an organization like that, or
Speaker 1: you know one that seems like a good fit, don't
Speaker 1: hesitate to drop us a line. You can reach me
Speaker 1: directly at Team Montague at Calling Bullshit podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, and let's get on with the show.
Speaker 1: The best case scenario for Web three is that it
Speaker 1: brings about a golden age for the creator. The concept
Speaker 1: of Web three is fairly elastic. What is the Web
Speaker 1: going to evolve into? I think that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of potential there. Web three overall is less about blockchains
Speaker 1: per se than it is about the idea of innovating
Speaker 1: new mechanisms of consensus building in social cooperation using digital tools.
Speaker 1: Web three the third version of the Internet. It's often
Speaker 1: described as a potential utopia guided by the promise of
Speaker 1: decentralization and Internet where your attention and data belong to
Speaker 1: you and you alone. But is the current manifestation of
Speaker 1: Web three a reflection of this promise or is it
Speaker 1: just a bunch of bs? Welcome to Calling Bullshit, the
Speaker 1: podcast about purpose washing. The gap between what an organization
Speaker 1: says they stand for, and what they actually do, and
Speaker 1: what they would need to change to practice what they preach.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, time onto you, and I've spent over
Speaker 1: a decade helping organizations define what they stand for, their
Speaker 1: perp this and then help them to use that purpose
Speaker 1: to drive transformation throughout their business. Unfortunately, at a lot
Speaker 1: of institutions today, there's still a pretty wide gap between
Speaker 1: word and deed. That gap has a name, bullshit. But,
Speaker 1: and this is important, we believe that bullshit is a
Speaker 1: treatable condition. So when our bullshit detector lights up, we're
Speaker 1: going to explore everything the organization should do to fix it.
Speaker 1: What is Web three? When I started digging into that question,
Speaker 1: I found myself suffocated by jargon and acronyms, and once
Speaker 1: I finally got up to speed on the language, I
Speaker 1: was confronted with a lot of competing ideas. There are
Speaker 1: as many definitions for Web three as there are people
Speaker 1: working to build it. It's hard to put your finger
Speaker 1: on something that doesn't fully exist. Yet, I had a
Speaker 1: feeling I wasn't alone in my confusion, so I asked
Speaker 1: calling BS producer Hailey Pascalites to get out there and
Speaker 1: see what new Yorkers had to say on the topic,
Speaker 1: We're doing an episode on web three on what web three?
Speaker 1: Web three? What's Web three? I do know it is.
Speaker 1: I think it's all hype. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: it's going to go away, and I think a small
Speaker 1: part of it will stay and be actually valuable for
Speaker 1: the future. What part do you think will stay? I
Speaker 1: think the parts that are have actual practical applications rather
Speaker 1: than trying to hype and sell something. I mean, I
Speaker 1: never really had to term it before. I've literally never
Speaker 1: heard of it in my life. I just think of
Speaker 1: like new tech, crypto, like these are all words that
Speaker 1: come to mind. The reason all these words come to
Speaker 1: mind is because these technologies are all components of a
Speaker 1: larger but still nascent system and have gotten most of
Speaker 1: the media attention to date. But for the purposes of
Speaker 1: this episode, you don't have to know that blockchains are giant,
Speaker 1: open stoce databases where data can be created but never destroyed,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to appreciate the way that cryptocurrencies
Speaker 1: allow money to operate outside the confines of government. Nor
Speaker 1: do you need to understand that n f t s
Speaker 1: are non fungible tokens unique digital items that act just
Speaker 1: like items in the real world. What you do need
Speaker 1: to know is that Web three combines the ideals of
Speaker 1: the original Internet, open democratic access to knowledge with the
Speaker 1: most exciting aspects of some very new technologies. These technologies, blockchain, cryptocurrencies,
Speaker 1: and n f t s are powerful tools for codifying
Speaker 1: that aspiration into the very fat brick of Web three,
Speaker 1: because they are themselves open source, anti authority, and decentralized.
Speaker 1: This is why Web three promises decentralization and data sovereignty.
Speaker 1: It could be a version of the Internet where everybody
Speaker 1: has custody over their own data, a platform where your
Speaker 1: digital self might reflect who you actually are, an Internet
Speaker 1: where participation in democracy thrives. Another way to understand what
Speaker 1: Web three might evolve into is by looking at what
Speaker 1: it has evolved from. Mark Andresen, founder of Netscape and
Speaker 1: co founder of venture capital firm A sixteen Z, says
Speaker 1: the three different phases of the Internet can be understood
Speaker 1: as read, write, and own. Web one allowed users to
Speaker 1: intake content or read. The big breakthrough was you go online.
Speaker 1: You can read stuff, you could see stuff, you can
Speaker 1: do searches. Web two, the version we all know and
Speaker 1: love is read right. It's the digital world of user
Speaker 1: generated content and Internet funded by the attention economy, where
Speaker 1: user data is ultimately controlled by a handful of giant companies,
Speaker 1: sort of the social networking, blogging, video YouTube, you know
Speaker 1: kind of user generated content era. Web three is read right.
Speaker 1: Own own means you can own value, right, you can
Speaker 1: own money, you can own digital assets. It's basically have
Speaker 1: a trust layer of money layer and an ownership layer
Speaker 1: that rides on top of the sort of untrusted, unowned
Speaker 1: you know kind of space has been the Internet so far.
Speaker 1: This individual ownership part gets a ton of press because
Speaker 1: digital assets can now be uniquely tagged and monetized, meaning
Speaker 1: that n f t s and crypto are subject to
Speaker 1: insane wild westing and speculation. So if you own a
Speaker 1: bitcoin today, you will be a millionaire. Jack Dorsey's first
Speaker 1: tweet sounding for nearly three million dollars. The art world
Speaker 1: just turned upside down with the sale of this digital collage.
Speaker 1: It sold Thursday in an auction for sixty nine point
Speaker 1: three million dollars. And while crypto has become a volatile
Speaker 1: market all its own, Sam Bankman Freed built ft x
Speaker 1: into a huge crypto exchange valued at thirty two billion
Speaker 1: dollars over just three years. Will last week get imploded,
Speaker 1: sending aftershocks throughout the industry. It has also enabled the
Speaker 1: movement of money in entirely new ways. In some cases
Speaker 1: this is super positive, Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation saying
Speaker 1: they have raised over sixty eight million dollars through more
Speaker 1: than hundred and twenty thousand crypto donations. In other cases
Speaker 1: not so much. Bad actors took advantage of the ethereum
Speaker 1: merge to make millions of dollars. One point nine billion
Speaker 1: dollars worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen, people thinking that
Speaker 1: they're buying one of a kind digital pieces of artwork
Speaker 1: or songs, believing that they're investing in what's the next
Speaker 1: big thing. I can't call the police, there's no bank.
Speaker 1: You've just lost all your money and there's not much
Speaker 1: you can do about it. Web three and all its
Speaker 1: current aspects currencies that aren't backed by government's art, that
Speaker 1: only exists in digital form. These might have started as
Speaker 1: fringe concepts, but they are now fully mainstream. Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard of the term web three? Web three? No?
Speaker 1: I have no idea what that is? Oh, dear God,
Speaker 1: I have no clue. All right, So maybe Web three
Speaker 1: isn't fully mainstream, but it's certainly popular if you're a
Speaker 1: coder and investor, or just techno curious. Venture capitalists like
Speaker 1: Mark Andreesen spent a combined thirty billion dollars on the
Speaker 1: crypto space last year alone. Many of these investors A
Speaker 1: sixteen Z included are the very same firms that helped
Speaker 1: create the monopolies that control our current version of the web.
Speaker 1: These giants of Web two have optimized for popularity, attention,
Speaker 1: and convenience. This is their business model, and the ramifications
Speaker 1: for that underlying philosophy have affected all aspects of public
Speaker 1: and private life. We know that algorithms shape behavior, so
Speaker 1: it's not hard to see how the future of Web
Speaker 1: three will fundamentally affect all of us. With the promise
Speaker 1: of a more humane, egalitarian, and decentralized Internet, Web three
Speaker 1: represents an opportunity for a different kind of system, but
Speaker 1: it's still a very young industry. So what will the
Speaker 1: underlying philosophy of Web three b Will it be true
Speaker 1: to the ideals of the promise, or by using the
Speaker 1: same venture capital, will it succumb to the pitfalls of two.
Speaker 1: The answer is wrapped up in some fundamental philosophical questions
Speaker 1: what is each person's responsibility to society and what does
Speaker 1: it mean to be an individual? But before we get
Speaker 1: into this cryptic hash puzzle, let's take a quick break.
Speaker 1: At this point, you may be wondering how the answers
Speaker 1: to a few semi vague philosophical questions create the scaffolding
Speaker 1: that holds up Web three. Well, luckily, my guest today,
Speaker 1: Glenn Wile, is here to explain everything. He's a former
Speaker 1: economist who now focuses on reimagining the future future of
Speaker 1: social organization, economies, politics, etcetera. He's a big picture thinker.
Speaker 1: He co authored the paper de central Life Society, Finding
Speaker 1: Web three Soul with Ethereum founder Vitalic Buterin, where they
Speaker 1: make the case for Web three based identity tokens, and
Speaker 1: his book Radical Markets helped shift the discourse of Web
Speaker 1: three away from an exclusive focus on blockchains and towards
Speaker 1: something much broader and brighter. So to start out with,
Speaker 1: in preparing for this conversation, I learned that you actually
Speaker 1: prefer the term decentralized social technologies to the term Web three.
Speaker 1: Can you talk a little bit about why you like
Speaker 1: describing it that way. Well, I mean Web three is
Speaker 1: a little bit limiting and has a focus that makes
Speaker 1: you think in financial terms. It makes you think of
Speaker 1: an evolution of the Internet rather than the applications that
Speaker 1: run on the Internet. And so I think decentralized as
Speaker 1: technology to me captures the notion that what we're creating
Speaker 1: our technologies, but they also are technologies that are about
Speaker 1: how people organize and relate to each other. It captures
Speaker 1: the focus that I think that we should have on
Speaker 1: social structures and social impact rather than just financial speculation. Um,
Speaker 1: I think Web three overall is less about blockchains per
Speaker 1: se than it is about the idea of innovating new
Speaker 1: mechanisms of consensus building and social cooperation using digital tools.
Speaker 1: Just to get specific for folks who may not have
Speaker 1: your background, I've heard a couple of attempts to define
Speaker 1: the term web three. One is to build a more humane, egalitarian,
Speaker 1: and decentralized Internet where every individual has complete custody of
Speaker 1: their data. So that's a theme that that seems to
Speaker 1: run through a lot of definitions. Is this idea of
Speaker 1: democratization of power. Power has become centralized in Web two
Speaker 1: to corporations, and the promise of Web three is to
Speaker 1: kind of redistribute that power to individuals, which, by the way,
Speaker 1: was one of the promises of Web one, I think, right,
Speaker 1: Just to be clear, I I think that the individual
Speaker 1: focus is one interpretation. The focus I would take is
Speaker 1: a diversity of communities, not individuals, And this is an
Speaker 1: important tension in the discourse around Web three. Some people
Speaker 1: imagine it more in terms of some kind of small
Speaker 1: d democratic network based you know, collective self governance, and
Speaker 1: other people imagine it in terms of you know, anarcho
Speaker 1: capitalist every person for themselves, ownership, property, etcetera. The concept
Speaker 1: of Web three is fairly elastic, so it's it's a
Speaker 1: contested space, right right, Okay, I want to pivot a
Speaker 1: little bit to a couple of specific questions about aspects
Speaker 1: of Web three that I've heard talked about. One is
Speaker 1: this idea of owning our own data and benefiting from
Speaker 1: it from selling it in some cases seems to have
Speaker 1: been a central idea in the space, and I've seen
Speaker 1: that you have expressed skept skepticism about that idea. Um,
Speaker 1: why is that, Well, it's it's funny because Jarren Linier,
Speaker 1: who's one of my closest collaborators, and to a lesser extent,
Speaker 1: I I think we're pretty central to kind of originating
Speaker 1: that mean. And yet, as as often happens, we think
Speaker 1: it's been very misapplied and misunderstood. In particular straighten us out, Glenn.
Speaker 1: A lot of people when they think about you benefiting
Speaker 1: financially from the value created by data that pertains to you,
Speaker 1: they want to think of private property as their image
Speaker 1: and model. But that's not a great metaphor here. And
Speaker 1: the reason is that most data pertain to multiple people.
Speaker 1: So is this call that you and I are having
Speaker 1: my data or your data? Right? Um? Is my social
Speaker 1: network my data? Well, actually not really. It's like it's
Speaker 1: the data of me crossed, Like each link that constitutes
Speaker 1: that social graph belongs to at least two people in
Speaker 1: that group, right and so? And in fact, I would
Speaker 1: contend that that's true of virtually all data. So data
Speaker 1: is relational almost always. It represents things in a social contact.
Speaker 1: It does not represent abstracted things that are the property
Speaker 1: of a single person. So if we want to think
Speaker 1: about data empowerment and data dignity, we can't think about
Speaker 1: it in in terms of private property. We have to
Speaker 1: think about it in terms of some structure of diverse
Speaker 1: but collective self government. You know, a union is a
Speaker 1: better image to have in your mind than is a house. Um,
Speaker 1: the basic rhetoric of the space is wrong and broken,
Speaker 1: and if we pursue that direction, I think we're going
Speaker 1: to end up back in the outcome that we started in,
Speaker 1: because there will be a race to the bottom where
Speaker 1: everyone will know that someone who's part of that data
Speaker 1: will sell it, and so you might as well be
Speaker 1: the one to sell it first and cheaper. That's really
Speaker 1: interesting that had never occurred to me. Let me let
Speaker 1: me push on that a little bit though, because you know,
Speaker 1: one of the big problems in the world I think
Speaker 1: is created by social media, and specifically the business model
Speaker 1: behind most social media companies, which is attention based, right,
Speaker 1: and that attention is a personal thing, and you don't
Speaker 1: benefit from that at all, And I guess I wonder
Speaker 1: if there's a way for people to be compensated for
Speaker 1: paying attention to things. I mean, so, first of all,
Speaker 1: just to be clear, I'm a huge advocate of the
Speaker 1: notion that the value that's currently being captured by large
Speaker 1: platforms rightfully belongs to the communities of people who are
Speaker 1: actually creating that value it on form So I'm getting
Speaker 1: complete agreement on that. That being said, UM, I think
Speaker 1: many of the simplistic ways of formulating what you just
Speaker 1: said wouldn't really get us away from the bad outcomes
Speaker 1: that we're facing. So UM, take the example of the
Speaker 1: social media platforms. I don't think simply giving people a
Speaker 1: check in an undifferentiated way for their attention is going
Speaker 1: to get us past the polarization and so forth. But
Speaker 1: I do think that there are changes to the business
Speaker 1: model that really could get us past it. So like
Speaker 1: the product that Facebook claims to be selling is connection.
Speaker 1: But but connection and the social network and the graph,
Speaker 1: these are not things that are valuable to individuals. There
Speaker 1: are things that are valuable to the society that those
Speaker 1: individuals together constitute. UM. And of course there's no one
Speaker 1: society that There's churches, and there's nations, and there's local
Speaker 1: you know, units, and all of these care about cohesion
Speaker 1: and dynamism within their communities. And at present, these systems
Speaker 1: are accomplishing the opposite of that. They're reinforcing divisions. And
Speaker 1: if those organizations were you know, to replace the advertisers
Speaker 1: as the customers of Facebook, and to pay for algorithms
Speaker 1: and curation that built community and solidarity that did what
Speaker 1: what Facebook claims to be trying to do in the
Speaker 1: first place. Well, yeah, and even if Facebook wanted to
Speaker 1: do it, it's business model is misaligned with its mission,
Speaker 1: and so it can't accomplish its goals without changing how
Speaker 1: it thinks about its financing approach. Another concept that gets
Speaker 1: talked a lot about that's sort of related, but but
Speaker 1: I think different in some important ways is the concept
Speaker 1: of digital identity or digital personhood that seems to be
Speaker 1: important in the space. And I've read that there are
Speaker 1: lots of competing views here and some riffs between various
Speaker 1: groups about the right way to handle digital identity or
Speaker 1: digital personhood. Is there a right way in your view?
Speaker 1: So I'm a big believer in a theory that was
Speaker 1: put forward by a guy named George Zimmel. He was
Speaker 1: one of the founders of sociology, and he had a
Speaker 1: I think very brilliant observation, which is that there is
Speaker 1: no such thing as a lot of political philosophy imagines
Speaker 1: as sort of the pre social individual that you can
Speaker 1: then liberate humans have throughout their entire history survived only
Speaker 1: to the extent that they've lived in groups. And so
Speaker 1: actually what happens with modernity is not the rediscovery of individuality,
Speaker 1: but rather that society becomes more complex. So it used
Speaker 1: to be that you would worship and mate and work
Speaker 1: and eat all with the same people, and they were
Speaker 1: your tribe. But as we get into more complex cities,
Speaker 1: and in fact all the terms around democracy are connected
Speaker 1: to city citizen as someone who lives in a city. Right,
Speaker 1: So that the reason why this notion of a individual
Speaker 1: citizen emerges is because now all those different social functions
Speaker 1: separate out, and you become an individual because you're the
Speaker 1: neat unique intersection of those different social groups that you're
Speaker 1: a part of. And I'm a big believer that systems
Speaker 1: of identity need to mirror that structure. The way that
Speaker 1: you preserve privacy and still allow all the functions of
Speaker 1: identity is by fragmenting the aspects of your identity among
Speaker 1: the different things that constitute you in your life, and
Speaker 1: you know, defending the noess of those different spheres. And
Speaker 1: you know, this returns to the data union example. I
Speaker 1: imagine data union but every person might be part of
Speaker 1: several data unions that represent the different ways in which
Speaker 1: they participate. And I and I see data, you know,
Speaker 1: identity being handled in in a very similar way. Like
Speaker 1: I'd love to see a future where rather than us
Speaker 1: having like one driver's license that represent us, where we
Speaker 1: have many different digital tokens, one coming from our work,
Speaker 1: one coming from like a distributed autonomous organization that we
Speaker 1: participated in, one coming from some political affiliation, and all
Speaker 1: of these together knowing various aspects of ourselves that we
Speaker 1: can present or reveal in appropriate social contexts. Right, you
Speaker 1: sort of waived at this as you went by, but
Speaker 1: just for listeners, like the danger of a single identity,
Speaker 1: a single digital identity is security essentially, Is that right?
Speaker 1: Or I mean security or privacy? Yeah, I mean so
Speaker 1: there's there's ways to express it differently. So from a
Speaker 1: security perspective, you're very reliant in that case on a
Speaker 1: single point of failure, whatever institution issues that thing, getting
Speaker 1: things right. And in fact, that's the reason why if
Speaker 1: you go an interview for an n essay, uh, you
Speaker 1: know job, they're not going to care much about your passport,
Speaker 1: like they know that that doesn't really work very well.
Speaker 1: They're gonna go and look for all your different social
Speaker 1: relationships to figure out who you actually are. You know,
Speaker 1: um so so like Yes, security absolutely, but it's also
Speaker 1: it's absurd that for so many different contexts in our lives,
Speaker 1: we're presenting this one social security number that can link
Speaker 1: us across all the different contexts. Most of the times
Speaker 1: you give your social security a number of nothing to
Speaker 1: do with social security, and so by not planning explicitly
Speaker 1: for pluralistic identity systems, we end up with these totally
Speaker 1: inappropriate cross cut identity systems. Yeah, very interesting. Um, I
Speaker 1: think this is related. You wrote a white paper about
Speaker 1: something called soul bound tokens where you talk about them
Speaker 1: as a way of encoding trust into the system. Can
Speaker 1: you explain, first of all, what a soul bound token is. So,
Speaker 1: soul bound tokens are non transferable and f t s
Speaker 1: their statements that are made by one digital signifier wallet
Speaker 1: about another, and they can represent a sort of network
Speaker 1: of social relations. But the potential of these is that
Speaker 1: it makes it much easier for a wide range of organizations, individuals,
Speaker 1: groups to issue credentials to each other, and therefore for
Speaker 1: you to have a intersecting set of you know, credentials
Speaker 1: that together can constitute an identity in a context specific way,
Speaker 1: rather than having to rely on a singular institution to
Speaker 1: give you one thing that you use everywhere. So a
Speaker 1: soul bound token might be the thing that I used
Speaker 1: to join one of the unions that you talk about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for example, like you, you you might get one from your university,
Speaker 1: one from your employer, one from uh, maybe every podcast
Speaker 1: that you do. We issue each other a soul bound
Speaker 1: token saying that we did it together, right, and that
Speaker 1: that's like a CV, But unlike a CV, it's not
Speaker 1: something that you have to send in a PDF and
Speaker 1: so want us to read and then maybe o c
Speaker 1: R and then verify whether it's right. There's like a
Speaker 1: cryptographic signature indicating that for every one of those things,
Speaker 1: the counterparty to that has said that they did this
Speaker 1: thing with you, So it's inherently reliable UM, and that
Speaker 1: can then be the basis of you getting admitted to
Speaker 1: all kinds of different things. It can be a reputation
Speaker 1: effectively that you can stick not a single dimensional reputation score,
Speaker 1: but a multidimensional representation of your self that you can
Speaker 1: use as the foundation for accessing some social system. Well,
Speaker 1: I see, so you have many of these. This isn't
Speaker 1: a one thing that you you have. All right, let's
Speaker 1: pivot to the peril a bit. Um. What what do
Speaker 1: you see as the biggest threats to the potential of
Speaker 1: of Web three or or distributed social technologies. Well, so,
Speaker 1: I think there's a long term ideological danger and there's
Speaker 1: a bunch of near term harms that are being caused
Speaker 1: by the system. There are groups of people such as
Speaker 1: Peter theold Abology Screenavas and this guy Mensious mold Bug
Speaker 1: courtesy Arvan, who view all these technologies as a way
Speaker 1: to undermine the authority, legitimacy, or even ability to colle
Speaker 1: tax revenue or enforced the laws of governments. And not
Speaker 1: not just governments, but any social institution, a church, a union,
Speaker 1: a co op. They're very openly hostile to all of
Speaker 1: those types of organizations, and they want to get to
Speaker 1: a world that liberates quote the individual unquote from those
Speaker 1: institutions and gives them selves sovereignty um. And they mean
Speaker 1: that like really seriously and literally so sovereign individual imagines
Speaker 1: that there are literally a hundred million sovereigns um. That
Speaker 1: have no accountability to any external social authority. And that
Speaker 1: is a terrifying possibility. And even if something like that
Speaker 1: isn't actually empowered, it gives a cover, a tech sheen. Two.
Speaker 1: You know, everything for isis to the sorts of people
Speaker 1: who don't pay their taxes because they say that the
Speaker 1: government's legitimate. It gives like a cool factor to these
Speaker 1: really like basically terrorist organizations, anti anti social order, anti
Speaker 1: social groups. So that's really scary, um and uh. And
Speaker 1: there are more modest versions of that that are already
Speaker 1: playing out. There are people who are in a self
Speaker 1: sovereign way managing their own wallets and who are getting
Speaker 1: physically assaulted by people who get them to give them
Speaker 1: their keys or get hacked. In a more subtle way.
Speaker 1: There's a variety of criminal activity that goes on, especially
Speaker 1: in the sort of more privacy oriented parts of this space.
Speaker 1: You know, some of the protocols, especially those operating proof
Speaker 1: of work, do a huge amount of environmental harm, and
Speaker 1: there's an enormous inference times. Yeah, there's an enormous amount
Speaker 1: of financial speculation going on that's creating a huge concentration
Speaker 1: of wealth and exacerbating problems for many vulnerable people. So
Speaker 1: these are really bad outcomes that are being facilitated by
Speaker 1: the space at the same time as it's opening up
Speaker 1: experimentation with much better possible futures. Yeah, and it feels
Speaker 1: like the financialization aspect gets all of the press right,
Speaker 1: Like that's the thing that people focus on, is the money,
Speaker 1: and I want to pursue that for a minute, because
Speaker 1: from the cheap seats, it seems to me that that
Speaker 1: venture capitalists have latched onto this idea of decentralization in
Speaker 1: a way that feels primarily like marketing to me. Honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, we saw that happen the first time in
Speaker 1: the transition from Web one to Web two, where it
Speaker 1: started as a very decentralized thing. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, talking about the power of the
Speaker 1: Internet and the power to distribute information, to democratize access
Speaker 1: to information, to empower individual people, and that all went away.
Speaker 1: And let me nuance that a little bit, because I
Speaker 1: actually do. I think it's a little bit too tough
Speaker 1: on the VC side. And the reason is that there's
Speaker 1: a wonderful article by J. C. R. Licklighter called Computers
Speaker 1: and Government in nineteen seventy nine in which he said
Speaker 1: that the Internet was meant for trusted transactions, it was
Speaker 1: meant for identity, it was meant for sharing of computational resources,
Speaker 1: and that the protocols that have been built by the
Speaker 1: public and academic consortia covered just the barest bones proofs
Speaker 1: of concept of what he thought you needed to make
Speaker 1: the Internet work. Um, and that if if the these
Speaker 1: multisectoral efforts didn't invest two achieve those goals, that it
Speaker 1: would be colonized by monopolis. So it was a choice.
Speaker 1: It was a political choice that was made not to invest,
Speaker 1: which got us to where we are. More than was
Speaker 1: the choice or ill intent of venture capitalists. They operated
Speaker 1: within a system where the only way that they could
Speaker 1: fund functionality was by raising money from private investors. And
Speaker 1: I don't think they're evil for having done that, but
Speaker 1: I do think that our society made the wrong choice by,
Speaker 1: you know, pursuing this neoliberal path that made it inevitable
Speaker 1: that monopolies would own these critical parts of our social infrastructure. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is, what about the movie
Speaker 1: that we're seeing now is different? I don't think a
Speaker 1: lot is different in the US and Taiwan, it's very different.
Speaker 1: It's it's a bit distant, it's a different cultural context,
Speaker 1: but it represents the best version of the potential of
Speaker 1: this space. Um. There's a digital Minister there named Audrey
Speaker 1: Tonge who's the first transgender minister of a major country
Speaker 1: if you consider Taiwan to be and I know that's
Speaker 1: a point of controversy, and uh, she was a leader
Speaker 1: of the occupying movement there, and she's built a participatory
Speaker 1: democratic platform for the country that a quarter of the
Speaker 1: population or monthly active users on and really taken a
Speaker 1: chunk of the time that we waste hating each other
Speaker 1: on Twitter and funneled it into people solving real public problems.
Speaker 1: To me, that's the most hopeful version because the public
Speaker 1: and social sectors have made massive investments, um, and they've
Speaker 1: really done exactly what they should do. So I don't
Speaker 1: think the story is playing out differently now. And I
Speaker 1: think that whatever the idealism of people in the web
Speaker 1: three space, unless there's serious engagement from the social and
Speaker 1: public sectors, you'll just get a repetition of the same thing. However,
Speaker 1: there is a hope that we can help governments, help
Speaker 1: social movements understand that and do something different this time,
Speaker 1: return to something closer to the model that built the
Speaker 1: original Internet. Yeah, well that would be wonderful. Any chance
Speaker 1: of that happening more, let's say, holistically in the US, Well,
Speaker 1: I think you need cultural change to make the political change,
Speaker 1: and so we need to inspire people with visions of alternatives.
Speaker 1: And I think that to some extent the Web three
Speaker 1: spaces managing to do parts of that. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the stories like Audrey's story are going to
Speaker 1: be even more powerful. So let's just talk about the
Speaker 1: future and and and predictions that you have for the
Speaker 1: future of Web three or these decentralized social technologies, Like
Speaker 1: can you paint a best case scenario and a worst
Speaker 1: case scenario just so people can understand the choice that
Speaker 1: we're faced with. I mean, I think the best case
Speaker 1: scenario is that sort of all the liberal democracies get
Speaker 1: to roughly Taiwan's level, which let's say that that takes
Speaker 1: maybe ten of the effort that we spend on social
Speaker 1: media doing stupid division reinforcing things, and moves that into
Speaker 1: people doing the online equivalent of participating in town halls,
Speaker 1: you know, building projects together, solving real public problems. Bridging
Speaker 1: divide civic engagement just ten to fifteen percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Just that we're spending on politics online, I think would
Speaker 1: be enough. And through that there's also large investments made
Speaker 1: by the democratic world's governments to build fundamental infrastructures or
Speaker 1: identity data sharing, etcetera. We start utilizing all the machines
Speaker 1: and data that are basically idle and siloed right now
Speaker 1: because we're able to have privacy preserving protocols that let
Speaker 1: it be used and let people get value from it
Speaker 1: without it being covered up by some proprietary service, and
Speaker 1: that enables us to find way more effective ways, cheaper
Speaker 1: ways to solve climate problems. That allows us to defeat
Speaker 1: pandemics like they did in Taiwan, where they had like
Speaker 1: only a couple dozen deaths and they grew at five
Speaker 1: percent throughout the pandemic and have less than three percent inflation.
Speaker 1: So we're able to tackle problems as as they've been
Speaker 1: able to tackle them. Because of all this distributed intelligence
Speaker 1: that we have, people start building bridges and unions and
Speaker 1: so forth across lines of political division, and that scrambles
Speaker 1: our political spectrum, and then you know, new voting systems
Speaker 1: start to creep their way in that bridge divides and
Speaker 1: then help people reach consensus and that reduces polarizations. Right.
Speaker 1: I think those are all really plausible outcomes that we've
Speaker 1: seen played out in a real world context. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, the worst case is that the dreams of
Speaker 1: the sovereign individual types get realized, which is to say,
Speaker 1: they become such strong cryptography and so many financial transactions
Speaker 1: that governments can't see anything. People can evade any taxes
Speaker 1: they want, and that breaks down all public services. It
Speaker 1: breaks down, uh, the ability to do law enforcement, to
Speaker 1: pay for national defense, etcetera. And the only people who
Speaker 1: are able to maintain those things are authoritarian regimes and
Speaker 1: extremely wealthy corporations are individuals. Those organizations then gain all
Speaker 1: the ability to coordinate and constant traded power. Everything ends
Speaker 1: up running through those organizations. They end up in conflict
Speaker 1: with each other, but there's no one to adjudicate that
Speaker 1: conflict because the UN is broken down and whatever, and
Speaker 1: so you end up with some kind of global scale
Speaker 1: conflict without limits on weapons. Okay, alright, that that would suck.
Speaker 1: Let's not do that. Um so uh, Glenn. Last thing,
Speaker 1: and this is kind of an experiment we tend to
Speaker 1: focus on individual companies or organizations on this show and
Speaker 1: really try to determine what is the delta between word indeed.
Speaker 1: So we've graded a scale called the B S scale.
Speaker 1: It goes from zero to one, zero being the best score.
Speaker 1: Zero BS zero delta between word indeed and a hundred
Speaker 1: percent fullshit. Um, if you were to give the Web
Speaker 1: three diaspora a B yes score right now, would you
Speaker 1: be willing to do that? Yeah, so I'd say, I'd say,
Speaker 1: But the problem is that, because Web three means these
Speaker 1: opposite things, I think you could easily defend the answer
Speaker 1: of zero percent or a hundred percent because because uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got a set of people who wants
Speaker 1: the space to be like wrecking all social institutions, and
Speaker 1: you've got a part of the space that wants it
Speaker 1: to be about um, creative new ways of coordination and
Speaker 1: reimagining democracy. And it's kind of doing half of each
Speaker 1: of those things. And that's because kind of half of
Speaker 1: the people are aiming for those things. So they're all
Speaker 1: kind of doing a hundred percent of their missions. It's
Speaker 1: just commissions are opposite to each other. Yeah, a bunch
Speaker 1: of zero bullshitters all pulling in opposite directions. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: very interesting. Thank you for that answer that was That
Speaker 1: was great and this is a great conversation, Glenn. I
Speaker 1: really really appreciate you spending time. Yeah, thanks for Glen.
Speaker 1: Web three isn't about decentralization or even data sovereignty. It's
Speaker 1: about the potential to make society better. The promise of
Speaker 1: Web three is really an opportunity to reimagine the whole
Speaker 1: system as we enter into a future more and more
Speaker 1: determined by the shape of the Internet. Do we want
Speaker 1: to maintain the status quo or redefine our social tools
Speaker 1: and identities. Will we bring our old ideals with us
Speaker 1: into Web three, or can we take the opportunity to
Speaker 1: re examine our values and set up new systems that
Speaker 1: shape our interactions for the better. So which future will
Speaker 1: we choose? The one where everyone lives just for themselves
Speaker 1: and we descend into lawless chaos, or the future where
Speaker 1: we use the Internet as a tool to come together.
Speaker 1: We've invited two additional experts, a Web three convert and
Speaker 1: a Web to be critic to help parse this out
Speaker 1: right after the break, Do you think it's possible that
Speaker 1: like our data can be decentralized and like taken away
Speaker 1: from people like Mark Zuckerbrick. I guess I have to
Speaker 1: think about, like what the ramifications of the decentralized system
Speaker 1: would be. I think it would be awesome. I'd like
Speaker 1: to believe it could be decentralized. It's a great dream
Speaker 1: to have. It feels almost kind of like an impossibility,
Speaker 1: especially start of the way things are chending, just like
Speaker 1: you have these being sort of like Internet conglomerate. Sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: at the center of everything, folks. I am very excited
Speaker 1: to introduce two experts who are going to help us
Speaker 1: continue to unpack both the promise and the peril of
Speaker 1: Web three. Our first guest is software engineer and notable
Speaker 1: crypt skeptic Molly White. Molly, thanks for being here and
Speaker 1: welcome to calling bullshit. Thanks for having me. So, Molly,
Speaker 1: could you tell us a little bit about your background,
Speaker 1: like how you got into software, and then maybe a
Speaker 1: little bit about the roots of your skepticism. Sure, um, so,
Speaker 1: I am a software engineer, and you know, I've sort
Speaker 1: of been a computer geek my whole life. Recently started
Speaker 1: researching Web three and cryptocurrency is a little bit more broadly.
Speaker 1: Last year I started a website called Web three is
Speaker 1: Going Just Great, which is a sort of sarcastic title
Speaker 1: UM for a project that tracks all of the disasters
Speaker 1: that are happening in Web three but also in the
Speaker 1: cryptocurrency and blockchain industry is more broadly, you must be
Speaker 1: busy these days. I am very busy these days. Cool
Speaker 1: More on that very soon, but first I need to
Speaker 1: introduce our second guest, Vlad Ginsburg, who is the founder
Speaker 1: and CEO of the n f T platform block Party. Vlad,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: It's an honor to be here. So, Flood, can you
Speaker 1: tell us a little bit about your background, because I
Speaker 1: know you started out in the art and then how
Speaker 1: you came to the Web three space. Sure, they did
Speaker 1: start out in the fine art industry, and over time
Speaker 1: I became familiar with block chains of cryptocurrency as there
Speaker 1: was an increasing amount of buzz about the potential for
Speaker 1: some of those technologies to disrupt the art market. And
Speaker 1: the more I learned, the more I became excited about
Speaker 1: the possibilities and eventually made the switch to be full
Speaker 1: time in the blockchain industry, thinking about fine art instead
Speaker 1: of vice versa. So thank you both for being here again.
Speaker 1: And and this episode just for benefit of listeners, is
Speaker 1: a little bit different than most of our episodes because
Speaker 1: it's the first time that we've taken on a sector
Speaker 1: or an industry rather than an individual company or organization.
Speaker 1: So usually at this point in the show we would
Speaker 1: have called BS and we'd spend this whole panel looking
Speaker 1: at ways to fix that BS, and we do want
Speaker 1: to get into some of that today, But I thought
Speaker 1: I would just start out by asking you both to
Speaker 1: give us your definition of the term web three, because
Speaker 1: it's a little hard to get agreement on that term.
Speaker 1: So what does the term web three mean to you?
Speaker 1: So I would I would define web three as permissionless
Speaker 1: digital ownership. I would also perhaps add the right to
Speaker 1: self sovereignty on the web. Talk about what you mean
Speaker 1: by that. So I think disintribigating the third party between
Speaker 1: creator and and the market around them is I think
Speaker 1: the big promise, because oftentimes what we see in well,
Speaker 1: let's say Web two, right is creators are putting out content,
Speaker 1: but the content that they're putting out really lives in
Speaker 1: a third party platform that is monetizing the content or
Speaker 1: otherwise taking a lot of ownership over it, and the
Speaker 1: creators are right, Yes, that would be That would be
Speaker 1: a good way of putting it. And it doesn't seem
Speaker 1: that the creator is self sovereign in this natively digital space.
Speaker 1: And by self sovereign you mean essentially their own prestanding entity,
Speaker 1: right with no no intermediaries between you and the market. Okay, Molly,
Speaker 1: I want to I want to pivot to you and
Speaker 1: ask you next, how do you define the term web three?
Speaker 1: I think the most important thing to understand is that
Speaker 1: web three is a marketing term more than anything. So
Speaker 1: it has been a pretty successful, i would say, marketing
Speaker 1: campaign to sort of rebrand crypto after sort of some
Speaker 1: boom and bus cycles made people a little bit more
Speaker 1: wary of crypto as a concept, and so by redefining
Speaker 1: it to be something that sounds like it will be
Speaker 1: the future of the web, a lot of entrepreneurs and
Speaker 1: venture capitalists and other folks have been able to get
Speaker 1: people to buy in, like quite literally buy in to
Speaker 1: this idea of web three. If I find myself needing
Speaker 1: to sort of draw boundary around what is and is
Speaker 1: not Web three, you know, if I'm looking at an
Speaker 1: individual project, typically I look for. Is it sort of
Speaker 1: a web project, so something beyond just like a cryptocurrency
Speaker 1: token doesn't have some sort of social community on the web,
Speaker 1: Or is it trying to use blockchain for something like
Speaker 1: data storage beyond just transactions, and is there a blockchain involved.
Speaker 1: So Web three is pretty much inseparable from the idea
Speaker 1: of blockchains. And although a lot of people working on
Speaker 1: Web three will use much broader terminology like decentralization and
Speaker 1: self sovereignty, they're typically referring to blockchains. With that. The
Speaker 1: idea of decentralization and self sovereignty on the web are
Speaker 1: nothing new, uh, and certainly not anything exclusive to this
Speaker 1: idea of Web three, but they are terms that are
Speaker 1: coming up a lot in those conversations. Yeah, are there
Speaker 1: positive aspects that you see to it? Or are you
Speaker 1: completely are you essentially a rejector of the entire premise.
Speaker 1: I think that the most positive aspects of Web three,
Speaker 1: and you know, just crypto and blockchains more broadly, is
Speaker 1: that they have brought attention to issues in the Web
Speaker 1: that I think are really important. You know, the idea,
Speaker 1: for example, of large tech company is really monopolizing how
Speaker 1: the web operates today is a very serious issue I
Speaker 1: think in the Web, and it's one that a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are working in Web three are also
Speaker 1: talking about. So I think there's some really shared goals
Speaker 1: there between myself and other sort of Web advocates and
Speaker 1: people who are working on Web three. But I also
Speaker 1: think that the idea that blockchains will somehow form the
Speaker 1: foundation of a solution to these problems, uh is pretty overblown.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the issues with the Web
Speaker 1: really come down to societal and policy issues beyond just
Speaker 1: the technical ones. And uh, you know, it's pretty much
Speaker 1: impossible to apply a purely technical solution to societal and
Speaker 1: policy problems. And I think that there are some serious
Speaker 1: negative externalities when it comes to crypto block chains Web
Speaker 1: three that are extremely detrimental to where the Web should
Speaker 1: be going. Yeah, I actually find some of the most
Speaker 1: evangelical folks about Web three end up agreeing more often
Speaker 1: than not about some of the problems of the externalities
Speaker 1: that come up. Oftentimes I will find myself thinking about, um, well,
Speaker 1: maybe we're at really Web two point five, because so
Speaker 1: much of what Web three requires is really just Web
Speaker 1: two plus some things like blockchains and n f t
Speaker 1: s and technologies that are really interesting but still very
Speaker 1: much under development. Just following on your your point about
Speaker 1: Web two point five, I guess really the question that
Speaker 1: caused me to one to do this episode is, you know,
Speaker 1: you hear the definitions around this space as being about decentralization,
Speaker 1: about self sovereignty. The phrase I used that I've picked
Speaker 1: up to build a more human, egalitarian to centralized internet
Speaker 1: where every individual has complete custody of their data stuff
Speaker 1: like that. Right, you hear the promise of that, and
Speaker 1: then I'm watching money flow in and venture capitalists start
Speaker 1: to invest a ton of money. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: happened in the transition between Web one and Web two,
Speaker 1: right Like Web one was sort of the wild West,
Speaker 1: very uh democratic, very egalitarian, I mean, I guess to
Speaker 1: to the extent that you had access to the technology
Speaker 1: to connect yourself to the web. And then it became centralized.
Speaker 1: Right the venture capitalists rolled in, They started making investments,
Speaker 1: and entrepreneurs built these giant platforms which, now, as you said,
Speaker 1: glad tax people on the way through right on both sides,
Speaker 1: in some cases one side of the equation on in
Speaker 1: in some cases both sides. What is going to prevent
Speaker 1: that same thing happening with Web three. I agree with
Speaker 1: you that when you look around the let's say Web
Speaker 1: three industry, and you see so much of the same
Speaker 1: investment dollars that supported Web two supporting large platforms in
Speaker 1: Web three, well, you're still kind of doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: You know, you're you're waving this banner of self sovereignty
Speaker 1: and you're waving this banner of decentralization. But some of
Speaker 1: the biggest platforms in Web three, you're still using their servers,
Speaker 1: You're still very much on their platform, And so I
Speaker 1: think it's a little bit more effective to see the
Speaker 1: potential of Web three less as Web Tube versus Web three,
Speaker 1: and a little more as well. Web two, other than
Speaker 1: social was also really where e commerce exploded. With Web three,
Speaker 1: it's a place where n f T commerce is exploding,
Speaker 1: and we're able to tell creators you can build your
Speaker 1: own commerce around yourself. Now that's not really happening on
Speaker 1: some of the bigger platforms, but you can see the
Speaker 1: promise with the folks that are buying into the possibilities. Molly,
Speaker 1: any thoughts on that. I have a lot of thoughts
Speaker 1: on that. Um. I think the comment about venture capitalists, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of supporting this move into Web three is a
Speaker 1: really important one to focus on a lot of the
Speaker 1: talk around the potential of Web three and the decentralization,
Speaker 1: the return of ownership of data, you know, from these
Speaker 1: huge tech companies into the hands of the users, the
Speaker 1: move away from giant tech monopolies. The same talking points
Speaker 1: are being used by venture capitalists who have supported these
Speaker 1: technologies that really landed us in the Web two era.
Speaker 1: And it's pretty wild to see people taking at face
Speaker 1: value these claims by enormous venture capital firms that they
Speaker 1: will somehow be acting out of sort of the good
Speaker 1: of the broader web users rather than in the efforts
Speaker 1: of enriching themselves, which is what venture capitalists are paid
Speaker 1: to do. I mean, they are paid to make money, right.
Speaker 1: In addition to that, I think it's also really important
Speaker 1: to look at um the claims about how Web three
Speaker 1: is somehow empowering creators in a way that they have
Speaker 1: previously been unable to experience in Web two. There's not
Speaker 1: an issue in Web two with creators not being able
Speaker 1: to host their own work, receive payment for their work,
Speaker 1: you know, solicit income from their fans. This is all
Speaker 1: possible in Web two. The requirement and I guess for
Speaker 1: creators to use huge platforms, you know, the spotifyes of
Speaker 1: the world and things like that to reach their fan
Speaker 1: bases um is largely because of the sort of monopolization
Speaker 1: of attention that happens in Web two, where it's really
Speaker 1: hard to just like start up your own standal and
Speaker 1: website as a musician and actually reach people. You you're
Speaker 1: sort of beholding to these platforms. What Web three is
Speaker 1: doing is really creating new ways of artists to distribute
Speaker 1: their work. But the distribution of their work is not
Speaker 1: the problem. You know, We've had that solution in this
Speaker 1: sort of Web two world, and now if they wanted
Speaker 1: to do it using n f T s or a blockchain,
Speaker 1: they can do that too. But it's nothing particularly new,
Speaker 1: and the issue that has been holding back creators in
Speaker 1: Web two still very much exists in Web three, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing it play out all over again with massive
Speaker 1: platforms like open Sea as an n f T platform
Speaker 1: and other various sort of gatekeepers. Really a monopo realizing
Speaker 1: the ability of creators to actually reach people. And as
Speaker 1: you might expect, you look at open see and you
Speaker 1: look at its venture capital funding, and you see some
Speaker 1: really familiar names. You see Andrews and Horowitz, who has
Speaker 1: backed Facebook and Instagram and all of these major platforms
Speaker 1: that have monopolized attention and Web two, and they're suddenly
Speaker 1: decrying those same platforms in the hopes of getting people
Speaker 1: to believe that they're now not doing the exact same
Speaker 1: thing all over again. Vlad, and I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: your take on that, um, you know, given what you're
Speaker 1: up to at at block party. Absolutely, and and and again.
Speaker 1: This is where I see myself oftentimes agreeing on some
Speaker 1: foundational pieces with skeptics and encouraging folks to maybe reject
Speaker 1: things like open see because they are extrapolating things like
Speaker 1: the attention economy from Web two into what we're trying
Speaker 1: to build in Web three, which is a creator economy.
Speaker 1: Let's look at the hot issue right now today as
Speaker 1: we record creator royalties are the big burning topic in
Speaker 1: the Web three space. To give a little bit of
Speaker 1: context to that, one of the things that smart contracts
Speaker 1: and the blockchain can offer the creator is a royalty
Speaker 1: structure on subsequent transactions that you are not trusting a
Speaker 1: third party to divvy up your royalty back to the
Speaker 1: original creator. But you're simply asking some code to do that.
Speaker 1: That's the idea of permissionless, of trust less. You don't
Speaker 1: have to trust a smart contract. You just kind of
Speaker 1: have to program it to do something. Somebody like me,
Speaker 1: as much as I evangelize the space might call bullshit
Speaker 1: on certain platforms, I include Open Seeing this. Sure they
Speaker 1: pay out royalties to creators, but they pay out royalties
Speaker 1: on their servers. It's still their internal garden doing the
Speaker 1: calculation paying it out. And now we were looking at
Speaker 1: the last twelve months where crypto has taken a backslide
Speaker 1: and every company is looking for more revenue. So marketplaces,
Speaker 1: including now there's some push and pull it open See.
Speaker 1: But a lot of marketplaces are saying, we're going to
Speaker 1: kill the royalty because we don't want to lose five
Speaker 1: of the revenue of a of a transaction. We want
Speaker 1: to keep that five percent. So creators are raising their
Speaker 1: hands and saying, but wait a minute, that was the
Speaker 1: whole that was one of the that was one of
Speaker 1: the key features of us. What are we doing here?
Speaker 1: And so what you're seeing now is these creators that
Speaker 1: were sold this promise, they're asking themselves, well, wait, is
Speaker 1: Web three bullshit? Or are certain companies and Web three bullshit?
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily the entire space, it's individual players within
Speaker 1: that space that are creating the issue. Molly, what's your
Speaker 1: take on on that. I think it's possible for both
Speaker 1: things to be true. Um, the space itself has inherent flaws,
Speaker 1: and that these centralized platforms and you know, major players
Speaker 1: are particularly bad. But one thing that I sort of
Speaker 1: noticed when we're talking about decentralizing and f T platforms
Speaker 1: is what I mentioned earlier, which is that the issue
Speaker 1: is really not with the distribution or the payment rails
Speaker 1: when it comes to creators monetizing their work. What is
Speaker 1: difficult is getting people to actually find my work, you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't already have a following somehow, usually built
Speaker 1: through these large platforms, then telling someone to hey, it
Speaker 1: comes see my website, you know, and download my music,
Speaker 1: it's impossible to get out there in any sort of
Speaker 1: substantial way. You're really relying on social media, um, you know,
Speaker 1: music distribution platforms to get in front of people, and
Speaker 1: that same problem exists on Web three, and you also
Speaker 1: have the same distribution problem. It is a different technology
Speaker 1: So if you particularly like blockchains and you want to
Speaker 1: create a n f T out of your song, that's
Speaker 1: an option to you, but it is not particularly revolutionary.
Speaker 1: That's actually somewhere where I would jump in now as
Speaker 1: somebody that really believes in this stuff. And I feel
Speaker 1: much more comfortable given my background UM talking about visual artists,
Speaker 1: and I don't disagree at all that it's been possible
Speaker 1: to sell natively digital art prior to blockchains. That said,
Speaker 1: I've spent time in the art industry and I've seen
Speaker 1: really wonderful works by the names that you've heard of, Solvere, Dolly,
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol. These artists were around in the early days
Speaker 1: of the computer and they did create digital artwork. But
Speaker 1: it's really tough to sell it. It's really tough to
Speaker 1: create a culture of collectorship around it. And while UM
Speaker 1: Web one and Web two have given creators the tools
Speaker 1: to publish natively digital art on the Internet and distribute
Speaker 1: it and disseminate it, never until Web three has a
Speaker 1: culture of collectorship been able to grow organically around the
Speaker 1: idea of digital art. And we get to a place
Speaker 1: now where we're telling photographers and digital artists you don't
Speaker 1: need to step outside of the medium to sell your work,
Speaker 1: you can exist on your own. And we come back
Speaker 1: to this idea of well, now we're starting to see
Speaker 1: companies like Manifold, companies like I hope block Party to
Speaker 1: tell creators, hey, it's actually really easy to manage your
Speaker 1: own smart contract and set your own fee structure and
Speaker 1: set your own royalty structure. So the successful musicians that
Speaker 1: we speak with in in um in the web three
Speaker 1: space are ones that are successfully building communities. They are
Speaker 1: thinking about their n f T s less as songs
Speaker 1: and more about I have put a token that I
Speaker 1: originated into your wallet, and now I'm able to see
Speaker 1: every wallet that has one of my tokens, and I
Speaker 1: can now tell those wallets come join me on on
Speaker 1: this platform where you can communicate. Come you can have
Speaker 1: access to things that I'm creating digitally as I create them.
Speaker 1: I can air drop you things, and you are building
Speaker 1: this network around yourself. So I've seen musicians do this
Speaker 1: do this quite successfully. I think that's also not particularly
Speaker 1: unique to Web three. I mean, creators have been creating
Speaker 1: communities like that for a very long time. You can
Speaker 1: look at I mean I follow a bunch of people,
Speaker 1: for example, on Patreon, who I support because I love
Speaker 1: their work. There's the same benefits that are being described
Speaker 1: in web three, and there's nothing that paid Treon is
Speaker 1: really doing that I can't actually just do myself if
Speaker 1: I want to. That is possible in the same way
Speaker 1: that it would be possible for me to go write
Speaker 1: a smart contract to do a lot of the same things,
Speaker 1: and it requires very similar sort of levels of effort
Speaker 1: as well. I think can I can I make an
Speaker 1: observation maybe to both of you and have you call
Speaker 1: bullshit on me. But one of the things that I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here thinking about is maybe, like one of the
Speaker 1: things is we've trained people to do the easy thing,
Speaker 1: and it's super easy for them to find music and
Speaker 1: then downloaded and listen to it. It's very easy for
Speaker 1: me to get on Amazon and find a thing that
Speaker 1: I want. And at some level, aren't we also or
Speaker 1: don't we need to ask consumers, like regular people people
Speaker 1: who buy things, to actually start pushing back on this
Speaker 1: idea of convenience, because that notion of making it easy
Speaker 1: is sort of the ultimate engine behind these giant platforms, right.
Speaker 1: I think that's really true, and I think that there
Speaker 1: is a lot of value in pushing consumers to be
Speaker 1: conscious of the ramifications of their decisions. So I think
Speaker 1: there is a strong argument to be made to, you know,
Speaker 1: like let's make a shift back to the indie web
Speaker 1: and not necessarily consume all our content through Facebook and
Speaker 1: Twitter and all that. I think there is um but
Speaker 1: I also think we need to be a little bit
Speaker 1: realistic about the ability of the average person to engage
Speaker 1: and devote that amount of time um to doing things
Speaker 1: like that, you know, And I think we need to
Speaker 1: be realistic about the circumstances that are leading people to
Speaker 1: have to take the quickest option, the cheapest option, even
Speaker 1: when presented with the ethical choice they might go in
Speaker 1: a different direction. I think enabling people to have more
Speaker 1: flexibility to make the right decision rather than the cheapest
Speaker 1: or the quickest would be useful blood any uh any thoughts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some of the promise of web three that is legitimate
Speaker 1: to me and very exciting to me is a very
Speaker 1: human push and pull between let's all get together in
Speaker 1: one place and then let's all split off into our
Speaker 1: own tribes and the success I think of Facebook and
Speaker 1: things like my Space eventually Instagram, Twitter are this very
Speaker 1: human drive to have all of these tribes get together
Speaker 1: in one place, and I think that has sort of
Speaker 1: metastasized into some really problematic stuff that happens on Facebook,
Speaker 1: that happens on these giant monolith places. And so when
Speaker 1: we think about Web three is a rejection of all
Speaker 1: of this, it's these tribes breaking away and saying we
Speaker 1: don't want to be part of the monolith. And now
Speaker 1: we go over to what's happening right now and some
Speaker 1: of the creators and communities that are building tribes around
Speaker 1: themselves and they're being given these decentralized finance tools to
Speaker 1: do it. I don't think we're there yet. I still
Speaker 1: think that we have years of work to do before
Speaker 1: it's easy enough to use and attractive to use. But
Speaker 1: it's not going to be right now. It's certainly not
Speaker 1: easy for the legitimate purposes of Web three. And that's
Speaker 1: why I say we're probably years away from Web three,
Speaker 1: and that we're in Web two and a half right now,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the value this can bring for
Speaker 1: creators is very much an R and D, and we're
Speaker 1: still struggling with the consumer that has a really hard
Speaker 1: time onboarding into into how to buy these things, and
Speaker 1: it's really unfortunate to me. And where I will very
Speaker 1: much call bullshit on my own industry is it's hard
Speaker 1: to work on this stuff. It is difficult to navigate
Speaker 1: the regulation of onboarding and getting people into crypto r
Speaker 1: un seen out of cryptocurrency. It's very hard to get
Speaker 1: the consumer to participate in a way that is meaningful.
Speaker 1: But there are folks working on it. It's far easier
Speaker 1: to put a jpeg on a token, put her an
Speaker 1: open sea and say this is like I, I personally
Speaker 1: am not a huge fan of let's say born a
Speaker 1: ball club where everybody hasn't enough T and that means
Speaker 1: we're gonna throw concerts and we're gonna open up like
Speaker 1: an exclusive club in London and all this other stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's fine, but that's the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that you really don't need a blockchain for and you
Speaker 1: really don't need smart contracts for. But it's easy because
Speaker 1: if you market it right and you hype it correctly,
Speaker 1: then people get excited about it. There's sort of this
Speaker 1: interesting dichonomy and web three where you simultaneously have advocates
Speaker 1: for it saying you've got to get in. Now, you've
Speaker 1: got to get in early. You know, you've got to
Speaker 1: be in the forefront of this new thing. And then
Speaker 1: you also have people saying it's too early. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not revolutionary yet, but it will be. The conversation
Speaker 1: changes every time. You know, it's like, so, should we
Speaker 1: be using your products if it's not ready yet? Should
Speaker 1: we be giving you money? Should we be supporting this industry?
Speaker 1: It's kind of all over the place. You know, people
Speaker 1: will say, yeah, there are flaws. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: those same people are saying, come by my token, come
Speaker 1: use my project, And so it's it's tough because I
Speaker 1: think the goal posts sort of move constantly. If a
Speaker 1: technology is so so nascent and it is so flawed
Speaker 1: that the average person can't responsibly or safely engage with it,
Speaker 1: it's not ethical to be promoting it as something that
Speaker 1: people need to be adopting, that they should be engaging with.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that if you're designing a car
Speaker 1: that crashes of the time, you probably shouldn't be telling
Speaker 1: people to strap in and go for a drive. Um, Molly,
Speaker 1: I understand your point, right, If a thing isn't ready,
Speaker 1: why are you asking people to use it? But I
Speaker 1: would observe also that that is seemingly true of the
Speaker 1: software industry in general. Right, that is an that is
Speaker 1: a thing that Silicon Valley has spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time training all of us on. Is you're using an
Speaker 1: imperfect thing. So you look at like the the issue
Speaker 1: with self driving in cars, right, Like I own a Tesla,
Speaker 1: I have full self driving capability. I will tell you
Speaker 1: it is absolutely not self driving, and I absolutely would
Speaker 1: not use it that way, but I do use it.
Speaker 1: And so should they not sell Tesla's until it's perfect
Speaker 1: and ready? Or is it okay to go? You know,
Speaker 1: you're taking some risk by trying to sound you're a
Speaker 1: test pilot, and if you accept that responsibility, get in
Speaker 1: there and go for it, you know. Question. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I think it's a great question. And I think generally speaking,
Speaker 1: software and actually many industries have a serious problem with
Speaker 1: ethics and the acceptability of doing that. I actually don't
Speaker 1: think it's acceptable for Tesla to go. Yeah, you might
Speaker 1: kill yourself for somebody else with this, but go for it.
Speaker 1: You know, you've accepted the risk that you're taking other
Speaker 1: people's lives into your hands. The same thing I think
Speaker 1: is true with Web three and crypto where people are
Speaker 1: saying it's early, there might be bugs, you might lose
Speaker 1: everything you put into it. So I think that there
Speaker 1: is an ethical problem and that we as a society
Speaker 1: need to push back on the idea of software engineers
Speaker 1: just pushing forward saying move fast and break things. But
Speaker 1: it's so easy, I think when you are so removed
Speaker 1: from your user base to say, oh, you've gotta break
Speaker 1: a few plates, you gotta run over a few people
Speaker 1: with your tesla, you gotta bankrupt, if few people completely
Speaker 1: wipe out their savings, it's you. I think it's really
Speaker 1: critical that the software engineering says, no, we can't just
Speaker 1: stick out that we're going to break a few plates.
Speaker 1: We need to be very responsible and thoughtful about not
Speaker 1: only what we're building, but how we're marketing it, how
Speaker 1: we're selling it, who we're selling it to, what we're
Speaker 1: telling them they can do with it, and what it
Speaker 1: will bring to the world, and what the risks are
Speaker 1: what they're signing up for, and how they're protected or
Speaker 1: if they're protected at all from catastrophic failure. And none
Speaker 1: of that is happening in the crypto industry, and I
Speaker 1: think that is really really critical to pay attention to
Speaker 1: you and push back on vlode any any thoughts on that. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm still going to be very mindful of separating out
Speaker 1: crypto trading culture, which is not necessarily unique to block
Speaker 1: chains or Web three, and the very idea of like
Speaker 1: speculatively wild westing. I think that's a feature of Web
Speaker 1: three and a feature of blockchain, but I still struggle
Speaker 1: to see that as the main thing. I'd love for
Speaker 1: you both to make some brief predictions about the future
Speaker 1: of Web three. Paint a best case scenario and a
Speaker 1: worst case scenario for me, Molly, why don't we start
Speaker 1: with you? Well, I think the best case scenario is
Speaker 1: that people uh redefine the term a little bit. You know,
Speaker 1: what is the web going to evolve into. I think
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of potential there to fix some
Speaker 1: of the very serious problems that exist on the web
Speaker 1: and to move towards a more you know, community driven
Speaker 1: platform which is not so uh, you know, hyper optimized
Speaker 1: for advertisements and engagement at the expense of everything else.
Speaker 1: I worry that people will really internalize this definition that
Speaker 1: Web three, the next generation of the Web, is going
Speaker 1: to be crypto and you know, block chains and everything
Speaker 1: else without you know, actually examining whether or not that
Speaker 1: is true or should be true. And so I think
Speaker 1: in the worst case scenario, people really stick to their
Speaker 1: guns on blockchains, crypto, etcetera. And we see what is
Speaker 1: already playing out with large venture capital firms capturing a
Speaker 1: lot of the market and really quite successfully separating people
Speaker 1: from their money with promises of getting wealthy overnight, escaping
Speaker 1: tough financial situations. Being on the forefront of the future
Speaker 1: of the web. I think that is the worst case scenario,
Speaker 1: that this really does continue to play out, and that
Speaker 1: people get harmed even more than they already have, which
Speaker 1: is a substantial amount. Thank you for that, Molly at Vaude.
Speaker 1: Best and worst, I'll start with the worst case. The
Speaker 1: worst case is that Web three falls into the habit
Speaker 1: of Web two. So I call web to the Golden
Speaker 1: Age for the consumer of content. All the world's content
Speaker 1: is available to us at our fingertips, at a low price,
Speaker 1: easily searchable, and it's been nothing short of truly a
Speaker 1: renaissance for the consumer of culture. Web three fails if
Speaker 1: it falls in the worst case scenario of proliferating the
Speaker 1: idea that we continue the Golden age for the consumer.
Speaker 1: The best case scenario for Web three is that it
Speaker 1: brings about a golden age for the creator, particularly the
Speaker 1: natively digital creator of content. The best case scenario for
Speaker 1: Web three is that the creators of content can own
Speaker 1: their creation, own their copyright, own their commerce, and be
Speaker 1: able to do so without requiring a third party to
Speaker 1: facilitated for them. Great, thank you, blod Okay, last question,
Speaker 1: we have a tool on calling bullshit called the B
Speaker 1: S Scale. It goes from zero to a hundred. Zero
Speaker 1: is the best score zero BS and a hundred is
Speaker 1: the worst total BS. What score would you give Web
Speaker 1: three today, Vlad? You go first to assign an overarching
Speaker 1: score for an entire industry has actually made this entire
Speaker 1: podcast and conversation quite challenging because we're trying to loop
Speaker 1: in so many different players. Yeah, so to put the
Speaker 1: score on the industry, I'm gonna say twenty. Molly, I
Speaker 1: would give it a solid and I think some people
Speaker 1: might be surprised that I might not give it a hundred.
Speaker 1: There's some hope there, Molly. At least it's hope. I
Speaker 1: think that people will really continue to follow the goal
Speaker 1: of Web three without being chained to the technology um,
Speaker 1: but I remain fairly optimistic that Web three will end
Speaker 1: up being defined quite differently from how it has been
Speaker 1: defined in the past couple of years by the marketing
Speaker 1: minds behind a lot of the crypto and blockchain projects. Okay,
Speaker 1: this was an absolutely awesome conversation. I want to thank
Speaker 1: you both so much for participating in it. I totally
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I learned a ton and thank you for
Speaker 1: the time today. Thanks for having me, Thank you so
Speaker 1: much time. Alright, folks, it is time to make the call.
Speaker 1: How much BS is there in the web three space.
Speaker 1: This is the first time we've looked at an entire
Speaker 1: sector on the show, and I knew it would be complicated,
Speaker 1: but I had no idea just how contested and nascent
Speaker 1: this space is. Not to mention all of the technical language,
Speaker 1: it's also the first time that we received it's widely
Speaker 1: divergent BS scores. To recap, Molly gave it a Glen
Speaker 1: A fifty and Vlad a twenty. There are just so
Speaker 1: many places that our guests disagree and places their views intersect.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to paint a verbal ven diagram.
Speaker 1: You might want to grab a pencil on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper. Molly and Glenn agree that the Internet could
Speaker 1: have a bright future, and that future isn't necessarily tied
Speaker 1: to the blockchain. For instance, Glenn mentioned Taiwan's digital tools,
Speaker 1: which are actually built without blockchain technology. Molly and Vlad, however,
Speaker 1: both agree that Web three implies a blockchain. Vlad believes
Speaker 1: that blockchains can help create the ultimate directed consumer platform. Molly,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, doesn't think the blockchain is solving
Speaker 1: any problems and is probably creating more trouble than it's
Speaker 1: actually worth. And Vlad and Glenn agree that vcs aren't
Speaker 1: necessarily the only enemy here. Bad actors take many forms,
Speaker 1: but everyone agrees that this is a tough topic to
Speaker 1: dissect and that to some extent, vcs are working to
Speaker 1: consolidate power in a sector they are advertising as decentralized.
Speaker 1: So this one is tough to call. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give it a fifty. I think the fair answer here
Speaker 1: is that we have multiple factions working their butts off
Speaker 1: to produce totally divergent versions of Web three, and the
Speaker 1: outcome is far from clear at the moment. If the
Speaker 1: vcs managed to create a centralized version of Web three,
Speaker 1: where our data is plundered for the benefit of a
Speaker 1: wealthy few. That's bad, and the score goes way up.
Speaker 1: If the anarcho capitalists win and all our social institutions
Speaker 1: and governments get erased, I think that's a bad thing.
Speaker 1: But if end and some of the other Optimists went
Speaker 1: out and we use Web three to enact some of
Speaker 1: the original promise of Web one and create a better
Speaker 1: functioning and more egalitarian society, well that would be great
Speaker 1: and the score would drop way way down. So let's
Speaker 1: all agree to keep an eye on this space and
Speaker 1: revisit it in the future. I am so grateful to
Speaker 1: have such amazing guests joining me for this one. I
Speaker 1: want to thank Glenn While, Molly White, and Vlad Ginsburg
Speaker 1: for taking the time to speak with me on the show.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend checking out more of their work to
Speaker 1: learn more about them, check out the links on our
Speaker 1: show notes, and if this episode monopolized your attention, subscribe
Speaker 1: to the Calling Bullshit podcast on the I Heart radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to people speaking to
Speaker 1: your ears. Please take a minute to rate us and
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Speaker 1: production team Hannah be Yell, Amanda Ginsburg, D S Moss,
Speaker 1: Hailey Pascalites, and Parker Silzer. Calling Bullshit was created by
Speaker 1: co Collective and it's hosted by me Ti Montaguio. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.