foreign
[Music]
after such a tumultuous time over the
past few years a lot of us have gone
through a lot of personal and societal
issues and to come together to celebrate
and to look at all the changes that have
happened over the past few years in the
ecosystem and the things that didn't
really change over the past few years as
well so Defcon is actually a perfect
example
of us trying to expose the community and
the culture to the needs in different
regions of the world and it's quite
clear by the different feedback that
we've been getting that their reactions
that people are really not truly close
to empathizing or understanding the
needs of others when it comes to really
benefiting the individuals that would be
able to make the use of the technology
to the most of their benefit
so I believe the many of you that are
sitting in this room have truly made
this your life's works for the past few
years and will be the individuals that
kind of look at how we can look at
ethereum as an ecosystem and what needs
to be done to maintain the
decentralization
so I wanted to kind of take this
opportunity to step back and really
examine from a pragmatic approach maybe
somewhat of a therapy session with these
individuals in the room and look at like
what has been really exact what has been
happening in the ecosystem and how can
we look at uh what's been going wrong
and why are we really here and where do
we need to focus our energies and what
are we hoping to create as an impact
from a Global Perspective for
participants that come from very
disparate and unique backgrounds and
lived experiences so let's face it we
have a problem all of us have this
notion and mental model of can someone
else do it when it comes to maintaining
and running Services uh when we have to
participate included in this network and
in the Rondo about way we've kind of
just adopted this same mentality that we
had coming into web 3 from the web
ecosystem as a whole so I wasn't kidding
when I said this would be somewhat of a
therapy session and we'd look at what is
happening as far as Behavior change inch
so in order to do that I wanted to look
at the trans theoretical model of
behavior change so there are five stages
of change that have been conceptualized
for a variety of problems and behaviors
so the first stage is basically
pre-contemplation
so these are individuals that are not
really ready to make any change they
might be unaware or under aware of the
issues that are happening
so maybe there's a few individuals in
this room that don't really that aren't
really aware of the issues that we are
facing when it comes to decentralization
in the ecosystem then there's
individuals that are kind of in this
contemplation stage where they're aware
of the problems but they're not really
mindful or seriously thinking about
overcoming them in any meaningful Manner
and then there's no commitment to take
any action
so I think that's kind of the space a
lot of us kind of occupy at this point
is we're aware of the problems but we
really haven't done any preparation or
are ready to do any action to change
those things so the next stage is
basically preparation and that combines
like the intention of wanting to create
some change and then looking at some of
the behavioral criteria to make that
change in the first place and then
intending to take some action in the
first place
so from there we go to the action stage
and this is I think where the biggest
issue happens within the ecosystem is
that we get prepared but we just don't
have the tools or the resources to take
any action to create that change so this
is the stage where individuals actually
have to modify the behavior they have to
change their experiences environment and
have in order to overcome their problems
and this requires uh quite the overt
behavioral changes and considerable
considerable amount of commitment and
energy and resources
then from that we go to the maintenance
so basically people work to prevent
relapse and the work that had been done
in the action phase
um and then obviously there's relapse
and I think this is the point of uh
place where we are in the ecosystem
where we've kind of reverted to making
decisions in the hopes of mass adoption
that kind of compromise the decisions
when it comes to decentralization and
we'll kind of get into that a little bit
so we postulate quite a bit on Twitter
and other social media channels around
like what are the issues but there's
really no action or Force put behind
them
so my objective today or is to kind of
like help some of the individuals that
are in the room to move from this
pre-contemplation phase to something
that is a little bit more actionable or
at least prepared for them to do so so
decentralization has kind of been touted
as this core to the ethereum of web3
ecosystem
yet we continue to operate in a world
where the end users have been trained
and programmed to not think about any of
the infrastructure that they need to run
to utilize some of the services or the
technologies that we utilize
um so it means that they're not really
aware of how these things operate how
secure they are how they're managed and
what are the trade-offs when you
actually get to
um making those
trade us when you actually start to rely
on these intermediaries to come and
facilitate some of this technology
and the community just continues to
operate with the same Mantra of can
someone else do it that we have been
programmed to do so within the web 2
ecosystem but it's kind of interesting
to also look at the different cohorts of
people that come into the ecosystem so
throughout the years these individuals
hold very different values and their
mode of operation is quite distinct as
well so if you really wanted to examine
the people that are giving talks at
Defcon you'll be able to kind of
guesstimate where and when in the
ecosystem they kind of entered so from
like 2010 to 2012 onwards these were
individuals that were kind of Cypher
punks they were crypto punks and they
were crypto anarchists they wanted to
take control back from the state as you
go towards the 2014s 2016s these are
individuals that are more game theorists
these are system design thinkers these
are individuals that are thinking about
more mechanism designs and so forth and
then as you go into the later years
these are individuals that are more
aligned with business cases and user
adoption
so the place that I kind of came into
the ecosystem was around 2016 where I
was sold this vision of web3 being my
portal into anything that I wanted to do
with privacy user interactions and so
forth so the first thing that I as a PC
user wanting to interact with ethereum
was there's no Ico boom there's no rise
in token prices at this point so all I
could do was to interact with ethereum
was try to run a node
and the first thing I tried to do was
look at the Miss browser and I was able
to get it running but the issue was it
wasn't able to sync so the next option
was the parody UI ranit was able to get
it to sync but there was no features or
anything functional that would kind of
keep me utilizing that service and kind
of interact with the ethereum network in
any meaningful manner
so then at the same time status and
Jared were kind of like evangelizing
this ethereum for mobile Vision where
you could have no infrastructure on a
mobile device you can interact with
these Technologies to whisper Etc and
this was around 2016 and we're in 2022
and I want to interact with ethereum
what do I have command line interfaces
it's unfortunate but there's a lot of
infrastructure work that needs to be
done a lot of resources and issues that
have come up that has still led us to a
position where normal users that want to
interact with the network State can do
that in a meaningful manner they can't
run nodes they can't run infrastructure
because there's just no easy way for
them to do so
so one thing that we come to realize
time and time again is that users will
always give up their Liberties for
convenience
and this happens within social media
networks where the users give up their
data privacy just for the sake of quick
access and the ability to interact with
certain use cases that are not available
and that doesn't require them to
actually run any infrastructure or node
Services Etc
and they really don't have that
bandwidth or the time or the allocation
to actually worry about some of this
stuff when it comes to running
infrastructure
so we get into this situation where
we're kind of like the the citizens of
Springfield and we just want someone
else to take care of all our problems
and we just kind of operate within that
mental framework
um and I think it's
it's really a disservice to the
ecosystem and the the intended
purpose of why we are here in the first
place uh because we want control over
our data we want control over our uh
privacy and that we're in just a
position where we're relying on
intermediate areas and putting a lot of
trust in them to give us what we should
be optimizing for
so when we look at who is there to blame
it it is the the ecosystem as a whole
and the key decisions that we have made
when it comes to trying to optimize for
whether it's adoption or other
consequences of Technology limitations
that have been there so what does
decentralization currently look like in
the ethereum ecosystem it's it's it's
you have to be kind of mindful and kind
of step back and actually evaluate that
most of the key ownership or individuals
that actually invest in crypto tokens
Etc hold their keys on centralized
exchanges so there's there's a
centralized party taking control of this
stuff in the first place when it comes
to no infrastructure majority of nodes
are actually running on Amazon AWS and
cloud services so you're kind of back at
Ground Zero again
similarly when it comes to data
availability or getting access to
the transactions and so forth you're
relying on inferior when it comes to
staking a lot of the staking is actually
Consolidated on staking pools or
centralized exchanges at this point
which is a huge problem uh when you do
get into censorship and those
organizations having to kind of function
within certain jurisdictions and laws
that they must abide by
additionally when it comes to network
security we have issues with client
diversity so like the major execution
client is get which occupies close to 80
which is a huge issue when it comes to
network security additionally we did
have issues with prism being a majority
client but the community did a lot of
energy and focus on that we're at a good
position there but still there is a lot
of work that needs to be done there and
when it comes to dapps or other
resources
um you know you're basically reliant on
things like open C which are not very
decentralized in any manner as well so
unless you really run an ethereum nodes
you're not you're like trusting third
parties to provide you access to the
blockchain and which is not really the
the core value of what we were trying to
achieve so you're not really truly
participating in this P2P network uh
you're not properly propagating your own
transactions to the network you're
dependent on things like metamatch to
connect to inferior and then you're
looking at etherscan and just giving
this inherent trust to these
organizations and these services to
provide you the information that you're
looking for and for it to be accurate in
the first place
so when you look at like the the
participation of the current POS
validator nodes within the context of
the world you can see that majority of
individuals that are participating are
within the North America and Europe
regions and this is a concern as far as
diversity is concerned as well you can
see there's a bit of action within the
East Asian communities but that is still
very limited and it's quite interesting
to kind of like map this to the
participation from
ethereum Global online hackers it kind
of maps quite
nicely aside from the fact that there's
a lot of developer activity happening in
India but there isn't too much staking
happening there so I think it's good to
know that there is a lot of work that
needs to be done as far as making sure
that we've created the ecosystem and the
resources for these Network participants
to come in from these locations that
might not have the resources to do so so
32 ether is a lot of money for
individuals in Latin America or Africa
or Asia so how do we get resources and
technologies that kind of help them
participate in the network and staking
is not the only way for them to
participate in the network so they can
run nodes they can learn run like
clients they can run other services and
really think about how they can get some
sort of participation within the network
that doesn't rely them investing money
and perhaps we can even look at how can
incentivize those individuals and
monetize or compensate those individuals
to be participants in the first place as
well which we can talk about a little
bit later
so it's clear that this these things
don't seem like an issue until they
become an issue and that at that point
it's just too late for you to do
anything so we've seen a little bit of a
glimpse of this
um when it comes to web 2 hacks Etc but
most recently when it comes to tornado
cash
so I said one of the biggest issues or
the blames was on us but there's other
factors and other forces kind of
functioning towards making some of this
a little bit more difficult for us to
decentralize and not be functioning
within the current systems that do exist
and that's one of those things is like
advice adversarial State actors so as we
saw with tornado cash I'm not a legal
expert or anything but uh so I won't
speak too heavily on this and I think
there's probably other talks within that
conduct kind of go into this route but
they were basically put on the ofax
action list and then the developers were
added to this sdn list which doesn't
doesn't make sense from uh perspective
of the law at that point and then on top
of that crypto projects are abandoned
countries like China and India where
there's a lot of developer activity but
they just don't have the opportunity to
work on these Technologies in the first
place
in addition the third forcing factor is
that there's individuals which are kind
of
classifies mad adoption vultures these
are individuals that come in take the
narrative that you've been working on
for the past x amount of years and then
co-opted for their own benefit so these
are the Elon musks these are the uh
Jack dorsey's these are the mark
zuckerbergs who are just waiting by the
side that once they see their
opportunity they're going to jump on the
narrative and take it for their own
benefits so when you see Elon Musk
tweeting these dot coins and making
people those coins kind of jump up in
value a lot of people invest in them
kind of Follow That Trend and when they
lose money that reflects adversely on
the ecosystem as a whole so all the work
that you've done now gets marred by this
rug pull that was kind of like
facilitated by this individual that this
was having fun creating memes on the
internet similarly we've seen what these
social media companies do when it comes
to feature releases one social media
company releases a feature two weeks
later everyone has the same features
within their applications similarly
these individuals are just waiting for
their opportunity to kind of co-opt what
you're doing and then utilize their fit
for their benefit you've seen this with
Zuckerberg kind of reframing this his
whole organization around meta worse and
whatnot
similarly with Jack Dorsey he's always
pushing for Bitcoin and decentralization
but we haven't seen too much come out of
that
so one thing that I wanted to kind of
get into was addressing users needs so
if you were thinking about what needs to
be done moving forward is that we need
to meet the users halfway or where they
are that means that if people or
majority of the world is using PCS and
we want individuals to stake or
participate in managing nodes or
creating validators Etc maybe we create
interfaces or documentation that's a
little bit easier for those individuals
to understand so this is the ease of
access and then as I was mentioning
earlier there's this part about
incentive alignment so what does it look
like for people to participate in the
ethereum network we kind of confuse it
with just staking at this point but
there's other opportunities for
individuals to actually a
communicate and get participation
participation within the network uh
through running nodes running like
clients and other services that can be
of a meaningful manner but like how do
you incentivize them how do you create
resources or infrastructure for them to
even do that in the first place
uh Additionally you have to kind of like
take them through this Progressive
disclosure phase where you can't just
check them in the deep end of uh
decentralization as they start to make
those uh
movements towards action you kind of
help them and guide them towards that
just movement as far as decentralization
in the first place and that kind of
leads into the guided education
encouragement of those individuals so as
you start moving up the the use cases
you should make sure that those
individuals are provided that sufficient
guidance and the encouragement to
continue and maintain the changes and
behaviors that they have implemented
additionally we need to make sure that
there's relevant context and narrative
framing for the individuals that we're
speaking to so the framing that you have
around web 3 and the challenges that you
face with financial uh restrictions or
censorship Etc is not the same that the
individuals in Bogota face or the people
that in Africa face or the people that
face in India and this this is the
context that we need to be aware of to
make sure that the framing is uh
maneuvered in a way that they understand
why they should be decentralizing in the
first place and what does that mean for
them and how does that benefit them in
their long run
so I think one thing that I would
encourage for everyone to start doing on
their own to if they really value
privacy or security and want to like
reduce Reliance on third-party servers
and improve sensitive resistance or
improve health and do your
centralization of the network is to take
ownership and participate in the network
themselves and this means running a node
or whatever it may be ethereum.org has
been doing a great job of creating these
resources that easily that are easy to
understand and that have a lot of
translations for different regions and I
would encourage everyone to kind of
start digging into some of these more
resources online and try to understand
where we kind of started as an ecosystem
and where we have kind of ended up in
the past few years
additionally if there's individuals in
this room that are quite passionate
about creating this change for the
ecosystem I would encourage them to come
to adoption day it's the uxn conference
where we have uh quite a few interesting
lightning talks from individuals from
optimism
um from status from uh different Clan
teams to kind of really dig into these
different issues and think about what we
need to be thinking about in the short
term and to the long term when it comes
to the ux challenges when it comes to
adoption and make sure that
decentralizes at the core
decentralization is at the core of any
of the issues that we focus towards so
please be sure to add this to your
schedule so we know how to plan for the
room accordingly and make sure that we
set it up since it is a small Workshop
room
additionally we'll have working groups
focus on ux challenges between 1 pm and
6 pm and then after that we'll go to the
chiva Lounge hopefully where Tomo will
do a DJ sets uh looking forward to that
myself
uh additionally at Defcon this year we
really made a point to highlight teams
and projects that are working on some of
this stuff so be sure to go to the
client team uh impact boots I know for a
fact that Nimbus is working on user
interfaces to make some of this stuff
easier
um Lighthouse is working on some of this
stuff I know prism and lodestar have
done some research and development in
this regard as well do check out
ethereum on arm which is a small device
that you can actually start running a
node on an ARM device that nodes provide
services or along this this regard as
well same ethereum so they're all in the
impact boot area so be sure to go check
them out as well additionally I think we
just need to kind of go back to this
diagram around why we were looking at
the transtheor article model of change
and what we need to be mindful of so
it's always an upward spiral and we're
always going to relapse and I think over
the past few years we've unfortunately
relapsed to a point where we just don't
want to take ownership of the managing
our services or infrastructure at all
and we're going to have to start
looking at what infrastructure what
resources which education needs to be
put in place where people can now start
actually preparing and putting things
into action so hopefully there's
individuals in this room that can guide
us that can lead us move into more
action-oriented mind frame rather than
where we just
contemplate and think about the issues
that we are facing but once we actually
get to the point that it's too late
there's nothing that we can do so I
would like to thank everyone for coming
today and hopefully you get an
opportunity to engage with the thousands
of individuals that are coming to Defcon
from disparate backgrounds and
communicate with them and really learn
about the challenges that they face when
it comes to some of this stuff why are
they here why did they want to
participate in the ethereum whether it
was creating resources whether it's
developing protocols what really drives
them and how do you take that context
into the work that you're doing I think
it's quite imperative and
Community efforts like Defcon are
amazing to see the the consequence of
what happens at these events so you
might see an idea spark at one of these
talks that leads to a huge impact not
only monetarily but just from an
ecosystem-wide perspective uh in the
next few years so be mindful of those
conversations take the opportunity to
really dig deep and think about the the
reason why we were here in the first
place and how we can kind of continue
moving towards that decentralized
ecosystem thank you very much
[Applause]